Website Design and Internet Strategy for Business Owners

In business we have to trust our service providers. SEO companies are our gateway to online success. But it’s a good idea to keep a tab on what they are doing on our websites. Remember in the online world the website is your business store and you wouldn’t want a wrong description or profile projected! Or worse you wouldn’t want to be taken for a ride after paying those dollars!

Ask them for a keyword list and make sure that they get them right.
This is important. Take time off for it or you’ll spend five times over trying to rectify the error. You may not know what words your potential customers are using in search engines to try and find a business like yours. That’s why you’ve hired a SEO company in the first place. But instead of appearing stupid

1. Ask them for examples of your competitor’s sites
2. Ask them for a keyword list.
3. Select a mixture of keywords. Remember that the single word keyword will be the toughest to optimize for and they may not be the most suitable. Though there may be 5040 searches for ‘insurance’ per day there is no point in spending money optimizing for it. ‘Auto Insurance’, or ‘health insurance’ may be more suitable. Some thing like ‘dental insurance’ may be more specific. However, “call center” (treated as one word) can result in huge business.
4. Ask them the difficultly level of keywords. 45% or less are relatively easy to optimize for and higher the difficulty, the toughness of optimization increases.
5. Ask your SEO company to prepare a list of existing web pages on your website which target suitable keywords. That way you will know which page targets what keywords and how many more pages of content will be needed on the website.

So you get to control the costs.

Your chance of appearing at the top of search engine results is greatly enhanced if you focus your website optimization efforts on two/three word phrases instead of single words.

Check your webpage title
Now that you know what phrases which webpage is targeting check the title of the l page. You can view it in the top browser bar when you open your website. Your page title on your home page is the biggest indicator to search engines of what your website is all about. The page title originates in the Meta Tags, which are not displayed in the normal view of your website.

1. A page title should be between 10 to 60 characters long including spaces.
2. It should preferably be in the format <main keyword>, <sub keyword>, <brand name>

Remember that the company should optimize each page title on each page to get the best result. A random check is sufficient.

Get the Description Right
 The description that appears below your URL in Google search engine is the metatag description that was included in the source code of your page. The  Description should contain an enticing and informative snapshot of what the website is about and it should appeal to all search engines to appear. While Google takes a page description of 150 characters, MSN often takes the initial 100 characters from the Meta Description. The description should make sense, convey all relevant information about the web page and entice the reader to read the page. It is also worthwhile placing one related keyword phrase within the Meta Description.  If possible add a phone number in the description metatag

Web Page Names
If your SEO company is a genuine company, they will most probably get it right. But step in here to ensure that the most important pages of your website can be told over the phone. After all it’s you and your team who will conduct the business. It should not be too long to fit in the business card. There are times when it is technically not possible. Ask them for a redirect.

Let People Find You
Add your contact number and office address prominently. Let people know that you have an office space. Give visitors a number to enquire for business.

Consideration for the Media
You may not be a big company right now, but as your business grows and your brand becomes recognizable the press may decide to follow you. Create a media corner. Put all your press releases, speeches and videos over there all at one place. Keep adding the latest press release to the site. Post your press release on the site a day or two earlier that the official press release.

Some Questions To Ask Your SEO Company To Keep Them On Their Toes

What ‘H’ Tags are you using?  H Tags or ‘Heading Size’ were originally introduced to aid the formatting of HTML documents. Because their presence indicates  page heading with larger text, many search engines have decided to count this as a significant part of their ranking. Websites should not be designed just for their look and feel. Equally they should not be designed only for search engines. However, with a bit of thought and creativity, web pages can be built with both visitors and search engines in mind.

Are you using the keyword in Alt Tags?  Alt tags short form for Alternative Tags were originally designed to contain the text to be displayed on web pages instead of images if a user’s computer did not have the capacity to be able to display images. Alt Tags on images provide a great way of getting your keywords near the top of your pages without reducing your website readability. Alt Tags can also positively impact your internal website keyword linking. For a website to be successful, you have to create a new site entrance by adding Alt Tags to each image to appeal to search engines more effectively. With this, not only you are appealing to more users by using Alt Tags to your images, you will also be complying with website design standards for disabled users of your site.

