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How to Boost Your Search Engine Ranking For Free - Articles and Blogs

By Andrew Egorov in Featured

So your website is up and running and the investment in time and money you’ve put into your PPC campaign is now paying off.

With the website tracking you have implemented, you have been able to fine-tune your campaign so that you now have a fairly good idea about who you’re marketing to, what they’re searching for and the highest converting and traffic keywords. You have also been able to slowly reduce your CPC (cost per click) down to a more reasonable level.

But like all good businesses, you are constantly looking for ways to improve on your ROI which in the world of internet marketing means higher click rates. You should also be fully aware that you need to know how to monetize the traffic you are generating from your website. Traffic means nothing if you’re not doing anything with it.

There are a multitude of free ways to improve your search engine ranking so that you’re on the first page (and hopefully first position) on your relevant keyword search results.

In this article I’m going to go through the main ways in which you can do this. The most common term used for this is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO.

A search engine’s primary purpose is to serve the user the closest match and most relevant information for any given keyword search. Search engines reward websites that have good quality, relevant information with high search rankings.

One of the ways that a search engine ranks a website is by the number of unique links the website has from other websites. From the search engine point of view, this is an indication that the website must have something of value to other websites.

There are some important key things you must always understand to have an effective SE marketing strategy.

1. Provide valuable, relevant content.

Don’t just fill your site with non-relevant garbage. All articles on your website should be relevant and consistent to what your website is about. Try to avoid using free article to pad out your website, as people will soon find out that the information is non-relevant and won’t bother visiting.

People need to be interested in the articles or else they won’t link to your website and you won’t build your rankings. This takes time…as I keep reiterating in my articles…”Rome wasn’t built in day.” Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with using free articles, but the least you can do is filter out any non-relevant stuff.

2. Try to add content to your website on a regular basis.

Don’t expect to be able to add 1000 articles to your website in one go and expect a 1st position ranking in Google overnight. To get a high ranking using these free techniques takes time. Try to think of your internet business as an organic thing like an oak seed. It might take a while before you see any results, but given a bit of time and attention, it will grow into something massive and long lasting.

Weblogging (or blogging) is probably the easiest way to add content regularly.

Specifically designed websites called weblogs or blogs allow for easy and regular posting of articles. Of the many blogging sites on the internet today, one of the most popular can be found at www.wordpress.com. In fact, this blog is being hosted by them.

When writing your articles, make sure the content is relevant to your website and make sure it will interest whoever is reading it. Make sure that the article has links back to your other websites, be they your personal website or your lead capture pages, so that you are encouraging people to click them and so build up your authority status and keep the search engines happy.

Remember, search engines sole purpose is to provide people with the best quality and most relevant information possible. If you are doing that, they will reward you with a higher search engine ranking.

3. Get your articles published by as many other websites as possible.

It is important to throw your net wide and get a large variety of different websites linking back to your websites. Use syndication sites, reprint rights, press releases and article distribution sites to get your articles published by other websites, so that you can steadily build up your search ranking.

How do you do this? In actual fact, this blog is a form of syndication. A popular method is to use RSS, which allows subscribers to be instantly notified of any new updates. You can also publish articles using article submission sites like www.ezinearticles.com or submityourarticle.com.

So how often should I publish an article or blog?

Well it’s really up to you, what your website is and what sort of ranking you want. Approximately 1-8 articles a month is optimal, but never more than this. Publishers soon get tired of numerous articles from the same author. The key is consistency. Submit an article a few times a month, every month, and you should see results in just a few months.

Because blogs and articles are a simple and effective way to get content out onto the internet, they can be misused and abused by people flooding blog sites with complete rubbish using automated scripts in an attempt to boost their search engine rankings. People want content that is interesting and relevant and will soon get bored and annoyed with sites that have obviously gone for the quick and dirty approach to providing relevant content.

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Andrew is an Internet Entrepreneur and Mentor, with over 20 years experience in the IT industry. He is passionate about teaching people how to build and manage their own internet business and sharing his extensive expertise and knowledge of the Internet. His main business website is http://www.incomelifestylefreedom.com His personal website is http://www.andrewegorov.com Visit his websites for FREE information!

SEO, Subdomains, Site Architecture and Sitemaps

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

Today, (with slight hesitation in fear of giving away too much) I am electing to share an effective SEO method which incorporates the use of sitemaps, subdomains and site architecture. As a result, you will have the capacity to develop robust websites with colossal proportions using a coherent site and link architecture to virtually zero in on competitive rankings and long-tail keywords alike.

