Why Your Business Should Invest in Search Engine Optimisation

SEO – or search engine optimisation – describes the process of getting a website or web page to the top of a search engine’s unpaid ranks. The science behind it is clear-cut, even for those of us who consider ourselves technical novices: the higher up you are in, say, Google’s ranks, the more likely people are to click on your web page and buy your product.

But, in line with the rise of the internet marketing, SEO has become somewhat more complex than that. And while it is still a marketing tactic based on driving traffic to a company’s website, it is an intricate process that requires constant management and technical know-how in order to make sure you stay ahead of the competition.

Companies from all over the world are cottoning on to this, which is one of the reasons why internet marketing companies are doing so well. Most business owners don’t possess the free time or technical skill to be able to enhance their own SEO, which is why they outsource the job to a team of consultants and experts instead.

However, before shaking your head at the idea of another expense, it’s a good idea to consider how search engine optimisation could help your business. If you’re looking to create more of an online profile and increase your visibility and sales, investing in this sort of service is a no-brainer as far as business decisions are concerned.

Not only are SEO services usually quite affordable, but they can also be tailored to suit your requirements and budget, so you’ll never be paying for more than what you think you need. Plus, once you see the results (and your increased profit) you can think about investing more into the process and watch your business grow from strength to strength.

What’s more, compared with the costs associated with other forms of marketing, SEO is incredibly cost-effective. Not only does it drive revenue, the initial outlay is minimal and will help to secure your online image, which can only mean good things for your brand.

Plus, it’s not predicted to go anywhere any time soon – in fact, it is only likely to become bigger and more important as online buying habits increase. If you want to keep up with your competitors, this is the way to do it.

SEO requires you to optimise the user experience of your site, making it easier, clearer and more visually appealing for your customers. People these days have limited attention spans, so they are unlikely to longer very long over your page if it doesn’t immediately grab them, or if it takes a long time to load or find what they are looking for.

An internet marketing company will help you address all of this, making your website far easier and more pleasurable for customers to browse. There is a lot of competition out there, and to stay ahead of it, you need to make sure you’re investing in your target customer’s online experience of your brand.

To put it plainly, without an effective internet marketing strategy in place, your customers don’t stand much chance of finding you. A recent study indicated that between 80-90% of customers who shop online check review sites prior to making a purchase. Without SEO, how will your customers be able to find you among a sea of other competitors?

Investing in organic SEO is now more important than ever before, especially if you want to succeed in online marketing or selling. Not only will it improve your online presence, but it will also prevent you being left behind by the ever-changing online marketplace.

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Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Marketing Versus Search Engine Marketing Services

Search engine marketing services sure can decrease the amount of
time you are required to devote to your business to make it a
success. However, even though there are many advantages to search
engine marketing services, there are disadvantages to be
considered as well.

Before you make the critical decision to hire or not to hire
search engine marketing service providers, be sure you have
weighed the pros and cons as they relate to your particular
situation. After all, each and every woman-owned business is
unique, so what works for one business owner may or may not be
right for you.

The primary advantages to contracting search engine marketing
services are: 1) not having to manage your search engine
marketing campaigns saves you a lot of time, and 2) when you
contract professional search engine marketing services, they
likely have more experience in search engine marketing than what
you have.

Disadvantages are: 1) search engine marketing services can be
expensive, especially with ongoing monitoring of your marketing
campaign, which is crucial, and 2) there is some potential that
you will not get search engine marketing services that are worth
what you are paying for them.

The main toss-up in deciding between do-it-yourself or search
engine marketing services is between time and money. If you’ve
got more time than you’ve got money, doing your own search engine
marketing is likely best; however, if you’ve got more money than
time, using professional search engine marketing services is
probably for you. The second consideration is whether to master
the learning curve so you can do your own search engine
marketing, or to rely upon professionals to take care of it for
you.

It is important to realize that ongoing monitoring and
adjustments to your search engine marketing campaign is
necessary, so consider that when reviewing your options. Some
businesswomen opt to have search engine marketing services plan
and launch their search engine marketing campaign, and then they
take the reins in managing the campaign over the long-run.

Search engine marketing services generally offer a variety of
service options. Search engine marketing services that design and
run your marketing campaign always begin with research. The
research should include analyzing your competition and
identifying keywords and keyword phrases that will optimize your
website for the search engines.

They may include natural search engine optimization and other
optimization services that involve strategic placement of
keywords and keyword phrases in your web content and meta tags.
Building link popularity is also generally a part of the natural
search engine optimization process.

