Many companies consider redesign or redevelopment of their website to attract and impress new clients. They contact with web development company and purchase a fancy web design and somewhat functional CMS.
Nowadays no one underestimate search engine optimization any more. Almost every business considers hiring a SEO company or expert to do the optimization part on the ready website.
Where is the error here?
Search engine optimization is a complex process. Basically it can be divided into two parts – on-site optimization and off-site optimization. Doing on-site optimization on a non-optimized, fully-developed web site will cost a lot of efforts. To cut short the costs, search engine optimization must be kept in mind during the website development and design.
For example flash menus can be good looking but the search engines still can’t handle them. The same goes for JavaScript menus and navigation. The overall site usability must be approved by a SEO expert.
There are many requirements for a site to be SEO friendly – different titles and meta tags for different pages, articles, categories, etc. Search engine friendly urls also must be considered.
I won’t list all the necessary stuff, because this post will become too long.
What is the solution?
A good SEO expert must participate in development process. Developers and designers must be in touch with him from the planning point of the project. There are some web development companies that offer a complex solution – web design, CMS development and SEO optimization. Anyway consider consulting more than one SEO expert and ask about the reasons for every step with suspicion.
Showing posts with label SEO campaign planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO campaign planning. Show all posts
Dec 13, 2008
Blog planning – how to start a high-traffic, high-paying blog?
After reading about a SEO experiment in DP, I gave a serious thought about what is the best strategy to start a blog. What is the best planning? How to attract more visitors? How to get maximum revenue? How to make people remember you?
I am not exactly a SEO expert, it is more likely that I am a SEO enthusiast. I am not interested in making money from SEO, my money source is programming. But for the past two years I do (and experiment on) search engine optimization for some sites. It is not a complete service and only small part of them are mine. I have some sites in high competition niches and some in low ones. And I make tests on different types of blog/website monetizing.
So what I have learned till now. The basic is – you have no guarantee in anything related to search engines. Two websites with no duplicate content but identical in niche/ marketing/ optimizing will have very different performance. This is not a rule of course but it happens most of the time. And all of this is just my opinion and analysis, I don't pretend to be fully right in anything.
I’ll make a simple plan for starting a blog, according to what I have learned till now. I choose a blog, not a website because it is a little more complicated for a website.
I am not exactly a SEO expert, it is more likely that I am a SEO enthusiast. I am not interested in making money from SEO, my money source is programming. But for the past two years I do (and experiment on) search engine optimization for some sites. It is not a complete service and only small part of them are mine. I have some sites in high competition niches and some in low ones. And I make tests on different types of blog/website monetizing.
So what I have learned till now. The basic is – you have no guarantee in anything related to search engines. Two websites with no duplicate content but identical in niche/ marketing/ optimizing will have very different performance. This is not a rule of course but it happens most of the time. And all of this is just my opinion and analysis, I don't pretend to be fully right in anything.
I’ll make a simple plan for starting a blog, according to what I have learned till now. I choose a blog, not a website because it is a little more complicated for a website.
- Initialization
This is the research part. If you haven't selected a niche for your blog - now is the time to do so. You must select a niche where you can provide quality content. If you are not a pro in writing consider hiring a professional writer. Make a deep research on your target niche. Analyze your competitors, niche forums, social sites, trends, keywords, etc.
Spending a little more time on this first part will help you to solve many problems of the future.
- Actions - any of this step may be not appropriate for your niche, make the final decision what to do in a clear mind
- Make minimum 20 posts before doing anything else with your blog. Maybe this advice is not suitable only for political/ civil/ spicy blogs.
- Make gradual link building campaign – too fast link building may put you in a sandbox
- Make minimum 3-4 posts per week for the first 3 months
- Active membership to some related forums and communities – minimum 3-4 quality posts per forum per week
- Make 30 or more directory submissions per week – prefer high rank directories
- Make minimum 20 posts before doing anything else with your blog. Maybe this advice is not suitable only for political/ civil/ spicy blogs.
- Goals
Define your goals depending on the niche popularity in a monthly rate:
- Unique visitors expectations
- Performance
- Revenue
Keep in mind that in a high competition niche your blog will need more time and efforts to become popular.
I usually start to monetize my blogs after 3 months starting period. It is better to set goals according to the niche for the expecting revenue. Don’t aim too high because one disappointment at the beginning may be critical.
Selecting the type of revenue program is also a very complex task. I’ll live it for another post.
Sep 12, 2008
More abstract view over the link-building process
Link building is one of the most important parts of a SEO campaign. Anyone speak how this affects your website’s PR or traffic.
