SEO Best Practices

How do you know if web site is optimized, over optimized or under optimized?

To begin with, in order to find out if your web site is under-optimized; just do a few basic checks like:

1. Title tag
2. Description tag and
3. Content of the web site

Analyzing the above features will give you an idea whether your website’s  on-page optimization is optimal. If any of the above features does not follow the SEO best practices, you may be missing out on the opportunity to get traffic to your site.  However, if you find that all of the above-mentioned features and more is present in your website, you may want to find out if it is overtly done. It is indeed not a good SEO practice to go overboard and over-optimize your website so much that it might seem like spamming.

For example, if you sell flowers online, your web site should be able to convey the message through the titles,descriptions, and the content of your web site. What you need to check is if these features are able to describe, and tell both the search engines and the visitors what to expect in the site.

If we do a search on your website with the keyword “flowers” and your web site glows like a Christmas tree, it means you are overdoing the keyword bit!

The content and the appearance of keywords have to appear natural, it can’t be forced. Do similar checks on the internal links, on the titles, of every page of your site. If you find that your website is indeed over-optimized, I recommend, you start working on every page and tone it down. It might give you a change to do a content re-evaluation, and that might do wonders for your web site.

If your website is optimized well, and is still not ranking, don’t lose heart. Keep working on your off-page optimization strategy. Remember slow and steady wins the race , and it still holds good.

Long tailed keywords; What are they?

To put it simply, long tailed keywords are keywords that are more descriptive. This means, they are very specific.

Let’s just say you are looking for a driving school near your locality. If you simply type in “driving school” in any of the search engines, you will get a whole lot of sites that are relevant to deriving schools but may not be relevant for you since you are looking for a driving school near your locality.

More and more searchers are realizing the value of typing in keywords that are more descriptive i.e. long tailed keywords. So in the above-mentioned example, it could be something like “driving schools near <location>. These keywords will indicate to the search engines what the searcher is searching for, the search engines will then fetch web pages that are relevant to the search terms used for searching.

From the SEO perspective, it is a good idea to use long tailed keywords when optimizing your web pages. Not only will you find visitors who are interested, the chances of conversions are very high indeed! Long tailed keywords usually do not have as much competition as keywords that are more generic, so your site will have a fair chance of ranking as well.

More and more searchers type in exactly what they are looking for. Almost all the searchers have little patience to sift through many sites since many of them search from their mobile phone and they want to get the information as fast as possible.

If your web site SEO strategy does not consider long tailed keywords, you might be missing out on precious traffic.

Earlier there were search engines and search directories. Searchers  would go to Google, Yahoo! MSN, Altavista, Askjeeves, Dmoz etc to search for anything they wanted.

Those were the days when we talked and discussed about the search engines…which one is better…Google or Yahoo! or Altavista or maybe MSN?

Directories like Yahoo! and Dmoz directories were and are very organized and since submissions were verified and accepted manually, one was sure to get authentic sites. In fact, if your site is registered in search directories such as, Dmoz and Yahoo! Directory it would give your site a lot of mileage and still does. Google was still in the process of bettering its search results page and we would quite often get a lot of irrelevant sites on searching.

From then and now, what has changed?

a) Search engines have really got better at the game, the results displayed on the SERPs are almost always bang on. Just type in the keyword on any search engine like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and you are bound to get an answer to your query in a jiffy.

B )Today we are spoilt for choices… If it exists, it’s on Google they say! Besides that we have a choice of social networking sites like Facebook, Stumble upon, an authoritative site such as Wikipedia… what else can we ask for?

c) Almost everyone has any information they need at their fingertips, how fascinating is that! In a country like India, even if you visit the remotest of location, you will always find mobile stores selling mobile phones and connections. Cable operators provide internet connections as well. There are surfing joints in every locality.

The search engine wars still exist but today almost everyone knows Google and Yahoo! And I think Google is still in the lead because of it’s clean interface, it still has just that search box and therefore minimizes any sort of distraction for the users. The searchers go to Google to search and they do just that. Yahoo! Which is an equally good search engine, probably is the 2nd best choice because of quite a few factors but I would say that its interface is a bit distracting.

Essentially because it is more than a search engine, it is more of a search portal, a one stop shop for everything, which is great but to a searcher, it helps, if the searcher can go to a page an search without too many distractions.

Google has many of the features that Yahoo! has but because of the clean uncluttered interface and of course relevant results, it is so popular. Social networking sites have got even more popular, if your friend likes something, you would like to check it out too, right? And that’s how it works.

