HomeEducation is highly competitive and with the Government having announced a funding cut of £950m for British Universities over the next 3 years, it will only get tougher. 15-24 year olds make up 16% of the total PC-based Internet population in the UK but that figure leaps to 25% for mobile access.
As teenagers spend more time online and using smart mobile devices, education faces the challenges of finding new ways to grab attention and build engagement. In recognition of this, British Council now offers an e-marketing workshop1 to help education marketers understand how students select education products online (next course in London in November 2010).
How can higher education brands increase engagement with their customers? How can colleges win the persuasion battle and convince students that there is the right blend of skills and support to help them excel? How can they tap into the lucrative overseas student market?
Search and they will find
iProspect research shows that 62% of searchers click on links within the first page of results. It's logical that to be front of mind, you have to be highly visible on SERPs; rely on your marketing efforts, not on the propensity of searchers to sift through pages of results because we all have attention deficit issues online.
A few ideas:
Concentrate on your brand, location, departments and individual courses. In the last 12 months, in the UK alone there were approximately 390,000 searches for "psychology university" and 320,000 searches for "psychology courses".
It's a social thing
Traffic from social networks to brand websites is increasing. 99% of Generation Y users (aged 18-24) have a profile on a social networking site, though Twitter adoption in the under 24s is a slower burn. Higher education will benefit from the fact that social media is international - the key networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare enable local content to be dispersed to a global audience.
Here are some ideas worth exploring:
Be front of mind - get behavioural
Retargeting8 enables you to serve targeted online adverts to people who have visited your website when they browse elsewhere, using advertising networks and their media partners.
For example, Acme College has a new visit from a potential student who searched for "engineering degree" in Google. The student visits the engineering department landing page, then leaves and continues the web session on another website. Acme then serves adverts promoting its engineering courses via 3rd party websites to the same student to keep their message front of mind.
Evidence from the retail market9 suggests that 42.9% consumers who see retargeted adverts then return to the original website.
Further reading
There are some interesting articles available online for further reading. Check out the following:
Take away thoughts
Source
This article was written by James Gurd, guest writer and blogger at user experience consultancy13, Webcredible. They run a range of fantastic training courses including Google Analytics training14 and social media training15.
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by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)
Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.
Permission
Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.
Subscriber Addresses
When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.
List Maintenance
Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.
Message Format
Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.
Content
Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.
- Website URL: Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered. Words/phrases: Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like. Images: Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content. Attachments: With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.
CAN-SPAM Compliance
The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.
Reputation
Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:
- http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
- http://www.bondedsender.com
- http://www.habeas.com
Relationships & Whitelisting
Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.
Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.
Related E-mail Marketing Articles and Tips:
Click on titles to read more.
3/15/11 3 Surefire Reasons to Use Animated GIFs In Your Email Marketing Click on titles to read more.
3/10/11 Email Timing: A Look At 6 Marketers
3/8/11 3 Helpful Thank You Page Examples
3/7/11 Meet AWeber at SXSW 2011
3/3/11 How to Instate Brand Ambassadors With Email
3/1/11 Do You Market Solutions, Or Just Stuff?
About The Author:
Tom Kulzer is the CEO of AWeber Communications. AWeber Creates Lasting Customer Relationships For You With Email Newsletters, Autoresponders, RSS to Email and Other Email Marketing Tools.
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Google was originally known as BackRub when it started in 1998. It represented a new approach to ranking sites on the web. Prior to Google, the dominant searches didn’t make much of an effort to improve their ranking systems. This led to a variety of bizarre results when people searched for something and the results were not particularly relevant. Google sought to overcome this problem.
Google works by focusing on relevancy. You will hear a variety of comments about how Google ranks sites, but in the end it all comes down to this term of art. Relevancy can simply be defined as a web page that is most relevant to the terms search for by a user. The trick, of course, is for Google to figure out how to determine relevancy.
Google works by focusing on the content of web pages. It tends to mostly ignore meta tags as too many search engine optimization people learned how to tweak their sites to get results. Since these tweaks were often shortcuts, the search results were less than great. To circumvent this, Google now focuses on the overall text of the page as well as the site as a whole. The exact Google formula, known as the algorithm, is not public information, but issues such as keyword density, flow of the text, amount of code, registration length of domain and how long visitors stay on a site all seem to be used. In truth, there are probably a couple hundred factors involved in the evaluation.
