Domain Name

Choosing your domain name is critical! There are a number of important concepts to chew over. Unfortunately, some of these concepts are not mutually compatible. So there are some big decisions to be made.

First ask yourself what are trying to achieve with the Domain name. Are you trying to make the name memorable? What we are getting at here is repeat business and easy recommendation. If the name is memorable, then the next time a visitor wants to visit your site, they can recall the domain name easily. If they want to pass on your site onto a friend they can easily remember the site. So which is easier to remember “Google.com” or “thegreatestsearchengineintheworld.com”? Get the point! Short names tend to be more memorable - but here’s the rub - not many short names are available as domain names. Our advice is to stick with the top TLDs - namely, in our view, .com, .net, .org (if there are no legal issues), .info and possibly .tv (if your site is entertainment, media) and your country domain extension (so for the UK: .co.uk). Of course, this restricts the choice of domain names.

Memorable or descriptive?

Although Google, Amazon, Delicious, etc are not particularly descriptive of the service or product that they offer, they are certainly memorable! However, an alternative approach is to go with the descriptive domain name - such as WeddingGifts.com . It is obvious what this site is about and the name is relatively easy to remember. However, imagine, a few months down the line an old visitor to your site might want to return. Was it WeddingGift.com or WeddingGifts.com or WeddingPresents.com etc? You can see the problem.

Search Engine Perspective

Do the keywords in the domain name influence Google? In our experience it is a definitive YES. We 100% believe this is an excellent reason to go down the descriptive route for domain names. So say you are selling Chateaux Property - then the keywords “chateaux” and “property” are going to be the phrases that browsers will be typing into Google. Check on sites such as Wordtracker.com and nichebot.com for highly searched phrases for your “market”. These will give you a clue for potential domain names. So the best domain name, in our example, will be www.chateauxproperty.com. Note there are no hyphens and we are using the .com TLD. It will be much easier to get top rankings on “chateaux property” with this domain name. Check it out!

Existing Domains

What other hints? Another key factor is the age of domain. Older domains are ranked better on Google. So first stop should be a site like GoDaddy.com and check out expiring names. Other factors to look at when checking through expired domain lists are any existing Google PR and inbound links from other sites. Google PR is measured on a scale 0 to 10. 10 being best! Rankings of 3 or 4 are great as a starting point and if they have lots of inbound links from other sites - that is great! CheckPageRanking.com will help you evaluate the domain.

Buying a Domain name

If you are being serious about your business, then buy the domain name for 10 years not the shortest term (1 year). Why? If YOU are serious then Google will also believe you are serious. Google will give you browny points in the rankings! Also, seriously consider buying combos - such as chateaux-property.com, chateauxproperty.co.uk, etc and point them with permanent re-directs to the main site. You will pick up more type-in traffic and stop cometitors trying to piggy back on your success.

Francis

Seo Specialist

Localization and context improvements in search engine rankings involves trying to better anticipate the person’s needs. Google currently does this by offering the option to save search history and then offers up suggestions based on the statistics you have provided through Google history. The semantic web involves using a number of languages to improve the quality of indexing websites more accurately and quickly. Currently Yahoo is the only major search engine that uses Semantic Web protocols.

The ability of Google to provide local search information based on the user’s location settings is also an attempt to improve the localization of SERPS. Google maps is the best example of this with Business 1st appearing on the Lancaster, UK map together with address, website and telephone number information. This type of geotargeting is also possible without use intervention by the search engine performing an IP lookup and prioritizing websites based in the UK for searches originating from the UK. This is also used to serve PPC (pay per click) internet marketing that is targeted at specific locations.

Google prefers the use of IP lookups to determine the location of a website because many websites (such as business 1st) use “.com” TLDs. But even IP lookups are not effective if the webpage is also hosted in a foreign country.

Context and personalization of the search engine results was started by Google with its personalized homepage and web history options (googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/personally-speaking.html). It means that a different set of results will appear in SERPS if you use the service compared to if you do not use the service. Microsoft also made a similar copy of Google’s Web History and Google Desktop Search in what was called “What I’ve Seen” which was then integrated into Windows Desktop Search and now evolved to PHLAT (research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=1415).

