Tweeter button
Facebook button
Technorati button
Reddit button
Myspace button
Linkedin button
Webonews button
Delicious button
Digg button
Flickr button
Stumbleupon button
Newsvine button
Youtube button

February 7, 2012

Posts Comments

Points to consider when working on your website promotional strategy

October 21, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Your website promotional strategy should act as part of your marketing strategy and enough time
should be assigned to it to ensure it works and gets you the results you are looking for. There are
certain promotional mishaps you will want to avoid and here we will discuss them in more detail
so that you know what to look out for.

Avoid working with frames
The first thing to know is that frames are not the same as search engine ‘spiders. You could sit
around all day and work your content to sit within a frame but realistically, do you want to go to
such tremendous effort when you could focus your efforts elsewhere?

Flash might look good but why it’s best to avoid it….
The nest thing is Flash. It might look fantastic but it isn’t overly usable and might prevent you
ranking as high as you want to. Your top priorities should include how the user experiences your
site so don’t dwell on making it look amazing when it might impact how easily your users can
access your information.

When writing your titles and tags
When you are writing your tags, include a little more information that will help search engines
rank you higher in terms of relevance. If you use your keywords and phrases in your titles and
tags you can expect the keyword density to increase and your website to appear higher in the
listings.

Keep your titles the right length
It’s all about balance. You don’t want to stuff half of your content in your title so that it outweighs
the content it refers to, but you can still take the opportunity to write a simplistic title with your
keyword or phrase in it.

Don’t confuse your text with images
Some people get rather carried away with imagery and illustrations when really they just detract
from the readers’ ability to read what you have written. Of course images will add to your content
and can convey a sense of what the text is about, but the reader should be able to then decide to
read on if they choose rather than have to fight through your design to get to the content.

Head your text with titles
Your pages should be headed by titles and keywords or phrases and not by graphics. You site is
supposed to get people’s attention by appearing high on a search engine results page. Your text
will achieve this for you whereas graphics will not.

Use keyphrases rather than one-word search terms
You might like the idea of having a very broad keyword that will get you lots of traffic but in reality
this is not the case. The best advice is to have a keyphrase that includes up to four words so that
the search is narrowed and you get visitors to your site that actually want to know about you and
what you do. Too generic a term will simply get you traffic that is of no consequence to your business.
If you are looking at conversion rates to see how many interested visitors are taking some form of action
when theyvisit your site then this will only be skewed by the number of visitors that were looking for
something completely different.

Remember the importance of links
Get some relevant links in the content of your text. You can’t ignore how valuable these links are in
strengthening your content and thus your relevance in search engine results listings.

Don’t overuse your keywords
Your website promotion strategy but calculate how much is enough keyword usage and how much is
too much. There is a fine line. If you bombard the reader with your keywords, your text will become
nonsensical.

The dangers of lengthy URLs
Lengthy URLs can prevent a search engine from indexing your pages in the way they should be and you
will end up with lots of symbols that will confuse search tools. Remove these by taking advice from your
website developer and promotional specialist.

Filed Under: Website Promotion Tagged With: ,

Top 5 steps to outdo your competitor websites

September 14, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Getting high listings on Google does not require a perfect website. Just make it better,
when compared to your competitors’ websites. Your website will be clicked on, only
if you can make it slightly better than your competitor websites. Optimize your web
pages for the right keywords, then allow the quality of the backlinks to make the difference.

Here are top tips to help you surpass your competitors.

  1. Locate who your real competitors are
    The websites that rank high for your keywords are your real competitors. This is what
    you are to do: use Google to carry out a search on your keywords (at least five of them),
    then write out the links or URLs of the sites that have the best rankings for the five keywords.
    These five URLs are the your potential competitors.
  2. Find out the PageRank spread of linking Webpages
    The PageRank number displayed on Google’s tool bar is an imperfect metric. However, this
    number can still be useful in discovering the secret behind the higher ranking of certain websites;
    while others are left out.You can search out the sites that link to your competitors’ sites and notch
    up the Google PageRank of each page. Certain providers have link managers that sort the sites by PageRank.If you find out that there are more backlinks from high PageRanked web pages to your competitors’
    sites than that of your own site, you can hire services from  some of the available providers to
    generate higher PR links.
  3. Do some analysis on your Competitors’ backlinks
    Find time to analyze the number of links to your competitors’ sites that have your major keywords.
    You can accomplish this easily using the link manager feature of some market providers.Once you key-in the action, IBP will display the web pages linking to your competitors’ sites and will
    also reveal the anchor text of these links. To find out if your anchor texts are incorporated, sort the
    displayed sites by anchor text.

    You need to have more inbound links on your site (than your competitors) that feature the keywords
    you desire to rank high.

  4. Analyze the high level domains of the linking web pages
    When targeting Google versions such as Google.co.uk, there should be more backlinks in your
    website – from sites that employ the matching top level domain – than the number acquired by
    your competitors..

