Digital Marketing Consultant

If you have ever taken a road trip of any distance, you probably understand that somewhere along the road you are going to have delays and detours.  Perhaps you are remembering your last road trip that ended in a detour simply because you missed a road or made a wrong turn.  

 

Learning the ins and outs of SEO can be much like a road trip with delays and detours along the way especially if you are not using an expert in the field of SEO.

If you are planning a road trip, preparation is completed in stages.  If you are a professional driver, you will need to make sure each of the following stages is completed for a successful road trip.

1. Complete any vehicle service that is due such as oil change, tire checks, and take care of any mechanical problems you may have.   Failure to do so may find your planned road trip has come to a complete halt.
2. Clean the inside and outside of your vehicle.  This is for your comfort and for your image.
3. Double check to make sure your registration and insurance cards are available and up to date.   Failure to do so could be costly.
4. Get a map of your planned route.  This is a breeze with MapQuest or Google Maps.  You should do this for a back up even if you have a GPS.
5. Plan for any meals and lodging needed along the way.  
6. Fill the vehicle up with Gas and plan for refuels in plenty of time to prevent walking instead of driving to the gas station during your road trip.

If you run a professional business, Internet and Digital Marketing Planning includes the following essential steps:

• Search engine submission
• Keyword and phrase identification
• Meta tag development utilizing the best keywords
• Quality original website content with appropriate keyword density
• Build incoming links associated with keywords and relevant content
• Incorporate article marketing
• Get involved with social media marketing
• Implement blog marketing
• Add various other SEO marketing tools and processes

Almost each one of the steps noted are not a onetime shot or fix for your website.  These steps have to be repeated consistently and frequently to attain and maintain high ranking on the search engines.

Save yourself a headache and increase your rankings on the search engines as quick as possible by using an experienced International Digital and Internet Marketing Consultant in the field of search engine optimization.  You know your business; they know theirs.

SEO is the process of providing relevant website content, to the search engines, both invisible and visible, associated with established keywords used for marketing a website.  SEO also includes building links between relevant websites.

Higher ranking on the search engines verifies your website which in return provides qualified visitors resulting in increased sales, signups, and potential clients

Once in the past SEO was fairly easy to accomplish with search engines.  In today’s world of SEO, the task has become much more complex in nature requiring extensive analysis and research.  Previously, it was just a minor adjustment to the meta tags whereas today these 3rd generation search engines use content to qualify a website along with links directed from other similar websites.  The search engines pay little attention to the meta tags today.

You have probably spent a lot of time and energy on your business products and services.  Without effective SEO for your online business, it is similar to having a brick and mortar store that is filled with quality products and services for your target market, but then, after all that work, you never unlock the door to let the customers come inside to purchase those products and services.

SEO companies that only provide basic search engine submission services are not very effective, since your goal should be high ranking, not just being listed.  Your online business cannot afford not to have SEO that works with the latest search engine requirements, especially Google's.

For the best rankings, SEO strategies should focus all the requirements that can produce top rankings on the search engines.  If you would like to see how this is done, you should check out our wisdom book.

Those who have been marketing businesses on the Internet for a few years will understand how it has become more competitive over the years.
Each day more and more websites are added to the Internet.  Setting realistic expectations for search engine optimization has become even more important with the increased competition.

It is necessary to develop a good Search Engine Digital and Internet Marketing strategy to obtain the best possible ranking.   The question today is not about keywords as much as it is about Search Engine Digital and Internet Marketing (SEM) strategy.  Getting ranked well is an ever-moving target. It is your ever-changing strategy that is going to obtain the most successful ranking on the search engines.

SEM will not provide results immediately and it is not a magical approach to successful ranking.  Obtaining overnight success with search engine results simply is not a reality.  

SEO still has some value in using keywords, but it is quickly becoming a less effective way.  The future success of SEO is with the development of a comprehensive strategy targeting multiple keywords focusing on sustainable long term results.

The strategy for Search Engine Digital and Internet Marketing will vary depending upon the type of business and type of business model utilized.   A professional Digital and Internet Marketing Consultancy can provide the best direction and strategy implementation for your business.

The complexity of search engine optimization has brought new elements of focus to leverage your website for both search engines and visitors.   Maintaining you website position for optimal visibility is critical to the success of your business.

Developing the best strategic plan for Search Engine Digital and Internet Marketing and even International Search Engine Digital and Internet Marketing is an essential for building your online business.

The development of your website is the first step in your online Digital and Internet Marketing campaign efforts.   Remember it is only the first step, not the only step.   To be successful, you will need to position your website to attain good ranking by the search engines and more specifically Google.

The guy speaking in the video below may seem like a clown, but you can bet your business on his marketing knowledge:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is developing the strategies to attain better ranking on the search engines.   There are SEO tips available to assist in a successful online campaign.

