Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts
A report by the Atlantic shined a light on a new “social media service” which allows users to purchase Google +1′s in bulk. The site in question, Pluseem, has a variety of different Google+ package sizes, from 50 plusses to 2,000, with the prices ranging from $0.18 – $0.38 per plus.
Of course this is a direct violation of Google’s quality guidelines:
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
The service makes the following claims about their sale of +1's:
- All +1′s come from people with a Google account that has been verified by phone (Phone Verified Accounts)
- All +1′s come from real people. No bots are being used!
- All +1′s are being given by manually going to your website and clicking the +1 button
- It’s untraceable because the +1′s are being given from different IP’s
- All +1′s are given dripped over a couple of days so it looks natural
Interestingly, the website in question was sold less than one week ago for $115 (about the price of 1,000 plusses!) Of course this isn’t the only site out there with promises of gaming social platforms. With some simple searches, anyone can find a variety of packages that offer similar services. This is also fairly regular on other popular sites like Digg, Facebook and Twitter.
Why You Shouldn’t Use Services Like These
You can absolutely get some quick votes with a product like this … but should you? Any skilled internet marketer knows this isn’t good marketing or great SEO; it’s spamming. Much like links, quality matters immensely for and social product. On Facebook your EdgeRank will slip if marketing to a non-relevant audience. On LinkedIn’s Today your profession directly affects your likes and shares. There is no reason why Google would not use quality and relevancy as well with +1′s. By paying for non-relevant users to vote or like your content on a social network you are effectively muddying your message.
In conclusion, will 2,000 votes from random users over a few days help your website? Probably not. Will it will hurt your long-term strategy while violating Google’s quality guidelines? Most likely.
When you are very new in SEO, there is a whole lot of conflicting information about what is right and what is wrong. There's a constant battle between which one is more effective.
It's pretty easy to get frustrated at how long it can actually take to achieve a decent ranking in Search Engines. This can lead to taking the wrong advice from the wrong people. I learned by trial and error the SEO mistakes listed below.
Here are some rules that you can follow if and only if you DO NOT want your site to rank in search engines.
1. Build a Flash Only Website
The days of Flash only websites are probably behind us (thank God). Having said this, as a web developer it's surprising how often I'm asked, 'Does that include Flash?'
Search engines cannot read content embedded in Flash files so you shouldn't use Flash to build websites. It's perfectly all right to have a flash feature box or slideshow or something like that so long as the rest of your site is built with HTML.
2. Hide all Your Content in Images
This is another sin of the past, although you do still see it occasionally. If you embed your navigation and page copy in images, search engines will not be able to identify this content. Use text-based navigation and semantic mark-up instead.
3. Use Excessive JavaScript/AJAX
Search Engines do not understand JavaScript/Ajax. If you use too much of this and in particular in your navigation, you're preventing your content being indexed. Use text-based HTML/CSS navigation instead.
4. Copy Someone Else's Content
You're not much of a writer and no one will ever know right? I'm afraid not. Duplicate content is one of the biggest sins you can commit as far as search engines are concerned. Not only do you prevent your site from ranking, but you also impact the site you copied the material from.
You should either write all content yourself or hire somebody else to do it for you.
5. Stuff Your Content with Keywords
Including the same keyword phrase in the Page Title, the Heading, three times in the copy, bolded, in a link and in an image alt tag is an example of keyword stuffing. This is like telling the search engine, 'I'm trying to manipulate you into ranking me higher'. They won't rank you higher, they'll penalize you instead.
Include your keyword phrase, but do it naturally. Write primarily for humans then worry about search engines.
6. Use Automated Directory Submission Software
There are loads of software programs to automate the directory submission process. Don't use them.
First of all directory submissions are not that valuable in terms of PageRank anymore. Secondly you'll end up with thousands of similar Titles and Descriptions that will mark you as a cheater as far as search engines are concerned.
Submít to well-established directories, write unique Titles and Descriptions and try to focus on local and niche directories.
7. Participate in Link Exchange Programs
Often you see websites with a 'Links' or 'Resources' page with a list of links a mile long. Often these have no relevance to the content of the site and have been reciprocated on an identical page on the corresponding site.
