Pay per click, as the term itself suggests, is a form of advertising that makes use of keywords for popularizing your business on the web. To make a success of your pay per click marketing you need to find the keywords that will best describe about your business. Pay per click marketing is used these days on a large scale, as this is the best way to reach out to online visitors. A study found out that more than seventy five percent of online visitors could be reached through pay per click marketing.
Yes, pay per click marketing is the best source to attract the attention of online visitors, but you must also realize that you need to know all you can before you actually start the process for your business. Nothing can be more frustrating then being caught in a situation where you are not aware of what you are doing and what is happening to your business. So make sure that you know in detail all the nitty gritty about pay per click marketing before using pay per click marketing for your business.
Finding out and identifying the proper keywords is the first task for undertaking pay per click marketing. What you need to do is find out what words will be used by online visitors for searching information or the products that are being sold through your business. There are various tools that can be used for finding out the correct and appropriate keywords for any particular business. Overture, word tracker and digital point are some of the tools that are capable of finding out appropriate keyword for any site in the web.
Sit and plan out carefully what amount of money you are willing to spend on your pay per click marketing campaign. For pay per click marketing, you will have to bid a certain sum of money on keywords that describe your business. Those particular keywords will be used for advertising your goods in major search engines. Whenever a visitor clicks on your site a pre determined amount will be reduced from your bid amount. It is inevitable that you will get many visitors who will click on your site just because your site happens to be listed at the top of sponsored finds in search engines. This cannot be avoided.
There is very little time to grab the attention of visitors. What you can do to grab visitor attention is to making very compelling landing pages. It is very possible that people will not buy goods from you for the first time they visit, but design the page in such a way that at least the visitor leaves behind his email address so that you can contact them in future and tell them about your products. Your landing page must appeal emotionally to the visitor. If you manage to gather the email address you can create a strong database and send out emails through auto responder.
Competition is something that is inevitable and you cannot avoid this in any field. So any marketing strategy including your pay per click marketing strategy must be made and implemented in such a way that you always stay miles ahead of them. Being successful in business is all about beating the competition and no matter how tough the competition, you will have to beat this at all cost.
January 18, 2011
AdWords Tips: All About Keywords
As you probably know, Google AdWords is a pay-per-click marketing system, which is a great way to get traffic to your site. But if you don't know the ins and outs, it can end up costing you a lot of money and not making you any.
So, what's the key to success with AdWords? Well, I wish I could tell you there were one or two simple tricks, but the fact is, the best way to ensure success with AdWords is to be familiar with every aspect of the system. This will likely take weeks or months of research, plus a few bucks spent testing out a real AdWords account. However, you can greatly increase your chances by following this bit of advice: don't skimp on the keyword research!
Maybe you had it in your head that you could go through your site, grab 20 or 30 words or phrases, load them into an ad group, and you'd be watching the traffic and sales pour in. This is simply not the case. Keyword research should be the most time-consuming part of setting up any campaign; not only that, but you should be doing it all the time. That's right - never stop building your keyword list. Okay, now let me explain a few things:
First, you need to understand how Google uses your keywords to show your ads. You place a bid that determines your maximum cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. This can be different for every single keyword, if you wish. This bid does not represent the amount you'll pay for each click (like on Overture); this is just the maximum you'll ever pay for any single click. For example, if you have a max CPC of $0.50 set for a keyword, you'll only have to pay the full amount if someone else bids $0.49. If that person decides to lower his bid to $0.30, you'll only pay $0.31. This is because Google's bid discounter only charges you one cent more than the next highest bidder, no matter what your max CPC is. Theoretically, then, you could bid $10 or even $100 and still only pay $0.31 for a click.
But that's not all! As you start getting impressions (i.e., your ad shows up in the search results) and clicks, you'll have a click-through rate (CTR). This represents the number of clicks you receive per 100 impressions. Here's the really beautiful thing about AdWords: the higher your CTR, the lower your click cost. Because Google values relevance, you'll receive a bonus for having a relevant ad, and CTR is the primary indicator of how relevant your ad is. So, let's say you're competing with someone for ad position No. 3 on the search results page for a particular keyword. Your max bid is $0.50 and his is $1. He should be way above you, right? Not necessarily. Suppose you have a CTR of 5%, and his is only 1%. Google factors in CTR when calculating ad positions, so you end up with this: max CPC × CTR = (what we'll call) ranking factor. In this case, your ranking factor is 0.025, while your competitor's is only 0.01. Which means your ad shows above his for $0.50, even though he's willing to pay up to $1!
Okay, so now you know the basics of how keywords work in AdWords and how Google charges you for clicks. What's next? Keyword research. The best way to go about this is to use WordTracker. I won't get really specific about how WordTracker works, because they've got a ton of information right there on the site - just go do some reading there when you finish this article. Basically, though, WordTracker will help you find the best keywords to use in your AdWords campaign. You type in any word, and you'll get up to 300 related terms, which you can then click on to find a few hundred variations of that term. The terms you'll get are all terms from WordTracker's search query database, which uses metacrawlers to compile information (again, they explain it on their site if you're really interested). So you know that all the words you find there are real terms that people are actually searching for. Even better, you get a prediction of how many searches to expect per day for any keyword, how many times it shows up in their database, and a KEI value to determine your best words (KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index, which you can also read about on the site). You can get a free trial, or you can sign up for a single day to test it out with all the features included (a day's membership is just a few bucks).
There are some free keyword research tools you can use, but I recommend these only for absolute newcomers who have no budget to start out with. Overture's Keyword Inventory is a good, free resource, but there's a catch: it shows results only for searches done through www.yahoo.com. If you're marketing with Google AdWords, you should know that Google accounts for at least twice as many searches as Yahoo!, in some cases three or four times as many. (Though reports vary, Google usually receives credit for about 50-60% of all searches, while Yahoo! gets about 20-30% - but this is based on all searches, and results for individual searches may vary widely.) You may find other "free" tools or downloadable programs that claim to help you with keyword research, but I say don't bother with them. You get what you pay for. Most of them just pull their results directly from other free online tools, and they don't offer anything in the way of features unless you buy the "full version." If you're out to get one for free, just use Overture. (Google's own traffic estimator is decent, but it doesn't give you an exact count for searches within a given period; you just get status bars, which are hard to interpret. Google's bid and position estimates are also usually way off.)
