As more websites come online in today’s technologically advanced world, s we are asked more and more what makes a website work? Is it in the web design; is it in the website graphics; or does it come down to good SEO practice; or even Internet Marketing?  What truly makes a website appealing to viewers and customers?

Well the answer is not in any one of these areas, it’s in all of these a great web design with nice clean graphics married together with good solid on page SEO techniques and off page SEO techniques means you are really heading in the right direction. Then you have the option of working on solid Internet marketing methods, email marketing getting your product or service known is half the battle.

The days of “If I build a website, they will come” are long forgotten and over. The fact of the matter is customers will not come to your website if they can not find it. Then comes the million dollar question do I pay for my clicks using a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign like Google Adwords or do you employ the services of an Search Engine Optimization company (SEO) like www.websitepromotion.net.au? Either way will get you found but remember once you become a payer of clicks you will become for ever reliant upon this method for you traffic.

The facts are clear and simple if you employ the services of an Internet Marketing company, they can set you straight on the facts and dispel all the myths and best inform you on how to make your website work especially on design, call to action, and the right keyword target. So often I get clients that say to me they want to be found for ridiculous single keywords. The fact is you will have more chance of doing business by using localized keyword targeting your area and subjects relating to your speciality.  If you are selling rare dogs, don’t just have a keyword for those dogs in the US.  Use the name of your breed in your area. This will at least increase business in your area.

Everyday we are emailed and answer phone calls from people that are at the end of the road we soon set them straight on what makes and good website great.

When you hire a professional SEO Firm  to optimize your website, naturally you expect results. You expect your rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages) to improve, your traffic to improve and subsequently your sales or leads, meaning your ROI (return on investment) to also improve.

But how long should this take? How long before your investment in SEO starts to yield results and your site starts to move up the rankings?

First off, this depends on a number of factors:

The competitiveness of your industry
As with any form of business, if your industry is very competitive online then you’ll have to do more, and wait longer, to see any results. If your industry is in finance, personal injury, medical or adult then you’re competing with some very large companies with even larger marketing budgets. You won’t be able to set up a loans company and compete online without a sizable investment in your SEO.

Your starting point
Where your website is starting from is also a factor. If you have a ten year old website with hundreds of links and indexed content then you’re starting with an advantage over the person who sets up a new domain from scratch. An established website will always have the advantage over a new one, so you need to keep that in mind.

Your budget
The level of SEO required by a website varies, and if the budget is small then sacrifices have to be made. Sacrifices such as slower link building, fewer content articles or no development of website tools will slow down an SEO campaign.

Previous SEO, whether bad or good
This can be a huge factor in the success of your SEO. If you have had SEO before from an SEO company then you could be in a strong position from which to move forward, or you could be in the weakest position of all, having just been found out by Google for spam, link buying or duplicate content. If you’ve had SEO before, you should tell your new SEO company immediately to save any time and mistakes down the line.

Your expectations
This is again important to clarify before any SEO campaign can begin. If you believe that your SEO company can get you on the first page of Google for any phrase then you’ll be disappointed. Your SEO company should advise of what is possible and what is not at the outset, that way you won’t feel let down in the long run.

As for the original question, how long should SEO take before you see results; you could see your rankings improve to the point that you have first page listings in a matter of days or it could take more than a year. Ask your SEO company for realistic projections for their work, they should be able to tell you.

In case you have not noticed, I have been talking about Search Engine Optimization.  That is because it is very important in today’s world.

If you have read much about SEO, you probably already know that this little piece of code is one of the most important parts of your pages.  Unlike in the popular song we used to sing around campfires, where my name was your name too (Da, da, da, da, da, da, da), page titles MUST all be unique for them to be effective.

If you are using WordPress, or almost any of the other CMS tools, your HTML page titles are probably the same as your post titles.  Having both titles match is not necessarily bad, but you could get better results if you mixed them up some.

