Tech Search

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers' understanding is significantly different.
{mosgoogle}
The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By "quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this
concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank lower on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let's look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between
"Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school
who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective
or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business' rewards.

Copyright © Roger Gonzales
About The Author
------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Gonzales is the owner of this article. To learn more visit
Search Engine Optimization http://www.rogerbetagold.com
also you can check for the latest SEO articles at my personal Blog http://www.rogerbetagold.blogspot.com Free 8 Day mini-ecourse
You Can Make Your Living Online http://www.protected-lessons.com
To order the ebook click here http://www.rogerbetagold.com/ebook 

Goal and target - Goal of the Website (site's purpose) and who is the target audience?

Context - Layout, design (user-friendly layout) and color schemes.

Content - Text, pictures, sound, and video (must be useful information which achieves goals and interest to your audience).

Community - How can the site enable user-to-user communication ?

Customization - Site's ability to tailor itself to different users to allow users to personalize the site.
{mosgoogle}
Communication - How the site talks to the visitor, site to user or two-way communications.

Connection - Degree that the site is linked to other sites.

Commerce - Site's capabilities for commercial transactions.

-Your domain should be your company name.

-Make a consistence in design. Changing interfaces is a potential barrier which should be avoided.

-Make the content on your first page rich and explanatory.

-Make your title clear. Clear title makes task clear.

-Show the users what's new with the site and company.

-Use focus and emphasis on the main product.

-Proper use of images (meaningful and clean images).

-Downloadable speed (pages load quickly and provide something to read almost instantly).

-Pages are easy to navigate so that you can find what you want and most importantly, the content is useful and worthwhile.

-Good interactivity engages the user and makes your site memorable.

-Easy to find information.

-Provide valuable, timely information to the user.

-Provide keywords for search engines (search engine optimization).

-Provide a search option within the site.

-Contact information should be easy to find and preferably visible on all pages.

-Updates should be made regularly to give users a reason to return to your site.

-Proper programming with no broken links.

-Provides copyright information.

-A good Website needs to be able to be viewed in whatever browser or service the customer is using, so cross-browser and platform compatibility together with accessibility features for the disabled are a must.

It is good to get websites designed by professional website designers.
A good web design company will be help you design a search engine friendly website. And also take care of search engine optimization too.

Article written by
Wendy
Best Web Designers

A lot has been written on web design that sell products and services but relatively few web designers know how or are even bothered about developing websites with the basic elements required to give your website a head start on search engines.

Here are a few important web design tips that will set your website apart when it comes to ranking on search engines and selling your products and services.

1. Every web design should include the famous tags. There is no excuse for not including these in a web design from the outset. No matter what they say, tags have their say in the way search engines look at your website and no web design is complete without carefully chosen tags.

{mosgoogle} 

There are 3 important tags namely the Title tag, Description tag and the keywords tag. Each web page should have its own set of tags. What are these tags? These are words and phrases that are embedded in the HTML of the website and very easy to include in your web design.
Let us look at each of these tags.

2. The Title tag is an important part of web design for search engine optimisation. This tag is likely to be picked up by search engines and displayed as a result header when a visitor finds your website on a search engine. This tag also appears as the title that in the blue strip at the top of your browser.

A good web design will contain a short Title tag that includes the keywords you think visitors will use to find your site.

3. The Web design should also include the Description tag. This is a short description of what the web page is about and it often appears just below the title in search engine results. Although the importance of the Description tag in search engine ranking is uncertain, the description in a web design acts like a sales pitch. This is your opportunity to tell the visitor what the web page is about and why he or she should click on your website. Remember, web design is not just about building a website and getting it ranked. A good web design should do all this, get the visitor to click on your website when it is found and sell your products and services.

4. Let's look at the Keywords tag. A lot of web designs contain a mass of supposed key words in the Keywords tag. Keywords are the words or phrases that visitors use to search for websites on search engines. A good web design practice is to have focussed and themed web pages. This means that each web page should be focused on one keyword at a time and this keyword should be in the web page Keyword tag. It is very important that the keywords used in the tag also appear in the body of the text.

5. The h1, h2 headers are also important elements of a good web design. Use h1 and h2 headers as these are read by search engines. Use them as high up on your web page as possible and where possible use the keywords in the h1 header. H1 headers are by default large fonts. It is possible to format these so they match the overall look of the web design and retain their header properties.