Link building can be split in several parts:
Directory submission
There are many web directories out there. They vary in types – free directories, deep-link directories, paid directories, topical ones. Web directories at any kind are a good way to make the count of links to your website greater. They can be good filling in any search engine optimization campaign. But web directories can’t be the only source of links or you won’t have satisfactory results.
Article directories
I am not a big fan of them. It hardly cost its time for me. There are only few good ones.
Link exchange
Link exchanging with related sites - one good way to get nice rank and a lot of targeted traffic. Offer some good link exchange program on your site and people will contact you with proposals.
Forums
Contribute to some related forums. Share your experience and your URL
Blogs
Links from popular blogs help both with good value and some traffic.
Friends
Ask people around you to help in your campaign.
Social networks/bookmarks/etc
Go for it. Put your titles on the main sites and ask some friends to vote for you. Make good friend networks and share your offer.
So what is the best option?
All. One good campaign must be well balanced, depending on the type of the website, service and target market.
Link building can be split in several parts:
Directory submission
There are many web directories out there. They vary in types – free directories, deep-link directories, paid directories, topical ones. Web directories at any kind are a good way to make the count of links to your website greater. They can be good filling in any search engine optimization campaign. But web directories can’t be the only source of links or you won’t have satisfactory results.
Article directories
I am not a big fan of them. It hardly cost its time for me. There are only few good ones.
Link exchange
Link exchanging with related sites - one good way to get nice rank and a lot of targeted traffic. Offer some good link exchange program on your site and people will contact you with proposals.
Forums
Contribute to some related forums. Share your experience and your URL
Blogs
Links from popular blogs help both with good value and some traffic.
Friends
Ask people around you to help in your campaign.
Social networks/bookmarks/etc
Go for it. Put your titles on the main sites and ask some friends to vote for you. Make good friend networks and share your offer.
So what is the best option?
All. One good campaign must be well balanced, depending on the type of the website, service and target market.
Jul 23, 2008
Getting traffic from images
Images are important part of many websites. If you have a blog with fun cat photos or a gamers website with screenshots, you can attract more users with your images.
So how to optimize a website for image search engines?
Optimizing for image searches is not so complex part of a SEO campaign. Done together with standard SEO optimization it can bring a lot of well targeted traffic.
Good luck!
Edit: One very useful video about image url - does Google consider the url?
So how to optimize a website for image search engines?
- Image name
Use describing names for your images. Name like a453kjh4.jpg won't help you get any traffic. Web crawlers are not people and they can't understand what is on the image but you can help them with precise names. Use short describing names like cat.jpg or clouds.gif.
- Alt text
Don't ever forget to add describing and precise alt text. This is the other important part for getting targeted traffic from image searches.
- Page title
Page titles are something important for any kind of search engine optimization. You must have precise, short and describing titles for your pages and images with similar content.
- Paragraph titles
Paragraph titles are very similar to page titles. One page can contain multiple topics and any topic must have its own describing title.
Optimizing for image searches is not so complex part of a SEO campaign. Done together with standard SEO optimization it can bring a lot of well targeted traffic.
Good luck!
Edit: One very useful video about image url - does Google consider the url?
May 24, 2008
SEO campaign
First thing to do is to clearly define your business goals. Why are you doing a SEO campaign? What do you want to achieve? How to do it? What tools or services to use? Isn’t it better to hire a specialist or a company?
Try to write down these questions and expand them in a way that is most relevant to your web site or service. This article will try to clear the overall concept of a SEO campaign and find some answers.
Steps in doing our campaign:
First and one of the most important: keyword research.
The basic of all search engines are the keywords. Also main part in target advertising and Pay-per-click campaigns are the keywords. People enter keywords in search engines in order to get necessary information. Choose the keywords that will bring the right type of visitors in your website. There are two methods of approach in selecting keywords. First one is a broad approach. Imagine that you run an e-commerce web site. Here the most obvious keyword is “buy online”. Disadvantages of this keyword are apparent – very high competition and not targeting at all. Google will return millions results for this term. The effort for rank good for this keyword would be enormous and don’t worth it at all.
In other hand you can choose more relevant and describing term for your service or website. It will bring more exactly targeted traffic to your site and eventually more customers.
The basic tool to consider in this part of the campaign is Google keyword tool. Be careful to balance well between the popularity, relevance and competitiveness of your keywords.
On-Site optimization
Carefully review your site and map out a simple plan for basic changes. The first thing to consider here is the question - is the site search engine friendly? Avoid flash website without any html content. It may look cool but search engine crawlers are not friendly with the flash content. Also avoid using flash or javascript for web site navigation. Anchor is the best choice for a menu.