There are a number of problems with this:
* Reciprocal links are less valuable than one way links.
* Links from pages containing hundreds have no value.
* It looks like you are trying to cheat the search engines.
* It looks unprofessional to users.
Reciprocal links are fine in moderation. Try to only swap links with relevant organizations and try to link from, and get links from inside paragraphs of related text in articles or blogposts.
8. Use the same Page Title and Meta Description Across Your Site
If you do this, you are basically saying that all your webpages are the same. Search engines index webpages and not websites; this is why you should have a unique, accurate Page Title and Meta Description for every page. Include your keywords in the Page Title in particular but don't go crazy with the Meta Description.
9. Focus on the Wrong Keywords
Often when companies hire an SEO they'll tell them they want to rank number one in Google for a 'short-tail', high competition keyword phrase. For instance an accountant might want to rank for the term 'accountant.'
I'm afraid it doesn't really work like that. It takes a while for any site to get off the ground and this is why it is important to focus on 'long-tail' keyword phrases. This is achieved by adding modifiers to the original phrase like 'tax accountant' or 'tax accountant manchester.'
By focusing on less competitive phrases you can get instant traffic while setting yourself up to compete for more competitive phrases in the future.
10. Don't Use Search Engine Friendly URLs
A SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URL is really a human friendly URL. What I mean by this is one that contains actual words and not a list of numbers and symbols.
Non SEF URL: http://www.onlineassistant.co.cc/?page_id=330
The first example contains words that relate to the content of the page as well as what category the page is in. The next example contains the article id which is of little use to anyone.
Every owner of a website on planet Earth knows that getting a constant flow of traffic is the key to making money online. The world wide web attracts such a massive number of buyers that regardless of what you sell, you will make some really good money when you have lots of traffic.
Internet marketers are constantly coming up with newer ways to expand their reach across the Internet because no website can survive without enough specific traffic. In their quest to obtain more of the elusive traffic, the website marketers have come up with some rather creative ways to bring in greater amounts of traffic in a short period of time and with little effort.
My email inbox has been flooded with sales letters promoting some automated software or seldom used secret that promises an explosion of website visitors within 30 days. The disturbing part of all this is that it goes against the teaching of our early years; that nothing good comes easy and there is no quick path to building a successful business. As a result of these promises of abundant website traffic and exploding sales figures, many have abandoned those time tested methods of attracting real targeted website visitors that are prepared to take some kind of action. Keep in mind that website traffic isn't something that you can just get, but visitors will come to your website when you have something to provide, enticing them to click on your link.
Too many people are cashing in on a person's desire to get to the top without much effort by offering some really useless website marketing techniques that could actually kill their search engine rankings. The fact is that these are nothing more than 'Marketing Fads', that may produce some huge results in the beginning, but when the newness wears off their effectiveness will fade away forever just like the telephone booth.
Remember when pop-ups and pop-under advertising came out years ago? This was the hottest marketing tool since the time of placing fliers on cars in parking lots. However, when people around the world started using pop-ups to promote their websites there were windows popping up every time you visited and exited a website. Internet users worldwide got so sick of all those pop-up windows that someone invented pop-up killer software. The search engines even started penalizing websites that were using pop-up scripts and soon after that method of website promotion faded away.
I will attempt to identify and explain some of these useless website promotion techniques that should be avoided at all cost. Using some of these bad website marketing techniques could certainly kill your search engine rankings.
Automatic Search Engine Submission Services
These free search engine submission websites allow you to put in your URL, keywords and a description of your website. You then click Submit believing that your website is on its way to being indexed on thousands of search engines. Not so! First of all, the major search engines require manual submission by hand and even implement coding script to prevent auto submission. Secondly, when you click on that Submit button you have no idea where your website link will end up going. Your website link could be automatically posted to illegal or international directory websites that are nothing but a colony of spam links. If Google crawls your website and finds out that you have links to your website coming from other websites with rotten content, then your website will pay the price in low rankings.
There is absolutely no substitute for manually forwarding your websites to the search engines. You will have complete control over where your link is going, and the search engines will automatically crawl your website to get your title and description.
