Tips To Good (And Bad) Search Rankings

As all professionals involved in Search Engine Optimization know, there are no guarantees with SEO. Understandably, major search engines are pretty cagey about how much they let search marketers know regarding their algorithms and ranking methods. Whilst we all know that ethical SEO tries to work with search engines to bring about relevant and useful results for the user, we also know that this isn't as simple as it sounds. Search engines constantly adjust their algorithms and as SEO professionals, our job is to constantly innovate too in order to find new ways to improve our clients' websites so that search engines recognise their relevance and move them up the results listings. In an SEO world with ever-changing goalposts, there are still some methods and techniques which are tried and tested to help in the mission to get on that first page.

Here are my top tips to SEO and ranking success:

Content, Content, Content
A point that cannot be stressed enough is the importance of quality content to a website. Well-written and relevant content is perhaps the most valuable SEO tool that there is, but as with all good search engine optimization techniques, it benefits the user of the website most of all. A website which is a great industry resource for information rather than merely sales-speak is much more likely to be seen by search engines as a site worthy of their attention. A high ratio of text to images, flash or JavaScript helps to ensure that search engines can decipher a web page's subject matter easily and having a website which is rich in useful information for users will mean that visitors are much more likely to stay on a site for longer and return to it again.

Business Blogs & Bookmarking
There has been much debate in the search marketing industry in recent times over whether or not blogs are a useful tool when it comes to SEO. The general conclusion is that the only blogs which really make a difference to your website's online profile are those which really have something interesting to say. Blogging for SEO reasons alone is pretty pointless, but relevant and information rich blogs can help to build your website into a comprehensive industry resource which visitors find valuable and as a result, so do search engines. Blogging can show the "human side" of your organisation too, which users often find more approachable and you may find that visitors will comment on your blog asking questions etc which they wouldn't have the facility to do otherwise.

If you do integrate a blog into your organisation's website, you can utilise the relatively new world of social bookmarking to find a whole new audience and exposure. If your blog post (or video or audio blog) is submitted to a social bookmarking service such as digg or stumbleupon, it appears on their website (or a review and link does) which increases your traffic as users of the social bookmarking service click through to your site. A reputation can be built for producing quality blog content, especially multimedia blogs (e.g. regular video blogs through youtube) and interested users will subscribe to your feeds, receiving updates when you release new content. Regular return visits, more inbound links to your website and the good quality of your content will help you to gain more authority with search engines and improve your rankings.

Online Press Releases
Press releases have also been a bone of contention in SEO circles for some time, mostly because a meaningless press release is a waste of everyone's time. A press release can be a useful SEO tool, but only when you have something worthwhile to say. The point of press releases is that they can be picked up by journalists as well as by consumers and therefore they need to be well-written and interesting. Writing a great article is one thing, but making sure that it is distributed to those who will find it relevant is another matter. With online press release services able to distribute your piece for you to industry relevant portals (for a price), it is entirely possible to target your audience to a large degree. Hyperlinks within the press release point back to the website and with major search engines picking up on it in their news sections for your keywords, increasing the appropriate targeted traffic to your website, raising your profile online and of course, spreading your organisation's latest news far and wide.

Links
Good quality, relevant inbound links to your website are considered vital in any off page search engine optimization strategy. If you take a look at some of your main online competitors' link popularity (using one of the many free online SEO tools) then you can see how well their link building is going and how much catching up you may need to do. In order for links to help improve your ranking, they need to be from good sources. Quality over quantity is definitely true when it comes to backlinks, because links from sites with little relevance or search engine authority themselves will do you no good whatsoever. The reasoning behind this is that good quality websites with great content and good rankings are likely to link to sites of a similar high quality as they only want to be associated with relevant websites themselves. Building excellent links can take time, but is well worth the effort.

For every ethical search engine optimisation technique which works with search engines to produce relevant results for the users, there are many methods which do the opposite. Often known as "black hat" SEO, these methods aim to manipulate search engines into thinking that a website is something that it isn't in order to gain better search results. Although some of these techniques may seem to be working for a very short time, search engines usually penalise website utilising these techniques by imposing bans from all of their search results, sometimes even blacklisting a website altogether. The confusing part is that some of these methods were at some point considered part of legitimate SEO until they were abused by black hatters.