But third-party tools, even if they're very good, won't do your keyword research for you. You'll have to pick through your web site (or your affiliate's sales letter) for words and phrases that you can use. Then, using those words, see if you can think of similar words or concepts that people might be searching for. There's no real trick to this; you've just got to do a lot of brainstorming. Once you've got a good core list, take that over to WordTracker to beef it up. (Hint: If you see any words that don't directly relate to your product, service, or niche, add them as negative matches.)
Now you should have a lean but healthy keyword list. This is your first step to beating out your competition on Google AdWords.
So, what's the key to success with AdWords? Well, I wish I could tell you there were one or two simple tricks, but the fact is, the best way to ensure success with AdWords is to be familiar with every aspect of the system. This will likely take weeks or months of research, plus a few bucks spent testing out a real AdWords account. However, you can greatly increase your chances by following this bit of advice: don't skimp on the keyword research!
Maybe you had it in your head that you could go through your site, grab 20 or 30 words or phrases, load them into an ad group, and you'd be watching the traffic and sales pour in. This is simply not the case. Keyword research should be the most time-consuming part of setting up any campaign; not only that, but you should be doing it all the time. That's right - never stop building your keyword list. Okay, now let me explain a few things:
First, you need to understand how Google uses your keywords to show your ads. You place a bid that determines your maximum cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. This can be different for every single keyword, if you wish. This bid does not represent the amount you'll pay for each click (like on Overture); this is just the maximum you'll ever pay for any single click. For example, if you have a max CPC of $0.50 set for a keyword, you'll only have to pay the full amount if someone else bids $0.49. If that person decides to lower his bid to $0.30, you'll only pay $0.31. This is because Google's bid discounter only charges you one cent more than the next highest bidder, no matter what your max CPC is. Theoretically, then, you could bid $10 or even $100 and still only pay $0.31 for a click.
But that's not all! As you start getting impressions (i.e., your ad shows up in the search results) and clicks, you'll have a click-through rate (CTR). This represents the number of clicks you receive per 100 impressions. Here's the really beautiful thing about AdWords: the higher your CTR, the lower your click cost. Because Google values relevance, you'll receive a bonus for having a relevant ad, and CTR is the primary indicator of how relevant your ad is. So, let's say you're competing with someone for ad position No. 3 on the search results page for a particular keyword. Your max bid is $0.50 and his is $1. He should be way above you, right? Not necessarily. Suppose you have a CTR of 5%, and his is only 1%. Google factors in CTR when calculating ad positions, so you end up with this: max CPC × CTR = (what we'll call) ranking factor. In this case, your ranking factor is 0.025, while your competitor's is only 0.01. Which means your ad shows above his for $0.50, even though he's willing to pay up to $1!
Okay, so now you know the basics of how keywords work in AdWords and how Google charges you for clicks. What's next? Keyword research. The best way to go about this is to use WordTracker. I won't get really specific about how WordTracker works, because they've got a ton of information right there on the site - just go do some reading there when you finish this article. Basically, though, WordTracker will help you find the best keywords to use in your AdWords campaign. You type in any word, and you'll get up to 300 related terms, which you can then click on to find a few hundred variations of that term. The terms you'll get are all terms from WordTracker's search query database, which uses metacrawlers to compile information (again, they explain it on their site if you're really interested). So you know that all the words you find there are real terms that people are actually searching for. Even better, you get a prediction of how many searches to expect per day for any keyword, how many times it shows up in their database, and a KEI value to determine your best words (KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index, which you can also read about on the site). You can get a free trial, or you can sign up for a single day to test it out with all the features included (a day's membership is just a few bucks).
There are some free keyword research tools you can use, but I recommend these only for absolute newcomers who have no budget to start out with. Overture's Keyword Inventory is a good, free resource, but there's a catch: it shows results only for searches done through www.yahoo.com. If you're marketing with Google AdWords, you should know that Google accounts for at least twice as many searches as Yahoo!, in some cases three or four times as many. (Though reports vary, Google usually receives credit for about 50-60% of all searches, while Yahoo! gets about 20-30% - but this is based on all searches, and results for individual searches may vary widely.) You may find other "free" tools or downloadable programs that claim to help you with keyword research, but I say don't bother with them. You get what you pay for. Most of them just pull their results directly from other free online tools, and they don't offer anything in the way of features unless you buy the "full version." If you're out to get one for free, just use Overture. (Google's own traffic estimator is decent, but it doesn't give you an exact count for searches within a given period; you just get status bars, which are hard to interpret. Google's bid and position estimates are also usually way off.)
But third-party tools, even if they're very good, won't do your keyword research for you. You'll have to pick through your web site (or your affiliate's sales letter) for words and phrases that you can use. Then, using those words, see if you can think of similar words or concepts that people might be searching for. There's no real trick to this; you've just got to do a lot of brainstorming. Once you've got a good core list, take that over to WordTracker to beef it up. (Hint: If you see any words that don't directly relate to your product, service, or niche, add them as negative matches.)
Now you should have a lean but healthy keyword list. This is your first step to beating out your competition on Google AdWords.
Link building for effective search engine optimization
When you begin the task of acquiring quality and relevant backlinks to your website there are many factors that can increase or decrease your search engine rankings. This article outlines the difference between good and bad backlinks.
A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums.
For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.
Stay within your category, relevant content is very important to the search engines. Write an article preferably relevant in content to your website and submit the article to high quality article directories. Blogs are an excellent way to get quality one-way backlinks, Blog sites also receive tons of traffic, which in turn give your site more exposure. Posting your link on forum pages is also an efficient method of aquiring backlinks instantly.