The semantic web is an attempt to add an extra layer of protocols to provide more data about webpages. Yahoo was the first to read RDF Site Summery (RSS) files and Yahoo Pipes uses XML based RSS feeds from websites. Atom is the Google version of RSS feeds which is intended to provide structured data about websites. This is useful for keeping up to date with new products available on ecommerce online shop websites for example.

A setback to personalized search engine results is the privacy concerns, especially with regards to the recent cases of the UK government loosing sensitive personal information stored electronically. But as more people start using personalized search, search engine optimization companies will have to start offering products such as RSS and RDS Site Summaries.

Francis

SEO SPecialist

SEO20/20 is a creation of Charles Heflin’s. He definitely knows all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and he knows how to teach it. I have learned so much from him but I got off-balance. I was focusing so much on SEO that my sentences were getting wierd. One day I was reading one of my articles and couldn’t believe how I sounded. I heard myself say “Oh for crying outloud, get real!”

Studying SEO requires tons of concentration and can lead to ridiculous distraction. Don’t get distracted like I did from the main thing. As they say, “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing!” Whatever your reason is for marketing online in the first place is the “main thing.” For me, it is taking care of business, taking care of real people who are attracted to the value my business has to offer. Take a few tips from me, stop worrying about things where to place keyword phrases with some sort of SEO 20/20 vision. Get back to your CEO 20/20 vision. Remember your vision. Every successful entrepreneur has a laser focus on the business’s mission, vision and core values. That translates to being real, connecting with people and seeing clearly with 20/20 vision.

Tips For Entrepreneurs

Tip #1 Marketing Psychology and Edward Bernays Entrepreneurs have to market their businesses. They must reach real people and connect with them in some way that promotes trust. It’s all about marketing psychology, which is not a bad thing. It’s good, very good, to connect with people and build trust through marketing. The man considered the father of marketing psychology is Edward Bernays. He developed a type of relationship marketing by connecting with his audience. He was really good with words and very persuasive. Over a short period of time, he turned a book no one cared about into a best seller, so to speak. It was written by his uncle who needed money and gave him the unpublished book as a thank you for the loan. When Edward read his uncle’s book, he began to see that the “hidden motivators” his uncle talked about could be used in marketing.

Being a very persuasive man, Edward got his uncle’s book published and the rest is history. He and his uncle became famous. Who was his uncle? Sigmund Freud. But Edward Bernays saw what his uncle didn’t see, the positive and powerful side of what Sigmund Freud called our “hidden motivators.” Edward’s vision was 20/20. He saw that if American industry tapped into the “hidden motivators” of their customers, companies could connect with their target market in a more powerful way. He saw a great opportunity. He saw clearly, like an entrepreneur.

The well known copywriter, Jack Forde, tells more of the story something like this… After reading his uncle’s unpublished book, “A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,” Edward began to understand his own power, the power of words that connect with the powerful emotions we all have. He was very talented in persuading others with his words, inspiring them toward ideals. An example of his talent was when he worked for Woodrow Wilson. He helped “sell” the president’s agenda for the League of Nations with his words. He coined the phrase “Making the world safe for democracy.” He was stunned later when he traveled with Woodrow Wilson to Paris just after the war and heard crowds of people in the streets eagerly repeating back that phrase, his phrase.

Tip #2 Attraction Marketing and Networking Attraction marketing is marketing psychology. It’s the human side of marketing. Good marketing online or offline is all about value. Value attracts. It’s always been that way. When we go to the grocery store, do we ever strictly adhere to our grocery list? Of course not. We go in to buy specific things and come out with more than we intended to buy. Why? Because we were attracted to something we didn’t know we even wanted, but we did. We saw something not on our list, wanted it, and bought it. No high pressure sales pitch, no one chasing us down or cornering us to buy extra. That doesn’t work. But attraction marketing, marketing psychology, does work.

For some reason, a lot of entrepreneurs feel bad about marketing in this way. Probably because we didn’t take a lot of marketing courses in college. Many of us became entrepreneurial after our first career. We left corporate America to be in charge, to run a business the way it should be run. I love focusing on providing value to the world in a business all my own. The next step is to market that value using attraction marketing. Any legitimate business that is successful in today’s world is successful because real people are attracted to the value that business provides. It just requires getting the word out.

