If you have a website that you would like to get to the top of the search engine then there are some
simple rules you can follow that will help you do just that. Obviously what you do is country-specific
so you will need to tailor your website to the Google listing appropriate for your country.

Hopefully you will find the information we have included interesting and useful to you. Maybe you
will even want to share our tips with your friends….

The first thing to think about is where you are going to sell your goods or services. Just as you might
if you were marketing your business in one country and targeting specific groups of people, you should
do the same but on a larger scale. What is different about the country you are going to sell to. Use this
information to help you work on your website. The results that are pulled up in a search listing will differ
by country so you will need to do slightly different things  if you want your website to rank highly in
each of them.

Why you should try to appear in versions that are specific to the country
If it isn’t immediately obvious to you why you should look to have your website listed in other versions
of Google then lets go through some of the reasons.Google.com takes your IP address to locate you and
direct you to the appropriate version. For instance, if you were based in the UK, then this would be the
Google.co.uk version. If you have a listing through the .com version then this would not appear in the local,
by-country version.  If you want to be visible to other countries, and choose which countries these will be
then you need to ensure you are listed in their specific versions.

How to ensure you appear in the search engine results
The next question, is how you can do this. Firstly, make sure you have a domain name that is relevant for
that country. A .co.uk domain would not be appropriate for Germany, for instance, so making sure that you
have the country-specific domain name will help you and give you a greater chance  of achieving a higher
ranking. If you cannot get a domain name that is specific to that country then the next thing you can do is
to get an IP address that is local to that country instead. At least this way, Google will recognise the IP address
as based within the country you are trying to market and therefore allow you to list within those search results.

Make the content of your site relevant to that country
Including a postal address on your website that is based in the country you wish to target will help Google to
list you in the relevant search engine results, as will having your address information listed on different pages
of your site. The more information that can be collected from your site to help identify your location the better.

Use the right language
Of course, it goes without saying that your website should be in an appropriate language. There is very little point
having your website in French if you are selling to the Spanish, but more than this, your website should use the
right phraseology. If you are an English speaker based in the US but targeting a UK audience, you should adjust
your spellings and phrasing to suit the market. This is not just a concern in terms of reaching the people you want
to market yourself to, but also in terms of having Google recognise you as a site that is appropriate for the listing
you wish to appear in. If you do the things above, you will dramatically improve your chances of being listed in
Google’s results for a particular country.

Getting to the top of the listings
Once you have appeared in the listing you wish to rank highly in you now need to think about how you will get to
the top of the search. Using the right keywords and in the right density will help you in this regard. Google should
not only recognise you as appropriate for a specific country, but relevant to a particular search. You should ensure
that the content of your website is as relevant as possible in terms of text and using the associated keywords.
Hopefully you will find that by using all of this information you are able to get to the top of the search engine listings
and target the market you are looking to break into!

One might not achieve the desired higher ranking on Google search pages
without having planned and optimized the ‘content’ of their webpages very
meticulously. Basically, you need to work on the titles of your webpages,
the contents they carry, as well as the backlinks from other websites.

Often, webmasters tend to overlook the internal link structure
of a website; the internal link structure plays a vital role in any
website’s overall ranking.

Why You Should Pay Attention to Your Website’s Internal Link Structure
Links from external websites count more than the internal links. However, internal links are important aspects of generating signals in search engine algorithms. In the eyes of search engines, links are as good as votes. When you focus on optimizing your site’s link structure, you can create a clear path for the search engines to access the important pages of your site and also reveal the keywords you desire to rank high on.

What You Should Do

• Your optimization should start from the main navigation of your website
  The navigational links that are visible on every page of your website are the major navigations on your site. The most important aspect of your website navigation is the main navigation. 
  
  Typically, it includes a “Home” link – e.g. linked business logo image. It also includes links pointing to the major sections of your site.

  Don’t meddle with JavaScript and Flash Menus. A good number of search engines would often bypass such web pages in the course of indexing. A better way to design your website navigation is to use CSS as well as standard HTML.

  Don’t fail to incorporate your top prioritized keywords onto links in your main navigation.

• Ensure that the initial link on the page is the correct link
  It appears that the first link on a webpage is the only one that Google considers. Look at it this way; if Webpage A links to Webpage B with “more info” as the anchor text on top of the page, and uses another anchor text ‘buy golf items’ at the bottom of the page, Google is most likely to use only the first anchor text on top of the page. 

  Therefore, if you link to another page more than once, ensure that the first link on top of the page features your most important keyword – the one you desire to achieve a high rank on.