Google also determines relevancy and rankings by looking outside of a site. Specifically, it looks to see what other sites are linking to the site in question. In theory, the more sites linking to you must be an indication that you are offering highly relevant content on your site. For instance, the website for the IRS is consistently ranked highly for tax terms because thousands of sites link to it. Logically and practically, this must mean the IRS offers highly relevant information on taxes and of course it does.
As you might imagine, this linking factor led to the growth of an entire industry dedicated to trading links. This process is known as reciprocal linking. In the last year, Google has devalued such links because it no longer represents a measurement of relevancy. Instead, it just represents a measure of how many links a site can trade. Google now looks more at the type of links being traded and gives high value to links which are inbound only. This means someone is linking to your site without you linking back to them.
Asking how does Google work is a complex question. Part of the answer is unknown, but the parts we do know allow for the manipulation of search rankings. This, of course, leads to lots of traffic on a site.
I always laugh when listening to mainstream marketing company blabber on about branding and demographics. On the web, ecommerce is boils down to one concept and only one. You must determine the needs of your prospects and provide solutions.
It is so important that you should start every day and meeting off by saying, “What are the needs of my prospects and how does what I am doing provide a solution to those needs?” If you cannot provide a quick, simple answer, you have wondered off the path to profits and need to refocus.
So, what the hell do I mean by “needs.” The trick with web ecommerce is to realize that there is lookie loo traffic and need traffic. A person shopping online for Christmas presents on December 15th has a serious need and is highly motivated to buy. A person that is drinking coffee on a Sunday morning and catching up on the news has no needs and isn’t going to get off their butt to find their wallet. Obviously, you are only interested in the motivated person.
Finding the needs of your prospects should be the first thing you do. Before you decide on a business name. Before you buy a domain. Before you even decide on the exact products or services you will offer. All of these subjects will be determined by your prospects once you understand their needs.
Okay, so how do you figure out their needs? In the real world, you would invest $50,000 on a market analysis, surveys and so on to find out their needs and the best location for your business. You are going to love this. With web ecommerce, you are going to spend under a couple of hundred bucks.
You first step is to identify the single word that best describes your business. If you want to open an online travel site, the word is “travel.” If you want to sell a book on investing, the word is “investing.” Whatever you business, pick the one word that describes it best.
Taking your one word, you want to use this program: WordTracker. With Wordtracker, you are going to do a keyword analysis. You will do an analysis for “travel” by entering the word in a provided form, hitting the return button and then watching the program kick out every keyword phrase that incorporates “travel” that has been typed into a meta search engine in the last 60 days.
Think about that for a moment. It is going to report to you the exact phrases used by your prospects to find something related to your business, in this case, travel. Each of those keyword phrases represents a need your prospect has regarding travel.
Let’s say you were going to build a travel site focused on cruises to the Caribbean. After you do the keyword analysis using the phrase “cruise”, you find there are tons of search for cruises to Alaska. Your prospects are telling you the subject the site should focus on. Instead of wasting time and money on the wrong area, you know where to go to pull in customers. Your domain name, advertising and search engine optimization should all be focused on the keywords you identify for your area of interest.
Of all the purported strategies for web ecommerce, there is one that always works. Identify the needs of your prospects and provide solutions to them.
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In order to create a fantastic social media buzz, making sure that the link bait you generate is captivating and relevant to your target audience is vital. Of course, the main objective you are going to strive to achieve is that your content catches attention and holds it, ensuring that leads are generated as a result. In this guide, we're going to give you seven great tips for creating great link bait that works.
1. Give them a reason to link to you
Before we begin to weigh into creating link bait effectively, it's worthwhile to remember what type of marketing strategy it is. The great thing about this technique when it's done effectively is that it will make other websites promote your online presence. And why would they do this? Mainly, they would be interested to promote you because it is an incentive for them. People share content that increases their social status in some way - that makes them look clever, funny, or in the know.
Strong and exclusive content from your website give their readers what they want, and when links are made back to your website, you get traffic and interest which will bring sales. As you can see, the first point is to give other blogs and web pages a reason to link back to you, offering something that makes you stand out from the crowd.
2. Link out first
The second point to creating great link bait is to make sure that you offer connections and references n to other websites, giving your visitors connections to other relevant online services. In a way, this could mean that the website you have helped will pay you back by linking back to you at a later date, meaning that you both generate new hits as a result.
