SEO vs. SEM The ROI Myth Busted

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 01-10-2009

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Search engine optimization and search engine marketing both are intrinsic part of Internet marketing efforts. But there is some confusion as to which one is better strategy in return on investment (ROI) terms. This article helps clear some of the doubts.

SEO vs. SEM The ROI Myth Busted

Return on investment (ROI) is one of the deciding factors for any course of action involving investment of resources. For quite sometime now, a debate has been raging on whether search engine optimization (SEO) has better ROI than professional search engine marketing (SEM).

In fact it has become a bit of a myth that it is easier to get good ROI through SEO than it is to get the same ROI through SEM. Two facts have helped evolve this myth SEM involves click costs while SEO works through free traffic. Lets see whether this myth holds any water.

Well, a closer look tells us that this myth doesnt have any truth in it and there are several reasons for that. In this article though, we will deal with just one reason: the landing page difference.

In SEM, you decide the landing page your visitors will see. In SEO, a search engine spider decides on the landing page visitors will see. There’s a difference in control, and that difference makes all the difference. Thats why serious search engine marketing services providers opt for full blown SEM rather than just SEO.

Searchers, after all, are people with itchy back-button fingers. If they come to a site and don’t think it’s the best site for them, they’ll return to the search engine results page - and click on your competitors’ links - in a matter of seconds.

But if your landing page is optimized for the keywords the searchers choose, and the ad copy the searchers see, then you’re able to tell a new visitor, right away, that he/she’s come to the right place.

And no matter how amazing your site is, that’s a message that visitors need to hear. Because people don’t just want to see a good landing page, they want to see a relevant landing page.

But only a good search engine marketing firm can optimize your landing page. A search spider won’t.

In both SEO and SEM, you only hit ROI if your searchers convert. A search engine marketing services provider might require a higher initial investment than an SEO firm does (because SEM requires the management cost, plus the PPC cost; while SEO only costs the price of management alone) - but you’re also likely to get better conversions through SEM, because you’re likely to get better landing pages through SEM. And it’s only conversions that will get you ROI.

Are we saying that getting the best SEO possible isn’t worthwhile?

Absolutely not!

The more real estate you take up in the search engine results page, the better. It will plant your brand in the psyche of the browsers making your website easier to recall when they would require services/products you offer.

So good SEO is absolutely vital to strong internet marketing! But saying that SEO will get better ROI than SEM - because organic traffic is free - ignores the most important element of SEM: control. And its control that makes all the difference between getting traffic, and getting traffic that converts.

And that makes a huge difference when it comes to ROI.

Introduction to SEO.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 28-09-2009

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Over the last few years, search engine optimization (SEO) has been needed and used more and more, although it has been around for much longer than most people think. With new development tools being used to create websites that are heavy on Java, Flash and images, its important to have something that the search engines can read. If the content cant be read by search engines then they cant index it, and if your site doesnt get indexed then it wont be found when people search for it on Google, Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else. This article will outline what SEO is, how it works, and some unethical SEO methods that you should avoid.

What is SEO?

SEO is a way of analyzing your site and modifying it to allow search engines to read and index it more easily. SEO is all about maintaining and building websites that get ranked highly on the major search engines.

You see, when people use a search engine, they generally dont look beyond the top 20 or so results. If you want to make any money from your website, you need to get ranked in the top 20 out of potentially hundreds of websites.

How Does SEO Work?

Search engines maintain a huge database containing information from individual websites. Most of the information search engines collect isnt listed on their results pages, but it is taken into consideration when it comes to deciding those results rankings.

It is very important that you encourage the search engines to rank your website in a high position, and you can do this through the keywords that you use on your website, as well as when you submit it. If the keywords you use in your submission tool dont match the ones on your site then you could harm your rankings be sure to have all the keywords you want to use on the website itself before you submit it.

Most websites dont focus on their topic well, and so keyword lists containing 50 or more phrases per page are recommended. By focusing some of the pages of your site on keywords, you will score higher with the search engines.

Free Search Engines.

