Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Investing in Social Media

When it comes into our business, we always want to do the things that what we think are the best for the success of it and for it to be known not only on your place but in the whole world if possible. You are now on your way on how to be successful. We know for a fact that nowadays the internet is now becoming a common friendly user in the whole world. Almost all people are relying on it, even you.

Social media is a web-based communication software that can interact with thousands of web users in the internet. It is an accessible technique for all the business owners. Through the help of social media, your business will now be on its way to success. Whether you are an amateur or not in your business, you might ask yourself these possible questions:

  • How can I have a Social Media?
  • How important it is to have your an own site?
  • Does social media really work?
  • Is it too expensive if I will have one?

Getting a social media designer also known as a mobile site or a web designer is the easiest way on how will you have your own site. You just need to be wise in getting your own site designer, make sure that they are a highly recommended by someone you knew or a really trustful designer. Always beware in scams. Your business is not that big or famous just like the other, but with this you are now one step closer to be famous just like them. Having your own site means having an internet marketing. It is now common when it comes in the business world. As you can see, internet marketing is another way of promoting your business or your product. In internet you can do a lot of tricks on how you can get your prospective clients but be sure that your site is not only focused on selling or promoting, the web users will get annoyed on you and worst they will blocked your site.

Having a site is not really important or necessary, let's just focused on what are the benefits that you were going to have.

  • You can write or post some articles that can help you gain or attract more clients.
  • Your prospective clients can contact you in an easy way.
  • You can see their comments on your article/post.
  • You can get some advice regarding with your business through your commentator.
  • You can read the reactions of your web visitors and learned from them.

That was only few of them, you can discover on your own the other benefits of it if you'll decide to invest on social media. Don't mind with how much will you going to spend but mind with how many clients will you going to have when you have your own social media/site. Investing in social media is worth spending for, just always think of the positive side of your mind. Maybe it is now your chance to be successful and be famous just like the other. So, start focusing and use social media in your business.

Learn how you can increase your revenue and web traffic through Social Media Promotions, Check www.wickedinnovations.com for more detailed description on Internet Marketing Services.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Basic Techniques in Search Engine Optimization – Part 2

So now, you have build your new website already. And as promised, discussed below is the last part of your journey in Search Engine Optimization process. If you have adopted the first part of this topic, you may now proceed on the off-page optimization process which consists of the following:

ESTABLISH KEYWORDS ON YOUR SITE. As you've done developing, you may now proceed on researching keywords that you may want to obtain in your website. Of course, it should be relevant to the site. You can use some free keyword research tool such as the Google Ad words version. You may also look upon some tools like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery. These tools also provides paid versions that you may want to acquire. In finding for keyword, you may consider the global search volume and competition within relative keyword to another.

PUT UP YOUR METAS ON EACH PAGE
. After establishing a competitive keywords on your website, you may now proceed on developing your metas to each of the site pages. Make a relevant,unique and descriptive meta title and description as search engines do not like duplicate content. You can put your major keywords within the title for it considers to be the most important factor in on-page optimization. Meanwhile, you can put your minor keywords on the description tags, although it doesn't help a lot in crawling, it describes what your site is all about. Thus, helping searchers to have the idea on what your site is composed of. Furthermore, keyword tags are often neglected today so better set aside putting too much of your effort here.

WRITE GOOD AND UNIQUE CONTENT FOR YOUR PAGE. This is one factor that you should bear in mind. For most Search Engine today often look into one unique content. As good content creates quality back links. If you are in an e-commerce business, you may want to create content that is more of your product/service description while utilizing the keywords you've decided to use in your site. Remember that, SE do not like duplicates so better yet avoid copying content from other related sites.

WRITE FOR HUMANS AND NOT FOR SEARCH ENGINES. As always advice, writing content for humans increase chances of getting high quality traffic and search engine result. Subsequently,  there are some abusive webmasters who do keyword stuffing in order to rank higher in the SERP result. Thus, the article is not consider as human readable but only for bots. Perhaps, the algorithm before is not too tight unlike of today. However, it will not be longer regulated for there is the so called Panda update who reminds us to make an informative and readable contents for users online.

MAKE YOUR KEYWORDS AN ANCHOR TEXT IN INTERNAL LINKING.
Whenever you do internal linking, you can make use of your keywords as an anchor text. This somehow helps your site to get crawled by spiders. Furthermore, it is one way to introduce what your website is in spiders of the virtual world. Thus, it increases your search engine visibility whenever it get crawled by spiders in a do-follow websites. TIP: avoid using 'click here' anchor text for it is no use in the SE visibility.

PROVIDE A WEB ANALYTICS ACCOUNT. Before doing any SEO campaign, you are obliged to engaged your website to analytics. For it defines what campaigns are working and those with no value at all. Thus, you can set your goals for the SEO efforts you'll be more focusing.

SIGN UP IN THE DIFFERENT SEARCH ENGINE TOOLS. You should take advantage of the different search engine tools such as the Google Webmaster tools, Bing Webmaster Central and Yahoo site explorer. Signing up for an account can help you to see how your site is being seen by these search engine. It can also improve your site internal structure where you can be aware of the inbound links linking into your page.

BUILD LINKS WITH QUALITY. We do not want to involve our site to those link farmers, so to avoid these we are to submit only to those quality and trusted directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo dir, etc. You must build links into authority site where your niche is categorized. You can also analyze competitors inbound links for the additional techniques that you can acquire.

