Richard Bolles, job search guru and author of What Color Is Your Parachute? predicts that you can expect to search for work 1-2 months for every $10,000 you hope to earn. So, if you’re looking for a $40,000 a year position, you may search for 4-8 months to land it. Back when the economy sizzled, that job search length would have seemed outrageous, but now, many people would be thrilled to only search for 4-8 months.
Now the question is: How can you limit your job search length regardless of what’s happening with the local economy?
The answer to that question depends on the strength of your job search campaign. Take a look at these common job search problems. If your campaign is suffering from any of these symptoms, try one or more of the tips suggested for each.
If you’re mailing resumes but aren’t getting interviews:
o Your campaign may not be intense enough. Remember that searching for a job is a full-time job. Increase your employer contacts by phone, fax, mail and email to 10-20 per week. Gather job leads from a greater variety of sources than you have been using, such as networking, newspaper ads and Internet sites. But most important of all, tap the hidden job market.
Bottom line: Getting interviews from resumes is in part a numbers game. Contact more employers to increase the odds in your favor.
o Your resume may reveal that you do not possess the skills sets employers want. Get them! A tight economy means employers can command whatever skills, credentials and experience they want, so why argue with them? Volunteer, take a class or create a self-study program to learn what you need to learn. Or, take a lower-level position that will prepare you for advancement to the job you really want.
Bottom line: It’s up to you to qualify yourself for the job you want. Demonstrate your initiative and enroll in that class now, then be sure to claim your new skills on your resume.
o You may not be contacting the employers who are buying the skills you’re selling. First, identify the three skills you possess that you most want to market to employers. Second, match those skills to three different kinds of positions that commonly use your preferred skills. Next, tie each of the positions you identify to specific local industries and employers who hire people with the skills you’re marketing. Then create different resume versions for each of the types of positions you intend to seek. Make sure each version highlights and documents your ability to do what you claim you can do.
Bottom line: Different employers need different things from their employees. Know what you have to sell and sell it to the companies that want it. At all costs, avoid genericizing your resume with clichés and vague statements.
o Your resume may poorly communicate what you have to offer. If you have weaknesses in your employment chronology or if you are changing careers, you will need to take great care in structuring your résumé’s content to overcome any perceived deficiencies. Create a powerful career summary statement which emphasizes your primary skills, qualities, credentials, experience and goals. Group your most marketable skills into an achievements section and showcase those using numbers, concrete nouns and clear indications of the results you accomplished. Use company research and the employer’s job description to focus your revised resume on the company’s needs.
Bottom line: The person who decides whether or not to interview you will make that decision in a mere 15 to 25 seconds. Be clear, organized and achievement-focused to use those seconds to convince the employer to interview you. If you’re getting interviews but no job offers:
o You may have the basic skills the employer needs but not the advanced skills they prefer. Review the second bullet above and act on the suggestions presented. Once you have updated or expanded your skills through additional education, experience or self-study, begin building a career success portfolio to prove your success to prospective employers. This will also help you respond to those behavior-based interview questions that are the rage these days.
Bottom line: It is up to you to advance your career. Figure out what you lack, then learn the skill or develop the ability.
o You lack strong self-marketing skills and this is showing in your interviews. To improve the quality of your interpersonal communications and interview responses, take a class. Invite someone to role play an interview with you. Practice answering behavior-based interview questions. Arrange to participate in a videotaped mock interview. To project your personality positively: Select three to five about yourself that you want the employer to know about you by the end of your interview. Brainstorm ways to weave those things into your responses to common interview questions. Learn about personalities different from your own. Smile and relax! Make strong but not excessive eye contact. Go into the interview armed with 5-8 words or phrases that positively describe your workplace personality and use those words or phrases throughout the interview. Match your communication style to the interviewer’s questioning style. Know your resume and defend it. Keep your responses brief and always to the point.
Bottom line: Your interviewing performance serves as a preview of your on-the-job performance, so project your best. Research, practice, and sell! To job search is to make mistakes. Question is, are you learning from the job search mistakes you’ve made?
Evaluate your search every two to three months so you can fine tune your campaign on a regular basis. You probably get your car tuned up regularly. Why not do the same for your job search? With the right knowledge and proper tools in place, there will be no stopping you!
Tag: Search
Strategies For an Online Job Search
Finding a job used to be a very slow process, but this has drastically changed with the advent of online job search boards. Rather than waiting for the Sunday newspaper to find good jobs to apply for, you can now set up an account with a multitude of online job search agents and have hundreds of leads delivered to you inbox daily. This article will show you how to properly put together an online job search that is efficient and effective.
Online Job Search Strategy – Step 1: Get Your Profile Online
The first step in conducting your online job search is preparing electronic copies of your resumes and cover letters. The major online job boards allow you to create a free profile and upload as many targeted resumes and cover letters as you like. Putting your job search documents in an electronic format makes it super easy to distribute them to potential employers quickly. Once you have put your resume in an electronic format, it’s important to upload it to as many sites as possible. Most importantly, make your resume “searchable” or public to employers. This way when an employer runs a search for specific keywords, your resume will show up without even needing to apply for the job.
Online Job Search Strategy – Step 2: Set Up Automated Job Search Agents
The major online job search sites offer a fantastic automated feature – emailed search results. You can create a free profile that will bring daily leads to your email address. When you create a job search agent, be sure to use as many relevant keywords as possible relating to your field. Don’t just use the title of the position you are looking for, include synonyms and related words to increase the chances of finding leads you are interested in. For example, if you are an accountant, don’t just search for “accountant.” Instead put together a large string of related keywords, such as: “accountant, accounting, general ledger, finance, financial reporting.” You may end up seeing jobs that you are not qualified for, but it’s better to have too many than too few.
Online Job Search Strategy – Step 3: Managing the online application process
It can get pretty cumbersome to manage the application process once you have multiple emailed search agents created. To keep yourself focused, you need to have a good process for organizing the leads. I like to use the daily job application organizer that you can find at JobSearchPower.com. By keeping a list of jobs you are interested in you can be sure you are following up properly on each job you apply for.
Strategies To Find Job Search Success in the New Economy
I read in the news that Apple announced it has sold over five million of its new iPhone 5, just three days after its launch and to sweeten Apple’s products demand, more than 100 million of Apple’s latest operating systems devices have been updated.
Apple’s success is an important indication that the Internet has taken over the new economy. The latest trend of using social media to find job has moved to a dynamic speed. Savvy job seekers knows that they cannot solely rely on traditional means in looking for jobs.
Traditional job search includes strategies such as looking in the newspaper classified advertisements, searching through ‘help wanted’ notices on bulletin boards, going to recruitment or job agencies, and write in for jobs opportunities directly to the companies. All these traditional ways of job search involve an individual reacting to a job that has already been publicly offered.
Although, traditional methods are still necessary, creative, well-informed and socially Internet savvy job seekers will take a step further to stay ahead of their competition by creating an online presence to reach out to more prospective employers. That is because they know that more and more recruiters use the web as a place to search for talent and conduct employment background searches. This trend will set to increase over the years.
