Posts Tagged ‘google’
Beating Your Competition in the Search Engines
April 23rd, 2008 | 
Author: Search engine optimization (SEO) is actually more complicated than most people realize. After all, not every business needs results from the search engines. Some businesses only need local results. Then there are businesses that rely on search engines for 100% of their revenue.
Once you figure out what your basic needs are, then you have to determine who your real online competition is. In traditional terms, your competition is the business down the street. On the Internet, however, your competition is the website that is beating you out on your keywords. Your competition might not even sell the same products or services as you. If he is getting your search engine traffic, he is the competition.
Know Your Keywords
Your keywords are your “turf” on the Internet. Your success depends on two things. First, what are the keywords that represent your products or services? You should be able to figure that out on your own. Secondly, what are the keywords your clients are searching for when they want the products or services you offer?
Let’s say that you sell cars. If you sell Chevrolet vehicles, you can easily guess a few keywords. It is not a surprise that “Chevrolet dealership” is a key phrase. Since your prospective customers are generally searching within one city, you do not have to beat out the whole world for “Chevrolet Dealership”. You must have to beat out the local competitors. Phrases such as “Chevrolet Dealership Houston” or “Houston Chevrolet Dealership”, will be easier to target and will produce your best results.
Know the Competition
Search Google.com, Yahoo.com, msn.com, and see who comes up in the top five results for your most important keywords. It does not matter if those sites sell cars. You want to be on top for your phrase so whatever comes up … that is your competition.
Beat Them at Their Own Game
Analyze those sites for the most common SEO tactics. Then whatever they are doing, you should one-up them in every respect.
Here are a few tips on what to look for:
Keyword frequency – How many times do they use the words you are targeting? Count them. Use those words and phrases more frequently and more times.
Inbound links – How many links do they have coming in? Search google.com using this format: link:www.anythinginternet.com
Prominent Keywords – Bolded keywords, keywords in the website address, keywords in the title bar, and keywords in headings are all considered important.
There are many other things to look for. I recommend you hire a professional SEO consultant if search engine results are important to you. These tips will help you optimize a few of the most obvious parts of your web page. There are a lot more things to do. You want your keywords in your page title, your META tags, and you want to optimize every page on your website.
Increasing the number of inbound links can be a lot of work. If your competition has a lot of these, you should hire a professional to help you compete. Experts can add hundreds of new inbound links for you quite easily.
If you make changes to your website, prepare to wait a long time for those changes to be 100% effective. Some things could take six months to become fully effective.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 
Tags: google, google.com, search engine optimization (SEO), search engines, traffic, yahoo, yahoo.com | 
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The Numbers Never Lie
Most business websites share the objective of getting people to visit the website and take action once they get there. The desired action will vary from site to site. You may want your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, contribute to your blog, or to purchase some products or services. Whatever it is, when a visitor does it, it is a success.
What is a Success for You?
You might have more than one type of success on your website. You might call it a success if someone contacts you and provides their phone number or you might only call it a success when they put in their credit card number. Maybe there are several different successes on your website. Step 1 is to identify what exactly is a success and make sure there is a method for tracking that on your website.
Identify your successes and identify the way to identify them. The confirmation message that follows a sale or the thank you page after someone contacts you are two possible examples. If you accept member registrations, a success would be the page that displays after they confirm their registration. Identify all these successes and how to identify them.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a statistics package that you can use free. There is a simple setup process to get started and there are more advanced features when you are ready for them. One of those advanced features is the “campaign”. Once you have identified the successes you can use that information to setup Google Analytics campaigns.
Google Analytics supports many different reports and it might take you a little while to find the ones that help you the most. The main thing that most people look for are:
- Number of visitors per day
- Number of pages viewed by each visitor
- Keywords used to find your site
- Sites that referred visitors to your site
- Number of successes based on your campaigns
Comparing these numbers can give you great insights into what is going on and why. If you sell a book on your website, you can track how many people used related keywords to find your site, how many viewed the page that actually promotes your book, and how many people actually buy the book. Comparing the numbers will give you insights as to where people are stopping. That becomes your area to work on.
Another advantage to Google Analytics in contrast to statistics built into your web hosting account is that Google only reports legitimate visitors. The technology used by Google is more accurate. You get numbers that you can use. Other statistics packages might report higher numbers, but those numbers are only good for bragging rights, not for optimizing your online business.
The Numbers Never Lie
It is so important to know what is going on with your website. How many visitors do you get each day? How many of those visitors are looking at your products and services? What keywords are they using? What are they buying?
It takes good numbers to make good decisions. If you are not getting enough successes on your website, consider making changes to your website. If you are not getting enough traffic to your website, consider other marketing strategies. You can only tell what to fix by first identifying what needs fixing.
Blogging for Dollars
So what’s the big deal about a blog anyway? Blogs have become a hot buzzword and have managed to become the most popular tool for adding Web 2.0 features to your website. If you don’t have a blog then you are missing out. Blogs help you attract repeat visitors, demonstrate your expert knowledge, build huge credibility, and sell products.
A blog is simply a technology for adding an article to your website and allowing site visitors to add their own comments to your article. Allowing comments is not mandatory, but is a great idea for building loyal visitors. Blogs are easy to use, integrate into your website nicely, and can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your website.
Getting started is fairly easy. You’ll need to choose a blog tool. We recommend Word Press. There are other tools and you’ll have to decide whether to install on your own site or use their site. My advice is to install their software on your own site. If it isn’t your own domain name then it’s bad for business.
Setup is a breeze. Posting articles is a breeze. You’ll have that going in no time. Don’t even worry about getting setup and running. These are minor technical details and any decent web savvy geek can get you over that hump quickly.
What matters most are: (a) promoting your blog, (b) keeping it interesting, and (c) monetizing it. Promoting your blog is done the same way that promoting any website is done. Invite people to come visit, solicit friends to help you build it up by commenting on articles, mention it in your newsletter, and so on. Just keeping putting the word out there and make sure your articles are real contributions to the community and not some uninteresting babble.
Monetizing is done in three ways. You can place ads on your website, such as inserting Google Adsense ads. You can advertise your own products and services with banner ads. You can also place affiliate links on your blog encouraging them to buy other products and services that pay you a commission.
Blogs are easy to start but take a little time and practice to master. You’ll be adding and changing things over time. The end result could be amazing. I’ve heard stories of people selling their established blogs for significant money. Who knows, maybe someone will offer give you an offer you can’t refuse. So what are you waiting for? Build your blog today, invite your friends to help you get it established, and you will have a fan club before you know it.
