Social Media Marketing Jump In

If you are just starting out in building a business, online is a great way to get your opportunity to the masses. Social Media is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to start. Before you just jump in the game, you need to know what the best ways to market with social media.

First let's go over what not to do in social media. It is one of the first things everyone dose. I have even done it. You get into a new business and you are excited and ready to build a Six Figure income. You start emailing every one of your friends with your join me now link. Plastering your join me now links on your wall, other's wall, in groups and everywhere you can find to post these links.

This is a waste of your time. It just will not work. SO DON'T DO IT!

as things are are some simple steps to get you started down the right path.

1) Get your thoughts and marketing organized. Know exactly what you want your outcome to be. Figure out what you are going to be using Social Media Marketing for. Are you looking to market a product, business opportunity, both or brand yourself? Knowing what your ultimate outcome is, before you just jump in.

2) When you start your company it is not a multimillion dollar business to start. It is rather small and most likely costing you money every month. So most likely you cannot start out like a fortune 500 corporation and how they market. Unless you have a large marketing budget and cost is not an issue. But you can take tips on what is working for them and add some in a much smaller way to keep cost down.

3) Start with a single objective; you don't need to learn everything before get going. As you learn, apply that in your marketing. The main thing is to get going with what you know.

4) Create momentum with sharing your wins. Every time you get a sale or company partner, let everyone know. Let them know that you are having success. Nothing sells more excellent than showing success. People what to have success and if you can show that success and are willing to share it with them. You will find that people will be drawn to you and ask for help or how can them join you and have the same success

Make it a daily activity to marketing in social media. Keep it growing and you learn what is working and what is not. Remember, if it is not working in 90 days, it probably will not work in the next 90 days. Change what you are doing. Continue do waste your time is not a way to forge your corporation.

How The Internet Has Changed The Marketing Mix

Generally, when people talk about the marketing mix, they are referring to the four P's- Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Previously, when stores were the only places people would purchase things, marketers had to think about things like- which stores they would choose to stock their goods, where in the store they would place them etc. But now organisations need to develop online strategies to attract and retain customers.

People now spend time on the internet, not only buying products but researching them. Consumer reviews are available on most company sites where people are free to share all of their thoughts and opinions. This phenomenon of real people, sharing real thoughts, in real-time isn't limited to company websites. No, social platforms have sprung up all over the internet solely for people to share their personal details, preferences, and whereabouts with one another.

While this might seem threatening to brands, it's actually the complete opposite. Brands can use these platforms to their advantage by getting closer to their buyers. They can learn all about what they like, how they interact, and where they spend their time online. And if the information they are obtaining isn't specific enough, they are asking for it. Some brands ask outright, others launch competitions and collect data, and some get their followers to do their work for them, tempting them with prizes and five minutes of fame!

As a result of all of this social stuff, a fifth P has been added to the marketing mix-personality. Brands now need to have personalities. Not just identities but an actual voice, a face, a sense of humour, and most importantly, opinions and value to add. Yes social platforms have opened up the conversation, but the conversation should still be clever. And if not clever, than informative or entertaining.

Moreover, brands utilizing these platforms have to be committed to them. With online profiles, they are attracting the attention of people around the world, and as a result marketing must always be on. Like online marketing never sleeps. If a company is considering starting a blog and believes that they will post three times a week, then they must. If they go a few weeks without a post, readers will fall off, and are likely not to come back. In that respect it's better to start small, be more than realistic about what you can output and then, once it becomes part of your everyday, part of the way you speak, browse, surf, and travel, you can start adding more.

Internet Marketing Guide For Beginners

Being a beginner in online marketing, you definitely need a helpful and insightful internet marketing guide. Here is one you can surely rely on.

Being New To Online Marketing

So, you have decided to jump into the bandwagon and earn decent revenue across the internet. The most successful online marketers today have also undergone the same stage where you are today. They were also newbies to the business months or years ago. You can follow their steps and become a successful internet marketing professional, if you have the will and determination to do so.

Admit it. You may not have the expertise and the right skills to make it in this industry. But, be reminded that you can always learn. You need an effective internet marketing guide to help you take every step with certainty and success.

Be Organized

As a beginner, the many opportunities and people you will encounter along the way will overwhelm you. It will help if you will stay organized. Organize your thoughts, priorities, and business goals. Plan your actions very well especially in marketing and actual selling. Every night before you go to sleep, assess the entire day and think about what you need to accomplish the following day.

It will also help if you will create a new email account that you will use for your business. As a logical internet marketing guide, do not give your personal email to prospective clients as you might end up mixing personal and business messages. Remember, in the online business, you need to immediately and appropriately respond to every email or query you receive from a potential customer.

Online Or Affiliate Marketing?

Do you intend to sell your own products and services online? If you do, first make sure your products and services are of good quality. It will be a busy ride for you since you have to take care of your supplies and your marketing. Before you roll out any marketing campaign, be sure your supplier will be able to provide bulk orders if ever sales pitch up.

Every internet marketing guide will assert that it is more advisable for beginners to start as affiliate marketers. This way, you will only market and sell other people's and businesses' products and services. Thus, you will not worry about supplies and quality of products and services. Affiliate marketing pays well.

Invest In Marketing Solutions Or Tools

As a last component of this internet marketing guide for beginners, invest in marketing solutions or tools. Such programs will be very helpful to you. You can learn about the ins and outs of the business without committing blunders if you have the right tools and programs in use.

Such solutions will help you take every step with ease and certainty. Everything you need in online marketing will be there. It will be to your convenience if you will invest in those.

Fundamentals of Starting a Business

The fundamentals of starting a new business are the same no matter whether you have a 'brick and mortar' business or a business that is online. You need to have a plan, and you need to execute to that plan. No need to invest energy, commitment and you must be patient.

We all hear about the marketer who started one day with only a good idea, and soon became the latest wonder story on the internet. The reality for most of is that it takes a lot of learning and hard work. With time we begin to see a little income. As the learnings come we make changes until we achieve the success that we had begun to feel would not happen.

Building an online business will take time. You must let the world know that you are here, and what product or service you offer that fills a compelling need that currently have. It doesn't take millions of dollars to communicate the message to others. It does take time and follow through.

One way to get the word out is by using free classifieds, or on all of the chat boards. You can also advertise what you have for sale on any of the online auction houses. List your products and services on these online auctions houses on a weekly basis.

With the increased traffic that comes to you via the auction houses comes an increased awareness of your business. After all, the more people that learn about you and the products you sell, the more sales you will make.

Write articles that are targeted to those in your product niche. If your focus is on products for dogs, then your articles should follow suit. Those articles can become content for sites that are targeted at dog owners.

Write a review, or even better have a product review completed by an outside writer, about your product or service. Submit it to as many online sources as you can locate.

Create a newsletter in your targeted product niche. Others with an interest in your product niche will become aware of you and your products when they read your newsletter. The same idea holds true with emails and email campaigns to your list.

The methods for getting the word out about you and your business are almost limitless. While all take time and effort, the results can be quite amazing. Give it a try.

To your online marketing success!

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Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

A quality of SEO done on the website can bring tremendous traffic and help in return on an investment (ROI), brand visibility, more returning visitors, and higher number of sales. Apart from these benefits, search engine optimization is a cost-effective way to market your website online as it drives the traffic from various search engines to your website and hence there is significant rise in the traffic and potential customers. People are mostly using search engines to know about the products and services or any other piece of information online. After they put the search terms, hundreds of web links are open in front of them; however, only the web link on which proper SEO has been performed gets better ranking and visibility and mostly clicked by the users.

With the visibility on SE's, the rankings of the website are also improved which wins the trust of the visitors and hence they are more interested in visiting your website again making your business successful than ever before. We have to understand that SEO may take time for any website to get better ranking and you might have to wait for 6-8 months; however, the results are remarkable as this is the most effective way to get maximum returns on investment. Organic traffic is mostly generated by the search engine optimization rather that PPC campaigns. It is very essential to get search engine optimization done as you need to get higher rankings than your competitor's websites and you must run search engine optimization campaigns running for a full year or two. This is the only economical method to drive traffic to your website.