The major search engines on the Internet are still free, and its not hard to take advantage of this free advertising you can do it in as little as an hour.

There are several companies that provide free SEO tools, or you can pay a professional to take care of it for you. Looking around on the web will turn up all sorts of useful resources.

What is Unethical SEO?

Unethical search engine optimization techniques can be unlawful, unscrupulous, or just in bad taste. Youd be surprised how many people use these methods. A lot of what is now called unethical SEO used to be accepted, until people went overboard and it started to have a negative affect on the web as a whole.

Keyword stuffing is when your site consists of long lists of keywords and nothing else. Don’t do it. There are ways to put keywords and phrases on your site without running the risk of getting banned.

You may have seen invisible text if youve been selecting the text on a page and found words that are the same color as the background. This text is often lists of keywords put there in the hope of fooling search engine spiders while hiding the words from visitors. This is considered unethical, and you shouldnt do it.

A doorway page is a page that isnt designed for real people to see its purely for the search engines and spiders, in an attempt to trick them into indexing the website in a higher position. This is a big no-no and should be avoided.

Even though unethical SEO is tempting, and does work, you shouldnt do it not only is it annoying to users, but its likely to get you banned from the search engines sooner or later. You sites search engine rankings just arent worth the risk. Use efficient SEO techniques to get your site ranked higher, and stay away from anything that even looks like unethical SEO.

SEO is a set of techniques used in order to attract visitors or prospective customers to your website, and the goal of a search engine is to provide high quality content to the users of the Internet. These two objectives are not in opposition, if you do SEO the way it should be done.

SEO Content Writing Converting Artificial Keywords Into Natural Keywords.

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 20-09-2009

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SEO Content Writing Converting Artificial Keywords Into Natural Keywords.

The Role Of Keywords Within SEO.

One of the major aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) is the use of keywords both in the Meta tags of a site and throughout the website content. In particular, the density, the placement and the actual keywords themselves are hotly debated topics. It is certainly no secret that keywords play a vital part to any good SEO program, but because search engines like Google and many others change their algorithms on such a regular basis it may seem difficult to keep up with the current best practice. However, there are some good general guidelines to follow that should always ring true regardless of how you personally approach SEO.

Keeping Abreast Of SEO Times.

It can be difficult to say at any given time what the keyword rules are when it comes to SEO content writing, but there are always common worst-practice factors that should be avoided completely. That is, search engines like Google will not only ignore your website content but they will actively penalize you for certain things.

Spam The Big NO!

Search engines do not take spam, or the sites that contain it, lightly. This is the most important thing you should remember. It used to be acceptable in the eyes of search engine robots for your content to be 100% keywords with absolutely no meaningful text. However, this practice of keyword cramming or keyword stuffing is now something that does not go unnoticed and you will face a penalty for using this technique. Yes, keywords are important but you also have to provide solid and informational text for your visitors.

So, What Is The Correct Keyword Density Then?

Of course, this leads to the question of how to determine what is considered spam and what is considered an acceptable level of keywords within your text and again this is a topic that leads to debate between SEO experts, webmasters and content writers alike. The general belief was that including a keyword within your text with a range of 5% to 10% was best practice. It certainly wouldnt get you penalized and it made it blatantly obvious that your site was relevant to that topic. However, some believed the figure could legitimately be taken as high as 20% without any negative search engine effects.

Err On The Side Of Caution.

While these high densities of around 20% may not have got you penalized at one time it is increasingly likely that they will be regarded as being geared primarily towards search engines. Search engines do not want to display sites that are created for this purpose; their aim is to display websites that are geared towards visitors. As such, sticking to a lower percentage is likely to produce better results for you.

Playing It By The Rules.

Keeping the keywords to this sort of level is an art, but it is not one that should elude most people. The art, of course, is to combine search engine optimization with informative content that will appeal to your visitors as well. In order to do this it is important that you use natural keywords.

What Are Natural Keywords And Artificial Keywords?