Here are 3 ways you can use social media to enhance your job search success:
1) Build your online presence on social network sites.
Make employers find you easily online and thus open doors to more job opportunities. Without an online presence, you will not appear to be as relevant as those who has and you will be passed over for more savvy applicants that have online visibility. Creating online presence include
- LinkedIn- A networking tool for professional connections. Also used to recommend job candidates, industry experts and business partners. Employers use LinkedIn as a search tool to find talent, and job seekers use it to leverage their network in support of their search.
- Twitter – Social networking and instant messaging that allows users to post 140- character updates. Employer can use Twitter to post for job opportunities.
- Facebook – A social network that connects people, to keep up with friends and share ideas. Depending on their privacy level, some job seekers have successfully secured a job through their Facebook network.
2) Create a blog to demonstrate your expertise
Another good way to further boost your image and demonstrate your experience, expertise and passion in a particular field is to create an updated blog. Keep it professional, creative and update it with value add contents for readers. The articles that you post may include tips and advice on issues in your area of expertise, also be mindful that everything you write and post online is up for judgement.
3) YouTube and Pinterest Marketing
Internet savvy job seekers are making use of video marketing to promote themselves. This is a creative approach to job hunting that has become increasingly common in the social media arena. You could create a video resume, such as a short and traditional video that include a general rundown of your work experience, educational background and skills.
While Pinterest is not a networking platform, as it does not allow direct communication, it is becoming increasingly popular with businesses. It is a powerful tool to demonstrate your knowledge, organisational skills, and creativity to prospective employers. You can create boards which relate to specific skills-sets you have and use it as a portal to link to work you want to showcase – like an online portfolio.
4) Online Resume
In the new economy, it has changed the way employers review resumes, the Internet has also made it possible for job seekers to post their resumes online, on their own hosted web sites. This change is particular helpful to those persons whose resume presentation will be greatly enhanced by being able to take advantage of the graphics and interactive capabilities that an online resume on a personal web site can provide.
In a nutshell, in these times, a paper resume is not enough. It is essential to be creative and a well-designed electronic, or online version of your resume combined and linked to a strong social media profile, is usually ideal for a successful job search.
Simple Fundraising Ideas? One Woman’s Crazy, Adventurous Quest in Search of Ideas For Fundraisers
When I began my parenting journey several years ago, I didn’t realize that I was also embarking on a never-ending search for simple fundraising ideas. Truly, I had no idea that one of the primary responsibilities as a parent would be continually drumming up ideas for fundraisers.
Even after I had resigned myself to the fact that fundraising would be a regular part of my life, I still had no idea that it would be such an adventure.
You see I’ve got three kids in school selling everything from pies to pizza. We’re involved in drama, soccer, basketball AND I sit on a hockey board that is solely self-funded by–you guessed it–fundraisers.
I’m trading commodities with friends, “I’ll take that pie and trade you cookie dough…good we’re even.” My family members won’t even answer their phone anymore, afraid they’ll be buying more things they don’t need.
We’ve done ’em all!
Let’s see, there are the gift-wrap/specialty item/trinket sales. If you ask me, these types of fundraisers are overused and overpriced. Every time I turn around my child has yet another catalog! In this economy when I can buy wrapping paper for $1.00 at the local dollar store, why would I want a roll of wrapping paper that costs me $9.00? (So what if it is better quality, it just gets ripped off the gift anyway.) I would actually rather write the school a check then try to sell this stuff.
Of course, we’re so tired of selling stuff anyway, so half the time, I just place a good sized order for my own family (reluctantly, of course).
Case in point: My daughter recently came home and mentioned that the “The Cookie Dough Guy” said that if they wanted enough money for their field trip to the Boston Museum, they were “encouraged” to sell at least two tubs of cookie dough (for $14.00 each!). I spent $28.00 on two itty bitty tubs of cookie dough. I could have gone to BJ’s, bought a BIG tub of Tollhouse Cookie dough for $6.99 AND bought my daughter’s admission into the museum for less than that! Why didn’t they just ask for the money for the field trip? It’s absurd!
And, how about those booths at craft fairs or festivals?
Okay, so if you’re ever asked to “man a booth for a couple of hours” be very wary. Our organization signed up for a booth at our community’s Summerfest in June. I signed on for the early shift (I’d get my shift over with and enjoy a fun filled afternoon with my family). Yeh, first mistake. Funny how your “replacements” never seem to show up to actually replace you. So, there I was, 6 hours later “manning the booth”. If that wasn’t annoying enough, suddenly, the skies grew dark, the wind kicked up and we were in the middle of one of those horrific thunder and lightning storms. Everything was blowing wildly; the canopy was about to take flight. And the rain was coming down in droves. Needless to say, we earned very little money that day. (Even putting the
“severe thunderstorm factor” aside, the event was not very profitable because even though there was a lot of traffic, there was also a lot of competition.)
Oh and let’s not forget one of my favorite “simple” fundraising ideas, pizza kits and pies.
Okay, yes they are pretty decent sellers, but the logistics of the whole thing are crazy. First of all, you need to arrange an EXACT delivery time with the company because they need to keep the goods frozen. Then, you need to let everyone know when that EXACT delivery date is and pray that they actually come to pick up their products. And, when they don’t . . .well, let’s just say, it was a darn good thing I had a spare freezer in my basement to store some of those overly large boxes! And, don’t get me started on how I had to make a bazillion phone calls to those people who failed to show up at our EXACT delivery time.
But, my all time favorite adventure was “The Bottle Drive”. The most basic of simple fundraising ideas. You collect, basically, people’s trash and exchange it for money. Piece of cake.
That’s what we thought too. The conversation went something like this: “We’ll have a bottle drive!” “Yes!” “On New Year’s Day.” “Great idea!” “All those New Year’s Eve parties! We’ll make a ton of money!”
It became an obsession. I’m in the grocery store and I run into Mike. He says, “Hey, we’re having a New Year’s Eve party, you and John should stop by.” Great, I’m thinking. Give his address to one of the drivers to pick up their bottles in the morning. I get so swept up in it, that I actually find myself eavesdropping to find out where everyone is going to celebrate.
So it’s New Year’s Day and with maps in hand and addresses of all those parties that happened the night before, we jumped into our trucks and headed out. Did I mention we live in Maine? We had been hit with several December storms and today we were in for a Nor’easter, as they are so endearingly called. (In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, this basically means that the snow falls in unassuming small crystals at a moderate but relentless pace until you suddenly realize that you are completely socked in.) That wasn’t going to deter us though . . . no worries, just bundle up and get an early start.
Here’s a curious concept…an early start on New Year’s Day. Okay, so not everyone spent New Year’s Eve like me — in their pj’s, snuggled up next to the woodstove, going to bed early so we could get an early start in the morning for the bottle drive. At 9:00 a.m., if you had a party, you are NOT likely to be moving around, much less cleaning your house. So, many doors went unanswered.