BUILD QUALITY INBOUND LINKS THROUGH BLOGGING. Aside from the many link building techniques that you'll acquire, there is another way where you can get quality link back – through blogging. As we all know that most search engines, especially Google loves unique, fresh content and comprehensive data where it becomes the source for your high search ranking result. Furthermore, through blogging you can share your comments and opinions and many related blogs by which you can get back a quality link back to your site. Always remember that creating and adding quality content keeps your site being seen refreshed by different SE.

MAKE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING. Joining different social networking sites basically helps in creating back links. Sign up for an account of your business and gain prospective and potential customers there. For Facebook, you can make a business page and collect as many online users that may turn to potential customers. You must have to post good contents for you to have good reputation and as well as to give traffic into your site. Same goes with other social networks, the most important that you'll have to bear is to be an interactive member with online users and do not spam customers pages.

ENGAGE YOUR SITE IN LOCAL SEARCH. You may take advantage of local search opportunities to collect local traffic. You may spread your business address and local phone numbers online. You can also submit your site into different free local listing services that the Search Engines are offering such as Yelp, CitySearch, Local.com and many more. Moreover, you may also encourage customers to leave opinions or reviews in your business in these listing sites.

KEEPING THE TRAFFIC/CUSTOMERS. We can never know how the algorithm changes our SERP position. So it is better to make an alternative to keep our customers to stay on our products and services. So it is advisable for one website to have a newsletter form for your customers to be keep updated with what your businesses has to offer them. By giving them a comprehensive newsletter, no matter how algorithm changes, you are assure that your customers will hold onto your services/products.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Basic Techniques in Search Engine Optimization – Part 1

A lot of businesses today are tremendously growing, where in some of them partakes and gaining popularity in the cyberspace. While other businesses started in acquiring the virtual world, they are also becoming aware of the implementation of how to generate traffic and income online.

With various blogs and websites that explains SEO 'basics', Some may have the confusion of what really makes up the 'SEO basic techniques'.

You can see below what really makes an SEO basics that you may want to acquire:


Discovering the SEO Process.
If you decided to partake in this lesson, you should be obliged to become a student of this subject. Learn the most of techniques that you can. As there are plenty of resources in the web. There are several books that may also help. However taking the DIY route may require a lot of time and efforts in you.

Once you involved your site in SEO, you should know the fact that before getting the best result, you will need to take in the long term process. It is actually not a one time process. While the SE algorithms changes regularly, you should know that the injection of these techniques should be continuous. For you will not know how long your techniques will work, it may be working this year but how about next year. Thus, you should go with the flow where SE algorithm is in.

Patience is always a virtue. As stated above, partaking into the long term process will require patience. For the result will often take months. Most especially if your online business is only a newbie in the virtual world.

Building a user-friendly website.Before attempting to get a higher rankings, you must first analyze how your website will appear online. You may want to build a site for humans and not for search engines. A well and neat designed website will do.

Using Keywords in URLs.
After building your website, make sure to put your keywords in some of your URLs and file names, e.g., www.domain.com/your-keywords.html . However, it shouldn't be done in all the URLs. You may also use hyphens in your keywords for your Url for hyphens are also consider as space.

Comprise a sitemap page on your website.A site map helps web site sub pages to be crawled and indexed by spiders. By which, it is required to put all the sub pages of your site in one page called site map. It also help spiders to understand what your website comprised of. Furthermore, it helps one site with navigation menu that is hard to be crawled.

This is only a quick preview of the basic techniques in SEO. Check out for the last part and be able to acquire such steps.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

How to Choose a Good Website Redesign Company

Since website design is considered to be one of the most important factor when it comes to inviting visitors, all online entrepreneurs must bear in mind that they need to make the right decisions when hiring a professional web redesigner. Actually, this is not easy to do for there are numerous companies who are catering their services with very affordable prices. So what you need to do is to analyze the abilities and reputation of each companies, because don't you forget that hiring a bad redesign company may break and ruin the image of your website.


Well particularly, there are many ways on how you can find a reputable redesign company. And that is by asking some friends, business partners, and other web companies, or you may even read a few website reviews if you still have the time to do so.


Another effective method is to examine the company. Remember that you have the freedom to take a look at their portfolios, so don't miss that chance. By this, you can browse through their current and past works, and you can gauge their over-all abilities. Does their designs look professional or amateur? Do they create websites that are search engine friendly? Or have they done something similar to what you want? Take note that you can ask them anything you want just to make sure they can give you the perfect services available.


Furthermore, you also need to know if that particular web re-designer has the ability to create websites that are functional, user-friendly, and with good navigability.


Take note that the layout of the page is important, so if the re-designer can build pages that have less amount of cheeky images and animations, that's a plus point because having those stuffs may just slow down the loading time of your website. A good re-designer must also be enriched with professionalism and the right mixture of intelligence and creativity in order to create a website that will rank high in all search engine giants.


In addition to the tips being provided above, it is also necessary to choose a website designer who is easy to work with. Well, this is very self-explanatory, since we all know that none of us would hire a person that is too busy and have no time for client-designer conversations. In fact, it is as well important that you communicate with your chosen designer often times, so you can discuss your personal plans for your website - including the looks, choice of colors, content to use, and other vital details.


To date, there are millions of websites competing with each other just to be positioned on the first pages of Google and other major search engines. And perhaps the only weapon that you can use is your web design. Thus, you really need to find time in selecting a reputable web redesign company that is capable of making your pages unique, edgy, and competitive enough to earn a good credibility in the Internet industry.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Site Conversion Strategies

Those who have been working on websites for some time now know how important getting plenty of traffic is to the success of a site. After all, it is considered as the lifeblood of a website. However, plenty of traffic will actually be pretty much useless unless it gives out results.

This is what is called by internet marketers as conversion. In simplest terms, conversion happens when a viewer of your site actually buys from you, hires your services or do anything useful to your site. In other words, conversion happens when you yourself get something out of your web site.

