Rob Emmerson’s SEO Blog

You’ve probably heard the standard advice about keywords.. “Find lots of keywords that are relevant to whatever you’re selling, get lots of traffic, and you’ll make lots of sales”. Sounds sensible, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, it’s rarely that simple.

To make it clear why that is, let’s start with an extreme example. For a site selling horses, the phrase “horse pictures” is clearly relevant. In many ways, it looks like an ideal phrase. It gets quite a lot of searches. There is very little competition in organic listings. You can get very prominent positions for this phrase cheaply on most pay-per-click search engines. But you are very unlikely to ever sell a horse using the phrase “horse pictures.”

Why doesn’t the phrase “horse pictures” generate sales? Because the people who type this phrase into the search engines are either the parents of children who want to look at pictures of horses or the children themselves. In almost every case they have no interest in buying a horse. Worse yet, they have no place to put a horse if they did purchase one. The most persuasive sales copy in the world couldn’t sell these people horses.

The phrase “horse pictures” connects you with the wrong person. Many other phrases connect you with the right person, but at a time when they are in the wrong mindset. If you have the right person in the wrong mindset, you will probably fail if you try to bully them into buying. But you can often make sales by leading them into the desired mindset.

How do you change someone’s mindset? It’s often easier than it sounds. Just figure out what the person wants and give them exactly that. Then immediately follow up by offering what you want them to buy.

Continuing with horses, here is an example. Imagine that most of your horses are sold to dressage enthusiasts. Let’s say that the big dressage event is called “Dressage 2005” (not a real Read the rest of this entry »

Getting an advantage in the competitive online marketplace can be quite challenging. Once online marketers start to see some success, some have a tendency to put their head down and focus solely on the business at hand. This can lead to missing some of the other opportunities to gain business, like using SEO.

The most successful webmasters have some understanding of SEO and how it affects their websites. There are many myths about SEO and what it is, but even if you have never heard the term it can be easy to apply and benefit from SEO.

SEO is the process of optimizing your website from a technical and stylistic viewpoint. The technical optimization takes the form of using the proper Meta Tags, Alt Image Tags, and off-page optimization techniques. The stylistic adjustments are made in order to make the content more search engine friendly such as keyword density, bold text, title text, headings and other ways to highlight the most important keywords on your site, so the search engines can deliver accurate results to users.

The natural outcome of optimizing a site is increased traffic from search engines, and ranking higher in the results that are delivered to their users.

SEO won’t necessarily change the look of your site. Although, sometimes it is a good idea to make structural changes to a site to make it easier for the search engine to read the page. Many times some subtle changes in your headings, focusing on your keywords in text, adding content can make a big difference in your overall SEO.

Depending on how competitive your chosen keywords are, you can expect to see results from your SEO efforts fairly quickly, sometimes in just a few days. However, when you are starting your SEO effort you should start with some broader, less competitive keyword terms and work up to more competitive ones. This will allow your site to gain momentum and gain ranking for the more competitive terms as you work your way up the search results.

Tracking your website statistics is the best way to track your SEO and know if your SEO efforts are bringing the desired results. Most hosting sites offer basic statistics for this, or check out Google Analytics.

When you are analyzing this data, pay attention to where your traffic is coming from. If you see increasing referrals from Google, MSN, Yahoo or another search engine, then your efforts are working. Next you should watch where your traffic is coming from geographically. You wouldn’t want to attract visitors from India, if you only ship to the US. If your product or service is available worldwide, then you can see where your product might be hot.

If you are using other advertising methods like pay per click, or Banner Ads, direct them to special landing pages so you don’t skew your results with traffic from paid advertising.

SEO is the best way to drive highly targeted, traffic to your site and best of all it can be free. SEO can easily be incorporated into your advertising and marketing efforts, and the increase in traffic, and ultimately sales will make the effort well worth the time.

Increases traffic

The basis for all revenue on your web site is that you get customers arriving at your site from search engines or from other sources in great numbers. It seems a simple concept that the more traffic you have, the more likelihood that some of the visitors are going to purchase your product. Search engine optimization helps increase the traffic, because the techniques utilized correctly help to improve your visibility on the search engine results page. Used correctly, SEO techniques make your page move to the top of the list where visitors are more likely to view and use the link.

Improves your page ranking

Search engine optimization techniques will do just as the name suggests–optimize the appearance of your business web page so that search engine spiders will view it more favorably. Because your page ranking is reflected by how high on the list your page appears when the search engine results are returned to those who have placed a search query, the goal to improve the page ranking of your web page is of key importance. Using keywords in a way that optimizes the algorithm factors set by the search engines will increase your ranking in most instances.