Using a CMS does help eliminate one of the biggest problems I see on the ‘net when it comes to page titles.  All too often companies ignore them, or put in something that may make sense to them, but actually does more harm than good.  Why create a title that just says “home page” or “products?”  Sure, it does tell you what page of the site you are on.  However, it does nothing to tell you or (more importantly in this case) the search engines what content that page contains.  Think about the book example I’ve used in the past – what if every book you looked at had just “the cover” written on the front of it.  It’d make selecting a good one a bit more difficult.

Another common mistake is that too many site owners just insert the name of their company on every page as the title.  What’s the point in that?  If you are a known brand, your content should already rank for your name.  If you are an unknown brand, who will know to search for your name?  I’m not saying you can’t include your company name in page titles, but if you must, please put it near the end.

When determining a page title it’s best to consider the content of the page and then try to imagine how a person might describe it. Often, that’s also how they would search for it.

For example, if your company name is “Smith & Associates” and you sell real estate in New Castle, Colorado you should try something like “Real Estate in New Castle, Colorado – Smith & Associates”, or perhaps “New Castle Home Listings – New Castle, Colorado – Smith & Associates Real Estate”.  This helps you be found for what you do, where you do it and who you are.  If you can fit in alternative terms, like I did in the second example – I used both “home listings” and “real estate” – that will boost the odds of being found as well.  For interior pages, consider adding additional details based on the style and neighborhood of the home being shown on the page.  Perhaps a title like “Ranch Style Home – Big Creek – New Castle, Colorado – Smith & Associates Real Estate” would be a good match for your page.

A word of caution though; while there is no limit as to how long a page title can be, the search engines will only display approximately the first 65 characters (including spaces) and will cut off the rest, possibly resulting in an odd looking title being displayed for your pages.  In general, you should try to get your most important words as close to the beginning as possible.  The search engines will read the entire thing, but since search engines try to mimic humans, and since most humans only get a few words in before they stop reading, the engines place greater strength on those words nearer the beginning.  You can see from this example what happened when I set one of my page titles a little too long.

OK , there you have it.  Now you can get started reviewing and updating your page titles.  Let me know how it works out for yo

Contributed by Ben Adams

1. Use wrong keywords on your site ==> Yes this can be bad, but who will decide which keywords are wrong.  Bottom line, if you are a web designer, learn the site you are designing.  Spend a little bit of time learning about the topic and what people search for.  Use Google Analytics to analyze how people are finding your site.  Use different keywords

2. Put high keyword density => Agree that this is a common mistake – not much else needs to be said.

3. Put too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tags => Quality not Quantity comes to mind here.  Think about it.  If you have tons of useless words, versus 10 quality and relevant words – which will do better?  Don’t cry wolf, cry sale!!

4. Use Page Cloaking => Agree – Nothing more to be said.

5. Use Automatic Submission Tools =>> This wont hurt your site.   However, many people stop here.  So, make sure that you don’t just submit your site.  Make sure that you use a variety of tools on your site to get the best result.

6. Too many Link Exchange in less time ==> might be but not sure, It is depending on your site and reputation of your site.  In other words, it is great to trade with other sites who have more traffic than you or to help another site if you have a lot of traffic. However, make sure the links are in the same category, and make sure that the links will actually help you and not hinder you.  Linking to SPAM sites don’t help you!!

7. Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics => It is against SEO but still pages which are created in graphics are not mistake.  You can use Hidden Text to still portray the page for Search Engines.

8. Creating Hidden Text =>> Simple – If you can’t see it, then users can’t see it, and search engines don’t like it.  Here are some examples where you would use hidden text – a flash site.  Flash can not be read by a search engine, so you re-do the text in the background as hidden text for the benefit of the search engine.  Anyone else think of another reason to use it?

9. Using Too many similar doorway pages ==> In other words, having tons of pointless links going to the same place.  Be sure that you use links, but only link once or maybe twice.  Don’t over-link and over market yourself on your own site.  Instead, use other people’s sites to market your own site.

10. Not using the NOFRAMES ==> not sure about this point, can any one explain it?  Exactly – half of you couldn’t.  The point is, don’t put extra code.  It clutters up the site, usually is not needed, and does not make the site Search Engine Friendly.  Only use code if it is necessary, and you know what it does.

