Monthly Archives: January 2010

Designing Web Sites For Search Visibility

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One of the major goals of putting up a website is to make your business visible online, because there is no point in creating a website if are the only person to notice it. Your site must be visible to internet users every time they search for the keyword you are working on. Search results in the three major search engines are the biggest source of traffic to any website.

So, whether you are to create a new website for your company or just redesign the existing one, you have to take into consideration the search issue. The most important thing to consider in building a website is that search should be a key consideration at every stage of the process, whether it is choosing the domain name, selecting a provider, setting requirements, producing comps, coding or site deployment.

Here’s some idea on how to fit your web design into the process of natural search in search engines:

Position content and language that reflects the way users search

Currently, search engines are still very literal in getting results for searches and the truly effective semantic intelligence still lies far ahead. So, you have to place content and use language that reflects the way users’ search, in order to rank for those keywords. Study and research for your keyword and your target niche for better understanding of your target audience.

Ensure that your website is both crawable and indexable by search engines

Submit your websites URL to major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing to be crawled and indexed. It would also help a lot if you install Sitemap on your website and deploy a robot.txt. A website that is design without search engine in mind can instantly render a once-thriving natural search program into total obscurity.
Incorporate search as both a business and technical necessity before planning has even started.

Search should be a major consideration in building a website. If search is not a consideration and top priority early in the planning phase, then it will be 10 times harder and more expensive to try to re-engineer at the end of or after the project.

Avoid the creation of URL canonicalization issues.

If you are to re-launch a website with a different URL take the canonical issue into consideration. For instance, if you change phone numbers the phone company will leave a recorded message telling the new number to the person who called your old number. It is the same when you change your URL and you want redirect the visitors into your new URL. This is the effect a 301 permanent redirect has on a search engine. It applies the old URL and backlinks to the new URL with this method the search engine is happy, and your site is happy.

Review Your Analytics Reports and Your Log Files

Analytics reports and log files are very important in investigating what keyword is currently gaining in terms of traffic, visibility, revenue, and conversions. With the help of analytics report and log files you would have basis of which areas of your site you should be focusing on and which area you should let go.

Making Visitors Stay Longer At Your Site

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Driving traffic to your website is only winning half the battle, the other half is making the visitors to perform positive responses such as buying your product or clicking through your PPC ads. In order to do that, you have to keep every visitor in your website stay longer. A one-minute browsing is enough time to convince your prospective customer to click the “buy” button. You have to provide something in your website. That something must be interesting enough that your visitors would stay on your website.

Here are few suggestions on how make the visitor stay longer in your website.

Grab Visitors’ Attention: This is the first step in making your visitor stay longer, design your site homepage that it grabs visitors’ attention as fast as possible and provides what they are looking for right away. Make your landing page looks professional and visually appealing at the same time.

Easy Navigation: Make the navigation easy for your visitor by designing your website in such a way that users find it easy to maneuver around. Organize the structure of your website in such a way that the visitors will find easily what they are looking for. Otherwise they get frustrated and move on to another website that is easy to navigate and understand.

Provide Fresh and Valuable Content: This means you have a website loaded with useful information that is relevant to your niche. Remember that the internet is all about information. Fresh and valuable contents are both valuable in the SEO and web design aspect of marketing.

Put Value To Your Visitors’ Opinion: Website visitors love to interact and want their opinion to be noticed. Allow your visitors to comment on or even criticize your articles, product, pictures or videos. This does not only make your website visitors stay longer but it could also persuade them to share their opinions. This is actually a good method of getting ideas to improve your site. It also gives thse visitors a feeling of importance. Peoples who are given the chance to interact in the virtual world are more likely to stay at a website for an extended amount of time.

Offer free products or samples: “Tease” your visitor so that they will ask for more. You can provide some free trial or demo tour of your product. You can also provide guideline or tutorial related to your product or services. Provide a page or portion of your website where your visitors can download samplers of your offered products. You can even include a link and information in the product that you offer and allow individuals who download it to advertise and sell it, or even give it away to others on their websites.