This involves the use of subfolder / naming conventions, SEO friendly titles, relevant semantic descriptions, pretty urls, subdomains and sitemaps.

By employing this strategy, it is similar to targeting the roots of a tree (the keywords stemming from a topic) to reach the leaves (top 10 rankings) by giving them a value (page) and then implement an internal link / irrigation system capable of producing its own secondary and tertiary ranking factors as a result of link cultivation.

SEO Company Shares: 5 Things to Consider Before Starting Your Next Website

By Oliver Feakins in Featured

It surprises me how many companies underestimate the marketing value of their website. In many cases, design and content development are left to the IT department with little to no input from the marketing channels other than logo and color scheme. The websites are put up too fast, without enough consideration of fundamental elements such as traffic sources, conversation to sales and design. A website represents the company behind it and the effectiveness of a website signals the quality one would receive from that company. It is important that business owners answer the following five questions before tackling a new website.

1. What is the website’s purpose or mission?

Sounds simple right? Defining your site’s purpose is the single most important step you should take prior to new website construction. For most, the purpose will be as simple as “produce quality leads for our sales teams” or “sell our products online”. Once the mission of your site is defined, incorporate that goal in every aspect of designing and developing your site. Ask yourself, “how does this feature help the website visitor complete the site’s mission?” It’s important not to lose focus and get caught up in ‘bling’ at the cost of realizing your mission.

2. What am I going to need in order to get this website launched?

• Time

It’s important to have reasonable expectations of time lines. Most business owners budget enough time for the website to be presented in “rough draft” but forget that testing is an important part of the process. This can take much longer than anticipated. While your development team will provide their best estimation of the time it will take, as a rule of thumb, add 50% to the completion time a developer tells you to allow for anything unforeseen.

• Cost

Cost is an important factor in the web developing process. Budget a little extra money over the agreed amount to allow for small enhancements to the project that were not originally specified. Unexpected enhancements costs are a really good reason to have a very detailed project description before you begin. It’s not uncommon for technology based projects to come in slightly over budget and by having extra money at your disposal, you’ll be able to keep the project moving forward.

• Resources

Have all your resources, such as having an assistant to help with planning or a graphic designer to help incorporate your company’s brand into the site, on board prior to starting. You may also need to bring in outside help, like programmers, internet marketing companies, social media marketing agencies and copy writers. Budget these resources into the total cost of your project and include them in the initial planning since having a seasoned professional working with you from the start will pay huge dividends upon completion.

3. How will I bring qualified visitors to my site?

Surprisingly, most small businesses have a website just to have a website with no strategy or plan on how they are going to bring qualified visitors to the site. It’s like having a billboard in the middle of the Sahara Desert - pretty but not bringing in customers. If you cannot hire an internet marketing company, you should tap into the many online resources geared towards small business internet marketing. At a minimum, you should invest into a properly managed Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing Campaign. Unlike Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the effects of PPC are immediate and can be controlled. I would also recommend working with a SEO professional to lay down the groundwork that will rank you high on the search engines.

Remember offline marketing as well. Your website should be part of your brand - put it everywhere! It should be on all letterhead, business cards, company vehicles, print and TV advertisements. Holding a contest that directs people to your websites is a popular and effective way to acquire a large number of back links to your site, which helps with search engine rankings.

4. How will I track my website’s ROI or gauge effectiveness?

Once your site is up and running, you’ll need to know if your marketing efforts (both “on-site” and “off-site”) are working. Remember your site’s purpose or mission? That now becomes what is known as a “conversion”. A conversion is the action taken by a website visitor that fulfills the site’s purpose. In most cases, this is either entering a sales lead into your site or buying an item. Other conversions could be downloading an “e-book” or signing up for a newsletter. Whatever the conversion is, everything done both on and off the site must be to lead people towards that completing a conversion.

To track your website and marketing effectiveness you need a reliable analytics program installed on your site. I am a big fan of Google Analytics because it’s very user friendly, easy to setup and free! By defining the desired conversion in your analytics program (PPC accounts as well) you will see which marketing efforts produce the highest number of conversions. Keep in mind that you may have a scenario where you get reduced site traffic but more conversions - but this is a good thing! You should review your analytics each month to track if your marketing campaigns are increasing or decreasing your conversions. Internet marketing company can do this for you and suggest ways to increase your conversions

5. How will I use design and technology to enhance my website?

• Design

Websites should be clean, clear and clutter free. Ensure your designers are familiar with your brand and how your company is graphically represented by giving the web designer a copy of your logo and any promotional material. The site must be developed around your existing brand not the brand designed to fit the website. If you are a new company, take the time to develop a rich corporate identity before having your website designed and developed.