Many people found the new version of Office very frustrating.  There are so many changes that are supposed to make life “easier” but confuse those of us who have been using Office for years.  As you well know, stylish and cool are not always best!  Well, have no fear, there is a free add-in out there that brings back the classic menus.

Necessity is the mother of invention and so someone thought up UBitMenu (and thankfully made it free!)

UBitMenu is a small plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 (Excel, Word, and PowerPoint) that makes Office 2007 look like Ofice 2003 by giving the menu – the Office2003 makeover. It gets added on as an additional menu tab in the three Office 2007 applications.

While you will get back your old usage habits, do also realize that the new Ribbon interface was designed keeping fluency in mind (take a look at the Quick Styles feature in the Ribbon). The Ribbon interface allows for first level access to the commands we use most often.

For instance, I personally find the Ribbon interface a better help in MS PowerPoint. One point to remember is that shortcut keys will continue to behave as they do in Office2007.

The add-on benefits…

• UBitMenu lets the bewildered switch back and forth at will between the older and newer style interfaces. That’s great because it doesn’t replace the newer feature rich menu with the classical one but merely adds an extra tab. And kilobyte-sized, it’s no extra flab.

• UBitMenu does not interfere with the new features of Office2007 in any way. The contextual tabs like the Mini-formatting toolbar works just as well with the classical menu active.

• UBitMenu also retains any extra features that may have been installed through other plug-ins. For instance, documents can still be saved to PDF or XPS from the File – Save As submenu.

• UBitMenu is based on standard Microsoft® Office-Add-in technology; therefore it seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Office2007.

This 359KB freeware application lets you keep the best of both worlds. UBitMenu is available for download in several languages from here.

Are you still one of those (Office2007 has been out for some while) who wished they could cut the ribbon and make Office 2007 look like the classic Office 2003 in Windows XP? Then you just might see the utility of this small software. Give us your freewheeling opinion in the comments below.

I hope you have enjoyed the posts that we continue to provide here at Solutions For Life. Our goal is to continually educate our users on the technology around us. We don’t write simply for our entertainment. Nope, our goal is to educate us all how to connect to the world around you…

Sincerely,

Ben Adams

SENIOR IT CONSULTANT

If you have a website, you probably use Google Analytics.  If you have not used it, I am sure you have heard of the free service, and you SHOULD be using Google Analytics!!  I have spoken of Google Analytics several times, so we won’t review it again.  I do want to say more about some of the different purposes of using Google Analytics.

Did you know that you can not only track your traffic and statistics, but you can track goals and key searches? Many E-Commerce Merchants use Google Analytics to track their pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Key pay-per-click statistics that can be tracked include revenue per keyword, number of conversions per keyword, average order size per keyword, bounce rates per keyword, and much more. But, those statistics are only for pay-per-click ads in Google.

In fact, for those merchants who also use Yahoo! and Bing pay-per-click ads, Google Analytics, Yahoo! and Bing offer no seamless integration between the three. However, the work-around below should provide Google Analytics, and the merchants that use Google Analytics, with basic performance data from all three search engines.

Integrating Yahoo! PPC Ads into Google Analytics

1. Make sure you have “Tracking URLs” feature turned on in Yahoo!. Go to “Administration” tab “Tracking URLs” to enable it
2. Make mass URL updates in your Yahoo! account to: a. Remove all keyword level URLs; leave only ad-level URLs; b. Append the appropriate keyword parameters. Examples of appending the appropriate keyword parameters are:

   Old Yahoo! URL:

   http://www.example.com/product-category/best-selling-product.html

   New Yahoo! URL:

   http://www.example.com/product-category/best-selling-product.html?utmsource=Yahoo&utmmedium=cpc&utmterm={OVKEY}&utmcontent={OVADID}&utm_campaign={OVCAMPGID}

3. Done. Yahoo! will dynamically populate corresponding {OVKEY} parameters with the right values and Google Analytics should recognize and read them.