Google pays attention to websites that link from related sites. Thus, if you market phones, make sure that you
link from sites selling phones as well. It is also needful to check your site’s content for compliance with Google’s
most recent ranking algorithm using Top Optimizers listed by several providers.

 

 

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, Website Promotion Tagged With: ,

Tips for building trust and influence of your website

September 12, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

There are several aspects to Google’s Panda update, but one thing is certain:
Google is concerned with signals of trust, influence/authority, as well as real branding.
If you own a website or business, what steps can you take to send Google these signals?

Here are a couple of ideas that work.

Indulge in Public Speaking

When you are a public speaker, Google will see it as a signal that your source is trusted as well as
authoritative – having nothing to conceal. Your business name and domain on the web are signals
to Google that you are speaking. It doesn’t matter where you are speaking – industry conference,
community college seminars etc, there will always be a page that lists who is speaking. Usually,
such pages will provide you with a link. The citation of your domain counts anyway, whether or
not you get the link from the platform you are speaking from. So, you are not wasting time researching
and preparing for those quality talks you deliver, it pays off well.

Blogger Linkup
This is a daily email newsletter. Each day, there is email going out of blogs seeking to get guest posts,
as well as bloggers searching for sites that would accept them. Well, the entire truth is that this doesn’t
generate desirable response at times, since a good number of the sites seem to be somewhat dodgy – so
consider it critically before showing your commitment. One of the mighty errors with a good number of
guest articles is the repeated use of same bio box. This results in unnatural focus on inbound anchor text.
Ensure that you do not form part of this mistake.

HARO – Help A Reporter Out
Have you heard about Help a Reporter Out? This is a daily email list of reporters searching for experts in |
different industries that would interview or quote for stories project. Obviously, you may not stumble on
a request from big name magazines and dailies such as the New York Times; however, there is still high
value placed on up-coming dailies and magazines, or industry-specific journals and magazines.

Press Releases
If you are regularly doing things that are press-worthy, it is likely you are sending out press releases about
such things. An example of press-worthy event is creating science project PDFs for an institution. If you
happen to get a guest blog post related to the project, don’t forget to link to it or mention it there. This way,
you can maximize content that you spent a lot of resources on (money, time). Now, you do not need to bother
about link equity passing of the press release – just see the links as directions or pointers. Once people stumble
on your press release and click on your link, search engine will definitely index them. Thus, it is recommended
that you place up to two deep links on your press release.

Consider Educational Links
Speaking generally, educational links known as .edu sites are seen as having more trust and are more authoritative
compared to any other site. One of the best ways to generate links from educational sites is to create valuable and
relevant content or project to .edu websites. If you are not skillful enough, pay a high profile writer to create a
valuable content that would attract the attention of professors, teachers and top professionals. Place the content
on a special template and do not include any ad or commercial links – if possible, turn the content into an encyclopedia.
Make the content downloadable by putting it in PDF format.

 

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, Website Promotion Tagged With: , ,

Top 10 blunders to avoid when promoting your website

June 23, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

The common blunders I’m about to reveal here are obstacles to search engine rankings. Have a look at them and do avoid these blunders:

  1. Using frames
    Search engine spiders tend to get confused when frames are involved. Therefore, if you have a frame site, your site may be likely ignored often by the search engine spider. There is nothing wrong with writing script or fine-tuning the content to function within frames; but, is it not better to divert that time to something more beneficial to your website in terms of higher ranking?
  2. Over-doing it with title tags
    A better strategy for effective website promotion is when you stay within 70 characters for the titles, and also for punctuation (comma in particular) inserted between phrases in each title tag. The webpages that feature limited content should use fewer characters.
  3. Using Flash
    No doubts, flash appears appealing – however, it affects the ranking of your site. Also, flash slows user experience. Most web surfers are not willing to wait a moment longer. Readability of the keywords by search engines could be improved by flash in the future, but this may also be meaningless if the webpages do not feature visible as well as readable text.
  4. Using design to mask text
    Design has a way of concealing text. Ensure that your visible text is strategically placed high on the page.
  5. Using effective search phrases
    Do this always; incorporate effective search phrases that are true representations of the content featured within your title tags.
  6. Using the wrong words
    Most websites owners prefer to use single-word search phrases since it appears such keywords generate more traffic. However, the reality is that only very few web surfers who use such broad terms may be interested in your offering. It is more effective to incorporate search phrases that contain 2 – 4 words, this is the best way to target a wider range of people who may actually be interested in what you have to offer.
  7. Not taking link building seriously
    Embark on massive link building, and concentrate on the websites that have categories and content relevant to your offerings. For instance, if you are offering computer software services, it would make no sense to link to websites that are marketing clothes.
  8. Using long URLs
    For those taking advantage of a database to maintain their websites, this may ultimately result in the use of long URLs with multiple session IDs, as well as parameters that give rise to multiple equality signs and question marks. The summary is that long URLs may be obstacles to proper indexing of webpages by search engines. You can consult your website developer to shorten the lengthy URLs, or even get rid of them completely. Your ultimate goal is to be visible to those who are looking for your offerings, anything that would constitute an obstacle should be reconsidered.