3. Do the hard work to uncover great content
The third tip for making memorable link bait is one that many of us will follow begrudgingly: doing research to make our content have 'the edge'. You need to bear in mind your aims and cater to your core demographic. The things you produce should inspire a cathartic response in your readers - stirring the emotions in a way that makes them want to link their friends to view your website for themselves.
So, once you've done the planning that many of your competitors will fail to do, you need to ensure that the research you've done in advance is used to create a twist on the content that already exists. If you're writing about the travel industry for example, you won't want to produce link bait about growth in the tourism sector if another website has already done it.
Instead, you will want to develop and grow the content you create into something refreshing and novel that hasn't been done before. Why not use trends and analysis from experts to predict where the industry will be in a year's time? How about scrutinising how the tourism sectors here in the UK and abroad have done comparatively amongst British travellers during the economic downturn?
By including fascinating statistics, you could instigate a conversation and a debate about the industry that revolves around the facts that you found for inclusion in your article. Even though number-crunching in link bait will do you wonders, make sure that you obtain the findings from a reliable source, as there is nothing worse than feeding your readers untrue information and your reputation diminishing slightly as a result.
4. Keep their attention
Fourthly, a way to ensure your link bait is top notch should be to ensure that you don't let a word count define your content. There is nothing worse than when you have to write 500 words of content, but you only have 300 words of valid points to make. As a result, you find yourself padding out the information you have with the remaining 200 words.
Slimming down the length of link bait in favour of a more succinct, tightly-written and informative article is far more effective, retaining the interest and attention of the reader. The concentration span of many Internet readers is low, so you want to place the most hard-hitting information and objectives of your link bait first.
5. Think of the visual element
This brings us onto fifth pointer on our list. Even though the written word has the ability to blow Internet users away, an original image will bring just the same effect - potentially in a better way than relying on your descriptive gifts. Creating a summary to accompany the photo will be wise, and photo storage websites will ensure that the traffic your server is able to handle won't be breached by the increase in bandwidth you will use.
6. Make the headline re-tweetable
Number six is a relatively new point, particularly because of the developments that have been made in social media. Now more than ever before, you want to keep your headline 're-tweetable'. So: what does this mean? Many blogs and websites now allow visitors to post a micro URL onto their Twitter account, meaning their followers will be shown a hyperlink and the headline of your link bait.
With the few words you have to use, making sure that you make an impact and leave the reader intrigued is vital. First impressions are integral to your link bait's success, and asking a question of the reader is one way to establish that all-important connection. If you are re-tweeted by a user or service that has thousands (or even millions!) of followers, you will reap in the traffic afterwards.
7. Don't overcomplicate things
And finally, the last point which will get you on your way to making fantastic link bait is this: don't be afraid to keep things nice and simple. Sometimes, if you have a powerful message, delivering it very clearly and without gimmicks will get you far further. After all, if you have too many clichés, bells and whistles in your content, could the main points and objectives be detracted from?
Link bait is an art not a science, and using these seven tips will be the start of a long journey towards mastering it.
This article was written by the team at My Phone Deals, which compiles and compares the best phone deals & free gifts1 from the across the UK. The site features news and updates on the market, as well as a flexible tool that finds cheap mobile phone contracts2 with a variety of search options.
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Copyright 2006 Joshua Spaulding
Through the recent years many people have learned the secrets of Search Engine Optimization. More and more sites have seen the effects articles have done for the traffic of their sites.
Some have even created sites devoted entirely to providing articles that could be read by their website visitors and have links that could lead to many sites that are related to the topics and subjects of the articles.
For example, the sites may feature many articles about a whole lot of topics. As a website visitor reads the articles they have searched for, they can find at the end of the article a resource box that can be clicked on to link them to the site that has submitted the article. Of course the article would be in relation to the site. Lets say if the article is about rotating the tires, the resource box may lead to a link to a site that sells tires or car parts.
A resource box is what you usually find at the end of an article. They will contain the name of the author, a brief description of the author, a brief description of the sponsoring site and a link. If a reader likes what they read, they would have the tendency to find out where the article came from to read more. The resource bow will be their link to the source of the article and this will entice them to go to the site and do some more reading or research for the subject or topic they are interested in.