Backlinks to avoid would be a zero page ranked webpage, especially if the home page has a zero page rank. Links posted within framed webpages which will also steal your traffic. Especially avoid link farms, webpages which contain more than 100 unrelated outgoing links, This type of link page is frowned upon by many major search engines. Avoid Webpages with mirror sites containing the exact same content with a different URL, also pages that utilize redirects and URL cloaking. Never post your link on a webpage that contains a "no follow" or "no index" robots meta tag within the source code. Dynamic websites with question marks in the URL should be avoided because they are not always indexed by the search engines.
Avoid posting your link on a page that opens very slow or contains mostly ads and flash banners. Try not to aquire or purchase great numbers of backlinks in a short period of time, backlinks should be accumulated gradually. Also avoid webpages and directories that list their results in alphabetical order, as their database increases your link could be moved to a less relevant page with less pagerank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors involved in the process of acheiving high search engine ranking.
A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums.
For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.
Stay within your category, relevant content is very important to the search engines. Write an article preferably relevant in content to your website and submit the article to high quality article directories. Blogs are an excellent way to get quality one-way backlinks, Blog sites also receive tons of traffic, which in turn give your site more exposure. Posting your link on forum pages is also an efficient method of aquiring backlinks instantly.
Backlinks to avoid would be a zero page ranked webpage, especially if the home page has a zero page rank. Links posted within framed webpages which will also steal your traffic. Especially avoid link farms, webpages which contain more than 100 unrelated outgoing links, This type of link page is frowned upon by many major search engines. Avoid Webpages with mirror sites containing the exact same content with a different URL, also pages that utilize redirects and URL cloaking. Never post your link on a webpage that contains a "no follow" or "no index" robots meta tag within the source code. Dynamic websites with question marks in the URL should be avoided because they are not always indexed by the search engines.
Avoid posting your link on a page that opens very slow or contains mostly ads and flash banners. Try not to aquire or purchase great numbers of backlinks in a short period of time, backlinks should be accumulated gradually. Also avoid webpages and directories that list their results in alphabetical order, as their database increases your link could be moved to a less relevant page with less pagerank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors involved in the process of acheiving high search engine ranking.
Meta tag optimization results in high search engine ranking
I was compelled to publish this article after noticing several SEO specialists writing in reference to meta tags being dead or obsolite. Meta tags are not dead. I will be the first to say, meta tags are utilized by all major search engines and are very much in use and extremely important to search engine ranking. If you need proof of how important meta tags are, try removing your meta tags and watch what happens to your search engine positioning. Your site will plummet to the depths of the unvisited web. Meta tags are frequently an overlooked factor which can improve the ranking of most any website.
This is an example of how vital meta tags are to your webpage and to your search engine ranking. Our website ranks #6 and #7 consistantly on MSN for the keyword submit site. To test the dead meta tag theory, our source code editor changed one word in the meta description tag and we dropped to #15 in the search results. Our rankings on Google and several other search engines suffered even more so. Needless to say we made changes accordingly. All major search engines definitely utilize meta tags for a description of the webpage and for indexing within the search results.
The title tag is one of the most important on page factors to consider. This is because search engine spiders read this tag first and place a high level of importance on the keywords found there. The title tag is also used for the title of your listing in the search results. The contents of your title tag will also appear in the top left corner of the browser bar. Correct title tag optimization is essiential and will result in a dramatic increase in your search engine ranking. The title tag should contain at least one or more keywords to be of any relevance to the webpage.
Search engine spiders read the description meta tag next. This tag is often used as a website description in the search results. The description tag should also contain a few keywords. The keyword meta tag is also vital to search engine ranking giving search engine spiders a sample of relevant text and content within a webpage. Other meta tags include robots, resource, author, copyright etc. These tags are not as important as the title, description and keyword tag, however they should be included if possible. To acheive high search engine ranking optimize your meta data. Proper onpage optimization will greatly improve your search engine placement.
This is an example of how vital meta tags are to your webpage and to your search engine ranking. Our website ranks #6 and #7 consistantly on MSN for the keyword submit site. To test the dead meta tag theory, our source code editor changed one word in the meta description tag and we dropped to #15 in the search results. Our rankings on Google and several other search engines suffered even more so. Needless to say we made changes accordingly. All major search engines definitely utilize meta tags for a description of the webpage and for indexing within the search results.
The title tag is one of the most important on page factors to consider. This is because search engine spiders read this tag first and place a high level of importance on the keywords found there. The title tag is also used for the title of your listing in the search results. The contents of your title tag will also appear in the top left corner of the browser bar. Correct title tag optimization is essiential and will result in a dramatic increase in your search engine ranking. The title tag should contain at least one or more keywords to be of any relevance to the webpage.
Search engine spiders read the description meta tag next. This tag is often used as a website description in the search results. The description tag should also contain a few keywords. The keyword meta tag is also vital to search engine ranking giving search engine spiders a sample of relevant text and content within a webpage. Other meta tags include robots, resource, author, copyright etc. These tags are not as important as the title, description and keyword tag, however they should be included if possible. To acheive high search engine ranking optimize your meta data. Proper onpage optimization will greatly improve your search engine placement.
Internet Traffic and SEO Techniques
You might be wandering the reasons your web site is not getting much internet traffic. After all your web site took lots of financial and human resources, but unfortunately like so many web sites, it is quite unknown and as a result it does not get enough internet traffic to make it financially viable.
Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.
And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine's pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.
Search engine optimization steps for a web page:
Title:
The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.
Keywords:
The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.
Description:
The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.
Keywords in Headings:
Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.
Web page text:
It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.
Keywords in Alt Tags:
Every html picture "img" tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Keywords in Anchor Tags:
Every html hypertext link "a href " should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Robots.txt file:
Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.
There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/
HTML code validation:
Search engine's crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.
Links:
Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.
Registering with Directories and Search Engines:
It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.
Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.
The-websol.blogspot.com
IT Consultant
This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.
Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.
And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine's pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.
Search engine optimization steps for a web page:
Title:
The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.
Keywords:
The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.
Description:
The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.
Keywords in Headings:
Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.
Web page text:
It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.