• Technology

I’ve found that a web developer’s choice of code is similar to a person’s choice of automobile - personal and really not making any difference in function. There are some cases when you will need something robust like a pickup truck or SUV but in most cases using a common form of programming like PHP HTML or ASP will still get you from A to B. As well, using a common programming language will ensure that you’ll be able to find programming help faster and less expensive than if you went with a lesser known language. Finally, try to keep away from Flash and JavaScript as they can hamper the crawling of search engines on your site.

As you can see, a clear and thought out action plan will greatly increase the effectiveness of your site. Don’t underestimate the power of a well designed, conversion optimized website since this can mean many dollars added to your bottom line. Good Luck!

About The Author:

Oliver Feakins is the President of the Internet Marketing and Social Media Company WebTalent SEO. Visit http://www.webtalentseo.com for more information or call 877-496-3327.

Proceed to Checkout - Understanding Search Behavior

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

Business is all about exposure, value and availability which is the premise of SEO. When the need arises for consumers to find a product or service like your own, it is advantageous to create the path of least resistance when it comes to exposure and visibility of your unique selling proposition vs. your competitions.

In modern times, that path / search behavior is opening up a browser, going to your favorite search engine, Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN Live and typing in a keyword or phrase that best represents a phrase with the highest probability or garnering a relevant match for your query.

Upon investigation of the snippets (the title tag of the page and the corresponding segment extracted from the page) consumers base their intent on which pages best represent the chance of them finding a likely match once they click the result.

Why Most SEO Projects Fail and How To Fix Them

By Mike Tekula in Featured

I started in SEO working for an agency that required an annual contract. Clients who wanted to hire them had to be prepared to pay in full upfront for 12 months of service.

That’s a heck of a commitment, isn’t it?

The worst part is that most of the time what the client was “buying” wasn’t clear.

Many of proposals read something like this:

“Acme SEO Consulting will optimize Client’s website for search engines using best practices and proprietary tools and techniques. Work may include the following:

• Title tag optimization
• Headline optimization
• ALT text optimization
• Keyword research
• Keyword density improvements
• Canonicalization corrections
• Crawl testing
• Robots.txt setup / maintenance
• Broken link scans
• Link building
• Competitor research
• Internal link optimization
• PageRank sculpting
• 301 redirects”

Whew, sounds pretty advanced, doesn’t it? For someone new to the world of SEO most of these deliverables may as well read, “Flux capacitor installation, GKC valve distribution correction, Removal of vermicious knids.”

The question most people are asking when they read a proposal like this: how do these things all add up to me getting a positive return on my investment?  How do they translate into more sales/leads/etc?

As an SEO I know that several of the bullet points above are often crucial optimization points. It’s my job to know which and when/where they’re required - and what the priority is to implement each one when it’s on the table.

There’s also a lot of muddy language in the example above that leaves the actual deliverables impossible to pin down. “Best practices,” “proprietary tools and techniques,” “work may include” - these are all nice ways of saying, “we’re not telling you exactly what we’re going to do.”

From an agency standpoint the argument is often, “well, if we give clients the detailed plan upfront won’t they just take the proposal straight to a low-cost competitor and get the same work for less?”

This is not a great attitude to take in approaching business relationships, is it?  ”Well, these people could be trying to screw us so let’s tell them nothing.”

It also misses an important point: Internet Marketing needs are different for every website.

Projects Must Be Tailored for Unique Needs

Believe me, it would be great if every client that picked up the phone and called us or contacted us through our website fit into a cookie-cutter mold for SEO and other Internet Marketing services. Everyone would get the same work at the same cost and, most importantly, they’d all see the same positive results.

Happy, prosperous clients = happy, prosperous agency

Unfortunately that’s just not how it works.

The truth is that your website and needs are unique.