• Breadcrumb navigation may be excellent for sub-webpages
  Breadcrumb navigation can be highly beneficial to sub-pages. Usually, sub web pages are not often linked from the main navigation of the website. 

  Search engines find it easy to place your sub webpages into the appropriate context when you incorporate breadcrumb navigation links.

You can show visitors and search engines the exact location of a webpage by using breadcrumb navigation links.  Don’t forget to incorporate descriptive as well as keyword-rich phrases in your site’s breadcrumb navigation – for example: Golf bag > Golf shoes > Buy golf items.

Pay attention to the information I am providing here; this is based on my several years of experience in providing search engine ranking services. There are lots of disinformation out there regarding SEO.

I have offered SEO and ranking services and advice to both big and small businesses. During these years, I’ve come to discover something essential; the sites that rank high usually share some common traits.

The anchor texts of the inbound links to your site
Using the anchor text from sites that link to your site, Google as well as other search engines are able to ascertain the theme of your site and determine what is best for your website in terms of ranking. Therefore, check that other sites are linking to you with both the keywords in your anchor text and URL – email them to this effect and ask them to update your link. Place your high priority keywords in the link.

Keywords featured in your title and meta tags
Meta tags have not stopped being part of the influencing factors to your rankings. Although they are no longer very weighty, meta tags work very well when it comes to placing your page in the right category. Meta tags also help to identify what search engines are likely to look out for in the course of spidering the pages. Ensure that your keywords are featured on your tags, and that the tags are well constructed.

What about the diversity of domains linking to your site?
A lot of search engines are not just concerned about how many sites link to your site, but on their diversities as well. This is the way to judge how popular your site is; this technique is quite helpful when it comes to enhancing your ranking.

Link popularity
Link popularity can be likened to Page Rank; the topic had been a subject of discussion in search engine forums for a while. There are several factors at work to assess the quality of webpages from external sources. The more popular and recognized the pages are, the more value their links add to your website.

Also, the root domain is one of the ranking factors. No doubts, you can employ dedicated pages or sub-domain to generate keywords in your URL; however, the best bait is still to have them in your root domain.

Finally, you have to continually be on the lookout for better ways of carrying out SEO campaigns to get the best result.

Now owned by Yahoo, Overture created pay for performance (P4P) basically. They foresaw increase in online shopping, that online buying activities would skyrocket dramatically and that advertising had the potential of getting massive as a result.

Without visibility, web visitors may not get to your site to buy and may not also be part of your list. One of the great ways to increase sales as well as traffic is to place ads that are capable of directing people to your website. The service mentioned earlier, which is now in Yahoo’s ownership enables companies or sites’ ads to be visible based on the keywords that a visitor is using to search.

Your List Building Activities Get Better with More Visitors
A company that desires to generate more traffic to its site can take advantage of this service. More traffic promises more viewing of your site and increased possibility of actual purchase after the visitors must have benefited from the information featured on your site. It would eventually also result in more potential buyers joining your list. It is relatively quicker as well as easier to build your list when you have more traffic. There’s hope that a good number of those in your list may eventually become loyal customers as you follow them up tactfully.

Every business needs high volume traffic to survive, especially traffic that has high potential of translating to actual patronage of your business’s offerings. So, services such as Yahoo Overture – P4P (Pay for Performance) is a great way to make your site visible to targeted traffic.

How Does this Service Work?
If you are conversant with Google Adwords, you would easily understand how Yahoo Overture works. It is simply the use of search-based keywords to put up an ad on relevant websites. The choice of keywords by the surfer would determine the results that would be displayed. You will get to see ads on the result page’s right side when you carry out a search. The paid ads are featured at the top of the ads. The position is exactly what the company or site paid for the listing of their choice keyphrase or keyword.

For instance, if your business offers Dell Computers for sale and computer accessories, you would need to select relevant keywords that would cause your ad to come up when a web visitor searches with related keywords such as “Dell Computers” or “computer accessories.

When leveraging this service, you may not bother much about site content optimization for visibility on search engine results. However, don’t take chances, spread your traffic generation tentacles and do not solely depend on one technique. In essence, embark on other techniques that improve your ranking on search engine results.

Anyway, Yahoo Overture is capable of getting your site listed on search engine’s first result page, but it all depends on the competitive nature of the keywords you chose and the kind of budget you have for the service. Well, ensure that you are not generous with your budget using this service, until you see it working for you. Let me say that search engine optimization still remains the best way to get highly visible to web visitors.