Finally, one neighborhood proved to be promising until we saw…the Boy Scouts. We couldn’t believe it. They were having a bottle drive as well! (It’s amazing how fast a bunch of not-so-thrilled-to-be-up-this-early-on-a-weekend teenage hockey players can actually move when they are trying to outrun the Boy Scouts.)
My friend and I decided, enough of this door-to-door stuff, we’ll hit up the local restaurants and pubs. We hit the mother load at our local Thatcher’s. We rock! Our hopes were high. Then, we hear, “Sorry, you need to talk to the manager and they aren’t working on New Year’s Day” or “We have lots of bottles in our shed out back but unfortunately the plow guy hasn’t plowed us out from the last storm. Come see us in the spring.”
Okay, this was getting discouraging. We traded cell phone calls and met at regular intervals at the local redemption center. The snow was coming down faster than the plows could get the roads clear and we realized that it was getting too dangerous to have vehicles on the road. With an army of twelve trucks, we headed back to the redemption center only to discover it had closed due to the weather!
Now what do we do?
“Bring them to my garage” (What, who said that? Me? Note to self: you are far too accommodating.) Of course everyone thinks that is a great idea!
Before I know it, my garage is full of stale smelling beer bottles, my hands are sticky and cold, I’m exhausted, my husband is ready to divorce me AND my car is now outside covered by 18 inches of heavy, wet snow because there isn’t enough room in my garage!
Over the course of the next week, my husband and I bagged up the bottles and made several trips to the redemption center. Woo Hoo! We made $350 for 15 people, spending a cold, snowy day, driving all over town. There has got to be a simpler way to fundraise!
Webinars on Acme People Search – How YOU Benefit
Hello Everyone!,
I took the time to attend Tissa Godavitatne’s free webinars for Acme People Search Engine Affiliate Program this week (On Thursday and Saturday 12 AM Singapore time!). As a practicing IT Manager in Singapore, working into the wee hours was not an issue :-). I made up a list of things I wanted to clarify from Tissa and was looking forward to my first 2 webinars with the man on Thursday and Friday night.
Did Tissa blow us away or what!!
Tissa answered every one of the concerns that was thrown at him,be it on the Acme People Search Engine Or Global Domains International.Many affiliates shared their success (or failure) with the Acme People Search and GDI.
Here is a recall of the Q & A we had with Tissa Godavitarne.
Adrian’s Question : How does the the Acme People Search Engine make money for you?
Tissa Answered : By referrals and product sales!
There are seven streams of income in your back office.You can earn from sales of digital products from Clickbank, HD Publishing, MyLife and Google AdSense as well as affiliate commissions.
You earn referral fees for recruiting affiliates for Lunar Pages,GDI and the Acme people search engine itself. In summary you will earn from MyLife, Google AdSense, HD Publishing, GDI,Lunar pages, Clickbank and of course referral fees to the Search engine.
Adrian’s Question : What is this “business opportunity” you keep talking about?
Tissa Answered : The option of joining Global Domains International which gives you web hosting, a free website builder, a domain name, and 10 email addresses.
Joining GDI gives you the chance to earn a residual income with their referral program that runs 5 levels deep. The Acme people search engine builds your GDI downline for you!
Adrian’s Question : How do you drive traffic to your Acme people search engine presell and landing pages?
Tissa Answered : Paid (PPC highly recommended) and Free web traffic!
Yahoo! Search Marketing,Microsoft AdCenter and Google AdWords are the main sources for paid traffic. If you want to realise your full earnings potential then you must learn PPC.
However If you’re just starting out the following FREE sources of TARGETED traffic is recommended.
– Article Submission :- Squidoo lenses,Ezine Articles, and Blogs
– Video Submission : – Upload your video demo’s to Metacafe, Google Video and YouTube
– Social Networking marketing :- Facebook, Myspace LinkedIn and Twitter,
– Email Campaigns :- Autoresponders from Aweber and GetResponse do a great job and dont spam!
Free traffic sources NOT recommended
– Text ad placements.
– List builders
– Email blasters
– Safe lists
The traffic you get from the above sources are not targeted AND you can be blacklisted for spamming. By all means use them if you are experienced (You still undertake the risk of a spamming complaint), but NOT if you are just starting out
Adrian’s Question : What’s your take on Search Engine Optimization?
Tissa Answered : A Search result in Google is split into 2 types. ie Organic and Sponsored results.The former contains a listing of indexed websites arranged in order of relevance, content, back links, keyword quality, and Page rank. SEO is the process of optimizing your website to be displayed very high for a given keyword, Ideally on the first page of a Google search!. It is a different ball game altogether. You must learn PPC in order to drive traffic to your Acme People Search Engine and Presell pages.
Thank You Tissa!
Each Webinar was supposed to be of ONE hour duration but they stretched close to the two hour mark on both occasions! This guy must be nuts to pay for that much of bandwidth,but hey he WANTS us to succeed remember?
This is the type of product support I expect only from a paid membership program, but here is Tissa offering it to all for free!.
There were so many gems shared by the other attendees in addition to Tissa, all with the intention of helping one another SUCCEED as an Acme People Search Affiliate and GDI affiliate.
In a nutshell these are the points that grabbed my attention
– Tissa’s Secret GDI sign up sauce
– Why you get ‘Google slapped’ and how to avoid it
– Acme People Search Engine Affiliates on the current GDI Leader board!
– Why Craigs list should NOT be used to advertise.
– How an Affiliate is using Traffic Gieser to drive tons of targeted traffic to his blog with video marketing.
– Success stories of Newbies making money online in their first WEEK of promoting the Acme people Search engine.(This is not including the $125 commission Tissa gives you when you sign up)
– What benefits the system brings when embedded with GDI to to work from home mom.
And so much more!
This is a perfect opportunity for those of you want to use the Acme people Search engine for free to address your concerns about the product. You get to talk to the product owner who pays for your bandwidth so that you can speak up!
So Folks, that’s it from me for now. I will continue posting the results my interaction with the man in the next webinar. Right now, I cannot wait to apply what I learned and get me some more mooolah! With the Acme People search Engine!
Take care and have a great weekend!
Search Engine Optimization
World’s major SEO companies
Google, AOL, Info Space, Yahoo, Askewest, MSN, AltaVista, Lycos, AllTheWeb, Netscape, Looksmart, Go/ InfoSeek, Overture, NBCi/Snap, Kanoodle, IX Quick, Northern Light, Excite, DMOZ, WiseNut, Teoma, Hog Search, MetaCrawler, Dogpile Web Search Eureka, EuroPages, Free Find, Go.com, Mirago, Nerd World, Northern Light, Open Directory Project, OpenText, Planet Search, Scoot, Starting Point, UK Directory, Webtop, Yellow Web
SEO an Overview
The objective of Search Engine Optimization is to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site. This relative ranking is often viewed as a struggle to best use a few keywords, instead of a struggle to out-do your competition. If you search on your target keywords, you will see the leading site in the rankings. All you need to do is to be better than that number one site. This page suggests ways to optimize and improve search engine results with ranking and placement advice, placement hints, tips, and clues to improve your search engine keywords relative to existing leaders. After all, better keyword ranking is your real objective.
