Noel Wu's Blog

There are many facets of your website’s design and Online Marketing that will contribute to how successful you are in achieving a high Search Engine Placement. The most beneficial methods for getting to your goal are what we refer to as “off page” methods, these will typically require the help of a Search engine optimization company. However, at this time we shall deal with a number of the “on-page” modifications that most website owners can easily implement to make a difference in enhancing search engine placement.

For any website to succeed (at least in the sense of attracting visitors who want to be there), the site needs to be indexed by the search engines on the keyphrases that searchers are likely to use when seeking a site like yours. There would be little point in your business being listed in the yellow pages under “Delivery Companies” if what you actually do is Floristry. No one is going to find you when they look in the directory. Things are very similar on the web but without the strict categorisation of Yellow Pages to guide you. Let’s consider our Florist again.

If our beautifully designed floristry website talked consistently about “spring blooms” within its text, it may well be indexed by Google etc. under the section Spring Blooms. All fine and dandy… provided of course that searchers type the phrase “spring blooms” into the search box. If however, they search for “Florist”, in all likelihood our beautiful floristry website probably won’t be listed in the results. The point is, if you want your website to be listed, it really does have to be indexed correctly for you to have any likelihood of achieving a reasonable Search Engine Placement. The search engines will of course do that for you, but you do have to give them some clues. At a very basic level, if you think users of your service will look for “florist in Bradford” then make sure you have that phrase prominent in your website.

To take that concept a little further, consider a whole range of search terms (or Keywords) that you think people are likely to use when trying to find a website such as yours and include them in your site pages, taking care to ensure that the site reads well. Keep in mind here that by just adding keywords and phrases on your site certainly will never guarantee that you’ll be found, but with luck you should be indexed correctly by the search engines. Whether you’ll be found during a search will depend on a number of factors including how much competition you have and how highly ranked your site is with those search engines. To make improvements to your ranking for various keywords, you’ll probably need to enlist the assistance of a Search engine optimization companywho can help you designa full Online Marketing plan.

Once you’ve decided on the most beneficial keywords and phrases that search engine users will be looking for, try combining these in logical groups. Our Florist, for example might bringtogether Valentines (Valentine Flowers, Valentine Roses, Valentine Gifts, Valentine Flowers Bradford), Occasions (Birthday Flowers, Anniversary Flowers, Thank You Gifts, Occasions Flowers Bradford) Funeral (Funeral Flowers, Funeral Sprays, Funeral Wreaths, Funeral Flowers Bradford) etc. etc. On the website, our florist would now ideally have three separate pages, one each for Valentines, Occasions and Funerals. Within the Valentines page text would now be mentioned the key phrases Valentine Flowers, Valentine Roses, Valentine Gifts and Valentine Flowers Bradford and so forth. I’m sure you can see how this could be applied to most websites.

By adopting this approach, when the search engine reviews (or crawls) your website, as it will do on a regular basis, it should categorise each of your webpages according to the content and title, provided that it all appears to match. In so doing, our florist will hopefully have a chance of being listed in a search for “Valentines”. It goes without saying that, it is a long way from here to getting a front page Search Engine Placement, but at least you’ve made a beginning.

As well as getting your keywords right, you’ll need to be sure that you (or your web designer) observe a few simple rules to make sure that each of your web pages is given its best possible chance with the search engine. Make sure that all the pages are given a name using the chosen keyword (e.g. Valentines.htm), has a unique title which includes a keyword and describes the page succinctly (e.g. Valentines Flowers, Roses and Gifts); then ensure that your chosen keywords are each used as <h1> headings on the page (don’t worry; your web designer will know what to do
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Following these few simple rules will give your Online Marketing a head start to achieve a good Search Engine Placement; but bera in mind, to achieve a listing on page one of Google and other search engines, you’ll probably need the help of a Search engine optimization company.

Improving your rankings in the search engines may seem difficult to understand, and even harder to implement. This is quite simply not the case, however. There are numerous online tools that can help you get a good search engine ranking for your site or sites, even SEO videos, which can be extremely helpful if you don’t have the large budget for an SEO firm and you really want to actually succeed in your online business. You have to have great visibility and page one rankings on the search engines; otherwise you will be at a severe disadvantage to your competition.