Though it might seem to be all that easy, making this happen actually involves quite a lot of work. In fact, there are many instances where you will get plenty of traffic coming in and browsing your products, but no one even bothers clicking the buy button and making an actual purchase. Thus, you need to come up with strategies in order to convince your site visitor to actually buy something.

The most important thing that you need to consider is the relevancy of your site to your visitors. You can't expect them to actually buy from you if they are looking for something else. Thus, you need to know your market and what are the particular quirks of this. You can then use these further refine your site to make it relevant to viewers' searches.

Connected to this is convincing your customers to actually buy from you. This is actually the hardest part of a website conversion strategy. Though your content might be relevant to the things that the viewer is looking, they may not be willing to buy from you, for a host of other factors. Thus you need to actually persuade them to take that course of action.

Here, properly marketing your products or services is very important. You need to tell them that they need this or that product. For instance, you can attract them with a free item for instance, and order for them to make the most out of the product, then you need to convince them to buy it from you. You also need to show them that your products are the best one there is.

And in order to retain your customers, you need to make sure that they actually get to use your products to the fullest. Thus it would be a good idea for you to set up a support section in your site which they can then use for their own purposes. This way, they will have another reason to go back to your site and get more out of it.

Lastly, you need to remember to keep on improving your strategy. Keep in mind that your clients can easily change their minds, thus, you need to be able to adapt to them to continue being a successful site

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

An Overview of Search Engine Optimization

Have you heard about Search Engine Optimization or SEO? It is a procedure that improves the ranking of a certain web site or web page on the search engines results page.


As a businessman, say you are into online rose shop, you would definitely want profits after launching your shop on the web. The problem now is that, after launching your online shop it would definitely take time before it lands on the first page of the result page on a certain search engine. This is the main problem that owners face after launching a website. No user would browse up to the last page of a search result.


So how can they gain profits if their site is on the last page? This is where SEO's come to place, they would optimized your website using some strategies so that your page lands on the first page the result page on a certain search engine in no time.


Lets start by inspecting the nature of your content. Is it for selling? For promoting? or for providing products and/or services? Next, check your site if its new or an updated one. If its new, everything will be from scratch which is great because you don't need to deal with the former errors implemented as well as the limitations they have set, moreover you can perform your own strategies and architecture.


On the other hand, if its something that's already existing, search errors, study the architecture and be familiar with the strategies that was implemented. See if there are limitations administered.


After this search for keywords that a user would type on the research tab on the search engine. Remember that when selecting keywords think as if you are the searcher and not the provider. Also, do not to use a keyword unrelated to your site. It would only confuse the users and the Google spiders as well. Anyway, if its hard for you to select keywords, list down your products and services, then search over the web. Avoid using common keywords, else try implementing long tail.


Next, use your keywords on the title of the page, meta tags, anchor texts, then mention your keywords a few times on your content and as much as possible, your keywords should match your websites address.


When adding your keyword on the title of the page, remember to create a unique one on every page, and never adulterate your keywords by adding the exact keywords in every title. Consequently, use at least 2 variation for every keyword. For an instance: “Red roses at the redroses shop|Example.com”. This way you can target a much larger number of customer, the one who would search for your shop and the other one who is looking for red roses.

As for the URL, use what you think would be the best one, not withstanding where you create the site since there would always be a way to add your keyword. Categorize every page. For an instance: /rose/red-rose and/rose/bouquet-of-red-rose/.com.

Then for the tags specially for the description,its not bad to use additional words specially if its a good one, but as much as possible not too long. You can also use to tags. For an instance, in the meta:


Last, “the best keyword for your business might not be what you have branded on your website”, this is according to thewritersforhire.com. For an instance “signature bags” but “Louie Vuitton bag” is more common. Weigh your options properly, and use the proper grammar.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

SEO for your Web Blogs

As advised by SEO experts, the best and possible way to keep your visitors coming back to your site is by providing them with blogs that discuss interesting and knowledge-filled topics. In fact, a blog-driven website is much favorable to Internet users and search engine crawlers.

Creating a blog for your website is actually a powerful means of promotion. Take note that through writing one, you can be able to market your products and services. It would also allow you to provide your clients with the updates and changes occurring inside your business site. Primarily, you have to write numerous blogs that would capture the attention and interests of your readers. Equip each post with creativity and information so you can give an enjoyable reading experience to all of your visitors.

However, keep in mind that the success of your website does not only lies beneath those creative and informational blogs. Like any other web pages, blogs should also be optimized if you want to gain a larger number of readers, and appear on the first pages of search engines.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO for blogs may be daunting for first-timers. But if you'll just learn all the strategies, you will notice that it can put your website on the front line and may even give you huge profits. Below are few of the tactics which you can use to optimize your web blogs:

  • Place keywords on the title and content.
Well, this goes for all. Keywords placement is important if you want to be seen by search engine spiders. First thing's first, you need to conduct a proper keyword research so you'll be able to know which words describe your blogs best. Once you have identified your keywords, make sure to place at least 2-3 of them in your content and blog titles.

  • Submit your blogs to web directories.
Never underestimate the power and ability of High PR web directories. If you will likely to submit your blogs in these sites, you'll be included in their directory of quality blogs and websites. This method may even make your blog more search-able. There are actually hundreds of directories online, some are free and some are not. But if you'd like to have instant and guaranteed results, then go for the paid one.

  • Add META tags.
By placing META tags on each of your post, you can be assured that search engine robots will find your blogs in a short span of time. Take note that you still need to put keywords on your META title and description.