A small amount paid to SEO companies can give to more than expected results. In order to market the website or business, you will have to spend some money as we know that no business can run without hitting the right type of market and audience. However, with SEO, you do not have to spend extra penny for marketing, jut get SEO done on the website and the rest will be taken care by the professionals. There are various firms which are getting the benefits of search engine optimizations.
You must hire a professional company which has expertise in doing search engine optimization and based on your business and requirements, they will be able to suggest you the best techniques. They are even able to provide you the analysis for your competitors and can suggest you what you need to do in order to get the higher rankings.

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The World of Search Engine Optimization: Keys to Getting Your Webpage Seen

There's no doubt about it: the Internet is here to stay. In the coming years, our societies and cultures will continue to define themselves online, creating and cultivating an entire virtual universe in which we connect, trade ideas, socialize, and do business.

As the global tide of web users continues to rise, those who know a thing or two about search engine optimization (SEO) have a leg up on getting their content seen and recognized. Whether you have a personal online presence or run a site for a business or organization, SEO techniques can put you on a track toward digital success. Let's take a look at how websites are optimized to ensure the highest possible number of visitors.

Algorithms and Organization
Major search engines, used daily by millions upon millions of people around the world, work to organize sites into a kind of pecking order. These engines use complex mathematical algorithms to identify every web page on the Internet and rank it by popularity and relevance. Algorithms are smart enough to exclude certain content, such as those containing explicit or spammy text, from coming up in searches. They comb the net for content most relevant to whatever word or phrase you've typed into your search engine. Relevance is essentially determined by popularity; the pages that are linked to the most times across the Internet are ranked as top results. SEO techniques take advantage of this algorithmic ranking system in order to draw attention to your online presence.

Links, Indexes, Keyword Density, and the Virtual Food Chain
Linkage between websites is the key to the Internet's architecture. Links connect pages to one another, enabling users to have the classic experience of "surfing" the web that we're all so familiar with nowadays. As such, links are essential to bringing traffic to your content. When your page is linked to, it enters this massive web of connected pages, and becomes visible to search engines.
Engines assign every page an "index." You can think of this index as your site's phone number - the engine calls this number to get in touch with your online presence. The index contains some important information from your page, including specific keywords it contains. As such, the use of keywords in any content you post is essential to that content's popularity.

Let's say you operate a pet store in Ohio that specializes in dog care. Intelligent, frequent use of the keyword phrase "dog care in Ohio" on your web page may help it draw more traffic than other pet care-related sites in the Ohio region. This is the goal of search engine optimization as a marketing strategy. An SEO professional devises keywords and phrases that are both relevant to your business and visible to search engines. They will then build these keywords into your content, setting the stage for your site to become a highly ranked result.

For every word or phrase you search, there's a massive collection of results that can pop up. Search engine optimization uses sophisticated strategies to raise your website's position in this virtual food chain, and ensure that users who are seeking your information find it with ease.

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SEO Tips - How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

There are two categories of activities to increase ranking in search engines.
Imagine you're Google and you have a million pages to be sorted, and you need to return the best results. How can you understand what is the best result?

Google uses hundreds of factors, but the two main factors are:
• meaning and content
• Popularity

Relevance means that the content is relevant to the user keyword is written in.
Popularity is a measure of the popularity of your website is running. While many other sites link to your site, your site is considered more popular and is a signal to search engines that your site is a good website. If we extrapolate further, a link to your website is like a vote for your website.
To improve the relevance, you can improve your site's content.
To increase the popularity, you get other sites link to your website.

Method
You can add to the ranking of search engines, we recommend the application of the following.
• Content of the project to build a content site
• Link building plan - Increase search engine linking

1. In terms of content
Search engines want the best sites to see in search results. A content plan is to make your site more for your users, and therefore better for search engines.
Improving the content is not only to increase search engine rankings. Create more content such as product and category descriptions are very useful to users.
These are the methods you may use.

Keyword research and optimization
At the performance of last year to see which keywords are best to help, create a list of pages whose content can be improved by a better investment for these keywords.

Create content
Based on keyword research, create keyword rich content of these pages.
This includes things like creating descriptions of categories and more detailed descriptions of products.

2. Link building plan
Link building is about building the popularity of your site. Here are the methods you may use.

Directory submission
Take care of your site is listed in local most popular directory. Lists can be connected to your site.

Link Building
Links to other sites to your website. Many of these sites are designed specifically for building links for SEO purposes, so such links should be used in combination with other techniques related to construction.

Article Marketing
Write articles on products and submit them to article directories with a link to your site.

Premium link building and link exchange
Asked for a list of companies that are not competitors but are somehow related to the field. Email them and ask them if they will put a link to your website.

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The Benefits Of Search Engine Optimization!

You have probably heard of search engine optimization. You are probably also convinced that it works well for any online business organization. However, you must be wondering what its benefits are or as to why it is so powerful. Here are some of the benefits of using search engine optimization for your company website.

SEO impacts the buying cycle
SEO will not increase your marketing costs, but it will definitely increase the sales of your products or services. It can further all your business goals with a high return on investment. It can be a very costly mistake to think that everyone knows about your brand. People are very brand conscious and while shopping, they look for good deals. SEO plays an important role in this and it is like a prospect magnet that draws people towards your business organization through relevant keywords and phrases that are ranked highly in the search engines.

SEO isn't the icing on the cake
Okay. So, you have finished getting your business website designed. Do not think that you are all ready now. You would have to also define your business since engines need help to understand the nature of your business. You must now be wondering why you need SEO. It is because not only do the search engines need to understand the nature of your business, but also because search engine optimization will help bring more business to your website by bringing it to a top position. In fact, you need to take SEO into consideration even when you are getting your website developed and not just after you have finished getting it developed.

SEO can multiply your impact
How much would it have cost you to print your business cards or for that matter your commercial brochure? SEO is your digital calling card that provides you inexpensive solutions to bring more sales to your website. In fact, when you get an SEO campaign done for your website, you need not spend millions of dollars on the other marketing initiatives. When you, however, ignore search engine optimization, it will cost you more money for marketing your website and your business. Moreover, the search engine optimization company would double check or proof read your website first before putting it on the search engine index so that your business does not have to suffer. SEO will multiply your impact on your customers and bring more sales to your site.

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What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization

SEO or otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Is the process of optimizing your website pages, for better search indexing via online search engines.

SEO also helps your business thrive through higher exposure (also known as page 'ranking'). The higher your pages rank for relevance, the more traffic you will receive through normal searching methods.

This has the positive effect of driving more traffic towards your website. More leads = more (potential) sales.

Search engine optimization also plays a key role as a viable, internet marketing strategy. The key to it's successful implementation is relevance.

Relevant keywords that you use to describe your site, as well as the content included on all the pages. All play a vital role in SEO and PPC advertising.

By utilizing appropriate keywords for the content (as well as hyperlink analysis). You can 'naturally' improve your page ranking through search engine results.
"Search engine friendly" websites are pages that have apparently had SEO techniques applied to them. This technique is worth understanding and crucial to many successful internet marketing campaigns.

The benefits of SEO and search engine marketing are enormous. Do not underestimate the power of free organic search results.
It could be your ticket to success.

* P.S Please note that SEO techniques will work on the majority of websites.
However you must keep in mind other factors (such as how you market your business in general, analysis of your target market demographic, if you use PPC advertising, how your marketing model is implemented etc.)

If you would like any technical experience with SEO or internet marketing.
Join my list to receive free tips, advice and suggestions regarding: network marketing, MLM marketing, SEO, affiliate marketing, how to create a successful home business, attraction model marketing, affiliate super-systems and much much more.

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Search Engine Optimization: How Search Engines Work

Search engines mostly use a "spider". This program "crawls out" across the Internet to find new information or content from different websites. Once it grabs the contents it finds, it stores or indexes them.

The spiders, also known as bots and crawlers, crawl through the links found in the websites. They travel through hyperlinks and once they arrive on a web site, they will scan the web pages. The spiders will analyze the elements: titles, headings, body and meta tags. Once they found all they need, they store all of their finds in a database.