A great majority of people hunting for things to buy on the web find sites through search engines such as Google. The goal of optimizing your site for first page search engine rankings is to bring targeted consumers to your website who are looking for what you have to offer. The better you choose your keywords, and the higher they rank in the natural results, the more highly targeted and qualified traffic you will get. That is why search engine optimization is such a powerful tool.

The major search engines usually prefer (and rank higher) sites that have quality, original content rather than “pretty” sites that are slow to load with lots of flash or whatnot. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that your targeted visitors will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 300 words on each page, and while this may not be appropriate for some sites, especially store front sites, etc, still strive to have at least a hundred words on the page. If you are looking to create a good search engine position, this text is perhaps the most important aspect. In addition, the search engine crawlers have to be able to read your content, meaning that your content must be in HTML and not graphic format.

Link popularity is another key factor to ranking well in the search engines. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Today, all the major search engines rely on link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity can also be derived from and on on the types of sites, and practices of the webmasters, that you link to.

Try searching for “free link popularity check” in Bing, Google or pretty much any search engine, you can easily find out what sites are linked to your page. If there are not many quality sites that link to you, or if all the sites that link to you are of poor quality with low page rank, you should look into launching a link popularity campaign. Basically, this means searching for quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires looking into the quality of the sites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites give you a boost in the search engine rankings, but it also can help make your site be seen as an authority site.

Having good rankings for core keywords related to your niche is the most important aspect of a good SEO plan. Before deciding to spend money on a high priced internet marketing firm, give some of the ideas mentioned above a try, or search the web for free internet marketing tips, you might be surprised at how much information is available, and how simple it can be. You might also want to check out this very good free SEO ebook that you can instantly download. There is piles of information available on SEO, and if you want to promote your business online, you will have to either do your own search engine optimization, or shell out the money to hire a professional SEO firm. You need to have a plan to be successful, the the better you rank in the search engines, the more quality customers will be directed your way, and the more sales you will make online.

At the start of a new decade the world is continuing its way down the technological age. It has never been more important for businesses to stay on top of the newest marketing processes and advertising concepts to help increase the revenue of the business. In this day and age, most of the newest marketing techniques involve the use of the net. This is due to the increase in mobile internet and the viral effect that the internet can have on goods, businesses and organisations. The use of the internet to advertise products is called Online Marketing and is detailed thus;

Online marketing (also known as online advertising) is advertising done exclusively on the net or by e-mail.

From this definition of online marketing we can infer that little to no human interaction takes place in Online Marketing and due to the ways of the net we can also conclude that it is also of little to no cost. This is because there are vast “areas” of the internet that are either free to use or considerably lower cost (than it would be to advertise somewhere else, say in a newspaper).

One of the ways to advertise on the internet is through search engine optimisation. This can be described as “the procedure of raising the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines through natural or un-paid search results”. This sort of marketing is really useful for businesses who do not have large amounts of money (or the volition) to spend on advertising. The key free type of search engine optimisation comes in the form of Search Engine Placement. This is the use of online (free) search engines to advertise products and businesses.

Search engines work by searching the net for websites relevant to user inputted keywords. This information is known as search criteria. The results are displayed to users in order of their importance to the search criteria (the most appropriate being at the top). By searching search engines you can tellascertain which keywords are most searched for in your field of business thus making sure your website is very closely matched to the search criteria that is going to be typed in by the potential client.

This use of Search Engine Placement can be time consuming and hard to employ on your own. This is where a Search Engine Optimization Company could come in use.

A search engine optimisation company, also known as an SEO Company, will have the right knowledge and training in the field of Search Engine Placement and will be able to help you in achieving more “hits” to your website, usually through the use of different processes such as article writing and the changing of the html meta-tags. This is something that can be labour intensive and will demand the relevant knowledge and training. Unless you are willing to devote the time and effort to search engine placement then it is strongly advised that you use a Search Engine Optimization Company.

It is something that will incur a cost but that will still be reasonably cheap compared to traditional marketing methods. The cost should not be off-putting because the use of an SEO company could be very valuable to your business and the online marketing process in use.