It is not enough to simply add META tags and do search engine submission of your site to a million search engine indexes and directories. The first placement step in obtaining significant web visitor counts is to seek first-page search engine results. An early step is to build a great content-rich site. One of the last steps is the proper submission of your great site to the search engine or directory. In the middle is a step that is VITAL if you want to obtain front-page results, and most sites skim past this step because it is forgotten or too complex, but without competent Search Engine Optimization you are destined to be search engine fodder.
There are no Search Engine Optimization secrets — just ranking and placement methodologies to follow in order to beat your competition in obtaining a high ranking for desired search keywords. This site targets improving search engine rankings by using a “follow the leader” approach to keyword selection and page wording. Once you know what keywords and search engine marketing services (not spam) worked for the “leaders”, you can “beat the leader” and do even better! Proper Search Engine Optimization requires that you beat your competition, so knowing the keywords and criterion used by your competition is the most important first step. It will become obvious that good ranking excludes keyword spamming the search engine, and that with the careful selection of your keywords that you will fare well for a little effort. Bruceclay.com offers help, hints, and tips for improving search engine results via a specific search engine keywords placement methodology.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of search as it relates to marketing on the web. It is mostly technical in nature, combining programming with business, persuasion, sales, and a love for competitive puzzle solving into a written form capable of maintaining desired revenue goals while achieving high rankings in the organic sections of search engine results pages. It is not just technical, nor copywriting, nor links, nor just search engine submission, but an intricate blend of over a hundred variables into the fabric of a website. It is difficult to accomplish without a formal proven methodology and strong proprietary tools. We offer you a tutorial on all of that and more on these pages…
Before you start, you should understand that top 10 rankings with every single major search engine and directory can be obtained, although very few sites can get there and the effort is often beyond reason. Note: URL ranking results change week-to-week due to competition, so maintaining a top ranking requires constant keywords monitoring and information rework. Search Engine Optimization never rests, much like your competition.
The key information on this page includes how to prepare both you and your site for the search engines, choosing the right keywords, how to analyze your competition, what is submission and how is it best accomplished, when to monitor your ranking, instructions for performing an analysis of your site results, complete with tools and aids. This site covers all basic and advanced strategies and the common mistakes to avoid.
The overall SEO involves:
o Attracting prospects to a web site
o that is properly designed to encourage visitors to browse like Web Site Design
o leads the visitor to a completed transaction by offering products easily and without undue complexity like Web Site Navigation
o Addresses concerns (perceived risks) that can scare off the potential buyer if left unanswered like risk avoidance.
The overall SEO involves
o Attracting prospects to a web site
o That is properly designed to encourage visitors to browse like Web Site Design
o Leads the visitor to a completed transaction by offering products easily and without undue complexity like Web Site Navigation
o Addresses concerns (perceived risks) that can scare off the potential buyer if left unanswered like risk avoidance.
SEO Case Study
o Do you have any intent to sell your product yourself?
o Do you have any intent to sell this product through a traditional retail channel?
o Have you decided to sell this product via the Web?
o Determine What You Have To Sell
o Determine Who Already Needs What You Have To Sell
o Determine What They Will Pay For What You Have To Sell
SEO Guidelines –
o Obtain A Domain Name And Site Host
o Search Engine Marketing Through Links
o Search Engine Marketing Through Public Relations
o Search Engine Marketing Through Banners and Print Media
o Search Engine Marketing Through Strategic Relationships And Reciprocal Links
o Search Engine Marketing Through Email Discussion Groups And News Groups
o Search Engine Marketing Through A Bulk Email Program (Careful!)
o Measure Progress And Change Only One Thing At A Time
o Proceed to Search Engine Placement Tactics and Tools Page
Develop A Website Using These Principles:
Before submission you must have prepared your site for search engine placement. If your site is not prepared for top ranking then a submission service can only give you many, many poor rankings.
Consider techniques for counting visitors and have a demographics collection process (newsletter registration or perhaps a Guest Book or equivalent) for capturing visitor name and email information.
1. It must showcase the need that your product addresses (public interest)
2. It must showcase the solution that you are offering.
3. It must provide instant gratification (for information and access to the solution).
4. It must provide appropriate and timely information (in images and words) to allow the visitor to make a decision. Help them to decide that your product meets their needs.
5. Allow the visitor to buy your product (or, if a service, allow them to contact you).
6. Allow for easy information requests if questions arise anytime, day or night. Always respond promptly!
7. Consider techniques for counting visitors and have a demographics collection process (newsletter registration or perhaps a Guest Book or equivalent) for capturing visitor name and email information.
8. Change the site often (at least once per week) to give users a reason to visit again and again.
9. Consider offering a “gift” to visitors (free is best, perhaps a contest) to have them tell their friends to visit your site. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. We have our own “tell-two-friends” referral script on our site.
10. Have the site be “High Class”. Curb appeal is important in determining if you want surfers to stop and visit. Opinions will be formed early about whether the customer wants to do business with you. Plan improvements.(Regardless of what you may think, every site on the Web is under construction all of the time). Make sure that your web site design does not violate any taboos.
11. Design for the masses. Do not use exceptionally advanced technology unless that is your product. The Web is still connected to a lot of slow computers, and many do not operate on the latest Netscape or Internet Explorer products. Keep it simple and still meet your web site design and promotion goals. The toys must be appropriate to the mission of your web site.
12. Write the text and “storyboard” your site much like creating a good product specification. Use a word processor to lay-out all of your pages. Make sure that the flow is simple for the novice Internet user. Try to keep the body content each Web page to one to two 8½ x 11 sheets of paper, or if heavy information, minimize graphics and limit the size to no more than six pages. Focus on making the message clear. Creativity, and how quickly the page loads, is more important than the use of extra artwork for the sake of “cute”. And when this is done, call a Marketing Consultant first, definitely before you call a web page designer. Message and Placement sell on the web.
13. It is important to consider some aspects of eCommerce: web-based commerce with a human touch is very effective in most cases, especially with 60% to 70% of all shopping carts being abandoned. Do not design around human contact if it increases the ability to sell your products. Factor it into your design. While this may be against the Amazon.com hands-off model, some firms like Face Time Communications are integrating AOL Instant Massager with their website eCommerce applications to answer last minute questions. Reports are that buy decisions increase six-fold if questions are answered. Customer Service is evolving, and it is alive and well on the web.
14. Double check the site architectural concepts.
15. There are obviously “things” that a Web architect must know. Much of this is contained in this site and many others linked to this site below. You still need to have a minds-eye image of what is possible before you spend too much money doing it. We recommend that for optimal search engine placement that you start by reviewing this site once, and then on the second pass spend more time on the Web by “surfing” my links and those linked from our links.
16. For all sites that you identify, go to their website and visit their home page. Choose the browser option to view their Home Page HTML source (this might be a complex process). Scan these sites for search engine placement keywords and terms to make sure that your list is as complete.