Get the word out with powerful words. Be inspired by Edward Bernays in your marketing and then use words to inspire others. We know how relationships grow strong. They grow strong through communication that’s real. Business relationships grow strong in the same way. And now, we can communicate with the whole world. We can market our businesses with the power of our words by using the most efficient marketing tool in all of history, the second generation of the Internet, Web 2.0.

Tip #3 Web 2.0 Marketing - Super-Affordable! Now more than ever before, the individual entrepreneur can afford to have a powerful online marketing machine even if they are just starting out and on a very strict budget. Changes in the Internet make it easy to connect through Web 2.0 technology and it costs very little. Just focus on attracting real human beings not search engines. Network with real people online. Social media marketing allows people to get to know you and trust you, the real you. Targeted traffic, real people, will visit your websites because they like you.

You probably fit the typical entrepreneur profile. Creative, positive, all around fine person. Now as never before in the history of the internet, you can share that personality and your ideals online to attract people to your business. Reach people from all over the world, in videos at YouTube, in ezinearticles, at Squidoo, in business blogs, Hub Pages, — it’s endless what an individual entrepreneur can do online now that we could not do even just 2 short years ago. Web 2.0 is a huge marketing opportunity for entrepreneurs if they have 20/20 vision.

Francis

Seo Specialist

Every time you create content for your website, blog or article, you’ll need to consider what keywords to use. Keywords are essential to driving targeted traffic to your pages so that people can see what it is you are offering. A large number of these tricks can be very hard to figure out on your own. Search engine optimization is what all of us who are doing this are looking for. SEO comprises of optimizing the site with good content and keywords etc.

Effective “SEO” [search engine optimization] may also require you to make appropriate changes to the HTML source code of a site. These days, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design,so you may not have to worry about HTML codes. But how and where you stand if you want to be a successful affiliate depends on you. More than ninety percent of the most successful affiliates use products that are knowledgeable about. Something that themselves are interested in. You can find so many products to sell online that you should be able to find something that you are knowledgeable in.

Also successful affiliate marketers will go the extra mile to generate more sales. Leading affiliates agree that one the common necessities is having your own website. This is essential to becoming successful. However it’s really not that hard to do this as a full time job and make a good income as well without a website. But I will promise that you won’t make any money sitting and reading this so get out there the money is waiting.

Many search engine marketers and ad agencies offer keyword research services. Keyword research and analysis aren’t as simple as using the tools available at Overture and Google. Web site owners must go beyond these tools and look at the big picture.

But do you know what keywords your potential customers are entering when searching for the product or service you offer?Cornering this one aspect of search engine optimization is extremely important, and can literally transform your site to one with modest traffic, to one that is full of high quality traffic on a daily basis. There are plenty of tools on the market that can help you achieve your research goals. This site will feature discussions of those tools and other concepts to help you get more traffic to your website.

Never forget that keyword marketing research is the factor that determines the success or failure of your niche site. Keyword ranking is a very important process for any webmaster or writer to make use of the most searched keywords and related terms to help visitors find what they need. While doing keyword optimization it is always recommended to do a thorough market research and competitive analysis to find top keywords used by search engine visitors to find products and services online and what search terms are targeted by your competitors who are doing well in online marketing.

Keyword ranking will help you keep afloat from your competitors, because through it, you?ll know what the public wants, what people are actually looking for, thus giving you ample time to come up with services and goods that these people want. At its simplest level, keyword research is about studying the phrases that work for your search engine audience.

The process of uncovering and selecting the appropriate keywords for your site is called keyword research. Very simply, it involves undertaking an often painstaking investigation to discover what terms people search for, how often, and how many and which other sites appear for those terms. Keyword research is a strategic exercise that enables you to determine which queries your site is most relevant for and for which you can feasibly expect a return, then optimize your site accordingly.

In summary, a keyword ranking research is the heart of any search engine optimization task. An effective website relies on good keyword density, and using the right tools to manipulate those terms.

The counterintuitive rule of search engine keyword research is to try to forget that search engines can send you traffic. View the data as free or low-cost market research and you?ll have the proper mindset to formulate a content strategy that has a shot at ranking well. People need to like your content before Google will.