The design and management of pay-per-click advertising campaigns
is often an option provided by search engine marketing services,
as is paid inclusion management, and online public relations.
Paid inclusion programs may include getting paid listings in
directories, portals, newsletters, ezines, or other online,
industry-based publications that will direct targeted traffic to
your website and increase your link popularity. Most search
engine marketing services provide ongoing monitoring and
maintenance to ensure that your website receives the best
possible results from your search engine marketing and paid
advertising.

Link popularity is one of those things that remain constant as a
tactic for getting a good rank in search results. However,
professional search engine marketing services should know that
link relevancy is just as important. You can have tons of links
coming into your website, but if they are coming from websites
that are totally irrelevant to yours, they will not usually
accomplish the objective of boosting your website’s performance
in the search engines. Last but not least, search engine
marketing services should be able to provide you with detailed
reports that clearly demonstrate the services they are providing
and the results, in terms of traffic, that those services are
generating.

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10 Secrets You Really Should Know About Search Engine Marketing

Beverly Sills, the opera singer who died earlier this year, is famously quoted as saying “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going“. As a specialist online marketing professional, I spend a lot of time reading about the latest developments in search engine marketing and how this or that tweak, ploy or shortcut will suddenly change your life and lead to huge amounts of traffic; riches beyond your wildest desires and everlasting happiness. At the risk of sounding something of a cynic (I suppose 8 years in online marketing gives me a right to be!), if not a downright party pooper, I have to say I’m with Beverly Sills on this one. Yes, there are some things that you can do that might give you an edge, but if you are lucky it will only give you an edge for a very short time (before you’re found out). At best you could have just wasted your time, at worst you could be set back significantly and lose far more than you gained.

Background

Before I elaborate, it’s important, in my opinion, to understand, the history and culture of the net and of a lot of the people that have been involved with it. The Internet’s early success was largely promoted by a group of altruistic, non-commercial, caring, sharing and fair minded people, who wanted something to develop that was free and good. After all, this is a community that gave their time and knowledge free to develop Open Source software, in response to what it saw as the commercial dominance of software by certain companies.

The Internet’s now most mighty company, Google, grew up with this altruistic ideology, even having a corporate motto of “Don’t be evil”. It embraced these principles to provide a free search engine that allowed people to find what they were looking for on the internet. It continued to develop this engine to become better and better and provide its users with a better and better experience, even though those users didn’t pay a penny for its services. Eventually, it developed so much trust that it was able to start generating revenue by offering paid advertising alongside its free results, however it has continued to invest in making its free service ever better, based on honest, fair & good, “Don’t be evil” principles.

Admittedly Google has had one or two blips along the way but it has developed, generally, a trust amongst its users by delivering what they want and being fair about it. Search Engine optimisation whizzes and website owners who ignore ‘Don’t be evil’, do so at their peril.

The Accidental Search Engine Marketeer

So, if there are no shortcuts and you have to play fair and by the rules, then why “10 ‘secrets’ you really should know about search engine marketing“?

Well, let me tell you another secret, I discovered search engine marketing almost by accident! Ten years ago, when I started out online, search engines were very much in their infancy. In fact, to me, when you typed anything into a search engine, the results reflected what seemed to be the web’s main purpose and preoccupation, sex and pornography!

Back in those days’ people had lots of other ideas how they were going to get visitors to their website, many of them a lot more glamorous than using search engines. Anyway, let’s face it, there were a lot less websites back then.

Being in possession of very few resources (in comparison to the huge amounts of money being thrown about by other start ups in those dot com boom days) and at the time a relatively limited understanding of the internet, I concentrated on simple and, what seemed to me, common sense ideas and business principles to drive visitors to my website.

By employing these, more and more people found my website but not only as a result of all my hard work and efforts, they were also finding the site through search engines because, unwittingly, these same tactics were improving the search engine ranking of the site.

Amazingly today, despite the huge cultural, technological, social and environmental changes (and by that I’m only talking about the search engines!) the same principles still apply, despite the huge volume of different techniques, systems and tricks that have been peddled in the meantime. So what are these ‘secrets’?

The 10 ‘Secrets’ You Should Know About Search Engine Marketing

1. Focus

The internet is a huge ocean. No matter how big a fish you are, you’ll be lost in it. Find yourself a pond. The smaller a fish you are, the smaller a pond you need, but don’t try to be all things to all people: a) it’ll never work, b) you’ll never be found.

