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Posts Tagged ‘site optimization’

Elementary Guide to Keyword Selection

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Effective Keyword selection is essential to attracting customers and internet web traffic to the business website. Identifying a good, short term or phrase that properly describes the business, the product or the service though can be a challenging task. Keyword selection must characterize the page content though if the search engines are understand what the page is about.

At start up, most enterprises don’t invest time in researching what keywords would work for the organization. That or the process is simply not accomplished. As keywords help search engines to understand the content of your page though, ignoring keyword selection may mean turning away visitors and customers from your business website.

But what really are ‘keywords?’ The keyword list is found in a section of the webpage that the viewer doesn’t generally see. The ‘keyword metatags’ provide words and phrases to the search engines that describe what your page is about. Readers can’t see the meta tags unless they look at the page source code.

More importantly though, keywords describe your business, the web page and should be used throughout the page. Keyword phrases that appear frequently provide confirmation to Google and others that the page is in fact about what the keywords describe.

Keyword phrases, once identified, should be used in the page title, page headlines and reasonably placed throughout the text. Overuse of keywords is awkward and counter-productive as the search engines may see this as something they term ‘keyword stuffing.’ Pages they believe are overstuffed with keywords are devalued in the search engine algorithms or simply de-indexed.

There are many processes for selecting appropriate keywords. Google offers a tool that will read an already constructed page and offer ideas of what keywords might be appropriate for it. (This tool is part of the Google Adwords tool suite.) This tool is useful when one is unsure where to start in the keyword selection process. There are however, some things to avoid.

Avoid keywords that have a great deal of competition in Google Adwords. The same Adwords tool will display how much competition there is for a keyword or keyword phrase. Although not universally true, these keywords take longer to compete for and to rank well – especially for newer pages.

When you believe you may have discovered a good keyword phrase, run a Google search. If major corporate websites appear at the top of the results page, reconsider your choice. If your company page would be up against someone like Bank of America for your keyword term, rest assured that they will ruthlessly compete against anyone using that term – which decreases your opportunity to rank well. (There is a way to compete with the big guys just not head-to-head using their keywords. See the note on including a geographic term below.)

Choosing effective keywords and phrases then is an art form that identifies a creative and descriptive phrase that describes your page as well as your business. The other part of the art is to identify one of these terms that generates traffic but has fewer big companies competing for it. A good and efficient keyword phrase then is one that has a good amount of internet traffic but isn’t heavily competed for.

A quick note is appropriate here about traffic number that the Google Adwords tool displays. These are not exact counts, but are useful for providing a relative measure of the level of search activity that a keyword term receives.

One of the biggest allies you have in the selection process is creativity. Including things like geographic terms or city names in the keyword string help set your page apart from those of major corporations. Local customers in need of services generally include a geographic parameter within the search, such as ‘Banks in Birmingham.’ This is much more descriptive than simply searching for ‘banks.’ Big corporations generally compete very poorly on a local level for business traffic, so this could be an opportunity for a local business to elbow its way into the local market for providing goods and services.

Flexibility and willingness to try new phrases are important in keyword selection. Terms that may look great during the research phase may turn out to be total duds. Buyer behavior can be a scientific study that borders on the bizarre, so don’t be surprised if your great keyword term generates little traffic. There exist no rules for consumer behavior and logic frequently seems to be defied. Trial, error (and trial and error) may be necessary to identify the proper set of keywords that attract traffic and business to your web page. Still, when a business is in the start up phase or pre-growth stage, what better time would there be to find the right set of keywords that work for your company.

SEO Consultants in Denver brings many years of experience in link building, keyword selection and website optimization to help companies win new revenue on the internet. SEO Consultants Denver quickly deliver top page search engine rankings even for new pages.

Effective Internet Marketing – 6 Crucial Considerations

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Currently one of the most profitable ways to make money online is affiliate marketing using an effective internet marketing strategy. And if you do it correctly, you will increase sales in your internet business. Everyday, more and more people are getting online and searching for ways to solve their problems. You may be wondering just how you are supposed to get into the game. The six key ideas below will offer you the best internet marketing help.

1. Keyword Research – Very Important

The keywords you use are extremely important to a successful internet marketing campaign because they are the vehicle to get your website the top of the search engine results. Long-tail keywords are the best phrases to target. Why? Long-tail keywords allow you to cut out a large selection of your competition and are more likely to represent a more focused niche with customers at the end of the purchasing journey instead of at the beginning.

These long-tailed keywords actually target a smaller section of online users. In general, these are customers who are looking for a specific item or service. Basically, you become a specialist in your niche and drive targeted, ready-to-buy traffic to your site while preventing unnecessary competition with the big dogs.