Here are my top 'don'ts' for SEO:

Keyword Stuffing
Although targeting keywords is important because they are the search terms that people use in search engines when your result pops up, there is definitely such a thing as overkill. We will all have seen websites at some stage or another which we click on through a search engine, only to land on a web page which is full of keywords and very little else. This is exactly the kind of scenario that search engines try to avoid and so websites which stuff their content with keywords are likely to suffer penalties quickly. Although a few occurrences of keywords in your website content can help search engines to pick out the main theme, a keyword density of more than 1-2% for any one keyword or key phrase is likely to cause problems with some search engines.

Hidden Text
Even more devious than keyword stuffing is the technique of hiding text on a website. This is usually done either by hiding the text (usually just repeated keywords) behind an image, or making the text the same colour as the background. Either way, the user can't read the text but the search engines can, which means that it breaks the major search engine guidelines that state both users and search engines must have all the same content available to them on a webpage. Search engines will often ban such websites from their listings altogether.

Doorways & Cloaking
Doorways are single web pages which are created to funnel users from search engines to a specific website. You can't get to a doorway page via the normal website navigation and they contribute nothing valuable to a site. Again, as they are created for search engines to see (and rank) rather than users, they breach guidelines and users who find themselves clicking on a search result and ending up on a completely different website to the one they thought they'd be visiting find them very frustrating.

Cloaking is another technique which presents different content to search engines and users. The content it reveals to search engines is engineered with the sole intention of ranking for keywords and the actual 'real' website could be on an entirely different topic. Therefore, as the search result and the actual website are totally different, this is also considered a black hat technique.

Link Farming
As mentioned in the top tips for SEO above, relevant links from other websites with authority are vital to your off page search engine optimisation strategy and quality wins over quantity every time. One 'black hat' technique is to build what is known as a 'link farm' by creating a number of websites with the primary purpose of linking back to a main site. These links are trying to distort search engine results because they are manufactured, not 'real' links from relevant sources and this can also result in search engine bans.
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From visibility Magazine. By Matt Bullas is the founder and Managing Director of Click Consult, a leading UK search marketing agency, and its specialist search engine optimization division, SEO Consult, the UK's number 1 organic SEO company. Established in 2003, Click Consult has over 200 SEO and PPC clients in every major industry, providing a comprehensive range of search marketing services including Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns, Content and Banner Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Shopping Feeds, Website Design and Development, E-Mail Marketing and Online Press Releases. Write on June 09

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Ten Tips to Optimize a Landing Page

A landing page serves as a bridge between the marketing message that brings visitors to your website and the site functionality that enables those visitors to take action, such as filling out a lead form or making a purchase. In essence, it’s your organization’s first impression to the online community. In today’s market, first impressions are tough to overcome, especially when the competition is just one click away. The old saying holds true, you only get one chance to make a good first impression – so don’t blow it. Invest some time in testing and optimizing your company’s landing page. If done properly, it can offer a gateway to your business, giving customers the information they need to make purchasing decisions and delivering the essential sales information you need internally to run a successful business. Here are ten quick and easy tips to ensure your landing page meets customer expectations:

1. Are there any obstacles to scanning the page?

Today’s rule of thumb is that a Pentium I-586 user connecting via dial-up should to be able to quickly see your landing page and complete its call to action. Can they? Double-check the page appearance in different browsers, paying special attention to video and flash, as they not only create distraction, but also build additional barriers for the user to overcome.

2. How hard is it to leave the page or get sidetracked?

Check your headline. There’s not always a perfect headline, but there are a lot of bad ones. Most users will make the decision to stay or go within seconds of visiting your landing page. Your headline MUST catch the user’s attention immediately and compel them to keep reading.
Unlike traditional website navigation, landing page navigation should make it difficult for a user to easily leave the page. Allowing website navigation on the landing page offers more exit options and may hurt the conversion rate. Another reason to remove the standard website navigation is to gain better control over what the visitor sees and interacts with on the page.

3. Does the page have a fold?

It’s recommended that any folds on your landing page be eliminated. However, if a fold is unavoidable, make sure it does not take away from the call to action – keep all important components above the fold. In addition, it’s okay to have multiple CTAs (calls-to-action) on one page, as long as the primary CTA is in the top position above the fold.