But the real fun begins in the th tab of Web CEO Keyword Tool. Web CEO will research each keyword’s competition as thoroughly as you’d probably never expect from software. When it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the keyword competition becomes a complex measure of the leaders’ strength that consists of their link popularity, Google PageRank and Search Volume, Alexa Traffic Rank, overall number of pages that have included that key phrase in their TITLE tags, prices that the leaders pay to stay in the top of the paid search results etc., etc. Web CEO will quickly return all this data to you in one convenient table, allowing you to reshuffle keywords according to any parameter, finally discovering those special “money terms”.

Not only do these tools provide data on search volume, many will give you an idea of the number of search engine results for each term. This is usually referred to as the level of competition. All other things being equal, the lower the competition for a given keyword, the better your chances of getting a good ranking.

Remember that Wordtracker and Overture are both useful tools for relative keyword data, but can be highly inaccurate when compared to the actual number of searches performed. In other words, use the tools to select which terms to target, but don’t rely on them for predicting the amount of traffic you can achieve. If your goal is estimating traffic numbers, use programs like Google’s Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing to test the number of impressions a particular term/phrase gets.

Make sure that the search terms you are considering are highly relevant to your ultimate goal. If you are a service provider or selling specific products, keyword relevancy may be easier to determine?you ultimately want someone to purchase the product or service. Other goals may require more careful consideration, such as subscriptions to content publications and contributions to charities, for example.

For your keyword research try using KeywordSpy - a keyword research technology that will help you know what keywords your competitors are using and how it generates money for them, you can use those keywords to drive traffic to your site and give your business the exposure it needs. It offers Free trials.

Seed keywords are the words you use to start a keyword research project. In themselves, they’re not very useful, but the directions they take you in can produce a rich source of money-making keywords.

In the early days of keyword research, webmasters evaluated a keyword’s potential by calculating a simple demand-to competition ratio. Competition meant how many pages could be found on a search engine for this keyword. Next, it was necessary to know how many people searched for this keyword daily. For this purpose, webmasters and optimizers used the numerous online keyword research services that gather the so called “live searches data” from smaller search engines and meta-search engines.

As mentioned earlier, don’t select keywords without strategically researching and exploring your options. There are several very good paid subscription tools out there to help you conduct keyword research. Both are available for short-term rental. However, if you’re a sole proprietor or new to the SEO scene, it may be easier and more cost-effective to make use of the many free tools out there.

Rotapx Seo Specialist company Get a Free Ranking Report

Victor Quinteros CEO Rotapix

Keyword Relevancy encompasses a large area of potential confusion. Simply put, your “keywords” must be relevant to the contents, or “theme” of your web page. Keyword relevancy and analysis in choosing keywords that is matching the content of the web page is important to your success with the search engine. When selecting the keywords you have to be more specific as there is better chance of getting targeted traffic.

Weighted popularity-as some call it, is the practice of deciding “yes” or “no” regarding the question of “if” a key phrase is truly a real world search by someone who’s looking for you or your services. This is the first step in the key phrase sorting process.

It is developed according to the types of keywords (also known as meta tags) built into the website content, and the keywords you submit to the search engines describing that specific website. When websites link together, Internet indexing spiders (the software mechanism that indexes the Internet) are more likely to cross over your website, because they will travel to all links provided on each individual website.

Keyword relevancy is actually more critical than density in many cases. There as many answers as there are products to be sold. This is a measure of those visitors who are truly looking for your products and/or services. Those keywords that have a combination of high popularity and relevancy are sorted in descending order to reveal which keywords are best. This is an important part of search engine optimization. The more significant your web site’s content is for a specific term, the more likely the site is to show up near the top of search results for the term.

This is what puts your site ahead of the competition and creates dominance in search engine placement. And, keyword relevancy is the most difficult Internet advertising criteria to understand. Relevancy is not having a web page titled, named, and content matched. Keyword relevancy is also an important factor when building out a separate content network keyword list and ad group/s.

What is it?