• You’re in a unique market with unique competitors
• You’ve been in business for a unique amount of time
• You’re offering is one-of-a-kind (hopefully)
• Maybe you’ve got an in-house email list, maybe you don’t
• Maybe you’ve got an extensive profile of inbound links, maybe not
• Your website might need a design/usability overhaul, or it may be beautiful, usable and brand spanking new
• You could be running pay-per-click campaigns
• You might have a blog or articles on your website
• You may have web analytics installed or not - and for how long?
• Perhaps you have staff in-house who can handle website updates and creating new content - on the other hand, you might need to outsource these

Sure, many of the principles of SEO and Internet Marketing apply across all, or most, websites and markets. But with so many variables and unique characteristics the work (and budget) required to reach your goals are always particular.
It makes sense, then, that any Internet Marketing company, whether they’re proposing SEO, pay-per-click, email marketing, web design or all of the above, should customize their offering to the client’s needs, doesn’t it?

How to Know What You’re Getting Into

You can probably tell where this is going. Any project, whether it be SEO or another form of Internet Marketing, should have specific strategies, tactics and timelines geared for your particular situation.

If you’re looking to hire an agency, a project proposal should be a plan and not a reiteration of the agency’s selling points. The litmus test here: does the proposal focus on you and your needs, or does it reiterate why you’d want to hire the agency, some of their general methodology, their experience, etc. Sure, that stuff is important too, but a project proposal isn’t about the agency - it’s about the game plan and how it’s going to help you achieve your goals.

Some of the questions that should be on your mind when reviewing a project plan:

• What are the goals of this project?
  • More search engine traffic / exposure?
  • More leads?
  • More sales?
  • Do these goals make sense for your business model?
• How will the goals be achieved?
  • What strategy the agency is proposing?
  • What are the specific deliverables?
  • What is the timeline for those deliverables?
• Why will this strategy work?
  • What is the logic behind the strategy?
  • Has this strategy worked before?

Without the answers to these questions, isn’t it tough to know 1) what you’re aiming for and 2) how you’ll get there?

Imagine evaluating a year-long SEO project six months in. How are you going to evaluate the work that’s been done so far? How are you going to tell whether things are going well or not? If the plan or proposal was vague and listed lots of “possible” tactics/deliverables and no real timeline or goals it’s going to be pretty tough, right?

The basic reason most SEO projects fail

The essential reason most SEO projects fail isn’t because the work being done is shoddy (or the agency is just not worth their salt). That might be the case, but more often the cause of failure is the lack of a specific goals, strategy and detailed tactics/deliverables.

You can’t call something a “success” until you define that term. Take pains to understand upfront what your goals are for a project - and when an agency provides a quote make sure they’re addressing your goals, detailing the specific methods of reaching them and explaining logically why it’s all going to work.

About the Author Mike Tekula is the Director of Marketing at Unstuck Digital - a results-driven Internet Marketing agency that provides SEO Consulting, SEO Training and other Internet Marketing services.

SEO Dependency - Do Your Rankings Rely Too Much on The Home Page?

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

Are your search engine rankings depending too much on one page (like your homepage) or one sub folder of your website? If so, here are a few tips to spread the link flow around to hedge your SEO efforts. Chances are, unless you are employing a tiered SEO strategy that you are overly dependent on your websites home page or similar pages in your website.

Link flow pools into different pages of a website and learning how to harness this ebb and flow is crucial for long term and short term ranking objectives. The most common cause of this is excessive linking to a page without using a “nofollow” tag within the structure of the link.

The 7 Effective Methods Of Getting Targeted Traffic

By Nelson Tan in Featured

I never believe in buying traffic. How do you think visitors come to know me? Did they pay to know me? Most probably they subscribed because of a free download in the first place. You may not remember how but YOU are the traffic. You are targeted because I hit your hot button correctly

There are enough free resources out there on the Net to keep one busy with getting traffic, but here are the only 7 most effective methods: search engine optimization (SEO), link exchange, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, article submissions, blogging, viral marketing and massive giveaway events.

Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing your pages for the search engines so that your pages are optimized for the search engines to be searched with the most optimized keywords. You get the idea? SEO English is a bit like tongue twister. If you know the exact keywords your business or industry is famous for, you increase the density of those keywords in your page.

Actually, I don’t understand why some folks make SEO sound so complicated. On the other hand, other folks say SE spiders are so smart at discerning quality of content such that SEO is really much ado about nothing. Moreover, SEO English is just so unnatural sometimes and abuse may constitute as keyword spamming, unless you know the secret to writing it ‘fluently’. SEO is absolutely crucial in niche markets where competition in SE listings is not hot.