Is the site navigation in text? As said earlier if your SEO company is genuine they will insist on text navigation and even navigation without menu. Generally, websites have their navigation links on the top or side of each web page. Unfortunately, many website navigation menus are image based. This means that search engines often won’t spider the linked pages as they do with text-based menu links.

 Are you using the keywords to link to webpages? In technical parlance the phrases used to link to a particular webpage is called anchor text. They are given a lot of importance by search engines

Are all pages on the website linked by some page? Is the internal linking 100%? Well, we do not like loose ends, neither do search engine because they have been made by human. Make sure all the pages on your website can be reached by some page.

Work In Tandem
No SEO company can work effectively in isolation. They need your feedback, your suggestions (off and on). Ask for a monthly report to check your website’s keyword progress. Remember SEO is a long drawn process. Competitive keywords may be harder to optimize for. Once you reach page 1, the progress becomes slower. If you have found a good company all you have to do off and on is an occasional nip in the toes to ensure there is no scope for complacency.

Overnight online success is extremely rare. Most successes are a culmination of the testing, analyzing, improving and testing cycle.
 
If you really want online success, or even offline success, then you must understand the importance of correct marketing testing.

Ask yourself these questions as a starting point:

1. Do I have a website strategy?
2. What is my ROI on each strategy?
3. Am I you split testing your content?
4. Is tracking installed on each page of my website?
5. Am I monitoring my squeeze pages? If yes, Am I monitoring the results scientifically like following modifications of term and phrases, content and layout and other 2.0 web techniques? Which pages gives give me better returns? Can you analyze why?
6. Which form placement works better?
7. What site links are better exchanges?
8. Do I know the unique visitors, hits, time spent, page hit, etc., etc., etc. for your website?
9. Do you know all the measures for your website traffic?

This is just the beginning.

Scientifically track headlines, home page, navigation settings, Changes in pictures and graphics, location of certain offers, features, buttons, etc.

Monitor your links- both incoming and outgoing and your automated business functions and above all your list building and lead generation methods.

Always update your prospect and customer communication system and shopping cart.

In his free report on testing Ajay talks about some of the tracking measures and following the visitor profile.
“Here are some of the tracking measures you should be talking to your web designer/builder about. In fact, they should be talking to you about these things. If you have to bring them up you are already in trouble, with a capital T.
How many visitors are coming to the site?
How many of the visitors aren’t visitors (i.e. spiders, crawlers, etc. from search engines)
How many visitors are new vs. old?
How long does each visitor stay on your site?
What does each visitor look at?
What graphics, words, pictures, etc are generating the most responses?
Which search engines are getting you the best prospects?
Where else are your customers coming from
How many pages does the visitor look at?
What are your website rankings?
How much money have you made from the average visitor?
Who are your biggest money-making customers?
If you use PPC is it working and paying for itself?
Which links are bringing your visitors and are they converting to customers?
And so on…”
You can read the total report at http://www.gmrwebteam.com/images/FreeReportTestTrackMeasure.pdf

FUNDAMENTAL:  your website should bring in more money than
it costs to maintain it!

Some Tools:

Website Traffic Related:
Quantcast
Google Analytics
Compete
Hitwise

Split Testing Tools
http://www.1shoppingcart.com (paid)
http://www.adwords.google.com (free if using analytics version)

Market Testing Tools and Websites

Google Insights (free)
Google Trends (free)
Survey Monkey (free and paid)
Dneero (paid)

Link building continues to be an important part of online marketing and optimizing websites. Google, the most popular search engine, relies heavily on the link popularity of websites to determine the page rank of the site. If your website does not have inbound links from other websites, it will not achieve high rankings in highly competitive categories. Boosting the link popularity of a particular web page or website is known as off-page search engine optimization.

One of the biggest criteria for your website popularity and enhanced ranking in search engines is the quantity and quality of incoming links to your website. Incoming links are links leading to your site from other sites are an important factor affecting how well your site ranks in search engines. It is important to know how many incoming links your site has, their page rank and what anchor text is used in these links.

 Probably, the best way to get link to your site is by offering to exchange reciprocal links. This is the process of exchanging links with the webmaster of another site. The procedure is that you place a link to their website and in return, they will place a link to your website. Reciprocal linking is an effective way of generating targeted, topic related traffic to your website. It is beneficial to both webmasters as both the sites benefit from the new-targeted, relevant links. Over time, Search engines will also increase rank after seeing new links pointing from other quality and relevant sites to your website.

