Online Marketing Blog » seo

Why SEO is the best form on online marketing?

George — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:44:59 +0000

Online marketing and advertising is on the rise and more and more companies turn towards the internet to promote its products or services. Online marketing includes services such as SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing etc. All of these services have their own benefits such as speed, accuracy, reach, conversion rate etc.

In my opinion SEO is the one of the best online advertising or marketing techniques and the reasons are many. This differs from industry to industry and there might be industry which gets its online marketing benefits from techniques other than SEO. Other online advertising methods might be fast, have better conversion, drives good traffic etc, but the advantages of SEO in online advertising is really great.

Some of the major reasons why I rate SEO as the best online marketing technique are listed below. (This is just my personal view and not a public opinion).

1) Cheap and Affordable
SEO is considered to be one of the cheapest and affordable form of online advertising methods as it does not require to spend money on a regular basis Once you do SEO properly, you will get its benefits for some time without spending anything extra.

2) Long Term Results
Once SEO is done properly we can expect long term results without much maintenance. But when we use other online advertising and marketing techniques we need to spend money consistently for better results.

3) Higher ROI
Since SEO is cheap and affordable, naturally its ROI is also high provided the SEO is done in the right way and the website is getting targeted visitors.

4) Large Coverage Potential
As with other online marketing methods SEO is also having a large coverage potential or wider reach. This helps in getting more targeted visitors from different locations.

5) Relevant visitors
Usually traffic from SEO brings in relevant visitors as people get on to your site after searching for their targeted keywords on any search engine. They would only enter your website from the search engines if they feel satisfied with the snippets shown in search results.

6) Reasonably Good Sales conversion rate
Since the traffic from SEO is relevant and mostly qualified, you could enjoy a reasonable good sales conversion rate.

Introduction to Latent Semantic Indexing and its effect on SEO

George — Fri, 14 May 2010 06:21:49 +0000

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a search engine indexing technique used to identify relationships between terms and concepts contained in a text / content. LSI helps to find out words with similar meanings which are present in a particular content or text. Latent Semantic Indexing is playing a major role in the search industry and has helped to improve the quality of search results and is being tried to get implemented by most of the SEO agencies and professionals.

As we know that English is a language in which there are different words which have the same concept, single word with multiple meanings etc. In this case LSI makes it easier for the search engine to provide relevant search results to the users. Latent Semantic Indexing includes complex mathematical calculations to find out the relevant search results for words with different concepts or different words with the same concept.

To see the result of Latent Sematic Indexing let take a small example by taking the keyword “laptop”. Search for “laptop” by prefixing a tilde (~system) and see the results. You can see many results associated with “laptop” such as computers, Notebook, Toshiba etc in bold.
This is a simple example of how LSI works.

Google searches its huge database and when it finds that the word “laptop” and “Toshiba” are present in a large number of webpages, it comes to the assumption that both these keywords are related. Apart from this Google collects other data to calculate the relation between two terms.

There are many ways out to get the advantages of Lateral Semantic Indexing on your website and one method is to optimize specific pages of your website for relevant keywords. The different website pages should be optimized for different pages and this practice would help you in great way in implementing the LSI concept for your website. For eg. if you are targeting the keyword “used watches” you should also create separate and dedicated pages which targets keywords such as sports watches, luxury watches etc. By doing this you would be getting more relevant pages for a particular topic and the chances of listing your pages for the terms related to that topics are high.

Another way of taking advantage of LSI is to get links to your website from semantically relevant pages. If your website or webpage deals with “laptop” then always try to get links from website related to laptop, notebook, computers etc, rather than getting links from sites which are off topic.

It is also better to maintain a good site architecture such a strong internal linking, well organized content section etc. As a part of this make sure that the webpages of your website should be mentioned in the right categories.

There are some ways to take advantage of the Latent Semantic Indexing, and this can yield high results for your SEO activities.

10 Tips for Getting Better Rankings for Your YouTube Videos

George — Fri, 07 May 2010 06:55:16 +0000

YouTube is one of the largest online video sharing site where we can views, share and upload videos. YouTube offers an easy interface which makes it much easier to upload videos on to the net within much less time. YouTube is currently one of the largest search engine where people search for videos and it potential in the online marketing scenario is huge.

A lot of business and organization tries YouTube for purposes such as brand building, traffic generation and lead generation. The user base of YouTube is huge and these large amount of users contains targeted audiences of a specific business organization. These days a lot of companies are trying to take advantages of the large number of YouTube users. The companies try hard to promote their product or services online with YouTube.

As with any other online marketing strategies, the YouTube videos must also be optimized enough to make them visible on search engine result pages. Few of the YouTube file attributes can be optimized in order to increase its search engine visibility for relevant search queries. Here I would like to list 10 of the major Video Search Engine Optimization ( VSEO ) tips for YouTube videos.