A natural keyword is one that you would use in everyday conversation relating to a given topic. In the case of your website, if you were to sit down and write 500 words of informative content you would find that certain words naturally creep into the article and appear several times. These are your natural keywords, but unfortunately natural keywords may not provide you with the results you require. For example, a little keyword research may prove that a natural keyword of divorce attorney is a very well searched phrase but there are also 2 million websites geared towards this key phrase. Further research may turn up the fact that Find Divorce Attorneys may be a little less popular with regards to searches but there are only 10,000 sites aiming for this keyword. This instantly improves your chances of being closer to the top of the search results and that coveted top spot.

Replacing Natural Keywords With Artificial Keywords.

So, you now need to go back over the content you have already written and see if the term Find Divorce Attorneys appears within your content. In all honesty, it is quite unlikely that it would appear more than once, if at all. You have to make it fit into your content and you have to make it appear to do so naturally. Find the areas where you specifically used the keyword Divorce Attorney and see if you can swap the phrases with just a little alteration of the surrounding text.

Start From Scratch With Your Artificial Natural Keywords.

Another method is to look for your artificial keywords before you begin and make sure you have them in the back (or the front) of your mind when you sit down to write your website content. Because you are already thinking of the phrase you want to use you will naturally include it within the content of your site. Its not a trick, although you may want to consider it a subliminal tactic if you wish, but it will work.

The Result Of Keyword Conversion.

By converting your artificial keywords into natural keywords you should be able to effectively optimize pages towards both search engines and your visitors and this will mean improved search engine rankings as well as improved conversion rates. Even a small increase in visitors combined with a small increase in conversion rates will show a good level of increase in your income so you should not overlook this technique.

SEO Can Either Make Or Break Your Company

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 19-09-2009

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One thing that you should always take into consideration about your website is search engine optimization. Marketing on the internet is a viciously competitive area. You have to be up-to-date on all your knowledge and resources to make your web site better than the rest. All the other sites are struggling to get their site on top of the search engine rankings, and if you dont do the same then you could be left in the dust.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique utilized by almost all e-commerce web sites. Search engines are most frequently used to find sites needed by consumers to find the product or information theyre looking for. Most search engine users dont go past the first page of results. Getting your site to the first page is a huge accomplishment in itself. You will have a much higher chance of getting clicked on if youre placed high. If you have more traffic on your site, you will make more sales.

But you cant just sit at the top of the list after you get there. Since all the other sites can work to improve their ranking, youll have to constantly be updating your site to maintain or improve your position. So how do you go about doing this, and why? Well, youll do it for more profit. SEO will aid you in generating large amounts of traffic. If your ratio of sales to hits is 10% and you get a hundred or more hits a day, you get a fairly good amount of sales.

SEO is the use of any tools to make your domain reach the top ranks in the results of certain searches. Getting in the top half of the page will generate more familiarity worldwide, and your traffic will reflect it. In order to reach this goal, you must put in lots of effort. There are many things you may need to alter or add to get more search engine recognition. Usually you must acquire lots of data regarding the main phrases of your site.

You should consider changing the content of your site in order to get a good amount of keywords without making it too commercial. Its good to work alongside other sites in order to get link exchanges and page forwards. The more traffic generated by other sites, the higher you will appear on the search engine results.

If you have some cash available for heightening your sites traffic, you can pay an agent to do SEO work for you. There are sites that will keep track of keywords that will raise your sites ranking. There are many content writers that have lots of SEO experience who can create good keyword-filled content for your sites.

Act now and work on SEO for your web site, and youll immediately see the benefits. Search engine algorithms are always being changed. If your site is on top one day, it might not be so high the next day. Its good to always pay attention and do your best to keep your site at the top, because more traffic means more money.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization Software

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 14-09-2009

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Search engine optimization is the practice that website publishers engage in to increase their popularity in the search engine results for their chosen niche. Search engine optimization users hope to gain higher priority for their chosen search terms in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live. Search engine optimization, when done correctly, can have a profound impact on any business, online or off, since it enables thousands or even millions of internet users to better find the optimized website whereas without optimization they may not have found it at all.

