As we all know, Google is committed to retaining that top billing, and they have responded to Bing and created some innovations of their own. Bottom line for both search engines is more relevant results for their users, and that means that SEO – search engine optimization — is even more important than ever.

While details will be coming forward for the next many months, many bloggers and some other sites have noticed a drop in their SERP rankings with Caffeine and Bing. This doesn’t need to happen, however.

In fact, smaller websites actually have a better chance of raising their rankings, if they use carefully targeted SEO.

Relevant Content
Good content becomes even more important than it has been in the past. If your site can match more precisely what the user wants to find, then you have a better chance of a high ranking.

Be specific in your content pages, and they will have a better chance of rising to the top. Carefully choose your keywords; if anything, specific keywords have become more important.

Be sure to include long tail keywords that get specific about your offerings: red mardi gras beads for parties instead of mardi gras beads or party beads. Think about brands, too: Canon digital cameras instead of digital cameras.

The titles of your pages are important. Each page should have a unique title specifically matched to the content you’re featuring. And you don’t want to ignore the Meta descriptions, even though they still don’t figure into the SEO searches. But if your page lands high up on that SERP, then you want to have an engaging, accurate and catchy Meta description to encourage the click.

The bottom line – although it will take more months to really see how Caffeine and Bing are going to respond, SEO continues to be highly important to web design. Money spent on SEO is money well invested, with the new search engines as much as the old.

IPhone owners can find all kinds of applications at the Apple App store. If you’re a developer, you can post your application for free or for a fee, depending on what you’ve put into it and what you want to get out of it.

It costs $99 to download the Standard SDK and $299 for the Enterprise version, or you can ask a company  like Webdatamation to create an iPhone app for you.

SDK provides an environment for development tools that is similar to other Apple environments. Developers will find the source editor and graphical debugger look familiar and are intuitive to use.

Apple also provides an iPhone Simulator with SDK that allows a developer to run an app on the simulator, see how it would act in an actual iPhone environment, and then debug the app locally with the iPhone simulation.

In order to facilitate optimization, use the development instruments to collect and compare data. The instrument panel allows you to display the data graphically and in real time, making optimization easy.

Other development tools for SDK users include a drag and drop interface builder, an iPhone reference library, and a coding how-to reference that gives you examples of code you can add to your app to make it more functional, or simply serve as examples of ways you can develop your own.

Look for the videos and documents that cover all kinds of topics, and join the developer’s forum to get questions answered and to answer questions from other iphone developers.

If you want to create iPhone apps to promote your business, Apple’s SDK is your method of reaching the tech-savvy group of customers who own Apple iPhones by developing apps for the iPhone.

There are a number of strategies through which one can optimize their own website. Of these, the one that is worth mentioning is the “Cloud”. Many of you might have this question in your mind as to, “what is a cloud?” and “what does a cloud has to do in SEO?” Well, let me throw some light on this. Clouds can be of many types, such as, profile clouds, link clouds, content clouds and so on. However, the most commonly, or rather the only form of cloud used or discussed in the SEO works is the tag cloud. When you are looking in some website page, you must have come across a section headed “Tags”. Under this head you will see a bunch of words, placed one after another, some appearing small in size, whereas, some big and bold. The difference in the size is dependent on the number of times each word or tag has been associated with an item. This whole section is called ‘word cloud’ or sometimes called ‘tag cloud’. In general, the tag cloud helps a visitor to have an idea about the well-liked tags that are present in that particular site. The individual word or tag is actually linked to a page where you will get contents related to the tag you clicked.

This has been a very useful tool for search engine optimization and is gaining widespread acceptance by websites who want to optimize their keywords for search engines. Actually, the whole idea behind a tag cloud is to help you “visualize” content that is most relevant to a websites based on certain keywords or the keywords you searched for.

However, I am sure, you might have come across a funny situation where you have seen a website having certain keywords in its tag cloud in the boldest forms and yet it does not contain any content related to that keyword! For those of you, who have not, watch out!

The most popular search engine spiders cannot read JavaScript or images, just as they read and process plain text. However since having a tag cloud requires some logistic optimizations on keyword history, such clouds are represented by either using JavaScript code or images. This accounts for a cloud that contains misleading tags. The answer to this problem is simple; pictures alone DO NOT best define your website. No, they are not at all friendly to search engines. They may be professional enough to attract the solitary attention of a friendly customer but they are like alien material for crawlers and spiders!