The Influence Of Social Media Optimization In Search Engine Marketing

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Nowadays, social media optimization (SMO) becomes important ingredient in SEO and SEM campaigns. Many websites have received enormous ranking authority from top search engines because of their excellent SMO campaigns. In this article, we will explain the influence of SMO on search engine marketing.

Whether you like it or not the Social Media Optimization is the “today” and the future of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). It just maybe a trend, but it is a trend that would stay for a long haul. So, you would either go with the flow or be left behind.

Online marketing has always relied upon exposure in the search engines to drive targeted traffic into the website. Majority of the visitors which eventually turns out as customer directed to your site via search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. In the past, getting exposure was based upon the development of the website and generating backlinks pointing to your site. Although, the old school SEO is still very important, the social media optimization has changed the warzone of search engine marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace are just few social networking sites that grew rapidly in past few years. These social networking sites have millions of subscribers that spent time on the site, and they are getting traffic like a wildfire in the summer. The search engines have increased ranking authority to these sites, giving them control of a significant amount of search territory.

In the past, Google keep a separate search platform for blogs, videos, news, and similar types of “social” content. Each functioned as a separate search engine with its own set of organic listings. But few years ago, Google made a major change on its search algorithm which blends the organic listings of each platform into a system called Universal Search. The two other major search engines, Yahoo! and MSN (now Bing) follow the same system. Universal Search is now used as the primary index. This means that the blogs, videos, and news have been incorporated into natural listings. The Universal Search made a major impact that pushed many sites off the first page. This is one of the reasons social media optimization has become a critical piece of search.

As of last year, Google embarks on a new search algorithm which they called Google Caffeine. The Caffeine an algorithm, that is focused on faster, more relevant search and to better deal with fast updated information from services in social and viral media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This change has made social media optimization more vital in website optimization and promotion.
In addition, social media optimization helps preserves your current natural listings while helping you to gain even more search exposure. By utilizing blogs, videos, and social media sites can help you can capture a greater number of organic positions and valuable traffic to your site.

Understanding the Art of Link Baiting

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Link baiting is a powerful marketing technique and basically link baiting is viral in nature. Link baiting method is done by creating link baits. Link bait by definition is any content or feature within a website or blog that somehow baits or lure viewers to place links to it from other websites. The content is usually sensational in nature or, at the very least, interesting enough to catch other’s attention. Matt Cutts of Google defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”

Link baiting is a simple and indirect method in obtaining precious backlinks to your website. The logic behind link baiting is actually pretty simple and very obvious. As the name implies, link baiting is simply persuading others to place a direct link to your web page. Link baiting is good way to strength of your pages. The more quality inbound links your webpage has, the stronger it will become. Secondly, link baits can also help in your site to have higher search engine ranking and eventually can deliver more traffic to your site.

There are many types of link baits, although there is no clear distinction many divide link baits into categories which we hooks. The most popular hooks are the following:

  1. Informational hooks – The informational hooks, as the name implies, it provides information that a reader may find very useful. It may include tips, guides and some trick and tweaks on something that may interest readers. Using the informational and educational hook is probably one of the best ways to attract targeted, quality links. The disadvantage of this hook is it takes a lot of effort and time to create a good piece of information. But the amount o link you get from this is usually worth all the efforts.
  2. News hooks – Provide fresh information and obtain citations and links as the news spreads. News hooks that focus on celebrities and entertainment is good source of quality links.
  3. Humor hooks – Everyone love a good humor and if your joke is funny enough to tickle the senses of your reader they would want spread it to their friends. Humorous, cool, and funny things on the web are one of the biggest obsessions among the young fun loving internet savvy populace. You may tell a funny story or a joke or publish a bizarre picture of your subject or mocking cartoons of popular personality can also prove to be good link bait.
  4. Controversial Hooks – Other refers this as evil hooks or attacks hooks. This may include writing something controversial topics or include unpopular view on certain issues. This hooks could also includes rants, attacks and outings. Make sure you either have a very strong brand or a disposable one if you’re really planning on using this strategy. You might get away with a rant, but publicly attacking someone can really backfire.
  5. Tool Hooks – Putting a useful tool on the web is a good tactic of link baiting. You can create some sort of tool that is useful enough that people link to it.
  6. Widget Hooks – Widget hook is becoming popular. It is a badge or tool that can be placed or embedded on other websites, with a link included. It has been proven to be a successful strategy. However, it takes a lot of technical knowledge and time in developing widgets that can interest visitors.