Auto Submission to Directories and FFA sites
You may have seen those places that claim you can blast your website to over 2 million websites and directories. As a general rule, please stay away from anyone that uses the word 'Blast' because this is just another way of saying Spam. It sounds like you are literally placing your link on millions of other websites and getting tons of instant backlinks to your website. Those FFA or Free For All websites are nothing but a link farm containing links from sites with bad or irrelevant content. The search engines won't ever see your website as being respectable enough to rank high in the search results if it is affiliated with that type of environment.
Lead Generation Software
I once got an email that said, "Héllo Webmaster, My name is John. I have been searching the Internet for some business opportunities and came across your website. I just wanted to know if you are still in business today. Please email me at this_email@emailaddress.com and let me know. Thank you."
I replied to the person giving them more information about one of my websites. That particular email was forgotten until I got a few other emails with the same content from different names and email addresses. This matter sparked my curiosity and prompted me to do some further investigation to find out why these emails turned up so frequently.
I discovered that this was the work of lead generation software that extracts website links and email addresses from the Internet for any category. You just type the keyword in the search box and the software literally pulls in millions of email addresses. The software even allows you to email all those addresses. On the surface it appears to be the perfect way to put your website link in front of millions of people in the same industry as you.
This has the look and smell of spam, but because the one sending the email does not attempt to sell you anything, it's not quite spam. This marketing technique is not very effective because the email is generic, impersonal and did not give the reader a reason to respond. Your emails should speak to a person's needs and not just at them. Readers respond to emails if you find a way to reach their interests, giving them a reason to take action.
Backlink Generating Software
Google loves websites that have lots of quality backlinks, considering such links votes on the importance of those sites. Somebody got this crazy idea to automate the link building that Google loves, hoping to get huge numbers of valuable links and move to the top of the search engine results. Google has now gotten smart and has found to way to detect how you are getting your backlinks and even the speed at which you are getting them. So, if you are still buying links or using software to get instant backlinks, then chances are Google will find out and penalize your website. Nothing can substitute for writing valuable content that will automatically attract quality backlinks.
Automated Article Submission and Article Spinning
Writing high quality articles is a great way to attract targeted visitors to your website. Again, someone invented a way to automate this process as well. They came out with article submission software that they claim will automatically send your written articles to hundreds or even thousands of dírectories. There is even software that will take one written article, spin the title and words around, and send them to more directories. This software sells like hotcakes because people don't want to do the labor intensive work of writing their own articles and sending them manually to article dírectories.
The real, authentic article directories that can syndicate your articles are getting smart and have installed a special code that disallows auto submission of articles. They have also installed a special script that can detect articles that have been spun off from the original. Most of them manually approve articles before they are published in their directory and can easily detect duplicate and spinned content.
Conclusion
Widespread use of these automated website marketing techniques has taken away the need to apply really genuine website promotion that gets real results and replaced it with push-button marketing. You may see some quick and positive results, but only for a short period of time. Treat your website like an infant; give it lots of attention, feed it some healthy content, protect it from dangerous spam activity and let it grow naturally over time.
In this blog post, I'm going to tell you a simple method on how to write a SEO optimized post on your blog. I'm going to make it very simple, and it will help you a lot if you're a beginner in blogging.
If you're an experienced blogger, this info might not be new to you, as you might already been implementing SEO strategies to your blog. Nevertheless, enjoy reading this post too.
I used a very simple plan to SEO optimized my blog posts most of the time, and I can say I've been getting great results from my SEO efforts. I got people calling me to ask about my business. I got partnerships through bloggers who found me on Google. So let me share with you what I did.
1. Pick Your Keyword.
You can search for high demand keywords using Google Keyword Tool. Pick keywords that are more targeted instead of general ones. Example of General Keyword = "Compensation Plan". Example of Targeted Keyword = "Best MLM Compensation Plan In The World".
It is easier to rank for keywords that are more targeted than general keywords. The keyword that you have searched and wanted to use, will be your main keyword.
2. Put Your Keyword In Your URL Post Permalink.
In every blog post, you'll have to insert your blog post permalink.
For example, I'm using 'seo optimized posts' as my permalink. Put only the main keyword you want to optimized. Try not to put the whole title into as the permalink.