1) Relevant Title
The Title of the YouTube file should be optimized well in order to get better rankings. The title should be relevant, unique and it would be better if the Title contain the major keyword in it. It is also recommended to include the word “Video” in your title as people search for it on the search engines.

2) Description
It is better to creative an accurate, unique, relevant and keyword oriented description to your YouTube file to getting better ranking and click through rates.

3)Keyword Tags
The keyword tags should be populated with relevant keywords and should take care in avoiding excessive keyword stuffing.

4) Utilizing the Thumbnail
The thumbnails of your YouTube video can play a huge role in visitors viewing your file. If your Thumbnail is not relevant then chances are that you might loss out one a potential visitor.

5) Selecting the right category
Make sure that you submit your YouTube Video in the right category. Videos submitted in irrelevant categories may not get relevant traffic.

6)Enabling User Participation
Getting user reviews and comments on your YouTube video can enhance your search engine rankings.

7) Getting Quality backlinks
One thing I have noticed is that getting quality backlink for your Youtube files from relevant sites can enhance your search engine visibility. So it is better to get backlinks from good and relevant sites.

8) Anchor Text Optimization
In the case of back links, if you are having some control over it then it is better to optimize the Anchor text with your major keywords. On the other hand if you are not in control of your back link, then you can atleast mail the webmaster of the other site to edit the anchor text as per your requirements.

9) Making use of other Social Media Sites
Getting traffic from other social media channels is one of the best option to increase the ranking of your YouTube file. Social Media sites are capable of generating huge traffic and it can increase the number of views, ratings and comments for your YouTube file. A YouTube file with a large number of views and comments has a better chance of ranking higher in the search engines.

10) Increase the number of Subscribers
If you have a large number of subscribers for your YouTube files, then your videos will have higher chances of being viewed. This will automatically increase your search engine visibility.

I am pretty sure that there are certain other points that I have missed. If so, please feel free to comment.

How to Use SEO and Social Search for Lead Generation : Live Webinar

George — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:13:05 +0000

Internet has become one of the major sources for the people to search, learn and shop for products. Before purchasing anything, buyers search on the net about the product, its reviews / feedback etc. This is done with the help of the major search engines and other social media sites like Twitter, Facebook etc. So in order to get the best sales and revenue from your websites, intelligent SEO is essential. So SEO is an integral part of the lead generation and is one factor which cannot be avoided at any cost.

Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing at HubSpot is conducting a live webinar on How to Use SEO and Social Search for Lead Generation. The time for the live webinar will be Friday, May 7, 2010, 2:00 PM ET. Learn how to get found using SEO and social search to generate more relevant traffic and qualified leads online.

The topics covered by the webinar will be as follows.

* How content variety is the key to ranking higher in search
* Why Page Rank is no longer a relevant measure of search success
* The use of social media for search and its impact on legacy search
* How to use SEO and social search to drive more visitors and leads

TIME – Friday, May 7, 2010, 2:00 PM ET

The space is limited for this webinar. So reserve your spot at the earliest.

Click Here to register for the webinar.

Importance of Quality Web Hosting in SEO

George — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 06:09:06 +0000

Hosting is an area where people gives little importance as far as SEO is concerned. There are different opinions among a large number of webmasters which makes it uncertain for webmasters whether to invest more in their hosting plans or not. But in my experience I would like to give importance to website hosting quality when it comes to adopting a good SEO strategy.

Apart from ranking factors, the website usability should also be taken into account. Nobody likes to see their site being slow or down and this may decrease the rate of returning visitors onto the website. If a website is hosted on a cheap or shared reseller hosting server, such things are bound to happen.

There is no harm in going for a shared hosting services if your site is a medium one with a limited traffic. But in most shared servers, chances are that the neighboring websites may not be of high quality and this may harm your site also. Some of the neighbors may be spam sites, penalized by search engines and so on. In this case most of the sites associated with that server may fell victim and may receive negative influence on its rankings. So while going for shared web hosting always make sure that your neighbors are of high quality. So before selecting your website reseller hosting provider, make a research and find out whether there are any bad neighbors. Depending upon the nature of your website you can select either Linux or Windows reseller hosting programs.

If your site is a large one which attracts a bulk amount of traffic on a daily basis, it is better to go for a dedicated website server. These days it is not much costlier in getting your site hosted on a dedicated server. In a dedicated server your site has higher chances of getting more search engine visibility and you will not be facing issues such as bad neighbors and hence the risks associated will increase. Moreover dedicated server hosting is fast and is able to sustain the high volume of traffic especially from social media sites.