Each page in the database is then ranked, applying several machine algorithms. Here's where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. The ranking will depend on how you have optimized your website. To get a good ranking, you should have applied your SEO techniques that will give you a high score.

Remember that the ranking will determine your place in the search engine results page (SERP) - a page that returns a list of results ranked according to several factors.

And when someone searched a word or a phrase, the search engine will match the word or phrase to its indexed information. It will pick the pieces of information that have followed a certain criteria and displays them to the SERP. The person who just searched a word will then have to choose, usually from the top results, the website he or she wants to visit.

The importance of knowing how search engines work is a background on how search optimization works. Take advantage of this technology by performing strategies that will make your website visible. Do your best to make your website inviting for spiders. And if the spiders visit your website often, your chances of landing on the top results are high.

The goal of SEO is to make your website popular. You have to pay attention to every detail and area that involves search engines. For instance, search engines rely on keywords entered by internet users. In response to this, use SEO techniques that include creating effective, relevant, popular and competitive keywords. Search engine also deals with links which points to SEO techniques of proper link building. It also shows how important inbound links are. This makes the spider stay more and read more information. It could earn you a higher score and get you in the higher ranks.
Note that there are millions of websites present in the internet today. The fact that the number is growing makes it necessary for you to optimize your website regularly. Every now and then, optimize your website by adding more contents, altering the website structure, producing keywords and educating your team.

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Search Engine Optimization Tips For Bing Search Engine

You have a website for quite some time now, but the problem is you do not have enough traffic. Almost everyone you know keeps on telling you that it's all about Google indexing your website. It's Google this and that, people just won't stop at pointing it out to your face. However, most people still do not know until now that MSN created Bing search engine. You've never heard about it before, and do not think that it can be as good as Google.

Are you still being kept in the dark? Trying to impress Google and completely ignoring other search engines like Bing? If you received most of your traffic because of Google and think that you are okay with what you already have, then think again. If you are reading this article then we both know that what you firmly believed in is not actually doing anything for you. Not even seeing your website even in the top 1,000,000 list is not going to help you at all.

So how is Bing search engine different from the famous Google and other search engines? Well, first it is quite different since the latter only accepts quality content. You always have to ensure that whatever you are putting on your website is not a copied or rehashed material. Wake up! That technique simply won't work. If you are using PLR's then you need to stop using it, so your website won't be seen and read by the search engines as repetitive. Why not write your own article, that way you are assured that your content is original, and it will also help your website to stand out since your content is nothing but unique. Added to that, you must ensure that your content is equipped to target your markets searches.

Added to that, ensure that there will be a lot of ways for traffic to easily access your website. You can easily do this by marketing ads, the use of back links, link exchanges and articles. They also need to have proper amount of keyword density. Now, did you know that Google bases their rankings on keyword density and links, while Bing search engine doesn't? Not to mention that Bing search engine is not that concerned whether your website is new or old. By saying that, it allows your website to attract more traffic. With more traffic comes your chance of getting higher ranking.

One last tip, if you want to improve your ranking in Bing search engine, you will need to change an article that does not contain your keyword. You must ensure that your keywords are cohesive to your articles. While the use of anchor texts is always being given higher priority than page ranking, so use it properly and as often as you can. Your URL must not be in lowercase.

If you want your website to get noticed by Bing search engine then try the following tips mentioned above.

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Search Engine Optimization: The Benefits of SEO Services

Most Internet users log on to the Internet to search for something; it can be information, a product or a type of service. And through this, you'd want to aim for the top ranks in the major search engines. This is because Internet users always make use of a search engine to find what they are looking for and when the search results come back, they are probably going to visit the top websites in the results. And this is precisely where you want your website to be positioned. But in order to achieve this, you will need some search engine optimization strategies in play.

There are many SEO tools that can be used and you can simply research on them to learn more. This article will talk to you about the major benefits you will be getting when you use SEO service in your marketing strategy. And be ready because there is a long is of benefits that is about to come your way.
One of the major benefits of using optimization services is that you will be increasing visitor traffic in your website. Ideally, the more visitors you have, the more chances of you earning more income. Further, if you have more visitors browsing your website, you are making your brand more known to the public.

The next benefit of SEO services is cost effectiveness. You don't need to spend a lot on your marketing strategy if you decide to use SEO services instead. What you need is the proper know-how of the SEO services and you can do the promoting yourself. You can actually save a lot of money with Internet marketing if you decide to go search engine optimization services to promote your website.

With search engine optimization, keywords are very important. These are the words that Internet users search for in a search engine and these are the words you put in your content and website to get the hits from the search engine. In light with this, SEO services are compatible with search engines and you can simply work with the guidelines of the top search engines out there.

Another benefit of SEO when done properly is that you will be getting quality visitors in your website that will easily translate to sales. There are many SEO services that you can but when done improperly, you won't get successful results. However, if you do it right, you will find your website ranking amongst your top competitors and getting more page visits.

And lastly, with proper SEO services, you will be able to market a specific product to a specific target market. This is called niche marketing and it makes use of niche keywords. Sometimes, you will notice that your visitor traffic is increasing but it's not converting to sales, this means that your optimization techniques are failing. That is why you need to target customers that you are sure will be interested in your products.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Article

SEO can be a confusing venture for most people. Even many so-called-experts can have a difficult time keeping a website at the top of the search engines.

First... the search engines are constantly changing their algorithms in an effort to bring you the most relevant website listings for your search query. Search engines also change their algorithms to stay ahead of the dishonest companies that quickly learn how to manipulate the search results.
As soon as the search engines change the way they list websites, there are unscrupulous people who go right to work trying to figure out how to cheat the system.

These people are using what's known as "Black Hat SEO" and if you are trying to run a legitimate website, stay away from them at all cost! Sure your website will get a high listing rather quickly using black hat techniques, but as soon as the search engines figure out what you're doing, they will likely ban your website from their listings altogether (forever). And sooner or later, they will figure it out.

Second... There's a lot of misnomers about what's more important when it comes to SEO. Some so called SEO gurus will have you believe page rank is the most important thing when it comes to search engine listings. This is simply not true.

Page rank (or Google PR) is one important factor when it comes to ranking a site for the search engines, but SERPs (or Search Engine Results Page) is what really counts.
"Page Rank" is Google's way of putting a number to the authority of a site. If they believe your site is important, they'll give you a higher PR.

But it doesn't mean the authority of your site will get you indexed for you main keywords.
There are thousands, perhaps even millions, of websites that have a low page rank, but are listed on the first page of the major search engines (including Google), for some top keywords. By contrast, there are just as many high PR ranking web pages, that are buried in "no mans land" when it comes to the search engines (including Google).

Also, the other major search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Bing, and hundreds of smaller search engines) don't really care about your "Google Page Rank" at all. They only care about giving their visitors relevant search results.

So ask yourself this... would you rather have a low Google PR of 1 or 2, and be listed on the first page of the search results? Or would you rather have a high PR of 5 or 6, and be listed on the tenth page of the search results, where no one will ever find you..? I think the answer is obvious.
One of the websites I built for my other online business, hasn't had a Google PR of more than 2 for the last 4 years (since it's been live on the internet). But it has been on the first page of ALL major search engines (for my main keywords) for 3 1/2 of those 4 years. I'll take the low PR and keep the high listing any day of the week.

What about this "Alexa Rank" I've heard about?
Alexa rank is supposed to be an indication of how much traffic a website gets. The lower the number... the more visitors a website is getting. If your Alexa rank is 50,000 it's supposed to mean (out of the millions of websites on the internet) your site is the 50,000th most popular site there is.
If your site has an Alexa rank of 2,000,000 then your site is only the 2,000,000th most popular site on the internet.

But here's the truth... Alexa ranking is NOT an acurate measure! It only registers websites that are visited by people who have the Alexa toolbar installed in their browsers (mostly SEO companies and web developers) So it doesn't count actual visitors to a website.