If you are using a new web domain, it will take some time to get recognition from the search engines.  Using an existing web domain can help obtain higher rankings quicker by the search engines.  It is also helpful if the domain name carries some of the keywords for your niche.   A fair amount of thought should be given to selecting your domain name.  Finding an available one is another story.

The most effective SEO is built with both the search engines and the reader in mind.  You will want to select keywords that are relevant to the type of searches your target market will be using to search the web.   This is a complex process and the service of an expert in this area can prove to be very beneficial.

The importance of keywords for the search engines, the reader and search engine spiders cannot be overlooked.   Several tools are available to help in keyword research and selection:

•    Wordtracker
•    Keyword Discovery
•    Google’s keyword tool

There are other resources and tools available to assist you in developing effective keywords for your specific niche.

These are just a few of the major consideration required to attain the best search engine rankings for your website.   An SEO company has the expertise to assist you in your Digital and Internet Marketing campaign efforts and obtain favorable rankings in a short time and will likely pay for itself many times over.

Surprise. I have found another secret use.  Okay, it is not secret, but it is a good surprise.  As much as I am in the business of getting clients found by the search engines, I have not considered going outside of Google, Yahoo, and now Bing.

Advanced Link Manager Assistant lists 110 search engines.  Most of the reason for this has to do with geography and language.  But, in fact, they do have them all and they update them every day. 

Why is this interesting?  I can see which search engines in the world are indexing which pages of any website.  It either gives great satisfaction showing many indexing each page or great frustration if pages are not indexed.

I have not really been fair to Advanced Link Manager Assistant since I have not covered all the functions.  But then I have other things to do while Advanced Link Manager Assistant and Advanced Web Ranking let me do it.

Another surprise...it has a webcrawler function.  As they describe it, "Website Crawler lets you crawl an entire website or pages until reaching a specific level and provides helpful information about each crawled page.

"The results gathered following the crawl can be exported as Google Sitemap(XML) or Yahoo Sitemap(TXT).

"For each crawled page, Website Crawler provides it's page rank, meta information (title, description, robots, keywords, author), the number of outbound and onsite links, HTTP response and the size of the respective page.

"Website Crawler can help you not only crawl your website and export the results as a sitemap for the main search engines, but also analyze each crawled URL and see if the page meets your optimization requirements. In this way your optimization and marketing efforts will have a positive impact for your website rankings."

For someone in our business, this type of control is essential.  Being able to do it with such ease is a dream.  But one drawback is that this feature is only available in the Enterprise version.

As a disclaimer, I should tell you that the company has offered the software to me for review.  I have not had time to use the software over any longer period of time, so I may have missed something.

Common mistakes that can result in low search engine rankings

Customers these days don’t just browse or surf the Web anymore – they search.  Search engines allow consumers to search for a desired product or service online by typing in keywords and relying on the search engine to find relevant matches.  As a business owner, you want your website to be found easily by potential customers… so what if it isn’t even being indexed?  

In this three part series of articles, you will learn ten common mistakes that may be standing in the way of your website and the top positions in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Ask.

Hosting Issues – Your server is too slow
There are a lot of websites out there for search engine crawler programs to try to index.  Some experts estimate that there are as many as 4 billion sites live, so search engines don’t have much time to spend trying to index them.  If the host server of your website has a slow Internet connection, the search engine will attempt to index your text, but will often time out which may result in your site not being indexed at all.  You can help avoid being passed over by the search engines by limiting the size of your home page to less than 60k, or simply by switching hosting companies to someone more reliable.  

Hosting Issues - You’re using a free Web space provider
If you’ve decided to host your business’ website with a free hosting provider, you might want to reconsider.  Some search engines will only list a certain number of pages from a single domain, so if you’re sharing that domain with thousands of other people, you can’t rely on your site being indexed at all.  In fact, some search engines leave off free hosted pages altogether, due to the amount of spam sites they receive from these domains.  

Truly though, as a business owner, your website URL should be one that instills confidence and trust in your potential customers that is easy to remember and to type – and free domains simply aren’t that.  Www.genericsites_forbusinesses.com/~canada/heathersflowers/home.htm simply doesn’t look professional, regardless of whether it was indexed on the search engines. It’s worth it to pay for hosting to get a URL that reflects your business AND is seen by search engines.

You have special characters in your URL
Choose your URL carefully.  Most search engines have difficulty indexing pages with special characters in the URL, such as &, $, =, %, and ?.  Many search engines ignore pages with these characters in the URL entirely, so it’s best to avoid them altogether, just in case.  If the search engines skip right past your URL, they will never get a chance to index the keyword-rich, relevant content of your site.