3. Insert Your Main Keyword Into Your Title. As Front As Possible.
Put it at the front, then create a attention-grabbing blog post title too. For example, "Best MLM Compensation Plan - Where To Find It?"
4. Adding Main Keyword Into Post Content
Include your main keyword in your first 50-100 words.
Then for the rest of the passage, do not mass-spam your main keyword. It is highly recommended that you only add in 2-3 main keywords in your passage. Add one at the beginning, one at the center, and one nearing the end of the post.
* Mass spamming or repetition your main keyword may get your blog post penalized by Google. You don't need a 100 repetition of your main keyword to get ranked by Google.
* Write for Human first, Spiders second. Insert your main keyword appropriately in your post, and make your post readable. Don't write for the sake of getting page ranked, and forget about the real human reading your post.
5. Link your Main Keyword To A URL.
Do link your main keyword in your blog post at least once to a URL. Of course, you would want to link that keyword to a relevant url of yours. But you may also want to link it out to others' urls.
6. Use All-In-One SEO Plugin.
If you're in WordPress, you would have used this plugin called All-In-One SEO, which helped you a lot to rank your blog post in search engines. There are 3 sections you have to fill in.
7. Publish and Ping
Publish your post, and then Ping it using Ping-o-matic to inform search engines about your latest post. They will then send out their 'spiders' to look for your articles.
Ping every time you publish your blog post too.
Enter Title of your blog post, the URL of your blog post, and RSS feed of your blog.
Then Select all the Ping services, and then Ping It!
That is it!
This is just the basics of writing a SEO Optimized post if you're new to blogging. There are of course many advanced SEO tricks and strategies that can help you optimized your post further. And i will touch on those next time.
Recently, the following happened to me: I wrote my regular weekly newsletter and posted it on my site. Since this was a longer URL, like millions of other webmasters, I used a URL shortening service to make this link more usable and manageable.
I posted this shortened URL to Twitter and placed it in my weekly email posting... immediately I started getting emails from my subscribers and followers... the link doesn't work, you must have made a mistake.
Which can be easily done, but when I checked the link, I found that the shortening service was not working properly and giving the dreaded "Page Not Found" response. To compound the problem, I was using the Google URL shortener Goo.gl and since it was Google everyone assumed the mistake was on my part. I mean Google is Google.
In the past, I had been using bit.ly but had switched to Goo.gl, well - because it's Google. And everything works better with Google; this was the first time something I used with Google had not worked as planned. And it just wasn't my links, none of the links with Goo.gl were working. No big loss, unless you were linking your Black Friday and Cyber Monday traffic through these shorteners. Ouch.
But this brings up the whole question of whether or not you should use a link shortener?
A URL link shortener works by redirecting your shorter link to the longer one you have entered into their database. If this is a permanent 301 redirect, then your SEO benefits should pass through to your longer link. No harm done. But if the shortening service uses a 302 temporary link then SEO is not passed through to your longer link since the search engines only read this link as temporary.
All the top URL shorteners such as tinyurl, bit.ly and goo.gl use 301 redirects so they are SEO friendly, if they're working!
From this SEO perspective, there is no reason not to use these shortening services, besides they are great for sharing links and getting your links out there.
I only started using those link shorteners because of Twitter which only gives you 140 characters to make your point. These shorteners are also good for sharing and spreading your links around the web. However, in one way using a URL shortener is not a smart marketing move because you are giving up control of your link, putting it in someone else's hands, in this case Google's.
If it goes down, or they decide not to link to your content for some reason, you're in trouble. Same goes for bit.ly, they are in control of your links. Maybe it doesn't count so much if it is a general link, but if you a have an affiliate link in there, you can't change or alter it. Or just imagine, you have 10's, even 100's of thousands of these shortened links spread all around the web, bringing valuable SEO PR back to your site. Suddenly the service or company goes under and all your links disappear from the web overnight.
Web services and sites go bankrupt or change directions all the time, so the above scenario is not out of the question. If you're using and depending on these shortening services to deliver both traffic and SEO to your site, then you should ask yourself.
Is this really a wise move?