Gives you a better web page

Search engine optimization improves the over all design of your web page, since you must think about how to make best use of product descriptions, information and visually appealing factors in the design. It’s easy to type in a few words about your business, add some dancing teddy bears and a lot of bold letters, bright colors and exclamation points, but this can have a negative effect to a person looking for genuine information about a product or service. They may stay only long enough Read the rest of this entry »

Why use it?

Search engine marketing is helpful in a number of ways. The overriding goal is to increase the revenue by increasing the number of visitors to your web site. Additionally, the visitors must show a high conversion rate. In other words, the visitors who are directed to your web site should be those who are targeted. They look for a product on the internet, are directed to your web site and are convinced to purchase the product you offer. Although search engine spiders don’t read web pages–people do–it is still important to provide enough information in the text of your web page that searchers are directed to your page for the answers they seek.

How does it work?

Search engine marketing is both very simple and as complex as you want it to be. It is simple in the sense that if you use a variety of keywords–ones that the searcher is likely to enter in a query box on your web page, the search engine spider will rate those favorably and your page will be returned as a response. However, this doesn’t mean that just listing a lot of possible keywords on your page will make it rank higher than others selling the same product or service. This is where the complexity of the practice enters in. The web page must be readable and informative to the human reader as well.

Using tricks of the trade

You can take advantage of several tricks of the trade that are perfectly acceptable to the search engine robots who visit your web site in order to index it and provide page rankings. Search engine marketing, for example that includes the key word in the title or subtitle of your page is acceptable, in fact, encouraged. Take advantage of the images descriptions on your web page. This not only allows the visually Read the rest of this entry »

Let me try reading your mind. You’re thinking, "What? Google proof my site with links? I thought links helped Google rank my pages higher?"

And you’re absolutely right. They do.

But links do something else. They give you a backup source of traffic for those days, weeks, or months when Google spasms out. Something content alone can’t do.

So while content and on-page optimization count, to me links are what separates the men from the boys.

Now links come in three flavors:

• Directory Links

• Reciprocal Links

• One Way Links

Let’s briefly cover each.

====> Directory Links

Unlike some, I’m not especially enamoured with directory links. For me their role has been to serve as the initial link(s) for a site so Google can find it. Other than that I find them more trouble than they’re worth. Unless they’re specifically targeted to your niche.

Still if you gotta have some let’s round up the usual free or "for fee" suspects:

• www.joeant.com

• www.jayde.com

• www.goguides.org

• www.skaffe.com

• www.dmoz.org

• www.bluefind.com

Simply pony up some cash for express review and you can get yourself decent directory links in no time.

====> Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal links cost you nothing but time. They’re pretty much forever. And if your site is link worthy, that is has decent content and pagerank (PR), you should have no trouble getting at least a third of those you approach to swap links with you.

Even better each link back to your site has the potential to deliver up a heapin’ helpin’ of

• PR

• Traffic

• Link reputation (from the link text)

Since they’re there for the asking, make sure you’re spending a couple hours a week soliciting link trades.

====> One Way Links

Some feel one way links carry more ranking firepower. I’m not so sure. But there are many ways to get one way links. My two favorites? Articles and rented links.

Article Links

I know every one and his dead dog touts article marketing as a way to gain exposure, links and presumably traffic. But they really do work. Maybe not overnight. But if you hang in there you’ll find you can build your online reputation and create a steady stream of traffic to your site too.

Yet their real fire power is unleashed if they appear in ezines read by your prospects.

Also when I’m on the prowl for link partners, I keep my eyes open for anything that would suggest the site posts guest articles. When I find one, I fire off the link swap request and submit an article. Hey, a two-fer!

Now if you don’t Read the rest of this entry »

There are always do-it-yourselfers in any business, so it should be no surprise that many successful web promoters are doing their own SEO. Many web guru’s started by fumbling around the internet until they found the right formula for success. The web itself has evolved as a result of individual experimentation and the sharing their knowledge.

The target for SEO continues to evolve, techniques that once worked, now are less effective. New types of promotion like social bookmarking are growing in importance. It is not necessary to be an expert in SEO to promote your own website, but you do need the basics of good SEO practices. So, if you are looking to start “doing it yourself” keep these points in mind as you develop your plan.

1.Unique Search Engine-Friendly Content

One of the most important aspects is your unique web content that is laid out in a search engine friendly way. Flash and text embedded within images are not read by search engines. Make sure your images have alt image tags and that you use your most important keywords in plain text on the site. Highlight these important keywords in titles, heading and hyperlinks. Use your keywords as anchor text in links rather than using images. Never try to stuff keywords on your site by making them too small to read, or making it the same color as the background. Instead use your SEO keywords frequently in the page copy, but keep it to 3-5% on the page.