But like the article itself, the resource box must also be eye-catching to demand the attention and interest of the reader. While the resource bow encompasses only a small space, providing the right keywords and content for your resource box will provide more prodding for the reader to go to your site.
Now we know what resource boxes are, what are the benefits of having a good resource box? Mainly its driving traffic to your site. Many sites would allow articles to be placed in their sites because they can make use of the articles to fill their pages. They also get affiliation with other sites that can be beneficial for them as well. For the sponsoring site, when you get people to click on your resource box, you generate traffic that can be counted upon as potential customers.
So what would be a good content for your resource box? Basically it is keywords, learning about the proper keywords that people are mainly searching for. There are many tools you can find in the internet that can help you in determining what keywords to use.
Resource boxes can also make use of all the creativity it can get. You only get a small space for your resource box so you better make the most of it. Try to catch the attention of your reader with resource box content that can make them give a second look. Unlike TV ads, you don’t have visual aids to drive your point in. But you do have the power of imagination of a reader. With the right content, you can make them think and intrigued.
Another tip is to use keywords that should be related to your site. Do not mislead your potential website visitors. Build your credibility so that more people would get enticed to visit your site and browse what you have to offer. Make the people click your resource box by providing resource box content that makes a lasting impression. You only get one chance to wow them and hundreds of chances to repulse them.
Never underestimate the power of the resource box. It may be small in size but they will provide a significant aid in driving traffic to your site. A boring resource box will never get a job done. Be fun and creative but at the same time show that you have a great deal to offer, too much to ask for something that couldn’t fit a paragraph? Yes and no, there are many tips and guides that can help you in doing this, the first step is realizing how important a resource box could be in making people click your link and be directed to your site.
About The Author:
Joshua Spaulding is an Author providing valuable information on how to Make Money Online through his web-site at http://makemoneyonline.josh4info.com Joshua also provides thousands of Quality articles through his Article Directory athttp://www.articlesalley.com
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Potential clients often call to mention they are interested in pursuing search engine marketing. I ask them what they mean by search engine marketing and they often are not sure.
What is Search Engine Marketing?
What is search engine marketing? It is a global term that refers to all the different ways you can market a site on the zillion or so search engines out there. In truth, it is a catch all term for most people who know they should probably have a website, but not much more than that. It is like walking up to a real estate agent and saying you need a house.
If you have a business, you need a site. If you have site, you must need search engine marketing. Logically, this makes sense. In the practical world of internet marketing, however, search engine marketing is a very broad term. It encompasses a wide variety of things.
When most people use the phrase, they are really saying something else to a marketing company like ours. What they are saying is I need exposure for my site. I need to get people from the search engines to my site. Most important, I need them to buy. If this is your general thought process, you are thinking along the correct line of thought. There is, however, a problem.
Search engine marketing has a number of distinct areas. You can read about them here: “The Key Elements of Search Engine Marketing”. The problem, of course, is most sites should only use a certain type of search engine marketing. The role of a good search engine marketing firm such as ours is to identify those areas, explain why they should be used and successfully carry out a campaign for your site.
In general, search engine marketing is just a catch-all phrase that really means very little. If you are considering marketing for your site, make sure to get a more detailed understanding of what you are getting into and why you should do so.
When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a wide variety of ways to go. Here are the top approaches, to wit, the key elements of search engine marketing.
The Key Elements of Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is a very general term that more or less encompasses most types of online marketing. It is by far the most effective way to generate traffic to your site. Traffic simply refers to the number of people coming to your site. Unlike rush hour on your local freeway, you want as much traffic as possible coming to your site. With search engine marketing, there are a couple of different ways to go about this.
Pay-per-click marketing is the simplest form of search engine marketing. It is also the most expensive and the least credible. With “PPC” marketing, you are simply paying for the placement of a small ad on the search engine in question. The problem, of course, is you are paying! If you are not careful, your return on investment can be atrocious and wipe you out within a few months. To make matters worse, many people fraudulently click ads just to use up your budget. This, of course, makes your return on investment even worse. PPC has its place, but it should never be relied upon as a total solution to your marketing needs.
Search engine optimization is the next method in the search engine marketing arena. With “SEO”, the goal is to get your site ranked in the top 10 in the search results for specific keywords. All the clicks you then receive are free, which makes your return on investment very high. The downside to SEO is it takes time to get those rankings. A new site can expect to wait six to nine months before even getting a sniff of a ranking on Google. Yahoo and MSN take less time, but not much less. Most sites run PPC campaigns during the first year while they wait for the rankings.
