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Finally google has been doing some gardening and has cut out most of the weed. About time!
Now, not to worry, big G didn’t devaluated the directories all together. Google simply have some more and better algorithms in place to determine whether or not the directory owners are taking it seriously.
In other words; most directories are still there, it just the crap-, the fake- and the spam-directories that have been filtered out and lost all their pages from the google index and of course their PR just as well. No real loss …
Still, it’s a good opportunity to upgrade the way we process your directory submissions just as well. The best way to do so is to use more different descriptions. So from now on we’ll use 5 totally different-unique descriptions, instead of 3 more or less different descriptions.
For our most popular package; the 250 homepage + 5×50 deep-link = 500 manual directory submissions package, this means that we’ll prepare 30 totally different-unique descriptions.
Especially for the deep-links it makes a significant difference; we combine 5 different titles and 5 different descriptions, which gives 25 variations. So, each deep-link you get will be much more unique. This does gives more link-love!
We could do even more, but writing these descriptions takes times of course, and all those variations also slows down the submission process, so we already have to raise the prices. Still, I’m only doing this as I believe that the results will be much higher than the price increase, so you do get more bang for your buck.
250 homepage + 5×50 deep-links = 500 directory submissions :: $150
30 titles and 30 unique descriptions!!
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SEO starts with keywords.
Search engine users enter the words into a search engine in order to find the information they want. Do you know which words people type in and how to choose the right words for your website?
The most obvious thing to find out about keywords are how often is it searched for. Which one of the three persons below will get most search traffic, do you think?
These images were found in the WordTracker Keyword Reseach Guide. 
It is clear that you need to use the same words that your customers use, rather than the correct industry terms. To find out which words that your customers use, you can use tools as WordTracker or the Google Keywords Tool.
However, that is not all that you will want to learn about the keywords. You also need to find out the competition on that keyword. For some keywords the competition is so strong that it is nearly impossible to achieve some rankings for those words.
And then you have to keep in mind conversions. What do you want your visitors to do? Sign up for something? Buy a product? Just enjoy free information? The different type of visitors use different keywords when finding your site. If your goal is to sell a product, you are not getting much out of visitors that only want to enjoy free information.
The right keywords do not only attract lots of search engine traffic, but also the right traffic.
The internet is like a large library, with information on anything that you can think of. It is also called the information superhighway. Most people using the net are on it for the information. Therefore the most important thing on any website is the content!
In general the success of a site will depend on the type and usefulness of the content. You cannot force a visitor to like content that isn’t interesting, useful or unique. The most successful sites are the ones visited by people over and over again. This only happens when the site constantly adds more and new content, whether it are tutorials, newsflashes, sport results or anything interesting.
What about all those online shops? Well, the shops that are only geared towards selling should not expect to be very successful in the search engines and will have to be prepared to use other marketing and advertizing techniques.
The characteristics of good content are:
- It is appealing to the target audience. Know who you are writing for and adjust the content to be attractive for your visitors.
- It is original and says something unique. A lot of information on the Internet is repeated over and over. But you will see that the most successful websites have something new to say.
- It should be interesting and informative. Some information can be found elsewhere on the web, but still people will come to your site because they like your style, your humor. Give it a personal touch.
- It should be easy to understand. The Internet is available to all types of people and your site should be readable by people outside the industry.
Is content writing not your greatest skill? There are various places where you can get a little help.
You can have a look around at the hundreds of article directories where you can get some content for free. All you need to remember is to add the short bio of the original writer.
You can also hire a copywriter, full-time for a large site or freelance for smaller sites. There are also companies providing content writing services. All you need to do is make a specific order with the keywords, length, perhaps a title or a few hints on the topic and they will create it for you.
Good content will bring visitors to your site, but regularly updated content will bring returning visitors to your site. These returning visitors are more likely to explore the rest of your site and find the products or services that you are selling. This means in short: Regularly updated content will bring in more revenues from you site. And that is why content is king.
It is time to talk about the concept of social media optimization. Social networking is all about joining communities online, which will give you and your website a wide exposure. Top Social Bookmarking websites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati present a way to save your favorite webpages and media online, and share it with others. This is a nice way to promote your own website or products as well. Sites as MySpace and Squidoo allow users to create a page about yourself and share your information, which can bring lots of quality targeted traffic to your website.
Adding your website to these social bookmarking sites is really easy. Most offer a toolbar or button. With a single click you can be listed. For the most part, the popularity will be based on the public. You cannot force a person to like something that isn’t interesting or unique. But there are a few things that you could do to help your entry and draw traffic.
- Create eye-catching headlines
- Write a meaningful description
- Content is king so your content should be fresh and meaningful
- Make it easy for others to vote / bookmark your site by adding buttons to your website
- Allow comments and feedback
- Make them public
- Network with other users
The key to Social Networking is easy: The simple idea is to reach out to as many people as possible in order to make your website popular. If you have great content and simply share it with as many people as you can, it will see success.
Many web designers are so focused on the design part of building a website, that they will unintentionally affect its search engine rankings. It is a total shame to create an attractive website that does not attract any visitors. There is no point to all that beauty if no one can find it. Here are some ordinary design mistakes that should be kept away from whenever possible.
Image Links
If your navigation menu consists of images to form the buttons instead of text, the search engine bots will be confused. It makes it difficult for search engines to spider and index your site. What if you do not have any other option than image links in the navigation bar? Add ALT text to the image links to give meaning to the image. Make sure that you have text links somewhere else on the page as well. The footer is a nice place to have a few more links.
Frames
When using frames in a site, the problem is that most search engines will only see the frame loader page and ignore the rest of the page within. If you do not have any choice but using frames, offer lead-in pages that are not placed in frames. This means that you can put all of your beautiful frame-based pages in other locations.
Splash Intro Pages
Beautiful intro’s or entry pages, often using flash animation, are impressive to human visitors, even though many of them will ‘skip the intro’ quickly to get to where they want to be. For search engines, however, such a introduction is not impressive at all. The spiders will think that this is the index page and will not find it useful at all. Often, the only text on these intro pages is “skip intro”, which does not say much about the rest of the site.
In order to get the top rankings in the SERPs, your will have to help the search engines a little bit. Their spiders will have to find your site, and be able to navigate the site, and read all of your content, before they can rank it. Some graphic elements will affect the accessibility of your website and are better avoided. Surely it does look nice, but who is there to see it if your site does not attract any visitors?
Posted in search engine optimization, webdesign | 
Tags: design, graphics, seo, spiders | No Comments »