Monday, June 07, 2010

Do SEO Experts Know All Search Types?

SEO experts are familiar with three primary search types, including:
  • Informational search: It involves search for a specific topic.
  • Navigational search: It involves search for specific website or web page.
  • Transactional search: It involves search for information required to purchase a product or service.
Besides, there are other types of searches that most of the SEO experts don’t take into account. The following discussion helps the inexperienced SEO experts to recognize other search types that can help you achieve improved search engine rankings.

Ad Hoc Search

Consider an online surfer who is completely unfamiliar with a particular topic. While searching for the information, the user would like to find all possible documents relevant to the topic. A good example in this regard could be of reviews related to a particular product. So, what SEO experts should do is write reviews for the business products and services of their websites embedding important search keywords in it.

Search for Known Items

A searcher might prefer to use a search engine to search for a specific website or web page he had already visited in the past. In fact, it is a usual practice of online searchers to search for the known items using search engines only. The reason for this is that most of the searchers don’t remember the exact URL of the website, but some special part of it. For example, login page of Google Adwords. If the user directly wants to reach the login page, he would sue search engine and queries like “google adwords login”.

So, what’s the role of SEO experts in this? An SEO expert must optimize each and every page of the website using title tag, Meta tag, heading and other things.

Search for Named Pages

An online searcher who had already visited a named page of a website in past would like to recall it using search engines. To explain it better, consider the website of a health clinic specializing in the treatment of a cancer. So, a page of the website might be named as “cancer treatment”. So, a searcher might use the query like “cancer treatment ABC”, where ABC refers to the name of the organization. An SEO expert need to optimize such named pages of the website effectively.

By constantly viewing the search behavior of various online users, an SEO expert can implement features of various search types in the client’s website.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Extend Your SEO Expertise by Building Proficiency in Your Niche

What do the SEO experts and search marketers usually lack? What restrains these experts from becoming top performers is lack of expert knowledge in the industries they work for. At this stage, it is endurable to have little knowledge about the business niche. Still, many new online businesses are beginners in employing SEO strategies. So, an expert in SEO can easily keep ahead of them. But, the situation is going to change very soon.

Those who lack knowledge about their business niches come out with average content, which is passable for the time being. But, the future search marketers would require making use of their knowledge base to generate quality content. There will be tough competition among the websites to get top ranked in the search space. Then, only the experts in niche and SEO would make it to the height. Here are some of the advantages of having niche expertise:

To be innovative: Those having expertise in their niche can discover innovative solutions to be on the top of the search space. They are innovative in creating fresh content and also in attempting new ways of link building.

To be a predictor: Staying ahead of rival businesses require one to predict the upcoming trends of the industry. Those having the knowledge of the past and present of the industry can utilize their knowledge to predict the future trends.

To be unique: Search engines are always in need of fresh content. However, most of the content they index is an attempt to be unique. With knowledge of your niche, you can be unique in presenting the ideas and content which is fresh and more informative.

To be fast: Experts in their niche can deliver content at a faster rate and thus, stay ahead from others.

To be a real expert: The knowledge of niche can draw the line between a mediocre and an expert. When you start utilizing your niche knowledge to entertain the query of your audiences, you are placed in the category of the real experts.

How to Obtain Niche Knowledge

Obtaining niche knowledge is similar to building SEO expertise. You must start reading books and watching videos related to the industry for which you work. Even the blogs of experts in that industry can help you in this. Remember that it is not all about researching a niche, but it involves a process of continuous learning about the niche.

With a great combination of SEO expertise and niche expertise, you can definitely have better returns on investment.

Monday, May 31, 2010

How to Make Business Blogs Achieve SEO Success?

Bringing SEO success for a business blog is important to substantiate its existence on the web. There are some simple to perform things that can make a business blog visible among the search engine’s top results. While the tips mentioned below might appear vary basic to the SEO experts, they can be of great help for new business bloggers.

Directing Traffic to Posts

A post on your business blog needs to be indexed in the search engine result pages. However, the home page of the blog is indexed most of the times. The reason behind this is that some business bloggers are habitual of posting the entire post on the home page itself. This is a bad practice that restricts the indexing of internal blog pages containing individual posts. So, you must have a brief introduction of the post on the home page, so that the single-post URLs are indexed in the results.