Article marketing is the third and newest element of search engine marketing. With this approach, you write articles for your site and submit them to clearing house sites known as directories. Webmasters for other sites can then use them so long as they also publish an author byline including your name and a link to your site. When the article is published on other sites, people start clicking the link and you have traffic.
For most sites, all of these elements of search engine marketing are used at one point or another. The ultimate goal is to get rankings through search engine optimization and sit back while the free traffic rolls in and sales occur.
2010 has been an interesting year for ecommerce and multi-channel. The arrival of tablet devices and emergence of location based social networking have given marketers new playthings.
However, the economic uncertainty of the past few years has also served to increase the focus at Board level on the profitability of the ecommerce channel. Consequently the pressure is increasing on web managers to display commercial acumen alongside a thorough knowledge of digital marketing.
What will the future hold for 2011? This article discusses 4 trends that Webcredible expects to dominate.
Web analytics no longer an after thought
Web analytics is still under-valued by many etailers both large and small. Online budget is ploughed into digital marketing and optimisation is bottom of the pile, unloved and under-used.
2011 should herald a mind shift amongst ecommerce managers. 2010 has continued the trend of diminishing traffic, especially for search in markets like Electronics and Computing, and the erosion of margin as consumers spend more time researching price savings online and using price comparison and discount aggregators.
The spending on internal analytics staff has been slowly increasing since 2009 and 41% of companies surveyed stated they would increase their web analytics budget in 2010 [Source: Lynchpin report 2009].
The glory days of rapid online traffic and sales growth are on the decline and a more pragmatic business model is emerging where commercial acumen is important. It always should have been but the scrutiny from the Board is increasing and web managers need to be savvier in the way they control ROI. In 2011 there will be more resource dedicated to website optimisation, using web analytics, voice-of-customer and testing to improve KPI targets.
Increase in dedicated mobile sites
Smartphone usage increased by 48.7% to 54.3m units in the 1st quarter of 2010[Source: AOP Digital Landscape Report, June 2010] and is growing faster in the UK than in Europe.
Whilst 2010 has been continued the trend of mobile apps, with large multi-channel retailers like Argos stepping up to the plate, it is likely that more retailers will invest in dedicated mobile platforms in 2011.
The rationale is clear - for brands that are experiencing a shift in customer browsing habits from PC to mobile, it's essential that they provide a robust and scalable ecommerce offering that is cross browser compatible.
Tablets capture on the move market share
The launch of the iPad seems like a distant memory but the Tablet market is the new Everest. The latest addition, Samsung's Android tablet device called the Galaxy Tab, has upped the ante with the ability to make phone calls and send text messages.
As of June 2010, Apple had sold over 2m iPads (quicker uptake than the iPhone in 2007) with the UK reputed to be the 3rd biggest market globally.
Tablets offer users greater usability with a larger screen on which to run apps and browse the Internet on the move. The figures suggest the trend will continue and more and more UK consumers will embrace tablet technology as more vendors enter the market.
The challenge will be for ecommerce teams to ensure the compatibility of their website with tablet technology and to tap into marketing technology that enables them to geo-target customers on the move with location specific offers.
Social media becomes a core component of customer service
Visionaries like Guy Stephens, previously of Carphone Warehouse, have long advocated the necessity to integrate social media into the Customer Service framework. Social media is essentially just another communication channel; therefore it has the potential to influence customer opinion.
However, social media is not in itself a solution. It needs to be planned and have a structure the same way that any other customer communication channel does. Companies have been dabbling with social media as a customer service tool to varying degrees of success. The damage if done badly is striking – United Airlines is the best example whereby a disgruntled customer used YouTube to broadcast his displeasure, the company didn't respond effectively and the net result was a 10% drop in share price, or a cool $180m. Money talks.
2011 should see an increase in the tie-up between ecommerce marketers and their Customer Service counterparts, with internal SLAs established to ensure customers contacting companies via their social channels are given a high quality service and issues are effectively managed.
The Econsultancy article from way back in 2009 on how Naked Wines handled a customer complaint via social media is worth reading.
This article was written by James Gurd, guest writer and blogger at user experience consultancy, Webcredible. They run a range of fantastic training courses including Google Analytics training and social media training.