SEO is a carefully created method of improving the probability of your web page appearing on the results page of a search engine query. The nearer the top of the search engine results page your web site appears, the more likely that searchers will click on your web site link and go on to purchase the product or service you represent. You can perform search engine optimization yourself, or hire an expert to do it for you. There are approved ways to improve your standing and ways that can get you banned. It’s important that you do the optimization correctly to avoid getting your web site shut down.

Who needs it?

Any small business owner with products or services advertised online should make the effort to optimize their web site so as to achieve the best results when the search engine spiders visit your site. There are SEO algorithms that are used that are generally proprietary and different search engines look for different components in order to determine the rank of the specific web page. Naturally, each web site owner wants to achieve the highest possible page ranking for the products or services that are displayed on the web site. Getting your page ranking as near to the top of the search results as possible gives you more web browsers seeing your link.

How to get the best results

The best results for SEO is to determine the specific algorithm used by a particular search engine and write your web site to use the best possible mix of keywords, links, and placement so as to improve your ranking. Attention should be paid to using the keywords or keyword phrases correctly. Not only the number of times they are used, but in what context they are used. Even the placement of keywords on the page is important for best results. Another factor that is important is that of links to other web pages.

How does SERP apply?

SEO best results are returned on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. When a searcher on the internet uses terms in a search engine query box, the search engine returns results on a page called the Search Engine Results Page. This can be a few links up to thousands of links, but few searchers look beyond the first page or two of results, since the results often are less relevant as you move further down the page. The ranking of your web page up toward the top of the list is what can increase your sales significantly.

Page rankings

Page rankings are the somewhat arbitrary number assigned to web pages based on the SEO results identified by the search engine spiders or robots. Each major search engine relies on a different algorithm for ranking, although there are similarities between the three major search engines, MSN. Yahoo and Google. The goal of search engine optimization techniques is to have the web page appearing on the first page of search results for the specific query.

Francis

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) have become essential process that cannot be overlooked by any online business website. Having a well designed website/page that is not optimized for the search engines is not desirable as it may remain hidden. The webpage / site must be able to pull in the required traffic that fulfils the business objectives. If you have an online marketing campaign going on, it is very essential that required potential traffic keeps flowing into the website and to the specific landing page.

Actually in SEO every page of a site that gets indexed by search engines becomes a potential landing page and nothing is left to chance. Here there may not be a single landing page that demands immediate /instant conversion. The content of the web page and/or links to the page are optimized for very specific, carefully researched keywords. This requires very careful planning.

In SEM and PPC (pay per click) campaigns, a landing page, also known by the term lead “capture page” is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, which is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines. This landing page is also used for counting and tracking all the arrivals and determines the level of effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

Thus landing pages are of two types

• Referential
• Transactional

While the referential landing page contains the relevant information as required by the visitor, a transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete some transaction. This could be filling up some form/ registration/ or addition to a mailing list etc. Only once the transaction is over, can the visitor be said to be a conversion. But this is a challenging process. How do we motivate a visitor to register? He needs to be comforted, motivated and directed to take action and get converted. A more efficient landing page will mean a better conversion rate.

Needless to say, a lot of effort has to go in designing the right landing page that can enhance a website’s conversion rate. One might have to even try out different design options and see which one works best.

Francis

Seo Specialist

Having worked online as a Web marketer since 2005, I’ve seen just about every trick and gimmick imaginable for improving a page’s standing in the search engines. Naturally most of these suggested tactics are unethical, and therefore end up contributing to the creation of new strictures within the search algorithms.

The ironic thing is, you really don’t need any trickery to get the search engines to like you. All this black hat nonsense is just a big waste of time and it ends up causing more problems than it solves.

The pattern works as follows:

Every couple of months a new set of childish tactics is hailed as the next big thing for faking out the search algorithms and getting a page to the top of the rankings. Thousands of marketers who either don’t know any better or just aren’t capable of quality Web development climb on the bandwagon and for a couple of months all participants enjoy improved search engine position.

Invariably, the minds behind the Web’s leading search engines catch on to the hoodwinking, adjust their algorithms and level severe penalties against Webmasters caught using the most recent black hat techniques. Sometimes this will result in a domain being chucked completely out of the search index.

This is especially tragic when otherwise honest site owners have been given bad advice from so-called SEO experts. Generally speaking, there is no process for appeal once your site has been banned from Google or otherwise flagged as a black hat operation.