  • Provide a text version.
This is only applicable for those blogs who have a JavaScript and Flash navigational structures. Actually, using Flash is cool but it can heavily affect your blog rankings since search engines have a hard time reading them. Thus, it is necessary for you to provide a text version at the bottom of your pages.

  • Interact with other bloggers.
Doing those puzzling on-page SEO are not enough to call your web blog a well-optimized one. You still need to take good advantage of several off-page stuffs such as blog commenting and blog networking. Bear in mind that by promoting your blogs through social media giants (Facebook and Twitter), you will gain more inbound links, traffic, and popularity.


Thursday, April 7, 2011

The Truth behind Organic SEO

Most website owners are sometimes confused between the difference of organic SEO from the one that they're currently doing. Well, don't be fooled by its name, organic SEO is not as exotic as it looks like. Surprisingly, if you are to read this article, you will find out that you are actually doing organic SEO for some time now. You're just unaware of it.

Basically,
organic SEO is also known as “natural” SEO or simply, “SEO”. This is the process of improving your web pages to make it more visitor-friendly and search engine crawl-able. It also serves as a good method for online entrepreneurs who are tending to reach their target market easily and earn higher profits.

Just to refresh your minds with the nuts and bolts of SEO, take note that the success of your campaign depends on how you show your information and product details to the people. Getting your pages ranked in search engines using specific keywords are based from your website's popularity, quantity of backlinks, and quality of the content.

For you to achieve organic search engine results, you must go natural. In short, never fall from the black hat's trap. Although these strategies also work in having a high ranking in Google and other search engines, they are still not advisable to use for such practice may give your site a penalty. It is then considered best if you'll use the natural way of promoting your website to receive long-term benefits.
Organic SEO, if done properly, will help your website improve its performance in search engines. Which will eventually result to more brand popularity for your business. Basically, if you want to see good and instant results without any additional effort on your part, you can hire some professional organic SEO specialists, just be sure that their services are reliable enough. Alternatively, you can do several organic SEO methods all by yourself. This option is more affordable and may even give you sufficient knowledge which you can use for your further promotions.
Below are few of the most effective organic methods for optimizing your web pages:

Keyword Research – This is the process wherein you have to collate and list down all the words and phrases that people are commonly using when browsing through the web. Make sure to get only those keywords that are related to your website niche.
Content Writing – Search engines love fresh and unique content, thus, you'd better equip your pages with one. Place 3-5 related keywords into your content so that it will become more search engine crawl-able. Also take note that your content must be informational and 100% original – never copy the content of other websites.
Link Building – One of the standards of search engines when ranking a website is the quantity and quality of the page's inbound links, which is why link building is considered to be a vital organic SEO method. Some link building strategies include:
  • directory submissions
  • social bookmarking
  • blog commenting
  • forum posting
  • article submissions
  • social networking


Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The Truth behind Organic SEO

Most website owners are sometimes confused between the difference of organic SEO from the one that they're currently doing. Well, don't be fooled by its name, organic SEO is not as exotic as it looks like. Surprisingly, if you are to read this article, you will find out that you are actually doing organic SEO for some time now. You're just unaware of it.

Basically, organic SEO is also known as “natural” SEO or simply, “SEO”. This is the process of improving your web pages to make it more visitor-friendly and search engine crawl-able. It also serves as a good method for online entrepreneurs who are tending to reach their target market easily and earn higher profits.

Just to refresh your minds with the nuts and bolts of SEO, take note that the success of your campaign depends on how you show your information and product details to the people. Getting your pages ranked in search engines using specific keywords are based from your website's popularity, quantity of backlinks, and quality of the content.

For you to achieve organic search engine results, you must go natural. In short, never fall from the black hat's trap. Although these strategies also work in having a high ranking in Google and other search engines, they are still not advisable to use for such practice may give your site a penalty. It is then considered best if you'll use the natural way of promoting your website to receive long-term benefits.

Organic SEO, if done properly, will help your website improve its performance in search engines. Which will eventually result to more brand popularity for your business. Basically, if you want to see good and instant results without any additional effort on your part, you can hire some professional organic SEO specialists, just be sure that their services are reliable enough. Alternatively, you can do several organic SEO methods all by yourself. This option is more affordable and may even give you sufficient knowledge which you can use for your further promotions.

Below are few of the most effective organic methods for optimizing your web pages:


Keyword Research – This is the process wherein you have to collate and list down all the words and phrases that people are commonly using when browsing through the web. Make sure to get only those keywords that are related to your website niche.

Content Writing – Search engines love fresh and unique content, thus, you'd better equip your pages with one. Place 3-5 related keywords into your content so that it will become more search engine crawl-able. Also take note that your content must be informational and 100% original – never copy the content of other websites.

Link Building – One of the standards of search engines when ranking a website is the quantity and quality of the page's inbound links, which is why link building is considered to be a vital organic SEO method. Some link building strategies include:

  • directory submissions
  • social bookmarking
  • blog commenting
  • forum posting
  • article submissions
  • social networking

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Improving Search Results with Google's New Algorithm

One of the reasons why people browse through the web is to look for useful data, which can answer their queries and give them the best online services possible. However, it seems that the number of bad contents being published online are increasing, thus, enabling people to read information that are not really helpful.

According to Google's statements, their goal is to simply “give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible”. So if this is the case, why is there still useless content being listed in their search results? Well actually, the answer lies behind the works of some website owners who are very eager to increase their search engine rankings through all available methods. And one of these methods include the creation of bad contents just for the sake of acquiring a good position in Google.