One of the unwritten rules of Internet Marketing, always control your links and route them through your own domain which you control. Especially if you place these links into viral ebooks, articles, videos... make sure you are linking through a URL on your site. This way you can easily alter the link if anything changes.
By using these URL shorteners, even one run by Google, you really are giving up control of your links. Granted, Google and Goo.gl will probably be around for the foreseeable future and until last week I didn't hesitate to use their shortening service. Now I am not so sure about using their service and question my usage of any of these shortening services in general, despite all the great benefits they give your online marketing.
If you do use one of these URL shorteners, make sure you completely check out the service and its history before you start using it. Actually, if you're going to use these shorteners, it would probably be a good idea to use three or four of them so that all your eggs/links won't all be in the one basket. Better safe than sorry.
Have you had any similar experiences with URL shorteners? Please share your experiences and your thoughts on using URL shorteners as comments
A typical Ecommerce website contains a few hundred pages. An E-commerce giant like Amazon contains thousands of products and millions of web pages. Optimizing a website like Amazon is not tough; it just requires a strong SEO strategy.
Optimizing an E-commerce site is slightly different from optimizing a static website. You need to plan and construct your optimization strategy well in advance. This will help save you a lot of time and effort in the future.
16 E-commerce SEO Tips to Keep Your Website Ahead in Rankings and Traffic
1. Maintain a Uniform and Clean Website Structure: The home page of your website should reflect the product categories; while all the inner pages should follow a common webpage structure.
2. Use a Unique Title Tag: Every product page should have a unique title. An Ecommerce site can contain any number of web pages. You can ask the programmer to code the title from the page content and product name. This makes your SEO more dynamic.
3. Select an Appropriate Keyword: The keywords must be unique for every webpage. They must reflect the important phrases within the webpage content. For an Ecommerce site, you can ask the programmer to select keywords from the content and product name.
4. Create a Relevant Description Per Web Page: The description of a web page is the snippet which appears in the SERPS. Every visitor reads the snippet and then clicks on the search result. It is very important to include a description relevant to the webpage content.
5. Include Breadcrumbs for All Inner Pages: A breadcrumb is like a secondary navigation structure. It helps the visitor to navigate back to the main product category page. A breadcrumb also helps in the internal linking of the website. Overall, including a breadcrumb makes the website SEO friendly.
6. Use a Heading Tag: Searchbots assign a lot of importance to the heading tag. The heading tag is SEO friendly and can be used to format the title of the web page content.
7. Avoid Usage of Flash: Avoid using flash on every web page of your E-commerce website. This will expand the site loading time. If the use of flash is inevitable, include textual content in the flash. Search engines are capable of reading the text in the flash file.
8. Optimize Images: Add the Alt tag to all the images of your website. Search engines cannot read images. The Alt tag is a means of ensuring that the search engines read the alternate text for images.
9. Optimize Anchor Text: Anchor text appears between the anchor opening and closing tag. It is good practice to use keywords as the anchor text.
10. Create an SEO Friendly URL Structure: The default URL structure of a dynamic website contains parameters. Search engines are not capable of understanding these parameters. A good URL structure must contain words separated by hyphens.
11. Generate a XML Sitemap: A XML sitemap contains all the URLs present in the website and makes it easy for searchbots to find and index all web pages. If the number of web pages on a site is large, you can create a number of XML sitemaps and then submit these sitemaps to Google via Webmaster Tools. E.g. sitemap1.xml, sitemap2.xml.
12. Limit the Number of Outbound Links: Always link to a safe and secure website. If you are not sure about the quality of the website you are linking out to, use the no follow attribute.
13. Submít to Search Directories: Forward your website URL to good quality search directories. Most of the search directories take a few weeks to link back to a site. Fill in the details of the submission form carefully, so that the administrator accepts the submission.
14. Submít to Article Directories and Social Bookmarking Sites: Article submission is the quickest way of obtaining high quality backlinks. You need to select the do follow bookmarking sites and submit the URL to them. Growth in traffic is a plus point of submitting to social bookmarking sites.
15. Integrate a Secure Payment Gateway: A secure payment gateway is the heart of an Ecommerce website. Get a trust seal from Verisign, TrustE, etc. Visitors will be more likely to trust your site and to make an online payment.