2. Differentiate

You need to have a reason why someone visits your website and buys into your product or service. In the offline world it’s often OK to be as good as everyone else and rely on the fact that people like you as the reason they want to buy from you. In the online world, where there is so much competition and, generally, people don’t know you, you need to have sound reasons and differentiating factors.

By all means try to get people to like you (see 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10) but remember they have a lot more choice in a search engine than on a high street, you need to communicate why they should choose you simply, effectively and fast!

If you’re selling motor insurance for disabled lady drivers, yes you have a niche and you’ve completed step 1, but you need to establish the benefits that your customers will enjoy by buying from you and that they will value more than the 237,000 other links they could choose. You then need to communicate these on your web pages and in your Meta Description of your content or Search Advertising Copy, to make it easy for your visitors/customers to establish quickly why they should visit your site when scanning a search page.

3. Build Your Site and Its Contents for Your Customers Not You

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), there is a concept that people are led either by their visual senses (what they see), their auditory senses (what they hear) or their kinaesthetic senses (what they feel). When you watch any great auditor speak (Bill Clinton for instance) you’ll see him trying to appeal to all of these senses, so that he communicates with his entire audience – not just a part of it. Your website must do this too.

Search engines like words but don’t fill your pages purely with text, a lot of your visitors will also like to see images. Likewise don’t fill your pages with images because you like them and you think your visitors should too. A lot of your visitors also want to hear what you have to say and feel comfortable with your site.

Search engines like words because they tell them what your site is all about, so you need to write clearly on your pages just this. But it’s important to write these words with your customers in mind, not what you think the search engines want. Your customers have got to understand them and they need to be written in their language.

If you are selling bling jewellery you need to use a whole different vocabulary to that if your offering savings and investment advice to the over 65′s. The reason for this is twofold:-

a) If you do get them to your page but they don’t relate to the content when they get there or it doesn’t make sense, they’ll just click off.

b) The same language your customers want to read is that they’ll use when searching

Search engines now also have clever robots that can read English and will penalise your site if it thinks you’re trying to trick them by writing keyword intense nonsense. In any case, what’s the point of getting people to your site if you lose them immediately because you haven’t written content they can understand or relate to?

4. Write Well Structured Content

I’ve already said it but I’ll say it again, make your pages easy for your visitors and/or customers to understand. Just like you learnt at school, structure your content to make it easy for people to follow. Write a good page title that explains what your page is about, use headings to explain what each section is about, use sub-headings where appropriate, use the words that are important to your visitors and/or customers in the content (though not repeatedly) and stress the important bits either by using headings or putting those words in bold. That’s just common sense writing.

Remember that people read web pages differently to printed pages (they tend to skim read) so write bulleted points, in sharp, concise text with links to greater detail and further information, if the reader requires.

Search engines like a minimum of around 300 words per page (about the quantity of this number 4 section) so that they can accurately gauge the contents of the page. You’ll also find this just about nicely fills a web page with an illustration or two, without going below the fold, i.e. forcing the reader to scroll down the page.

Add a Meta Content Description to explain to the search engine (or rather your visitor/customer who is looking for your page on a search engine) and lo and behold you’ve got a search engine friendly page! Yes, search engines, just like your valued visitors, analyse your pages by the Page Titles, Descriptions, Headings (H1, H2 and H3 in order) the use of Bold or Strong tags and by analysing the content of the page to understand the keywords and what the page is talking about.

5. Update Your Content Regularly

Just like a good shopkeeper changes his shop window and the layout of his store on a regular basis, then so should you change the content and look of your site. Firstly, in most cases, you want repeat visitors and they need to see you’re alive and care about the website (and them). Secondly, the more frequently you update, you’ll find the search engines will more frequently visit or crawl your website.

6. Give Your Users/Customers What They Want

I know this one is a bit radical but it really is one of the most important lessons you can learn. If you give your visitors what they want, when they want it and provide them with more value than they can get from other people/sites, not only will they be happy (and happy users or customers is surely the chief goal of any website or business) but they will return and what’s more they’ll tell their friends!

7. Delight Your Users/Customers and Make Them Your Evangelists

One thing I learnt early on is that going the extra mile to delight your customers really pays off on the internet. Word spreads really fast online and if you give a really good service and/or deliver an exceptional product, not only will your customers keep on returning (which saves you the marketing cost of getting new customers) but they tell their friends (who go on to buy from you and saves you even more marketing cost). The unexpected bonus is that they spread the word about your product or service through forums, blogs, web pages, etc., which talk about your great website and service and put links to your site, which drives more traffic to your site …… and improves your search rankings because of all these relevant (and not paid for) links.