By having this being said, Google has been pushed to make a major revision in their algorithms. This new algorithm was designed to cut down the number of bad-quality content/articles while improving the state of the search engine results for the benefits of the users. These adjustments were also made to reduce the search engine rankings of those websites that provide low-value services to people, copy content from other authors or web pages, and those useless sites.

Generally speaking, these changes in Google's Algorithm can make or break your website, so passionate site owners must never overlooked this fact. Since a huge tuning in their algorithms were done, 11.8% of Google's queries has been affected. And it is also expected that this will ruin your website rankings. As stated by a blogger from Google, they can't make any improvements  without affecting the rankings of many websites. Thus, some sites will increase their rankings and some will decrease.

While this new Algorithm might have few disadvantages for some websites, it is expected to provide better results for Internet users, and also to give high search rankings for high-profile sites with original and unique content, informational data, in-depth reports, and quality services. Google is partially made up of content created by different websites across the globe, which is why it is necessary for them to grant a reward for those sites that are capable to publish good articles and content.

Specifically, these algorithmic changes will be initially launched in the U.S. Thus, all website owners within the area must be enriched with quick strategies that may help them adjust to the algorithm and improve their rankings. Here are some:

  • Focus on writing a content with high quality and 100% originality.
  • Minimize the number of re-published content.
  • Include graphics, videos, and tools in your content.
  • Improve your pages' loading time.
  • Allow your readers to write comments, feedback and reviews regarding your content.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Ten Common Mistakes in Web Design

A web design is believed to be the most crucial part of a website. In fact, it can even make or break a web page. So if you are one of those people who are aspiring to create a web design that is close to perfection, then you must first get rid of the most common mistakes made by web designers. Here are some of them:

  1. Website loads more than 10 seconds.
This is perhaps one of the problems that people usually encounters when entering a site. Actually, having a website that takes too long to load is not advisable because it can only annoy your visitors, and they may even leave your website and look for somewhere else.

  1. Using unreadable and fancy fonts.
One reason why people browse the web is to look for information. Therefore, you must make sure that your fonts are easy to read and is appealing to the eyes so that your visitors can find useful and reliable data on your pages.

  1. Logo is not located on the top of the page.
The logo plays an important role in your online business. Most of the time, when a person sees a logo, he/she remembers how credible a website is. So bear in mind to place your logo on the most visible part of your page – and that is on the top.

  1. Unorganized content.
No one wants to see a website that's too busy from large pile of texts. As a designer, you must help your readers in finding the information they needed. Try to cut your content into a readable form – make use of highlighted words, bullets, and headers.

  1. The color of visited links doesn't change.
This is one common mistake that you must avoid because this would definitely annoy your visitors. If you want to create a user-friendly web design, then you must show people the difference between the visited links and unvisited links.

  1. External links doesn't open in new windows.
This is really a turn-off! You must let your users feel free to open links in different browser windows. Don't be afraid that they might not come back to your homepage anymore.

  1. Unreadable CAPTCHA.
Well, this would definitely be a huge problem for people who tends to post a comment in your blogs. How can your visitors give their feedback if they can't understand your CAPTCHA?

  1. Using “Introductions”
Never force your visitors to see something before they can enter to your main page. That is undeniably annoying.

  1. Over usage of Flash.
Aside from the fact the Flash are irritating, it can also hurt the loading time of your web pages. Only use of Flash in instances wherein you have to present your services in a non-static form.

  1. Taking advantage of pop-ups.
Stay away from these annoying pop-ups because they will just create problems for your users.


Monday, March 14, 2011

A Brief Guide to SEO Link Building

Acquiring backlinks is definitely one of the greatest obstacles on the industry of search engine optimization. For most sites, having millions of quality inbound links is a must in order for them to stay competitive in their chosen field. Take note that the quality and quantity of your website's backlinks is a huge factor which Google and other search engines look at when ranking your pages.

Basically, the process of building links involve the invitation of hyperlinks coming from other related sites. This is perhaps a time-consuming method and an ongoing task, therefore, you should never stop especially if you're currently on the midst of the process. You should also bear in mind that you must only post your links to related and high quality websites if you don't want to be accused as a spam site.

Actually there are various types of hyperlinks, and each of them plays a specific function. Some links are made to generate traffic and conversion, some creates awareness, but most of them are designed to improve your search engine rankings. Links are categorized into two – inbound links and outbound links. Inbound links, also known as backlinks or inward links, are what most web owners search for. These are basically the links that points to your pages coming from other web pages. Inbound links can either be organic or inorganic. Organic hyperlinks are also considered as natural links because it can be build without any efforts, while the inorganic links (artificial links) require a sufficient amount of effort in terms of building.

Building inbound links is not an easy task, especially for a beginner. You need to read and learn all the necessary details that cover up this process. Also remember that when you are on the method of generating links, you must fully optimize your web pages. Through this way, you can engage people and search engines spiders into your site, and provide them with the idea that your pages are valuable and worth linking to. Optimizing your site for better link building follows a process: first, it is necessary to choose a theme for your newly created website; then identify what keywords are you going to use in promoting your pages; lastly is to equip all of your pages with quality content and unique META tags.

There are actually a lot of methods which you can use in order for you to build quality inbound links. First in line is to take advantage of social networking websites. The industry of social media gives you the capability to reach a wider amount of audience in just a blink of an eye. You can also try forum posting, social bookmarking, link baiting, directory submissions, link exchanging, and blog commenting – these methods are proven effective in acquiring backlinks.