But, Google values more on organic link building-building links that progress naturally rather than appearing artificial. One of the biggest things you can do to create more traffic to your website is to create back links from other sites. If you can get hundreds of relevant one-way back links to your website, then you are not only going to get traffic from the links, but also from the increased ranking in search engines.

Link building determines a site’s page rank in search engines. The higher the page rank on the web, the better your placement would be in search engine results.

Tips to build links for website optimization-

• Submission to web directories- You can start your link building strategy by submitting your website link to web directory services on the net. There are thousands of directories ranging from the well-respected DMOZ, topic-specific directories to paid-inclusion directories. If you are on a limited budget, you can start submitting your links to free web directories. For example, DMOZ is a free directory, but has a somewhat lengthy process and it takes patience to get a link. On the other hand, if you are willing to pay, Yahoo! will add you to their directory within a week.
• Article submission- A great way to build natural and permanent links to your website is through submitting articles to other websites, each of which contains one or more live links pointing to your business site. The fastest way to get your website indexed in search engines is by writing articles and submitting them to other website. Publishing quality content with your site’s link is a good internet marketing strategy for online businesses.
• Publishing in social book marking sites- An easy way to propagate your links on the web is to use social book marking sites. You can submit a brief description of your site along with your links to social book marking page. If they find your page useful, they can bookmark it as well.
• Press release submission- Just like article submission- you can do press release submissions to all the major press release sources to build links and create more traffic to your website. You don’t have to do press releases on a daily basis, but doing them in a weekly basis will go a long way to getting your website indexed quickly.
• Forum Participation: This is another way of getting your link known to the right people and you gain the status of an expert here. Most forums allow a link back to your site after 15 to 30 forum posts.
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A turnaround in internet strategy is the use of press releases to reach out to millions of users who have internet access and subscribe to RSS feeds.

Gone are the days when press releases depended upon a handful of journalists. You can now communicate with your customers directly through Google, Yahoo and other such verticals. Your customers and potential customers should reda about yourproduct on the internet and reach your website directly.

You can write a press release about anything in your company. Do not wait for something big to happen.

Make sure that your press release contains terms and phrases that customers use to find you. This way you may be picked up by search engines.

Tips for Press Release

• Always write your press release in third person.
• Include a quote or two for authenticity.
• Keep the headlines of your press release interesting.
• Add a date to a press release only if necessary.
• Add a follow-up URL in a press release; if necessary create specific landing pages. Try to track the visits from a press release to your website. It provides a useful insight into your customer behavior and is useful for further press release strategies.
• Keep the press release length at about 350 to 500 words
• Release the press release on your website and for submission simultaneously
• Check for spelling mistakes
• A press release that offers a new solution to an existing problem is likely to be picked up by readers.
• Add social bookmarking tags to your press release, this makes it easier for a person interested in your product refer the product to his or her group. In short, it helps in viral marketing.

Press Release or Media Section on Website

It is helpful to have your own press release or media section on your website. It has been proved that journalists or even customers often visit the media or press release section on your site to try and get latest information about your company and its product. Additionally, press releases will live on your site forever, but will get deleted from other sites, most probably after three months. You media section can also include informative videos and audios that a customer may enjoy seeing.

A word of caution however. DO NOT ignore the traditional media. They have their own role to play especially in attracting local business. Use the internet aprt from the traditional press.

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List of Press Release sites

PRWeb

PR Leap

Web Wire

PR Web Direct

PR News Wire

Fast Pitch Networking

1888 Press Release

Business Wire

PR Log

Free-Press-Release

PR

Market Wire

Majon

24-7 Press Release

Press-Release-Writing

eReleases

Send 2 Press

Pressbox

EMail Wire

Internet News Bureau

Prime News Wire

USA News

EWorld Wire

Press Flash

Soft Press Release

Press Release Network

Mass Media Distribution

News Wire Today

Press-Releases

News Press

Corporate News

Exclamation PR

Company Press

Press Release 365

Trans World News

Free-Press-Release-Center

Rush PR News

DP Directory

PR Free

Exact Release

PR Urgent

PR 9

Mopress

Online PR News

What is Article Marketing?
The writing of articles related to your services, product or expertise and publishing it online for general audience is called article marketing.