The hosting locations also has some role to play in the SEO strategies which I would post in this blog later.

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Importance of Meta Descriptions in SEO

George — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:41:42 +0000

Meta descriptions were once considered as an important ranking factor and all the SEOs and web masters took care in creating keyword enriched meta tags for better rankings. But later major search engines such as Google and Yahoo have openly stated that meta descriptions are no longer given importance as far as search engine ranking is considered.

Even though Meta descriptions are of not much importance in the ranking algorithm of Google, it is useful in some other ways. Meta descriptions are shown in some of the search snippets and a well written Meta descriptions can enhance the user experience and thereby increase the click through rate. Since meta description is no more a ranking factor, it is always better to make it as creative as possible for better traffic conversion.

If a web page has enough content, then Google will automatically pick relevant snippets from the content for a particular search query. So for a web page with rich content, Google would go for the snippets from the content rather than from the meta description. In this case the web page will perform well even if there are no meta descriptions.

But in the case of a web page with minimal content is always advisable to create a well written meta description for better conversion. In the case of minimal content, Google will be showing snippets from the Meta description and hence the presence of Meta description in mandatory. The length of the meta descriptions should be limited since different search engines shows different character length from the meta descriptions. For example Google displays up to 160 characters and Yahoo displays up to 165 characters. So the length should be kept in mind while creating the meta description for your website.

The introduction of personalized search results by Google has increased the importance of a compelling and well written meta descriptions. As told above a good written meta descriptions can help in increasing the click through rate (CTR) and an increased CTR plays an important role in increasing the search engine ranking for that particular keyword. So if a particular keyword is being searched by a searcher, and if he is forced to click on your website which is ranking lower in the results only due to the compelling meta description snippets, it would definitely improve your keyword rankings.

So those who consider that meta descriptions are outdated, it is high time for you to rethink on your opinion. Try to create a well written, unique, compelling and well optimized meta description for better CTR and better search engine rankings.

There is Page Rank Loss with 301 Redirects

George — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:12:09 +0000

As per recent interview with Matt Cutts, the debate over the passage of link value and page rank with 301 redirects has been made more clearer. As per Matt Cutts the 301 redirects do not fully pass the page rank and values. Even though he is not 100% sure about the answer, he didn’t ignore the possible loss of page rank value as a result of the 301 redirects. During the interview Matt Cutts also stated that he was not sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented any sort of such natural page rank decay. But later in a follow email he stated confirmed that the fact was true.

Here is an excerpt from the interview.

Eric Enge: Let’s say you move from one domain to another and you write yourself a nice little statement that basically instructs the search engine and, any user agent on how to remap from one domain to the other. In a scenario like this, is there some loss in PageRank that can take place simply because the user who originally implemented a link to the site didn’t link to it on the new domain?

Matt Cutts: That’s a good question, and I am not 100 percent sure about the answer. I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301).

So going forward it would be better to keep this fact in mind.

Eric Enge: Let’s say you move from one domain to another and you write yourself a nice little statement that basically instructs the search engine and, any user agent on how to remap from one domain to the other. In a scenario like this, is there some loss in PageRank that can take place simply because the user who originally implemented a link to the site didn’t link to it on the new domain?

Matt Cutts: That’s a good question, and I am not 100 percent sure about the answer. I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301).

Top 20 SEO Mistakes to Avoid

George — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:41:24 +0000

There are many mistakes done by web masters while optimizing their site for search engines. Most of them are very simple SEO mistakes and the site can perform really well if they are fixed at the earliest.

Here I would like to list around top 20 SEO mistakes that should be avoided for getting better website performance and search engine rankings. This list might miss many other points and I request every one to comment me back if they find any missing points.

1) Discrepancies between the Title and the Content
This is one of the major issues that most of the website faces while doing SEO. There would be no relation between Title tags and the content present on a particular web page. This may be done either by mistake, due to ignorance or in an effort to promote the keywords in an aggressive way. But this irrelevancy is sure to harm your search engine rankings and should be fixed at the earliest to avoid further damages.
2) Irrelevant Content
If your site content is not relevant to the objective of your site, then there is not use in doing SEO. The content of your site should reflect your site’s objective, services, products etc.

3) Complex Content
The content should be kept as simple as possible and no body would be willing to go through complex content. Even if there are some technical specifications to be mentioned, try to keep it as simple for others to understand.

4) Less Content
Having very less content can also harm your SEO activities. You site should have enough content to support your keywords and enhance your SEO campaigns.

5) Over Usage of Keywords
Over usage of your targeted keywords in any area of the website is a big mistake which should be avoided. Usually website owners tries to over stuff keywords on areas such as Title, Meta tags, content etc and such practices only diminishes the search visibility of the website and its keywords.