Utilization of Tags

Without focusing on important tags on your business blog, you can’t expect the SEO efforts to pay. Here are some tips to help you:

  • Take care of differentiating the title tags form the post titles. While the titles of the posts are usually creative, the title tags need to be keyword specific.
  • If most of the posts on your business blog contain images, you should unleash the potential of alt tag for SEO purposes. Keep in mind the keyword strategy of each post while adding image tags.
  • Meta descriptions may or may not get indexed by the search engines, but making them informative and rich in keyword can help your blog posts to attract the web traffic.
Controlling the Indexed Content

It is a waste of efforts to let everything and anything get indexed in the search engine results. For example, allowing the results generated using search tools on you business blog to get indexed share the indexing value for your posts. You must learn and employ the tools to control the content that you want to get indexed.

Using Redirects

One usual problem faced by the blogs is indexing of several versions of the same page. This leads to sharing of search engine rankings among content duplicated through multiple versions of the same page. This problem can be solved using redirects.

As promised in the beginning, all the above-mentioned tips are easy to employ. Use them to let your business blog achieve its due respect in the search engine result pages.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Important Roles Played by Deep Links for a Website

Deep links are the links to a website’s internal pages, other than the home page or main page. Talk about them to webmasters and some of them would criticize the existence of deep links. Deep links are considered bad because they take the focus away from the website’s main page. However, it is just one side of the coin and should not pass any conclusion against the deep links.

Deep links are of great use for a website and they are no less than any other SEO tools. Let’s trace some of the positive aspects of deep links from the following discussion.

Improve Website Ranking

Deep links earn recognition for the internal web pages of a website. Isn’t it indicative to a search engine that the website as a whole is useful enough to be indexed in the search engine result pages? However, this would happen only if the deep links are provided by good and popular websites. If the websites linking to your website’s internal pages have bad reputation, little can be gained through such deep links. Getting deep links naturally can easily improve the website’s standing in the search engine results.

Increase Website Traffic

The internal pages of a website are less likely to be visited by a visitor to the home page. This is mainly because of the fact that visitors have difficulty finding the way to an internal page. However, if the internal page is directly indexed in the search results, it is visited by the surfers looking for specific information. This in turn increases the overall traffic to the website.

Target Different Keywords

Not all the keywords can be stuffed on the home page of a website. So, deep links extend the use of more and more keywords through internal pages. One group of keywords can be targeted for one internal page and another group for another internal page using deep links. In this way, all keywords of a particular niche can be targeted for your website.

Keep Old Popular Pages Alive

The popular content of your website gets concealed with passage of time and addition of new content. How about keeping the old content popular throughout? This can be made possible by providing deep links to the old popular pages of the website.

Finally, deep links can help you assess and improve your website. Using the analytics tools, you can learn about the pages that attract more traffic than others. So, giving importance to deep links should be a part of your overall SEO campaign.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

SEO Called Expensive – Get a Clear Picture

People keep on calling SEO an expensive affair. You can believe it to be true but then it requires a lot of elaboration. And once you get familiar to the elaborated view of the same, you will find yourself in the opposite clan of website owners. Let’s see how a so-called expensive SEO budget can be made to look affordable.

Consider the ROI
First of all, the idea of taking your business online is worth appreciating. With an online business setup you invest far less than an offline setup. Thus, it is sensible to spend few hundred dollars per month on search engine optimization. Top search engine ranking and increase in web traffic are the returns on investing in SEO.

Competing with Big Brands
Don’t get amazed by the fact that top-brands in different niches spend millions of dollars every year on SEO and internet marketing. However, by spending only few hundred dollars on reliable SEO techniques you can be in competition with big brands. SEO is effective because it is impartial to the brand value and treats big and small online business equally.

Saving on Alternative Promotions
Spending on SEO can help one save the cost of using other and more expensive promotional media. For example, an advertisement on radio, television or print media can cost as much, or even more money than you spend on SEO. And the results achieved through SEO are comparable, sometimes more effective, to other promotional campaigns.