How does it work?
Let us take the example of a site that offers weight loss surgery in Mexico. This site publishes a lot of articles online, almost 6 to 7 articles per month. Around 10% of visitors to this site (among 10,000s) come from article sites. This site uses article marketing as a foremost technique in its strategy for online visibility and targeted audience.

The best part is that this form of marketing comes relatively cheaper or even for free if you have a knack of writing.

So how does the site get traffic from article sites? All article publishing sites have an author resource box that lets you say something about yourself and your website. This author resource box is an important place for internet strategy because visitors get to know you and your website. So in the author resource box the site says that “ABC is the founder and owner of XYZ, a company specializing as a scheduling service for weight loss surgeries in the safest city in Mexico at one-third the prices of weight loss surgery in USA because cost of living in Mexico is cheaper than the US.”

After reading the resource box people click on the link and come to the site because they have read your article and want to know more.

Do how does it help you?

• Sends traffic to your website through the resource box.
• Gets back links to the site, which matters where search engines are concerned.

How to do it?
For optimum results each article should be around 500 to 700 words.

• Target only a single keyword in the article, and use synonyms.
• Pay particular attention to the resource box. It has the capability to drive traffic to your site.
• Do not blatantly promote your site or product.

What is Article Marketing?
The writing of articles related to your services, product or expertise and publishing it online for general audience is called article marketing.

How does it work?
Let us take the example of a site that offers weight loss surgery in Mexico. This site publishes a lot of articles online, almost 6 to 7 articles per month. Around 10% of visitors to this site (among 10,000s) come from article sites. This site uses article marketing as a foremost technique in its strategy for online visibility and targeted audience.

The best part is that this form of marketing comes relatively cheaper or even for free if you have a knack of writing.

So how does the site get traffic from article sites? All article publishing sites have an author resource box that lets you say something about yourself and your website. This author resource box is an important place for internet strategy because visitors get to know you and your website. So in the author resource box the site says that “ABC is the founder and owner of XYZ, a company specializing as a scheduling service for weight loss surgeries in the safest city in Mexico at one-third the prices of weight loss surgery in USA because cost of living in Mexico is cheaper than the US.”

After reading the resource box people click on the link and come to the site because they have read your article and want to know more.

Do how does it help you?

• Sends traffic to your website through the resource box.
• Gets back links to the site, which matters where search engines are concerned.

How to do it?
For optimum results each article should be around 500 to 700 words.

• Target only a single keyword in the article, and use synonyms.
• Pay particular attention to the resource box. It has the capability to drive traffic to your site.
• Do not blatantly promote your site or product.

Article Format
Ensure that your articles are well formulated.

1. A Headline: that is attractive, arouses curiosity, highlights a problem and entices the reader to read on. Try to ensure that the keyword in contained in the headline.
2. A Sub-Headline: is an option in some sites. It should offer a light into the problem highlighted in the headline

1. Keywords: Put the primary keyword first followed by variations of the phrase along with synonyms.
2. Article body: should be of around 500 words. Try to keep the flow smooth covering all aspects of your topic in brief.

1. Author Resource Box; author resource box is the most important link back to your website. Your article may be excellent, but if people do not visit your site it’s all effort gone down the drain. The resource box must tell something about you, your website and MUST contain a Call to Action. For example:

My Article Is Ready Now What?

One your article is ready you need to post your articles online to get them across to viewer.
There are two ways to do it.

1. Use a paid posting service like SubmitYOURArticle that publishes the article on it’s website and syndicates it to publishers further.
2. Use the repository of free article posting websites on the internet and post the articles at those sites.

In both cases you need to create a user account. Remember, some sites will publish them immediately while others will publish the articles after screening them.

Helpful Hints

• Use a combination of paid and free posting
• Send article links to your friends and colleagues
• Use keywords as the anchor text to link back to your site.
• In the body try to use the keyword at least twice or thrice.
• Keep the sentences and paragraphs short.
• Proof read your article several times.
• Though 7 is a good number post at least 3 articles a month.

Till next week,

Regards,
Sangeeta

Last week we talked broadly about website design and how to integrate it with your internet strategy. We also saw the significance of good original content and how it acts as a unifier for all aspects of internet strategy. This week we will go a step further and discuss onsite aspects of internet strategy. I will try to provide you with a checklist and a list of don’ts.