4. Are you gathering unnecessary data?

Poorly constructed and unreasonably lengthy forms are still surprisingly common in today’s landing pages. Remember to keep the user in mind and optimize your forms to provide the best experience. Evaluate each form field to determine if the information requested is really necessary. To make the form better, allow:

a) the input cursor to hop to the next field after the current field is completed;
b) the user to tab around fields
c) fields to be auto-populated where possible

5. Is there enough white space on the page?

Studies show that white space improves the user experience and allows key messages to stand out. Your landing page should do the same. Evaluate every element on the page for its contribution to user conversion rate. If you don’t need it to get your message across, remove it. It may seem like more is always better. But if you take a step back and really give it some thought, is more really better? Don’t overload your users.

6. Are there testimonials on the page? Is there a link to Privacy Policy?

Testimonials and privacy policies help create the necessary levels of trust required for today’s online businesses. Would you purchase an item from a site that did not have this information? In addition, if you have any awards or other forms of recognition, a landing page is a great place to highlight them and boost your corporate validation.

7. Is it obvious which button to click on?

Make it easy for the user. All buttons on the page need to be big, use full color, and be located above the page fold. Test to learn what colors and sizes work best but take baby steps and test one thing at a time, or you risk not understanding what exactly worked the magic.

8. Does it take too long for the page to load?

Pages that take too long to load produce “barely there” conversion rates, a poor user experience, and Google quality score issues. Use tools to check your page load times and make sure it takes less than the 7.5 seconds to load.

9. How do you feel about the photography used on the page?

Images are probably the most controversial element of any page, but even more so for landing pages. Try testing stock imagery versus amateur photography. An image should compliment your messages, making the entire page look more professional.

10. What about search Engines?

If you are creating multiple landing pages with only slight variations in text, it's wise to ensure that these pages are kept away from search engine spiders. To prevent duplicate content penalties from search engines, make your general purpose landing page available for indexing, but use robots.txt or a robots meta tag to exclude other pages.
Employing these techniques can greatly improve the success of your company’s landing page and in return, increase sales conversion. Taking simple steps to increase the usability and appeal of your page can give your company the edge over competitors – and in these tough economic times, can make the difference for your business and its future.

From Visibility Magazine. By Maria Nikishyna is the Client Manager for Point It! Inc. Maria has a degree from the University of Washington. Write on June 09.

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Generate money from Blog

In this blog I've posted some articles to guide you generate money from blogs. Most of the tips come from extremely long articles of successful bloggers that I've compressed to make the readings much much shorter for you. Trust me, if you have no idea about monetizing blogs, learning to do it from the basics can take a really long time. Having short articles that compresses all the important points can help you a lot, because you don't want to spend too much time on learning how to do it. There are 3 basic questions you should be asking yourself when learning to build a monetizing blog:
* How to get more visitors to your blog?
* What's the best programs to monetize your blog?
* How to optimize your blog and ad designs to maximize your earning?
If you're a first timer on this, I'll give you some quick pointers on what are some of the major things you should know if you want to successfully monetize your blog. It can hurt you a lot if you don't know these things (hurt = cost you time and energy with little in return). This list isn't the most comprehensive ones on the subject, but will give you the big picture on what to learn.

* Adsense - Know Adsense and learn how to optimize its use in your blog. Using Adsense isn't just about putting the codes in your blog. There are tips on how to maximize your earnings by optimizing you Adsense placement, colors, and overall design.
* SEO - Learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is needed to help you get your blog to rank high on search engines, e.g. Google. In other words, you'd want your blog to be in the first page of Google search result when somebody googles keywords related to your blog.
* Keyword Research and Niche - Think carefully on what niche area you want to blog about and what keywords are the best for your blog URL, titles, descriptions, and post titles. Simply using www.yourname.com as a URL will put you at a huge disadvantage at getting rank well, unless your name is Paris Hilton, which gets search the most (to learn from what she has to say about life, I guess).
* Blog Promotion - Money only comes in when there are visitors to your blog, thousands of them. How to get them to your blog isn't easy. You have to learn how to promote your blog.
* Monetizing Programs - Bloggers out there don't just use Adsense. There are tons of other programs, affiliates, and sponsorships. The trick is to know which is the best for you and how to optimize their use in your blog.
* Quality Blog Content - Anybody can write anything on their blogs. But what articles attract the most readers? Blogging isn't just about posting articles. You have to learn the tips and tricks to get others read what you write.
* What NOT to do - There are things that if you do will hurt your monetizing effort. For example, if you have Adsense put in blogs that are 'smart-priced' by Adsense, you'll earn very little. Read also the Adsense Terms and Conditions so that you don't do anything that'll get you banned from the program. 'Smart-pricing' is explained below.
* Social Media - One way of promoting your blog is through networking inside social media networks, such as Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, etc. There are tricks to get the most out of them.
* Getting Visitor Traffic - How to bring visitors to your blog? And how to get more and more of them, over time? There are many ways to get people to your blog - social media, search engines, word-of-mouth, recommendations. The more you know about this the better.
* RSS Subscribers - People will subscribe to your blog if you have good contents, which means you'll get more readers, more visitors, and most importantly more exposure. Are there tips out there how to increase the number of subscribers? Yes, there are. Sharing from ourblogtemplate.com