By Scott Buresh
The average search engine optimization company is in high demand, and with rising pay-per-click costs and growing exposure of SEO in the mainstream media, this is unlikely to soon subside. Unfortunately, many organizations that willingly embrace SEO as a marketing tool also unknowingly sabotage the efforts of the search engine optimization company they have chosen.
Demand Rankings with No Changes to the Site
It is a common assumption that search engine rankings are determined by a magical formula rooted largely (or almost exclusively) in technology. In reality, long-term search engine rankings are generally achieved through an equal mix of technology and updated website content. An ethical search engine optimization company will usually turn down work when told that under no circumstances can any of the visual elements or content of a site be changed.
It is largely a site's content--from the text to the images--that allows search engines to determine what that site is about. That same content also helps other sites and directories to decide whether or not a site is worthy of a link (and link popularity is, of course, a major factor in rankings). Many companies do not want to hear this, especially after they have paid a sizable amount of money to a web designer. The bottom line? That site built entirely in Flash for which you spent $50,000 is not going to achieve high rankings for a variety of phrases without substantial changes that will allow its content to be indexed by the engines. The truth hurts sometimes--but so can the cost of lost opportunities.
Update the Website without Consulting Your Search Engine Optimization Company
A very common and innocent mistake can have disastrous consequences. It generally happens when a webmaster is updating a website, perhaps simply adding a press release or uploading a graphic. Accidentally, the webmaster saves an older version of the site over the new version, removing many of the elements that the search engine optimization company had added to achieve high rankings. This can result in a loss of positions for which the search engine optimization company, of course, is blamed.
Worse yet, since most sites are developed on a "test bed," damage can be done when the site goes live. Test beds are not intended to be crawled by search engine spiders, and so responsible webmasters include instructions in the site code requesting that spiders not index the site--the Internet equivalent of a "do not disturb" sign. The major search engines dutifully obey this request on the test bed site. They also dutifully obey when these instructions are accidentally transferred over to the live site during an update. As you might imagine, the results from such an oversight are somewhat less than ideal. Once again, the search engine optimization company generally gets the blame.
Since constantly accepting blame can be demoralizing, a good search engine optimization company monitors the code on all of its clients' sites on a daily basis, analyzes any changes, and quickly reacts if anything potentially harmful has been done. In this way the website can be repaired before ranking losses occur.
Link to Other Sites
Everyone that has a website has received at least one email requesting a link exchange. Unfortunately, this type of exchange defeats the purpose of link popularity, and engines are starting to take notice. Since inbound links are essentially counted as "votes" for your site, a simple trade-off between sites does not necessarily indicate that those sites are advocating one another. Worse, if you actively link out to a site that becomes penalized (and sites that seek reciprocal links are likely to be very aggressive in their optimization tactics) your site can become penalized in turn.
This does not mean that you should never link out to another site, especially if you believe that the site contains information that is of value to your visitors. Your search engine optimization company, however, should be given the opportunity to review any site to which you want to link. Additionally, a thorough search engine optimization company will frequently review the outbound links on your site, making sure that none of the websites to which you are linking begin using questionable SEO practices. This ensures that your site stays out of danger of penalization.
Create Additional Domains
There are legitimate reasons for wanting to have several domains mirroring your site (tracking the performance of offline website advertising, for example), but few, if any, are search engine related. If you are hoping to get a double listing for duplicate content on multiple domains, you are wasting your time--the engine will typically choose one version of the content and keep the other version out of its index.
Not long ago, there was a danger of all versions of a website being removed from search engine results for having multiple domains with the same content. Most engines, as mentioned above, now will simply choose one of the websites and discount the others. The problem is that promoting multiple domains with duplicate content can water down your link popularity as it is spread over several sites. This obviously hinders campaign performance.
Vanity domains can still be used, but they should redirect to a single version of the website using a 301 redirect. This means that if anyone adds an outbound link to one of your vanity URLs, your site will still get credit for the link.
Try Your Own SEO Tactics
The worst nightmare a search engine optimization company can face is when clients begin to see great results from the campaign and then believe that they should pitch in and help "accelerate" the results. Unfortunately, while the intentions are admirable, this is usually much like someone observing an auto mechanic screw on a radiator cap and believing that this observation now qualifies him as a certified radiator technician (and his tool of choice is generally a hammer). There is much going on in a typical search engine optimization campaign involving page elements, behind the scenes factors, linking strategies, and many other facets. If your search engine optimization company were to take the time to explain exactly how everything worked and why it was important, your campaign could take years. Many tactics, particularly those that SEO beginners might try, can put your site at risk of penalization. I suggest you steer the car and let your search engine optimization company fix the radiator.