Finally, do not overstuff your webpages with keywords; avoid using same keyword sequentially up to ten times. Just spread your major search term throughout the page as many times as possible.

Filed Under: Website Promotion Tagged With: ,

How changes on your webpage can influence your search engine rankings

April 20, 2011 By admin 1 Comment

It’s no longer news that your ranking on search engine result page can be influenced by changes on your web pages. But, no one can say for sure the mode of search engines’ reaction on the changes on our webpage, and what it is in particular that influences the changes in search results. Perhaps some answers may be generated from a new search engine patent.

Changes

A good number of search engine patents handle the changes that take place on your webpage.

Six years ago, a patent published by Google described how changes made to your webpage can influence your website ranks. Recently, another patent was granted to Microsoft that tells us the impact that changes on website have on how a site ranks in the search engine result page.

The new patent granted to Microsoft reveals the particular elements on your website that are likely to be monitored by search engines.

Now, what are your webpage elements that search engines monitor?

Here are the webpage elements that can be monitored according to the new patent:

  • Webpage featured keywords
  • Webpage related keywords
  • The anchor texts employed on your webpage links
  • How images or texts are positioned on your webpage
  • The sizes as well as colors applied on your webpage featured images
  • How frequent document on your webpage varies over time
  • How much of the content on your website has changed
  • The search terms that visitors are using to locate your page
  • Your webpage’s assigned tags

How precisely, do the changes in these webpage elements influence the ranking of your webpage?

The patent revealed that searches are grouped into two; there’s the ‘informational’ as well as ‘navigational’ search. The category or group to which a search query belongs determines the effect of the changes on the website. The query a searcher uses to find a named webpage is an example of ‘navigational query’. For instance, a search for ‘Harvard University’ will take the searcher to the homepage of this university. On the other hand, ‘how can I repair my lace wig’ is an example of ‘informational query’.

If a web visitor is searching for info relating to a recent event, websites that included the information recently are likely to be boosted in their ranking.

There may be a boost to webpages that have static content. This technique works excellently with certain websites but may become an issue for home pages that embark on regular content update.

What is the significance of this to your Webpage?

Microsoft got this patent, but from all indication, it is likely that Google employs related techniques. Search engines are not only concerned with the current version of a webpage. They also take cognizance of the webpage’s status in the past. The changes on your webpage could mean that ownership of the site has changed, it may also mean that you are trying to make your site stay up-to-date. Search engines may also see changes on your webpage as a sign of spam etc.

So, do not embark on optimization of a web page that is already ranking high for any of your keywords. Instead, optimize a different page using the new keyword. Use different keywords to optimize different pages of your site, but ensure that the keywords are related. This proves to search engines that your site is relevant to a specific theme.

Filed Under: Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Website Promotion Tagged With: , ,

A closer look at doing Business on Facebook

June 21, 2010 By admin

The answer to the above question will depend on your personal business
objectives and your ability to use this tool effectively.

Firstly, you need to know that the original basis for the existence of Facebook is social networking.
Therefore, it is basically a tool that enables individuals to share information and stay
updated about recent happenings within their social circle.

It could be the social circle of family & friends, a collection of contacts,
people with common interest, or network of professionals or business connections.

A pure business networking tool is LinkedIn.
Facebook is purely a social networking instrument.
Therefore, if you must promote business with Facebook, you need to
be careful how you do it so that you don’t irritate the original users.

To ascertain whether Facebook is suitable for your business, you need
to analyze if there are interest groups and target audiences that have the potential of generating business for you.
You may aim at generating business directly by offering your product or service to those using Facebook,
or indirectly, by creating awareness for your brand, or generating sales feedback on your products and on yourself using the network.

Other online social networking sites do exist.
What comparison can you make between Facebook and these other social sites?
Also, is it better to focus on one site or extend your tentacles to multiple networking websites?

Facebook leads over other social networking sites.
The age group of its users range from early-twenties and above.
In fact, social networking scene is ruled by Facebook – only having a measure of competition from MySpace.
Facebook is focused more on sharing life events, keeping touch with friends and family and getting back with lost contacts.
But professional circles and business connections are also popular on Facebook;
however, you must understand that they are not part of the original purpose for the creation of Facebook, and therefore can generate issues if care is not taken when using it for other purposes.
LinkedIn is completely devoted to professional and business connections and leads in this niche.
However, the number of subscribers is low when compared to social networking websites in general.

Couple of questions you could ask yourself

  • Can I realize my business objective by using social networking sites?
    If your answer to this question is a YES, then you can promote your business successfully using Facebook and other social network sites.
  • What is the specific network that will best suit my specific business objective?
    The answer to this question is FACEBOOK.
    But yes, you must be creative and socially committed in order to achieve a good result with business marketing on Facebook.
Filed Under: Facebook, Online Marketing Tagged With: , ,