Ralph Ramah is the webmaster of Discount Web Design( http://www.discountwebdesign.co.uk ), a leading web design firm. Please feel free to republish this article provided you keep this resource and the hyperlink.

Link Building Campaign
How to get referrals and gain credibility on the Web

Is your goal to get more traffic on your Website without spending a lot of money? Is it important that your Website is easy for your prospects to find on the Web? Though there are many things that contribute to a quality, well-positioned Website, increased link popularity - done properly - will establish your business as trustworthy on the Internet and bring more referrals.

Benefits of increasing link popularity
Every time you place a link on your site to another Website, you are referring business to them. It is likely that your customers will also check out the businesses that you sponsor on your site and perhaps do business with them, as well. Visitors to your site who believe your business is credible, will also be excellent candidates for those websites on your resources page. Conversely, a link to your site is a referral from another business to yours.

Gain credibility with your online market
When a business places a link on their Website to yours, they are recommending your business as a credible source of information, and not only that, but it also provides services or products to their customers and visitors. On the Web, there is no greater compliment than to be on the receiving end of traffic referred from thousands of quality business Websites. This is how a link building campaign gains credibility for your site.

{mosgoogle}

Gain higher search engine rankings
Because links on the Web establish referrals and credibility, search engines rank sites with good link popularity higher than sites with lower link popularity. When a search engine reviews your Website, it is looking for all kinds of things about your website that go into its algorithm for ranking. One of these factors is the number and quality of links from other Websites to your site. Basically, it considers a link to your site as a vote. So the more votes a site has, the higher a site can rank in the search engines. Obviously, there is more to achieving top rankings than just getting a lot of links, but it is a significant factor that can move a site's ranking from the top 20 to the top 10 for a particular keyword in major search engines. In many cases an increase in link popularity can be the key that puts a site in the coveted first place slot.

How to do a link building campaign
You may be asking, "So how do I get more quality links to my Website?" First, get listed in good quality directories such as Open Directory (Google's directory), the Yahoo! Directory, About.com, GoGuides.org, and Gimpsy.com. Many of these directories are free but some of them charge a fee. There may be specific portals for your industry that will list your site; check Galaxy.com for some of these. If you sell products on your site, it may be worth it to be listed in an online mall such as Shop.com, Yahoo Stores and/or MSN e-shops. If you are more focused on local business, look for business directories in your area. For example if you live near the Metro Atlanta area, Kudzu.com is a great place to list your site.

Link Exchange
After you are listed in some directories, build a resources page on your site and begin swapping links with other companies you already work with and others that complement what you do. For example, it makes sense for a carpeting and rugs retailer to swap links with a quality carpet cleaning service. Use your common sense when selecting businesses to recommend; you'll want to choose companies that offer services and products your customers are likely to need and vice-versa. The rule of thumb when link exchanging is to add the link to your site ONLY if it makes good business sense.

Online Media Placements
Many online audiences are targeted by advertising on websites that cater to that niche audience. A well-placed banner ad or media on these niche websites will get the attention of your audience and a well-designed media ad will get click throughs to your site. As long as the ad links to your site, online media placement builds link popularity.

Publish Articles Online
Another great way to increase link popularity is to publish informative articles on your site and submit them to appropriate online publications. Many of these online publications will either link directly to the article on your site - increasing your site's link popularity -- or post the entire article on their site with your contact information. A good place to post articles is FreeSticky.com.

RSS Feeds
Real Simple Syndication Feeds make your articles available immediately to all websites that want to syndicate your content on their site. RSS feeds link back to the author's website where the article is contained, thus a great technique for building links. One place to register your RSS feed is Syndic8.com.

Online Press Releases
Issuing a newsworthy article to the press is an excellent way to increase link popularity. Your press release needs to be optimized for specific search terms and linked back to your website to get the greatest return for a link building campaign. I always use a professional copywriter to write press releases for my company and for my clients.

Blogs
Blogs have received much attention over the past few years and it's easy to see why. More and more people use blogs to express themselves, educate, entertain and connect with others who have similar interests. A well-managed blog that becomes a great resource for current info on a topic brings many volunteer links. Start your own free blog at Blogger.com.

Develop A Link Worthy Site
Your site will gain links without asking for them when your site is viewed as an industry resource, or a great place to learn about products in your industry, or has a unique online tool for the industry. If your site is full of wonderful, useful information other sites will naturally link to it without you even asking. This is by far the most effective link building technique because the search engines are all about favoring "in demand" content!