Remember that only those websites which have a large amount of inbound links will be entertained by Google and other search engines. So you'd better begin creating quality backlinks as soon as possible.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Changes in Google's Algorithm May Affect Your Search Engine Rankings

If you're really serious on the Search Engine Optimization factors of your website, then you must take into considerations this new algorithm being set by Google. These changes was taken into account when an incident took place in an eye wear company, DecorMyEyes. Vitaly Borker, a staff of this company, seems to be very eager to reach the top rank of the search engine listings that he even harassed and threatened one of their costumers named, Clarabelle Rodriguez. Investigations also show that Borker has been gaining high popularity and visitors through his good and bad online reviews. He admitted to a reporter that having a lot of reviews is a big part of his plan to succeed in his chosen business.

As written by Amit Singhal, a fellow of Google, “We were horrified to read about Ms. Rodriguez’s dreadful experience. Even though our initial analysis pointed to this being an edge case and not a widespread problem in our search results, we immediately convened a team that looked carefully at the issue. That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results”.

With this changes, SEO specialists out there would probably find website promotion a more daunting task since Google will be more stricter when it comes to ranking a site. Thus, SEO experts must adjust and adapt to this newly implemented algorithm if they are still eager to improve their search engine positioning. You'd better watch out for those methods you're implementing because not all forms of publicity are considered by Google as good ones.

So how does this new Algorithm works and how can it affect you rankings? Supposedly, the expert team of Google made it possible for this algorithm to detect all the websites and online businesses that provide poor services and costumer experience. Those said sites will be given a rank that is extremely lower than the others. Google will be basing this new ranking formula through the site's feedback and costumer reviews. Therefore, it seems that web reviews would now be a huge factor which Google will look at when ranking a site. Take note that all reviews must be good and unbiased. “To expose user reviews and ratings for various merchants alongside their results. Though still on the table, this would not demote poor quality merchants in our results and could still lead users to their Websites”, Mr. Singhal elaborated.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Integrating Social Media Into Your Business

In the last two years, social media has grown significantly, not only in the number of sites, but also in terms of its reach. In fact, it would be quite difficult nowadays to find a place where social media is not well known to a lot of people. And with the growth of social media, many have started to find a lot of use for it.

One of the sectors that have definitely started to embrace the social media phenomenon a lot is the business community. A lot of businesses now have set up their own social media department to make use of the craze. But, sadly, only a few do make big in the social media scene. So how do you make the most out of social media for your businesses?

Well, one of the first things that you might want to keep in mind is that using social media in your business is not simply all about posting status announcements on your profile pages. In fact, you will be surprised to find out that a workable social media campaign for your business will actually involve a lot of things.

Here, integrating social media into your site is one of the first things that you need to work on when conducting a campaign. Take note that this not merely mean that you have to post social media status updates on your site on a daily basis. Instead, you need to make sure that your social media pages are well integrated to your site, such that it is easy to head to your homepage from, say Facebook or Twitter.

And of course, you won't be able to get traffic to your site if your visitors find no need to go there in the first place. Here, you need to entice visitors of your social media pages to head to your main site for more information. Having great content will be one of the surest ways of attracting people looking at your profile pages to head to your main page. For instance, videos posted on video sharing sites can be used to attract the curiosity of viewers and seeing what more you have to offer.

Finally, take note of the word social in the term social media. This means that you need to do a lot of interacting, or socializing, in order to attract visitors. Replying to comments and questions made by your viewers will definitely establish your presence and attract more people to you.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Getting High Page Rank with Google's Place Search Algorithm


Launching its newest algorithm last year, Google seems to be taking a stronger grip on local searches. Their new organic method of ranking websites will have a heavy effect on many sites especially for those who don't have addresses and Geo-locations placed on their page's title and descriptions. This concept of location-based organic search algorithm has actually introduced a couple of years ago. In fact, it was in year 2005 when Google filed the so-called search patent.

The main point of this organic search method states that Google will be more likely to give high page rank to websites that are compatible to be found in local searches. In short, those who have proper placement of Geo-targeted keywords on their content. And in able to know which sites are nominated to be positioned on the first page, Google will determine where a business or service is located. Then by using the content from the page and other essential information, Google will now attempt to match the data and the listings.

You see, if you wanted your website to get high positioning in Google, you must consider using this Place Search algorithm along with your traditional search engine optimization strategies. Bear in mind that the combination of organic-based SEO (defined by local optimization and Google Places) and traditional SEO (keywords density, META tags, quality and quantity of links) can help your website achieve its desired success. Take this as an example: In September 2010, the website Wikipedia.org has been ranked 4 in Google's organic search. But if the site won't use any business locations, they will shrink down at the bottom of the page. Or worst than that, they will completely fall at the second page. This also goes with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Although they both have been established and are getting popular all over the Internet, they still need to increase their local relevance in order to stay on their current positions.

Perhaps the main reason why Google implemented this method is to provide a much better search results for consumers in local markets. Imagine if you will likely to type a Geo-targeted keyword in Google's search bar, then you will find a more relative information compare to using those traditional keywords.

For you to have better positioning through using this Places Search algorithms, Google has set a few formulas which you can use. First you must claim a local business that is listed in Google Places. You can also make use of RDF micro formats tags to identify your location base to Google. And most importantly, optimize your web pages with location-based keywords and links that is relevant to your area's address.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Truth About Social Media


For some online entrepreneurs, they believe that social media is their superhero - a knight in shining armor who has the power to save their dying and unsuccessful businesses. Well the process of online marketing through social media is currently in its highest peak nowadays. With an increasing demand for immediate success, web business owners are benefiting from the skills of this newest tool which can give them the strength to go on-board without having to spend more time in working.

However, the truth about social media contradicts to this belief. While this process may really help your online business to achieve its goals, you still need to give a little more effort. Take note that if you're website is really bad, no one can save it. You must have a solid foundation for your site before you can actually feel the effectiveness of social media marketing. Also, social media alone will NEVER provide you with millions of visitors who will stay on your site for a long time. Yes it is quite true that from time to time social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn will bring you a massive amounts of visitors, but also remember that these people are always free to visit other sites even more and forget about your page.