The best practice is to make good use of the “alt” and “title” tags for your images. This will allow the web spiders to crawl your web page in the most efficient manner and mine information from the content of your website. Identify your perception of the tag cloud; for example, which keywords should be bolder, and then compare it with the actual results. Modify or edit the “alt” or “title” tags accordingly.

If you spend some time on this, you will soon come up with satisfying results. Yes, “Tag” is the new SEO language that is creating waves, why shouldn’t you capitalize?

There are a number of misconceptions in selecting the right and relevant keywords, which, if not checked, can ruin the entire optimization process. Among the various misconceptions, the most common one is that bigger keywords are better. However, this is not true always. Suppose you are a life coach and you are trying to optimize your personal life-coaching website. Therefore, in this case, you can use “life coach” as the appropriate keyword for the site, which is small yet carries a lot of meaning to it.

Keywords should be very specific and should flawlessly relate to the products or the services that are being offered. One can even use keywords in phrases, but the phrases should be in small meaningful sentence format. Moreover, keywords should be such that have high frequency demands and low competition. High keyword frequency can also be defined as those, which are entered in the search bar while searching in any search engine and can draw high traffic. On the other hand, low keyword competition indicates lower number of websites using the same keywords to draw visitors.

Apart from these facts about getting the right keywords, let me share some basic tips that would definitely help you to select the perfect set of keywords for your website. The foremost thing is that you will have to learn to think like a nonprofessional. You might have a thorough knowledge about your industry, but this might not be the case with everyone around. So, while framing the keywords, try to use those words or phrases that a nonprofessional would use who knows nothing about this industry. At the same time, you need to think in an expert’s point of view as well! The product or the service you are offering might need the use of some specific keywords, which the layman would definitely not know. Therefore, it is better to have a balanced perception of both.

So, whenever you are optimizing your website, always remember to pay extra heed to keyword selection, as you certainly know by now, that it is a very important part of this whole optimization process. If you use some rational steps, keeping in mind some basic facts, success might take some time to come. However once it is there, it’s going to be a long lasting one for sure.

Marketing through search engines can be done in usually two ways, namely organic SEO and inorganic SEO. Organic SEO, as the name suggests, is nothing but the natural way for optimizing a website in the search engine pages. Since, this does not involve any sort of monetary transaction, good content of the web page full of creativity and relevance is of utmost importance. Another thing that one should keep in mind while using organic SEO is that, the content should continue to advance according to the need of the people searching the net. Moreover, optimization of this kind helps the websites to achieve a higher order of ranking for a longer period of time. This means that organic SEO has a natural, long-term impact.  However, the only shortcoming here is that one might have to wait for over a month or so in order to “see” the desired results i.e. to get one’s website ranked higher in the search engine pages for a particular search criterion.

Now, talking about inorganic SEO, the first thing that I would like to mention here is; this type of optimization involves a substantially larger amount of money from the respective website owners. The website owners, who aim to attain maximum popularity of their website within the shortest time period, are advised to exercise this artificial form of optimization. In this form of SEO, the website owners pay an amount for making their ads appear on a prominent part of the search results page. Consequently, substantial amounts of inbound traffic are drawn to the website. Compared to organic SEO, this is a bit expensive, and hence, inorganic SEO is best suited to those who can afford an enormous “flow of funds” to be paid for the optimization. Unlike the organic way of optimization, inorganic SEO can bring in the desired results much quicker, but the impact or the effect of such optimization is not that enduring.

People have their own reasons and opinions regarding the debate that which one of these two forms of SEO is more effective. On the basis of the evaluation made on search engine marketing services, both Organic and Inorganic SEO have their own shares of advantages and drawbacks. You can choose any of these services, which you feel suits best with your requirements, strategy and budget. In my opinion, I would say that a balanced combination of both the services could bring in the desired results, wherein, your website can be seen at the highest position of the search engine pages for a longer period of time and also, draw inbound traffic faster.

After attending the workshop I felt a renewed sense of purpose as a search engine marketer towards challenging my clients to focus on and improve their conversion rates, I wanted to provide some of the highlights in my next few columns. Conversion defined

Why do we get blank stares whever we talk about ‘conversion’ to executives? Perhaps this clear definition will help aid us in the future:

Conversion is the process of successfully achieving the primary objective of a specific page or website.