Here's a statistic that proved this fact to me...
I currently have a dozen websites I maintain, and I regularly check the traffic stats on all of them (like every good webmaster should)
One of my sites has an Alexa ranking of 171,246 (pretty good... right?) Another has an Alexa rank of 4,276,996 (which is lousy) But according to my analyzing stats (I cross reference Google Analytics with AWstats and a couple other programs, to get a more accurate statistic) The one with the better Alexa rank is only getting around 40 to 50 visitors a day, but the one with the worse Alexa rank is seeing over 400 visitors a day.

What does this tell us?
It tells us the one with the higher rank is being visited by a few people who have the Alexa toolbar installed (and the toolbar is sending stats back to Alexa) But the site that's actually doing better is being visited by real people who don't find it necessary to have Alexa monitor their browsing habits.
A lot of SEO companies will use the Alexa rank to show their customers "proof" that they're earning their money. ("see, your Alexa rank has gone up... so keep paying me") But remember this... Alexa rank is NO indication of how well a website is actually doing!

So, what gets your website listed on the first couple pages of the search engines? In a word... "Relevant Content" (O.K. in 2 words)
Search engines are only concerned with showing relevant search results for a persons "keyword search query". Search engines make their money by showing their advertisements to as many people as possible, and having as many people as possible clicking on those sponsored listings.
If their search results are useless to their visitors, people will stop using their search engines, and start using a different search engine. No visitors... no revenue for the search engine.
So while there are a number of important techniques you need to use for a higher search listing (back links, internal linking, proper meta tags and keyword percentage, to name a few) Remember... relevant content is king! And as the search engines become more sophisticated, relevant content on your website will only continue to become more important.

There are also many other factors that play a role in getting your website listed at the top of the search engines. It takes consistent effort and continual learning to keep up with the ever changing algorithms of the search engines, and a quality SEO person (or company) will continue to learn and keep up with the changes.

But remember... there are no "secret" methods for getting a high search engine listing. If you're talking with an SEO company, and they won't tell you their methods for increasing your website's listing (because they say it's "proprietary information") then I recommend immediately finding someone else to talk with about your website's SEO.

A quality (and honest) SEO company should have no problem telling you what methods they will use to increase your website's exposure on the search engines. So before you give anyone (or any company) your money, there are a few questions you should ask them first...

9 Important questions to ask your SEO company BEFORE you hire them!
And yes, SEO is something you can effectively do yourself, but it does take a lot of time and effort, and most business owners have better things to spend their time on. That's why you hire an SEO company... to do the work for you. They provide a service, and you pay them for that service.

Looking for search engine optimisation companies that helps you get more clients? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

Web Hosting and SEO - Search Engine Optimization

We have seen many organizations completely ignore Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when considering a hosting package, web hosting and SEO should be a key consideration in the selection process. SEO is an important step in creating a website and should should be taken into serious consideration before you even begin to build your website, one of the considerations here is hosting.
Country Specific Domain NamesIf the majority of all of your customer base is located for example in the UK, then you should get hosting in the UK - get your own UK hosting here. However if your server is located in the US for example you can still localize your domain to improve rankings on Google UK search.

Staying on the example of serving a customer base largely or complete based in the UK using a TLD: .co.uk tells search engines that your are indeed based in the UK. Even having a .co.uk domain name and a server hosting your website in Germany or the US having that crucial .co.uk is a strong enough statement.

However don't be tricked into typing 'UK Web Hosting' into Google and going with the first result as some UK Web Hosting companies actually have servers based overseas and with the combination of a .com domain name your chanced of appearing in the Google UK search from the web and pages from the up is limited.

In an ideal world in this scenario you should have reliable hosting in the UK and a .co.uk domain name, however there are ways around it if you do not. If you are based in the UK and own a .com and not .co.uk, you could purchase .co.uk TLD and forward your .com to the .co.uk however there is risk in this if you site has build up a good reputation and has a strong back link campaign and high page rank. You can always try to localize your domain. But in conclusion to rank in a regional specific area you either need hosting in your country or a local TLD e.g. .co.uk, you don't necessarily need both. 

Avoid Cheap Web Hosting - consider both web hosting and seo ...
Simply knocking up a quick website, rushing the design, back end coding and on site search engine optimization and finally whacking it onto the cheapest server you find is not going to deliver any success at all, if you are serious about creating a professional authoritative website then you really needs to invest wisely in web hosting. As mentioned above why attract unwanted visitors from unwanted locations.

Sometime cheap hosting companies will offer ridiculous amount of free space, however this can have an adverse effect on down time, and this means that your website may not always be available upon request. This not only has a knock on effect on SEO but also website usability as it may cause problems for website visitors to visit your website when they want to, what is worth adding here also is if search engine spiders cannot access your website and follow links throughout your site this will obviously have an effect on your SEO campaign. Again some webhosts that offer cheap hosting use a method where your domain is redirect to the back of another Website. This can cause problems with the search engines reaching your website and website content. I have also found that some cheap hosting providers host sites that have been banned from the search engines; this of course will have more than a negative effect on search engine rankings.

Avoid Hosting Multiple Domains on the Same Server
Yes it does seem very tempting to buy server space and hosting more than one domain. Let's just say that search engines e.g. Google may frown upon this type of behavior. Search Engines may believe that the company hosting these multiple domains is attempting to artificially link together hence trying to manipulate search engine with the objective of increase rankings in the search engine results pages. However this can and often does results in a decrease in SERP rankings. In conclusion consider web hosting and seo as working to compliment each other in your efforts to achieve effective search engine ranks, check out the resources below.

Sourcing for search engine optimisation companies that helps you generate more leads from Google? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine optimization is very important if you are looking to expand your internet exposure however, it seems that many people are victim to bad SEO (search Engine Optimization) practices. The major criticism is that a lot of people are paying completely too much for little or no results. In addition, a lot of them fall prey to bad SEO techniques. If you plan to hire an SEO pro in the future, I recommend you to follow the steps below before hiring any SEO firm or individual:

A) Find out how well-known and experienced an SEO firm is before you talk.
Do they have a considerable number of clients list?

Are they available?
B) Examine their portfolio.
What kind of results have they accomplished?

Contact a few of their clients. Were they satisfied with the SEO work that was done?
C) Consider and confirm their methods?
How will they optimize your site in the major search engines to reach your keywords?

Do they use organic methods? Some individuals or companies use doorway pages, hide text in the background, utilize re-directs and other blacklisted methods. Stay away from these because search engines consider these techniques as spam.

D) Get a least three proposals from other SEO companies.
Look at each one carefully. Are there similarities? Proposals will assist you know which companies are honest and which are trying to sell you something that doesn't work.

What is the cost? The cheapest isn't always the best; however, the highest price may not be attached to a complete and feasible course of action. Try to find an individual or a company that will give you what you want within your SEO financial plan.

E) Get everything in writing.
Look over the document carefully. Be sure it covers everything you have discussed, including methods of achieving your desired results. Have the copies signed by both parties. If the job is a large one you may want to consult a lawyer.

F) Clearly state the terms of payment.
While most SEO companies will not do any work for free or agree to a results based pay scale, many knowledgeable SEO professionals will not shy away from a base plus performance incentive package. I am not a firm believer in prepaid contracts. The majority of SEO professionals will abide by the 50% up front, 50% upon completion standard. Make sure all financial terms are as clearly defined in your contract as the actual scope of work. This will protect all parties involved in the event that expectations are not met.

All in all, try to do your best to train yourself on SEO. Have a basic understanding of SEO terminology and SEO methodology. Anyone offering SEO services should not have a problem explaining how they intend to get you results.

Sourcing for search engine optimisation company that helps you get more clients? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

How to Use Search Engine Optimization

If you have an online business and you have been trying to grow it with your website, have you ever thought about using SEO?

Believe it or not, many business owners are not familiar with search engine optimization and do not exactly understand what it is or how it works.  Here, we will talk about how your website will be able to function better because you will be using this process and what some of the benefits are.  We will also touch on how you can optimize your website quickly, easily and effectively, so you will gain a good customer base and truly get more and more sales and in turn, more profit!