Once you have your copy, check to see if it is being crawled by the search engines. On Google enter “site:://www.yourwebaddress” to verify if your page has been indexed. If your site is brand new it will take some time for it to show up in the index. There are many factors that play into being indexed including age of the site, duplicate content (copy and pasting content, or cookie cutter affiliate websites), Java script rather than HTML links, bad site layout (too many sub-directories),long dynamic URL’s with special characters (question marks or any other database characters, #, &, *, !, %) known as “spider traps,” or orphaned pages.

2. Do Your Keywords Homework Thoroughly

Keyword research is the most important step in the process. If you get this wrong you could be wasting all of your time and effort promoting your site. Start your research with the broadest terms to describe your product or service. Utilize the keyword research services that are available to narrow the terms and find variations of those terms. I like to use Google AdWords, Keyword Discovery, and Wordtracker.

Your goal is to find phrases that are highly searched and optimize your site like the top sites in those keywords. If the keyword is not used much, then you will not draw much traffic by using them. Remember to use the most focused keywords to optimize; because, general terms will be much harder to gain in rank, and the traffic you get will be less relevant.

3. Get In-bound Links to Your Site

There are many ways to get links to your site, some traditional and others not so traditional. This may be intimidating at first, but it is very important for your SEO and PageRank. Google counts a link as a “vote” for your website when calculating PageRank. The more links you have, the more votes you have, and the higher your PageRank. Much like any popularity contest, not all votes are equal, links from higher ranking pages count for more than lower ranked sites.

If you have taken the time to create unique original content, you are already miles ahead of much of the competition. If you are fortunate and create something very unique, you may get many links, however, most webmasters won’t just link to your site for no reason.

You can try trading links, but the effectiveness of link exchanges is decreasing, and if you are in a highly competitive market they won’t help much. Recently, paid links have been looked down upon by Google, so save your money. Volumes could be written on linking strategies, but for the beginner, stick to these techniques to start.

Issue a press release and include a link to your site.

Comment on blogs, public forums and articles with content related to your site.

Put links on your other sites leading to your new site, or have a friend link to your site.

Submit articles relating to your niche and include a link in the resource section to your site.

Use the many social bookmarking and social media outlets to link to your site.

4. Ride The Social Media Wave

Online communities developed for networking and socializing is at an all time high. Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Technorati and others allow members to store their favorite sites and share them with others online. These sites can also be used to create “buzz” about your own site.

If you are trying to generate sales from your efforts, then you should avoid promotional hype on these sites. The social sites are so powerful because they are based on the public’s interest. If you don’t have anything unique or interesting to share, these sites will not work for you.

Don’t be shy on the social sites about the site you are promoting. Network around with other users, share relevant content, be creative with your bookmark title and tell people you know in the real world about the content you have on the social sites. Quality content that you simply share with others will lead to your success on these sites.

Use these points as a general guide to plan your SEO. If you are established or are just starting out in your SEO efforts the advice will help, but remember that persistence and patience are your biggest assets when it comes to website promotion.

When you are trying to develop your backlink strategy it is important to understand the different ways to gain links to your site. The easiest way to get links to your site is by doing a link exchange.

Link exchanges are done with similar sites with both sites placing a link to the other. Link exchanges have been penalized by search engines because of heavy spam but there still benefits to doing a link exchange, so don’t be afraid to try.

The best links to get our inbound one way links. These links are sometimes difficult to get because there is no exchange. It requires the other web site to link to you without you linking to them. Gaining one way links should rank near the top of your off-page optimization strategy.

In order to get one way links you have to get noticed. Getting noticed online is not a whole lot different than getting noticed off-line.

In order to get other sites to link to your site you have to provide unique original content on your site. One way to develop this content is to add a blog, Forum, or other method to regularly add content to your site. If you have a static web site it will be much more difficult to gain links.

Applying SEO techniques such as the above can bring great benefits. As an example if you are trying to optimize a site that sells vitamins. The first step would be researching highly ranked competitors. After analyzing their sites you can use their blog or forum to determine what topics are hot. Typically in these community sites hot topics will draw quite a bit of traffic and comments from readers.

One method of gaining their attention is to look at the topics on their site that are creating the most commotion. After you determine the hot topic, go to your own blog and do a review of that site. In your review concentrate on the hot topic, but don’t just talk about their services. Remember you’re trying to gain attention so argue about what they’re missing or things they don’t have. The key is you’re not trying to advertise for them rather you want to establish yourself as an expert.

