SEO Tips for Beginners

Posted by admin | SEO Tips | Sunday 20 March 2011 10:36 am

Use of Title Tags
Make sure to create unique title tags for each one of your web pages. The SEO India search engines like to see unique title tags because each page should show something different. The title tags should be descriptive and you should also add keywords in the title tag as well. Google and other search engines only show a certain amount of characters in the title tag so make \ sure it is distinct.
Meta Description Tag
You can include more characters in the Meta description tag. The Meta description tag gives the search engines a summary of what the page is about. You can write more characters within this tag and be sure to include your keywords in this tag as well. Make sure that your description tag describes the page and has to do with the content on your page. Description tags are also important because Google and the other search engines sometimes use them as snippets for the search results. This helps Google when they are displaying the most relevant search results.

SEO-Tips
Create friendlier and more descriptive URLs
Create more descriptive names for each web page. For example, our search engine optimization services page is called SEO-services.html. We use a more descriptive name instead of naming it page1.html or something vague. This also helps the search engines determine what the page is about and increases your chances of being more relevant. Vague URLs and page names can be confusing and are not memorable. This helps users to remember the name of a URL and Google looks at this as an SEO “friendly” way to name your web pages. The friendlier your URLs are, the more relevant your web pages become.
Write quality content
Make sure to write engaging, quality content. Quality content is looked at as more relevant and the search engines want to display the most relevant results for the particular keyword. Content heavily influences your website and is one of the main factors in search engine rank. Good content helps build your website’s reputation with its users and the search engines recognize this. Consistently updated “good” content will also be a huge boost in the relevance of your website.
Use your header tags appropriately
Make sure your header tags accurately describe the page as well. For example, the header of this page is “SEO Tips for Beginners to Get Started With“. This is the title of the article and it describes what the page is about. Also, since header tags make the text on the page bigger, this shows a user that this text is important.

Why You Need a Web Designer and Seo Specialist

Posted by admin | SEO | Monday 7 February 2011 10:26 am

A lot of things have definitely changed since, say, a decade ago. With regards to business, whether it be little or big, each one must depend on some kind of presence over the internet so as not to be treated as cons or illegitimate by a lot of people.

web-seo

Businesses need to have websites where pertinent business information will have to be found. This is exactly why web designing is very important when making websites. Inasmuch as the façade of a physical office gives way to people’s impression about the business company, then so does a website. The internet site is the online facade of any business enterprise and must therefore appeal to the people it is targeting to be its market.Web site design doesn’t only include the physical layout of the site, furthermore , it has something to do with SEO or web optimization. This caters to optimizing the text and keywords alongside the tags so that the website will generate enough traffic. When it has good traffic,it implies that the website is being viewed and read by its targeted market. Kaizen SEO is a Toronto SEO Company specializing in SEO and web design and development.Web designing and SEO are the two essential components when constructing websites. They help improve the presence of your online businesses to ensure that a lot more people will discover your business and this increased traffic will ultimately spell profit for you. At present, majority of businesses do have their own presence online. Most companies sell their items and services via the internet and competition has become a lot more fierce. To raise sales, business owners have resorted to varied SEO approaches like Google Adwords, online advertising, pay per click activities, traffic exchange, link building, etc. You can say that SEO has helped a great deal of businesses turn in great revenue the last couple of years.So if you are starting with a different business, or maybe you offer an old business you intend to revive, having someone do a great web page design and SEO for your business site will be a good investment on your part. Make contact with Toronto SEO now and see your enterprise profit!

E-Mail Marketing

Posted by admin | E-Mail Marketing | Sunday 12 December 2010 10:09 am
email-marketing2-bottle

Email Marketing has reached a significant stage for business development and progress. Today, email is symbiotically tied to effective social media presence. Social networks have adopted their own inbox system, for example: Facebook and Twitter both have their own inboxes. In effect, individuals rely more on the messages obtained from these social media outlets rather than their inboxes simply because their Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail inboxes are reaching an overload. The consequence of this overload is simple: your audience fears their emails will be sold away to other companies intent on filling their inboxes with spam. This causes a chain reaction of untrustworthy, paranoid, and sceptical readership which believes that their anti-spam guards are not going to be enough against the onslaught of spam.