Search engine optimization (SEO) software includes tools that help webmasters research their chosen markets in order to hopefully rank better in the search engines. SEO software also sometimes automates much of the research needed in order to accomplish this goal. While many SEO Software offerings are not worth their asking price due to being outdated or irrelevant from their inception, some search engine optimization software gives a competitive edge due to the resources they provide.

Some examples of features offered by SEO software:
Find competitors websites that rank higher. This can be a very useful function because once a competitors website is found, their methodology in ranking higher can be reverse-engineered and thus beaten.
Backlink searches. Backlinks are the backbone of the internet since search engines utilize links to crawl websites for data and determine how each website should be ranked. A website that has backlinks relevant to its content will place much higher in the search engine results than one with little or no links.
Alerts webmasters to how many pages of their websites are indexed. Since search engines only index web pages and not entire sites in their results, it is important to know what has to be done to ensure that all relevant pages are indexed in order to better understand what methods are successful and which ones are not.
Finds penalized websites that websites are linked to. This is a very important feature of any SEO software. A website that is penalized means that it has been dropped from the popular search engines because it has been involved in unscrupulous activity. Linking to such websites can hurt the linking websites rank in the search engines. This feature helps webmasters eliminate that problem.

Search engines are constantly working to evolve the algorithms that they use in order to rank websites for relevant content so SEO software also continues to evolve. The savvy webmasters utilize SEO software to elevate their websites so that they are able to receive maximum exposure.

Do-It-Yourself SEO.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 13-09-2009

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Does the whole idea of Internet marketing intimidate you? Are you thinking of hiring a professional? Well, weve got great news for you. Its really not difficult to do search engine optimization (SEO) yourself you can save hundreds of dollars, and get the same results as the professionals do. You will probably get better results from highly qualified professionals, but you should definitely perform these do-it-yourself actions first. Once youve done some of this kind of work it will be easier to determine if a professional is worth his/her salt.

Basic SEO is very simple and easy all it takes is the willingness to put in the work. Once you know the ropes, its not that difficult though it can be time consuming. The content of your website the focus of what SEO is all about. Here are the top points to think about when youre doing it yourself.

1. You will start by registering a domain name, which should reflect what your site about. Keep it short, as long as its somehow related to your site. Being more specific can help. You could choose to name the page after one of your products or services, for example. Another method is to get a sub domain of a popular domain. This will generally help you get indexed more quickly though it will not appear quite as professional to your visitors. There is a trade of here, sub domains are quicker (and generally cheaper), but domain names are more memorable, and, in the long run, better for your indexing.

2. The next thing you should look at is your pages title (i.e. the HTML title tag), which is critical in letting search engines see what the page is about, and is the first item looked at by search engines to determine your relevance. You should put your most important keywords in your title tags you dont need to worry about singular or plural forms as search engines account for these changes in most cases. Whatever you do, don’t call your home page Home make the title a mini-description of the page.

3. The two primary meta tags arent as important as they used to be, but the description tag is still used by some search engines to display information about your website to users and help them decide whether theyve found what they are looking for. Not all search engines bother with this, though most will put some bearing on it (even if it is minuscule).

For very short descriptions the alt tag can be used. Alt tags let you describe an image or graphic file theyre the pop-up descriptions that appear when you hover your mouse over a graphic, or when the graphic cant be downloaded for whatever reason.

Text within comment tags is never displayed on the page it is used by coders and designers to remind them of what that part of the page is for. Some coders used to put lots of keywords in the comment tags, so that they would be seen by search engines but not users, but search engines have now stopped paying attention to any text that isnt seen by the user. Keep this in mind when trying to post invisible text (i.e. white text on a white background). This kind of behavior can get you banned from a search engine.

4. Having keyword density in all of your content is good, but keep in mind that each search engine has its own requirements when it comes to how many times that a keyword or phrase should be in the content for the page to be relevant. Somewhere between 5 and 8 percent is a roughly optimal level but this isnt always possible, and you shouldnt force it. Dont overdo it, or the search engines might mark you down.

