by KevinPosted on Posted in Search Engine Optimization — No Comments ↓

Do you ever wonder the factors that impact your search results?

How does web traffic reflect your web site rank?

Traffic has a direct impact to your web site’s rank among Google search results. The higher the rank, the more traffic you get. There are specific algorithms that Google and other search engines use to rank web sites, which are secretly guarded. Google uses over 200 ranking factors. SEO involves tailoring your website to ranking criteria.

Ranking algorithms is the part of the search engine that decides which pages show up at the top of the results list. Organic ranking is complicated. Ranking algorithm is the mathematical formula a search engine uses to score page against the query to see which pages are the closest matches.

The two main factors are page factors and query factors.

Page factors- Web search ranking algorithms rely heavily on components that have nothing to do with query entered.
1. Strength of links to a page
2. Number of visits to the page and more
These factors boost the rankings for searches on any word that occurs on that page.

Query Factors – The query that the search enters weighs heavily. The number of occurrences of words in the query, where they are found on the page, title, and body. Other elements are weighed in the search engines regarding rankings.

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by KevinPosted on Posted in Content, Search Engine Optimization — No Comments ↓

Having Trouble Getting Customers to Your Web Site?

You are not alone ….. even big business struggle to be noticed. According to Inc Guidebook, the Web has some 120 million Internet domains and tens of billions of index pages. Each competes for search engine visitors. The good news that even small businesses can attract more customers by a focused search engine optimization (SEO) campaign.

SEO is not magic: it takes work and professionals to do the best. Even a professional cannot guarantee landing your site among the top 10 web sites for popular search terms and cannot drive traffic to sites that do not offer value. However, if you have the time or the money to hire a professional, it is worth it.

Some tips for the do-it-yourself:

1) Update your content Frequently.
In today’s survival of the fittest market, web sites containing old
static content reduce rankings. Keeping your content fresh attracts
search engine robots to visit your web site more frequently.
2) Be Persistent.
The age of your site can have a positive effect on search engine
rankings. The longer your web site is online the better your chances.
3) Choose Wisely.
It pays to select the right domain name from the start
and not to change domains.
4) Be Unique:
Do not duplicate content. Duplicate content is damaging to your
rankings. By keeping all pages of your site original you stand a
better chance with the search engines.

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by KevinPosted on Posted in E-Commerce, Shipping — No Comments ↓

When developing an ecommerce website, an area that needs to be considered is cost of fulfillment which includes the cost of warehousing, shipping supplies, freight charges, warehouse management systems and staff. Think of it as the pick, pack and ship orders process. You have to decide whether your company should outsource fulfillment to a logistics company which tracks inventory, picks, packs, and ships on behalf of your company.

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by KevinPosted on Posted in Pay Per Click — No Comments ↓

Often times people ask me whether they should advertise on the content network of Google Adwords? People tell me that when they do it by themselves, the content network produces poor results. So most likely, you will get lower click rates and less traffic using the content network than the search network. This makes sense because people coming through the content network were not searching for your product. So some people think the content network is useless because they have lost money using it in the past. My answer is it depends on who is doing it (ie: Adwords Professional) and whether they are accounting for your market, what you are selling and the site your ads are being displayed.

The content network should be treated totally different from the search network. If you do decide to use the content network, we recommend using a separate campaign. Start off with a small dollar amount and measure your performance. Use reporting tools to test sites, budgets and refine your campaign. Google’s placement report measures your performance on the content network. Google’s placement report can be located in the reports section of your Adwords program. This report helps you filter out sites that bring you poor traffic. If you find a site that wastes your money, remove it. Therefore, if you find that a site that performs well, or the conversion is inexpensive, continue to invest more in it.

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by KevinPosted on Posted in Pay Per Click — No Comments ↓

Customers ask me which is the best position for Google Adwords Ad?

In considering your return on investment (ROI) for pay per click keyword campaigns, competing for the top spot could be a big mistake. Why? The higher you are on the page, the more clicks that you receive. Unfortunaltely, you will receive clicks from someone who is indecisive about purchasing your product or service. This will exhaust your budget faster thus lowering your return on investment.

For most advertisers, shooting low is smart. Position 6-8 is the sweet spot that we recommend for Adwords. Not only does it lower the cost of a bid and bring in traffic, it stretches your budget.

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by KevinPosted on Posted in Search Engine Optimization — No Comments ↓

Search Engine Optimization is an on going process. Search engines like Google are consistently changing their algorithms to ensure sites are fairly rated.  In fact, it was reported last year that Google changed their ranking algorithm 400 times.

Small businesses are not the only group who requires Search Engine Optimization. Even Fortune 500 companies need to spend time working on SEO. According to a 2009 survey conducted by Conductor, more than half of Fortune 500 companies had almost no natural search visibility, with their targeted keywords not within the top 100 natural search results. None of the Fortune 500 companies surveyed had a majority of their keywords ranking in the top 25 search results.

The following are some great ways to improve SEO and make your web site more effective. These practices are ethical, so they will not be greatly affected by Google’s algorithm changes.