• Zero on a website design company in your area that has a good aesthetic sense coupled with excellent programmers and experience in website marketing. Ask around. Do not cut costs at this stage. Ask the number of pages and the rates for additional pages. Make sure that there are no hidden costs. Try to go for companies integrating three aspects -design, marketing and maintenance; it’s easier and more convenient. Though initially expensive, you eventually end of saving costs because basic SEO of your website is done.
• Decide on your website design requirements before hand. If you need a database to show information to your visitors offer two or three search options like search by city, search by type, search by requirement (may have 2 or more options hence will require more programming expertise). These factors make your website popular and user friendly encouraging visitors to come back.
• Research your keywords and identify a keyword for each page: You can do it yourself or take the help of a website marketing company. Do not identify more than 3 keywords per page.
• Good website architecture: The file should not be more than 3 levels deep, filenames should be relevant, main navigation tabs should be clearly visible and all pages should be linked. This inbound linking is a very important factor in SEO. 
• Make navigation easy for online visitors and search engines. Logically group your pages.
• Original and relevant content: If you cannot write hire a copywriter. Be involved at each step. The content enables visitors to convert into customers.
• Optimized and verified HTML code: This topic was covered in the following post: Website Design, Keywords, SEO and your Business
• Acceptable code to content ratio: This tells us how much code is there on a page and how much of content. More the text the better. You can check your website at the link below
  http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/code-to-text-ratio/

• Media Section in the website: check that it can includes video and podcasts abilities. These are the latest forms of media marketing
• Build a list: One of the most important steps of internet strategy and most often ignored is a visitor capturing form. Most often it is a short form containing the first name and the email id. Visitors to your site may give you this information if you are offering a newsletter or a free download of a whitepaper or something equally interesting. These lists are important when you are launching a new product or have something special to give to your old clients.
• Try to have a blog on your website. And update it frequently, at least once a week. The blog is good for feedback and information and attracts visitors. Search engines like blogs too as they always add fresh content to the site.
• Sitemap: Ask for XML version to be submitted to search engines and HTML version for your visitors
• Robot.txt tells the search engine where to go and where not to go.

Some Don’ts

I will not give a big list but avoid the 5 below:

• Avoid flash
• Avoid iFrames
• Never use a login to access content pages, remember SE cannot login
• Avoid duplicating your content across pages on your website.
• Don’t use black hat SEO, avoid companies that promise instant results.

Resources for Internet Marketing Strategies

• For Marketing tips: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
• For Blogging tips: http://www.problogger.net/blog/
• For Internet Marketing tips: http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/
• For Free Copywriting Tips: http://www.sellingtohumannature.com/articles1sc.html

You’ve worked hard at identifying the keywords that will drive traffic to your website.
These keywords have to be integrated with website design to start driving traffic to your website. Then there is the issue of conversions. So the design, code and content must be integrated for a successful website business. Discuss all of the below factors with your website designer and content writer if any.

Website Design: The Fundamentals

There are thousands of website design companies out there and you can choose any. Ask for quotes from a few of them to analyze their services. The rates vary as per services and pages. Ecommerce websites cost more than information websites. Inquire if maintenance and hosting services are included in the pricing.

• Insist on the website design coding being done in CSS. It’s convenient if you want to change a style later on and is very SE friendly.
• Templates may be cheap, but then your website wouldn’t stand out. That’ll affect conversions and you lose the money you set to save.
• The call to action must be clear and outlined but not outrageous.
• Choose colors suitable for your business. It modulates the mood of the visitor.
• The classic white background and black text is the best. Top copywriters follow this and leave color spaces around the edges of their pages.
• Do not compromise on site navigability. A visitor must get what he came to the site for and any additional information must be easily available for him to see.
•  The <a href=”http://www.w3.org”>World Wide Web Consortium </a>is a standard for coding. Ask for the w3.org validator for XHTML and CSS to be added once the site is done. You can then check the accuracy of the coding yourself.

Integrating Keywords with Website Design
The diligent work you did for finalizing your keywords find a place here. Once the keywords are integrated in the design there is a better chance of your website coming up in SERPs.

