Monday, July 27, 2009
SEO: It is all in the Keywords you choose.
8:39 AM | 
Posted by
Juan Carlos |
The hardest concept to explain to our clients at ZenNexus SEO is the concept of choosing the right keywords for your internet publicity campaign. For Google Adwords or any other Pay-Per-Click vendors the keywords you choose to advertise under determine the amount and kind of traffic you get to your website.
Every keyword is in fact a market in itself; it converts into sales in a particular way, attracts a particular group of customers, they attract customers at different stages of a purchase cycle. Are you going to use a keyword that attracts people when they are only getting information for their daughter's homework or are you using one that attracts someone that is ready to buy?
Why not get them all then? Well, it isn't that easy; while you can use any keyword you want in a PPC campaign, if you are doing SEO the keywords you choose determine your content. While you may be tempted to write your content to please your clients, the truth is that you have to strike a balance with the results you want in a search engine. This is what makes content so darn complicated; it is like you are appealing to 2 different people at once.
This is why at ZenNexus SEO we aim to be included early in the website design process, rather than wait until you are recovering from a series of poor choices. This inevitable wastes some of your time trying to determine if your efforts are being effective or if you are competing against your old website. This situation becomes more of a problem when you have built a network of links that tie you down to the wrong keywords and you have been associated to them.
Do not try to fool the Search Engines!
Never use such methods as cloaking, link farms, keyword stuffing, alt text spamming or any other dubious ways. Although they may work for a short time, you not only risk getting your site penalized, but it could actually be banned from search engines altogether.
As search engines like their results to be accurate, they just do not take kindly to people trying to trick them. I have seen people vanished from the search engines because they have been using black-hat methods of SEO. It is hard to repair this situation but the price can be quite high in time and resources.
Every keyword is in fact a market in itself; it converts into sales in a particular way, attracts a particular group of customers, they attract customers at different stages of a purchase cycle. Are you going to use a keyword that attracts people when they are only getting information for their daughter's homework or are you using one that attracts someone that is ready to buy?
Why not get them all then? Well, it isn't that easy; while you can use any keyword you want in a PPC campaign, if you are doing SEO the keywords you choose determine your content. While you may be tempted to write your content to please your clients, the truth is that you have to strike a balance with the results you want in a search engine. This is what makes content so darn complicated; it is like you are appealing to 2 different people at once.
This is why at ZenNexus SEO we aim to be included early in the website design process, rather than wait until you are recovering from a series of poor choices. This inevitable wastes some of your time trying to determine if your efforts are being effective or if you are competing against your old website. This situation becomes more of a problem when you have built a network of links that tie you down to the wrong keywords and you have been associated to them.
Do not try to fool the Search Engines!
Never use such methods as cloaking, link farms, keyword stuffing, alt text spamming or any other dubious ways. Although they may work for a short time, you not only risk getting your site penalized, but it could actually be banned from search engines altogether.
As search engines like their results to be accurate, they just do not take kindly to people trying to trick them. I have seen people vanished from the search engines because they have been using black-hat methods of SEO. It is hard to repair this situation but the price can be quite high in time and resources.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Publicity Smorgasborg
For a few years now there has been a significant difference between "regular" publicity agencies and "online" publicity agencies. When you go visit one of the traditional agencies you will notice that they even separate their online media divisions as if they were some kind of freaky beings.
The big problem arising on this industry shift is that printed demand is dying and making competition very fierce among dinosaur agencies that have resisted change. These extintion-bound agencies have resisted change for far too long. Like the traditional engineering firms that drafted blueprints using pen and ruler they will dissapear because they are hanging on to a dying art.
I have seen clients pay $60,000 dollars for a media campaign that was based on bus stops; these people waited for months until their campaign was released. One of these clients was for an up-scale restaurant in Puerto Rico, where prices for a 2 person dinner experience is around $120.00. The restaurant closed 6 months later and I wonder if they had spent $30,000 on Google Adwords and SEO if they still would be around.
"Internet users are not playing with the internet anymore"- according to an internet publicity agent in Puerto Rico - "This is not an experimental media; it is killing printed media in effectiveness every day." Effective agencies should present a combined approach of online-offline mix to campaign offerings when they present to clients. The money-toting clients are online; while the homeless go to sleep watching the 60K ad at the bus stop wishing they could afford the $120.00 meal.