Email marketing has a dark side which depends on harvesting tools (scanning the web for email addresses, that is why you must never type your email address in full) intent on mass collection and dissemination. These tools are efficient, inexpensive, and very dangerous to your company’s overall reputation. In addition, these tools will not bring you positive results simply for one reason: those that you email will not become effective subscribers. If you do decide on taking the dark path, keep in mind that Microsoft and Google have begun developing powerful, intelligent, and very semantic anti-spam technologies to render your messages useless. Consider Microsoft’s Sender ID Framework:

“The Sender ID Framework (SIDF) is the leading e-mail authentication protocol. Created by Microsoft, with broad industry support, it helps protect more than 45 percent of all legitimate e-mail sent worldwide.” Source: Microsoft

email-marketing-campaigns

The dark side continues to pump the internet with spam according to the Return Path “Top Email Trends in 2009″ (2010) study: “spam has increased over 141% since March and also found that spam volumes grow by over 117 billion e-mails a day”.

Email marketing is further complicated by image blockers, intelligent spam filtration technologies, as well as poor HTML rendering. Furthermore, individuals are less likely to click an email they have not condoned and so, they become uninterested in a product.

Email marketing relies on strong connections between you and the subscriber. With this relationship, they will not only purchase your products, but also recommend it to their friends. The visitor must come willingly to a website, read relevant content and subsequently want to subscribe to a newsletter. This is the only way to ensure that subscribers will produce results levelling and increasing a company’s revenues.

According to ExactTarget’s Email X-Factor Study (2010), “58% of people start their online day by reading emails”. Emails are a significant aspect of an individual’s life, for they comprise of relational dialectics, comprehensive communication, and rich exchange of information and knowledge. In a parallel study conducted by the Nielsen Company, “the dominance of email activity on mobile devices increased from 37.4% to 41.6% of US mobile Internet time”. Consequently, businesses have begun to invest significantly into email marketing and newsletter campaigns according to JupiterResearch (2010).

The only way to get a individual’s attention to your newsletter and subsequently become a part of your email marketing campaign is to offer free and/or promotional products according to ExactTarget’s (2010) study: “67% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to receive discounts and promotions”. In effect, you are facilitating a connection for your product and rendering their business for certain. Pursuing an email campaign can have tremendous benefits, especially if your company also has an office. According to Econsultancy’s “How We Shop in 2010: Habits and Motivations of Consumers” (2010), “42% of consumers said the best way to receive ads for sales and specials is via email” and subsequently, yourspecial offers become the connection for a relevant subscriber–with their email subscription, they’ll be compelled to visit your store or your website to purchase the product. These statistics suggest that there is a lot of money using this method.

Best Practices and Standards

In order to achieve a successful online marketing strategy, consider utilizing the following best practises and standards for 2011 in order to obtain a clean reputation, a “cool” reception and relationships with your potential subscribers. Email marketers are doing the following behaviour in order to maximize ROI, subscriber engagement, and subscriber confidence in their products.

1. Social Media

A cross-syndication of your presence on several or the most popular networks are a must in order to make real-time conversations, provide immediate feedback, and build a relationship. Above all, the email newsletter campaign cannot exist without a relationship. Email marketers can no longer blast a mass email and hope for replies, they must be done with the needs of the subscriber in mind.

2. Segmentation

You need to personalize your subscribers, follow a guideline to make sure that your subscribers are not getting the same generic message. Using informal dialogue, colourful text, and an easily readable content will go far with your audience. Remember, not all of your subscribers behave the same, or have similar needs. Throughsegmentation, you will be able to gather effective analysis.