• Filenames: Try to use the keyword in the file names, both the webpage and the image file if any. For phrases use hyphens to separate words.
• HTML Tags: Search Engines Read the HTML part of a website. So use your keywords in the

• Anchor Text: The phrases used to link to a web page are called anchor text. Keep the anchor text to a webpage close to the key phrase of the web page. Use the anchor text on the website and from outside to link to the webpage.

Fundamental SEO Requirements of Website Design
These small requirements make your site easily to spider for search engines and they pick up all of your site and add the pages to their index.

• Site Architecture should be structured and neat.  Avoid going more than 3 levels deep as far as folders are concerned.

Bad Example: http://www.xyz.com/bicycles/seats/leather/productname.aspx
Good Example: http://www.xyz.com/bicycle-seats/productname.aspx

• Robot file: This file tells the search engines where to go and where not to.
• Sitemap: Is available in 2 versions HTML AND XML. Have both versions on the website. The xml version should be submitted to search engines. It tells the search engine that these are the web pages on the website. The HTML version is to aid your visitors navigate the website.
• 301 redirects: If you are revamping your website with new software and keyword rich URLs, do not lose the value of the old pages. Redirect them to new relevant pages using a 301 redirect that tells both visitors and search engines to go there.

 The One and Only Integrator: Content
Content integrates all factors together. Even a totally ecommerce website needs names and description of products. DO NOT copy and paste content from the web. It’s a crime and you could be prosecuted. Content is king. It tells the visitor what your website is all about, what options are available and how they can avail those facilities. Spend a lot of time doing your content.

• Good original content is the best optimizer ever.
• Use your keywords in the title/headline of the content and the body of the content coupled with great style
• The ideal content length is 350 words or more.
• Use synonyms of the keyword
• Having a well structured website ensures that there is smooth flow of content from section to section

These factors integrated together can create a successful website. Make these factors an essential criterion for an internet strategy for your business. Together this strategy coupled with some plain hard work will save you a lot of time and money.

Until next week, when we discuss other strategies of bringing visitors to your website.

Regards,
Sangeeta

Targeting the right keywords is half the work done.

How to Find the Right Keywords? The Process

If you are starting your site from scratch, selecting keywords at this stage is a time and money saver. If you are redesigning your website, this is the time to outgrow your previous mistakes.

If you are wondering what keyword has to do with website design think again. It determines whether your website architecture will have a folder or linear structure. If it is a folder structure then how many levels? Suppose you are a company selling confections. You are designing an e-commerce website. You may have two or more options for website architecture

This will give you a directory structure of

http://www.xyz.com/cakes/category/productid
e,g http://www.xyz.com/cakes/wedding/12345-aabcde
http://www.xyz.com/candy/category/productid
http://www.xyz.com/chocolate/category/productid

OR
You can have this

This will give you a directory structure of

http://www.xyz.com/weddings/category/productid
http://www.xyz.com/bithdays/category/productid
http://www.xyz.com/thanksgiving/category/productid

Now, Using <a href=”http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com>Wordtracker</a> to determine the search phrases customers use to find the ‘ cakes’ we find people are searching for wedding cakes, birthday cakes, diaper cakes and so on.

Naturally the second option is a better website architecture structure. It can grow both laterally and longitudinally. It’s more suitable for search patterns hence later it will be easier to optimize.

The best way to do a keyword search is to write down the phrases that describe your website’s purpose. Start with:

5 one-word phrases

10 two-word phrases

5 three-word phrases

Run them in a keyword tool. You will be amazed at the results.

Save them in a spreadsheet.

Selecting the Right Keywords

Your spreadsheet probably has a thousand keywords. It’s best to have a base keyword in mind around which your site will evolve. Keep these in mind before you start selection

• One word phrases are the hardest to rank for because they require a high number of backlinks which is difficult for a new site.
• Their conversions are also the worst because people are not searching for that product or information. They realize it as soon as they type it and see 44 million websites for ‘cakes’.
• Two phrase keywords are good to optimize for as they have more searches and hence more conversions. But they are difficult to do so especially for a new website.
• Three phrase keywords may be few but are relatively easy to optimize for. It’s best to start with three word keywords.

Select the 3 word phrases most suitable for your site.

The other factors that matter are

• The number of competing sites
• The strength of those competing sites

The problem with free tools is that they do not show the competition. For this the best way to do it is manually.