17. Marketing is everything. It brings potential buyers to your door. But proper design is vital, because without effective design the buyers who see your home page will leave before it finishes loading. The average home page loads in 48 seconds at 28.8, and the average visitor stays at a home page for 35 seconds, obviously many leave before the page finishes loading. We can learn from this.
18. Create/Design the site by taking content and art, mixing it with navigation and style, testing it on family and friends, and always listen to comments, grunts, pregnant pauses, and blank stares. Specific advice on development of a page is at our Quality Site Criteria page and we suggest that you visit it now, before you code your first Web page! Try not to copy a page layout from another site. Use your own words, ideas, and artwork whenever possible, making sure that the message in the image matches your text. Make sure that the visitor knows what you are saying/selling at all times.
19. Carefully consider the use of database tools, visual tools, and java tools. These are areas receiving a lot of interest, and technology work, and they might be right for your site. Carefully consider your options since some could adversely affect search engine placement.
20. Use the smallest graphics that you can to relay your message. It is estimated that 20% of all Web users surf the Web without graphics enabled! But always have graphics if it helps sell your product. Don’t add graphics just to be neat — an animated mail box is really not something to add to a commercial site.
Follow these rules (mandatory for Free Site Listings)
o Make sure the site is rated for Family Viewing (keep it clean).
o Be courteous to other authors at all times — respect their copyrights, trademarks, and intellectual property.
o Make sure the site is NOT a multi-level marketing site, a network marketing site, or a get rich quick site (although some MLM sites can get into the free lists if they are not moderated).
o Make sure the site is NOT graphically overburdened. Minimize the use of CAPITAL letters, large fonts, and extensive graphics, especially animation.
o Make sure the site Home Page loads quickly and informs the visitor what you have to offer them right up front. If using sounds, use MIDI files whenever possible instead or WAV files, and default to off unless sounds are short. Be careful, some browsers crash with sound enabled.
o If you entice visitors with a FREE OFFER or CONTEST, make sure you explain how to obtain the gift or prize in an obvious manner. (FREE is good, but contests usually don’t work and there may be legal problems).
o Always choose to communicate information rather than to display wiz-bang nifty technical skills. These gadgets are a no-no to many free sites even if mandatory for some award sites. Animation, although exciting to see sometimes, is a real distraction on most pages and actually decreases sales. Avoid it unless there is a purpose.
o If you are going to be selling a service or product, take the time to establish a merchant account and accept credit cards. The good news is that this is easily implemented with or without a store. The bad news is that it takes effort to set it up. It is strongly suggested that you visit our page on e-commerce considerations and follow those instructions carefully!
Search Engine Placement through Search Engines, Links, and Awards
Before submission you must have prepared your site for search engine placement. If your site is not prepared for top ranking then a submission service can only give you many, many poor rankings.
There are many Web businesses offering to list your site with search engines or directories for FREE for a few sites, and for a small fee for other sites. The key is that over time, the categories change, the registration format changes, and there is a great difference between being submitted and being registered. At present, there is a 25% mortality rate for search engine sites every few months, and those that survive do so by upgrading categories and registration formats.
Search engine placement requires some homework. Before making this commitment, make a written note with the below information:
1. Your Web address (URL) in the form of http://www.yoursite.com
2. Your email address in the form of yourname@yoursite.com
3. The title of your Home Page in the form of “your site -products for (need}”
4. A 40 character product description
5. A ten to twelve word site description (your site TITLE probably)
6. A twenty-five word site description
7. A forty word site description (keep in your paste buffer). Consider using this text at the top of the displayed area on your home page.
8. A list of sixteen to twenty words best describing criteria that a prospective visitor would use in a search engine to find your site
9. A complete list of keywords (up to 1000 characters) sequenced with the most important first (possibly from your HTML Keywords line)
Search Engine Optimization and Design
Building an attractive even beautiful is the goal of most website designers. In the process, sometimes the effectiveness of the website is diminished. We need to keep in mind that our goal is not only to have a beautiful website that will make people want to stay and look around and enjoy, but also a website that will be helpful to the engines in determining what our website is about or what it is relevant to.
Udi Manber, Google vice president overseeing search quality, in response to a question about webpage content evolving to be more search engine friendly explained, “It’s definitely still lacking. I wish people would put more effort into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right keywords onto their pages.” Popular Mechanics – April 16, 2008
Search engine optimization or SEO is arguably the most essential way to drive targeted traffic to your website because it leads to improved search engine placement. Optimizing the benefits of a well-designed web site will result in much more traffic coming to the website thereby generating income for the company publishing the website. With this fact in mind however, optimizing your website might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area. Good search engine optimization that leads to improved search engine placement will, on the other hand, bring you a much higher return on the investment of either time or money you put into it.
My goal in this article is to give you the basics of search engine optimization so that you can understand it and incorporate it to help you accomplish your task. This will help you to improve your relevancy and search engines rankings for the best results possible through proven search engine optimization techniques.
What are the major mistakes in design
First is is important to remember that search engines are machines and read words they don’t see images or pictures. The most common mistakes form a search engine optimization standpoint are:
- Making a website totally in Flash(TM)
- Images without alt tags
- Minimal or nonexistent meta title or title tag
Flash(TM) to the search engines is just like an image it is invisible although the Flash(TM) may capture the intrigue of the viewer it won’t help the search engine to know what your website is about. While the text display as a part of the Flash(TM) my be rich in keywords and information it will be lost completely to the search engines and you will go unnoticed. Flash(TM) and pictures can be used to enhance a website but the site must have text in order to build relevance for the search engines.
In the same sense images are also invisible, however we can include alt tags that will give the search engines an idea of what the viewer will see. In fact the alt tags can be very helpful since the search engines will place a little more emphasis on the text in alt tags. Don’t go overboard using keyword phrases in the alt tags but use some to help where appropriate.
The title tag as well discuss later is an important place to tell the search engines what your webpage is all about.
Where do we start?
Why is search engine optimization (SEO) so important? SEO is important because this will make your website relevant to your keywords during the search engine ranking process and will lead to improved search engine ranking. This is the reason why some businesses hire an SEO company to do this task.
You can get information on low cost related services anywhere on the internet. However, few are really showing you how to work out an inexpensive plan for improved search engine placement. Some companies will even use antiquated techniques that may slow the process down. Good search engine optimization should help you to start improving the search engine ranking of your website and start driving traffic to it in a matter of days or weeks with expensive processes.
Search engine optimization begins optimally on your website, as you plan and build it. If it was not done at first you are not too late, you can do it after you have it built and go back and revise it to improve the exposure to the search engines and still lead to improved search engine placement. It consists of the following elements referred to as “onsite optimization”.
- Keyword Research – choosing the primary and secondary keywords you will use on your website or webpage
- Implementing the keywords naturally into important elements in the website header and body.
Keyword Research and Usage
Let’s start first with keyword research. Why is keyword research important? The keyword research helps us to find the keywords that connect us with our targeted audience. They are the words that we want to use on our website in a variety of ways to build relevancy on our webpage so when search engines find our website and view / crawl our pages, they will then index us for those keywords. Once that happens, then when those keywords are typed into the search engine by potential customers, the search engine will then display our site in the search results, which is how they tie us to our targeted audience.