Note that it’s easy to make all these changes using the account bulk sheet. Click on “Download campaigns” button on the “Campaigns” tab to get it.

Integrating Bing PPC Ads into Google Analytics

1. Update all ads to have {param1} in place of the destination URL.
2. Make a mass update in order to get the right parameters in place. Examples are:

   Old Bing URL:

   http://www.example.com/product-category/best-selling-product.html

   New Bing URL:

   http://www.example.com/product-category/best-selling-product.html?utmsource=MSN&utmmedium=cpc&utmterm={keyword}&utmcontent={AdID}&utm_campaign={OrderItemID}

3. Done. Bing will now dynamically populate {keyword} parameters with the right values and Google Analytics should recognize and read them.

Note, also, that it’s easy to make all these changes using Bing’s adCenter Desktop tool.

Summary

Google Analytics is a robust and free analytics package. But, its built-in functions to track pay-per-click advertising activity are limited to tracking only pay-per-click ads in Google. With the work-arounds above, merchants who also use Yahoo! and Bing pay-per-click ads can track them in Google Analytics, too, and they can also track the relative pay-per-click performance of all three search engines.

Domain diversity is an important SEO factor that is crucial for a site in order to rank well on the Google SERPs. This is achieved by the site gaining inbound links from a diverse set of domains. This is a daunting task as it is not easy to get inbound links. The best way to achieve this is for the site to contain top quality content that makes it a standout in the industry in which it operates.

Research done by the experts at SEOmoz indicated (above the 95% confidence level) that domain diversity is a key metric that helps a site achieve top rankings. The diversity here refers to the number of links coming from a variety of root domains to the site in question.

The links gained are all the more powerful when the anchor text in the link contains keyword phrases that aptly describe the nature of the page/site gaining the links. It is not easy to control this factor as the site linking in will not always choose anchor text that is appropriate to your site.

The other important factor here is the trust and authority of the domains linking in to your site. When you have a good quality site with lots of valuable content, you will attract links from a variety of domains. A percentage of such inbound links is bound to be spammy. Google looks at the ratio of percentage of such spammy links to the total number of inbound links to your site and has a threshold of acceptance for such aberrations.

The topical focus of the domains linking to your site is a big boost in the entrie scheme of things. Though Google has not professed to being semantically inclined in its algorithms, it is important to have relevant links to your site than totally irrelevant ones.

There are a variety of ways in which links can be built. A good post on gaining inbound links from diverse domains shows exactly that.

Consolidation of Links From Various Domains:
A great video post on microsites by Rand shows that it is better to concentrate your efforts of building content on a single domain on which your site resides rather than increasing the division of labour and hence dilution in focus by creating microsites and blogs.

Rand gives a clear example wherein a site owner has two distinct domains, one for her blog and one her actual site. Pictorially, it can be depicted as:

There are several inbound links coming into the site owner’s blog site. She has done all the hard work in publishing valuable content to attract these links from various domains with relevant anchor text. She now passes a link to her main site with the same anchor text directed at a specific money page on her site. This is deficient in two ways.

Firstly, the accumulated pagerank juice from all the inbound links are not transferred appropriately from the blog site to the parent site by means of a single link even though the anchor text is relevant to the landing page on her main site.

Secondly, Google sees just one domain (the mysiteblog.com) linking to the parent site (mysite.com). The inbound links to the blog site come from different domains. This is not going to help the owner rank well for the specific keyword phrase of her choice. A lot of hard work does not translate into actual results in this case.

An ideal scenario in this case would be to have the blog as part of the main domain. Even if the blog receives multitude of links from various domains, it is still part of the main site and it strengthens the domain diversity of the links now pointing to the site. It can be something like this:

To integrate the blog within the parent domain, all the posts on the blog site domain can be created afresh under a sub-folder called blog on the mysite.com domain under the same URLs and all the posts on the blog site can be permanently redirected to the new blog sub-folder.