Starting a social media plan requires proper knowledge and time. Always remember that this marketing process is not that easy to accomplish. And like any other forms of marketing, social media involves a goal setting – in one way or another, you need to test certain actions to see if this method will work for you and your business. You should try new things as well, engaging yourself with new activities will actually make you a better social media enthusiast. If you are going to try your luck in this industry, don't limit yourself when it comes to increasing the awareness of your business, be open to more people, and get good traffic to your site. Like what is mentioned earlier, SET A GOAL! Your goals will be the one to tell you what to do in social media websites.

Moving forward, this so-called “truth about social media” depends on how you perform the said online marketing method. Some factors may be agreeable to you but not for other people. Social media, as popularly described, is a marketing solution that will quench your thirst for unsuccessful business. It is more affordable and can bring you more profits compared to other strategies. Well that might be applicable for you, but it is not that guaranteed that it will grant your wish 100%. In fact, some social media marketing users find that after 1 month of their dedication to the method, their sales did not slow down and didn't increased either. And unfortunately, they just gave up.

Social media can make or break your online business. So take a good care.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Useful Tools for Web Design Evaluation

Basically, an effective web design is described as the one in which users are able to find information in an instance and in a logical way. Therefore, as a web designer, you must be able to know how to evaluate your own designs to see if it delivers quality outputs and effectiveness to users. Take note that there are an array of methods which can help you in evaluating the over-all performance and looks of your website.

Below are some tools that can help you know if your web design will work.

PERFORMANCE TOOLS:
    *      YSlow – this tool is created to examine all the components of your web page, including components dynamically created by using JavaScript. It also measures the performance of the web pages while offering you a few suggestions for improvements.
    *      WebPageTest – a helpful utility that analyzes the page load times while giving you a quick rundown of how well your site is performing based on a number of various criteria.

ANALYTICS TOOLS:
    *      Piwik – this analytics software gives interesting yet detailed reports on your website visitors, your popular pages, the search engines keywords they used, the language they speak, and all the needed information.

VALIDATION AND COMPATIBILITY TOOLS:
    *      HTML Validator - this validator checks the mark-up validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, and MathML, thus making cross-browser design that much easier. You can also check if your source code is standardized. This tool will work perfectly for all users even though they use different browsers.
    *      CSS Validator – a free validation software created by the W3C that is committed to help Web designers and Web developers check the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This tool is said to be an invaluable ally. It does not only incorrect uses of CSS, but it will also tell you when your CSS poses some risks in terms of usability.

USER FEEDBACK TOOLS:
    *      Five Second Test – is a simple usability test that measures the effectiveness of your user interfaces. It works by flashing up a screen shot of the particular web page for 5 second. After the page is viewed a form appears which has five spaces for the user to simply list the things they remember.
    *      Usabilla – this tool allows you to create your own feedback surveys. You can edit the tests in order to get useful data on how visitors find their layouts.

Use these tools listed above early in your development to ensure you're on the right track, or use it to see how well your existing site stacks up.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Why You Should Use a Link Building Service

Of all the SEO techniques and web promotion strategies, it is the Link Building which carries a huge vitality. In fact it caters all the necessary factors in order for your site to achieve high page rank in major search engines. As you know, your site's back links are what search engines look at when ranking your site, therefore it is better to take the best step when it comes to link building technique.

Building links steadily is what makes link building a time consuming but the most effective process in SEO. Bear in mind that a well planned and comprehensively conducted link building strategies can provide you and your site with more visitors everyday – which results to high brand credibility. And since you want a rapid and successful results, the strategy of building links offers you a good news! Buy using link building services from dedicated companies, you can not only generate a massive amount of visitors, you will also increase the amount of your traffic. With traffic to the site, you will be able to put your products in the front of the customer who is ready to buy.

Moreover, link building services allows you to have your company get linked to a large number of other sites. Which literally means – more popularity. Having these factors being said, you can thus conclude that the whole purpose of link building is to get your link onto the web pages. By having a service that solely concentrates on this, you can see an increase in traffic and page ranking over time. This increased traffic can be increased profit for some website owners.

Link Building is categorized into two types of quality links - reciprocal and non-reciprocal. Although both plays a prominent role in search engine optimization, they have a few dissimilar characteristics and effects. In reciprocal link building, you will be aided to multiply and at the same time increase your sales figures. This is a time-consuming process, but at the end of the process, you will find that your site has received a prominent ranking. This also helps in online partnership. Any site which uses reciprocal linking can be assured of online partnership. While with a non-reciprocal link building, you do not need to exchange links. It also gains authority status, meaning - as you receive more back links, you attract more visitors.

With these benefits written above, it is then important to maximize the use of link building services. The great thing about such services is the amount of time it can save the website owner – and that is YOU. Remember that not all of us have the time to contact a variety of other website owners to see if they will link to your web page. Instead it is more beneficial to hire someone to do this.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

SEO is much more than Meta Tags

A myth about SEO or Search Engine Optimization reduces all to just Meta Tags. In most cases, people often thought that Meta Tags are the only tool for search engine optimization, but ironically, this is one of their least useful uses. Perhaps we can never deny that meta tags are an important factor to take note in Search Engine Optimization, but still, there are many more important elements to be considered. SEO is a sort of puzzle in which creativity and technicality embrace each other.