There are several views of search engine optimization that start from incorrect information. This means that some businesses are wary of using the services of a Search Engine Optimization Company and are therefore potentially missing a great opportunity to increase online business.

One mistaken Belief is that the SEO businesses must trick the search engines into placing companies on the first page of the search results. Any straight business owner, when hearing this would in all probability decide that if some form of trickery is involved that the service is not one in which they would consider investing in. Ethical search engine optimization is the best way to work and any business doing so is in fact well thought of by the search engines as they are being aided in their endeavours. The job of the search engine is to join searchers up with websites that provide them with what they are looking for. As long as the Search Engine Optimization Company works towards this objective too there is no element of trickery involved.

Another false belief is that you can get keyword exclusivity for the right money. This is not the case. No search engine offers this feature and any website owner is able to pick any keyword he or she chooses to help the search engines draw clients to the site. There is certainly competition in terms of promoting those keywords and often businesses will both have the same ones and be competing for high Search Engine Placement positions on them but no one business can buy the right to any of them. The search engine optimisation companies will endeavour to ensure you are listed high on the list but everyone is free to “have a go” at any particular keyword or phrase.

Another falsehood is that the services are pricey. Of course this is all relative and if one was to compare the optimization costs to say, a small ad in a free locally distributed newspaper then of course the cost would look very high undeniably. On the other hand if you could compare the cost to the amount that would need to be spent in newspaper advertising to accomplish the same amount of business as generated by the optimization itself then the cost would be very encouraging. Of course the need to spend relies on the business wanting, and being able to cope with the massive amount of extra business brought in.

Finally a misconception which catches out a lot of businesses is the conviction that most web designers can actually carry out the optimization service for you themselves. Whilst it is true a small number can in fact do this, in the main it is something that the web designer can only do the very early stages of at best. Their skills lie in the programming and layout of the site and in the way in which the site interfaces with the internal systems that the company runs. They are usually capable of getting some of the keywords into the coding but this is such a small, albeit important part of the process that must occur. Those businesses leaving optimization to their web designer will more often than not be very irritated in the results.

If these and other opinions of the search engine optimization companies can be overcome more businesses will find it easier to make use of Online Marketing in the form of search engine optimization.

Ok, so you have a website that amazes] your associates, but do you have a website that amazes your intended audience? In fact, are you bringing the visitors to your site that you truly need to make it profitable? Regrettably, most website managers fail to get the return on their Online Marketing spend that is viable and a high Search Engine Placement is a thing they are very unlikely to achieve. Today we’ll analyse a typical search results page and consider how, with the assistance of a search engine optimization company, you could make the most of your Online Marketing investment.

If you use Google (which a large number of people do) you’ll already be familiar with the look of their results page. You key in say, “search engine optimization company” and you’ll get two sets of results returned. Down the right hand side of the page (sectioned off by a vertical bar and across the top of the results section (with a pastel coloured background) you’ll see a set of results named “sponsored links”. These are paid-for adverts. They are kept separate so it’s quite clear that they are paid for.

The organisations that place these adverts usually pay nothing up front, but they will make a small payment each time any searcher clicks on one of the links. This is known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The remainder of the results on your page (if you’re using Google) will be what are generally known as “Organic” results. No payment needed for these entries, just a fair amount of savvy and a good deal of hard work.

Whilst PPC advertising could well be an significant part of your Online Marketing strategy as you hunt for a good Search Engine Placement, surveys have shown conclusively that searchers place greater trust in organic results than in PPC adverts. This isn’t particularly surprising. Organic Search Engine Placement tends to be earned rather than bought. To be on page one of Google or any other modern search engine, you’ll need to have a site that is relevant and authoritative in the estimation of the search engines. Only by refining the results effectively, can the search engine make certain it offers exactly what the searcher is seeking.

The sophistication of the search engines means that they have numerous methods of ensuring your site meets their criteria. In days gone by, it was possible to fool the search engines into serving up your website to an unsuspecting searcher irrespective of how suitable (or unsuitable!) it was. Thankfully, we no longer have that problem. Search engines such as Google use quite subtle algorithms to determine the suitability of a result with the basic concept being that for a site to rank highly on a results page, especially for a common or competitive search term, that site will almost certainly require some citations – that is, it will need to be referred to by an authoritative source.