Email-Marketing-stats

3. Testing

It is always recommended to test your newsletter to ensure that it is being delivered properly, accurately, and that all your images and HTML are rendering appropriately. You must also ensure that analytical code is embedded in the email to ensure effective tracking and behaviour of the subscriber with the email.

4. Crossing Technologies

Not only must your newsletter be friendly to their email client, they must also be readable through other devices. Knotice (2011) reported that “13.36% of emails are opened by a mobile operating system or device” and that “US mobile-commerce revenues are expected to double in 2010, reaching $2.4 billion” (Coda Research Consultancy, 2010). Ensuring effective cross-technological syndication may be the livelihood of your entire organization.

Email Marketing tools

There are a number of email newsletter campaign services. They provide flexibility, customizability, and most importantly-analytics. Below you will find a list of tools and services that can help you optimize and improve your Email Marketing campaign.

1. StreamSend

One of the products I highly recommend is StreamSend’s email marketing services. The customer support and overall newsletter and plugin templates are incredibly flexible, easily modified, and carefully coded with excellent documentation. While expensive for most individuals, these services are important.

2. Tribulant’s WordPress Newsletter

My other highly recommended product is Tribulant’s WordPress Newsletter Plugin (3.0 Compatible). This is significantly a cheaper option compared to StreamSend and much swifter with customer support in my opinion. Not only do they include frequent updates, but they also have a developer’s license in case you want to install this service on potential clients. Tribulant has an excellent reception, terrific reviews, and in my opinion, the best option to go when being faced with this daunting task of attracting newsletter campaigns. This software keeps meticulous records, easily configured at the coding level, and can easily be set up with templates.

3. MailChimp

Your next option is of course the free service called MailChimp. In my experience, MailChimp is not very user-friendly, it’s too cluttered, and too messy to navigate. Overall, MailChimp is not intuitive enough at the coding level unlike Tribulants Newsletter Plugin. Furthermore, MailChimp is not so easily understood, lots of places one later discovers “oh, I didn’t know it was there”.

4. ThemeForest

Of course the email marketer will be interested in templates, so I highly suggest visiting ThemeForest for these. These templates are exceptionally documented and incredibly customizable. They come with precise instructions and are easily integrated with Tribulant’s aforementioned product. I am currently using the “Fresh Newsletter” option, but, according to Themeforest, there are 170 potential newsletter templates you can choose.

While there are several other ways one can develop their email newsletter campaigns, the most important connecting all of these four standards and trends is simply relationship-building through social media. Our suggestion is to use the above tools, be creative, experiment but stay whitehat in order to avoid damaging your online reputation. If you wish to learn more on how to optimize your Email Marketing campaign make sure you read the article “20 Tips for developing a Successful Email Marketing Campaign“.

 

SEO Checklist: 60 essential checks before launching a website

Posted by admin | SEO Checklist | Wednesday 17 November 2010 9:35 am

seo-checklist-search-engine-optimizationLaunching a brand new website or publishing a new site version is typically a straight forward process given that it is well planned and well organized. Failing to take into account all the known ranking factors or failing to build an SEO-friendly website can lead to low rankings in Search Results. As a result before publishing a website, the Webmasters and the SEO professionals should validate that they are aligned with the best current practices and that they have not made important mistakes in their SEO campaigns. In this article we provide a detailed SEO checklist in which we have the most essential checks that one should make before publishing a website online.

Keyword Optimization

keyword-ppl

Having well written/optimized texts and using the right keywords right is extremely important in SEO. Make sure that before launching your website, you can give a positive answer to all the questions below:

1. Did I conductive an extensive keyword research? Did I find all the popular terms that are relevant to my industry/niche/website? 

2. Did I choose the targeted keywords wisely? Have I made sure that I can compete for the selected terms?

3. Did I write unique, high quality texts that will be considered useful both by the Users and by the Search Engines? Have I performed a spelling check to all of my texts?

4. Do I have unique titles and descriptions in all the pages of the website?

5. Did I add all the important keywords in the page Titles, the Meta-Descriptions and the HTML Headings (H1-H6)? Have I optimized my texts for those keywords?