8. Keep Your Website Simple and Working

Just like most processes, you need to build your website for the lowest common denominator. Make it as simple and easy as you possibly can. Rigorously check everything so that your users have no chance of having a bad experience. Always sacrifice sophistication for simplicity, if simple works.

Badly built, over complicated, unfriendly or broken sites not only turn off your potential visitors and/or customers, making them click off straight away (and what’s the point of going to all the trouble of getting visitors if your lose them immediately) but high bounce rates (people clicking off your site quickly because what they saw wasn’t what they wanted) is a big part in the Quality Score used by Google & Yahoo in their paid search algorithm. Furthermore, badly built sites, poor or obsolete code and broken links is something search engines definitely don’t like and you will be penalised for it in your search engine rankings.

9. Build Links with Relevant Sites

As I said earlier, before search engines became such a dominant driver of traffic, you tended to look all over for sources of traffic. Having no money meant paying for advertising listings was out of the question but if you could find relevant sites where a link to your site would benefit visitors and drive traffic, for instance if your site sold beds and you got a link from a site that sold bedding, then it was win-win. Similarly if you did stuff or created news stories that other sites may want to cover, then you could gain coverage and links.

What I wanted was traffic (which I got) but into the bargain I got what were essentially big votes from credible sites about my pages which boosted my search rankings. If you focus on being really good and giving value, you do develop these links and these are what search engines really want, so that they can establish you are a respected and credible site. Search Engines see links as votes of a websites value. If they see lots of paid or traded links these are not really saying the website is any good. What they want is impartial endorsements of your site and it will accord these links much higher value.

Do not trade links, willy-nilly or engage in reciprocal linking as it is sometimes called. In my opinion, the first and only question you should ask is, will this (incoming) link generate traffic/add value. If the site/page is relevant and/or related then the answer is that it probably will. If you are a management consultant and get a link from an adult dating website the chances are it probably won’t. The search engines see it similarly (though they’re not interested in the traffic). If they see a link to a horse race betting site from a site/page that is discussing racing form then they will see it as a credible endorsement or vote for the site and enhance the ranking of the linked to page. They will see the adult dating rank as being of no relevance to the management consultant with the result that the latter’s ranking could actually be negatively affected because the search engine thinks you’re trying to trick it.

10. Communicate With Your Users/Customers

Having got people to your site in the first place and even got them to buy something from you don’t then just ignore them. Work at keeping them on board and getting them to keep coming back. Communicate with your users/customers by giving them advice, information, offers, support, help – not junk but things they will value. Communicate with them in whatever means they prefer (obviously making sure you get their permission to do so), whether it be by email, text, blog, podcast, special pages on your site or whatever is their preferred choice. An established user will use you again more readily, as they (should!) trust you and this will be a lot less costly than trying to find new users. Once again, if your users value this (which if done right they will) you’ll find links appearing which add more weight to your pages and your search rankings.

Summing Up

Well, I told you there were no shortcuts and I also told you these were “10 ‘secrets’ you really should know about search engine marketing“. You certainly should know them because they all make common sense. Search engines employ legions of highly intelligent boffins to develop extremely complicated algorithms which are designed to make sure the search engine user gets the best result from their experience with the search engine. How they do that? Remarkably, they follow common sense rules to ensure that this is achieved and try to stop “evil” people from coming up with shortcuts.

If you really want to succeed online you should be doing all of these as a matter of course without evening thinking about search engines and that, remarkably, is what the search engines want you to do. Give your users the best experience you possibly can and you will be rewarded but remember “Don’t be evil”!

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What Parents Need To Know About the Dark Web

The dark web is a part on the online world that isn’t conventionally accessible. It takes different types of software and computer knowledge to access the content present in this space. As a parent, nothing can be more important than to monitor your child’s internet access and track his activities. However, it is easy for kids in the modern digital age to seek and learn how to use specific types of software to access disturbing online content, buy and sell illegal items, etc.

The advancement in technology has allowed children to learn and grow in many aspects of life. The many opportunities that platforms such as YouTube and Instagram provide are one of the positive effects of the internet. Search engines such as Google have been a game-changer when it comes to online education and knowledge seeking.

There are plenty of parents whose knowledge about the internet does not exceed past using social media networks such as Facebook and YouTube or just searching for random stuff on Google. However, to the dismay of many, there is a whole different world on the World Wide Web, which is referred to as the dark web.

The internet generically has three subdivisions. The internees, that are a part of our daily use, the deep web that is useful for the government and the dark web.