For everyone's information, Meta tags are considered to be one of the most basic factors of Search Engine Optimization. Learning it's elements is a requirement and a must for every SEO practitioner. Meta tags have been around long years ago. They have been a big part in search engine history. They were valued as a factor in rankings before – until people started abusing their use in getting on top of the SERPs. After that, Google opted meta tags out of the ranking factors. But that doesn’t mean that they are not important anymore - meta tags still play quite a big role in your site’s SEO. In fact, the use of Meta Tags in web pages are often required by search engines as a source of information to help them decide how to list and rank your website. Meta Tags are not always required, but as a rule of thumb, it makes more sense to take advantage of them than to leave them out.

Basically, meta tags are the words that are hidden in your code. As described by Mr. Danny Sullivan, it is “a ‘legal’ way of hiding words in your web pages for search engines”. The search engines still read them for it to have a simple, summarized idea of what your site is about and what exactly your keywords are.

The importance of Meta tags lies beyond the fact that the search engines read them in order to compare if these keywords and the description are related with the visible content. Are your keywords present in your page? Is your meta description related with your content? There is certain weight in your meta tags that the search engines see, that being the reason, wouldn’t you want to do everything in order to bring your page a little bit higher in the SERPs? That’s exactly the reason why meta tags is important.

However, SEO is much more than meta tags. Using such tool is never enough to attain your desired goal – to rank high in Google and other search engines. According to Mark Edwards, the most important SEO tip was to ensure any website content was relevant, interesting, regularly updated and substantial. “And make sure other sites are acknowledging you (if they use your content),” Mr. Edwards said.

Even if meta tags do not hold much vitality when it comes to page ranking, their importance is still present as the search engine robots validate their relativity to your content and site niche.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Best Ways to Acquire High PageRank

A successful search engine optimization campaign can never be achieved by just doing a simple link building strategy. Bear in mind that employing the most effective link building techniques is a must. Moreover, link building is not only the process of getting links to a website from other sites; in one way or another, it can also increase a websites page rank with the search engines. Page Rank is the value that the search engines give to a web page. It is usually on a scale of 1 to 10.


Building link popularity helps to gain higher page rank for a website. The higher the page rank, the higher the site will appear on the search engines with competitive keywords. Usually, the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN use link popularity in order for them to rank a website. The search engines seem to think that the more incoming links a site has, the more important or valuable it must be. So how do we get a good quality of inbound links for our website? Here are few of the best ways:


First in line is to write a compelling content. Press releases, blogs, articles, and reviews are guaranteed to provide you with quality backlinks. In writing an article, try to put in as many keywords as possible, but it should not be very obvious to the reader. Create as many blogs as you can and post them on websites with high page rank. Blogs are very effective as many people are sharing their thoughts on blogs and you have a good chance of getting noticed. After coming up with a strong content, it's time for you to do blog commenting. This is the process of posting feedback or comments in blog posts in order to get referral traffic and increase search engine rankings of sites. This technique can be acquired by searching related area of interest blogs & forum topics.


Another commonly used technique in having high PR is through directory submissions. Directory submission sites allow you to get a massive amount of inbound links for free! The nice thing about it is that the directory listing will always be there for as long as the directory does not violate any protocol. It is a fact that most net visitors forget websites and pages; thus is your website is enlisted with a directory, people can always find you when they want to.


Social Media and Bookmarking also plays an important role in achieving high PageRank. Since social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter owns millions of users, it is undeniable that posting links on different profiles are an effective way to acquire backlinks. Take note to find the best bookmarking websites based on PageRank, Alexa Rank, dofollow and submit website using beneficial keyword anchored phrases.


I’m sure by implementing the above methods, your website can get a high page rank.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Get More Exposure for your Blogs through Social Media

Creating a blog is easy. But the hardest part of it is building a large audience that will visit your posts. Well it is quite true that the biggest problem which most bloggers are facing these days is on how to get people notice their posts. Even though you have written the best and creative blogs, that will be nothing if no one has likely to read them. So how can you get your blog noticed?


Announcing your blogs through social media sites is indeed a good start to make your blog promotions effective. Since social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter carries millions of users from different parts of the world, it is undeniable that these sites are great for getting thousands of visitors to your blog in an instance. Every bloggers should realize the importance of networking with other bloggers. Remember that bloggers are human. They help people that they like, and they like people that help them.


Social media has its own audience with unique preferences. Some of these audiences has the ability to link to you, vote for you, re-publish your posts to other networking sites, and promotes the things that you're currently promoting. Ergo, you should never under-estimate the power of social networking when it comes to promoting your blogs. In fact, all successful bloggers have built a strong network along the way.


One can use Twitter and Facebook in many different ways that will benefit their blog promotion. Having accounts and posts on both networking sites might help you in the best way possible. When you post on Twitter, it can automatically re-post to your personal Facebook news feed. While if you post something on your FB's fan page, it will also post to Twitter - as well as to your personal Facebook news feed.


And the best thing that social media do is that they allow you to link your blog posts to their sites. For Facebook, navigate to the “NetworkedBlogs” application, click it, and add your blog information as requested. There’s a verification process that Facebook will walk you through to make sure you’re the author of the blog.


For Twitter, go to “Twitterfeed”, a useful and free website application that feeds your blog to Twitter. Register for an account, verify your personal details and then log in. Once done, click the “Create New Feed button” to add your blog. It might take a couple hours to start working. LinkedIn is another social networking website that allows you to link your posts. If you have a WordPress blog, simply go to “Applications” and click “WordPress.” If you have a TypePad blog, go to “Applications” then “Blog Link”. LinkedIn will walk you through the process step-by-step.


Generating a large audience for your blog posts is never an easy task. And perhaps social media is only one of those effective ways that could give a more successful results to your blog promotion.