One thing that you need to remember whenever it comes to optimization services is that you can do it yourself, however there are companies out there that specialize in optimizing websites and they know all of the right keywords and know exactly how to drive traffic to your website quickly and easily.  A company can be costly though, so if you do not have the funds just yet, you may want to start out doing the process yourself and then move to a company as soon as you have the funds.

Now that you know some ways that you can use SEO on your website, the next thing that we are going to touch on is how it can help drive traffic to your website.  Search engine optimization actually is a process that involves keywords and the use of keywords on your website, as mentioned above and when your website is optimized, you will see a huge increase in traffic as well as customers, which is why you got into an online business in the first place!

Sourcing for seo marketing company that makes your business grows? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the basic skills you need to know and understand in order to make money online. This article gives you a brief overview of what SEO is and how you can apply it to your website.

If you're interested in making money online, there are two key things your website has to accomplish. It has to be seen by a ton of visitors. (We call that "traffic".) And, some large proportion of your visitors need to do whatever it is you want them to do--fill out a form, download your book, click through to your affiliate site and buy the product. (We call this "conversions".)
SEO addresses the first of these two concerns--traffic.

There are a zillion ways of getting traffic. You can pay for it with pay per click, for instance. Or, you can create it through manipulating your web page content so the page naturally appears in the top ten results every time someone searches on whatever keyword your page is focused on.

The process of manipulating your content so Google and other search engines naturally return your page near the top of their organic search is what SEO is all about.
Let's look at how you accomplish this.
First off, let's understand what I mean by "organic search results".
When you search Google for a particular term, you get the search engine results page (SERP) with the results of your search on it. That page is broken up into three sections.

1. At the top are two search results. These are almost always spots the advertiser has paid for via Google AdWords.
2. Along the right-hand side are a list of ads. These, too, are paid for with Google AdWords.
3. Starting two lines down from the top and running down the rest of the page are what we call your "organic search results".

Organic search results are not paid for. They are the results that Google thinks will best fulfill your search term.

Independently of returning results for searches, Google is busy cataloging web pages. They have software called "spiders" that comb the Internet returning web page addresses and content. Google makes a sort of map of these web pages, so that when you search on a particular term, they can return the web pages that are already cataloged, which seem to best fit your particular search term.
Google's whole mission in life is to return the most relevant pages possible for your search term. (It really is! This is their corporate mantra.)

So, the goal of SEO is to get your web page to rank as high as possible in Google's organic search results.

Sourcing for search engine marketing companies that makes your business grows? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

SEO Training (Part 3)

You spend countless hours designing the perfect webpage only to find out a couple of days later that your published content does not sit on the radar of the giant search engine providers. So why is this? Let's look at a couple of scenarios that could cause those hardworking search engine bots to overlook your webpage.

(a.) You include forms on your website that require users to input information before they can see your content - There are various reasons that you may have a form on your webpage: you may want to capture a users personal information in order to setup an account for them or you may want them to complete a marketing survey or it could simply be a password protected website. Your intentions may be sincere but could have an adverse affect on whether the content that sits behind those forms can be found and indexed by the search engines. Bots will not try to attempt filling out forms so any links that are connected to those forms will be overlooked by the crawlers.

(b.) Your webpages may literally have thousands of links pointing to it - In reality, search engine bots can only crawl on a certain number of links on a webpage at a time. This is done purposely in order to reduce spam and make the rankings between webpages conservative. That being said, there will be a good probability that those bots will overlook some of those webpages that are accessible by those huge number of links.

(c.) The "Meta Robots Tag" - The meta robots tag is used by the web master to restrict access to the webpage by the robots. Why would a web site owner do that you may ask? Well, simply put, in addition to the good search engine bot and crawlers there are also malicious bots as well so the meta robots tag would protect your web content from them, but in the process you may end up restricting good bots as well.

(d.) Using JavaScript code for your links - Best practices suggest that you use HTML links as these are easily read by search engines as opposed to using links that are embedded within JavaScript code - search engines have a hard time reading these links and hence give little attention to them.

(e.) The use of the "Robots.txt" file - This file has the same function as the meta robots tag in that it polices the links that are on the webpage and blocks spiders and crawlers from traversing them. Be careful when using the robots.txt file because you may also block legitimate crawlers from finding your content through those links.

So, by understanding how code works and knowing what search engine bots can and cannot read when it comes to your links you can greatly enhance or optimize your webpages for search engines.

Seeking for search engine company that helps you generate more leads from Google? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

What exactly is SEO or Search Engine Optimization and how does it impact your online presence? In it's simplest definition, it's basically the process of first selecting the most appropriate keyword(s) or keyword phrases you want your website or webpage to be recognized for, then subsequently structuring your website or pages so that this particular keyword phrase will ultimately appear in the search results if and when someone searches for that particular phrase. Confused? Hopefully this will make a little more sense as you read on.

The "essence" of SEO involves fine tuning or optimizing your website content (the text that is contained within your website's pages) along with the HTML and "Meta Tag" coding that doesn't necessarily appear for humans, but is fundamentally important to what your browser sees and how it interprets your content - this is called on-page SEO. It also involves an appropriate link strategy or methodology of applying anchor text links from pages within your site as well as links to and from other external sites which is called OFF-page SEO. The more links to your website from other relevant and topically related external sources, the more authority your site is considered to have for that topic.

The most popular search engines are obviously Google, Yahoo, MSN Search and AOL and there are a ton of other 2nd tier search engines as well (like 7search, searchfeed, enhance, kanoodle, to name just a few). Each and every one of these search engines protect their methods and ranking algorithms very highly as they obviously don't want to let out their secrets to people who might use this knowledge to "game" the search engines. It is in the absolute best interests of every search engine to always provide the most relevant information as possible when someone uses their search engine to look for information. Imagine if you used a search engine and no matter what term you searched for, you were presented with non-relevant junk. You'd likely never use that search engine again!

Having said that, every search engine takes into account a vast array of factors when determining what sites or pages appear at the top of their search engine listings. These factors and the weight each carries are in a constant state of flux - continually striving to improve their listing results. These algorithms differ so greatly between each search engine that often a webpage that ranks #1 in one particular search engine may rank #200 in another search engine.

Contrary to popular belief, new content or websites don't need to be "submitted" to search engines in order to be listed. One single back link from an already well established site will prompt the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider or examine its entire contents if structured properly. If no external links are present, it could take a few weeks or even months from the time a site is created for the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site. So, it definitely pays to have links to your new web property from other already established sites which are already being spidered. The higher the authority of the site you are getting a link from, the more weight that link carries, and the quicker you'll get indexed.

If all this doesn't make any sense at all and you have no ideas what the best keywords are to target for your particular website, there are TONS of 3rd party companies out there who would be more than happy to help you out, myself included.

Seeking for search engine marketing company that improves your search engine ranking? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, popularly known as SEO, is the way of attracting more and more visitors to a website and thus increasing rank of the website. As its name suggests, search engine optimization is typically related with search engines. There are lots of search engines around the web. Google, Yahoo, Bing etc are some of the mostly used search engines. Suppose, you want to search about dental hospitals around the USA using Google. When you search you will notice that lots of links have appeared. There may be thousands or millions of websites related to dental hospitals around the USA. But it is not possible that all the websites appear in the first page. Usually for Google, ten links or websites appear in each page. You may wonder why it is important for a website to appear in the first few pages.

This is a fact that people tend to click on websites that appear in the first few pages. It is rare that a person will search about five hundred pages and then click on the link of your website there. So, websites that appear in the first few pages get most of the traffic. We all know that the more you get traffic the more you have the chance to shine in internet marketing. Internet marketing has become a global business now-a-days. So, it is highly important for you and for the growth of your business that your website appear in the first few pages.

Now the question may arise what you can do to place your website in the first few pages or, possibly, in the first page. Here the SEO works. The main objective of SEO is to optimize your sites in such a way that your website appear in the first few pages. So, we may say that the websites that are optimized well appear in the first page. There are some things to follow if you are to optimize your site well.