Affiliate Programs
Finally if you are serious about your link building campaign, set up an affiliate/referral program. You may have seen a small banner ad on a site saying "Buy this book at Amazon.com." When you click on this message, Amazon.com pays that affiliate a commission on every sale made from those referrals to their site. This is the essence of an affiliate/referral program. Businesses that want to make sales without all the hassles will sign up for your affiliate program and place a link from their Website to yours. Of course you have to pay them a commission on all sales from their Website, but your link popularity will take off. Make sure the link points directly at your site rather than the affiliate program's site. And that, my friend, is what we're talking about here, a good link building campaign is the way to go!

Things to avoid in your link building campaign
Search engines are becoming more sophisticated, changing their ranking algorithms frequently to weed out the sites that use "illegal" or unfavorable means to gain high rankings. To make the most of your site's good qualities, it's best to avoid:

* Tricks to get you noticed. When a search engine encounters one of these mal practices, that site will be penalized -- and possibly even banned -- from the search engine.
* Link farms and Free For All links pages, are nothing more than long lists of Websites; they do nothing for a site's link popularity because the vast majority of these pages are not even found in the search engines. In order to increase link popularity, the web page that contains the link to your site must be in the search engine's database and contain a small number of outbound links.

In conclusion, a link building campaign is a process that should be ongoing. As your link building campaign grows on the Web, so will your business.

Tom Shivers is a search engine marketing professional and President of Capture Commerce, Inc., which he founded in 2000 to help businesses leverage the Internet for growth and profit. Capture Commerce specializes in search engine optimization and conversion rate marketing, and currently serves clients across many different industries, including travel, automotive, industrial, education, and the arts.

Many think a website is hard to understand, harder yet to use, and hardest of all, to afford. Not true. A good website design firm, that speaks plain English, and is well versed in Internet marketing will help. These agencies should also give you a free review and perhaps samples of what they can do for you. Depending on your needs, some websites can be had for as little as $10 per month after the initial design and marketing fee. Caution should be exercised here. A very high priced website may not bring you all you imagined, but a very inexpensive one will surely disappoint. After your website is built and ready to begin working for you, there is the tricky task of submitting and marketing to the search engines. Search engines like Yahoo and Google are where most of your prospects find you. Submission and marketing is a tricky proposition because the search engines change the rules often and there are very specific steps you need to follow so that you are ranked well. Everyone wants a first or second page listing, but getting there takes the work of an expert. Don't undertake this task yourself. Let a search engine specialist do it for you. Their fee will be worth its weight in gold.

{mosgoogle}

Make no mistake about it; the Internet is the most powerful marketing tool we have ever seen. Build your website, market it well and watch your fortunes grow.

Betsey Duggan is president and CEO or McMann & Tate Advertising a midwest agency that specializes in making its clients stand out from the crowd.

1. Every web design should include the famous tags. There is no excuse for not including these in a web design from the outset. No matter what they say, tags have their say in the way search engines look at your website and no web design is complete without carefully chosen tags. There are 3 important tags namely the Title tag, Description tag and the keywords tag. Each web page should have its own set of tags. What are these tags? These are words and phrases that are embedded in the HTML of the website and very easy to include in your web design. Let us look at each of these tags.

2. The Title tag is an important part of web design for search engine optimisation. This tag is likely to be picked up by search engines and displayed as a result header when a visitor finds your website on a search engine. This tag also appears as the title that in the blue strip at the top of your browser. A good web design will contain a short Title tag that includes the keywords you think visitors will use to find your site.

{mosgoogle}

3. The Web design should also include the Description tag. This is a short description of what the web page is about and it often appears just below the title in search engine results. Although the importance of the Description tag in search engine ranking is uncertain, the description in a web design acts like a sales pitch. This is your opportunity to tell the visitor what the web page is about and why he or she should click on your website. Remember, web design is not just about building a website and getting it ranked. A good web design should do all this, get the visitor to click on your website when it is found and sell your products and services.

4. Let's look at the Keywords tag. A lot of web designs contain a mass of supposed key words in the Keywords tag. Keywords are the words or phrases that visitors use to search for websites on search engines. A good web design practice is to have focussed and themed web pages. This means that each web page should be focused on one keyword at a time and this keyword should be in the web page Keyword tag. It is very important that the keywords used in the tag also appear in the body of the text.

5. The h1, h2 headers are also important elements of a good web design. Use h1 and h2 headers as these are read by search engines. Use them as high up on your web page as possible and where possible use the keywords in the h1 header. H1 headers are by default large fonts. It is possible to format these so they match the overall look of the web design and retain their header properties.