Ideally you will use a reverse search tool that will enable you to type in words you think are keywords people would search for and which will tell you the number of times those keywords were searched for over a given period of time. Depending on the tool you are using and the databases and the search engines they have access to for their search results you will get different numbers in your reverse search results. Your search engine optimization professional will know and have access to these tools and which ones are appropriate for specific uses. These tools can significantly speed up the process of onsite optimization lead to quicker improved search engine placement.
One tool you can use for manual research is http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html Keyword Discovery’s Free Search Term Suggestion Tool. It will limit your results to 100 keywords for any given search. Another manual search tool is http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword SEOBook.com’s Suggestion tool. Both of these manual reverse search tools will allow you to find the keywords that people type into the search engines and how many times they were searched for. Remember keywords are how we connect with our targeted audience.
How Do I Use My Keywords Once we have identified the keywords, next we need to know where and how to use them for improved search engine placement. The first and arguably the most important place to use our keywords would be the title tag for your website. The title tag appears in the header of the page and is the first opportunity we have to tell the search engine what our page is about.
The title tag should be 60 – 80 characters in length and use one or two of the most important and/or relevant keywords for that page and possibly your website domain name, especially if your domain name includes keywords in it. The title tag information appears in the blue header bar at the top of the window and is also used as the title of your listing when your website is displayed in the natural or organic search results.
The meta description should be about 2 – 3 sentences or up to about 200 characters that describe for the customer and the search engine what the webpage is about. In the natural or organic search engine results, this description will be the first choice for the text the search engine displays beneath the title. This description does not appear on the website page when the website is displayed for the visitor but is readable by the search engine and used in the search results primarily.
A third meta tag is the keywords meta tag which is also not displayed to the visitor of the website. The keywords meta tag is a hold over from early methods of search engine optimization, but because it was abused by website developers, it is seldom use by search engines. We still use the keywords meta tag, but most search engines ignore it due to those previous abuses. Some search engines may still evaluate it and you never know when search engines may start to use it again. The Keywords meta tag is simply a list of up to 12 keyword phrases separated by commas.
The example below exclude the angle brackets due to this article being written in HTML but the angle brackets are the less than and greater than signs.
“meta content=”Basic search engine optimizations concepts presented to give business owners and website developers and understanding of good SEO techniques…” name=”description” /” enclosed in angle brackets.
“meta content=”keyword phrase 1,keyword phrase 2,keyword phrase 3,…” name=”keywords” /” enclosed in angle brackets
Your keywords used in the title, description and keywords tags now need to be used on the page to validate to the search engine that your page is actually about what you told the search engine that your page is relevant to. If the search engine doesn’t see any of the keywords on your page, then it can only assume that your page is not relevant to the words you used in the title, description and keywords tags in the header area of the web site.
Now that we know that we need text on the page how can we use that text to help emphasize the relevancy of the keywords on the page? Mechanisms such as header tags for headings using keywords will give more emphasis to keywords. Hyperlinks where the anchor text is a keyword phrase will add relevance to the keyword phrase and since the anchor text and the associated hyperlink reference are indexed by the search engines, using a keyword phrase as the anchor text both on the website and in offsite marketing will increase your ranking for that keyword phrase. Bolding and italics also draw some attention to the keywords for the search engine. Each page needs to have enough text on it to allow that page to demonstrate the relevance of the keywords it displays in the header of the page to the search engine, if true search engine optimization is to be achieved.
Lets take a look at some of the other tags mentioned in the previous paragraph. Header tags alert the search engine to more important text on the page, much like the headline on the page of newspaper does to the reader. A header tag is a tag that contain a “H” and a number between 1 and 7. The lower the number the larger the text and the more important it is to the search engine. H1 tags can be formatted using font tags to control the size or .css files to control the formatting.
Hyperlinks consist of at least two components. The first component is the link destination represented by the term “href” referring to the hyperlink reference and the anchor text located between the beginning and ending anchor tags. An anchor tag is an “a” in angle brackets and ending with “/a” in angle brackets. The beginning tag also include the destination reference. Remember that you you could use a keyword phrase in place of the word home to designate your home page. That keyword phrase would be a link and would help to build relevance for your website for that keyword phrase.
As we use these structures in combination in a natural way we then are able to help the search engine to know what our page is about and also create a page that is functional for the user.
To optimize your website well for the search engines you should use unique meta tags on each page on your website. The keywords should be used in:
- The title tag – big three
- Meta description
- Meta keywords
- Header tag – big three
- Opening paragraph – about 4% density
- Alt tags on all images and using keywords on about 3 images per page
- Link / anchor text or hyperlinks – big three
- Body of the page – about 4% density (visible text)
- Closing paragraph – about 4% density
They should be used in such a way as to feel natural on the page. If the page feels awkward, then look for ways to reword the information on the page and make sure you are not forcing the keywords in too many times. This in combination with other activities to build your page rank are the best ways to get your page listed on page one of the search engines.
These strategies are what we call onsite page optimization. Each page needs to have its own unique page optimization for the content on that page. Don’t make the mistake of using the same title, description and keywords meta tags for every page on your site.
Using these strategies in conjunction with the design of your website will vastly improve your search engine placement.
SEO Tips to Get Your Website to the Top of Search Engines
When it comes to the success of digital marketing and finding new customers via the web, keyword optimization is one of the most important tools you can bet on. Keyword optimization or keyword research is the act of researching, analysing and selecting the best word or concept of great significance to your product, services or campaign in order to target and drive traffic from search engines such as Google to your website and other digital platforms.
Getting your website or blog on the first page of search engines can be a daunting task if you do not understand the fundamentals of optimization. Although this tutorial is not guaranteeing you the first place in major search engines, it does point out what one needs to do to be in the Search Engine Optimization game.
It is much easier than you think and this article is to guide, help and provide you with the basic and key for successful search engine optimization:
Step 1. Choose the right keywords
It is tough to be the best at everything and that includes Keyword Optimization. The first step of reaching the top of search results is identifying the right keywords. It can either be a single or multiple words or entire phrases. As you might already be aware of, most searches on the internet are made in the form of a question. Therefore, before you start writing down the keywords, you need to decide which keywords you want to focus on. These are the words people would type into the search engines in order to find your page, blog, website or product.
It is very essential that the word you choose as the keyword is broad enough for lot of people to search for on the internet, but narrow enough that you have a decent chance of getting a high search rank for it on the search engines and results.
For example, the word “shoe” is way too general. However, “Where can I find cheap shoes online” is a pretty good one. Similarly, the word “Europe” is way too general and Wiki sites will normally dominate these top spots. So, “the best holiday destination in Europe” is a much better phrase to focus on.
Here are my top tips for choosing the right Keywords:
1. Start with customers
Think about who your target audience or customers are. What are they likely to type into the search bar when they are looking for answers where your services can help them? Why not ask existing customers what they would search for?