]]> http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/search-engine-marketing/is-search-engine-advertising-a-lucrative-investment/feed/ 0 http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/search-engine-marketing/how-to-verify-quality-of-your-content-to-meet-the-new-quality-standards-set-by-google/ http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/search-engine-marketing/how-to-verify-quality-of-your-content-to-meet-the-new-quality-standards-set-by-google/#comments Mon, 04 Jul 2011 06:23:27 +0000 admin http://www.aceinternetmarketing.ie/?p=1979

Recently, Google set a new standard or requirements that contents must meet in order to qualify passing through their search engine to get to online searchers.

Google now has the latest updated search engine algorithm with code name Panda. This algorithm is the cause of drop in ranking for a good number of websites. Google intends to decrease the rankings of substandard contents in their search result page.

Google has been magnanimous enough to make things easier for webmasters by putting up certain questions that would assist webmasters in determining the quality of their site contents, and thus ascertain whether or not such site’s content is sufficiently good for Google’s new quality filters.

Here are the questions that would help you determine whether your website contents qualify for Google’s new quality filters.

1. How reliable is the content on your webpage?
   • Can you vouch that the info outlined in your content is correct?
   • Who is the author of the article – a pro who is well knowledgeable about the subject, or is the article written by someone who is just copying contents onto the web?
   • Can you comfortably give your credit card info to the website?
   • For articles related to health, can you rely on the info presented on the site?
   • Is the website well known and respected for the keyword or subject of discussion?
   • Can you comfortably bookmark such website, recommend or share it with someone?
   • Are users going to be happy when they come across any page from the site?
2. Do you carry out a check on the quality of your webpages?
   • Do you check errors such as factual, spelling, grammatical or stylistic errors?
   • Was sufficient editing done on the article or was it hastily written and no extra check was carried out on it?
   • What extent of quality control measure was administered regarding the article?
   • Is the article quite insightful and informative beyond criticism?
   • Is the article worth publishing in a book, encyclopedia or printed magazine?
   • What about the thoroughness aspect, was proper attention to details given to the article?
3. Are your WebPages created for your visitors or search engines?
   • Are the subjects intended to benefit the site visitors, or are they merely created with the hope that they may be the kind of topics that compete well in search engine ranking?

Other questions include:

• How sufficient are the real articles on your website, are they even real at all?
• Do you overpopulate the article with too many ads, to the extent that the ads intercept the actual content?
• What is the length of the article and how substantial is the content? Does the article contain valuable specifics?

If your answer to all the questions is substantially positive, you still need to verify if Google sees your web pages as being relevant to the applicable keywords. Finally, you need to optimize your website with the top 10 Optimizers so that your site would rank high on the Google search result page.

A recently conducted study reveals that it is very important to rank very high in Google’s search results. The average click-through rate of the top results is almost 40%. The cost per click as well as the amount of searches is also an influencing factor on the clicks. What is the implication of this to your efforts toward search engine optimization?

The Exact Numbers
Based on the study, the web pages that occupy the first position generates 36% CTR (Click Through Rate). Second position’s CTR is 13%, third position up to the 10th position gets 10%, 8%, 6%, 4%, 3.8%, 3% and 2% respectively. You can see that the CTR for first position is higher than CTR of position 2-5 put together.

It may surprise you to know that the 11th position generates slightly more clicks compared to the 10th position. Perhaps, the reason may be traceable to the fact that position 11 tops page two of Google results.

There is relationship between CPC (Cost per Click) for AdWords and CTR
Based on the information curled from the study, high CPC (Cost Per Click) on Google AdWords generates lower click-through rate for organic results.

For a keyword that has a high Click Per Cost, the first organic result generates not up to 20 percent of the clicks. On the other hand, for keywords that have low CPC, the first result gets over 30 percent of the entire clicks.

The click-through rate is also Influenced by the search volume
The study further reveals that keywords with high number of searches generate higher click-through rate for the first position – the rate is 32% for widely sought-after keywords, while long tail keywords get 25%.

The overall click-through rate for long tail keywords on page one of Google result is better – 9% vs. 5% for popular keywords.

What is the implication of this to your SEO efforts?

• More than they appear on the surface, popular keywords are quite competitive.

If your optimization efforts are geared towards highly competitive keywords, you are not likely to see much result until you make it to the first 5 results.

• Long tail keywords optimization is a sensible thing to do.

There are several benefits attributed to long tail keywords; compared to popular keywords, long tail keywords are more targeted and the conversion rate is much higher as well. You are likely to generate more visitors via your long tail keywords; the exception is if you are ranking in the top 5 results for a keyword that is popular. Another benefit is that ranking high for long tail keywords is much easier since the competition is less.

