Search Engine Optimization - 18 Things You Can Do to Mess Up Your SEO Plan

Search Engine Optimization is just another tool in your marketing bag. If used properly it can bring you more customers, more prospects, and more clients faster than any other form of marketing. But, like anything else in marketing, it requires a plan. Plans require a clear end result to be defined. This is first and foremost in your online marketing plan: your end result (or conversion). What is your desired conversion?

Whatever your conversion goal is, it will involve a living breathing person on the other end of the internet connection. Before the existence of the internet, before the existence of direct mail marketing, conversions involved face-to-face interactions. Keep this in mind while developing your marketing plan. Search Engine Marketing is NOT about tricking the search engines, it is NOT about how much you pay per click and it is NOT how many websites link to your website. At the end of the day, it is about simulating that face-to-face interaction as closely as possible.

When your prospective customer reaches your website, they probably do not know who you are. They are not familiar with your company and most importantly they do not want to be 'sold'.

But WAIT??? You say. 'I have to make money. I have something to sell. That's why I spent so much time and money bringing people to my website'.

Yes, but here is something to ponder. When you are shopping in a brick and mortar store, say for instance that you are shopping for a new stove. What are YOU initially looking for? ...

INFORMATION!

You want to know what makes the $600 model better than the $400 model. You ask yourself, "do I really need all the features of the $600 model or can I live with the $400 model?" So you are sitting there reading all of the information on the tags. You are gathering information. If a salesman walks up in the first few moments, you tell him that you are 'just looking' to get him to back off. It isn't until you have settled on one or two models that you ask for help. It isn't until you have gathered all of the INFORMATION that you even glance in the direction of the salesman, fearing that even looking at him before you are ready will cause him to come running across the store and stand two feet from you until you make your final selection.

You don't want to be 'sold'. You want to make an informed decision and when you finally do ask for a salesperson, what are you looking for?

MORE INFORMATION!

You are looking for more information to support your buying decision. Only when you have satisfied all of your questions do you ever even pull out that credit card and make the purchase.

Keep that in mind when you are creating your internet marketing plan.

The successful salesman knows that he has products to sell. He knows that he must sell X number of stoves to put food on the table. But most importantly, the successful salesman KNOWS that in order to make the sale, he must know his product. He must have the INFORMATION. He must know how to communicate that knowledge & also how to make the sale passively without being a 'salesman'.

So, back to how to market ineffectively online....

If you truly want to lose potential customers... if your passion is to sit around all day and figure out how to trick the search engines into ranking your website in the #1 or #2 spot..... If you love paying way too much for pay per click traffic... if you are absolutely sure that you do not need to pay attention to proper Search Engine Optimization, then here are a few sure fire ways to completely waste your time with your website:

· Use LOTS of cute graphics... especially the dancing cowboy one... everyone loves that right?

· Put everything you can possibly think of on the first page

· Include links to every single site you can think of

· Link exchange with everyone that asks

· Ask everyone to link exchange with you

· Make your contact information hard to find

· List your contact information everywhere and anywhere it fits

· Have no sensible navigation whatsoever

· Name your home page 'Home', your contact page 'contact me' etc

· Use images to link your inner pages

· Have at least three broken links on every page

· Use the worst possible picture of yourself and make sure its cropped wrong

· Use the same title tag on every single page

· Use the same description on every single page

· Design your entire site in flash (remember to include the broken links)

· Buy 14,000 links to your site for $14.95

· Hide text on your website so search engines see it and people don't

And the #1 thing you can do to completely waste your time with your website is.......

· Don't include any information anywhere about anything having to do with your business

http://ezinearticles.com/?Search-Engine-Optimization---18-Things-You-Can-Do-to-Mess-Up-Your-SEO-Plan&id=2643870

Role of Directory Submission For Link Building

Perhaps nobody in the world of Internet marketing would deny the utility of link building. It is perhaps the most needful thing to do for better Search Engine Optimization. But the problem is that the task is not that much easy to achieve. There are lots of steps to follow to get the SEO job done more perfectly. Therefore it is easily presumable how important link building is for Search Engine Optimization. It is a fact that the link building is an easy job to do and it takes a pretty good amount of time as some times it is frustrating and confusing. But however it cannot be avoided as well. And the reason behind this is that the link building is perhaps the trump card for better ranking.