1. Create content for people not the search engines
2. Make sure keywords are present in prominent places of your web site such as the headers, subheads, title tags and meta description snippets.
3. Structuring the web sites so that important keyword pages are high in the site architecture and easily found by search engines and people.
4. Create well-written engaging content is an integral way to attract quality links. Use social media sites such as Twitter to get links. Tweet a link to your web site or add it as your profile link. Twitter is crawled by search engines frequently, this will help your new web site to be discovered more quickly.
5. Don’t use link exchanges.  Instead offer testimonials to business vendors that you work with for links.

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by CoryPosted on Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web Design — No Comments ↓

Usually there is a huge gap in making a web site look good and making it optimized. To add animations and cool effects you either need to use Flash, which cannot be indexed by search engines, or you need to use JavaScript, which is extremely difficult and time consuming.

But there’s good news on the horizon. CSS 3 is currently being drafted, and is providing some awesome animation and graphics tools to web designers. The best part? CSS code allows HTML to be animated, but can be fully indexed by the search engines.

What does this mean? It means that the gap between a great looking site and a well optimized site is slowly becoming smaller. Safari and Google Chrome for example already support some of the most popular CSS3 drafts. If you have the current versions of one of these browsers, check out: http://www.zurb.com/playground. ZURB interactive has been playing around with CSS3 and has come up with some really cool stuff.

My personal favorite is the CSS3 dock. It imitates the Mac OS X dock for navigation. It looks really awesome and allows search engines to index the navigation just like any other set of links. This is a really exciting development.

There are some issues however. First off, the most popular browser of today is Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has a long history of not adopting the W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium) standards. (It is the only major browser not to). This means that web designers will have to design their sites in such a way that it still displays ok to Internet Explorer users. (And maybe show them a message that they are not getting a full internet experience.)

Another problem is hardware. These new features are resource intensive. The browsers need to have efficient display engines to display these effects, and probably should have hardware acceleration (which most browsers do not).

These are really the only issues, and I am looking forward to the CSS3 changes coming to the market. So get your hands dirty and start learning some CSS3!

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by CoryPosted on Posted in Marketing — No Comments ↓

Google has recently introduced a new pay feature to Google Places. This feature, known as tags, allows you to add extra information to your listing in Google maps and displays a small tag on the map, next to your business. This is useful for things like coupons and sales. It is a useful marketing tool in general, but the question is, is it worth the cost?

Google tags costs $25 a month, kind of steep for a little yellow tag (see above.) The question is, will Tags allow you to make more than $25 a month. If so, then Tags is worth your investment. If not, it is probably not a good idea.

How do you know if you will bring in more than $25 a month from Tags? This depends on your business. For example, say you sell sandwiches. If you give a 10% off coupon through tags, and you spend $25 a month, you will need to sell at least $25 worth of discounted sandwiches to break even. If your sandwiches are around $5, then you will need to sell at least five sandwiches throughout the month, solely from Tags to break even.

Other businesses may fare better. For example, say you paint houses. If you give a %10 off coupon on Tags, and you normally charge around $1000 for an average house, then you will make a profit. The cost of Tags and the cost of the discount still means you are getting $875 for that sales, and then minus the labor, supplies, etc, you will still be making a profit.

Tags is a great opportunity for businesses to get more visibility in Google Maps, but this alone will not get you more sales. You should have an appealing product/service, and having a website that sells will also help greatly. I would recommend you try the Tags free 14 day trial, and see if you get a response. If so, keep using the service and refining your methods. If not, then you will really have to think if Tags fits into your business objectives, and if you are selling effectively.

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by KevinPosted on Posted in Pay Per Click — No Comments ↓

Often we are asked, should I use Adwords?
The answer depends on your business model and cash flow. A successful local business model may fail when applied nationally. With AdWords, advertisers are willing to break even or lose money on the initial investment because the Internet users are looking for their products.

If your company is conservative with your cash flow, you maybe losing money with Adwords. Advertisers must have the cash to go negative on their ad spending while customer life time value catches up. It could take over a period of 6-12 months to recoup the initial investment. Bidding wars for the number one position can drive prices to unreasonable levels. Pay what you can afford based on your cash flow and margins.

If your company has a successful business model, strong cash flow and have success in advertising, use Adwords. As your campaigns improve, the prices will go down. Adwords rewards you with lower clicks if your ads are relevant. The objective of Adwords is to give the user a good positive experience by showing relevant ads. Furthermore, you know what you can afford in your decision whether to use Adwords or not.

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by KevinPosted on Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web Design — No Comments ↓

If you use images in your web pages, it is good practice to include Alt text for every image that a visitor to your site will see. ALT tags filled with keywords can also be used to boost your keyword frequency and help you achieve better rankings. Many businesses disregard image SEO or do it incorrectly. They are missing out on an easy opportunity for better rankings.. Images that have no text describing what they are cannot be read by the search engines. Search engines rely on things like tags,captions, and file names to identify proper index images.

The ALT tag is designed to help visually impaired visitors to determine what the images contain, by allowing you to specify some alternative text. When a visitor points the mouse over an image with the alt tag, the text is shown. Search engines have the same problem as visually impaired users have, they cannot see the images. Images have no meaning to search engines. Search engines can only see the image tag’s text. Therefore it is of vital importance that you tag the images on your with their content.

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