This area of the internet is only accessible for people who are either invited to use its interface or use special software to enter these domains. You might find some very disturbing and creepy information regarding the dark web on the internet. It has been in existence single Google was a basic HTML format.

The deep web and the dark web differ in many aspects; predominantly they are not easily accessible by people who are unaware of its existence. In short, you will not just stumble on it, however, as parents, you cannot be satisfied by this, in today’s world information and especially a mysterious phenomenon such as this one is a curiosity to most youngsters.

Your child may not be specifically looking for its content, rather just browsing for the sake of curiosity. This is as bad as looking for it on purpose. As a parent, here is what you need to know about this disturbing trend:

1. Accessibility
As mentioned before you cannot just access the dark web like you can other websites on the internet. But it is not rocket science either; you can easily find the procedure and download the software needed to access this area by simply searching for it on regular search engines. If your child has access to a bank account or can pay online, they may just be able to join the websites and communities on that side of the internet.

2. The BitCoin
This is a digital currency, a payment system that has no repository and cannot be linked to a single administrator. All its transactions are peer-to-peer and this is the currency that is used on the dark web. If your child can pay online they can easily buy this cryptocurrency and access the dark web to make unconventional purchases or procure memberships.

3. How Bad Is It?
The Dark Web is the part of the internet where all illegal activities, drug trafficking, and other unimaginable actions take place. You get free access to forums that promote content such as child trafficking, hitmen, drugs, and even cannibalism. This is not what anyone would like their children to be a part of.

There are horrifying experiences and stories about the dark web that will shake you to the core. People who have accessed these websites claim that even though it boasts anonymity, there is no safety of identity; once you enter you might find yourself on pages that contain content that should not even exist by ethical and human standards. There are no warnings or barriers to the browsing; just a click and you may end up on a page that offers you membership to cults or an opportunity to join extremist groups.

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6 Simple Things That Will Make Your Company Look Better Online

Mobile Website – You need to have a mobile friendly website for a few reasons. Everyone uses a phone and you need to have an easy user experience and Google likes them for a few other reasons that I will not go into right now.
Email with Your Company Name – The days of being able to use free Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail emails are long gone. Those are fine for personal use, but to show a more professional face, always use your company email. You can get them for like $10 a year from whoever you have bought your domain from.
Consistent Branding – So you have a great looking website. You love the look and feel, but you don’t follow through on it everywhere. So, to get consistent branding throughout your online presence and properties use the same images and messages across all platforms. It will make you look much more professional.
Professional Pictures – Yes you can get away with using your phone camera for a lot of online things, but imagine if you paid someone to have a real photo shoot and take a professional picture for your website and social media. With everyone else using only phone to take picture, you will stand out like a real pro.
Professional Videos – It goes the same way for videos and for pictures. Video phone cameras are great for things like video testimonials, but if you want to show off you showroom or you Law practice, nothing will make you look more professional then a hiring a video guy to do a great professional job.
Social Media Engagement – Let’s see you post a ton of stuff on Facebook, but do you ever check to see if there are comments made? If you do check is it a week later. How do you engage at that point? It is a tough thing to do, because by then you probably have lost any chance of a sale. That person has moved on. But what if you had a way to get notifications that did not get buried with personally ones from Facebook? My suggestion is to down load an app called “page manager”. It will connect to your business page on Facebook, and notify you when anything is happening on your page. My recommendation is to answer anything within a few minutes. If you don’t you will risk wasting all the time and effort to get the person to your page in the first place.

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How a Multi-Faceted Approach to Site Promotion Can Secure Your Search Engine Positions

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

In my last article on site promotion, I talked about why using one site promotion technique is a short-term solution. Now I’m going to illustrate why site promotion is multi-faceted, and show an example of how these techniques can build on one another to help you get better search engine results from your search engine optimization efforts, as well as more traffic to your site overall.

Then, in the next part, I’ll tell you more about what some of the components to site promotion are, and how they can work together to help you maintain your travel levels and search engine position despite the ever-changing search engine algorithms.

Truly effective site promotion lies in using a group of tools and techniques to draw traffic to your site from many sources that build on each other, rather than just one.

To illustrate how some of these promotion techniques work together and build on each other, we need to go back to the previous example of my own site for a moment.

Each day, I get about 80 – 100 visitors to just my home page from search engines – this month you can verify that by looking at the referrer list at the bottom of my home page (see the resource box at the end of the article). As stated in the last article, visitors clicked through to my site for 1959 different keyphrases. 15% of those phrases yielded more than 10 unique visitors, with the top result sending 214 people to my site.