Most people are connected to Facebook from their mobiles, in fact quite a major proportion of the population search from their mobiles. With search and online experience getting more and more sophisticated and user friendly, I wonder what is next?

To best explain the evolution of websites, web site design, and SEO, I will divide this article into three phases-

Phase I- The Bygone era of website design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In the 90s when the internet started to get popular in terms of businesses starting to have a presence on the internet; I remember, it still took a lot of convincing for many businesses, especially small business owners to consider having an online presence. Back then, having an online presence was mostly like displaying a brochure online.  Many of these online businesses would put up their brochures online. That’s it. From the design perspective, businesses would not want to spend much on designing. Sometimes the whole page would be a huge image, sometimes just a few lines of text with contact numbers and an email id. Only a few businesses would perhaps have a full fledged website. As far as Search engine optimization goes, the maximum that Search Engine Optimizers (SEO was coming into being then and there weren’t really that many people doing SEO) could do was to provide titles, descriptions, and keyword Meta tags, and suggest the sites to search engines and search directories. The part that I liked back then is the ease with which web sites could rank with a relevant keyword; understandable since there were hardly that many sites competing, and SEO was even rarer!

Here, I will draw an analogy with constructing a home or building. We need a house, we do not have a house …so what do we do?

We construct a basic, very functional house; it serves the purpose, but is not really visually appealing. It’s just that; a house with rooms and walls to serve a purpose. I guess there wasn’t time or the need to mull over the finer aspects like making it attractive, it has to be constructed, and so be it.

Phase II- The evolving era of website designing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With the availabilty of better tools, and more service providers coming into the field, the internet got a big boost, a new era of web designers were born, they design really beautiful web sites, with frames, with animations, flash, etc. But are these sites user friendly? Can people get to these sites? Do these sites download fast? Are they accessible?
From the SEO perspective, many search engines could not index such websites, because of heavy applications and images, websites took ages to download. That took away the patience of the visitors as well. We created beautiful websites but not many could find them! Finally when they did, they could not find everything on the site!

Again, if we draw an analogy with constructing a building, we construct beautiful home, spend huge amount of money to make it look beautiful, but are these homes safe, practical, and functional too?

Phase III -The new generation of web sites, website designers, and Search Engine Optimizers

We have a new generation of web designers who are familiar with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) nuances, they design keeping in mind various factors so that the end result is a perfect balance beauty and functionality. Striking this cord of course is not easy, one has to test and test and test constantly.

The point that is evident today is that we will see designers, developers, and Search Engine Optimizers work together. Today, almost everyone who has access to the internet has either shopped online, has downloaded eBooks, bought tickets, and much more. Websites are getting better and better, search engines results are very relevant these days.

And again, drawing an anology with constructing buildings; we have multi storied complexes that are functional and yet are not bad looking. A good amount of time is spent on planning and ensuring that there is a perfect marriage of beauty and functionality. The buildings are modern, eco friendly, and user friendly. Interesting!

Designing will continue to evolve and so will SEO, but they have to go hand in hand in order to provide the best to the end users. In summary, website designing has evolved into a creative science, creating website’s that are user friendly, good looking, and SEO friendly too!

For more on SEO and Website design, you can also check out this article on SEO and best practices for Website Designing that I wrote some time back.

Most internet marketers today focus on PPC to get them their leads online. While it is true that PPC is the fastest and the most effective way of generating leads; can we ignore leads that we get from SEO efforts?

Your best practices for lead generation should also include SEO lead generation.

SEO impacts almost all your online activities. Be it submitting news to PR sites, optimizing content in the Social networking sites or even getting affiliates for your products/ services.

Many visitors visit your site from links that have been acquired because of SEO efforts. These visits may many at times end in a conversion. Since SEO percolates down to almost each and every medium- search, Social media, news sites, affiliate sites, the chances of visitors coming in to your site from these sources are very high.

The need for today is to have a holistic online marketing strategy. The strategy should not ignore the leads that your website receives from SEO efforts. Today people are not solely dependent on search engines to provide them the answers, most people use Social networking sites. Marketers cannot effort to miss out on the opportunities available from Social networking sites.

Search Engine Optimization, even though a slow process, once it gets going, it develops a network so wide that there is no stopping the benefits that you as a marketer can reap from it.