Firstly, the contents of your website should be relevant. You must have some idea how you can attract the visitors about a specific thing or product. Suppose, you want to sell electronic parts online. So, your website should contain adequate information about the electronic parts you intend to sell. Besides, the keywords should not be irrelevant. It often misleads people and they get irritated by this type of things. You need to create links to different high ranked websites and thus attract more and more visitors. It will help the rank of your website to grow up. Search engines can read only texts. So, it is better not to use images, video or flash player to describe about your product. However, what is most important is the title of your website. The title should be relevant to your business. It will increase the chance of being in the first page for your website. The URL of the website should not be too long to grasp. It should also be relevant with the business you want to enlarge.

These are the basics of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. If you are interested about SEO you need to learn about the pros and cons of SEO. Hope, the article will help you learn about search engine optimization and grow up your business.

Seeking for best search engine optimization company that improves your search engine ranking? Look for Dougles Chan - The Search Engine Guru.

SEO: What Does It Mean?

If you're new to Internet Marketing you may have come across the term SEO. You've probably even wondered what it means and what it's about. Like you, I was quite bewildered by the term when I first begin to look at Internet Marketing as a way to make money online. In this brief article, I would like to give you some basics of SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization and the reason why it is so important to anyone doing business online.

What is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization basically centers on keyword research. There are many different keyword analyzers that you can use to help you in this process. Google has a free keyword analyzer tool. Just do a search on Google to find it. In order to drive your website to the top of the page rankings, you have to use the right keywords and ultimately these keywords will drive the right traffic to your site in order for you to make sales. Without driving traffic to your site, the chances of you being successful are zero to none.

Strategic Placement of Keywords
It's important to place your keywords in strategic places throughout your site. Try putting keywords in your title tag of your post or webpages. Also, try to put them within the article/post about 3-6 times.

On-page Optimization, Off-page Optimization and Back Links
Two common terms that you will most likely encounter in Internet Marketing are on -page optimization and off-page optimization. The difference between the two can be summed up as follows: On-page optimization refers to things that you can do on your web page to better promote traffic to your site. An example would be keyword research, putting links in your articles optimizing your title tags, headlines, sub headlines within your article. Off- page optimization refers to things that you can do off your webpage to drive your page rankings and increase targeted visitor traffic to your website. An example of this would be building back links. The term back link basically happens when a link from another site links to your site. Back links are another way to build your sites search popularity. This can be done by using social bookmarking sites. Two such sites are Social Marker and Only Wire. Once set up, these sites will generally send your article to multiple sites with the click of your mouse.

SEO is very important to any successful internet business. Blending the right mix of on-site and off-site optimization, as well as evaluating, re-evaluating and utilizing the right mix should drive your SEO search rankings to the top.

An article by Scotts Digital -  Best SEO branding and search engine optimisation company in Singapore.

Do Alt and Title Attributes Help With SEO?

A highly talked about topic is the SEO world is, "Do Alt and Title Attributes Help with SEO?" Well to help shed a little light on this topic, I did some research and came up with a few good conclusions. I'm not suggesting these are 100% accurate but from my initial research they seem to be right on target. I welcome all other SEO experts to share their opinions on this topic by posting their comments - because as we all know, every little bit of information can help us all.

Well to start, I want to provide a brief introduction of each attribute to help you understand their "intended" purpose.

The alt attribute is, popularly and incorrectly referred to as an alt tag and is commonly misunderstood to provide a tool-tip for an image. Both of these are incorrect. First of all, the alt attribute is an attribute and not a tag. The alt attribute was always intended to provide alternative information about an element and is generally required for image and image maps and is not meant to be used to display a tool-tip. The alt attribute, can be used for the img, area, and input elements to help provide alternative information to users who cannot display that element in their browser. As an example, here is how you would define an alt attribute for an image: <img src="imagepath.gif" alt="this is our company logo">. If the image is not displayed the text, "this is our company logo" will be displayed in the place of the image.

The title attribute, on the other hand, is meant to provide additional information about an element, which is displayed as a tool-tip by most graphical browsers. The title attribute can be used to describe any HTML element except for base, basefont, head, html, meta, param, script, and title.
An excellent use for the title attribute is to provide descriptive text within an anchor tag to let the users know where the link will direct them if they click on it. When the user places their mouse over the link, it will display a small tool-tip displaying the title text that you've provided. An example would be

So as you can see the alt and title attributes have different purposes but how do they affect SEO? This is the true question we all want to know and understand. Do they help with SEO or are they simply ignored by the search engines? I tested several different scenarios, all in Google, and after my research I've come to the following conclusions.

Alt attributes seem to be picked up by Google, whether or not there was a link within that element. Some SEO experts have mentioned that if there is no link, then the alt attribute would not be indexed... from my research I've found this to be false.

Going further, I noticed in one testing scenario, if there was an image with an alt attribute and a link to a completely other site, that other site was also indexed by Google when searching for the text within the alt attribute. It was difficult for me to verify this multiple times but I definitely verified it in one testing scenario.

I also took this one step further and analyzed my results with what Google Images was displaying. I immediately noticed that Google sometimes takes the alt attribute text and provides this text as the description for the image in Google Images, something that is very valuable to know and understand when doing SEO for your website.

In all of my testing scenarios, the title attribute do not seem to be picked up by Google and adding a link to that element did not seem to affect this result at all. If you really think about it, this makes complete sense. Since you can place title attributes in almost every element of a website, it would be very easy for a user to affect the search engines by keyword stuffing throughout their web pages, something that Google and the other major players do not want, hence why title attributes do not help with SEO.

In my opinion, you should use the title attribute to help with your user's experience and not with SEO. Since tool-tips provide more useful information to the user about images, links, fields and much more, you will help your users to understand what is happening around the web page.
So from my testing I've determined that a title attribute is meant to provide tool-tips to the user for user experience, whereas the alt attribute is helpful in terms of providing alternative information to the user when their browser cannot display an image or input element and helping to increase the SEO of a website. My recommendation is to pay close attention to when, where and how you are using your alt attributes. If they help with SEO, then you should pay close attention to what you are adding.

When adding images always be sure to add an alt attribute to the code of each image. If you do not have one, then just specify a blank one, such as alt="". Also, be sure to add alternative text that is relevant to that image, the content on that page and be sure not to specify an alt attribute greater than 100 characters in length, as this may be perceived as spamming.

I hope you find my brief overview on the topic of, "Do Alt and Title Attributes Help with SEO?" to be beneficial for you and your business. I'm sure one could dive deep into this topic, spending weeks determining the differences between how Google, Yahoo! and the other major search engines handle title and alt attributes with regards to SEO for a website.

I welcome all comments and/or feedback.

A SEO article by Scotts Digital - Best digital branding agency and search engine optimisation companies in Singapore.

SEO Optimization Top Tips!

I've been in the art of SEO for quite a while now, and I've had success, when I first started though, I just hit brick wall after brick wall and just decided to create a new website each time I hit these problems. SEO can be a real pain for the first-timer. And it can put you off it for life! But don't despair, these tips I have outlined below will help you to increase your site's visibility to search engines and increase that all important Google PageRank!

First you need to decide what keywords you want your site to be related to, this is important and is where most people fall at their first hurdle. You can use good keywords to help you with this, follow the easy steps on the website on how to use and you can find out which keywords would be best to target your site with.

What you need to do now is to include your new keywords into your site! Use H1 tags near the top of the page to emphasize your keywords and to show search engines that these are important. It is also best to place your keywords at the very top and very bottom of your website. Emphasizing texts with bold and italics also goes a long way in SEO, this also tells the search engine that this keyword is important. Wherever you have spare ALT tags for your images, try and place your keywords in there, and also in the body of your website's content. Be careful though, do not overcrowd your website with your favoured keywords as this will NOT help your search engine rankings at all, try to keep them at a level like 5 instances of your keywords maximum on your page.

Include your main keyword in the TITLE tag of your webpage, for example a website about weight loss, my website title would be "Weigh Loss Tips | Examplesite.com" this is a good idea to do, it shows both search engines and users what your website is about and should hopefully boost your rankings.