Keywords in Alt Tags:
Every html picture "img" tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Keywords in Anchor Tags:
Every html hypertext link "a href " should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.
Robots.txt file:
Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.
There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/
HTML code validation:
Search engine's crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.
Links:
Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.
Registering with Directories and Search Engines:
It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.
Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.
The-websol.blogspot.com
IT Consultant
This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.
Ultimate SEO Plan for Internet Marketers
How to optimize your site
I don't like doing seo, but its very much needed. Search engine optimization for your website should be one of a webmaster's main goals. Getting traffic from the search engines is not only free but is also constant (depending on what keywords that you are targeting) traffic. Below is a plan that web masters should follow when they decide that they will start optimizing their websites, you should include a combination of onsite and offsite search engine optimization.
Step one: What keywords your going to optimize for
Think of what keywords that you want to target. If you target the wrong keywords then you may never see any results for them, just some common sense. And if you target overly competive keywords then it may take too much time to see results but once you do it will be well worth it. I would recommend targeting in the middle when selecting keywords to optimize your site for when you're starting out.
Just a quick tip when selecting keywords, i usually use the plural version for keywords or keyword phrases because the plural version includes the single one. For example if you have a keyword "shoe" try making it "shoes" because the keyword "shoes" include the keyword "shoe" but its not the same in reverse.
Step two: Start onsite optimization
This is one layer of search engine optimization and this process includes manipulating the source code of your website with keywords. The places to put keywords in your website includes the title tags, meta tags, within the text of your website, and within links (anchor text).
Title tags: This is the most important part to place keywords in your website and surprisingly a lot of web masters just leave this area blank. Search engine bots show the most prominence (importance) to keywords within the title tag which is why its critical to include keywords here.
Place keywords here
Text of document
Meta tags: Place keywords here but be careful not to place too many here or else you will be viewed as spamming the search engines "keyword stuffing." These use to be an easy way to score top rankings in the search engines but the search engines have evolved overtime and this is no longer possible to score high rankings with stuffing the meta tags. You will need a proper combination of onsite and off site optimization which i will explain later. Meta tags goes between the head tags in your source code.
Description Meta:
This should be a description of your website and always put important keywords in the beginning of the sentence if applicable."
Meta Keywords:
Some quick tips. Try to use the plural form of your keywords here and to also see if there are common misspellings for popular keywords and lace them here. DO NOT repeat keywords.
Heading tags:
Heading Size 1
Make sure to place your keywords here because this helps tells search engines related content on your website.
Keywords in the anchor text:
This is important, whenever you are linking within your website make sure to place keywords in the links, search engine algorithms like this. For example, if your selling a weight loss product instead of having a link that simply says "click here" have the anchor text say "click here to get the ultimate guide to weight loss." Anchor text code=Keywords go here
Alt tag
If you have a lot of graphics on your site there are a couple of things you want to do. First, you want to make it small as possible without losing none of the quality if possible. Websites that are bombarded with graphics usually take some time to load which can cause visitors to get impatient and leave so this is important to keep in mind. Also, make sure to place keywords in the image alt tags:
Make sure to actually describe the image, just don't use this as an extra means to stuff keywords, and use the keywords here that you have in your title and meta tags. Make sure to spell correctly (unlike what I'm doing) when your working on the on site optimization for your website. NEVER EVER copy and paste text from word into your html text editor, that can cause all types of complications. Write your keywords up in word and the copy and paste your text into a text editor like notepad or wordpad and then paste it into your html editor.
Offsite optimization
Offsite optimization has nothing to do with manipulating the source code of your website and relies heavily on links which brings me to my first tip with optimization, and that is to write articles. The funny thing is by getting links to your site is also a quick way to get indexed in the search engines.
Writing articles:
I like writing articles because the Internet was made for information and when someone is searching for something online they are most likely looking for information that they are searching for, i will assume that you did a good amount of searching today or browsing if your reading this right now. Okay, write and submit articles to website directories. I have tested and founded that a 3% keyword density is usually perfect when writing articles. Always place keywords within the anchor text in the links of your signature.
Classic blog and ping:
Search engines love blogs, and these are an easy way to get backlinks to your sites. Just open up a free blog at blogger and make a post with a link back to your site. You can also try deep linking by linking to other content parts of your site as well in your blog.
Blog comment:
Find the top blogs in your niche and leave a comment, but no spamming... thats just tasteless.
MSN, Google, and Yahoo Homepage:
Make and customize your own personal webpage for each of these search engines and post your articles here with a link back to your website. They also have rss so that you can syndicate your content as well.
Google: pages.google.com
Yahoo! my.yahoo.com/
MSN: my.msn.com
Press release:
Write and syndicate press release, this is a great way to get backlinks as well as also get some media attention about your website.
Extensive list (Link bait)
Take the time to make an extensive list of links to useful resources, this is great ways to make your website ready to get eaten up with links.
Build a 101 list:
These are almost next to impossible to not get linked to and often get dugged often in digg. I wrote an article in a couple of hours titled 101 muscular ways to get more traffic to you website and blogs and this have given me enormous amounts of backlinks and a good amount of traffic from the search engines, blogs it was reposted on, and forums as well.You can also make a separate page on your website for directories. These are great way to link to useful information, but its also a great way to link to pages within your site (if its useful) a process called deep linking.
Sitemap:
Sitemaps are important because not only does it help make your website easier to navigate for a first time user, it also helps spider your site which will help your content get indexed in the search engines. There is no secret, if the pages are not indexed in the search engines then that means they cannot draw any traffic from them. So, this is where sitemaps come in. Sitemaps are written in xml, a language i don't like but a language the search engines love (same languages that blogs are written in). Once you have your sitempap which has to be in .xml format before you submit to Google go here:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
Here are some xml sitemap creators:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Yahoo sitemap
To submit go here:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
MSN sitemap
To my current knowledege, MSN doesn't currently have a particular place to submit sitemaps to, but from my understanding if you submit your sitemap to Google, then MSN will pick it up because it can understand that protocol. Go here for more information if your curious: http://sitemaps.org.