Change the Marketing Direction
This may seem like an obvious issue that is easy to avoid, but often a search engine optimization company is the last to know that your company is no longer offering a certain product or service, that you no longer desire certain types of clients, that you are launching a new product or service, or that you are trying to drum up additional business in a certain product or service line. Organic search engine optimization takes time. When marketing issues like this arise, your search engine optimization company should be on your speed dial, so that it can be ready to take action based upon your current marketing strategy.
There are many other ways in which to hinder the performance of your search engine optimization company, but the above list details some fairly common examples. Organic SEO, when done properly, offers one of the highest returns on investment of any marketing channel available. If you do careful vendor evaluation, your campaign should perform above your expectations, provided you trust your search engine optimization company and leave your hammer in the toolbox.
About The Author:
Scott Buresh is managing partner of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, SEO Today, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to the recently released Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Georgia-Pacific, DuPont, and Boston Scientific. To receive Scott’s monthly articles, sign up for Medium Blue’s e-newsletter, Out of the Blue.
By Michael Fleischner
After you've selected the keywords you want to optimize your website for, you need to focus on what is called on-page optimization. On page optimization is what you do on your website pages to improve organic rankings. The good news is that through years of research and experimentation I have identified the most important on page factors for improving organic rankings.
There are variety of optimization factors to consider when optimizing your web pages. I have found three factors in particular to have more of an impact than others when correlating them to search engine rankings. In particular, meta tags, URL structure, and page load speed all have a direct impact on search engine rankings for particular keywords or keyword phrases.
Meta tags are important to web site rankings because they provide some basic information to search engine spiders. Meta tags need to be formatted correctly to enhance search engine rankings. My research as shows that meta tags by themselves cannot radically improve rankings. It is my belief that meta tags may be used to verify other aspects of your website and are important for getting users to click through from search engine results.
The best formatted meta tags should include a title tag that includes the keywords that you are trying to optimize for. It is recommended that the size of the title tag is sixty or fewer characters as this is the limit shown on Google search results. The second meta tag is the description tag which should be limited to fewer than one hundred and fifty characters and repeat your keyword phrase no more than two times.
The last meta tag worthy of description is the keyword tag. I see this tag misused all too often and it may actually be hurting your search engine rankings. When using a keyword tag, focus on only a dozen of your most important and highly trafficked keywords. Search engines should know that you are an authority site and worthy of top rankings. Do your research and only include the keywords that truly matter. You can also evaluate the sites in the top positions and model their keywords as long as they are included on your web site or blog.
Once you have your meta tags within your web page code it's time to focus on the next on page optimization factor. The load time of your web pages matter a great deal to Google and other search engines. Not only does your web page need to be formatted correctly but it needs to load quickly. Fast loading web sites mean a better user experience. Search engines like Google reward you for providing the right information quickly to web site browsers. Keep load times to a minimum and continually work to improve the speed at which your site loads.
The third and certainly one of the most important factors is URL structure. It is true that having your keyword in the URL helps but it is not the only or the most heavily weighed optimization factor by Google. There are plenty of examples of sites that include the keyword in the URL being outranked by other web sites. If you can purchase a URL that has your keyword in it though, consider it advantageous. If you are unable to do so, consider adding a folder or page to your site that includes the keyword you want to optimize your site for. A good example would be www.sample.com/keyword. By doing so you are placing your keyword close to the root and giving it more value. Also consider a sub domain strategy.
Before you begin any search engine optimization effort, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we'll discuss in the next lesson, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success.
Michael Fleischner is an SEO consultant and author of SEO Made Simple, revealing strategies guaranteed to improve search engine rankings. Learn more about Michael's hands-on SEO training program, Internet Marketing Forum, and SEO consulting at MarketingScoop.com or contact him via the Marketing Blog at http://marketing-expert.blogspot.com.
by Michael Moshkovich
Copyright (c) Webcart 2007
There is no question that over time, ecommerce sales have continued to rise as more and more people turn to the internet for their shopping. It's much easier to take a quick commute to your computer, surf the net for a short while, and purchase what you are looking for than it is to go out to a store for the same thing. Because of this, the future of ecommerce sales is looking bright.