The good news is you need not worry about this sort of trouble if you simply resolve to steer clear of all suspect SEO strategies. Be sure to do your research and check in with the Web’s more reputable search marketing authorities before executing a new technique.

It’s really not hard to spot a black hat trick. Your gut will tell you if the method is questionable, and again if it’s above the radar you’ll certainly find info about it on any number of honest marketing blogs.

To help you avoid some of the guesswork, I’m going to give you some standard advice on what makes a good, search engine friendly piece of Web property. These rules of thumb haven’t changed since 2003 and it’s unlikely they’ll stop working any time in the future.

First, you need to understand that search engines are looking for exactly the same thing on a page that a human user is looking for: quality! Keep this in mind as you build your pages and set up your blogs and you can’t go wrong.

The most important onsite element for good SEO is your title tag. This needs to include one to three solid keyword phrases. Your title is not only crucial to feeding the search spiders, it’s also the heading that will be displayed when your site appears in the search results.

Next is your META description tag. There is some controversy as to whether the major engines still look at this tag, but I’m telling you right now Google does. Not only will a good application of your main keywords help your ranking, you should know the META description is the text that shows up beneath your title in the results listings.

Within your main page content, be sure to exercise good keyword placement with your H1, H2, and other heading tags. Also experiment with putting relevant keyword phrases into strong, italic, and underline tags to let spiders know where important terms are on your page.

And don’t forget to name your images, links, and other files as keyword phrases. This little-used tactic allows you to slip a few extra keywords into a page without stuffing your content.

When using a blog, be absolutely sure to insert several relevant tags into the appropriate field with all your posts. This function is incredibly effective at getting the attention of the search engines and can result in your posts being indexed literally within minutes.

It’s also a smart move to put together a simple site map. This is essentially a linkage index that allows the spider bots to crawl your entire site quickly and easily. There are a number of sitemap generators online that make this process quick and easy for you.

Taking the above tips into consideration, remember to keep it natural! If you go to absurd lengths to add excessive keywords into your page content you’ll be flagged as a search spammer and end up getting the dreaded slap for it.

If you apply this simple formula for building your pages, you’ll have search engine friendly Websites every time. The only thing left to do is acquire lots of quality back links and watch your ranking improve over time.

 Francis

SEO specialist

Getting your website a top search engine ranking is far from easy. That requires a number of strategies (and patience) like carefully written keywords rich content, titles, description meta tags and lots of back links. In the world of online marketing, it can take a lot of different strategies to get yourself ranked high in the different search engines. There are such a high number of things that you have to do to get your website at the top. However one, but often forgotten factor is the use of keywords rich headings and subheadings.

Generally what people use to get a better search engine rank are keyword rich body texts (in which you have keywords placed throughout the document). Other times you will see people using description meta tags. However, it’s only when you put all these things together that you are going to get the most out of your online business. Of course, there is one thing that a lot of people do not pay attention to and that can help you to get ahead of the search engine wars, and that of course, is to use keywords in your headings and subheadings.

The heading in your article or web page is one of the single most important thing that you need to pay attention to when trying to get your website ranked. This is because headings are one of the main things that these search engines look at when ranking sites and checking for keywords. For the most part, the heading offers you very important information on what the website is about, and thus, the search engines take note on keywords that are placed in there. One of the best ways to let search engines know what a group of words is your heading, in HTML, you would use the H1 tags for your main heading and your H2 or H3 tags for your subheadings. A HTML tag would look something like this whatever your heading is . This lets the search engine know, that this is your main heading.

Of course, you can work your keywords into sub headings as well, in which you would use the H2, H3, and so on. Of course, the subheadings do not just help get you ranked, they also let the readers be able to scan your website for information that they are looking for. It is said that most people do not like to read when they are online. They would prefer to just scan information and find what they are looking for. That is why a lot of people love subheadings. If you want to get your website ranked fast and ranked high, then you need to start adding keywords into your heading. Only then are you going to see your website start to climb up in the search engine results.

Using headings and subheadings on your web site won’t skyrocket you to the top of Google, but it’s one important factor to consider in your quest for a better search engine rank.

To Your Success

Francis

SEO Specialist