The downside, if indeed it is a downside, is that you now need to work hard to achieve the ranking necessary to get your site to the top of the listings. Whilst there are many “On-Page” adaptations that can be made to your web site that will ensure it has a very good chance of being indexed appropriately by the search engines, that page one search slot will be tricky to achieve without the assistance of a search engine optimization company and a comprehensive and well thought out Online Marketing campaign.

A good search engine optimization company will advise you on those localized site changes you can make yourself, help you decide which keywords and phrases will achieve the best Search Engine Placement for you and then go on to deliver a full Online Marketing campaign. This should ensure that your website’s reputation as relevant and authoritative is reinforced and recognised by the search engines thereby helping make a page one Search Engine Placement a reality with all the business benefits that bestows.

You have finally made a decision to have a website developed for your business and are now hunting for cost effective methods to attract guests. This does not mean that you want to make the most frequent errors that most new webpage owners make.

Lots of first timers to e-commerce imagine that all they need to do is have their webpage hosted with a domain name that includes their business name and then sit back and wait for all the new visitors to come flooding in to them. Quite simply this will not happen as the well known Search Engines will not grade it very highly and any expected new contacts that search the internet for the products that the firm offers will be more prone to go to a competitor with a higher ranking webpage with the Search Engines.

An unusual fact is that numerous contemplate promoting on the net a very daunting job to perform and are therefore very reluctant to try it. What they do not understand is that Online Marketing has a lot of advantages compared to that of accustomed processes of advertising. A major benefit is that Online Marketing is very modestly priced when you compare it to the percentage of the cost against the range of its target audience and that any operation can be easily discovered and checked for performance.

A goodpractise to use in order for you to achieve the outcome that you are looking for is to employ the services of a respected search engine optimization company. They will perform the process of improving the quality and volume of traffic from the main Search Engines to your website based on search results being used. The vital task that the search engine optimization company will perform for you is to get your website as highly ranked as possible gained from the search results list. They will use various methods such as Keyword Search, On page Optimisation, Off page Optimisation and Behind the page Optimisation in order to achieve the flow of new customers that you require.

A regular mistake that is made is to surmise that by submitting your website to the Search Engines they will unquestionably add you to their directory instantly. This is not true as many of the main Search Engines can take weeks if not months to enter you. Therefore another program that will need to be undertaken will be Search Engine Placement. This is the process of securing and maintaining the position for your chosen premium keywords or keyword phrases in the organic search result pages of all the major Search Engines. Ideally with proper use of Search Engine Placement you will be able to gain a place on page one of most Search Engines within a few days or weeks.

In summary, if you are on a tight advertising budget and are looking for a cost effective way to induce an increased flow of net users to your website then use Online Marketing as your best selection. Remember to choose a recommended search engine optimization company that has a proven track record in the field of Search Engine Placement. As a result of this you will start to see the much needed increase in business that you are presently not getting from traditional advertising methods at a fraction of the cost.

The good news is that the established offline promoting that has always worked so well will still perform at least as adequately to promote your online presence but will need some renewing in order to keep up with the ever increasing demand for best practices from the online community.

Any business should already have a advertising plan and purposes from their offline activities. So let’s open with the basic aspects of Online Marketing. This will help get your website to a starting point from where you can attract new customers even if you are on a low marketing budget.

On page optimisation is always the best place to open because the proficiency of everything which follows is often dependent on this being done up front. This will include great text and inherent navigation as the basis for everything. Only once your site has been optimised for a wide range of patrons should you construct it for the Search Engines. This is the time that you should consider using the services of a highly respected Website Optimization Company.

Search Engines look at things like keyword consistency and how particularly a page matches a specific search term. Of course this is extremely over simplistic but nevertheless a invaluable starting point. By pinpointing 10-20 keywords or keyword phrases you would like Search Engines to pick up on and creating functional pages with relevant information from which you can utilise these terms in the right way will lead you to the best achievable Search Engine Placement available. You should also work to design a single page for every keyword or keyword phrase you want gathered and contain the keyword or keyword phrases in your heading and use all the words in the bulk of the page at a high consistency relative to other words. You should also preferably include a keyword or keyword phrase in the page heading as well as the URL of the page.