16. Track User Behavior with a Good Analytics Tool: You can track and analyze visitor behavior with a good analytics tool. You need to select an analytics tool based on your requirements. If your Ecommerce website operates on a large scale, you can opt for a paid analytics tool. Otherwise you can use a variety of free tools to obtain the best results.
It is very easy to rank well and get quality traffic with these tips. The trick is to maintain the balance of the site being SEO and user friendly.
Share what all steps you take to optimize your Ecommerce website?
Creating keyword stemming (the ability to have a page returned for multiple results) is accomplished easily through using synonyms and alternative keywords for inbound and internal links.
To promote this SEO tactic simply:
1. Map out the keyword cluster that best corresponds to the root phrase.
2. Make sure the initial keyword is utilized once in the first 25 words of the document.
3. Contextually integrate the secondary keyword 1-2 times into the page.
4. Make sure the page has 500-750 word min. so that search engines have enough context to identify the pages primary and secondary topic.
5. Use both the singular keyword variation and the alternative variation in the title if possible (or in the title+meta tag) - such as keyword1 in title, and keyword 2 (singular or plural in meta data).
6. Build internal links using the alternative keyword variations to supply the foundation of link flow.
7. Build inbound anchor text to the page (from other relevant pages) with the alternate variations of phrases you want the target page to rank for ( i.e. rates, pricing, fees, prices, cost) as an example of semantic stemming.
8. Wait for all the changes to get indexed.
9. Continue building internal and external inbound links until the page reaches the top 10 for one keyword, then reduce the inbound links for that keyword and focus on alternative variables so all the keywords are sufficiently nurtured.
10. Enjoy stemmed keyword rankings over time.
This works particularly well in the event that you are optimizing an array of keywords based on a semantic cluster (group of related words) and wish to use the synergy they create to provide buoyancy across multiple keywords simultaneously.
This simple, yet effective SEO technique can represent the difference between ranking for 10 keywords, 100 keywords or 1,000 over time, depending on how you scale this process across multiple pages in your domain.
For years now, the squeeze page has practically been the lingua franca of the marketing online world. Whether you're in real estate (and actually, the real estate industry in particular has leaned particularly heavily on squeeze pages), banking, e-commerce or anything else, the conventional wisdom has been to target tightly focused groups of consumers through these web pages/marketing tools.
These pages do OK at helping marketers identify which keywords or keyword phrases do well in terms of attracting targeted traffíc and if they're well designed, at gathering email addresses or other contact information from these visitors. However, there are much better methods of doing keyword research than creating a separate squeeze page for each of your keywords. Additionally, building and maintaining these pages represents an investment of time and money which isn't likely to produce a worthwhile return.
The squeeze page is dead - it just doesn't know it yet and neither do the marketers who still use this direct marketing-style methodology in their líst building efforts. I know there's probably at least a few of you out there reading this that still use them and are wondering what exactly is wrong with squeeze pages.
As it happens, the answer is plenty. They're unappealing to consumers and increasingly, they're seen as undesirable pieces of virtual property by the search engines as well. When you're trying to market your business with a tool that turns off both your target market and the search engines, it's clear that the time has come to abandon ship. I'll explain in more detail below.
They're Completely Unappealing To Readers
You've seen a squeeze page before - and chances are you've hit the back button on your browser almost immediately. These pages almost universally feature incredibly unattractive cookie cutter designs and copy which is generally nothing but sensational hype. That alone is enough to turn off most readers, not to mention that squeeze pages seem all too often to be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Put simply, they don't look professional by any stretch of the imagination - but they do look professional enough to fool many business people who are new to the medium of the web into using them at least for a while.
Think of it this way - if you got a flyer in the mail that looked like one of these pages, would you be in a hurry to contact the marketer to sign up for their mailing líst, let alone actually do business with them? Probably not.
As a general rule, if it looks too awful to be true, it's just what it looks like and squeeze pages are a prime example of this. They lack any kind of credibility with your prospective customers, especially when you're in the real estate business. These pages make you look like the online equivalent of a shady used car salesman, not the kind of person that people want to do a real estate deal with. There are other things about squeeze pages that turn off your potential customers, but since there's some crossover with this and the SEO shortcomings of the format, we'll get back to that a little later on.
