SEO

Online Marketing is becoming an essential marketing medium for a successful

business.  If a business can successfully marketing their product or service online
they open many new doors to potential customers and sales leads.

There are basically two avenues for online marketing

 Search Engine Optimization

 Paid Online Marketing 

SEO Meaning:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of
a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic"
or "algorithmic") search results.

In other words, it is the method of analyzing and constructing individual web

pages, as well as entire sites, so that they can be discovered, analyzed, and then
indexed by various search engines.

How search engine operate?

Internet search engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help
people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways
various search engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:
 They search the Internet -- or select pieces of the Internet -- based on
important words.
 They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them.
 They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in
that index.
Early search engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and
documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today,
a top search engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens
of millions of queries per day.

Why SEO?
1. SEO is a long term strategy for your online marketing.  Should you implement
pay per click or other paid online marketing then as soon as you stop paying your
bills to the advertiser the traffic to your website will stop.  Although you pay for
setting up an SEO campaign with a reputable agency often their other client’s
results are so impressive it is almost compelling to go with SEO instead.  With
SEO, should you stop paying for the refinements a reputable firm might charge at
an ongoing rate, you might only see a slight leveling off of website traffic.

2. With pay per click marketing you pay for every visitor delivered to your website
whether they like your service or not.  With Search Engine Optimisation your
website will hopefully appear high in the free search results and this will mean
you do not pay for a click through to your website - effectively once your SEO is
setup every click or visitor to your website is free.

3. False or fake click throughs.  In a study released in August 2007 it was

determined that 18% of click throughs on pay per click links on Google were
false.  In other words this could be competitors clicking through to your website
just trying to cost you money in advertising.

4. The psychology of clicking on sponsored links.  If you appear in both the paid
and unpaid search results then you would see about 80% of your website traffic
come from the unpaid free SEO website links.  There is a psychology associated
with consumers clicking on paid advertising links especially if they are labeled as
such, like in Google "Sponsored Links".  Searchers see straight through this and
know it is a paid advertising link.  Consumer preference is placed on the freely
generated results and links at a rate of 4 to 1.

5. Over the period of one year the cost of setting up the initial SEO campaign will
have more than bettered the underlying website traffic that an equivalent costing
pay per click campaign will have achieved.  From my client examples there is
about a 4 times website traffic factor weighted for SEO against pay per click. 

Factors influencing ranking:

 The number of other sites linking to it
 The content of the pages
 The updates made to indicies
 The testing of new product versions
 The discovery of additional sites
 Changes to the search algorithm – and other factors

What should you avoid?

SEO can greatly benefit your site. Why not increase your chances of being in the
results for other more common keyword searches? That would really increase the
traffic to your site, wouldn’t it? Yes, it could, but it might not be a good idea.
You have probably noticed that when searching for some topics, some of the
results seem to have very little relevancy to your search terms. Certain pages
listed in those results may even direct you to an entirely different web site than
the one listed.
The creators of those web sites have only one thing in mind: to get people to see
their pages. They do not care what they must do to get them there.
The following SEO methods are commonly referred to as spamming, and you
should always avoid them:
 automatically created ’doorway’ pages;
 false redirects and cloaking;
 keyword loading;
 hidden links or hidden text;
 pages stuffed with irrelevant keywords;
  duplicate content on several pages;
 intentional misspelling of certain popular keywords and web site names;
 centralized or unrelated link farms;
 similar techniques that attempt to fool the search engines.
Methods such as these can be effective in increasing the amount of traffic coming
to your site for a short while, but they quickly fail.

10 simple things for on/off page SEO:

1. Title Tag
Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags
— the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The
title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with
them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site,
that it is considered the most important of the three.
A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining
just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential
visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing.
It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go
overboard – you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing”
which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people
will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here,
as well.

2. Meta Tags
There are two primary meta tags in terms of SEO — the description and the
keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the search engines use the description
tag as far as ranking your results. However it is one of the more important
tags because it is listed in your search result — it is what users read when
your link comes up and what makes them decide whether or not to click on
your link.
 Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with
keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a
keyword list.
Due to “keyword stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard
the keyword tag. It is no longer nearly as important as it was years ago,
however it doesn’t hurt to include them in your source code.
When creating your keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms
people will type in when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go
overboard — too many duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web
designer” “web designers” “custom web designer” “html web designer”
“your state here web designer” – you get the idea). Those are all basically
the same, so pick one or two variations at the most and move onto the next
keyword.

3. Proper Use of Heading Tags

This is a very important element to consider when writing out your site
copy. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines
alike know where the major key points of your copy are.
Your main page title should use the <h1> tag — this shows what your page
is about. Use of additional tags, such as <h2> and <h3> are equally
important by helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual
break in the text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will
automatically know what your topics are on a page. The various heading
tags give a priority to the content and help index your site properly.

4. Alt Attributes on Images

Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms
of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image,
places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines
can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the
better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings.
In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who
access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a
descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.

5. Title Attributes on Links

 Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good
web site will have. That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place
your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but
equally useful for text links.
As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here”
doesn’t really tell a person – or more importantly, the search engines —
what the link is. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click
Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet – make
the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio” — this
will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant
to searches for portfolio’s.

6. XML Sitemap
My last post referenced the sitemaps used by web visitors to help them
navigate through your site themselves. However, there’s another version —
XML sitemaps — that are used by the search engines in order to index
through your site, as well.
This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information
such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of
what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that
help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.

7. Relevant Content
Having content relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most
important SEO aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in
the meta tags and alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on
the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a
futile attempt.
While it is important to include as many keywords in your page copy as
possible, it is equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m
sure we’ve all seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that
honestly don’t make much sense from the reader’s point of view.
When creating your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever
information you’re discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it
make sense to the reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking
 your page is great — when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t
make heads or tails of your information and it just feels spammy to them —
you can bet they’ll be clicking on the next web site within a matter of
seconds.

8. Link Building
We’ve probably all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web
site owner’s dream to have as high a page rank as possible. While the
algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is
constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web
site.
Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at
getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche
directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog
articles to.
With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to
generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a
give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking
back to you  — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!

9. Social Media
Although technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in
getting your web site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in
your plan.
Social media ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and
LinkedIn — to social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg,
StumbleUpon and many more. There is a lot of relationship
building involved, but as you build your own networks and build quality
content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web site
increasing, as well.
As with any relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site
like Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly —
your true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn
people off.
Even if you are on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to
make friends. Help out members of your network if they ask for a “retweet”
or Digg, give helpful advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.
If you write a great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers
in your  niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give
you votes on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the
more likely your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often
resulting in additional link backs from other blogs, etc.

10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash

Along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two
of these items are splash pages (often consisting of a flash animation) and
all flash web sites.
Yes, flash is pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at —
their own bit of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines
don’t get along well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible
advancement in this area, for the most part the search engines cannot read
Flash.
All that great content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the
search engines if it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search
engines are concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible.
And if the search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of
potential customers will miss out on what you have to offer, too.
Equally as “pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page
should no longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages
used to serve as an introduction into a web site (often with a flash
animation), it is no longer seen as helpful, and often times might actually
annoy visitors.
For one — it’s an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you
don’t give a “skip intro” option or set of links into your main site content —
because you’re essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full
animation. If you’re lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just
leave without giving your main web site a shot. And without an html link
pointing into your site, the search engines have no way to continue either
(unless you made use of a sitemap.xml file — but still…)
 A good alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s
no problem to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a
feature within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your
web site, as opposed to a full separate element.