Exchanging links with like-minded webmasters create a network for increased traffic distribution. Interested visitors are free to visit your site when they see your link on other people’s sites. SEO targeted towards Google is only half the battle. Its PageRank tool measures your page’s link popularity and ranks it higher according to scale. The more links pointing into your site as opposed to pointing out, the merrier.

* PageRank looks at pages, not sites.

Pay-per-click advertising is all about how much you are willing to pay the PPC program for a high listing so that visitors take notice of your link and visit it. You incur the bid price you set for yourself for every visit (click). Considering ROI, this is particularly useful when you are selling a product. Security features are in place so there’s no point being trigger-happy if you don’t like some sites.

Article submissions can give you an amazing amount of traffic, but only if you use the method right. You should make sure the content you’re submitting is easily understandable, and only covers one or two points, leading the people back to your site with your resource box. Most importantly, you need to make sure that your article is interesting, compelling, and of course, informative. Once you’ve submitted these articles to several article directories, you’ll probably see a marked rise in link backs, traffic and more.

Blogging is a free way to make sure that you’re reaching traffic in all regions of your niche. It has come up in stature from its days of being simply a place to ’share’ with your friends and is now a valid, and often well used promotional structure for a site-or even a basis for the site itself. Using WordPress especially can mean that you’ve got an easy-to-promote, amazingly simple to update site structure that allows you to build and maintain effortlessly. As a traffic generation tool, it is also a good way to create, maintain and direct traffic to your site. The more you blog using popular search terms related to your niche, the more intensive you’re practicing SEO as the archiving system of the WordPress blog script is absolutely well suited for Google indexing. Try to post on alternate days if not everyday.

Viral Marketing is everything and anything to do with propagating your name and URL through giving away free e-books, reports, article and e-zine submission, classified ads etc. But this is only by technological means. With people, we are talking about word-of-mouth.

Massive giveaway events come once in a while but they are really the biggest source of opt-in subscribers for anyone who participate in them. The organizer announces a proposal to carry out such an event, inviting contributors to submit a product of their own or one with resell rights to be given away for free. When the event begins, anyone and everyone can download all these exclusive products as long as they opt in. It’s very easy to get 1,000 subscribers in a week.

Of course, the organizer gets the most numbers, but he also puts in the most work to make sure the web server doesn’t collapse due to traffic overload, the gifts don’t go missing and the event proceeds on schedule.

Awareness and application of the 7 above traffic generation methods slowly but surely builds a good list of followers who are willing to patronize us.

Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com

How New Content and Post Frequency Impact SEO

By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

Today’s topic is based on the importance of refreshing your on page content from time to time to toggle “the fresh content factor” to get a boost in the SERPs (search engine result pages) using SEO.

Chronology and relevance reside at the core of search engine optimization and frankly, a website that has remained dormant for weeks or months without an update is not that appealing to search engines. Search engines reward fresh relevant content, or content layered with existing context to reinforce relevance.

On the contrary, once you reach a particular stage of on page and off page relevance for a series of keywords and terms, allowing your site to percolate ranking factors is just fine. Once you exceed the base level ranking criteria for a keyword, you can remain buoyant for extended periods. The point is, you must first cross the tipping point or your website and its rankings will be subject to volatility and receding in the index.

The primary objective is, to get a website into a favorable position if you intend to decrease post frequency. Since relevance is a two way street (based on the synergy or information and people looking for information), one metric search engines use to assess relevance is how frequently you add of modify content.

In fact, there is even an HTTP/1.1 status code to summarize if your content has changed or not, it is known as the 304 HTTP status code. The 304 status of a page translates into - not modified - and in a sea of gigaflops of information being skimmed, crawled and indexed on virtually every topic and website online, the website / page freshness factor counts when it comes to how your page is evaluated in the index.

Aside from relevance, and the volume of competition on each subject in search engines, you must first mirror that relevance within your website, then receive validation from other websites in order to exceed others targeting the same keywords and rankings.

I have seen this aspect of optimization countless times. If you neglect a website before reaching a particular relevance plateau, a website can flounder and remain dormant and essentially fizzle out in contention to SEO.

One tactic we utilize to overcome such stagnation is to go back and edit similar pages in the site that share a topic or have an overlapping frequency of terms which can be used to strengthen the internal linking of a website.

For example, if you wanted to increase your search engine positioning for Keyword A, then you (1) find all pages in your website that have context for singular and plural versions of Keyword A (2) edit those pages to link out to your NEW page (based on Keyword A) and then when those old pages get crawled and indexed you already have relevant links to reinforce and communicate topical relevance for Keyword A.