5. Many search engines judge web page importance on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. You should link to some related sites, but not too many. Dont overdo incoming links either, and keep them related your sites content. Its also good to get sites to use your keywords as the text of these links.

If you follow the advice above, you can do it yourself and do fine. SEO, if done right, can keep you on top for as long as you want to be.

Seo Search Engine Optimaization Tips

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 13-09-2009

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Search Engine Optimization uses a combination of techniques, tools, and technical know-how to get results .Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listing. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves the careful optimization of corporate web sites to effectively increase their visibility in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Alta-Vista,and many others. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.
Meta Tags
Navigational links
Rich Content

Meta Tags:
Meta Tags are very important for your website’s visibility. Many search engines read them from your site when you submit it to them .Major meta tags that you can use:

Meta Title
The only resource type that is currently in use is “document” This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes.

Meta Description
Depending on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the title of your page in an index. “content” could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point.

Meta Keyword
Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas.

Navigational links:
at the right or at the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines “read” your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right. Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to what’s important on your page.

Rich Content:
The more content you have on your site the more likely someone is to find what they’re looking for when they get there. Keep your site very content rich. Have a lot of pages.Update the site even twice a day if you have the time. Updating your site does not mean that you copy paste content from other sites.That will only push your rankings further down. Don’t have any duplicate content. At the same time ,dont spam multiple content across the same website. When a search engine views or reviews a website, which they do at least every few months, it looks for specific characteristics found in the content of website landing pages.For information about Search Engine Optimaization visit http://www.googleseostar.org.

SEO - Guide

Filed Under (Free SEO) by admin on 12-09-2009

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1. Alexa Ranking Tool:

Alexa is a very powerful tool used to rank web site traffic. Find out how your web site traffic stacks up against all your competitors! This is one of the most accurate freely available tools to find out how well your site ranks up against millions of other sites on the Web.

Remember:

“The lower the Alexa ranking number the more heavily visited the site.”
Some examples are:
Traffic Rank for Yahoo.com : 1
Traffic Rank for msn.com : 3
Traffic Rank for google.com : 5
Traffic Rank for ebay.com : 8
Traffic Rank for Rediffmail.com: 3,338
Traffic Rank for amazon.com: 14

These rankings are generally consistent with the amount of traffic they have.

2. What is PageRank?

In short PageRank is a “vote”, by all the other pages on the Web, about how important a page is. A link to a page counts as a vote of support. If there’s no link there’s no support (but it’s an abstention from voting rather than a vote against the page).
How many links you have from other web sites are the votes you get for your web site?

3. How is Page Rank Used?

Page Rank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance. It is only one part of the story when it comes to the Google listing, but the other aspects are discussed elsewhere (and are ever changing) and Page Rank is interesting enough to deserve a paper of its own.

Page Rank is also displayed on the toolbar of your browser if you’ve installed the Google toolbar.

4. What is SEO and why is it so important?

It is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in Internet marketing, this also helps your site get the exposure it deserves and increase your website traffic instantly.

5. Site Maps?

Site maps are useful in at least two ways:

1. If a user types in a bad URL most websites return a really unhelpful “404 - page not found” error page. This can be discouraging. Why not configure your server to return a page that shows an error has been made, but also gives the site map? This can help the user enormously .

2. Linking to a site map on each page increases the number of internal links in the site, spreading the PR out and protecting you against your vote “donations”.

6. Your Link Popularity:

Utilization of the search engines is a very important aspect of marketing; they are usually the first means by which prospects can find your site. That’s why link popularity is so essential. If the customers can’t find your web site, you will not see any sales.

The term “Link popularity” refers to the ranking assigned to your web site by the search engines. It determines the position your page gets displayed on when people search for certain keywords in a search engine. I can already hear you screaming… “Cool, tell me how to get my link popular!”

7. Link Exchange?

Link Exchanging, is important because it can drive more visitors then search engines, once established. Directories ad valuable content for your customers/visitors, and this it improves your SEO.

8. Reciprocal links:

1. Reciprocal linking is another name for swapping links.
2. That’s a link from you to someone and a link from them to you.