Blog Me Happy I don't want to be a newbie any longer.

OK, this is a immersive subject and I want to emphasise it’s not clear cut. But here is what I know in my research at the Backlinks clinic:

Authority – simplified

The more authority your site has the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that people trust you and your information. The good news is that authorities trusted by humans are also trusted by Google. A good illustration is the .edu and .gov suffixes. These domains imply they are credible sources of information and it’s an established fact that in the eyes of Google backlinks from these domains to your web pages will send authority to your web pages. Another shining example is Wikipedia as the entries here are largely contributed to by tribes of people as opposed to a single person.

So it follows that authority is significantly influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative sites link to your site then you inherit their authority and in the eyes of Google you become more authoritative and hence the trust in your site by Google increases.

How Google determines what is and isn’t authoritative is undisclosed for good reason and aligns with Google’s thinking of “Do no evil”. The last thing the Internet needs is someone exploiting the mechanisms that Google untilzes in its efforts to try and bring some order to probably the most significant technological resource of this period in history.

Backlinking methods you should avoid

In the same vein it’s worth my while stating some obvious sources and methods of building backlinks that Google not only dislikes but appears to be moving aggressively to ‘classify’ as negative authorities. In no particular order of severity, the common examples are:

• Paid backlinks – web pages where individuals purchase and sell backlinks
• Comment spam – entries that have links on blog pages that are just not associated to the main theme.
• Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied
• Rapid backlink growth – there are a myriad of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden rise in the number of backlinks is going to show up on Google’s monitoring systems, specifically if it’s a recently registered domain.
• Backlinks from unscrupulous web pages – these are particularly nasty as you are guilty by association – need I say more.

*There is another factor where I may be on dodgy ground, but reputable news portals appear to get a lot of authority and I have definitely discovered significant numbers of the same content over and over again on different web sites with no penalties, I am still monitoring this, only as a portion of of the results I am seeing go against the consistent behaviors I normally expect to see. More on this is in a future post….

Technorati Tags: backlinks, google, Page Ranking, search engine optimisation, SEO, SEO marketing

Posted under Linking.

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine optimisation friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot’s job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

Technorati Tags: search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, SEO

Posted under Site building.

Search Engine Optimisation is a way to get directories and search engines to give your web-site a better indexing position so that customers or anyone who is looking for your web-site can see it. The higher you are in the search engines and directories, the better chance you'll have doing business on the internet.

Here are simple steps to optimize your web-site:

Step 1: Modify your web-site – This step includes adding search engine marketing content to all pages in the website.

Step 2: Add tags - Add or make changes to Meta tags, Title tags, H1 tags, H2 tags and alt tags for images, after keywords research.

Step 3: Link building A,
Website statistics monitoring and conversion tracking
There are offline tools that you can use to SEO your web site and it all involves your URL or your Web Domain name. I would put my web domain name on business cards, stationery, have a sign on my car, use bumper stickers or have tee shirts  and coffee mugs made with the URL. I would do everything to advertise my web-site offline. This is called offline optimization of your web-site.

So web site optimization is both and online and offline deal. Online, you must use keywords to attract customers and get good search engine rankings and offline, you can advertise your URL to the public to get the to visit your web site.

Now for a bit of excitement. Start watching your web site’s stat’s to see how quickly the spiders find their way to your web site. You could even throw a free stats counter on your blog and watch the spiders visiting your blog.

Next step: Play "blog-and-ping" every day or so. More often if you have the time! Whenever you feel like it, add another posting to your blog. Remember to throw in some links to specific pages on your web site.

Technorati Tags: search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, SEO

Posted under Site building.

Anyone who has been search engine marketing knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales. However, here are some ways that you can do search engine optimisation for your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.

The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your salesletter, not to your whole audience.

The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too.

Use visual representations on web design for the problems and solutions that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your web site.

Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain.

Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!”).

Technorati Tags: search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, SEO

Posted under Site building.

Businesses are beginning to realize that a website isn’t enough to make a powerful online presence. Marketers have started to include blogging as a vital part of their online search engine optimisation and marketing mix. Surpringly there are still many businesses out there that have no idea how blogs can help them.

They simply came up with a blog, not knowing how to make it work to their favor. Blogs are highly versatile tools that are capable of executing the different aspects of marketing—from the basic market researches down to creative guerrilla marketing, blogs offer businesses a lot of breakthrough opportunities.

Below are 5 of the most practical ways in which a blog can help your online business.

1. Blogs make it simpler to create a relationship with your target market
Your brands gets a personality or at least its easier to get one when you publish a blog. Your blog allows people to directly interact with your brand, and they expect some sort of reply or acknowledgement that someone in your company has received and read their messages.

Maintaining this feedback loop allows you to keep an eye on your market and gives you a better conversion rate of prospects to loyal clients.

2. Blogs attract fresh insights and inform you of new category trends
You will receive interesting and fresh inisghts if you keep the lines of communication open for your blog visitors. The beauty of this is that you don’t need to pay anyone to talk to the consumers for you, but you still get the information straight from the primary source.

Organize the information you have gathered and make them work to your advantage, only you can do that. You can take it a step further and cross check your data. Visit your comptitors blogs and see what their visitors have to say about them. Doing so would definitely give you a better view of your marketplace.

3. Business logs permit you to trial your market before launch of a product or service
Before fully launching an ad or any creative promo and campaign, you can execute a mini version of your plan through your blog and see how your audience responds. Suggestions and comments will pour in, giving you ideas on how you can improve and tweak it to better suit your market.

Companies spend a lot of money conducting FGDs and researches. Sometimes these can cost more than a full blown campaign. While blogs cannot replicate the accuracy of professional research groups, they can work well for a lot of market-driven studies.

4. Blogs help you spread yourself online
Blogging networks survive on an amazing network of links. Bloggers are usually fine with linking fellow bloggers that they find interesting. Its a good idea to befriend top ranking blogs in your own category or at least related categories.

Ensure you make available, regular content and keep it updated to make sure your credibility is high.

5. Blogs allow you more room for creativity
Your blog can be the fun alter-ego of your corporate website. While this doesn’t mean a complete dissent from your brand’s identity, blogs allow you to close the gap between how you define your brand and how your market perceives your brand.

Technorati Tags: blogging, search engine optimisation, seo spain

Posted under Blogs