Google Slaps Squeeze Pages
It's true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as far as your performance in the search engines is concerned. Google and other search engines have been working on ways to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely the kind of content that users are actually looking for when they use the keywords which these sites target. It comes down to what it always comes down to when search engine rankings are the issue - relevance. A webpage designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact information simply isn't that relevant to many, if any, actual search engine queries, no matter how much content you try to cram onto the page.
Speaking of the content, this is something which has changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years. Once these pages started being penalized by search engines for their lack of content ("classic" squeeze pages, after all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers started turning them into the online equivalent of the long form sales letter - in other words, something no one wants to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing content has led to a further decline in the ranking of these pages in search results, making them even worse marketing tools than they already were.
Squeeze Pages Can Sink Your Main Site
Let's get back to that subtitle about Google "slapping" squeeze pages, because this is one of the most important points I'd like to make here today. If your squeeze pages either link to or are part of your main site, they're more than likely causing a slump in your main site's search engine ranking, making you less visible to your market online. In other words, the exact opposite of what you'd hoped to accomplish. If these pages link to your site, you can be penalized for these links from unpopular sites in what Google considers to be an iffy online neighborhood - and what are the three most important things in real estate? Exactly.
Another way that squeeze pages can drag down your online presence is through having a large percentage of duplicate content. Many businesses throw up dozens of squeeze pages which are basically identical other than the targeted keywords for that particular page. Even if you make an effort to rewrite the content on these pages, there's only so much you can do without putting a disproportionate amount of time or money into the effort.
So if squeeze pages are out, what are real estate professionals to do in terms of marketing online? There's plenty of options, all of which are better choices than building a series of squeeze pages. I won't go into them all here, but as always on the web, it's all about good content which is geared towards readers first and search engines second. When your market sees you as credible and reputable, they'll beat a path to your door and happily sign up for your email list. And where the market goes, the search engines will follow; but no one's flocking to squeeze pages.
There are many different methods of marketing your business website, on-line shop or e-commerce website, but for many business owners there seems to be a bit of confusion between what is considered generic back link building and what is a true social marketing campaign, and more to the point what is the aim of each marketing strategy?
Different SEO and web marketing companies will of course employ different methodologies to promote a site and more often than not you get what you pay for so to speak. Equally there is bound to be a crossover in campaign strategies the debate of which could go on for months, but the purpose of this article is to highlight the key differences and aims of each type of campaign not what any single campaign should contain.
Generic Search Engine Marketing
Typically the aim of a generic search engine marketing campaign (SEM) is to develop relevant and targeted anchor text back links to specific pages on your website to improve your site's link profile and authority in the eyes of the search engines.
This of course is all aimed at improving your website ranking and to ensure your website becomes "known" in the search engines for the particular key phrases you are most interested in ranking for.
Low level or cheap link building services often include article marketing, content distribution and directory submissions, although most professional SEO practioners will probably dismiss directory submissions as the quality of these links is generally very poor at best and sometimes dubious also.
Low level or cheap link building services can also take advantage of what have become known as social websites; typically these are in the form of blogs and other Web 2.0 properties and even low level social bookmarking sites. Forum posting just for the sake of links would also fall under this category.
The quality of budget link building services can vary wildly but they are not to be sneezed at though, as in many cases especially in less competitive or tight niches, they can prove to be very effective indeed and are often all that is needed to rank a site well.
Social Marketing Campaigns
Social marketing campaigns are quite different to generic search engine marketing campaigns although there can be a degree of crossover in many cases. A true social marketing campaign is much more focussed to generating leads and brand awareness as well as meeting the targeted marketplace in its own backyard.
A social marketing campaign however is also generally considered to be much further up the evolutionary tree of link building so to speak and while it will still develop and reward you with good quality back links to your site, social marketing campaigns are generally of much higher quality in both their make up and also can require a significant amount of planning and preparation.
Typically social marketing campaigns will take advantage of prime and highly focussed Web 2.0 properties and business networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ecademy and so on, as well as other complementary web sites and social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us to name but a few.