Website usability – consider that the main part in all this is the visitor. Make sure that every necessary part is easy to reach. Ensure enough time for planning site navigation and modules. Read different search engine guidelines and make your plans according to them. Pay special attention to the images – well described images can drive a lot new traffic through image searches.
Content
Content is the part that needs great attention. First thing is to check for and remove duplicate content. Avoid using duplicate content. Make a plan for regular updating and basic content suggestions.
Users Involvement
Plan a way to involve the visitors in your site growth. Polls, Competitions, Comments, Forum, User-created-content, Awards, Voting system can be weapons for this cause.
Off-Site optimization
Link building
Link building is the basic part of the off-site optimization. Search engines prefer and give more value to a natural linking. So give a reason to your visitors to link and promote your site.
Directory submission is a valuable way for link building, but using blindly won’t be in much use. Make a list of the best directories and plan dates for submitting. Consider to grow your links gradually, avoid automatic submissions and pay special attention to directories related to the search engines. Good thing to keep in mind that geographically related directories and listings can get you more targeted traffic than global services.
Article submission also deserves its time (but not much). Choosing few of the best article directories will add more value rather than spamming all the article directories over and over again.
Social bookmark and network services also need careful planning. Choose few more relevant to your niche and go for good rating in them. Selecting good content to share is very hard task. Ever wonder why some articles gets thousands votes and other hardly get less than ten? Good and spicy page can bring in a lot of visitors.
Search Engine Optimization campaign planning and realization is a time and effort consuming process but don’t forget that it is not the only way for promoting your site. Internet marketing is a lot broader field and the successful profit sits on the top of a selection of SEO, Pay-Per-Click, Affiliate and many other campaigns.
Try to write down these questions and expand them in a way that is most relevant to your web site or service. This article will try to clear the overall concept of a SEO campaign and find some answers.
Steps in doing our campaign:
First and one of the most important: keyword research.
The basic of all search engines are the keywords. Also main part in target advertising and Pay-per-click campaigns are the keywords. People enter keywords in search engines in order to get necessary information. Choose the keywords that will bring the right type of visitors in your website. There are two methods of approach in selecting keywords. First one is a broad approach. Imagine that you run an e-commerce web site. Here the most obvious keyword is “buy online”. Disadvantages of this keyword are apparent – very high competition and not targeting at all. Google will return millions results for this term. The effort for rank good for this keyword would be enormous and don’t worth it at all.
In other hand you can choose more relevant and describing term for your service or website. It will bring more exactly targeted traffic to your site and eventually more customers.
The basic tool to consider in this part of the campaign is Google keyword tool. Be careful to balance well between the popularity, relevance and competitiveness of your keywords.
On-Site optimization
Carefully review your site and map out a simple plan for basic changes. The first thing to consider here is the question - is the site search engine friendly? Avoid flash website without any html content. It may look cool but search engine crawlers are not friendly with the flash content. Also avoid using flash or javascript for web site navigation. Anchor is the best choice for a menu.
Website usability – consider that the main part in all this is the visitor. Make sure that every necessary part is easy to reach. Ensure enough time for planning site navigation and modules. Read different search engine guidelines and make your plans according to them. Pay special attention to the images – well described images can drive a lot new traffic through image searches.
Content
Content is the part that needs great attention. First thing is to check for and remove duplicate content. Avoid using duplicate content. Make a plan for regular updating and basic content suggestions.
Users Involvement
Plan a way to involve the visitors in your site growth. Polls, Competitions, Comments, Forum, User-created-content, Awards, Voting system can be weapons for this cause.
Off-Site optimization
Link building
Link building is the basic part of the off-site optimization. Search engines prefer and give more value to a natural linking. So give a reason to your visitors to link and promote your site.
Directory submission is a valuable way for link building, but using blindly won’t be in much use. Make a list of the best directories and plan dates for submitting. Consider to grow your links gradually, avoid automatic submissions and pay special attention to directories related to the search engines. Good thing to keep in mind that geographically related directories and listings can get you more targeted traffic than global services.
Article submission also deserves its time (but not much). Choosing few of the best article directories will add more value rather than spamming all the article directories over and over again.
Social bookmark and network services also need careful planning. Choose few more relevant to your niche and go for good rating in them. Selecting good content to share is very hard task. Ever wonder why some articles gets thousands votes and other hardly get less than ten? Good and spicy page can bring in a lot of visitors.
Search Engine Optimization campaign planning and realization is a time and effort consuming process but don’t forget that it is not the only way for promoting your site. Internet marketing is a lot broader field and the successful profit sits on the top of a selection of SEO, Pay-Per-Click, Affiliate and many other campaigns.
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