That traffic is invaluable and shows proof of how you can use my multi-pronged methodology to enable you to get top rankings even for more difficult terms. The methods I use are a combination of different website promotion methods that have combined to keep me consistently ranking in first page results for literally hundreds of terms. One of the more difficult of these feats was ranking for the term “free traffic” in both Google and Yahoo on the first page.

So how do I use other site promotion techniques to help keep my site from being dropped from search engine results? And how can you learn how to do the same?

Okay, let’s go back to our example, and look at May again. The next most frequent way I get a visitor to my site is from someone clicking through to a link – 15 -20% of my traffic comes this way.

My stats say that “1663 different pages-url” that were linked to me brought me visitors. The top three links back to me brought me over 1700 visitors. After the top thirty, most links brought me only 10 visitors or less each.

But even when a site brings me only one visitor, having several hundred sites do this adds up to a lot of potential clients.

So, obviously, getting links back to my site wasn’t the only important part of this particular method of site promotion. It was getting people to actually click through those links to my site. The trick is to get your link listed in places where visitors who are looking for your information will be, and getting that link to appear with keyword related text that you control.

Syndicating your site via RSS is one of the ways that this feat can be made easier – but again, they are but a part of a well-rounded search engine solution. And there are certain things you need to think about when setting up your blog that yield the most search-engine friendly results, as alluded to in part three of this series.

Do you know what else is important about having many links pointing back to your site? Other than the fact that, set up correctly, a percentage of people will click on them and visit you?

It’s the fact that search engines often find new content to include in their results through links that follow back through to your site. That’s one of the top functions of the search engine spiders that crawl the web. They follow links that lead to other links, and so on, deciding how to fill a deficit in their databases with the sites they find.

Not only that, but if the search engine algorithms should all change today, and state that quantity of links pointing back to you will give you only a little bit of positive karma, and that, from now on, only the quality of those links really gives you a big boost, if you used the methods I teach, including ways to optimize your links, you’d still covered.

This isn’t particularly difficult to emulate – if you use a multitude of ways to promote your site to search engines, as well as other ways to increase your site’s traffic. Each one of the techniques builds on the others, helping you maintain your search engine rankings, and bringing new visitors from other sources. I’ll have a sample list for you and a few resources in the next part.

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The Basics Of Free Web Site Promotion

It’s easy to forget the fundamental components of Web site promotion. Winding back the clock to the days when many Webmasters couldn’t afford prolonged advertising campaigns, the majority of people starting out with a new Web site were forced to discover the art of free Web site promotion. In recent times, however, with “pay per click” advertising becoming less expensive and various other marketing activities becoming increasingly cheaper, the art of effectively promoting your site for free appears to have been lost. The purpose of this article is to act as a refresher course for any Webmasters who are keen to keep their promotional activities down to a shoestring budget.

The practices you perform when promoting your site for free are just as important as any paid advertisements you might run. Indeed, drawing a steady flow of visitors to your Web site needn’t be an expensive affair. So, what things really matter if you’re serious about increasing your site’s traffic for free?

1) You should ensure your site is easy to link to. Even Webmasters who enjoy what your site has to offer may not consciously think to link you. In any case, you should remind your visitors, preferably on every page, how to go about adding your link. Not only will this bring extra visitors, it will improve your site’s relevancy for the search engines. Additionally, establishing link exchanges with similar-themed sites as yours is a remarkably popular and effective way of boosting your traffic levels for free. Your aim should be to establish as many relevant link-backs as possible.

2) You might like to consider adding a hyperlink to your Web site in your e-mail signature. If you’re feeling creative, you could do what some Webmasters do and add a small slogan, too. As well as this and within reason, you should respond to every legitimate e-mail you receive so that your Web address sticks in the mind of your contacts.

3) You should utilise search engines since they’re an ideal form of free traffic. Ensuring your pages are search engine friendly is crucial. The majority of people find information on the Internet via search engines and it’s important that you correctly research how to optimise your site. A good listing on a popular search engine can works wonders for traffic levels, so try spending some time optimising your pages. If you’re unsure and need some guidance with the technicalities, there are numerous sites and forums on the Internet that can help you out.

4) Entering your site for awards is an excellent way to gain recognition. However, when suggesting your site for review, be sure to avoid “automatic award submitting” services, since these can significantly lower your chances of winning. They don’t generally fare too well with the judges either.