The aim of a good social marketing campaign is not to specifically develop back links per se (although this is bound to happen) but to develop either brand or business awareness in a defined market place where the products or services you or your company supply will or could be in demand.
It is also to establish you or your company as an industry authority, go to person or trusted advisor, or even a business that can help other people solve their own problems or critical business issues by the provision of quality goods and services.
The Downside of Social Marketing Campaigns
While the advantages of a social marketing campaign are undeniable, there are a number of downsides which it pays to be acutely aware of.
The main downside of social marketing campaigns is the sheer amount of time and work that needs to be maintained to develop a business's authority or profile across many sites.
These types of campaigns are very hands-on and involve ongoing social networking and subtle promotion of a business or brand as well as the generation of useful/helpful relevant content either for general publication or for posting on your site as quality information pages or blog posts, or as donated content for other complementary sites that are not in direct competition to yours.
It may be for example that you want to develop a profile on forums relevant to the markets you are trying to penetrate by posting quality useful help and advice (not just a link post), but if not kept up-to-date or live these profiles can quickly lose ground and your on-line identity will fade.
Most businesses pursuing social marketing campaigns as an ongoing strategy will be spending at least 10-20 hours plus a week in one form or another and although this can be outsourced (often at considerable cost), typically this is done in-house by either the business owner or the marketing person, primarily because the business has the internal product or service expertise to maintain a long term focus and generate quality content.
What Is Right For Your Business?
The correct or most successful strategy required for each business will vary tremendously which is why most SEO professionals will not even conduct a web marketing campaign without some form of initial consultancy or competitive market assessment.
If time is not one of your assets or your budget is tight, then a generic link building campaign may be all that is affordable to you, but if you are in a competitive market and serious about your on-line business then it simply does not make good business sense to second guess your requirements.
Bite the bullet and employ the services of an SEO consultant even if only for initial consultancy as the advice you receive more often than not will be highly beneficial to the success of your on-line venture.
With Microsoft and Yahoo combining their muscle in the search space, it is imperative that you do not ignore it in your search engine optimization efforts, especially since it will be the Bing search engine that works behind Yahoo search as well. There have been countless articles written online and in technology magazines comparing Bing to Google, but you need to know the differences between how these two search engines rank their pages so that you can optimize your web pages for both of these as well as Yahoo.
Why Would You Rank Higher in One, but Not in Another?
Most small business owners get frustrated that their site either ranks highly in Bing, but poorly in Google or vice versa. Here are some of the reasons why this may be happening and more importantly some workarounds to tackle this problem.
1. Amount of text: Bing places a lot of importance to content, so if your pages have more than 350 words, then you have better chances of ranking higher in Bing. Not so in Google, for which it doesn't seem to be of importance. So, you need to optimize each and every page individually to meet Bing's page score requirements.
2. Natural Language: Bing places a lot of importance on relevancy, so if your website is optimized with LSI keywords, then you are likely to be ranked higher in Bing. Google is soon catching up, so maybe it's a better idea to optimize based on LSI rather than mindlessly repeating exact keywords. You can also get a firm offering professional link building services to help you out here.
3. Title tags: Bing places more importance on title tags than Google, so make sure that your keywords appear in your title tags as often as possible.
4. Back links and outbound links: Bing places more importance on links in general than Google, and the higher the number of relevant back links you have, the better your chances of a good ranking in Bing. Google used to penalize sites with a large number of outbound links, but Bing likes them, and so you may want to have a judicious amount of these as well in your site. Here again, if you get a professional to work on this area, their link building services team would identify the right places to place links for you, so that it actually translates to a better page rank.
5. Domain age: Both Bing and Google seem to favor older domains, so if you are trying to start off on a new business, it is better to purchase a domain name, that's been around for some time.
What This Means to You?
As a business owner, you would want all the traffic that you can get whether from Bing, Yahoo or Google and the best way to do this is to optimize it for all the major search sites out there. The best way out is to hire professional link building services to help you in your optimization efforts. If you do not do this, you may miss out on a sizeable chunk of traffic as more and more users start using Bing for their searches.