2. Weigh up the competition
Although it is important for you to choose words that many of your target audience might be typing into search engines, they should not be words that bigger companies with the most muscles and bigger budget will compete for.
3. Use Google tools
Guess not only. Google has several good tools which can aid you find what is popular to search.
On Google Trends, a public web facility based on Google Search engine, shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages including a list of popular searches. You can also enter keywords and see how popular they are, compared with other phrases and ideas on similar terms – in order to choose the one that most are looking for.
You can also find keywords using Google’s ad tool AdWords. You do not necessary have to advertise, you can just create an account and select using the “Keyword Planner” under the “Tools” menu.
Step 2. Customise Your Content
Once you have successfully chosen your keywords, there are a few other things you need to do in order get your site ranked high on search engines. One of such things is content creation. You have to create and distribute relevant and valuable content (such as speech, writing, photograph or any of the various arts) that attracts and engages your well-defined target audience. Content marketing helps us to attract new customers and build loyalty with existing customers.
For existing customers, this could also mean they take part of the relevant content that creates additional sales by learning more about your offer, and is more expensive products/ services than they have done previously. The following are few tips to consider during content creation:
1. Working actively with texts
Use keywords in the title and preamble of all the pages. Also, include the keywords in the body, the much higher up it is in the text, the better it is for your ranking.
However, be careful not to use your keywords too much. Google may interpret your site as a nonsense page which is only trying to attract traffic and you go down in search results. A rule of thumb is that your content should feel natural and interesting. Which of course is also important for your visitors.
2. Do not forget your photos!
Rename even your photos with your relevant keywords. This will make it possible for search engines index them and you can get hit even in image search. If you have the opportunity to enter an alternative text for each image, do not let go of such an opportunity.
Step 3. Get visits and links from others
The most important thing for search engines is to deliver good and relevant results, remember that’s their primary business. Therefore, priority is given to websites that Search engines deems others rate high or think is good. An example is sites with links and many visitors who stay long to engage with the site. Therefore, this is really important to:
1. Make sure to get a lot of visits to the page
Ask family and friends to visit your website. Get the link or URL out there as often as possible, for example, you make a video, put it up on YouTube and the links there – but incorporate all the content on your site and link to it there.
2. Ask others to link to your site
Ask friends, business partners or customers to link to you, perhaps in exchange for a link back or share interesting tips in your field and let others get put up pieces of contents with a link to you.
3. Share your site on social media
Sharing your website and contents on social media (not forgetting Google+ Google for obvious reasons) is extremely important. It can provide visits to the website, more traffic, attention and higher rankings
4. Get visitors to share
Get others to share your site and contents on social media, using “share” buttons. AddThis is a one of the free tools allows you to instantly share or bookmark pages with one easy-to-use tool. AddThis can also get statistics on how much your content is shared.
Step 4. Revise the technical
Even how your site is built technically is important for your rankings. Here are some things you can do:
1. Use Google Webmaster Tools (Now Google Search Console)
The Google Search Console (aka Google webmaster) is an amazing tool which offers many tools that will aid you to thoroughly analyse your site. From this analysis, you can work on problem areas to make your site rank better on Search engines especially Google
2. Make Your Site Mobile Friendly,
With a good percentage of the world’s population owning mobile devices these days, it makes sense to make sure that your site is mobile friendly. Mobile users also expects good mobile experience when they visit site.
If your site is not mobile friendly, it may rank lower in searches from mobile phones. Google recently Google released a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that’s designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results, therefore you can’t go wrong with this offer.
3. Make sure the page is fast
A site that takes a long time to load will rank lower on search engines. Google has indicated in the past that site and page speeds is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages.
Page speed is also important to user experience, the slower your site/page speed the more likely you will have high bounce rate and lower average time on your site. Some of the great tools which can help you with your site speed is Google Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix. This are tools that empowers you to make decisions that increase the performance of your website.
Step 5. Use Web Analytics Tools
Use analytics to measure the outcome of your efforts or to determine which areas of your site are doing well. Google Analytics offers free and enterprise analytics tools to measure website, app, digital and offline data to gain customer insights.
Example: Google Analytics enables you to track the visitors to your store, and generates reports that will help you with your marketing.
Under the “acquisition” in Google Analytics select “all traffic” -> “Channels” -> “organic search” so you can under the “keyword” to see which keywords drive the most traffic and the “source” which search engine. Using Google webmaster tools, you have access to them in Google Analytics under “acquisitions” -> “search engine optimization”.
Step 6. Use Google AdWords
Business regardless of size, wants to be found on the first page of Google. Getting seen by customers at the exact time they are looking for your information, products, services, deals or location is intent marketing (marketing based on someone intending to find your products), and it’s profitable.
Many businesses use Google AdWords to archive these by creating highly effective advertising campaigns to market their products and services, drive traffic to their website, and ultimately, increase sales.
I hope this article has given you an in-depth view of keyword optimization and you find one or more of the above tips useful.
Search Engine Optimization – What Not To Look For
Have you received emails spam emails from people promising to increase traffic to your website by making you rank high in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)? We get them all the time. As a matter of fact Google states they even get these unwanted solicitations. Here’s an example of an email Google received in the past:
“Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”
Funny huh? But how many people are responding to these ridiculous emails and spending lots of money with hopes that they can increase traffic to their website? What’s worse, many of these companies are actually able to brainwash their clients into thinking they really are benefitting! Companies that use these unethical business practices give the entire SEO (Search Engine Optimization) community a bad reputation.
Two Point Enterprise writes this article about what NOT to look for when shopping for SEO so that you may arm yourself to make an informed choice. We know of no better way to illustrate this article for you than to present a spam email we received from one of these rogue companies. Carefully read the email in the capture below, and then see our comments afterwards.
Click here to see a capture of the email
The subject of the email was “Do You Want Referrals from you Website?” (I guess they were in such a hurry to fire this email off they didn’t even take time to check the spelling.)
The first red flag is your receipt of the email in the first place! Check out Google’s Information for Webmasters and you’ll see that the very first thing they tell you is “Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue.”
The next thing the author of this spam email tries to do is make a feeble attempt of identifying themselves with real estate agents. Hence the words, “Location, Location, Location”. (Sorry partner, you ain’t jumping in bed with me.) Then they pay credit that you might already have a nice website, but if traffic could be increased could potentially drive millions of customers and billions of dollars to your website. They rule out pay-per-click services apparently without giving credit that real estate is actually one thing pay-per-click can work fairly well with, namely in large cities. Finally, as with all spam emails like this, they believe they have the solution you’ve been looking for!
We couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the next line where they increase the font size and announce, “It’s Here!!!! & Satisfaction is GUARANTEED!!!!!!!!” (One more exclamation point and I think everybody in the office might have wet their pants.) Seriously though Mr. Spam Email Author, what’s here? Is it SEO services with a perpetuating monthly fee to guarantee yourself recurrent income? I hate to crash the party, but SEO was around a long time before you registered your domain on September 24, 2004. And monthly fees were invented a long time ago too. I will give them a little credit for putting a guarantee on your satisfaction rather than your ranking. Rule #2 from Google is, “No one can guarantee #1 ranking.” They don’t tell you how they guarantee your satisfaction in the email though. I’d be surprised if it’s a 100% money back guarantee. I’ll bet they have it set up where they end up pocketing money some way or another. If they can brainwash you into thinking they are doing a good job they don’t have to give any money back.