Considering all the points mentioned above, you can invest trust and money in SEO. However, there are some ways to find the best SEO services so that your investments flow in the right direction. Here are some suggestions:
  • Choose a SEO company for long term to make best out of your investment. SEO is not on-time job and you need it constantly for your website.
  • Show your willingness to participate in SEO campaign so that you can measure the results through updates provided by the company.
  • Learn about the plans and techniques employed by the SEO company.
  • Look for a SEO company that uses analytics to measure the overall impact of the SEO techniques on the client’s website.
All you need to do is maintain a SEO budget right from the beginning. With this, you can actually find SEO to be a cost-effective solution for achieving desired business results.

Monday, May 17, 2010

How Microsites Become Bad SEO Idea?

The concept of Microsites, when launched and adopted by biggies in the online business world, gave the impression as promising and potential-bearing profit-making strategy. No doubts that online businesses have made fortune using them, but the idea just doesn’t click a number of times. Let’s criticize the use of microsites, based on the experience of webmasters and SEO experts.

Losing Identity of Existing Brand

You already have a well-maintained website with good amount of web traffic visiting it regularly. By launching a microsite for a new brand, you actually try to conceal the popularity of the old brand. So, rather than allowing a microsite for a new brand to piggyback your main site, it is better to launch a full-fledged separate website.

Missing Auxiliary Interest of Audience

By maintaining a separate microite for each type of product you wish to sell, you might lose the ability to entice the interest of a section of the audience. For example, the visitors interested in buying shoes and clothes from the same website might purchase only shoes from your website, even if you have a microsite that sells clothes. So, integrating different product categories on the same website can help your business better.

Creating Confusion

Suppose your audience gets a link of your microsite that sells clothes from your main website that sells shoes. But what if they reach your microsite through search engines and don’t find a link to your main website. It might give rise to the confusion about your business products.

Microsites can also create confusion for search engine spiders. You will definitely wish the search engine to index the web pages of your newly launched microsite. But, search engines are more interested in indexing the pages of your old and existing main website. And if you plan to block the pages of your main website, it obviously damages the search engine value of your main website.

Adding to Site Management

Microsites, especially when they are good in number, can add substantially to site management. Would you like to include all your 15 or 20 microsites in one press release? Or, will it be convenient to maintain so many social media pages for each of the microsites?

Division of Link Building

With one or many microsites, you actually raise the competition for your main website. If you are inspiring five websites to link with your main website, you would links to have same number of links for your microsite. So, why not to have one website and total of ten links for it?

Microsites are good, when you promote content or things like coupons through them. But considering them as a strategy to extend your business profits can be damaging.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

How to Save Your Links from Disappearing?

SEO experts have always been faithful to link building as one of the promising SEO strategies. However, not every webmaster or SEO expert makes best out of the link building tactic and there is a very simple reason behind this. Do you care to notice that most of the links generated some six months ago suddenly disappear from the search engine result pages? Even if you try to compensate the loss with new links, the cycle keeps on repeating.

So, are there any ways to make the website links permanent? Yes, there are and using them you can build a power SEO strategy.

Be Consistent in Approach

Consistency is an important aspect of building links. Creating useful and relevant content regularly and promoting it through article directories and social bookmarking websites should be an unfailing approach.

Make the Links Relevant

Obtaining one link from a relevant website, forum or blog is equivalent to five or more links from irrelevant sites. One of the reasons for the links to disappear from search index is their irrelevant nature. Getting a link from a website related in someway or another to your own website has more probability of being permanent.

Target Diversity

If the links to your website are spread over diverse online portals, there are more chances of them finding relevancy in search index pages. So, it is good to consider social websites, blogs, article directories, forums, web directories, RSS feeds and video websites to spread your website links, rather than focusing on two or three of them.

Regular Participation

One of the most damaging mistakes committed by the SEO experts is to distribute the link and never return. To maintain the quality and age of the link, it is important to get involved as a regular participant on the website. For example, if your have links to your website on a forum, it is good to participate in discussions, reviews and through comments.

Progressive Link Building

Search engines are loyal to the websites that grow steadily in terms of popularity. Be progressive while distributing links on the internet and don’t be irregular in your approach. By maintaining a healthy graph of link building, you can expect most of your links to maintain their quality throughout.

A lot of efforts should be put in to keep every single link to your website alive. Only then you can expect this tried and tested SEO strategy to work for your website.