Open Google, type the phrase and see the number of websites that come up for each page. Examine the sites on the first page. They will be the sites you will be competing with. Open each site, check their page rank and the backlinks to their site.

You can download the Pagerank toolbar at

http://toolbar.google.com

To check backlinks type the following code in Google search bar substituting the site name with your website name.

link: sitename.com

Select a long string for 3 word phrases whose searches rank more than 5 per day. This is the starting list for keywords for your site. Repeat the same procedure for two word phrases.

At this stage it may be suitable for you to leave out 1 word phrases.

Integrating the Keywords in your Website Design

All efforts at selection are useless if keywords are not properly integrated in design

2 tips before starting:

Do not optimize for more than 3 keywords on one page

Preferably optimize for related keywords

Example:

Virtual Offices in Irvine Orange County (keyword)

-Virtual Offices

-Virtual Offices Irvine

-Virtual Offices Orange County

Get your website designer to use these search phrases in the page in Title tags, Keyword tags, Header tags and Alt tags. While writing the content for the page make sure you use the phrase at least twice in 350 words of content. Use synonyms of the keywords.

Wow… that’s quite a lot of work done.

Until next week,

Regards,

Sangeeta

Meta tags are tags especially for the search engines. They tell the search engines what your web page is all about and helps it to index your page more accurately.

Meta tags are the hidden code usually put at the top of websites designed to perform different functions. The two most famous and misunderstood meta tags for SEO purposes are the description and keywords meta tags which you can find somewhere between your head tags. They are designed to provide the additional info about a page. Amongst other things, they tell the search engine what your page is all about, helping it to index your page more accurately.

So, meta tags are keywords placed in the top of a HTML webpage document to help search engines understand your page better. Just like the title tag, scripts and other information that go in the head section, Meta tags are not displayed on the page itself. Put them on every page that you create or publish. The search engine will find all your pages and you have a good chance of ranking your page highly. Yahoo lays more importance to Metatags than other popular search engines.

The most important Meta tags for SEO purposes are-

Description meta tag- The experts in SEO world believe (Might be based on facts and their experience!!!!) that the description meta tag is not crawled by search engines but the description metatag is simply displayed if your site shows up for SERPs. It easily grabs the attention of a surfer and aids in conversion. Therefore, make your page description tag keyword-rich, at the same time focus should be on the human reader.

Keyword meta tag- The keywords tag tells the search engine what keywords are important for that page. The original idea with the keywords tag was to provide a list of alternative keywords-synonyms to the keywords used in the body of the page. For best results don’t repeat keywords, use synonyms and limit the characters to 150.

Title tag- It isn’t a meta tag in a true technical sense. It is an HTML tag.

But generally it’s clubbed in the meta tag for ‘client’ ease of understanding (And novice SEO programmers too…….) It’s the most important tag in your head section, and shows up in the browser title bar. For best results keep it short to 65 characters and have unique title for each page.

Therefore, put a descriptive description in your description tag and relevant keywords in your keywords tag. Make sure you target people who have the potential of turning into customers.

The other common Meta tags include title, author, owner, subject, rating, abstract, language, copyright, robots etc.

Meta tags were started back in the early 90’s to help the search engines organize the growing number of web pages. This was an easy way to make your site indexed and listed high. But recently most search engines put more emphasis on technically advanced algorithms rather than Meta tags for organizing their search engines.

In these hard times we have some good news for you…

As a business owner you must have a dozen questions about Internet Marketing.

Why should I go in for Internet Marketing?

How will Internet Marketing benefit me?

Where do I begin Internet Marketing?

Can I do Internet Marketing by myself?

What is SEO?

How does it work?

And much more….

We at GMRWebTeam receive hundreds of such queries. Ajay, President of GMR Web Team has compiled all such queries into a strategy guide in the form of a ebook named

Seven Steps to Internet Strategy.

This book serves as a guideline for small business owners to begin with their website business. It tells them what is important and why and how it can be done.

You can download this ebook for FREE at http://www.gmrwebteam.com/ebook.shtml

However, this book is simply a guideline. To answer in-depth queries I will be discussing aspects of this book on the GMR blog here each Monday.

Not only this. If you have any personal questions about internet marketing you can contact us at marketing@gmrwebteam.com with the subject line “Internet Marketing Query”. We will respond to your mail.

Make the best of this hour.

…. These days they are hard to come by.