The next thing this spam email does is make an attempt to establish credibility for themselves. They want you to go to a search engine and search for the massive, non-competitive five keyword phrase “neighborhood prospecting websites for realtors”. If the reader hasn’t deleted the email and flushed it through their recycle bin by now they’ll see that the company that sent this email currently ranks #1 for this search. We plugged the five word phrase into a Google AdWords campaign and put a bid of $5 on it. After submitting, Google automatically adjusted the price down to $0.02 (because that’s how much it’s worth), assigned it the top position on the page (because there is no competition for that phrase), and estimated that our cost per day for the phrase would be $0.00 (because nobody in the world would be searching for that). So big deal guys if you are the #1 result for “neighborhood prospecting websites for realtors”. That’s because nobody else wants it!
Now look down a little further and see what we have here! Well if it isn’t an intellectual property and trademark infringement against the search engines, Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. I’d be willing to bet that these search engines didn’t authorize any use of their registered trademarks. Also I don’t see any notice at the bottom identifying the rightful owners of the trademarks, nor do I see the author disclaim himself from any affiliation with these search engines. Subtle little images like this can mislead the reader into thinking some kind of special relationship, or affiliation, has been radified with the search engines. Google says “beware of SEOs that allege a ‘special relationship’ with Google”. My guess is that Google has no plans of entering into some sort of strategic partnership with these whiz kids any time soon.
Next we have the sign-up button where we can make our monthly donation to these people. How thoughtful of them to make the button so nice and big. We don’t want to miss when we try to click it with our mouse!
At the very bottom they try to stay with the rules and offer you and itsy bitsy link to opt out of future emails from them. Unless they are conpensating you, why should you have to take time out of your day to opt out of this email you didn’t ask for in the first place? Good luck with that, by the way. Two weeks ago we received this email and we asked them to stop sending us spam. They replied and told us we received it because we signed up for something, which we know damn well we didn’t. However, we cut them some slack and dismissed it. Then on 3-2-2006 we received this same email again after we told them 2 weeks before to stop emailing us!
Hope you enjoyed the article! Good luck with your SEO!
Tips On Doing Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization or SEO, is the process of or a series of steps that one takes in an effort to make their website or other online assets more visible to others when others are searching for content online using search engines. This is also often referred to as positioning one’s assets to be found by “organic” searches as opposed to “Pay Per Click” (PPC) where you pay a fee to the search engines themselves so that they will help your site to stand out and be found.
So what actually is involved in this process called SEO? What are the steps you want to take to build out your online assets so as to be more easily found? My list below is by no means complete but it will serve to give you a solid overview to tasks you can complete to make your site more visible.
Search Engine Registration: The first thing you will want to do is to get your website registered with the search engines themselves. Most search engines offer you a method whereby you can tell them about your site and site ownership and you can also tell them what webpages exist on your website through submission of a “Sitemap.xml” file to them.
Search Engine Indexing: Next you will want to tell them more about your individual webpages so that this information can be stored and “Indexed” in their internal databases for use when people are making “Organic” searches. Each search engine has their own method of accepting your webpage indexing requests for example; Yahoo-Bing allows you to submit 10 webpages for indexing a day and Google, the largest search engine in the world today, provides you with a webpage indexing request tool called “Fetch as Google” where you can enter your pages to be indexed. Remember when using this tool to register each page as a standard webpage and also to register these same pages separately for mobile pages if they are “Mobile Responsive” in construction as Google maintains separate databases for mobile pages and to get found organically on a cellphone, you will need to have them registered in this second database as well.
Link Building: This is the art of building links back to your site from other quality Internet locations usually owned by others. This is often done by leaving posts on other forums, asking other site owners to link their sites with yours, building a presence on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, etc. and tying your presence on those sites back to your website, writing articles and press releases that mention your site, posting videos to places like YouTube and Vimeo that tie back to you, publishing e-books and more. The more “External Backlinks” you can create to your site, the stronger your site looks in the eyes of Google and other search engines and the better your site will rank within those engines organically.
On Site Optimization: There are also things you can do within your own website to strengthen your SEO rankings with search engines. You will be wanting to do keyword and keyword phrase research as you build webpage titles and write content for those pages, do the same for images you use so they are well described, link pages together so they can keep people on your site longer by easily giving them more access to additional related content on your site, create “Anchor Text” on your site which means taking strong keyword phrases and embedding hyperlinks to other locations on-site and off-site behind this text.
Content Creation: Write your website content in such a way that the webpage title and description are supported by your content words as close to the top of each page’s content as possible as this helps to validate these pages as being real and of value to the search engines when they render pages to their own content consumers.
Use of Videos, Audios and Images: Use them liberally on their site as search engines know that people to prefer to watch videos, look at pictures or listen to audios more than they like to read text – so use this strategy and be sure to richly describe them within your webpages’ “meta-data” and to also submit them for indexing to the search engines as well. It is tedious work, but will pay significant dividends to your site over time in terms of its visibility.
Build your webpages to be “Mobile-Responsive”: These days, search engines such as Google will not even display pages that are not responsive to people making “Organic” queries for content through them. If your webpage is not responsive, you will not be found.
Build Webpages Natively: Build your webpages natively as opposed to using templates wherever possible and test them for speed of loading. If your webpages and in particular your mobile webpages do not load completely within 2-4 seconds, your page will be penalized or not even be displayable through organic searches. Template pages tend to be “Fatter” so they take longer t load – which is why I make this point. Also keep your image sizes small – 4 megabyte images take much longer to load than 20K images…
Keyword Competitive Analysis: Do competitive analysis on your keyword research and where you place with those keywords in relation to your competitors. Look at what is making it to page one in an organic search for keywords and phrases you wish to rank for and research how hard it would be to displace them to get your content showing on page one of a search – and there are a number of tools out there that can help you make this job easier. Bottom line though is that you want to get to page one when ranking for the words and phrases that you choose and how you use them for SEO effect on your site – you don’t want to do all this work to rank on page 10 where much fewer content searchers get to.
Use Search Engine Dashboards: Search engines build informational dashboards for you to use to see how they are seeing your site and what errors they are finding on your site and they often offer suggestions for fixes and improvements. Use these dashboards! Get all you can from them about your site’s quality, make the fixes and let them know when you have fixed it so they can “recrawl” your site to register that it has improved. Doing this work is very important to maintaining good search engine rankings.
In summary, above are just some of the core things you will need to do to have a shot at getting to page one in search engines organically. Organic SEO takes a lot of work but those that put in the time to do this work on their sites are rewarded with organic traffic to their sites. Improving organic SEO should be a continual process for any company trying to do business online. Traffic is money and if others are doing this and you are not, they will be the ones making the sales you want to get. Often, doing this well means business survival itself.