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Five Tips for Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization sounds so daunting for most young companies. Who has time for dealing with metatags and keyword density when you're trying to get a company off the ground? Below is a simple list of five things you can easily do to improve your visibility on search engines.
1. You can afford free. Index your site with the Open Directory Project. It's free! The Open Directory Project powers core directory services for Google, Lycos, AOL Search, Netscape Search, and lots more.
2. Know thyself through thy customers' eyes. Remember that the words you use to describe your company are not necessarily the same ones that a prospect might use. Sometimes you need to go with the masses when it comes to keywords. Review your keyword list (if you have one), and see if your prospects would even think to search for them. You might even want to (gasp!) ask your customers about what keywords they use.
3. Stay on the up-and-up. Don't cram your keyword tag with dozens of keywords or repeating keywords. It doesn't work. Use 10 to 12 good, applicable keywords.
4. Put it in the Flash can. Don't let your web designer talk you into a Flash intro. Not only will everyone skip it because it's annoying and doesn't provide much in terms of information, it will stop the search engine spiders that crawl your site dead in their tracks.
5. Be more than a welcome mat. Develop unique titles for each of your pages. These titles appear at the top of the web browser window when your prospects or potential investors check out your site. So please, don't use, "Welcome to XYZ Company." This tells them nothing of value, except maybe that you have manners. Use the title to tell what you do, what problem you solve, and/or what the particular page is about. We're only talking about a handful of words per page (10 max), so it's not as painful as it might sound.
Jennifer Guinan, president of Sage Strategic Marketing, offers 19 years of experience in marketing, communications, Internet and search engine marketing, and PR for companies and organizations large and small. Guinan's background includes national and international marketing and communications executive management and strategy, PR and media relations, and consulting. Her experience spans multiple industries from financial, healthcare, and life sciences to technology segments including software, networking, telecommunications, embedded systems, and wireless. She has developed M&A communications strategies, executed crisis management campaigns, successfully launched a number of startup companies, and strategized and implemented company repositioning, product launches, and issues campaigns. Contact us: http://www.sagestrat.com | jennifer@sagestrat.com
Search Engine Optimization - A Do-It-Yourself Guide for the Small Business Owner
So your company has a website ? an important step to validate your company, boost its visibility and increase its sales. Now how do you get it to show up on Google and the other search engines like Yahoo and MSN?
10 Easy Steps to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings!
In order that someone finds your website and buys your product on the Internet it is essential to make it known to the world. So the first thing you do is to submit to search engines.
Google - PR & Backlinks
Here are some observations that I have made recently:
Reciprocal Link Exchange Management Software
Analyzing Googles Backlinks Is Close To Worthless
The Search Engine Showdown
If you're anything like me, you have a favourite search engine and you're loyal to it. You never use any others (which made this research difficult for yours truly), insist yours is the be-all and end-all and you even go so far as to deny any shortcomings it may have. But is your search engine truly the best? Inspired by a great article at the BBC News (BBC News: Search Wars), we decided to compare the major search engines. Here's what we found.
A Naive Mistake Cost Me My Google Rankings
Little do you know but you too could be making mistakes with your website that are costing you your search engine rankings.
2 Lesser Known Ways to Brainstorm for Internet Home Business Keywords
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doctrine states that you should always find a keyword that has little to no competition and that has high demand so that you can rise to the top of the search engine results and dominate that particular keyword. The problem with the internet home business area is that many people online are creating new websites with the typical keywords like "work from home" and "home business" so as a result it is almost impossible to rise to the top of the search engines or risking having to pay lots of money for pay per click advertising.
How Web Design Can Affect Search Engine Rankings
Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when being promoted on the search engines. From a basic 3 page brochure site to a corporate site with hundreds of dynamically generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design aspects in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO campaign. Below are a few points to take into consideration when building or updating your web site.
Help Your Visitors Zero in with Site-Flavored Google search
As Google has gained in their search reputation the past few years, many webmasters have added a Google search box to their pages. This is meant to provide a quick path for visitors to continue their search, should they not find what they're looking for on the original site. To help these webmasters provide even more service to their visitors, Google is currently beta-testing a new feature called Site-Flavored Google Search.
Click Click Boom: a Linking Strategy that will Blow Away Your Competition
Web marketers, do you hear what I hear?
Search Bots, Crawlers, and Spiders
If you are a webmaster and you review your logs, often you will see a bunch of really strange hits. They aren't humans, you can't tell their operating system or their browser! Who are these pesky little creatures who rummage around the internet all the time?
Search Engine Optimization Techniques
Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by achieving a high ranking in the search results of a search engine (i.e. Yahoo, Google, etc.). The higher a website ranks in a search, the better the chance that a website will be visited. Most Internet users will not click through multiple pages of search results, so a high ranking in a search is necessary to direct more traffic to your website.
Is My Search Engine Optimization Working?
You've just built a website and can't wait to start popping up in the top listings of search engines. After all, you've paid this company even more money to create "optimized, search engine friendly pages, start building links and add lots of fresh content." If it takes weeks and months for the search engines to notice me, do I have to wait that long to see if the money was worth it?
Site Maps: Let Search Engines Find Your Pages
With 40 million websites in existence, and more than 3 billion web pages indexed by Google at the time of this writing (July 2003), it's no wonder that more and more people are relying on search engines to find their way through the unruly world that the web has become.
A Simple White Hat Technique To Get Indexed By Google
Everybody knows that getting indexed in Google is getting more and more difficult each day and every body is looking for that edge over the competition.
The Write to Link Popularity
Incorporating writing as a means of boosting your link popularity can be a turnoff for many webmasters, when in fact it can lead to a wealth of links.
Search Engine Spam
Running an online business relies to a greater or lesser extent on search engine traffic. Be this free search engine traffic or pay per click traffic your business still relies on the search engines to profit and survive.
Google, Yahoo!, Pandoras Box And The Lottery
In the fall of 1990, the musical group Snap had a monster number one hit record called, "I've Got The Power."
Why Pay-Per-Inclusion Search Engines are Dying
A Pay-Per-Inclusion search engine is a service in which a search engine charges you a certain amount to spider and include your website in its database. For this fee, regular repeated spiderings are guaranteed, so you are sure to be indexed.