Therefore link building is one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization process and the key to get indexed for the best ranks on the search engines. And though it sometimes it seem to be a tiresome job still it is unavoidable and the better you can work on your link building strategies the more are your chances of getting better ranking.

Moreover link building has a close relationship with manual directory submission. They both depend on each other. For having quality back links you need to submit your links to the more SEO friendly directories. Though about the submission on SEO friendly directories there arise some questions, as some people believe that they worth the less while the others are of the opinion that they are really valuable for your site. But the fact is that it completely depends on your submission type, how you submit your site. However, for getting better quality back links it is needful to optimize your submission first.

Another important thing that is to be done for getting more back links is article submission. Perhaps article submission is the most important aspect of Search Engine Optimization as a whole. Moreover the title of your website and your web pages does play a vital role too. While directory submission, most of the directories use your title to give you back links and if the title contain your keywords or key phrases then it would be counted as a quality back link by the search engines, but if the website is submitted without optimization, it is rather valueless as your back links does not contain any keywords related to your site.

It is always better to provide your main keywords in the title in as short a form as possible. For a quality optimization title with about 50 characters is the best while you can provide 70-75 characters maximum in your title. On the other hand the descriptions should also be short and full of key words and should be approximately of about 250 characters. But the thing that should be kept in mind is that you should not just dump your key words in your description. Hence it is better to have them more catchy and attractive and along with providing the keywords. It would then be better able to attract the attention of the viewers.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Role-of-Directory-Submission-For-Link-Building&id=2585814

Conducting Keyword Research For Targeted Websites

When you decide about choosing the keywords and the keyword phrases, tools like Word Tracker and GoodKeyWords (free downloadable tool) help with distinguishing the words you will need for your promotional campaigns and website marketing. When you find the desired keywords, take those phrases or keywords and put it on your targeted websites which will directly link the visitor to you; i.e. help draw targeted traffic from the search engines your way.

Note, however, the following helpful tips:

- Do not intend to use a keyword which is very clichéd and used by almost every site in this process. Add a regional word or other word to make a longer tailed phrase. Getting the right words are necessary to attract your fair share of website visitors.
- Make sure you keep a record of the words used. Use ones that work, and stop using ones that don't draw in visitors.
- The domain is not as important as the keywords, so note this and make changes accordingly.

Thus, choosing your keywords is very important. The more times you use your keyword, the higher your ranking can become in the search engines. Keywords are the shortcut words that people use when searching for information online.

Learn more about search engines and keywords for your article marketing, blog posts and other related internet marketing, too. These words play an important role in driving people to your sites for clicks, sign ups, sales and referrals. So plan for long term growth with your marketing strategy.

Do You RSS?

I have recently become acquainted with RSS, or Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication (depending on who you hear it from) and am amazed at how it has been forced on internet users in the most recent years through browser updates and site adaptations. If you have a blog or any other source of information that you want people or customers to regularly be a part of, it's practically 'required' that you offer the RSS option.

So what the heck is RSS? Does anyone even really know? There isn't a clear explanation listed anywhere on the sites that want you to subscribe to so how are new or lite internet users supposed to know what it is?

WhatIsRSS.com says that "RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content." In short, if you want to know if a favorite site, news or blog has posted an update, the RSS indicator embedded into almost every browser will highlight. It is an easy way to subscribe to information without having to give away personal information. Make sense?

Probably not. RSS has never really be explained, is it even popular among the people we really want to use it? Marketers and business owners are getting a hang of it but the demographic we are attempting to force it upon doesn't yet have an understanding. It's such a useful tool and very easy to use and explain - it doesn't make sense not have a brief explanation somewhere near the RSS subscribe button on your blog or forum that would help to encourage users to make the 'easy' transition into RSS.