Link reputation also known as the link graph (a metric that looks at the links in and links out to each page in your website) is responsible for sculpting the way a page communicates intent and how it is valued in context for the keywords appearing in the links. 50% of the ranking factor is under your control with on page optimization and layering through methods described above (uniting co-occurrence for a favorable concentration of context).

These two attributes on page continuity and off page link reputation are some of the primary metrics search engines use to determine where to put your page in the index (relevance score) as well as the degree of trust and authority your website can gain regarding the topical context of the subject matter.

The idea is, to concentrate your content as much as possible through revisions, deep links and creating fresh content based on keyword research to preserve the rankings you have, while simultaneously scaling the heights of new / relevant keywords that can benefit your website and ultimately your business model.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

SEO & Proper Site Architecture

By Bradley Knell in Featured

When we speak about website architecture, we are talking about the design & layout of the web pages. There are some things that Google has a hard time with and so avoiding them is just plain smart both from a visitor point of view (vpov), and a search engine point of view (sepov).

You want a web design that looks great and appeals to the human eye, so visitors stay a while and come back often. I understand this is necessary. The problem is that often what is appealing to the human eye is not so appealing to Google’s algorithm. This can create problems getting your web pages to rank well in the search engines.

Google looks at text when it visits your web pages. It doesn’t “see” images and it doesn’t understand moving pictures too well. It sees text content on the page and in the code of the page - not much else. Websites that make heavy use of such things as “Flash” and “Java scripts” often have trouble getting decent ranking from Google.

Now Google is starting to get a “read” on java more than ever, and in some cases using it is ok. Placing it properly in the page code is important and your web designer needs to understand how to do it. For java scripts you need to place the script itself into a file, which resides in the root directory of the server. Then a link is simply placed in the code of the page where the script needs to be seen, so the script is called up through the link from the file in the root directory of the site.

Flash should only be used on a small portion of the web page, not the entire page! Flash files should contain keywords that Google is able to read. You see a lot of intro pages that are nothing more than moving images, and they take up the entire page - stay away from these designs if you can.

Static images should be kept small so they are not driving people away because the page takes too long to load. If you have to use a large image file, create a separate page that displays the larger version of the picture and use a small image link on the original web page.

Another problem that, fortunately you don’t see so often anymore, is something called “frames”. You know you are looking at a “framed” web page when it appears there is a smaller, scrollable window embedded in the larger page of your browser window. It is actually, a separate web page.

The problem with frames is that Google has to divide its Page Rank evaluation between 2 pages instead of one. If the larger page is being optimized for a specific set of keywords, and the framed page is not, this creates what we call Page Rank Dilution. If Google gave a value rank of 4 to the larger page, and only 2 to the smaller framed page, the overall ranking of the page may only be 3.

For page text, use a color for the text that is not close to the background color of the page. Black text on white background is best. Don’t use a print font smaller than 10 or 11. Both of these issues can cause Google to think you might be ’spamming’ its search engine.

Links

Make sure your page links are text links, not image links. Remember, Google reads text very well and it’s trying to offer pages that most accurately relate to a search term. It does that by checking the page text content against the query searched on. If the relationship between the two is very accurate, it will help your pages score well.

Links should be found in your site menu (usually placed at the top, or in the left or right column of the page. It’s a good idea to also include the menu links horizontally across the bottom of each page. Links should also be added in the body text of your pages wherever there is an occurrence of a keyword or key phrase. Use these links to link to other pages of your site that contain more information relevant to those keyword links.

Summary

Web design can sometimes cause problems when optimizing your website for Google. Strike a good balance between visual appeal and search engine appeal for best results!

Check with your web design person and make sure that care has been taken to ensure none of the above are issues with your website. If they are, edit the site so they will not be a problem in the future.

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Brad Knell is a professional search engine optimization consultant who has helped many business website owners improve their search engine rankings using a wide range of ‘white hat’ methods.

Supercharge Your Internet Marketing using the improved Google Keyword Tool

By Paul Marshall in Featured

As an Internet Marketing Consultant, I know that whether using pay-per-click (PPC) or organic search engine optimization (SEO), the process begins with our research keyword.

This is true whether you’re doing your work yourself or working with an SEO Consultant.

The search engine ranking for our chosen keywords consumes us, causing ecstasy when we succeed and sleepless nights when we fail.

But increased sales happen only IF:

© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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