The advantages of the new setup is that Google sees mysite.com domain to be the recepient of links from a variety of domains. The owner now needs to publish her content in only one place on her blog and cuts out duplication of work. In cases where site owners make posts on their blog and transfer the same content on to their main site, the problem of duplicate content is also eradicated.

Google is quite powerful and amazingly accurate when it comes to helping people find things. However, not many people know that Google can be used in different ways to drill down even deeper towards finding information. These are called Advanced Search Operators.

You might not realize this but, performing a simple search for a keyword phrase or topic is an example of a Basic Search Operator. The part that may impress you is that even the basic search operators do quite advanced things. The advanced search operators, well using them can produce even more impressive results.

All in all, it’s quite important to learn the operators and commands. Doing so will allow you to find more accurate information. But there’s a bonus. If you’re learning about SEO, understanding many of the Basic and Advanced search operators can help you learn quite a bit about search engine optimization.

Let’s take a look at a few of them and see how they work, and also let’s see how they can tie into your SEO.

The Site Specific Search

The site specific search allows users to search for results from only one site. For SEO, knowing how to do this can come in handy because you can easily find pages on a friend’s site that contain relevant keywords that you may want linking back to your site. Having links that point back to your site or a page within your site can increase the chances of improving your ranking and visibility.

example keyword phrase site:examplesite.com

The above will return pages on examplesite.com that contain the [example keyword phrase].

Another way to make excellent use of the site specific search operator is to filter results by domain name. For example, many people believe that receiving backlinks from .GOV domain names is the best quality. One way of finding relevant pages to try to get your link added within a .GOV domain would be to search for only .GOV results.

example keyword phrase site:.gov

The above will return pages on all .GOV domains in the index with the [example keyword phrase]. From there you can contain site authors, webmasters, and blog owners and try to get your link added. You’d be amazed to discover that sending hand written emails is quite an effective way towards landing very handcrafted and high quality backlinks.

The “All In” Search Operators

The allin search operators are fun. It reminds me of when I flip through the TV channels late at night and I catch a glimpse of the high stakes poker channel, when the players say, “All In!” and the audience gets excited.

The allin search operator gets me excited too because this command is one of the more useful commands for SEO. Let me explain them and show you how knowing how to use them, and most importantly, show you how to review the results produced. The allin operators are as follows:

allinanchor:, allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:

I use these operators when I am doing keyword research. When I do keyword research, I use programs such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Google Wonder Wheel, and a few other paid programs to find keywords that have the potential to turn a profit for me by attaining a superior organic ranking. The process can be split into two parts.

The first is determining if certain keywords yield a high amount of potential profit and traffic. The second part is determining if I can rank organically for the keyword phrases. Using the allin search operators is one of the tools I use to determine part two. In my next article I am going to give you some excellent examples of how to use the allin search operators and how it ties into SEO. Also, we’ll continue with more lessons on organic search engine ranking so be sure to stay tuned.

As we all know, the World Wide Web as we know it is HUGE!!!  Back in the old days, it was not that hard to have a unique site.  Now days, you have to really struggle to get your site found on the first page of Google when you have a common product because everyone is creating a website.  The world wide web is still dominated by content on websites though audio and video content have come to stay. What tools can you use today, that will help your site stand out for both your readers and to the search engines?

There is a crying need for unique quality content nowadays. Copywriters are in demand and I have come across cases where journalists in leading dailies and magazines have kicked their full time jobs and taken to writing content for the web. But the uniqueness of the content has come under the scrutiny of the major search engines.

What is the definition of “Unique Content” and how does that apply to you?
Most of the content is from the same source of User Generated Content (UGC). From the user experience perspective, the content on the sites are almost the same leading to a stalemate. This is where fresh updated unique content can surcharge the user’s energies and rev up her interest in the product or service she is looking for.

By unique content, it is not just laying out content in correct grammatical form in a unique style to escape the content duplication filter of major search engines. It is the inherent value of the content itself and the ideas portrayed therein that makes the content unique.

If you are an expert in a certain industry and you have worked in the trenches and have a lot of knowledge of the inner workings of the industry, then the ideas expressed and the tone and quality of your content will show that you are indeed a domain expert.