- Web Design Company, Los Angeles

Is It Smart To Use Long Tail Keyword?

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Keyword invaluable part of Search Engine Optimization, everything the search engine optimizer does goes around the keyword. Keywords can be classified into two main categories, the short tail keywords and the long tail keywords. The term ‘long tail’ was coined by Chris Anderson. He used it to describe the strategy of targeting less-competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive short keywords. A long tail keyword is like targeting a keyword “Web Design in Los Angeles” while short tail keyword would target “Web Design” only.

The Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are offering. Short tail keywords are good, in fact they are great but market on short tail keyword is so saturated and the competition is very, very tough. If you were to target short tail keywords, you will be competing with websites who has years of conversion data, an older trusted site, tons of content, and thousands of organic inbound links. Try to beat them right from the start for the most potent high-value keywords and you will likely fail.

If you are newly launched website and try to compete on the competitive keyword first, you are likely to rank in page 2 or page 3 or farther. And it is a common knowledge that less 1% of internet users goes beyond the page 2 of the search result. The visitors you might get would not be self-sustaining and your online business will be sent into its natural death just like thousands of websites before you.
Meanwhile, long tail keywords have less competition, and are thus far easier to rank to. For instance the keyword “web design” returns about 318,000,000 search results and you will be competing against sites like Wikipedia and sites that was “there” maybe before you born. But if you target “Web design in Los Angeles” you have less competition with barely 43,900,000 competitions. Plus you can rank for long tail keywords much faster, because you control your on page optimization.

Another benefit of long tail keywords is that the visitors that came in through long tail keywords have high conversion rates and ad clicks. According market research, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy. In virtually every case, such very specific searches are far more likely to convert to sales than general generic searches that tend to be geared more toward the type of research that consumers typically do prior to making a buying decision.
When your business becomes self-sufficient and you have build a revenue stream, you can eventually target for more competitive and more valuable keywords. By focusing on the second tier and third tier keywords first, you enable yourself an opportunity to earn the exposure needed to rank for the core keywords. It is long and tedious process, but eventually you could get there.

Is Your Website Ready For Google Caffeine?

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Google Caffeine is the new Google search algorithm that is focused on faster, more relevant search and to better deal with fast updated information from services i social and viral media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. With Caffeine, Google promises that this new search tool will improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search.

Matt Cutts, Google Senior Software Engineer, announces on his blog that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays. In addition, Matt Cutts tells that the ordinary users won’t be able to tell the difference and even those who tested out the public test site hardly noticed any difference in results. But, definitely, there will be a lot of changes when it comes to SERP.

Any changes in Google algorithm should not be taken lightly because it would surely affect the rankings as well. How much and to what extent is the effect of this changes only the Google know. The simple fact is that no one except Google knows what the update will do. Some webmasters says that there’s no way to prepare your site for it, but I disagree. Although, we may not be able to fully prepare for the changes but we could do some precautionary preparations.

Here are some suggested precautionary preparations we could do to our websites:

  1. Check your website/webpage download time. Google are looking in more detail at the overall experience that they are providing searchers with. Slow loading sites frustrate visitors. There is nothing more frustrating that clicking on a link to visit a website which takes an age to load. Frustrated visitors look elsewhere for their needs. They will either back click, or close the search altogether. As such, slow loading sites are expected to return poorer rankings. While the fast loading pages enhance user experience. They allow visitors to easily explore your website, gather information, and make an informed decision. Google is all for customer satisfaction, what’s good for your visitors is good for Google.

    Perform some manual checking of your websites in different browsers. If it is slow for you, definitely it will be slow for your prospective visitors.


  2. Check for broken links. Google crawls the website by moving through the links on a web page. Broken links could have negative impact on how your site continues to rank in Google or it may not affect at all. But it would surely affect your visitors surfing experience. It would be a good precautionary measure to run regular checkup to make sure that every internal and external link leads to a live page.