5) Although not entirely free, you might like to experiment with running competitions on your site. Even if the prize is inexpensive (e.g. a t-shirt with your Web address on the front), it’s a sure-fire way to reel-in interested visitors. Besides, directories specialising in listing competitions may also link to your site and send you additional visitors.

6) Submitting your site to the Open Directory (dmoz.org) is a free necessity for generating more site visitors. Not only will a listing here help to increase your site’s relevancy (for search engine purposes), it will be accessible via countless other Web locations who use the Open Directory to power their own sites.

7) If you want to instantly draw some attention to your site, then tell all your friends about it. Word of mouth advertising is the best possible form of promotion anyone can muster, and incidentally, it’s completely free!

8) Try telling visitors how to bookmark your site. There are still many Web surfers out there inexperienced with the Internet. You’d be surprised at how many also don’t know how to bookmark a Web site they’ve found. That said, when designing your pages, it’s a good idea to tell visitors how to add a bookmark. Alternatively, you could add a “click here to bookmark us” hyperlink.

9) Newsgroups are perfect for gaining site recognition. Recklessly promoting your site in newsgroups, however, is frowned upon. The key to promoting your site in newsgroups is to participate in newsgroup discussions that interest you. To promote your Web site (and to avoid any behaviour that may be deemed inappropriate), simply include your Web address in your signature. If readers appreciate your point of view, then it’s likely that they will take some time to visit your Web site.

10) You should endeavour to update your site regularly. Fresh, regularly-updated content will enable you to gather a keen audience, and what’s more, it will keep visitors returning. It’s far easier to retain existing visitors than to find new ones. Therefore, your content should be structured in such a way that it entices people to return.

11) You may not have realised but how a person finds their way around your Web site is a make-or-break scenario for traffic levels. If people can’t find what they’re looking for then they won’t view your site in a favourable light – and chances are they won’t return. Therefore, when designing your site’s pages, keep site navigation in mind, since consistent traffic levels are swayed by your site’s user-friendliness. All your content should be easy to locate within three mouse clicks. Think “simple navigation”. If visitors can find what they’re looking for within the shortest amount of time possible then by and large, they will keep a mental note of your site and may pay a visit in the future.

12) Sites that are fast to load keep visitors visiting, and they’ll undoubtedly help to increase your Web site traffic flow. Keeping site loading times down is a free and sensible way to indirectly increase traffic. How many times have you visited a Web page, only to find that it takes an age to load? My guess is that you didn’t bother waiting around. On the Internet, if you want to be successful, then your site should (ideally) strike a balance between presentation and loading time.

Summary: A massive, targeted advertising campaign is the ideal solution for quick traffic. However, most ordinary Webmasters are not working for large corporations who can afford this level of promotion. The fact is you don’t necessarily have to pay for high traffic levels, although if you are opting for the “free” route, you will have to work hard if your endeavours are to be successful. Remember: some of the best and most effective ways to increase traffic do not always require a wallet!

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Traffic Building – How to Create a Landslide of Visitors to Your Website

Traffic, everyone wants it and is trying really hard to get more people to their site. Traffic is what generates more traffic, and vitally for website owners, increases their revenue. When you are planning a web site, part of your thinking should include a strategy for building traffic and realistic time scales and budgets for doing it. Be prepared to wait several months for your traffic to build, unless, of course, you have the budget for some instant advertising.
Here are four essential key elements of traffic building:

Pay-per-click (PPC)

Link building

Search engine and directory submissions

Article marketing

Pay per Click Advertising

There are dozens of PPC advertising opportunities but until you understand how PPC bidding works and how to make a profit stick with Google Adwords. Pay per Click advertising like AdWords is worth spending money on. I would suggest reading up on AdWords books and articles on how to use this great advertising avenue to its fullest.

Link Building

Search engines such as Google see links from other sites as a vote of confidence in your site and will boost its position in their search engine results accordingly. Acquiring links from other sites is a slow process and requires a much organised approach. On the plus side, running a link building campaign means that you are not solely relying on search engines to bring you visitors. A link from an authoritative site lends you credibility, a link from a popular site sends you traffic and a link from a relevant site boosts your search results. Reciprocal linking is an effective, free way to get more visitors to your site.

Search engines

Getting your site listed with all of the major search engines and directories is essential for building traffic. Increasing search engine traffic organically can be an essential part of the promotional mix of for your website. When setting up a website, a vital task to carry out is to submit it to website directories.