This is most importantly recognised by other users who can clearly decipher you are indeed an expert. This is reflected by a spike in the visitors to your blog to read your posts and the increase in subscribers to your blog feed.

If you state clearly in your article or post that the content is free to be circulated provided there is a credit at the bottom through a link back to your site, the merit of your content will ensure that it gets circulated well and truly over the cybersphere.

It is common to find, especially in the field of affiliate marketing, site owners who have no clue of the specific niche the product is in, getting content creation outsourced to create an ebook or articles with its variations which in turn are used for promotion to gain inbound links and ultimately sales. The lower the costs of outsourcing, the more fluff that gets dished around the web.

Search engine algorithms today are superior in analysing the uniqueness of a given piece of content. They look at the navbar, the sidebar and footer links and the content itself to analyse its uniqueness. Gone are the days when a customised introduction and conclusion to an article made it unique. It is a lot harder now.

You can create all the content that you want but it is the search engines that determine its uniqueness and include it in their main index or banish it for lack of quality and the poor amount of inbound links it garners to have a low Pagerank threshold that prevents it from getting retained in the main index.

What kind of content should you adopt for your site?
When you have an idea for a website, that is when you have to determine the type of content that will suit your site. You cannot change horses midstream. Rand talks about the three widely prevalent types of content on the web today.

1) Editorial Content:
This refers to the content that is built by a human with a clear idea as the basis, then logic and reasoning that is initiated by a good introduction and great body copy that expresses the idea in lucid fashion and a healthy conclusion. The style and expression is unique to each writer. Good examples are a site owner blogging on her site coming up with unique content on a regular basis that keeps readers engaged and also garners great inbound editorial links from her industry peers and the linkerati in general. This type of content is ideal for smaller sites.

2) Machine Built Content:
If you have a burning ambition to domionate your niche or industry, then machine built content can be handy in satiating your desire. This involves collecting data from reliable sources and pushing them into a fixed well formatted content structure by way of an xml file and stored in databases. Content pages are generated on the fly in response to user clicks on the site.

The biggest problem here is the pattern that is obviously common to most machine built content sites. The on page factors like page titles and h# tags are unique on each page. But the content follows a fixed pattern with subtle changes in data as in case of statistical information. Most major travel sites employ this technique.

It is a scalable and saves time and money. But it does not make the cut when it comes to the search engines analysing it for its , you guessed it right, uniqueness. A content duplication filter can definitely prevent such a page from getting indexed.

From an SEO perspective, if the domain on which such content resides is a trusted mature domain with good standing, then it would not be a major issue. For newer sites (typically less than a year old) trying to establish themselves rapidly, it could be a major stumbling block.

3) User Generated Content (UGC):
This is the most valuable type of content any site owner could have on her site. But it does not come easy. It takes a lot of time and effort to build a bustling community and incentivize the contributors to make the content creation happen. Some of the popular examples are Wikipedia, Reddit and Digg.

This is a powerful and scalable technique but it is not easy to get a network of dedicated users scaling it up to the higher levels of content creation.

You can consider using content from each of the above mentioned categories or a nice blend of them to create unique content that can satisfy visitors to your site and keep them engrossed longer on your site pages. The amount of time spent by users on your site is certainly a factor the search engines could consider to determine the quality of your site content.

Most times, I hear site owners clamouring for links and/or aspiring for higher positions on the SERPs. One of the major factors that can propel a site to the top of the search engine summit is unique quality content. This arises from personal experiences of the blogger and the successful practice and implementation of the actual content that is being preached by her in her day to day blogging activities.

Once justice has been done to this crucial part, then it is only a matter of time before users identify the good quality advice offered on your site and the twittering and digging of your posts akin to the Web’s word of mouth propels your site into the limelight which is top rankings on the SERPs.

The number of inbound links from a variety of domains of different hues and the naturally worded anchor text in the inbound links to your site are proof enough of the confirmation aspect of your post’s nature from unbiased external sources in the most natural form erasing any doubt about the duplication of content in the eyes of the search engines.