This should work for Yahoo! As well, so thats why its important to always submit your sitemmaps to Google. Also, here is another trick that you can do. You can always ping the search engines so that you will tell them that "hey i updated my content come and visit and spider my website you." Here is the code: http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.YourSiteMapURL
There you have it, a nice summary of what you need to do in order to start an effective search engine optimization plan so quick reading, print this out, and get started working, all the best.
I don't like doing seo, but its very much needed. Search engine optimization for your website should be one of a webmaster's main goals. Getting traffic from the search engines is not only free but is also constant (depending on what keywords that you are targeting) traffic. Below is a plan that web masters should follow when they decide that they will start optimizing their websites, you should include a combination of onsite and offsite search engine optimization.
Step one: What keywords your going to optimize for
Think of what keywords that you want to target. If you target the wrong keywords then you may never see any results for them, just some common sense. And if you target overly competive keywords then it may take too much time to see results but once you do it will be well worth it. I would recommend targeting in the middle when selecting keywords to optimize your site for when you're starting out.
Just a quick tip when selecting keywords, i usually use the plural version for keywords or keyword phrases because the plural version includes the single one. For example if you have a keyword "shoe" try making it "shoes" because the keyword "shoes" include the keyword "shoe" but its not the same in reverse.
Step two: Start onsite optimization
This is one layer of search engine optimization and this process includes manipulating the source code of your website with keywords. The places to put keywords in your website includes the title tags, meta tags, within the text of your website, and within links (anchor text).
Title tags: This is the most important part to place keywords in your website and surprisingly a lot of web masters just leave this area blank. Search engine bots show the most prominence (importance) to keywords within the title tag which is why its critical to include keywords here.
Place keywords here
Text of document
Meta tags: Place keywords here but be careful not to place too many here or else you will be viewed as spamming the search engines "keyword stuffing." These use to be an easy way to score top rankings in the search engines but the search engines have evolved overtime and this is no longer possible to score high rankings with stuffing the meta tags. You will need a proper combination of onsite and off site optimization which i will explain later. Meta tags goes between the head tags in your source code.
Description Meta:
This should be a description of your website and always put important keywords in the beginning of the sentence if applicable."
Meta Keywords:
Some quick tips. Try to use the plural form of your keywords here and to also see if there are common misspellings for popular keywords and lace them here. DO NOT repeat keywords.
Heading tags:
Heading Size 1
Make sure to place your keywords here because this helps tells search engines related content on your website.
Keywords in the anchor text:
This is important, whenever you are linking within your website make sure to place keywords in the links, search engine algorithms like this. For example, if your selling a weight loss product instead of having a link that simply says "click here" have the anchor text say "click here to get the ultimate guide to weight loss." Anchor text code=Keywords go here
Alt tag
If you have a lot of graphics on your site there are a couple of things you want to do. First, you want to make it small as possible without losing none of the quality if possible. Websites that are bombarded with graphics usually take some time to load which can cause visitors to get impatient and leave so this is important to keep in mind. Also, make sure to place keywords in the image alt tags:
Make sure to actually describe the image, just don't use this as an extra means to stuff keywords, and use the keywords here that you have in your title and meta tags. Make sure to spell correctly (unlike what I'm doing) when your working on the on site optimization for your website. NEVER EVER copy and paste text from word into your html text editor, that can cause all types of complications. Write your keywords up in word and the copy and paste your text into a text editor like notepad or wordpad and then paste it into your html editor.
Offsite optimization
Offsite optimization has nothing to do with manipulating the source code of your website and relies heavily on links which brings me to my first tip with optimization, and that is to write articles. The funny thing is by getting links to your site is also a quick way to get indexed in the search engines.
Writing articles:
I like writing articles because the Internet was made for information and when someone is searching for something online they are most likely looking for information that they are searching for, i will assume that you did a good amount of searching today or browsing if your reading this right now. Okay, write and submit articles to website directories. I have tested and founded that a 3% keyword density is usually perfect when writing articles. Always place keywords within the anchor text in the links of your signature.
Classic blog and ping:
Search engines love blogs, and these are an easy way to get backlinks to your sites. Just open up a free blog at blogger and make a post with a link back to your site. You can also try deep linking by linking to other content parts of your site as well in your blog.
Blog comment:
Find the top blogs in your niche and leave a comment, but no spamming... thats just tasteless.
MSN, Google, and Yahoo Homepage:
Make and customize your own personal webpage for each of these search engines and post your articles here with a link back to your website. They also have rss so that you can syndicate your content as well.
Google: pages.google.com
Yahoo! my.yahoo.com/
MSN: my.msn.com
Press release:
Write and syndicate press release, this is a great way to get backlinks as well as also get some media attention about your website.
Extensive list (Link bait)
Take the time to make an extensive list of links to useful resources, this is great ways to make your website ready to get eaten up with links.
Build a 101 list:
These are almost next to impossible to not get linked to and often get dugged often in digg. I wrote an article in a couple of hours titled 101 muscular ways to get more traffic to you website and blogs and this have given me enormous amounts of backlinks and a good amount of traffic from the search engines, blogs it was reposted on, and forums as well.You can also make a separate page on your website for directories. These are great way to link to useful information, but its also a great way to link to pages within your site (if its useful) a process called deep linking.
Sitemap:
Sitemaps are important because not only does it help make your website easier to navigate for a first time user, it also helps spider your site which will help your content get indexed in the search engines. There is no secret, if the pages are not indexed in the search engines then that means they cannot draw any traffic from them. So, this is where sitemaps come in. Sitemaps are written in xml, a language i don't like but a language the search engines love (same languages that blogs are written in). Once you have your sitempap which has to be in .xml format before you submit to Google go here:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
Here are some xml sitemap creators:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Yahoo sitemap
To submit go here:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
MSN sitemap
To my current knowledege, MSN doesn't currently have a particular place to submit sitemaps to, but from my understanding if you submit your sitemap to Google, then MSN will pick it up because it can understand that protocol. Go here for more information if your curious: http://sitemaps.org.