There are a few key concepts in that definition I’d like to emphasize that all too often overlooked by some marketers.  The first being ‘process’, rather than a single event. The second being ‘primary objective’.  Get a group of marketing and sales people together in a room for a web strategy meeting and ask them each to state the primary objective.  Too often we blow by this critical step in a rush to tackle easier, less meaningful issues.

The ratio at which visitors achieve the primary objective on a webpage is called the conversion rate.  Quite simply when we increase the conversion rate, we are more profitable and successful.  So why don’t we spend more time in this area?  I think a lot of us give up too early, giving it our best attempt, instead of seeing it as an ongoing process by which sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail, but we always learn.

The scientific secret conversion formula

What I am about to reveal to you is highly confidential.  Many a man has literally gone insane trying to unlock this mystery.  Seriously though, Dr. Flint McLaughlin has developed, patented, and graciously shared with us a heuristic to help make sense, and practically, methodically attack the opportunity to improve our conversion rates.

The conversion sequence:  C = 4m + 3v = 2(i-f) – 2a

If you are like me, the first time (and second and third time) I was presented with this ‘formula’ my stomach rose to my throat as anxiety of failed math exams and chemistry experiments reemerged in my mind.  RELAX. Let’s break it down:

C= The probability of conversion. That’s easy enough.

m= Motivation of the user. This is basically how badly they want what you have, and the reason they want it.  This is the element you have the least control over.

v= Clarity of value proposition. This is probably the most important element because you do have control over it. I’ll be writing about this next month in detail.

i= Incentive to take action. What are you offering to stimulate a desired action.

f= Friction elements in the conversion process. Anything that impedes the visitor from taking action. Common friction causes are forms with too many fields, or confusing options/choices.

a= Anxiety about entering information. This could be things like testimonials, an award, Better Business Bureau logos, etc.

A little less art, a lot more science

All too often ‘enhancements’ are made to a home page, or landing page, because some creative person, an award winning agency, or the executive with the highest authority (or that executive’s nephew), suspects such a change will help make an impact.  And while there’s no doubt being creative, possessing outstanding copywriting skills, or just having a uncanny knack for going with a gut instinct can help lift conversion, if you are looking to mitigate risk and get real results, these should all be things to pull from, as work through this clear and linear conversion sequence.

Working with, and through this conversion sequence will put purpose and defensible rationale behind the changes that you’ll be making to your pages in the future.

Learn. Apply. Get results.

You’ll be amazed at how differently you approach a page when you’ve got a framework to guide you. I think you’ll also be surprised and pleased with the results that you can achieve with this methodology. In the next few columns I’ll be focusing on one or more aspects of the conversion sequence, starting with the ever-important “Clarity of Value Proposition”.

In the meantime, I invite you to get your best (or worst) landing page, and using the conversion sequence featured in this article, begin to ask, “How clear is my value proposition? Where is there unnecessary friction on this page? Who are the people coming to this page?  Why are they here? What do I want them to do on this page?”

Until next month, keep pressing forward!

Todd Miechiels is a business-to-business internet marketing consultant. His website is www.miechiels.com. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

Assigning performance benchmarks for keywords is one way to determine if you are maximizing exposure through the terms your site is optimized for. However aside from observation, knowing how to create the effect is (the ranking) is equally as important.

Planting Organic Keywords for Harvest

Think of your site as fertile soil, it represents pure potential with a clean slate that is completely up to you to determine what you grow (your content) and what type of harvest you can yield from the seeds you plant.

The seeds in this instance are keywords and without optimizing you site for specific keywords, it is like leaving the traffic that finds you up to chance vs. sculpting your site like clay into a masterpiece that has a specific type of intellectual, emotional and visual appeal.

Having the right landing page for each pivotal keyword

Each page is a turnstile or landing page depending on the visitors intent. Based on how orderly you structure information, which keywords the pages contain and the popularity of the page (both within your own site and how other sites link to / endorse it) determines the relevance score it attains for the topic. The higher the relevance the higher the ranking (when combined with other favorable metrics).

For example, if a keyword you elected to optimize with marginal effort returns 20 searches per month is it worth keeping? Absolutely, if you scale the result across hundreds or thousands of keywords with the same effort and those keywords stem into tens of thousands, and each one delivers 20-30 searches per month, then you have systematically increased your base for relevant traffic from search engines. The conclusion here is (1) pick attainable keywords and (2) make sure your site has enough information to qualify as a resource.

The common mistake is to obsess over one competitive keyword or a small range of keywords, instead of targeting an entire category of related semantic phrases. Why limit the potential of your site as well as sacrifice other ripe keyword opportunities that you could acquire (like low hanging fruit) from failing to see the big picture of search engine traffic?