You want to find keywords that are very specific. For instance, go to the free online tool, WordTracker Keyword Tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com and do the following:

Put in “internet marketing” – without quotes – then click the Hit Me button

Do you notice what turns up? With this phrase, you will find there are better than 1,800 daily searches, which is wonderful. Nevertheless, this shorter keyword has a ton of competition and is not very specific.

While you are still at WordTracker, try another phrase, such as “internet marketing help”. This phrase may not return thousands of hits per day, but it is a long tail phrase and much more related to people looking for internet marketing assistance. Therefore, if you are looking for an associated phrase for effective internet marketing this is the better choice of the two.

2. Web 2.0 – Social Networking

There has been a shift on the web to shared knowledge and creativity; the phrase web 2.0 symbolizes this sentiment. Social bookmarking, multimedia websites, blogs and such are all prime examples of social networking which is at the heart of web 2.0. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people involved in social networking and for the internet marketer, it is a great opportunity to use them as a way to reach potential customers.

So, your goal in this process many fold. First, create a blog around your keyword, “internet marketing help”. Now load it up with relevant information and specific unique content and do your best to help them solve their problem. Next, set up your own Squidoo lens on the subject matter and also have several social networking accounts such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. Can you see where this is going?

3. Site Promotion With SEO, Search Engine Optimization

So far, we’ve talked about how effective internet marketing and search engine optimization work together. SEO is a concept online and affiliate marketers use to increase their ranking with the search engine results. Strategic SEO will bring you to the top of the pile. The truth of the matter is the higher up you are on Google, the more you will be found by your customers. When is the last time you went beyond the third page of results when you were using Google? Never would be my guess!

Once again, another crucial key in internet marketing help is this: Unique content and Quality links are essential to your website. You may feel your head spinning at times from trying to implement all of the SEO tips you hear, but never forget to put the two of these at the top of your list.

The majority of marketers do not take the time to create a unique article and most of the time they just copy somebody’s articles. Do not take this approach whatever you do! At the very least, you should look at finding original PLR articles with rich content for your site. Google is a bit persnickety about content that looks old and used up. Google prefers fresh stuff. The biggest problem with writing your own articles up has been the immense amount of time it takes to write and then submit them individually to the directories.

4. Sell Your Own Versus The Affiliate Product

There is a time to sell your own product, there is a time to sell affiliate products and it is important to know the which direction you will take. The determining factor will be whether or not your market is large enough to sell your products. So how can you decide this? Go back to the free WordTracker keyword tool and type in a keyword related to your product. Let’s say “clay teapots.” Certainly there is someone in the world who wants these. Yet, your keyword tool will tell you there is just 1 search per day.

Take a moment to look at the other search results and when you do, you will see that “clay flower pots” actually has 68 searches per day. Additionally, you might notice that many folks are looking for “hangers for clay pots” in one form or the next.

This means it is time to adjust your effective internet marketing campaign and focus on “clay flower pots” or even their hangers. Now you can make clay flower pots and hangars at home and sell them online or you can search for an affiliate program at Commission Junction or Amazon and sell affiliate products instead. There are many ways you can find the right market that will work for your plan.

5. Get More Traffic And Internet Marketing

While building your business online, it is obviously important to increase traffic to your product page or website. The above-mentioned methods will improve your online user traffic. Advertising on social networking sites, using desired keywords and altering your keyword phrases are all good internet marketing help techniques.

You may already be aware that there are volumes of great information about this topic and you can rest assured we will be talking about it in detail with upcoming articles.

6. Customer Service – Help Your Customer First

Return business is the lifeblood of any company, and a helpful company is remembered by customers. Consumers prefer to do business with a helpful and intuitive online business. Go the extra mile to help them and your customers will remember! You! If they cannot trust you, they will shop elsewhere. Solving your customer’s immediate problem should be another key focus of your effective internet marketing strategy.

I recall some of the best advice I ever heard and was from a cassette tape I listened to out by the lake several summers ago. Earl Nightingale said, “Everything in the world we want to do or get done must be done with and through people.” Further: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal or goal.” We must be first honest with ourselves and others for an endeavor to be worthy. My hope is that you have found this information to be helpful and of value when it comes to giving you the answers you seek. Of course, one could never fit every internet marketing help tip in one small article. Nevertheless, if you will work on these ideas you will be well on your way to success.

B. L. Marlow has more than one interesting site. Checkout his latest ebook for free on how to get more web site traffic and his effective internet marketing blog for helpful online tips. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service