This should work for Yahoo! As well, so thats why its important to always submit your sitemmaps to Google. Also, here is another trick that you can do. You can always ping the search engines so that you will tell them that "hey i updated my content come and visit and spider my website you." Here is the code: http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.YourSiteMapURL
There you have it, a nice summary of what you need to do in order to start an effective search engine optimization plan so quick reading, print this out, and get started working, all the best.
Search Engine Marketing Optimization Products Reviewed
Most books and software ever sold online have-in one form or another-something to do with Search Engine Optimization. Why is this such a sought after service? Because... getting a good spot on major search engines can be the difference between $0 in profit per day versus $500 to $150,000 in profits per day (depending on the product you are promoting). Now there are many books and programs out there... and trust me, I've tried nearly all of them. Here are my personal recommendations:
1 - The SEO Elite Software is by far the best of the best in software out there. It is a bit pricey to start off with, but it will literally save you thousands of dollars in promotions. The advantage you have is that you can create instant back-links to your site whenever you choose to, and on more sites then you could ever dream of. To have access to tools with a 1/4 of these abilities you would pay about $239 a year somewhere else. In short... you get more than you pay for. I'd rate it 10/10
2 - Search Engine Optimization is another great, great tool. The price is a fraction of what you would pay on the previous software, but you are also more limited as to what you can or cannot do with this system. Still a super program, but remember: You Get What You Pay For.
3 - Links Master is a program different from the previous two in the sense that you get someone else to blast your text ads out onto hundreds of sites. Problem? You have limited control over the kind of sites and the amount of sites linking to your site. Again... a great service, but it does tend to go hard on the wallet of those starting out.
Believe it or not-there is no secret to getting your site listed number 1 on major search engines. You read that right! Search Engine Marketing is always spoken of as though it is hard to do. And gaining a number 1 spot on Google, well, that is just plain impossible. If done right, YOU can prove all those assumptions wrong.
Using software number 1 it is easy and fast as lightning to get top ranking on major search engines and, as previously stated, it takes very little effort on your part. Go to the site, read the testimonials-and if you are serious about getting that number 1 spot... I trust you will purchase the software. The SEO software is to the online marketer today as a machine gun would have been to a warrior in medieval times: It literally blows all Search Engine Marketing competitors to pieces!
Search engines can be an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to a web site. Our search engine marketing page provides access to the collective wisdom of all the top search engine marketing experts with regularly updated articles, links to resources, and announcements of new tools and services available to the search engine marketing industry.
Do you want your site to rank number 1 on Google?
Then use the number 1 Search Engine Marketing tool, which is currently being used by thousands of search engine marketers around the world. Gain YOUR #1 spot on Google, Yahoo, and MSN in record time!
1 - The SEO Elite Software is by far the best of the best in software out there. It is a bit pricey to start off with, but it will literally save you thousands of dollars in promotions. The advantage you have is that you can create instant back-links to your site whenever you choose to, and on more sites then you could ever dream of. To have access to tools with a 1/4 of these abilities you would pay about $239 a year somewhere else. In short... you get more than you pay for. I'd rate it 10/10
2 - Search Engine Optimization is another great, great tool. The price is a fraction of what you would pay on the previous software, but you are also more limited as to what you can or cannot do with this system. Still a super program, but remember: You Get What You Pay For.
3 - Links Master is a program different from the previous two in the sense that you get someone else to blast your text ads out onto hundreds of sites. Problem? You have limited control over the kind of sites and the amount of sites linking to your site. Again... a great service, but it does tend to go hard on the wallet of those starting out.
Believe it or not-there is no secret to getting your site listed number 1 on major search engines. You read that right! Search Engine Marketing is always spoken of as though it is hard to do. And gaining a number 1 spot on Google, well, that is just plain impossible. If done right, YOU can prove all those assumptions wrong.
Using software number 1 it is easy and fast as lightning to get top ranking on major search engines and, as previously stated, it takes very little effort on your part. Go to the site, read the testimonials-and if you are serious about getting that number 1 spot... I trust you will purchase the software. The SEO software is to the online marketer today as a machine gun would have been to a warrior in medieval times: It literally blows all Search Engine Marketing competitors to pieces!
Search engines can be an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to a web site. Our search engine marketing page provides access to the collective wisdom of all the top search engine marketing experts with regularly updated articles, links to resources, and announcements of new tools and services available to the search engine marketing industry.
Do you want your site to rank number 1 on Google?
Then use the number 1 Search Engine Marketing tool, which is currently being used by thousands of search engine marketers around the world. Gain YOUR #1 spot on Google, Yahoo, and MSN in record time!
January 13, 2011
How to Write Title Tags for Your Web Pages
When it comes to search engine optimization, the single most important sentence that you will write for your website is the title tag of your main page. If you write it properly then you will have taken a big step towards getting your site well placed in search engine queries for your important keywords.
Before I give you a step-by-step guide to writing title tags, let's define what they actually are and see why they are important. When you look at a web page in your browser, the writing in the blue strip above browser's commands (file, edit, view, etc.) is the title tag. On your actual HTML document the title tag is in the head portion between the notation <title> and </title> .
The title tag is important because it "tells" the search engine what the page is about, and in the case of your main page, what your website is all about. I remember back in my school days that we used to take standardized examinations in which we had to read a story and then answer the question: "What would be the best title for this essay?" Choosing a title tag is something like answering this kind of question. You've got to pick out the gist of your enterprise and highlight it in a sentence. So, take a look at your web page and get ready to begin, following these steps:
So, take a look at your website's title tags, and see if you can improve them. The effort that you make will be well rewarded.
Before I give you a step-by-step guide to writing title tags, let's define what they actually are and see why they are important. When you look at a web page in your browser, the writing in the blue strip above browser's commands (file, edit, view, etc.) is the title tag. On your actual HTML document the title tag is in the head portion between the notation <title> and </title> .