Ineffective Optimizing – You have text hidden in the background colour
In the past, some people have tried to trick search engines by hiding keyword rich text on a page by making the font colour the same as the background colour.  The text would then be hidden from viewers, but would theoretically still be ‘seen’ by search engine spiders, resulting in a high page ranking thanks to the keyword density.  

Unfortunately for those who have used this trick, most search engines have learned to catch it and will penalize your site for trying to “spam the search engine”.  They can even recognize if you’ve made the text a slightly different colour from the background.  

To ensure that your site isn’t blacklisted or penalized with low index rankings, simply don’t try to trick the search engines.  Make sure your website is keyword rich, and do it the right way.

Ineffective Optimizing – You have overused your keywords
It’s important to realize that overusing keywords on your website can be just as detrimental to your search engine rankings as not using keywords at all.  Many search engines avoid being spammed by carefully filtering out sites that overuse the same keywords or phrases repeatedly, either in their meta tags or in the body of the text.  While there is no magic number to determine what is ‘keyword rich’ and what is ‘keyword spam’, a general way to judge is simply to read the text aloud and objectively determine if the text sounds fake or natural.  If it sounds like you’re forcing the keywords into the text, it’s a good idea to cut some out.

Ineffective Optimizing - You’re using the wrong keywords
Sometimes the problem with your keywords is not how often you’ve used them or how you’ve formatted them, it’s specifically which keywords you’re using in your meta tags and in the body of your text.  When optimizing your site, you must be sure you’re using the words that your customers would likely search for – not necessarily the words you would use to describe your company.  When choosing your keywords, try to think like your potential customers and what they would likely type in to find your website.  

If your business is called “Heather’s Blooms” and specializes in bouquets and flower arrangements for weddings, you won’t want to only optimize for your company’s name or terms specific to your corporate identity (for example, tag lines or slogans like “creative floral creations”).  While some potential customers will search for you by name, the majority will be searching with more general keywords, such as: florist, flower arrangements, wedding flowers, wedding bouquets, bridal bouquets, etc.   Also, optimizing with geographic terms is a great idea, since most searchers will look for a business specifically in their area.  

Your site has poor link popularity
Is your site ‘popular’? One of the factors the major search engines look at when determining the quality of a website is its ‘link popularity’ – how many sites link back to yours.  If other credible sites link to yours, it boosts your site’s credibility and testifies to the quality of your site, which then boosts your rankings in search engine listings.

However, having unrelated links on your site and to your site won’t help your ranking.  Links must be related to your business and the content on your site – for example, if you run a flower shop, a link from a gardening center would be a good one, but a link to a drycleaner would not.  There are many reciprocal link programs that you can get your website involved in, which will help your link popularity – just make sure that the websites you’re trading links with are appropriate ones.

Problems with Content – You’re using frames, so search engines can’t see the text on your site
Using frames to design your website can result in low search engine rankings, because many search engines have problems reading the text within frames.  If your site is designed solely with frames, the only text the search engines can read are the title and meta tags – and that’s just not enough text to ensure your site gets indexed.

The best solution is simply to avoid using frames altogether by designing your site using layers instead.  However, if you site is already built using tables, a good idea is to add a detailed description of your site in the <noframes> section of the HTML that the search engines can read.  This won’t guarantee that your site gets indexed, but it will help.

Problems with Content – You don’t have enough text on your site
Search engine spiders read the text content of the site – they can’t actually “see” what your site looks like or how relevant the graphics on it are.  So, if your site relies too heavily on Flash or images, the search engines won’t have enough text to read to index your site appropriately. While flash and images are aesthetically appealing, they can seriously hurt your rankings if you use them in place of actual text content.  If you still decide to use a lot of images on your website, make sure that first, you write descriptions of the images in the <alt> tags, and second, you have other pages on your site that are text-rich so the search engines have something to read.

Time – Sometimes you just have to wait
If you avoided or fixed all of these problems and your site still isn’t found in a search, don’t panic.  Most search engines take up to six months to index a website.  Due to the rapid growth of the Internet, the number of websites launched every day is staggering.  Search engines simply can’t keep up.  So, sometimes, you just have to wait for the search engines to find you.  While you’re waiting, remember to refresh your content, since new, relevant content will appeal to both search engines and visitors alike.

Do any of these mistakes sound familiar to you?  You’re not alone.  The ‘rules’ of search engine indexing are constantly changing, so what may have been acceptable a year ago could get your site blacklisted from the indexes now.  

The best way to ensure that you aren’t doing more harm than good for your site is to enlist the assistance of a professional – someone who is aware of the most current best practices and can help your site be found by your customers.  Contact John Danenbarger today at John@SEOforSite.com. And for a different sort of on-line presentation that you can also have, check out http://www.seoforsite.com/Digital_Marketing.aspx