The online market is growing at a level far above that of the retail market, which is making anyone with the need to make money turn to the internet. The problem is you aren't the only one in the world with the idea to start an online business. With millions of people turning to the internet to try and strike gold with ecommerce sales, the competition has become ever so high online.
Anyone can start up an online business with the plan of making a large income.
However, because the competition is so steep, people don't realize the effort that is required to make it in the internet business. If you have aspirations of becoming another statistic of someone successfully starting up a business online, you have to be willing to put in the effort to reach out to the public.
Without a doubt, the statistics are in favor of those going into ecommerce sales.
In the fourth quarter of 2005, US retail ecommerce sales totaled $26.5 billion. That was an increase of 27.5% just from the third quarter of 2005. So as you can see, more and more people are shopping online creating the possibility for success in an online business.
With the high competition online, it is essential that you have two things to make it in ecommerce sales; a well thought out plan and a quality marketing campaign.
If you create a website without planning out who your target market is, how you will advertise, and how you can keep in contact with customers, you are setting yourself up for failure.
The more in-depth your plan is to begin with, the better your chances will be of succeeding.
There is nobody saying you have to stick with your plan throughout your business's existence, but it will help you develop into a money-making site. The marketing campaign is the same way. If nobody knows about your business, how do you expect to make money? The more thought out your marketing campaign is, the better chance you have of generating a higher traffic volume.
Despite the high competition in the internet industry, the future of ecommerce sales is bright.
As more and more people turn to the internet for their shopping, the availability and need for more online businesses will continue to increase throughout time.
About The Author:
Michael Moshkovich is a web developer and internet marketer who has written over 50 articles on SEO, shopping cart software and PPC marketing. To learn more about WebCart visit us at http://www.webcart.net
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By Michael Fleischner
The best way to achieve search engine dominance is by focusing on keyword research. As a search engine optimization consultant, I’ve worked with hundreds of companies that miss this very important step. Achieving top search engine rankings is largely based on the competitiveness of the keyword phrase you are trying to optimize for. If your competitor is in the top spot with a well entrenched web site, then your chances of out ranking him may be limited.
In addition to focusing on a keyword phrase that doesn’t have strong competition, you need to find terms that are frequently searched on. I recently finished a consulting assignment for a foundation trying to optimize their website. They had top rankings for a keyword term that seemed to be somewhat desirable. However, keyword research proved that the term received less than 100 searches per month. As a result, top rankings for this keyword phrase were nearly meaningless.
Once you have found a keyword phrase that isn’t too competitive and receives an adequate number of monthly searches, the next step is to thoroughly check out your competition. Google the keyword phrases you want to optimize for a run a back link check on the top three ranked web sites. This indicates the strength of those web sites relative to their search engine ranking. The more links, the more difficult it will be to rank higher than they do without some type of sustained link building campaign.
After doing your keyword research and confirming your choice of keywords and keyword phrases, it’s time to focus on improving your web pages around the keywords you’ve selected. Enhance your meta tags, titles, and web copy to include your keyword phrases. This helps to tell the search engines what your web site is about so it can rank your site appropriately. In addition to the on page factors, Google weighs off page factors to determine web site ranking.
Off page optimization requires a sustained effort that uses new content and additional links from third party websites. The most effective strategies are the most basic. Begin with a link building plan. Focus on article directories, web site directories, blogs, social bookmarking sites, and other resources where you can establish in bound links.
Your plan should include daily, weekly and monthly tasks that can attract links from authority websites consistently over time. Your goal should not be to generate thousands of inbound links quickly because Google will penalize your website. Rather, focus on steady link building.
If you want to improve your organic search engine ranking, begin with keyword research. By selecting the right keywords, you’ll be able to optimize your website more quickly than your competitors. After choosing the right keywords, focus on integrating your chosen keywords into your web site. Then you’re ready for link building and other off page optimization tactics that significantly improve rankings.
Michael Fleischner is an SEO consultant and author of SEO Made Simple, revealing strategies guaranteed to improve search engine rankings. Learn more about Michael's hands-on SEO training program, Internet Marketing Forum, and SEO consulting at MarketingScoop.com or contact him via the Marketing Blog at http://marketing-expert.blogspot.com.
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