The title tag is important because it "tells" the search engine what the page is about, and in the case of your main page, what your website is all about. I remember back in my school days that we used to take standardized examinations in which we had to read a story and then answer the question: "What would be the best title for this essay?" Choosing a title tag is something like answering this kind of question. You've got to pick out the gist of your enterprise and highlight it in a sentence. So, take a look at your web page and get ready to begin, following these steps:
| 1. | Make sure your three or four most important keywords or keyword phrases appear in the title tag. The most important words should appear near the beginning of the sentence, and they can be repeated within the sentence for added emphasis. For example, if I am offering low-cost web design, then my title tag might look like this: <title>Web Design: Affordable, Low Cost Web Design from the Acme Web Design Company</title> |
| 2. | Leave your branding and sales pitch for another part of the web page. Although it is a natural tendency to want to put your company name at the beginning of the title tag, you should remember that unless you are very famous like Coca Cola, people are not searching for you. So, put your most important keywords at the front of the title tag, and establish your brand name with your logo and other elements of the web page. If your company name includes your keywords, like our hypothetical Acme Web Design Company, then put it in the title tag, but not necessarily at the beginning. Similarly, the title tag is no place for your sales pitch, so keep out flowery or extraneous adjectives, unless they are actual terms used in searches for your product or service. |
| 3. | Place your geographical or niche-defining term in your title tag. If you are trying for a top ten or top twenty position for a term such as "web design," then you are really in for a difficult struggle. However, suppose the Acme Web Design Company is located in Columbus, Ohio. Then instead of attempting the almost impossible task of getting the top rankings for the term "web design," it would be far better to get a high ranking in the geographical niche using a title tag such "Web Design, Columbus, Ohio: Low Cost Web Design in Columbus, Ohio by The Acme Web Design Company" |
| 4. | The title tag can be longer than you think. Some guidelines say that the title tag should be no longer than 70 characters. It is true that only the first 70 characters will show in the top bar of the browser, but search engine robots will read the rest of the tag and the search engines will not penalize you for going over the 70 character mark. Take a look at highly ranked sites in heavily competitive categories and you will see examples of long title tags. Write the tag according to your need to get your important words and phrases included in a sentence that best describes what your product or service is about. |
| 5. | Vary the title tags on the inner pages of your website. Even with a long title tag, it is not possible to highlight all the possible terms which someone might use to find your website. This is not a problem if you make use of the other pages of your website. Instead of simply having a title tag that says "services" our web design firm could highlight "low cost, web design services" on that page. The "contact" page could be used to emphasize the geographical location once again, and so on. Many websites make the mistake of repeating the same title tag on each of the inner pages of the site. Avoid this and use each of your page's titles to target important keywords and keyword phrases. |
So, take a look at your website's title tags, and see if you can improve them. The effort that you make will be well rewarded.
Increase Your Leads with Search Engine and Lead Optimization Strategies
The most optimal way for an online Real Estate agent to succeed is through rapid lead generation and follow up. And in order to escalate your leads, you must start off with an acceptance of your current traffic and lead conversion ratio.
Ask yourself "How many visitors does it take to get to a lead?"
In fact, when we initially interview a potential client often times the conversion is close to a dismal 200:1. Depending on design features, you should really get at the most 50:1. And probably 30:1 is more like it.
Conversion comes from on page conversion optimization & Keyword representation.
On Page Factors
Most people have heard of Search Engine Optimization. Few talk about on page conversion optimization.
First of all, this whole concept pre-supposes that you are starting off with a most wanted action (MWA). Sometimes your MWA is Branding, sometimes it is Leads. And many times it is both lead capture and branding that you are asking your website to do.
If Leads are your goal then your call to action is critical. Other features on your page can distract the viewer from your objectives.
On Page factors that may increase or decrease conversion are:
Asking them to sign up (making your call to action clear)
A Johnson Box (these are those tabled boxes that break up your body copy)
Color can attract or distract
Too many buttons
Animation
Offer Placement. Where are you placing your call to action?
Variety of Call to Action
Frequency of your call to action
These are just a few of the attributes that may help your lead count to go way up.
HappyVille Real Estate
There is a reason that studies have found that Pay per Click search engine results often render poor conversion rates. Specificity.
The reason is that you can only use high volume keywords with pay per click (PPC). These high volume keywords are by their nature generalized. They are also the most profitable for the engine. But what may profit the engine does not always profit you. (Thats not to say that PPC doesn't have its place in a search marketing campaign)
9 times out 10, I am asked to "make my site #1 for "My City real estate". While this is a worthy objective, it is at best very short sighted. Words like "City real estate", "city homes", city condos", are all high volume in just about any city you research.
However, a successful marketing campaign must employ search engine click thrus that are made up of general & specific "streams of traffic". This is because traffic is a comprehensive endeavor. You wouldn't just rent out 1 or 2 of your penthouse units and leave the rest of your 150 unit apartment complex empty? You couldn't expect profitability would you?
However, this is exactly what most agents do when they go after a few high volume words.
Traffic is made up of the combined visits that come from various inquiries into a search engine.
Each inquiry represents a finite amount of possible traffic determined by the placement in the engine, for a particular keyword phrase.
So long story short, a few keywords aren't going to make your business. You need a Universe of words in order to get monster traffic and lead conversion.
Additionally, not all keywords or traffic are created equal. Step out of real estate monetarily and imagine yourself as Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com. What would delite you more?
500 visitors that typed in "Books"? Or 500 visitors that typed in "Harry Potter"? Or better yet, "Harry Potter, Sorcerors Stone"? The more specific you get, conversion goes up and the closer you can get to that elusive 1:1 conversion.
The challenge however, is that the more specific you get with our keywords, the less traffic you get. So you need to represent a large amount of these specific keywords that produce low traffic by themselves. But combined, create a large stream of very convertable traffic.
By optimizing your on page factors and your keywords that drive people to your site, you will take your visitor to conversion ratio down to a respectable number.
Ask yourself "How many visitors does it take to get to a lead?"
In fact, when we initially interview a potential client often times the conversion is close to a dismal 200:1. Depending on design features, you should really get at the most 50:1. And probably 30:1 is more like it.