Ralph Ramah is the webmaster of Discount Web Design (http://www.discountwebdesign.co.uk), a leading web design firm. Please feel free to republish this article provided you keep this resource and the hyperlink.

1. Write Power Headlines.

Which of these sounds better: "5 Ways to Create Better Web Articles," or "5 Ways to Dominate Your Niche with Articles that Rock"? Your headlines MUST pop off the page, and that means slipping those dynamic power words in whenever you can. And don't forget the search engines. Give the Google Monster something to snack on: popularly searched keyword terms in the first three words of your article's headline. You can find related keyword search terms right here: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

2. Make it Meaty.

Remember how peeved you were last time you clicked that article with the awesome headline only to start reading and find out that the author had virtually NOTHING to say? What makes an article 'meaty'? Specifics as opposed to generalizations. You MUST think details. Instead of saying "Download a free web editor," direct the reader to a specific website: "Download a free web editor at http://nvu.com."

{mosgoogle}

3. Talk it Through.

Here's something that so many new authors forget: in your article, you want to have a conversation with your reader. That means natural emphatic pauses, strong pacing... and yes, even permission to use colloquial speech! (Did you notice that pacing, by the way? How'd she do that?) You're allowed and even encouraged to have fun while writing. Your best bet: pretend you're writing an email to a friend, and then let the story flow.

4. Add Those Keywords.

What are keywords? Popularly searched terms that web surfers use to look up information in the search engines. You can find out what folks are hunting for by going to that Overture tool we talked about earlier, which is here: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Plug in your category and sprinkle the resulting phrases throughout your article. Use keywords liberally in your headline and first paragraph!

5. Give Away Freebies.

Share your favorite tools and web resources (notice I did that here) with your readers, and see how fast you become one of the top authors in your niche. People LOVE free stuff... and if you don't share, some other guru will.

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Are YOU Content With Your Content? Get Top Secret Marketing Tips from the Web's Biggest Gurus and Expert Authors on The First Annual Web Content Awareness Day on FEBRUARY 9, 2006.

Go to http://wordfeeder.com/wcad/landingpage.html for details.

You will require no or little knowledge of HTML as you can purchase a whole package from a web hosting company which should include some form of website developing software and your domain name plus the hosting of your website. Give some thought to your domain name. It should be easy for people to type in and remember. Not too long, succinct and preferably no hyphens. So you have chosen your domain name and your hosting service now you must develop your site. Again give some thought to this. How many pages you are likely to produce, how many links you will need. What sort of information is going on each page. If you are completely new to this then I would suggest that using your site editor software you produce a first draft and publish it. You can always modify everything later as you go along. This will give you your first website which you can then submit to the search engines albeit not exactly what you want or one that is going to attract visitors.

{mosgoogle}

Now you need to do quite a lot of research on the internet as to how to make your site visitor friendly and search engine friendly. Here you will discover the importance of good content, changing content, appropriate keywords, backward links, article writing and good copy on the website. Taking this information on board will enable you to restructure and rewrite your site over a period of time, probably many times. However all the time this learning process is going on your site is actually published on the Web so is likely to start being trawled by search engines and getting indexed even if it doesn’t sky rocket through the rankings. The most important thing to do from the outset is to write good content that will be of interest to your visitors. If it holds the attention of your visitors and gets them to contact you then it will likely be of equal interest to the search engines. Do not produce a site that is written with the search engines in mind. It is your visitors who are important and by following a few simple rules that are published all over the Web your site can become very attractive to visitors and to search engines also. Keep the site textually based, there is no point in having very flashy graphics as these are not noticed by the search engines and often annoy visitors who want to get at the information they are after as quickly as possible and not have to wait for some animated introduction to finish before they can enter the actual site.

Having put into practice all the advice that is out there you should have put together a pleasing and appealing website that visitors and search engines like. Each day or week you add more content and develop more links and you will gradually climb up the rankings. The last piece of advice I would give is start writing and submitting articles. One or two a week would be excellent over a year or two. Once your articles start being published you will see an immediate leap in the number of links back to your site and a subsequent rise in the rankings if your content is also good. Aim to produce over time several hundred articles if possible. The more you write the more links back to your site you will develop and the more visitors you will get as well as boost your rankings in the search engines.


David Smith is the owner of Sparkle Cleaning Services a commercial and domestic cleaning services company operating throughout the UK