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Methods to Make Money Online from Blogs

Darren Rowse has written a long article describing methods available for bloggers to earn money online directly from their blogs. The essence of this guide to making money online, added with some entry of my own, is summarized below.
A number of different monetizing methods are available for bloggers to use. Selection of which methods to use depends on blogs' niche, number of visitors/subscribers, impressions and expertise, among other things.

1. Advertising
* Contextual Ads - This is a pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) ads system based on blog contents (e.g. Adsense, YPN). It is a good system for blogs with specific niche topic. General blogs or blogs without any niche will not work well because the systems do not have any context to 'lock' on to when selecting what ads to display (resulting in displays of some very general ads).
* Non-contextual CPC ads - Display ads without having to relate to context, such as Chitika’s eMiniMalls.
* Impression-based ads - Payment are made based on the number of people viewing the ads; only good for blogs with large traffic). Examples: Fastclick and Tribal Fusion.
* Text Ads - A text-link on your blog sold as ads by text-link ads programs (such as AdBrite, Text Link Ads, and Bidvertiser). These programs sell your text-links to their own pool of advertisers; the benefit is that you don’t have to go through the hassle of finding your own advertisers. You also have a degree of control over what ads to run and what prices to set.
* RSS Ads – Many ads programs display ads in RSS feeds. Some programs only offer this option to blogs with a certain number of traffic, impressions, or subscribers.

2. Sponsorship
Well established blogs with large traffic have better chances of directly finding their own advertisers or sponsors to display ads. Typically, blogs with specific niche have more chances of getting sponsors with the same niche (e.g. blogs about camera getting Nikon or Kodak as sponsors). Ads are sold in the form of banners, text-links, buttons, or newsletters. Another type of sponsorship is sponsored posts: bloggers are paid to write specific posts as required by sponsors, or posts reviewing sponsors’ own blogs (positively I suppose).

3. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate program providers (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Linkshare, Commision Junction, Clickbank) pay you commissions for sending readers to purchase their products/services. Participating in these programs may require you to put more effort (than needed to setup ads in your blog) to influence readers to buy the products or services.

4. Selling Blogs
Well established and profitable blogs may be (and have been) sold at lucrative prices. An example is Weblogs Inc. which were sold to AOL for $25 million. But, to reach that level of success is extremely difficult and rare. Some smaller blogs have been sold at auction sites like eBay and SitePoint.

5. Donations
Only a very small number of blogs have been successful at making profitable income through donations. Most of them have large number of loyal readers.

6. Merchandising
Successful bloggers have used their influential blogs as brand names to be sold as merchandises (T-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc).

7. Paid Subscriptions
Selling blog contents to subscribers is an option to bloggers but a difficult one to profit from because similar contents are available free online. Bloggers would need a certain degree of expertise or exclusivity to have readers wanting to pay for these contents.

8. Blog Networks
There are two ways to profit from these methods: (1) Start your own network and pay bloggers to write in your network while profiting from the seven methods above. (2) Join other networks as a paid writer.

If you're new to this, getting too excited to try everything on the list at the same time would be a big mistake. Building your blog from the basics up the ladder - with patience - is the key. It's tempting to try all the different monetizing methods and see if it works more than others, but you'll end up wasting your time too much learning on how to get the most out of the different methods. It's best to start from the most common ones (most likely Adsense) and build up your experience getting the most out of it. Your experience then will make it easier for you to learn other new methods in time. Anyway, Adsense has been reported to bring in the biggest chunk of revenues to many popular bloggers.

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This post is a summary of an original post by Darren Rowse at Problogger.net (Alexa rank: 3185). The original post length of 1993 words has been cut down to 624 words (69% reduction).

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