Conversion comes from on page conversion optimization & Keyword representation.
On Page Factors
Most people have heard of Search Engine Optimization. Few talk about on page conversion optimization.
First of all, this whole concept pre-supposes that you are starting off with a most wanted action (MWA). Sometimes your MWA is Branding, sometimes it is Leads. And many times it is both lead capture and branding that you are asking your website to do.
If Leads are your goal then your call to action is critical. Other features on your page can distract the viewer from your objectives.
On Page factors that may increase or decrease conversion are:
Asking them to sign up (making your call to action clear)
A Johnson Box (these are those tabled boxes that break up your body copy)
Color can attract or distract
Too many buttons
Animation
Offer Placement. Where are you placing your call to action?
Variety of Call to Action
Frequency of your call to action
These are just a few of the attributes that may help your lead count to go way up.
HappyVille Real Estate
There is a reason that studies have found that Pay per Click search engine results often render poor conversion rates. Specificity.
The reason is that you can only use high volume keywords with pay per click (PPC). These high volume keywords are by their nature generalized. They are also the most profitable for the engine. But what may profit the engine does not always profit you. (Thats not to say that PPC doesn't have its place in a search marketing campaign)
9 times out 10, I am asked to "make my site #1 for "My City real estate". While this is a worthy objective, it is at best very short sighted. Words like "City real estate", "city homes", city condos", are all high volume in just about any city you research.
However, a successful marketing campaign must employ search engine click thrus that are made up of general & specific "streams of traffic". This is because traffic is a comprehensive endeavor. You wouldn't just rent out 1 or 2 of your penthouse units and leave the rest of your 150 unit apartment complex empty? You couldn't expect profitability would you?
However, this is exactly what most agents do when they go after a few high volume words.
Traffic is made up of the combined visits that come from various inquiries into a search engine.
Each inquiry represents a finite amount of possible traffic determined by the placement in the engine, for a particular keyword phrase.
So long story short, a few keywords aren't going to make your business. You need a Universe of words in order to get monster traffic and lead conversion.
Additionally, not all keywords or traffic are created equal. Step out of real estate monetarily and imagine yourself as Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com. What would delite you more?
500 visitors that typed in "Books"? Or 500 visitors that typed in "Harry Potter"? Or better yet, "Harry Potter, Sorcerors Stone"? The more specific you get, conversion goes up and the closer you can get to that elusive 1:1 conversion.
The challenge however, is that the more specific you get with our keywords, the less traffic you get. So you need to represent a large amount of these specific keywords that produce low traffic by themselves. But combined, create a large stream of very convertable traffic.
By optimizing your on page factors and your keywords that drive people to your site, you will take your visitor to conversion ratio down to a respectable number.
The Steps Before Website Traffic
The Steps Before Website Traffic
By now, you probably already have the theme of your website established, your keywords picked and your website ready to go live. You're thinking that you'll submit your site to the search engines, sit back and see how much traffic the search engines will send you, right?STOP! There are many different avenues you can take to drive traffic to your site but they should only be taken after you make the search engines your first priority. The search engines should be your foundation. They'll always send you a certain amount of traffic if you have a high page rank.
IMPORTANT!
Your website must be 'set up' for a high page rank in the search engines and it's important to do it 'before' you submit your site for the first time. Here's the reason why:
Usually, after you submit your website to the search engines for the first time, your website will be 'spidered' fairly quickly and hopefully your site will be listed on one of the top pages.
Your website may not get 'spidered' again for months so if you make changes to optimize your site, you may not see your changes take effect for quite a while. You could be stuck on a back page, if any page at all, for a very long time.
Without getting into the mechanics of designing your website, here are the basics of setting up your website to be search engine friendly.
THE FIRST STEP is to establish the main keyword for your site. This is the word or phrase that you want people to type into the search engines to find your website. It's important to have your site focused around your main keyword.
Let's say you have a site dedicated to 'building your own home' so we'll use 'home building' as our main keyword example.
THE NEXT STEP is to create a title for your website and to place it in the 'title tag' of your site. The 'title tag' should be the first tag in the 'head' of your site and it's important because many search engines use the contents of the 'title tag' as the title of the listing. They also look for keywords in the title and your main keyword should be the first words in the title.
Generally, your title should be no more than 40 characters and, again, it should begin with your main keyword. Try to avoid using 'stop words' in your title. Stop words are transition words such as - and, but, or, for, with, etc.
Here's a possible title using our example main keyword 'home building' - Home Building - Home Construction Plans
Notice our main keyword is first, the title is less than 40 characters (39), there are no stop words and we managed to sneak in 3 secondary keywords - home construction, construction plans and home construction plans. Clever huh?
THE NEXT STEP is to create a 'keywords meta tag'. This is where you list all the keywords you want to use for your website starting with your 'main keyword'. A good rule of thumb is to use about 20 keywords and your main keyword should be contained in about half of them.
Using our example keyword 'home building' our keywords could be - home building, home construction, home building plans, home building cost, construction plans, etc.
Notice I didn't use our main keyword 'home building' twice in a row. For example - home building, home building plans, etc. Search engines might see this as spam and it could hurt your ranking.
THE NEXT STEP is to create a 'description meta tag'. This is where you describe your website and, again, you should start with your main keyword.
Keep your description to about 150 characters, use as few 'stop words' as you can and sprinkle in as many secondary keywords as possible.
Make your description interesting because search engines often use the contents in your 'description meta tag' as the description of your website in the listing.
THE NEXT STEP is to use your keywords often in the body of your website. Make sure your 'main keyword' is somewhere in the beginning and at the end of the body of your page.
It's a good idea to use your main keyword in an 'h1' tag and a few of your secondary keywords in an 'h2' tag. This tells the search engines that you put importance on your keywords.
It's also a good idea to underline your main keyword no more than once and to use bold text for your main keyword no more than once.
Although there are other factors that determine your position in the search engines, having the basics of what search engines look for will give you a much better chance of making that illusive first page and driving consistent website traffic to your site.
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