Eat the Low Hanging Fruit

Having studied numerous traffic patterns from multiple sites over the course of years, the sites with the highest conversion focused on appealing to category leaders using multiple synonyms and landing pages, not just a narrow group of keywords. Each piece of low hanging fruit that has your main keyword in it, is a vote that puts you one step closer to the root phrase.

So, before you can own the tree, you must scale the ladder of relevance covering enough of the topics related to the category before your site is adopted in search engines as a source. Semantically, the seeds you plant in your domain (your pages and how you structure and link to them) have far more significance that you can imagine, which is why…

Site Architecture and Internal Linking Matters

The more structured and logical your site architecture, naming conventions, title tags and information are, the more likely search engines are to find, index and allocate that information when people use the search engine to find related information.

Wikipedia has used this strategy to virtually outrank millions of other websites in thousands of markets and categories. If you only need to master one market category, then look at their example and see that the more semantically related phrases you have that comprise aggregate content, the better.

If you structured proper information architecture by creating logical naming conventions and information silos, the only missing ingredient is internal linking, time and external links (otherwise known as link popularity) from other sites.

Website Optimization, Time and Authority

There are two ways to look at content development and chronology (1) for the initial spike of traffic that occurs within 72 hours or (2) the website authority grandfather effect after the search result goes into the dip (falls a few pages) and then comes back with authority to rank for month after month as if it were hard wired into the search results. Personally, I prefer the second type of optimization.

Through (1) constantly introducing and monitoring layers of content based on a keyword or topic, by (2) linking back to relevant pages with the most effective keywords internally and (3) building links to integral sub folders and sub pages through deep linking, this translates to search engines as a website that is a resource for the topic.

Since search engine algorithm is programmed to look at a finite number of criteria, the more favorable your alignment to the criteria it prefers and rewards the better. We touched on why cyclical layering of content based on a theme of information is one preferred method for gaining traction in search engines, but what are some other solutions that can increase traffic and expedite the process of giving multiple keywords and pages full expression?

Building links to sitemaps – This can reinvigorate pages with a history of performance that may have rotated out of the spotlight by giving them a fresh dose of link weight to redistribute as nourishment (like watering a thirsty plant)

Sift through server logs or look back 90 days to compare the quality and volume of your traffic to determine if you can and bring those keywords into a position of power where they can segue exact match and broad match traffic deeper into your site. This can be done through writing a new article, post or page, using a crafty title and linking the pieces together tactfully.

Reinvigorating keywords with a history of performance – If something slipped through the cracks and got pushed back a page or two in search engines, with a few links or building links to your links you can revive rankings from the past that delivered quality traffic with minimal effort (a few links from the right place).

Leveraging trust rank and website authority – You can leverage internal page rank by internally linking old content to fresh content or vice versa. Strong internal links go a long way and not only reinforce the main keywords you want to rank for, but also serve to elevate page rank for pages buried deep in your site.

These are only a few strategies, the key is to use multiple tactics and methods together, until you find the combination that yields the most favorable results. That is the real value of SEO, not the techniques, but having the depth to know which techniques are the most appropriate for the job.

Granted, much like a game of chess, your competition is not always your competitor, it is your own strategy that is responsible for how you overcome adversity or challenge. Ranking in the top 10 for extremely competitive keywords is no different, it just takes more time to see the fruit of your labors, however when harvest time materializes (massive quantities of traffic and conversion), it is well worth the wait.

The problem is that while these keyword searches seem like no-brainers, ranking for them can take a remarkable amount of effort on both the content and link building side. To warrant that investment, you need to know, from a business perspective, that financial returns will accompany the rankings. One great way to do this is to use paid search to investigate the likely ROI of visits from those keywords. Buy the keyword traffic for a few weeks or a month and measure visitors via a segmented tracking campaign (check out this post on action tracking to learn more). If the visits that arrive via those searches convert well and produce value, you know that a serious investment is warranted. If, however, they turn out to be tire-kickers and have a low propensity to produce returns, you can re-focus on higher ROI targets.