6. Are the Titles and Meta-Descriptions compelling for the users? Will they click on my page if it appears on Search Engine Results?

7. Did I use keyword combinations that are likely to be searched by users? Have I optimized my pages for those keyword combinations? Did I incorporate in the text synonyms that are likely to be used in the queries?

8. Do I have a descriptive alt text in all the images of my website?

9. Have I ensured that the content is not over-optimized, that there is no hidden text in the pages and that no Keyword Stuffing techniques are used?

10. Did I keep my pages targeted by focusing on a small number of keywords per page?

11. Have I kept the content of my pages relevant to my website’s theme? Am I sure that I have not optimized my pages for irrelevant terms?

12. Are the most important keywords of my page in the beginning of the document?

13. Did I make sure that my pages will not compete each other on SERPs and that I do not have lots of different pages optimized for exactly the same keywords?

Note that by using SEO Tools you can speed up your checks. Analyze your pages by using the Keyword Analyzer in order to ensure that your pages are targeted and optimized for your selected keywords. Additionally theSERP Analysis tool can help you analyze and evaluate the competition and see if it is possible to compete for the selected terms.

Website Development

seo-title-code

The techniques that are used in order to develop a website are extremely important and they affect the SEO. So ask yourself the following questions and make sure you have done everything properly.

14. Is my website well coded? Is it cross-browser? Have I made sure that my pages contain no broken HTML that is likely to affect the analysis of the site? 

15. Have I developed my website by using Search Engine friendly technologies? Is someone able to access my website without requiring him to use Flash, Silverlight, JavaScript/AJAX, Java applets, frames etc?

16. Is my menu visible from all the pages and is it developed in HTML so that the search engines can find the rest of the pages?

17. Is my site easy to be crawled? Do I provide text links for all the pages of my website?

18. Do I use properly the meta-robots tags?

19. Did I take steps to eliminate duplicate content by focusing on the Link Architecture, by doing 301 redirects when required and by using proper canonical tags?

20. Did I make sure that I don’t use unnecessary or incorrect HTTP redirections?

21. Do I redirect the non-www version of my website to the www version or vise versa?

22. What is the loading time of my website? Have I done everything I can to reduce it?

23. Am I certain that I do not do Cloaking and that I have no Doorway pages?

Note that you can check several of the above (HTML Validation, Meta-Robots usage, Spider View, Page Analysis etc) by using the Web SEO Analysis tool. Additionally you can check the similarity percentage between two pages by using the Duplicate Content Tool.

Link Structure, URLs and Links

tree-deep

In several articles in the past we have discussed how important it is to develop a solid link structure. Below we list the most essential checks that are related to the link structure, the URLs and the links:

24. Did I incorporate the important keywords in my URLs? 

25. Have I ensured that my URLs are not too lengthy or too spammy?

26. Am I sure that no Session IDs (or other unnecessary variables) appear in my URLs?

27. Are my URLs static and SEO friendly (they do not include the “?” char)?

28. Do I use dashes instead of underscores in my URLs?

29. Have I ensured that I do not have too many outgoing links per page?

30. Do the anchor texts of my internal links contain important keywords? Are their text short but descriptive? Are these keywords the same with the ones that I selected during keyword optimization?

31. Do I have an optimized Link Structure? Do I use a tree-like architecture where the top level pages are the most important pages of my website?

32. Have I linked the most important pages directly from homepage or from the top categories?

33. Have I ensured that most of my PageRank/Link Juice passes to my internal pages and that there are not too many links pointing to external sites or dangling pages?

34. Have I eliminated all the links that point to different versions of the same page, causing duplicate content problems?