6) Gaming the Search Engines
Using black hat techniques to fool the search engine is a serious SEO mistake and once caught you would be punished severely by the search engines. So always go with the white hat SEO techniques to consistently stay afloat among the search engines.

7) Over Usage of Flash Files
Over use of flash files in the website may hamper its search engine rankings. If you need to have flash files, have it on the home page only along with enough text based content.

8) Using scripts and CSS files inside the pages
The use of scripts and CSS codes inside a web page is not highly recommended. You can call the scripts and CSS from an external file, as the scripts and CSS codes inside a web page makes it difficult for search engine spiders to crawl through the pages.

9) Using non SEO friendly URLs
Using non SEO friendly URLs may prevent your website in ranking higher with the major search engines. So always use SEO friendly URLs which helps us the spiders to read it comfortably and also in getting better search engine rankings.

10) Over Usage of Images
Images can be used in the web pages but in a moderate way. Images should be given ALT tags keeping the size of the image under control. The use of image as headings should be replaced with text.

11) Broken Links
Broken links are not at all tolerated and should be found out and fixed immediately. It is also a great idea to have a customized 404 error page for these broken links.

12) Non SEO friendly Site Layout
Non SEO friendly website layout may create difficulties for the search engine spiders while crawling and hence the site’s layout should be made as SEO friendly as possible.

13) High Site loading Time
Due to some or other reasons many website have high site loading time, which makes the users to go away from the site. Google also recommends to have fast loading sites for better site performance and hence it is always better to reduce the site loading time.

14) Use of Duplicate Title and Meta Tags
Many of the website have duplicate title and meta tags which is not encouraged by the major search engines. Each and every page should have unique and relevant Title and Meta Tags, which helps the site in getting better search engine ranking.

15) Use of Frame
Frames are used by many web masters to enhance the look and feel of the website. But frames are not supported by the search engines and it is better to avoid them.

16) Use of duplicate content
Sites with duplicate content are sure to get penalized by the search engines. So it is better to have unique and attractive content for your website.

17) Bulk Directory Submissions
Many people around considers bulk directory submissions as a major means of getting back links. The fact is that the major search engines do not give much importance to directory submissions (especially the free low quality directories). So rather than going for bulk directory submissions, it is better to handpick few relevant high quality directories and submit manually into them.

18) Improper Robots.txt File
If the robots.txt file of a website is not properly coded, it may prevent search engines spiders from crawling your website properly. It may also help search engines spiders to crawls sections of the website that are not intended to be crawled by any search engine spiders. So always make sure that your robots.txt file is properly coded.

19) Instant Result Expectations
Instant result expectations of your SEO campaign is a major mistake that most of the web masters do. SEO is not a instant result yielding work like programming or designing. This is an ongoing process and it may take its own time to start getting results. So patience is the key for SEO and instant result expectations must be left behind.

20) Submitting to Search Engines
Spending your valuable time submitting sites to search engines is a major mistake to be avoided. Actually the search engines crawls and indexes the website by itself and even if you don’t submit them to search engines, there is nothing serious to worry.

5 Important Forums for SEOs / Webmasters

George — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:26:04 +0000

Forums are learning centers for any professional and are usually open discussion platforms where we can discuss anything about our niche. SEO forums are the real coaching centers for SEO professionals where they can discuss and share information which are useful to them. Forums are used as a medium for clearing doubts and learning new tricks of the trade.

Presently there are a large number of SEO forums available, but it is not possible to participate in all of them. People only participate in the most popular forums and depends on several other factors. I have handpicked and listed 5 of the most important SEO forums, which are useful for all SEOs / Webmasters.

1) Search Engine Watch
This is the most popular among the SEO forums with a page rank of 6 and Alexa rank for the overall site with 3,052. It covers a number of different SEO topics and have a large user base, which helps you a lot in open discussions.

2) Webmaster World
The Webmaster World forum with a page rank of 5 is a useful SEO forum where you can discuss SEO topics along with other wide range of topics such as designing, development etc. The forum has an overall Alexa rank of 753.

3) SEO Chat
SEOChat Forum is one of the favorite SEO forum, where I participate on a regular basis. It has a page rank of 5 and Alexa site rank of 2,468. It contain expert SEO professionals who are always willing to participate in the discussions in order to help and clear our doubts.

4) Webpro World
Webpro World is another useful SEO forum which covers a wide topic and have active discussions and experts users. It has a Google page rank of 5 and overall Alexa rank of 8,188

5) High Rankings
Another forum where I spend and discussion topics on SEO is highrankings.com. This forum is an active one with a Google Page rank of 5 and Alexa rank of 12822. Even though its Alexa rank is higher, the forum members are industry specific experts and are very much active.