When you have figured out your keywords and done the above, you need to start getting backlinks for your sire. Backlinks, these are links from other sites that are linking to yours, effectively telling search engines that other sites like your site and it is important and so it needs to be ranked higher in the search engine results. You can accomplish this by finding websites with a high PR and asking them to link to your site, this is easy if you are polite, and especially if you offer a backlink to them! When someone places a link to your site, ask them to make the anchor text the same as your main keyword, this will further increase your keyword's importance and boost your rankings.

When you have a high enough page rank and have placed your keywords well throughout your site, you will start to get higher and higher results on search engines and increased traffic
I hope this short little guide has helped people, and if it has I will be sure to post more in-depth article on this subject-matter and others!

An article by Scotts Digital - Best branding agency Singapore and best search engine optimization company in Singapore.

SEO Hijacking

There have always been rogue SEO companies who give the industry a bad name but since the economic downturn began I have noticed increased activity within the UK.

An increasing number of businesses are being cold called and email spammed with promises of first place search positions. Some of these cold callers are pushy to the point of bullying. The email spams say pretty much the same and often use disposable email addresses.

This has all started on the back of the economic recession which has seen many UK companies look to the Internet as another source of business leads. Rogue companies and individuals are using the crisis to persuade many small businesses to use their services.

On the surface this may appear to be healthy competition but underneath lies an emerging underworld of 'make a quick buck' scams.

There are many legitimate SEO companies out there who get their business either from the Internet itself or through client recommendation. These are the people who employ white hat SEO and put in the hours for their clients.

The rogue SEO's have another way of doing things. I have seen first hand evidence that they target knowingly optimised sites already ranking well and then somehow convince the client that their site cannot be found.

This tactic does not always work as thankfully many clients know when they are being hoodwinked. Unfortunately the recession has made it easier for the rogues to be more convincing. The economic crisis is affecting many UK businesses, one in particular being the building industry. As business enquiries dry up many clients assume it is because they are not doing well in the search engines.
Cue the rogues who promise more enquiries by getting the client first position in the search engines. This is where it becomes amusing as some of these companies actually quote to get the client on a high position for a keyword they already have at the top. I know of one client who was actually quoted a couple of hundred pounds to be put on the first page for a keyword that was already there. It would seem that the sheer greed of these people is making them not even bother to check if their target is already ranking.

I have taken a look at a few of these companies and their background says a lot. Tell tale signs can be spotted if you know what to look for. Sometimes a rogues website may provide very little information and contradict what the sales person would have told you. Other clues may be boasts such as 'we have been here a long time'. If the company was only incorporated around the time that the recession started to bite and the domain name is new then they most certainly have not been trading for long.

What amazed me was that when I really started to look into this I actually found other hijacked sites that still had the previous SEO companies web link on the site. I checked out the previous optimisers and they were genuinely white hat with a good reputation. I am not sure if they are even aware that this has happened yet. Basically these rogue SEO's are taking sites already optimised, charging the client all over again and then claiming the bulk of the work as their own. Many of them will tie the client down to a contract making it difficult for them to back out if they get suspicious.

My advice to those businesses with existing optimisation companies. If you have been with your company for a long term and are concerned about your optimisation then contact them first. Do not be tempted by high pressured cold call sales. If you do then you risk paying for something you already have and most likely at a higher cost.

For all the good SEO companies out there. Watch your backs. If you have many clients then it may well be worth emailing them to warn them about rogue SEO's. You may well save them a lot of money and keep their business at the same time.

An article by Scotts Digital - Best branding agency Singapore and the top search engine optimization companies in Singapore.

6 Simply Strategy Tips How to Make SEO Works

One way of improving your page rank is by using SEO or search engine optimization. While it's not a simple mission, it's also not unworkable to find your way to the top page of search results of search engines. You just need to make time to research and read about SEO in order to know more about it and how to make use of it.

On the other hand, if you want a quick knowledge about how to make SEO work for you, go through the tips below, which are some pointers about how to go about it.

1. Be careful in picking your keywords. Make sure they are appropriate

2. Register your domain name and insert a relevant keyword on that domain name, web address, and file name.

3. Familiarize yourself with the correct keyword placement. They should be found in the Meta description tags, title tags, and address of the website.

4. When you're linking, ensure that you do it in the right way. The links to pages in your website as well as your internal links should be official and useful. The incoming and external links should be related to the content of your website and its excellence should be upgraded at all times. Furthermore, the websites that chose to link to you must also be secured and can be trusted.

5. Do not copy anything from the web for your content. Avoid spamming, too.

6. Keep your page up to date, regularly do this and take out all the dead links. Ensure that your web server is dependable.

A SEO article by Scotts Digital -  Best SEO branding and best search engine optimization company in Singapore.

How Hire SEO Staff With Little or No Experience

If you want to expand your in-house team or build a team of digital marketers, it is always best to hire people who have no experience in the field of digital marketing but a whole lot of potential and train them.

However, this doesn't mean that just anyone can fit into an SEO role. There are certain unique skills and personality traits that can significantly contribute to success in digital marketing. If you are an SEO agency, here are a few things that you need to look for in a potential candidate:

1. To be successful in SEO, the prospective candidate should devote a considerable amount of time on continued learning such as attending conferences, reading blogs, and discussing and testing new methods and strategies. The ideal candidate should be someone who is an aggressive, independent learner. Ask the candidate about how they picked up a new skill and how far did they succeed in it. You can also ask him/her about the interview preparation as it shows if they're really keen about the job.

2. If your SEO outsourcing company has decided on hiring a candidate, there is a crucial factor that needs to be given due consideration - The candidate should have a fundamental knowledge of what SEO is. Go for people who have a clear and precise idea of how the Internet could be used as a tool to connect businesses with their customers. Empathy with the client, his fears or concerns and his goals is yet another factor that needs to be taken into account.

3. The potential candidate should be someone who can write well and should have attention to detail. He/she should be adept in communicating ideas.

4. Although the prospective candidate may not have any experience with analytics tools like Google Analytics and can build those skills through continuous learning, he/she must have the ability to think critically and to make use of the data to drive decisions.

5. A fresh employee might find it easier to learn SEO if he/she is net savvy. If the candidate has an active web presence, through social media networks, blogging etc, it basically suggests a general interest in the Internet. This is extremely important when it comes to learning SEO.

6. An ideal applicant for SEO should be some one who has experience in one or more of these areas -Marketing, Advertising, Public relations, APIs, Web development and design or copywriting. Hire for a smart, ambitious person who wants to pursue digital marketing as a career opportunity, rather than a route to make money.

A SEO article by Scotts Digital - Best digital branding agency and best search engine optimization company in Singapore.

5 SEO Best Practices to Get Better Rankings

The biggest need of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to make get your own website rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs). This can help you to get found by potential customers and your target audience. However, this is easier said than done. Millions of webmasters are competing with each other on the virtual sphere to edge out one another. Even search engines have grown more complex, with advanced algorithms and state of the art technologies. Here are some excellent SEO best practices that can aid you in boosting your website rankings and get your business at the top of the heap.

Take Care While Using Java Script Menus
As you probably know, Java Script is a special programming language that is used in order to make pages of websites interactive in nature. These run on the computer of visitors and are used for creating online quizzes and opinion polls. But Java Scripts are not recognized by search engines. Naturally, you need to use these only meagerly. You should develop a site map if some areas of your site consist of Java Scripts.

Use Relevant SEO

It is important for you to use SEO with care. Although the right keywords will pull the search engines to your content and make your website rank higher, you should use only those that are relevant. Do not use keywords or meta-tags that do not have any relation with your page content. Otherwise, your site may end up getting penalized. On the other hand, you can underline or bold up relevant keywords to highlight them well for search engine crawlers.

Update your website regularly

This is one of the SEO best practices that are often ignored. You should regularly update your website content if you wish to get your website achieve high rankings on SERPs. You should also keep watch of your competitors and change the keywords in an according manner.

Place tags on images on your website

Many people tend to ignore the high amount of traffic that they can get from the images on their website, if only they can optimize the image alt tags with the most suitable keywords. With the right keywords, you can give an accurate description of your images and make them readable for search engine robots.