Article Marketing

Article marketing has come a long way to become one of the core traffic building strategies for internet marketers and webmasters. Writing and submitting quality articles to article directories is an excellent way of promoting your site and sending it lots of targeted traffic. Article traffic is big, big, big: and here is why. When you write articles and submit them to the highest ranked article directories, for well targeted keywords, they can rush to the top of the search engine rankings.

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Why is Article Marketing Such a Powerful Traffic Building Strategy?

Of all the diverse traffic building strategies available to internet marketers, article marketing, is by far the most powerful method of increasing web site traffic, boosting sales, and maximizing profits.

If you have not yet implemented a powerful traffic building strategy for your website, you should definitely consider writing and publishing articles for the following reasons.

Writing useful, informative, high caliber articles about your market niche will identify you, to your readers, as an expert in your field.  

Being recognized as an “expert”  instills an aura of credibility, builds trust, and confidence with your potential customers.   Your prospects will feel more comfortable when buying from you, and an increase in sales from your online business will be the direct result.  

Cost effectiveness is also another reason why article marketing is such a powerful traffic building strategy.

It is not extraordinarily expensive to hire a ghost writer to create articles for you, if you don’t have the time available or ability to do so for yourself.  

It costs nothing to submit your articles to article directories for publication, and if time is a prohibition, there are tools that are now commonly available to automatically submit your articles to several directories at once.  

Multiple directory submissions dramatically increases the back links to your website, which in turn translates to increased traffic, and an increase in web site sales.  

Article marketing is an extremely important and powerful traffic building strategy, for increasing back links, that the search engines robots are constantly on the lookout for.

Including keywords when writing your articles, and submitting multiple articles to the article directories, is a very powerful traffic building strategy that makes your website more visible to the search engines.  Your web site will be quickly indexed by the search engines when using this strategy.

Published articles become viral in nature.  All your articles will contain an author’s bio or author’s resource box, where you can give a brief pitch about your business, and insert the URL for your web site.   The author’s resource box is always located at the end of your article and is usually limited to about 250 – 300 words.

Unlike other advertising strategies; when your articles are published by the directories, your website URL, which is contained in the author’s resource box, will become viral and will be disseminated throughout the internet universe to remain there indefinitely.

Your article will be archived in the various article directories, and will over time continue to funnel thousands of permanent back links to your website.  

That is the primary reason why your article should be well written, useful, well thought out, and keyword rich.  

It should now be evident to you why article marketing is such a powerful traffic building strategy in comparison to other traffic driving methods.

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Why SEO Services Is the Secret Ingredient for Your Business?

When it comes to SEO and running a business in India, things may seem straightforward. The only thing you need to do is identify the keywords that define your business, and use them in your website content in order to increase your chances of being found by users through search engines. However, things are not as always as simple as that. Good companies with good rankings in Google and other search engines do more than just on page SEO, as the procedure described above. With the help of specialized SEO services Lucknow, you will be able to increase your rankings, as well.

With search engine algorithms getting more and more sophisticated, throwing a few keywords every now and then on your web pages is no longer enough. Search engine spiders, indexing the content of your website, will look for complex relations between the keywords used and the actual content. Also, identifying the best keywords for your business may not be that easy. Keep in mind that Internet has been around for a while now, and most keywords for businesses have been used and overused hundreds of thousands of times.

Professional and Affordable SEO Company in Lucknow

There are lot of SEO Companies available online which can help you identify keywords that are not as overused as the ones known by everybody. SEO Experts focus on finding the keywords that have less competition on the World Wide Web and they know how to place them on page, so you can, indeed, attract traffic to your website.

As already mentioned, SEO is not done only by peppering your content with the needed keywords. Off page SEO, linking your website to social networks, correctly indexing and using SEO techniques for the pictures and videos in your website, are just a few of the other things SEO company can do for you and your business.

The advantage of localized (SEO) Search Engine Optimization

Another good reason for hiring Best SEO Company operating in your city is the advantages offered by localized SEO. A local SEO company will know how to localize your business website SEO, in order to attract customers living in your area. The best SEO techniques, if they only succeed in attracting visitors that have no interest in purchasing goods or services from you, are simply wasted.

Local searches are more important for a business that operates locally. For this reason, you need to hire SEO Services in your area that will provide customers with accurate information on your location, local maps for easy reach, and many other great things that will make your business more appealing than the competition.

Top SEO companies specialize in providing the best SEO services for local businesses. Even if the Internet is open to everyone, everywhere, localizing your SEO efforts will bring true value to your business. There are so many high quality and result oriented SEO agencies online helping clients to properly project their brand and generate targeted traffic and revenue through affordable SEO Services.

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