Many times your review via a blog will be noticed by the other site. It’s not automatic, so you may have to bring it to their attention. One way to visualize this is to imagine that you’re in a crowd of people and everyone is talking to each other. If you enter the conversation you must make sure to say something relevant. If you speak up and say something unrelated or meaningless people in the crowd will quickly dismiss you.

Here’s the trick to this technique, when you comment about a site or bring up a controversial point they have to link to you to reply to your review. Remember to position yourself as an expert when you do this. Don’t be rude or obnoxious, but make meaningful comments and reviews and you’re bound to get noticed.

Most Blogs track links to the site, so rest assured that if the blogger read something that needs to be addressed by them they will comment.

Don’t just leave it up to the whims of fate, after doing your review leave a comment on the site. You could excerpt a small portion of the review, just enough to draw attention and raise interest. This will serve two purposes, first it helps establish you as an expert, second you will benefit from their readers following the link in your comment to your site. The key is to do this on popular active sites. If the site doesn’t have an active community, reading and commenting, you will get the benefit.

Over time this strategy will help increase traffic your site and build one way links to your site. If you do it right you’ll see the numbers jump in your traffic from other readers visiting your site to get the rest of the story.

There are many different ways to promote a product or service online, but the results from each method can vary greatly. Some may give you an instant rush of targeted traffic, while some will produce a small but steady stream of prospects. You will find that most online promotion tactics will result in a steady stream, while only a few methods will produce a large instant surge of web site visitors. But how can YOU become a web site promotion expert?

The most important thing to learn regarding web site promotion is that no one method will make your product launch or promotion successful. Promoting a product using 10, 15 or even 20 different tactics is the magic formula to turning your product into an online success. Most of these methods may be more time consuming to apply than buying advertising, but the investment of time will pay off greatly for you later on.

Understand that web site promotion is a step by step process. Each method, once set up, can continue to promote your web site 24/7 with only minimal maintenance. Learn one tactic and apply it, then learn another. The combination of many web site promotion methods working as one is a powerful and effective way to generate leads or make sales for any product or service online.

The best part about learning web site promotion is that you will be able to apply what you learn to virtually any product or service. Ever thought of doing online marketing consulting to offline businesses? Once you take the time to learn effective web site promotion, you Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one thing that really irritates a lot of readers it’s getting a print ad or any other copy that has so many misspelled words and grammatical errors that you would want to get a red marker and edit and then send them back to whoever wrote the content.

If you want to repel your clients, then a copy that is full of errors would do it. In fact, misspelled words and grammatical errors in your print ads such as your custom booklets reflect an unprofessional attitude and non-expertise in your business. Hence, it is of vital importance that you proofread your booklet printing copy for instance, before you send them out to your target clients.

The main reason why proof-reading is important to your advertising campaign is because with a clear and concise copy, your ad can provide a clear picture of what your business can actually do. When you send your clients and potential customers your color booklet for example, do they understand completely and without any uncertainty your business and what you do? Does your copy clearly describe your business?

It is a fact however, that despite all the suggestions and advice both online and offline regarding how to improve on your ad copy many still have difficulty providing a clear description of their business. What’s more, most ad content often has errors in them that you would have a hard time understanding what it is their saying.

When after reading your ad your target clients still have no idea what product or service you are actually offering, then I believe it’s time for you to look at your copy and make changes to it.

First of all, you have to understand that using jargon on your ad copy doesn’t make you look good. In fact, it only confuses and annoys those who are not actually jargon-proficient. Avoid using these words then. You have Read the rest of this entry »

RSS is THE popular catchphrase, creating waves in today’s Internet world. But exactly what is RSS feed ? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, and is a very cost effective method to bring your information to your clients and potential clients.

When you as a marketer/businessman/company, decide to promote your business through the marketing strategies of the Internet, it’s time to take full advantage of this interactive medium. It pays to know what is RSS feed.

RSS has numerous advantages over the other existing methods, to turn it into the most sought-after, powerful, dominant tool, which will take over the Internet world soon.

Beyond just knowing what is RSS feed, this is how RSS can help you:

* Your website is the gold mine of information on how the public respond to what you say. RSS provides an unbelievable platform to discuss the views of the public without wasting time. Instead, you can spend your time on crafting quality contents. RSS has many special features such as dialog facilitators, RSS radars, and automatic responders to enhance the significance of conversational marketing.

* Your search engine ranking reflects how good your website is! Knowing what is RSS feed and harnessing its power properly will increase the search engine ranking remarkably well, and this helps develop your business.

* What do the visitors get on visiting your website? Interview customers for their feedback, do a research and make changes to your website accordingly. The last part can be done easily by knowing what is RSS feed and using them effectively.

* Read the rest of this entry »