Use the right keywords

One of the most important and cardinal rules of SEO is to make use of the best keywords and optimize the content of your website in a way that makes it easily crawl-able for search engines. You can make use of tools like Google Keyword Planner, Keyword Eye, SEO Book Keyword Tool, Semrush and Wordtracker - most of which can be used for free. You can use these to find out keywords related to the niche that your website deals with and get the most appropriate keywords that people look for. You have to integrate these into the content of your web pages in an organic manner, so that they are not treated as spam by the search engine robots. With proper usage of keywords, you can achieve high rankings on SERPs and boost your business.

An SEO article by Dougles Chan, The Search Engine Guru.

What is Search Engine Optimization and How it Can Benefit Your Business

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization, which is also known as SEO, is the process of increasing the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via organic or search results. The higher your company's website ranks on Search Engine Result Page (SERP), the more searchers will visit your site.

As a marketing strategy for increasing site's relevance, SEO consultants consider how search algorithms work and what people search for. A SEO process may involve a site's coding and structure, content and copywriting, site presentation, as well as fixing other problems that will prevent search engines from indexing your company website. If your company's website is not indexed by search engines, there will be no chance at all for your site to get high visibility rankings on search engines. Therefore, it is extremely important for businesses to take note of SEO and make sure that their websites are properly indexed by search engines.

The term "SEO" can also refer to "Search Engine Optimizer". This is an industry term that refers to agencies and consultants that carry out search engine optimization process on behalf of their clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Every agency and consultant has their own SEO methodology; therefore they may use different methods to achieve high organic rankings for websites. In most cases, in order to have effective SEO, it may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics will be incorporated into website development and design. That is why almost all credible SEO agencies and consultants will first look at the design and back-end architecture of a website before starting any SEO process. This will ensure that SEO is carried out effectively.

Search Engine Optimization as a Marketing Strategy for Businesses

So how should businesses use SEO as a marketing strategy? The primary objective of implementing SEO to a company's website is to drive targeted traffic to it. Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search result from top to bottom and left to right, looking for relevant results. Therefore, if your site is near the top of organic listings rankings (organic listings refer to the web results that are listed on the left hand side of the SERP), it will most likely increases the number of searchers who will visit your site.

A successful online marketing campaign may usually involve SEO, but it also consists of the use of paid advertising on search engines, building high quality websites to engage and persuade site visitors take action either through enquiries or online sales, setting up analytic programs to allow site owners to measure their successes and improving a site's conversion rate.

Benefits of SEO for Businesses
Businesses can benefit from SEO in a lot of ways, be it to increase brand awareness, get sales leads or increase sales revenue. The following is a list of benefits that businesses can get from SEO:

o Get more targeted traffic. SEO can increase the number of visitors to your site who are actively searching for your product or service.

o Increase brand awareness. SEO can give your brand a high international profile. You can also use SEO to create brand awareness for any new service or product by optimizing related product/service key phrases to rank higher on search engines.

o Marketing your brand 24/7. With SEO, your website will get exposure 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - without stopping.

o Higher sales. As SEO brings you targeted traffic, it can mean increased sales of your product or service.

o Long term positioning. Once a properly optimized & designed site is in place, rankings on organic listings should be consistent whereas the cost for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising is ongoing.

o More value for dollars. Once your company's website has achieved high organic rankings for various key phrases, you will not have to pay for each visit. Whereas for PPC Advertising, to enjoy high ranking visibility on search engines, you need to pay for each click or visit to your site.

However, to make sure that you have a successful SEO implementation, you need to make sure that your dedicated SEO agency abides to the guidelines of search engine when optimizing your site...

White Hat SEO VS Black Hat SEO

When it comes to SEO, there are 2 schools of thoughts - White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO. White hat SEO is techniques that search engines recommend as good practice and black hat SEO is those techniques that search engines do not approve of. For SEO consultants who practise white hat SEO, they tend to produce results that last a long time. Black hat SEO techniques may get a website to rank well initially, but the site will eventually be banned either temporary or permanently once search engines discover what they are doing.

So it is very important for you to know the best practices in the SEO industry and make sure that the SEO agency that is handling your account uses techniques that conform to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception.

White hat technique is generally summed up as creating content for users, not the search engines. The content that is created should be easily accessible to search engine spiders, rather than intending to trick the algorithms from its intended purpose. So, the general rule of thumb is to stay on the safe side by creating content that is relevant to your target audience. Search engines value relevancy - they will definitely want to rank a site higher their organic listings if the content on the site is what searchers are looking for.

Black hat technique usually involves techniques that attempt to improve rankings that are disapproved by search engines, or involve deception. One common black hat technique is to use hidden text, either as text coloured similar to the background of the website, or positioned off-screen. Another common technique known as cloaking is to load a different page depending on whether the page is accessed by a human or a search engine spider.

Search engines will penalize sites which use black hat techniques, either by reducing their organic rankings or even eliminating them from their database completely. This is a very costly mistake on the business point of view as you will lose out a lot of grounds as your competitors are enjoying free organic traffic from search engines due to their high rankings for major key phrases. One infamous example was in February 2006, whereby Google removed BMW Germany from its database for use of black hat methods. However, the company has quickly apologised and cleaned up the offending pages and were eventually restored to Google's database.

Therefore, it is very important to make sure that your SEO agency is moving away from black hat methods. You will not want to be blacklisted by search engines which will translate into loss in sales and profits.

Keyword Research - The Key Factor to Successful SEO Implementation

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN Live and AOL get a lot of searches every day. Before you implement SEO to your website, you must know what key phrases or keywords your target audience is using to search for the product or service that you offer.

Whether you like it or not, there is a good chance that many people have never heard of your company. These people might be your customers, if only they can find you on search engines and buying from you. It is well accepted that building awareness is the first step to land a new customer. For example, when someone sees a TV advertisement about that new car, you hope that he or she is in the market for a car at the moment. However, relatively few people are in that situation at any one time. Majority of people who saw the TV advertisement have no interest in buying a car at the moment. But someday they will. So advertisers know that the messages - the model of the car and company name in their commercials will stick in viewers' minds, who might remember the message later when they are ready to buy a car. It is the same for SEO.

Searchers might not know that your company offers a particular product or service unless they see your site listed on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Unless they see your listings, they will not think of you. Most of the time, searchers looking for a product or service for the first time might not be aware of any specific company or brand name as they are just gathering information. However, according to a research done by search marketing consultancy iProspect, more than 55 percent of searchers expect to see big brands listed at the top of search results.

The same study also shows that over 66 percent of searchers believe that sites that are listed at the top of search results are the top companies in their field. So can you imagine how this affects your company's brand awareness? If your company's website is not listed at the top of search results, they will not see your company as a "big brand" in their mind. Therefore, it is extremely important for you to optimize keywords or key phrases that your target prospects will use to find the product or service that you are offering.

So what types of keywords or key phrases should you choose? Businesses should target keywords that are relevant to the content of their websites. Basically, keywords can be categorized into 3 types, which are: "Too Hot Keywords", "Just Right Keywords", and "Too Cold Keywords". Too Hot keywords are single word search terms like "Aircon" and "Translation" which do not seem to be targeted enough to get conversions. These keywords usually bring in high search volume (which is naturally tempting to optimize) but the conversion may not be as ideal as targeting keywords which falls into the "Just Right" category. (For examples: Aircon Servicing, Translation Agency Singapore") By optimizing those "Just Right" keywords, businesses can get more targeted traffic to their websites and increase the chance of conversions.

Choosing the right keywords is the real beginning of any SEO effort. After you have determined the right set of keywords to target, you can start the work of search engine optimization.

Why do you need to outsource SEO?
SEO is a very time-consuming process as continual fine-tuning and monitoring need to be done. Therefore, it is advisable for you to hire a search engine optimization agency to plan out the optimization plan for your company.

A professional SEO agency will look at your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. Once they start to optimize your website, they will provide recommendations and monitoring reports for you to know the progress of it.

Last but not least, in order to achieve successful optimization results, it is very important for your SEO agency to work closely with your website designer if you have your own IT department. This is because your company website needs to be both visually appealing and search engine friendly in order to achieve high organic rankings, as well as conversions.

An article by Search Engine Guru - Dougles Chan