35. Have I eliminated all the broken links?

36. Do I use meaningful internal anchors when necessary?

37. Am I 100% sure that I do not have any hidden, spammy or paid links in my site?

38. Do I usually use text links instead of image links, when I point to an internal page?

39. Have I nofollowed the links that I do not trust? Have I decided on whether I will do PageRank sculpting?

In order get a detailed view of how the PageRank flows within your site and what is the link structure of your webpages, make sure you use the Link Structure Tool. It will provide you with detailed statistics and graphsalong with all the data you require to evaluate your current link architecture.

Domains & Hosting

domain-hosting

Both domain names and hosting can heavily affect the performance of your website and your SEO campaign, so make sure you check the followings:

40. Have I checked that my domain has no previous bans from search engines? 

41. Does the domain name contain any useful/relevant keywords?

42. Have I selected the TLD of the domain wisely? Am I certain of why I want to use a generic or a country specific TLD?

43. Do I understand what are the benefits and the tradeoffs of using subdomains?

44. Do I know in which country my website is hosted? Am I certain that the website should be hosted in that country? (Given that the server location is a signal)

45. Is my hosting company reliable? Do they update/patch their servers regularly? Do they offer the necessary modules that will help me build an SEO Friendly Website? What is the uptime percentage? What are the loading times? How many sites are hosted under the same IP?

Off Page and other Checks

website-checklist

After checking your webpages you need to ensure that all the necessary files have been built, that all of the necessary accounts are created and that you are ready to go live. Check out the followings and make sure you have not forgotten any of the basics:

46. Did I create XML and/or HTML sitemaps? Have I submitted them to the search engines? 

47. Have I created a robots.txt file? Do I know exactly which pages I have to block? Am I certain that I want to block those pages?

48. Have I created an account on Google, Bing and Yahoo Webmaster Tools? (Yes you should still use Yahoo tools until they are fully integrated with Bing).

49. Have I created a Google Analytics account (or use a similar Web Analytics service)? Have I added thetracking code in all the pages of my website? Am I sure? Am I 100% sure? ;)

50. Have I set up an RSS feed (mainly for blogs and news websites)? Do I use the RSS autodiscovery technique? Have I added the RSS URL on the HTML Header of my pages?

51. Do I understand what are the benefits and the tradeoffs of using Geo location? Have I decided on whether I should use it on my website?

52. Have I evaluated the design on my website? Have I set up the call to actions?

53. Have I setup the scripts to monitor user’s activity?

54. Have I decided on whether I will do A/B testing?

55. Have I developed a solid Link Building strategy? Have I gathered all the relevant high traffic directories of my industry and the search engine’s local listings where I can submit my business? Do I know which websites link to my competitors? Do I have a plan on how to acquire high quality links?

56. Have I decided on whether I should use Social Media to promote my brand? Have I developed a solid Social Media strategy? Did I add the social media buttons in my website? Have I created the profiles?

57. Have I tested my website by using the Web SEO Analytics Toolbox? How can I improve the site based on the SEO reports?

58. Am I positive that I use no blackhat techniques and that I do not violate Google ‘s Guidelines?

59. Have I created the Email accounts, the FTP accounts etc? Have I set up everything?

60. Have I tested thoroughly my website? Am I ready to go live?

I strongly believe that if you complete all of the checks that are described above and if you use this SEO checklist you will be able to detect most of the flaws that can damage your SEO campaign. I wish you the best of luck and I am looking forward to your suggestions and comments.

What other SEO checks do you perform before launching a website?

 

10 paid methods to Increase Traffic & Online Visibility

Posted by admin | Increase Traffic | Friday 22 October 2010 9:29 am

web-advertisingIf you wish to increase the online visibility and the traffic of your website you basically have 2 options: You can use the free channels and you can invest money on advertising. As we have explained in previous articles the free channels can bring lots of traffic to your website but they require lots of time and effort. On the other hand a successful ad campaign can bring easier thousands of users to your website and it can help you boost your sales faster.

Creating a successful advertising campaign requires careful planning and implementation. As we have seen in previous blog posts, failing to define clearly your goals and to select the appropriate channels can lead to an unsuccessful campaign that will not only cost you money but also bring undesired results.