  3. Provide fresh and updated quality content. Whatever the changes is, content is always the king when it comes to search engine ranking. Google always favor websites that provides quality content. Keep your content fresh and updated, as logic will dictate, a site that doesn’t have fresh content is either out of date or has been abandoned. One of the goal of new Google algorithm is to provide accurate user friendly search result, if you could provide that, then you are ready for the Google Caffeine.


  4. Quality links. The importance of quality links is not a news flash. Every webmaster and SEO knows the importance of quality links, but many are neglecting its importance. The “old” Google has been giving better weighing to high quality links for some time now. However, based on test of Caffeine this summer, high quality alone won’t be the only important factor.


Emphasis should, and probably will be placed, on high quality links that are relevant to the site’s niche. Avoid the bad neighborhood, or the sites that are known for spamming. Google abhor spamming.

Outbound links to the websites that are relevant to your site also gain weight, and should be emphasized. After all, it provides the best possible user experience, for both Google and the visitors of your site. Once again, the goal of Caffeine is to provide accurate user friendly search result. What’s good for your visitor is good for Google. What is good for Google is good for you.

Choosing Right Domain For Your Website

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Having a quality web design for your online store is good, but having a design is just a first step in the ladder. The next step is to publish it online, and to do that you have to select first the domain name that would represent your website. A domain name is an identification label that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS). A domain name is also known as the website URL or uniform resource locator. It is a unique name that would represent your website in the vast cyberspace.

Selecting the right domain name for your website is one of the most important business decisions you can make. It is crucial to choose the best domain name suited for your business if you want to attract quality traffic to your website. The domain name or URL will not only be the face of your website or business on the web, it also identifies the path for web search engines to find your site. Choosing the right domain name needs the same amount of care and consideration as you do in the actual web design process itself.

Here are some tips on choosing a right domain name that would represent your website in the cyberspace.

  1. Choose a short and easy to spell domain name.
    Simplicity is the keyword here. It does no good to have a website, if no one can find you because your domain name is too difficult to spell or too long to remember. Although, you are allowed to have a domain name up to 67 characters, but you have to keep in mind that your customer need to remember your domain name. Be practical and use short and easy to remember domain name.

    Avoid using cute names as well. You may think it’s cool to have a domain name spelled “fenikz” instead of Phoenix, but your target customer may not be able to find your website because of the misspelled name.

  2. Choose the right extension for your domain name.
    There are so many different extensions you could choose from. If your website is an online business the best option is the .com extension. The “.com” is the most popular domain name extension. Most people will try .com first whenever they are searching for a website. Unless your website has a special purpose, try to register a “.com”. If you are in education, the “.edu” extension is the best suitable for your website. If your site is geared towards providing information, then “.info” could be the best choice. However, in most cases, a .com will be a good choice.

    Other available extensions are the “.org”, “.net”,”.biz”,”.tv” and a lot more. You may also use the country extensions such as “.us” for United States, “.uk” for United Kingdom and others are available on the internet.

  3. Make your domain name it relevant to your content.
    Your domain name is not necessarily had to be your company’s name, but it much better if it is. But incase that your company’s name is not available to be your domain name, choose other name that could be representative of it in some way.

    Try to keep your domain name descriptive and relevant to your content. Make it to the point that if someone reads it or hears it, they would immediately have some general idea of what is your website all about. For instance, your website is selling toys and your business is located at Los Angeles area, it is smart to have a latoystore.com domain name. It is suggestive and intuitive. This helps your potential customer easier to find you when searching for what you are offering.

  4. Avoid using hyphen ( – ), underscore ( _ ) and numbers.
    Hyphen, underscore and numbers are valid characters in naming a domain. But practicality will tell you that is not clever to use them. Imagine a domain name claremont-design.com, it is a valid domain but it has a very high possibility that your potential customer will end up typing claremontdesign.com. According to research, most people don’t type hyphen, underscore or number in the URL.

Remember that your chosen domain name for your online business will be the first impression that the customer will have. Your website will be highly dependent on your web hosting and domain registration, so do not take the selection of domain name for your online business lightly at all.