Go ahead and track the leads that come through your SEO and Social networking efforts. After all, for SEO leads you won’t have to pay for every click. If you are focused on lead generation, make sure that all your pages, especially the SEO optimized content  pages (and not just the landing pages that are created specifically for PPC), have your forms so that you can track easily which pages are bringing in the leads. Go on, work on both SEO, Social medial marketing, and PPC, and watch your revenues grow.

The most important investment that you can make for SEO is time. Just find time to work on optimizing the content on your own site and Social networking sites. You can hire a SEO professional who can to do this for you, if you do not have that much time to spare. Spread your content and links all over the internet. You will find that the benefits of SEO are manifold.

Well, you could argue and say, hey I have a website that has unique content, it downloads fast, and I update it often. The content is very useful for visitors.

So why exactly do I need to optimize it? I am offering valuable advice and content, all for free; shouldn’t the search engines give it priority naturally? After all my web site is providing value to the target audience?

I would say yes, it is true you are keeping your commitment of providing a valuable service to your potential customers but…

There are millions and millions of websites out there; exactly with the same objective, who do you think the search engines will prefer?

Think about it. You have created an amazingly beautiful and valuable creation but no one knows how to get there. You will need a little bit of help from everybody to find this creation of yours. You need to help people and search engines to help you.

Just like there are landmarks that tell you which way you are headed, or street signs that tell you that up ahead there is a restaurant etc , you need to find a way to communicate to people and search engines that your web site exists and that it is one gem of a web site! Search engine optimizing your web site does that for you.

Little things like providing an appropriate title to each of your web page, and meta tags…these elements are small but they have an incremental effect on your website’s visibility.

You will need to couple your SEO efforts with What we call in the tradition marketing, word of mouth. It helps tremendously to shout out, tell your friends to check out your web site, request then to refer it. Social networking optimization is another way of providing your web site the required push. Include your URL everywhere, signature lines, your Facebook profiles, LinkedIn, twitter updates…

Search engines have their own algorithms; they have tools that tell them what is being searched and which sites are more popular.

And this is just the beginning.

Is your website new? And are you desperate to get on top of search results?

Indeed it may seem like an uphill task to get your website to rank well in the major search engines when you have just about launched your brand new website.The enormity of the task may just make you desperate enough to try any means to get to the top of search results.

No matter what, I would advise you to be patient and not resort to claims from many operators who wish to convince you to use their software or their services in order to rank within the top ten search results. Sometimes there is a money back guarantee attached to it as well!

Incredible!

I would advise you to not pay heed to any of these tall claims. SEO is not something that can be applied and experienced immediately. Remember the sites that are ranking well have put in a lot of effort to be where they are now.

All is not lost though…and things are not really that desolate for a new web site. If you are launching your website now for a market that is already saturated with exiting established sites, you still have a good chance to gain visibility.

Your new website competition will be immense and it will certainly be a challenging task to produce results immediately. But with time, patience, and the correct SEO techniques everything is possible.

(image taken from fivegulf.com)

There are disadvantages and believe it or not advantages of working on Search engine optimizing a brand new site.

Let me sum up the disadvantages first-

1. If your web site caters to an already over saturated market, it will indeed be a tough task to rank…but not impossible.

2. Making the website visible to the online audience through SEO efforts is a time taking process.

3. Your competition is already many steps ahead with thousands of incoming links and decent rankings.

4. And you are going to have to start with a PR 0.

Now for the Advantages of a brand new web site-

1. You can learn from others mistakes and successes.

2. You have the advantage of loads of data at the click of your mouse. Study your competitors websites, do a thorough research.

3. Run a short campaign on Google Adwords, find out which keywords work for you.

4.Your biggest advantage is the Social media, searchers no longer depend upon search engines for their answers, you can create attractive videos and upload it on to youtube and other popular video sites. Facebook, Linkedin and many other social networking sites offer various ways of promoting products and services  as well.

5. More importantly, just do things a little differently from what is already there in your competitors websites. Offer something of value for free.

In summary,  do not give up easily, give your efforts time. Use content that is original and is of value to your visitors.

Mix your online marketing efforts with paid and organic marketing so that you get results faster.

Wish you all the best and see you at the top!

Internet marketing is an umbrella term that includes all the ways and means by which you can promote your products and services online.

For most businesses it is now imperative to have an online presence. Any business (corporate or small business owner) whether already established or in the introductory stage needs to have a strong Internet marketing strategy. With more and more people using the internet every day, marketers cannot ignore this space any longer.