There’s just a few valuable tips to bear in mind when you’re pursuing this process:

• Paid search traffic can behave differently than organic traffic, so don’t take the figures at 100% accuracy. Build in some room for error, and you’ll create far better expectations.
• When crafting your PPC campaign for test purposes, make sure to narrow to exact match so you don’t accidentally measure traffic that’s coming in for longer tail or modified versions of the search query. It’s great to do this and measure response in a PPC campaign, but with SEO, you won’t be able to naturally rank for those same variants unless you identify and target them individually.
• Make sure to narrow to a geographic area, especially if your keywords contain any potential local intent or local modifiers. Otherwise, you can seriously over/under-estimate.
• Keep seasonal variation/flux in mind. Use Microsoft’s Keyword Forecast or Google Insights for Search to help out. Volume fluctuations usually indicate shifting intent as well, so purchasing keywords in a down period can hamper the accuracy of your forecasts.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/headsmacking-tip-6-test-with-paid-search-before-you-target-with-seo/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/how-to-use-seo-to-increase-website-traffic/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/how-to-use-seo-to-increase-website-traffic/#comments Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:53:29 +0000 Jeffrey Smith http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/?p=299 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is great for attracting the right visitors to your website. However, without keeping new arrivals either entertained, informed or satisfied, it won’t really matter how visitors found you if they have the impulse to click the back button before your content overwhelms their curiosity.

It is a simple fact that all traffic is not created equal and it is the synergy between the searcher and the searched that determines if you get the thumbs up (in reference to user engagement) or fail to impress your target audience as they slip away (often times never to return again).

There is a remedy however, which involves developing topical relevance with fresh content and cross-linking it with other useful pages (much like Wikipedia). As each page gains a foothold in search engines, this reciprocates back to the homepage and the homepage then redistributes even more relevance throughout the rest of the site. The more pages that appear for a given topic, the stronger relevance score your website has for that topic.

#1 Staying On Topic

Continuity is important for establishing the theme of your site – Aside from inbound links from other sites, design and usability, reputation is important. Based on its reputation (such as referrals from other sites, RSS subscribers, editorial links from trusted sources or word or mouth) each page has the potential to set off a chain reaction and virally spark interest to funnel traffic to your pages.

If your website or blog is not focused however, you will be sending conflicting signals to search engines, who if left to their own demise could devalue intentional areas of interest.

By staying on topic and maintaining a regular posting schedule, your website will benefit as this behavior is one method to fast-track website authority (which is the ultimate SEO goal).

#2 Create Compelling Click-Worthy Headlines

Does your headline make you want to click and read more? - To increase click thru rates in search engines use an appropriate headline – Your page can rank or tank based on this vital piece of information. Not only is your headline your first line of offense in acquiring an “exact match” position in the SERPs (search engine result pages), it also is your ticket to grabbing and maintaining the readers attention right from the start (which will determine the effectiveness of the content that follows).

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/how-to-use-seo-to-increase-website-traffic/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/the-optician-that-guarantees-visibility/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/the-optician-that-guarantees-visibility/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:22:06 +0000 Akshay Sura http://www.webdatasource.com/?p=2287 It is never good to just exist. Getting known is part of the desire of every human mind. When it comes to the Internet, you have to be known in order to even exist! Search Engine Optimization is a process by which you are able to improve the number of visits to your site and rank among the top few pages of any search engine. To put it simply, getting visible gets easier and your business increases manifolds.

There are many factors you need to take into account while implementing this process. The content is most important. There is a common term used in computer languages known as GIGO and stands for Garbage In Garbage Out. It is the content of your site that shall attract visitors and help retain them. The presentation matters a lot along with the coding and structure. It is also advised to have knowledge about the algorithm of the search engine in order to enhance the number of hits. As an example, for their algorithmic search results, the leading search engines namely Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft use crawlers to find pages. Generally a program or automated script browsing the Internet in an automated manner is known as a crawler.

Now there are many techniques to achieve this. Broadly classifying, there are some techniques that get the recommendation of search engines on the basis of design and there are others that do not get that nod of approval. They get termed as a White Hat or a Black Hat on account of the techniques you use. Sounds confusing? Well, if you are using cloaking or deceptive methods to get indexed on the list of search engines, you are using Black Hat techniques and run the chance of getting blacklisted or even removed from Search Engines. Deception techniques may range from “spamdexing” to making keywords invisible or merging them with the background. However, if you create content for users and tricking the Search Engine algorithms is not part of your “hidden” agenda, then be rest assured, you are safe and you are using White Hat techniques. Good news is that the White Hats generate results, which last for quite a long period. This should make it obvious for you about what you should choose.

Maybe the title should have been “The magician that guarantees visibility”. Judge for yourself!