I guess this unnoticeable transition is much easier to stomach than something like what we are doing for the digital television transition, huh?
http://ezinearticles.com/?Do-You-RSS?&id=2249751

How to Profit From Your RSS Feed

The Importance of RSS Feeds

Online advertising has rapidly evolved over the years. Content publishers and advertisers are generating innovative techniques and discovering profitable advertising models. In this connection, RSS feed subscriptions and advertising have gained prominence during the recent times and are branded as the most effective ad-models having great potential for marketing purposes. There are basically two vital factors that can maximize your gain from RSS feeds: subscription RSS feeds and RSS feed advertisements.

Subscription feeds

Subscription feeds are created to sell unique quality content. For instance, the publisher who wants to market his content will include a teaser copy in the RSS feed to advertise it to the browsers. If a reader is interested in purchasing the entire content, he can do so by paying a subscription. The success rate of the RSS feed depends on how best the RSS feed is able to project the value of the content and the uniqueness of the entire content. To be precise, if the reader is able to access the same quality content from yet another free source, why would he spend money and buy it? The subscription model will work its best if the content is unique and valuable-if you are aware about the optimization techniques and marketing methods, you might have heard that content is the king; it remains so ever true here also.

Advertising in RSS feeds

Over the past, several advertising models have evolved in the web. Banner ads and text ads, which reigned supreme till recently, are no more popular. Banners being filtered by the users and the text ads not being attractive enough, it is but obvious that online advertisers are now turning to RSS feeds for increasing the rate of success for their ads. Today the most popular and effective ads online are contextual ads and advertisements related to the webpage or the content of the RSS feed. For example, Google AdSense specializes in contextual ads and Pheedo has pioneered related category feeds. It is left for the publishers to evaluate the best model among these two by researching on the success rate.

Tips to design the best RSS feeds

Make your RSS feed attractive and appealing to the readers. Also, you need to update your feed constantly and always make them available to the readers. In addition to this, if you can promote your RSS feed through different ways, then nothing else can get you better. You can also forward your RSS feed through emails. This is an easier way to reach people and to break barriers. By placing RSS feed in your website, you can make it more interesting. More visitors mean more RSS. Paid subscription and advertising through RSS can get you more profits. RSS feed can also serve you as a PR tool to forward articles, sales letters, and press releases and a PR campaign can again generate more income to you. You can launch your own RSS product feeds and digital catalogues to take your products right to the desktop of your readers. Publishing your own podcast that carries audio and posting latest topics from your forums can create a better appeal to your RSS feed.

Promoting your RSS feeds internally

To promote your RSS feed in your own website, you need to start by improvising your own website. The concept of RSS feed is new and not everybody understands it as you do. It would be make things easier if you can have something written on your website where people can know more about this technique and its benefits. There are some websites that provide easy Java Script snippets that you place on your website, and the whole process would become easy for your visitors.

Promoting your RSS feeds externally

Promoting your RSS feed externally works in almost a similar way as you promote anything else on internet-it is just like online marketing and promotion. If you have submitted articles to ezines or article directories, then this is almost similar to that-there are many sites that allow submitting your RSS feed, and this in turn can tremendously increase the traffic and popularize your website.

Conclusion

Though almost all the internet content publishers know that they need more and more visitors to their site to generate revenue from their site; however, it should be noticed that if prospective visitors do not turn into potential customers, you are not going to get anything. If you have optimized your RSS feed and are able to get your message across to your audience, you can have more people subscribing to your feed, which will eventually generate good revenue for you. You need to get learned about the potential power of RSS feed and optimize it so that it can serve your purpose well.
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Profit-From-Your-RSS-Feed&id=2156985

What Does SEO Stand For? Defining SEO

You probably see the term "SEO" just about everywhere you look if you have spent much time on the Internet or reading about all-things-Internet. Many people have come to use the term rather loosely without really having a solid understanding of what it means. If you have ever asked yourself, "What does SEO stand for?", the following information can help illuminate the meaning of the term for you.