Today searchers do not only rely on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, they discuss, ask and find out through their social networking circles. Where a tweet can evoke thousands of responses, can marketers ignore the fact that they need a strong Internet Marketing strategy? Each and every business needs to have a presence in the social networking circles so that they can answer and reach out to potential customers instantly.

The target audience today is much more equipped at researching and finding out almost anything that they want to know. So whether your target market is local or international, there needs to be an Internet marketing strategy that will address the needs of the population that you are targeting.

Along with the offline marketing plan, the strategy of any marketer should be to include various aspects of Internet Marketing. Just like a cook who mixes certain ingredients in a certain proportion to cook a meal to perfection, the same way marketers need to include Search engine optimization, Search engine Marketing, Social networking, etc in their Internet Marketing strategy in the right proportion. Not all products and services require the same level of SEO (Search engine optimization) or SEM (Search Engine marketing) and it is up to marketers to strategize and form an Internet marketing plan that will be a right mix of all the components that form part of the Internet Marketing Umbrella.

For an effective internet marketing strategy, the objective has to be very clear.

Are we promoting a product that needs eyeballs instantly or can we gradually build that kind of audience?

Do we have a target date by which we would require people to register for an event or is it mostly open ended?

The answers to these and many such questions will provide the Internet marketing solutions and will form the basis of the strategy;

Whether to have an extensive SEO for the web site to begin with or to start with basics and keep working on SEO, while extensively using SEM so that the audience gets to know about the products/ services from day 1.

Internet marketing / website marketing and how it is planned and what strategies are used to promote products and services on the Internet are very important for any business to succeed online.

In my next few posts, I will take up:- the various components of Internet Marketing (web marketing), discuss ways in which businesses can draw up strategies depending upon their requirement, the best practices of Internet marketing, and how much of role does SEO have in it.

1. Get your website user ready. Try to make it easy for the users to access information.

2. It will be very helpful for visitors if a simple Navigation is followed. If you are using images for your navigation, it might be helpful to have corresponding textual navigation.That way even if your images do not download, your textual navigation will provide the necessary guidance.

3. Consider having a newsletter. You can get visitors to register for your newsletter for free.  Newsletters are a great way to communicated with potential customers. Have ample scope in your website to receive user feedback.

4. Design the contact us form so that it is an easy tool for visitors to reach you. Drop down options will make it easy and fast for visitors to send you a feedback. It helps to have a short feedback form. If possibly make only a few fields mandatory.

5. If you have a local presence, do mention the address of the organization, phone nos and directions to reach your office.

6. Start a blog. It helps to generate content and encourages participation from visitors.  It will be helpful if you provide external links to websites that complement your business or any web site or article links, videos anything you think your visitors will benefit from.

7. Have  a site map that clearly shows the layout of the website. A few lines of description against each link helps visitors identify the page or link they need to visit in order to find the information they are seeking.

8. If your website is huge and there is enormous amount of information, it will really help visitors if you consider having a search option in your website.

9. Encourage visitors to share your posts/ pages on social networking sites such as twitter…

10.It will be very helpful if you analyze your website traffic. Web traffic analysis software can be easily installed and you can get one for free. You can further optimize your website based on data made available by the web traffic analysis software.

 Having useful links on your website helps making it user friendly

How often have you wondered if the link strategy that you are using is actually working for your site?

You develop your site so that visitors come to your site and find what they are looking for. Your aim in creating the site is to provide the visitors what they really want so that they end up doing what you want i.e. buy our products, subscribe to newsletters, fill a form etc.
But are you truly catering to their needs?

For instance if you are giving your visitors details about your products/services and explaining to them the advantages of using the products and services that you offer, it would be really a bonus if you could refer them to a few sites that would help them get more information.

While selecting these links, be careful not to link to sites that are your competitors. links should be of related or allied products/services. They should work as a reference.

Here are a few pointers for selecting links -

1) Search for products/services that are related to your site. For example, if you are a manufacturer of furnitures made out of teak wood, you could perhaps link to sites providing information on teak wood.

2) In continuation with the above example, search for sites that offer services like carrying or transporting furniture (you could even get area specific if you are catering to a specific area). You could search for paint companies specializing in paints for wooden furniture.

3) Get some of your satisfied customers to mention a few lines about your products and services in their sites in exchange of a link from your site.

These are a few examples. If you can follow this in your link building strategy, it would really help your visitors and help you in return.

Keep adding links and make the site so useful that the visitors have no choice but to bookmark it!