For a larger part of the businesses,  it is quite easier to rank in page one for several long tail keywords and this is more beneficial compared to generating high rankings for only a couple of keywords that are popular.

Indeed, high ranking is very important; it is still far more valuable to rank on page one for a relevant keyword to your offerings than elsewhere.

Often, clients consult me to find out how the SEO techniques of their websites can be taken to a greater level. No doubts, these sites are already optimized as far as the previous SEO expert was able to go. However, I usually find out common SEO mistakes that are surprisingly made by most SEO experts. I’m going to discuss the major ones here.

1. Excessively Stuffed Title Tags
   Definitely, you can attempt to incorporate multiple search phrase variations in the title of a webpage. You are probably doing this to be on a safer side in case the search engines may decide to associate your page with majority or the entire variations. This may be effective at times.
   However, I discovered that when you populate a webpage with such multiple search terms, you are likely to alter the main message of that page; thus weakening meaningful ranking value for that webpage’s major search terms.
2. Concentrating Much on Google
   It has become rampant to see that business owners’ websites may have several of their pages indexed at Google, while only few are indexed in other major search engines such as Bing. In same manner, such clients may also be ranking on Google’s first result page for multiple webpages, while getting stuck on third or even fourth page at Bing.
   The SEO world tends to concentrate massively on Google, with the misconception that Bing would automatically work out things on its own. But little do they know that they are possibly missing out multiple businesses by concentrating solely or much on Google. The truth is that other major search engines such as Bing would possibly find it difficult searching out content all by itself.
   If you simply use the Bing webmaster system to submit a sitemap.xml file, this can raise the total number of pages indexed on Bing dramatically. It may interest you to also know that for each additional page in the Bing index, you can achieve a raise across your whole website. Well, there’s more to do at Bing, but this technique requires little or no effort – besides it is fast.
3. Being Philanthropic with Your Unique Content
   One of the most common mistakes I discover in most business websites is this; there’s something wrong with the way they create data feed on their offering listings for the purpose of shopping comparison. They tend to be philanthropic with the few unique content featured on their product pages, giving them away to multiple comparison sites – this results in significant duplicate content issues.   The worst part is when those data feeds get scooped by scrapers, which would eventually result in duplication of those product details on multiple scraper websites.

There are more common SEO mistakes that I surprisingly see in websites; however, the ones outlined above are more critical and should be addressed urgently.

The quickest way to have your website listed on Google’s search result page is to ensure that your website features all that is required by Google. And what are those requirements?

1. Your server has to be Google-friendly, in such way that it becomes easier for Google to index your page.So, what should you do to make your server and webpages Google indexing friendly?
   • Get rid of the ‘disallow’ lines in your robots.txt file if necessary.
   • Do not feature ‘noindex’ tags on your webpages – check to ensure that such tags are not found in your webpages.
   • Also, your web server would not be Google indexing-friendly if it uses cloaking scripts or bot blocking software.
2. Google indexes webpages with quality backlinks faster.Google bots often visit websites that have more quality backlinks pointing to them. Thus Google would be fast to feature your webpage on its search result page if your site has good backlinks that point to it.

   Bear this in mind; you need to wait for a while before Google can display your site on its search result page – why? Here are the reasons below;

   • Technical reasons: it is the procedure with this search engine, for an optimized website to wait for a while before it is indexed. Even when the bot eventually visits your website, it may only crawl some pages and leave some, and not all the pages crawled by the bot would undergo indexing.For the indexed pages, they would be parsed – the parsing process assigns the indexed pages to search queries. Again, why you must wait for a while is that Google would need to assess the content featured on your site and compare it with other websites’ contents, and subsequently rate your site in terms of quality. The entire process drags on for a while. However, if you have more backlinks pointing to your site, the process will speed up.
   • Competitive keywords: getting listed on Google search result page takes longer time for competitive keywords. So, you may need to target less competitive keywords first, then after achieving chains of top 10 ranking for these keywords, your chances of ranking higher for the highly competitive keywords would increase greatly.
   • Also, Google would take time to evaluate the quality of a new website, so ranking on Google’s top 10 search result page takes time for a new website. But as the website gets older and generates multiple quality backlinks, the chances of getting to Google’s result page increases.
3. Make your website meaningful to Google
   Google is slow to index single-page site. Google is likely not to find substantial valuable content on such site, especially a completely Flash site.
   Do not focus on just few pages of your website when optimizing your site, work on all the pages and fill them with valuable contents worth presenting to visitors. Google is concerned with presenting the most excellent webpages to web visitors who pass through it to search for information.