Given that you have a clear view of what you want to achieve and that you have a clear plan, the next step is toselect the appropriate channels. In this article we list the 10 most common paid methods that you can use to advertise your services and to increase the traffic of your website. Note that you should select one or more of the methods below, based on your goals, on your industry and on the type of services that you offer.

1. Banner Advertising

The Banner advertising is one the most common forms of advertising on the web. One of the key factors of launching a successful banner campaign is to create an attractive ad banner and place it on high traffic andrelevant websites. This will help you maximize your click through rate and your conversion rate. Usually the pricing models that are used in Banner campaigns are the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and the CPC (cost per click).

2. Adwords and other PPC Advertising

The PPC advertising can help you boost your business with a relatively low cost. As we saw in several previous articles, you can use Google Adwords, Microsoft Adcenter or other similar services to create your own ppc campaigns. Text, display or video ads with a pay per click pricing model is a convenient and effective tool to support your online business efforts.

3. Social Media Ads

The Facebook Display ads, the LinkedIn Ads, the promoted Tweets, the paid discovery (StumbleUpon) and the other similar social network ads have become very popular ways to promote a website. This is because these social media websites offer valuable demographics and infographics that enable webmasters to buy space and show their messages to highly targeted audiences. Note that selecting the appropriate social media network and form of advertising is extremely important to ensure the success of the campaign.

4. Buy Opt-in email lists

The Email marketing has been used extensively by the webmasters and the online marketers to promote their businesses. Several companies sale opt-in email lists that can generate useful leads for your company. If you decide to invest on this type of marketing, make sure that the lists were collected in a legal and ethical way. Using stolen email addresses will not lead to the desired results, it can really hurt the reputation of your company and it might even lead to legal problems.

no-spam

5. Ads on newsletters

Purchasing ad space on highly targeted newsletters that have thousands of subscribers can help you improve your exposure and increase your traffic. The cost of this type of advertising depends on the number of subscribers of a given newsletter, the size and the position of the ad in the newsletter template.

6. Affiliate programs

Theoretically by launching an affiliate program you can recruit thousands of online marketers that promote your business with relatively low cost. Affiliate programs can help you increase your sales and build a network of collaborators that generate new leads for your company. Launching an affiliate program is not a simple task. You need to design an attractive program, you have to define a solid policy, you have to train your affiliates and you need to use the appropriate software to monitor the sales, manage your affiliates, make payments and manage your campaigns. Closely monitoring your affiliates is a must in order to ensure that they use no blackhat techniques that can damage your company’s online reputation.

affiliate-program

7. Paid listings on targeted and high traffic web directories

As you know there are thousands of web directories on the net. Unfortunately most of them are low quality link farms that were launched to support the link building efforts of SEOs and as a result they do not attract any visitors. Nevertheless niche directories do exist and they can really help you receive highly targeted traffic. As a result purchasing featured listings on high traffic and high targeted business directories can help you boost your business.

8. Sponsorships

Another great way to get exposure is to become a sponsor on interesting blogs, applications or events. Sponsoring free services is a great way to get the desired exposure and increase your brand awareness.

9. Paid press release services

As we mentioned in previous articles, Press Releases are important tools that can affect both your SEO campaign and your online exposure. In order to make the most out of them you need to be able to push them through high traffic channels (news websites, niche article submission directories etc). If you do not own such a channel, you can still reach thousands of users: A paid press release service could do the trick for you and enable you to increase your visibility on news sites and on search results.

10. Paid reviews on blogs

Another method that can boost your traffic is to get paid reviews from influential bloggers. A paid review is a useful approach especially when you want to inform people for a new product or service. Keep in mind though that reviews can be not only positive but also negative.

Increasing the traffic of a website is usually considered a difficult and important task. Nevertheless you should never forget that attracting more visitors does not automatically leads to an increase of your sales. Definingclear objectives, planning carefully your campaign and using the right channels right are extremely important to become successful.

 

« Previous PageNext Page »