The big problem arising on this industry shift is that printed demand is dying and making competition very fierce among dinosaur agencies that have resisted change. These extintion-bound agencies have resisted change for far too long. Like the traditional engineering firms that drafted blueprints using pen and ruler they will dissapear because they are hanging on to a dying art.
I have seen clients pay $60,000 dollars for a media campaign that was based on bus stops; these people waited for months until their campaign was released. One of these clients was for an up-scale restaurant in Puerto Rico, where prices for a 2 person dinner experience is around $120.00. The restaurant closed 6 months later and I wonder if they had spent $30,000 on Google Adwords and SEO if they still would be around.
"Internet users are not playing with the internet anymore"- according to an internet publicity agent in Puerto Rico - "This is not an experimental media; it is killing printed media in effectiveness every day." Effective agencies should present a combined approach of online-offline mix to campaign offerings when they present to clients. The money-toting clients are online; while the homeless go to sleep watching the 60K ad at the bus stop wishing they could afford the $120.00 meal.
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Sunday, July 5, 2009
SEO: 10 Steps to Success
Getting your website top-ranked for a keyword can get you loads of traffic and therefore increase your profits as well. All you need to do is to optimise your content and create many links of different quality. But if you don't have any money to start off, its hard but it can be done.
Even if you have the money; getting a top ranking position is not money dependent. If you don't take the right actions, your money will be wasted on the wrong keywords or not listed at all.
Here's 10 free ways to improve your rankings
1. Directory submissions - The most effective way in getting lots of back links fast. Grab a good directory list and submit your link in every single directory. Make sure that you get a few new back links everyday to ensure long term success. The best way to do that is by viewing all new directory announcements in Digital Points forum Solicitations & Announcements section.
2. Article Submissions - Almost every single article directory on the web is free. Article directories are a good compliment to ordinary directories because it will bring you more diversity in your back link structure. Write a good article with more than 500 words and include a back link to your site and submit it to all major article directories. Hope fully, if your article is good, some webmaster will pick it and put it on their own sites, so you're not only getting back links from the article directories themselves, you are also getting free back links from real sites, which is very valuable in search engines like Google.
3. Wikipedia.org - A good source to collect incoming links. Do you have any content that is related to any wikipedia article? In that case, you can edit the wikipedia article and input your link on the link page. Make sure that the content you are linking meets up with the standard, otherwise, your link will be removed as fast as it came up.
4. Onpage SEO - Onpage optimisation was the most important SEO technique available before 2001. Today, it does not have the same decisive factor that it once had. It is however still very useful to do some basic onpage SEO. Make sure that your targeted keywords are included in the title, the headline and the footer. Make sure that you always provide some fresh content on the pages that you specifically want to optimise. Provide it at least with an RSS feed. But most important, make sure that the onpage SEO does not overshadow the content and make your site look less useful.
5. PRWeb.com - Post a press release once you release your site. It will help you a little bit in the rankings, but most importantly, if your Press release is good, you will get some natural links generated by PRWebs users.
6. Myspace.com - Myspace has recently become one of the hottest sites on the internet. It has also became one of the most effective places to market your site. Just make a profile for your site there, then try to get as many friends as possible. Post links to your sites on other profiles, post bulletins of your site and if it's cool enough, you will get some natural back links in return.
7. Ask for back links - Send out nice original emails to other webmasters that have similar sites. Write some sentences about what you think of their site or anything related to the subject of their site. When you get the reply, answer them, tell them something more and then ask for a reciprocal or a one-way link.
8. Forums - Forums are not only a great place to discuss things but also a good resource for generating back links, feedback and traffic. Put a link in your signature. Make a post about your site or even better, make a post about something and then make a related link to your site. Note, go for inactive forums, they tend to give more weight than the active ones and your link will be displayed over a longer time.
9. Make sattelite sites - Put up a site with some content on e.g. geocities.com and include a back link to your site somewhere, then submit the sattelite site to somewhere around 100 directories so it will be indexed in Google, and you got a high quality back link.
10. Also, SEO is an area where there are lots of paid alternatives that may help you in getting a good ranking. Some of these are paid article submission, paid onpage optimisation, paid directory submission paid link exchanges and paid links. If you are good on doing directory submissions but bad on onpage SEO, you can charge for making directory submissions for others and then hire someone to do onpage SEO for you.
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