Search engines take numerous factors into scrutiny when judging a site. New sites for example do not initially fare well. Nevertheless you will find they will allocate some credibility weighting to you the longer your site is up and running. The greatest factors though are external to the site itself by means of off page optimisation and behind page optimisation. It is therefore highly important that your Website Optimization Company implements both processes in order for your Online Marketing campaign to work effectually.

A good way to perform off page optimisation is to provide content of value to blogging sites and forums by way of article writing that will best serve your target market. They benefit from your topical content and you benefit from their exposure and links. The best method of employing behind page optimisation is to use a number of inbound (preferably non-reciprocal) links from other sites and the context and wording of the referring link as well as the ranking of the referring page and rreferring site. The popularity of these methods will play a big role in achieving an excellent Search Engine Placement for your website.

So in order to get your Online Marketing campaign off the ground employ a well respected search engine optimization company who will work effortlessly on your behalf to get you that all important Search Engine Placement that you require to drive much needed traffic to your website.

In this current bleak economic climate we find ourselves in, even various traditional firms are hunting for more cost effective ways to get their products noticed. As more and more of their potential visitors are using the web to find special offers, these firms are pinpointing that they should include some form of Online Marketing within their annual marketing budget. The very first program that is in the thoughts of various traditional firms is (SEO) Search Engine Optimisation. Whereas this program has proved to be a successful advertising tool for many, you may want to ask yourself a few questions before deciding on if it is right for you before spending a large ratio of your marketing budget on it.

The first thing to contemplate is whether there are enough possible new visitors hunting online for what your firm has to provide. You achieve this by utilising the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool which will give you a predictable number of monthly searches based on target keywords or keyword phrases that are associated with your firm. Now that you have that information you need to contemplate whether or not your webpage is doing enough for you to turn your patrons to sales. No matter how much traffic you get based on your Search Engine Placement you need to know exactly how many visitors that visit your webpage are actually buying from you and how many are not. For those who do not buy, offer them free information in exchange for their contact information including their name and e-mail address that way you can follow up on them. You should also contemplate what the likely lifetime value of any visitors is by deducing whether a client makes a single purchase or multiple purchases over time. Having that information will influence you in how much you should spend to attract new customers and whether you should contemplate using a search engine optinization company to help you with your SEO program.

Surprisingly many firms do not realise that part of their Online Marketing program involves creating written articles to maintain the Search Engine Placement that has been achieved. Numerous people seem to be either too busy or uninterested to contemplate creating written articles or other methods of text for their webpage. However well written text will enhance the credibility and respect that your firm will receive from the well known Search Engines and it will be a sure thing that your search engine optinization company will insist on working on this for you. Another factor to determine your positioning within the online community will be the amount of other webpage willing to provide links to yours. It is not enough just to list your contact details and services you provide but also provide blogs, forums and articles will be good enough reason for others to link to your site. In reality most searchers do not return or bookmark a site unless it provides them with attractions and items such as those mentioned. This is vital as this is not only the key to attract new patrons but will also ensure that they will keep coming back in order for your firm to be successful and to maintain that vital Search Engine Placement with the Search Engines.

Finally, the well known factor you will be most concerned with is how much your Online Marketing program will cost you and the return on the investment you will see. This is why it is highly vital to employ the services of a recommended search engine optinization company as you are not in this just for the sake of rankings but are here for the long run.

It is well believed that for any Online Marketing operation to be effective you will need to gain the faith and respect from the well known Search Engines that control the Internet. That is why it is totally important for you to follow a systematic approach to your operation in order for your customers arrive at you.

In this article we will be discussing the three well known steps that should be undertaken to help you get thatimperative Search Engine Placement that your business strives for. The very first step[ is to choose a selection of between ten and twenty keywords or keyword phrases for each webpage making sure that they clearly describe the text of your webpage and the benefits of your business. Keywords and keyword phrases are the terms that searchers will use when typing in the search box to administer an enquiry. A good position within the Search Engines does not only depend on your selection of keywords or keyword phrases but it will also depend on how you exactly position these keywords or keyword phrases within your web pages. However choosing unsatisfactory keywords or keyword phrases will certainly throw off your Online Marketing your operation from the start so it is important at this stage to spend some time to make sure you get it right. If you are finding this task difficult to undertake use a highly respected Website Optimization Company.