Don’t be deceived, there’s no short-cut to climbing to Google’s top 10 search result page. High quality content and valuable backlinks are necessary.

Before staking out any fund on SEO, your first task is to select the suitable keywords. In trying to pick the right keywords, you need to understand what is behind the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of people’s search. When people surf the web, they are looking for information on the solution to a problem as well as answers to questions.

Here are helpful tips for selecting the most suitable keywords:

• Have a brainstorming session: This is when you would embark on critical thinking to come forth with list of phrases you perceive visitors would likely employ when searching. The list would turn to be your intuitive word list.
• Take advantage of your competitor’s website: Look for the phrases your competitors are using, that are also applicable to your offerings. Another technique for uncovering the target keywords of your competitors is to visit sites such as keywordspy.com, or compete.com.
• Know when to go local: If you are competing for local market, it is better to go local with your keywords – local keyphrases help you rank higher in a faster and easier way. Example of local keywords include florist in Houston, painting contractor in Austin etc.
• Think like your customer, at least momentarily: A customer would enter a search query such as ‘home for sale’, while you may be using an expert term such as ‘real estate for sale’. So, you would need to bring your keywords to the level of the customers, their preferred search terms.
• Take advantage of keyword tools: The free Google Keyword Tool can be useful for this purpose. Also, paid Keyword Service such as WordTracker can be helpful.
• Consider the phrases used by buyers: This is usually 3 – 5 words or longer. They may also include specific locations and refine their searches in particular ways.
• Relevancy: The first keywords to choose from your keyword list are those that apply mostly to your offering. Avoid selecting the keywords that feature the highest search volume first.
• Search volume: After giving priority to relevant keywords, you can now come to keywords based on search volume and the number of competitors using exact or similar keywords. You would prefer to go for most relevant highest volume phrases, that probably feature the lowest competition.
• Analytics: Ensure that you look at your web analytics if you have a website. Check the conversion rate for each keyword. Determine the phrases with greatest time on page, and the ones with the lowest bounce rate.
• Implementation: If you are embarking on organic SEO, apply the keywords chosen for this purpose to the webpages that are most relevant and employ them in the visible text. Use the keywords or phrases in your visible text and titles for articles, social media campaign, as well as blogging.

Taking advantage of these powerful tips would help you achieve outstanding result with your SEO efforts.

Are you looking for an efficient alternative to search engine-oriented traffic? Don’t put all your eggs on the search engine algorithms. Yes, you can take advantage of other really efficient, reliable and multiple traffic-generation-sources to reach out to your prospective clients.

Alternative Traffic Sources & Exposure

You can grow your conversions and sales via exposure from a wide range of online sources, in addition to the search engines. No doubts, it is worthwhile to get several visitors everyday via search traffic; however, don’t forget that there are two ways to access a website – getting the specific URL, or via links from other webpages, ads or emails. If it were that simple to generate multiple visitors from SEO daily, it would have been the way for everyone to follow. However, several individuals and companies are not patient enough to deploy the necessary efforts; also, most of them are constrained by capital to embark on success-oriented organic SEO campaign.

You have options other than paid traffic sources and search engines; they include content or editorial positioning for consumptions through peripheral search. Peripheral or tangential refers to clicking an ad or link from a different webpage. The reason is that the visitor had no previous intention to visit the website when logged on.

The click on the tangents in question may likely take place from links embedded in articles, links in ebooks, an RSS feed, web 2.0 properties and other sources. This is the logic; along the line, users discovered something useful in the course of surfing the web and decided to research more on it by getting to its root or source.

It doesn’t matter how the visitor got enticed to follow the link from a commercial or educational impulse; the thing that matters is that passive editorial links are capable of driving stable stream of traffic to your webpages.

We all know that the sponsor of the ad or the person who placed the links did that deliberately. The important thing is that any traffic generated from these sources is highly valued and more qualified when compared to traffic from a cold click coming from a search process; reason being that they are already qualified from the warm-up procedure.

The Message or the Medium

Individuals have layered interests and are multi-faceted, depending on their various experiences and subjects of interest. Here’s the implication; by circumstance, the medium does not count much, rather, it is the message that the reader is connected to. Emotion is the quickening force and if it happens, or does not happen on your webpage, the relevancy of a search engine or another webpage becomes useless provided the conversion is generated.

Coming from the chronological standpoint, it was the effort of users that landed them to the initial webpage, or it could be that the webmaster who was involved in the content promotion was excellent with the syndication task (feeds, email, cross-promotion and others), and opportunity brought those users to the site.

Take advantage of other traffic sources today and generate more leads, traffics as well as conversions.