What SEO Stands For:

"SEO" stands for Search Engine Optimization - quite a mouthful of a phrase (and hence the popularity of the acronym). Let's explore the term "Search Engine Optimization" in order to get a handle on what it means to you and your website.

How Search Engines Work

Most people know what search engines are but are not exactly sure how they work. A search engine is a technology whose functional goal is to make available to searchers of information that information which is most relevant to the search terms they use. The phrase "most relevant" here is key, and this is what separates one search engine from another: how each one determines the relevance and importance of the content they serve up to information searchers can vary widely.

Commonly-known search engine sites are Google and Yahoo!, who together dominate about 90% of all Internet searches today. Search engines are basically made up of three main components. The first is a set of autonomous agents called bots that basically act as virtual librarians, constantly scouring the Internet's billions of pages and recording what they find. The second component is an indexing engine that stores key information about each page found by the bots during their regular searches. The bots then apply special algorithms to determine how to prioritize or rank these pages when someone performs a search for a given term. The third component is the search site itself where people go to perform a search and then view the results.

Defining "Optimization"

The algorithms mentioned above are really the "special sauce" for any given search engine. There is no pre-ordained way to rank content based upon relevance, so search engine companies are always competing to come up with better algorithms that allow them to better classify and rank the content found by their bots. This is where optimization comes in: by optimizing your site for certain search terms or keywords, you are basically slanting the odds in your favor that your site will come up higher than do websites competing for traffic from the same search terms.

Important footnote: Search Engine Optimization refers only to efforts to improve the natural or organic ranking of your site; it does not refer to the practice of paying to drive traffic to your site, which is known instead as Search Engine Marketing, or SEM.

What SEO Means to You

SEO is both an art and a science. It is a science because so many of the elements that make up an search engine optimization campaign can be quantified and analyzed numerically. That's the wonderful thing about the Internet: online activity is eminently measurable. On the other hand, it is an art because there is no one, single formula for achieving strong rankings. Rather, someone engaging in this practice must take a savvy approach, combining common-sense tactics with their own creativity in order to compete with other sites for the best possible rankings.

In general, SEO involves a combination of two things. First, you must optimize your website itself by paying attention to the visible content, invisible content (meta tags), site structure, formatting and other items. Second, you must work to build as many backlinks from other relevant, high-profile websites as possible. Search engine indexing agents take all of this into account when determining how to rank your site for a give search.

How important is ranking well for relevant search terms? Well, it can literally translate to money in your pocket if your website represents a business or is an e-commerce site offering online transactions. A smart SEO strategy starts with an SEO Audit: a thorough analysis of your website to analyze key elements such as: for which keywords is your site currently optimized? Are there issues with the programming code or structure of your site that could impede search bots from reviewing your site?, and What is the quantity and quality of backlinks to your site?

Start any SEO campaign an audit to make sure you are embarking on your journey well-equipped and that you are headed off in the right direction.
http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Does-SEO-Stand-For?-Defining-SEO&id=2126918

Expert says the future of SEO is in branding

Although Google is normally tightlipped about the way searches are conducted, one expert says new changes from the company means the future of search engine optimization is in brands.

When people talk about the history of search engine optimization (SEO), Google's Florida Update is often credited with affecting the SEO of websites all over the world. But Aaron Wall, writing for searchnewz.com, says a recent update from the search engine was even bigger, but few noticed.

Wall says the update from Google on January 18th increased the importance of brands in search engine result pages. He says that since that date, a number of brands quickly started ranking for certain search terms.

"Add in other brands that were already ranking, and in some cases brands have 80 percent or 90 percent of the first page search results for some of the most valuable keywords," he writes.

According to Wall, the search engine optimization (SEO) community should have been able to pick up on the fact that Google would make this move based on statements from company CEO Eric Schmidt who was quoted in October 2008 as saying brands and word relationships would play a key role in the future development of search.
http://www.brafton.com/industry-news/expert-says-future-seo-in-branding-$1273346.htm