The next stage is to optimise each page of your website with the keywords or keyword phrases that you have chosen. You do this by strategically positioning your keywords or keyword phrases in the best positions within your pages. Many webpage owners make the common mistake of using their business name within their domain name and title page thinking that their visitors will reach them. Nonetheless this will only happen if the business is as greatand popular as Google or Yahoo. Therefore it is imperative that you create a descriptive title using the best ranked keyword phrases from your list that best describes your business as your domain name and title page. Your next job is to give all other pages a title using the exact same methods. Finally place and rerun your keywords or keyword phrases within the body of every page but make sure that it does not make your text sound awkward as it is your customers that determine if your site is invaluable spending time on. You are almost there and the Search Engine Placement you require is nearly in sight. If you require help at this time then it would be best practise to employ the services of a Website Optimization Company.

The final phase is to make sure that you get tags from all the best directories and lots of other quality websiteswith topics related to yours. The best way to do this is by submitting a series of topic related articles to endorsed blog sites and forums. The main Search Engines will interpret these tags as a vote for your site and the more votes you get the higher the Search Engine Placement you will achieve as it will drive more traffic to your site to make your Online Marketing operation a success.

Finally if you decide to look for a search engine optimization company to help and assist you in all the topics we have examined in this article it is important that you choose one that uses ethical or white hat tactics to get the best achievable results from your operation.

Increase Traffic Using Video
Last year, we created a short video named “The Fluffy Green Widget”. It was about one minute long and really was not about anything in particular. There really wasn’t a lot of content in it, we just rotated some generic business pictures.

The important thing was naming the video “Fluffy Green Widget” and submitting it to all the major video sites like YouTube.com, Kewego.com, Livevideo.com and about 15 others.

Along with that, we submitted posts to business opportunity and other blogs that were about how to generate traffic on the internet.

All in all, there were about 25-30 submissions. Each one had a link to the page with “Fluffy Green Widget” in it on our main domain, or the actual URL of this page in the link text.

Now, if you go to Google and search for “fluffy green widget” you will see this page listed on the first page of Google along with several other pages that are hosting our Fluffy Green Widget video and article.

Your results can vary…
Finding the right key word to target is key to making this process work. Sometimes I spend more time finding the key words that other people miss then I do creating the actual video.

The Point of this experiment…
As you know, the search term “fluffy green widget” is not a highly targeted search term. This is why we picked it. Just to make the point that the process works. The main point is this sort of targeting will work for any key word. The important thing is to choose a key word that does get search volume, but does not have too much competition.

You can easily find a key work like this just by going to Google and searching for your targeted key words. Right above the search results, Google will tell you how many pages are targeting your key word next to the “Results”. In our case it looks like this:

Results 1 – 10 of about 66,200 for fluffy green widget.
66,000 competing pages may sound like a lot, but in the scheme of things it is not. In fact, if your key word has results in Google of less than 250,000, then it is a good key word to target. Try many different combinations of key words along with other qualifiers to find one with results under 250k.

What do we mean by “qualifiers”…
In our case “fluffy” is a qualifier. In a real case scenario, let’s say you are selling an exercise video. If you search Google for that phrase you get about 65 million competing pages. It would take quite a long time to rank on the first page of Google for that term.

On the other hand, competing pages for “step aerobics dvds” is just over 100,000 pages. It would be much easier targeting a longer tail key work like this if you want to get listed on the first page of Google.

To help you find these great key words, search Google, click on the “Other Options” link at the top left of the page, then click on the “Wonder Wheel” link. This is a great tool.

Here is the actual video we posted:

This is such a simple way to get traffic to your site…

Find your targeted key word in Google, and then on your web site, create a page with that key word in name of the page. The title tag on this page should also be your key word, then submit this page through our service… and watch the targeted traffic come your way.