All Entries Tagged With: "Search engine optimization"

How Can I Benefit From Article Marketing?

With information technology on the rise and gaining relevance in the world today, article marketing has become a very significant tool to promote businesses on the Internet.

While it is well-known that articles make consumers understand a product better, a well-written article can be one of the main reasons why any product sells. These days, article marketing is so advanced that it has become the foremost advertising strategy for many online businesses.

Central to the effectiveness of article marketing is the implementation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The primary function of this form of article writing is to achieve prominent rankings on the search engines by utilizing keywords which are popular among Internet users.

When a user enters a search term which is identical to your keyword, the web page of your article will be displayed as a search result. With effective SEO strategies, you can rank among the top search results and benefit from a steady flow of incoming traffic, which will ultimately lead to increased sales.

Due to the fact that SEO article writing involves a great deal of research and expertise, most website owners prefer to employ SEO experts to manage their web content. These specialized professionals will provide you keyword-rich articles that will dramatically improve the visibility of your website and win customers over with their convincing content.

SEO article marketing is such a proven success in the world of online business that many website owners are willing to hire the services of top SEO experts to help them launch their businesses into greater heights of profitability.

Other than its overall contribution to the betterment of sales, article marketing also brings professionalism and prestige to your website. With comprehensive articles that offer expert information about your products, your website will be widely regarded as an authoritative entity.

It will assume a position as the favored destination for consumers seeking specialized knowledge pertaining to your products. As reputation grows, your brand will be established as a trusted name in the business and this will in turn translate to a long-term influx of web traffic.

Compared to other forms of online advertisements which incur quite a substantial amount of financial investment, article marketing is basically free advertising.

Since your articles are included in the information base of search engines, they will automatically show up whenever a search term coincides with one or few of their keywords.

In a way, an article is a living advertising implement on the Internet and it grows in recognition from time to time, without you having to pay extra for each and every appearance.

Web owners who understand the full potential of article marketing will also post their articles to article directories and ezines to boost their chances of drawing more visitors to their websites.

As the Internet continues to extend its influence in our livelihood, article marketing will prevail as the most important means to distribute information, whether for a product or a mere matter of general interest.

There is nary a website that can communicate effectively without web content, and articles are indeed the most significant bridge between webmasters and users. By adopting an elaborate article marketing strategy, you can be sure that your business will achieve new heights of success.

March 28, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 0

SEO Tracking Tools – Crawler Simulation by Guest Blogger Gushchin Dmitry

First I’d like to thank Gushchin Dmitry of Easy SEO Tracking.com for being a guest blogger at the SEO Discussion Blog. We encourage our readers to send us their blog posts or become a regular contributor. We don’t mind if guest bloggers want to tell about their own product or service as long as it is useful to our readers.

User: I am the owner of the site. I did a good job by exchanging the links with other site owners, by increasing my page rank and creating the best content. Unfortunately, my site doesn’t appear in search engine results. What’s going on?

Don’t panic! One of the possible reasons might be that

Your site is “SEO Unfriendly”

User: What does it mean?

Let’s review the process of indexing the pages by the crawler:

strong>How Crawler Indexes Pages

First of all the crawler doesn’t treat the page the same way the users do.

Let’s consider the following example. What do you see at the screenshot below?

User: Umm… Well…

Text box

“Google Search” button

“I’m feeling Lucky” button

Logo

Excellent!

Do you want to know how Google “sees” the page above? If yes simply click “view page source” in your browser:

Exciting isn’t it?

The crawler doesn’t treat the pages the same way the users do, because what it “sees” and interprets are the HTML elements only. So one of the reasons your site is SEO unfriendly is the following;

The content of your site is not visible for the crawler as for the improper HTML. This scenario might appear for example in case when the developer or user who created the content incorporated JavaScriptcode or Javaapplets or Flash or things like that.

User: How can I found out whether my site is visible for the crawler or not?

By using Crawler Simulator like the one provided by Easy SEO Tracking.

Crawler Simulator Description
Crawler Simulator performs pretty straightforward operations:

1. It gets the page as if the crawler requests it.
2. And shows what part of the content the crawler actually “sees”

If you want to make sure that your site is visible for the crawler, simply enter the URL of the page in the Site URL field and click the “check” button:

In the example above the content of the page is visible for the crawler.

In cases when the “Content” field is empty or it contains too much JavaScript code it is a signal that the crawler will not see any information at the page (consider the example below):

In the example here there is not too much useful information for the crawler.

User: I entered the URL of my page in Crawler Simulator and it returns nothing. What I need to do?

Find the developer or someone who familiar with the HTML and ask him or her to fine tune the HTML! (If you need help adding content to your page that the search engines can see, click here and fill out the form or call us at 786-317-8774)

User: Thank you! Hey developer. I got some work for you!

Visit Easy SEO Tracking.com for more info.

March 13, 2010 | Chris McElroy | Comments 2

How Important Is Owning Your Personal Name As A Domain Name?

More and more I’m seeing people buy up their name as an URL (ie. JohnSmith.com, MarthaBartha.net, etc.). Is this just for the sake of vanity or is there a real purpose to it?

By way of full disclosure, I have an URL that represents my name. I went for AllenTaylor.com, but it was already taken. Therefore, I settled for the more specific AllenLeeTaylor.com, using my middle name. I’ve seen some people take their name with a .me extension.

I do think there is a good reason for doing this. For me, it’s a matter of reputation management, but that’s not all. I also believe it’s a good branding tool, particularly for creative people.

In terms of reputation management, you’ll have a better chance at ranking for your name as a keyword if you use your name as a domain name. Google now will only rank a couple of pages per domain for any keyword search term. If the search term is your name then what will searchers find? Your company site should be at the top of the list and you’ll likely have a few social networks on the list as well. A personal domain name should be on that list too.

If you have three social networks, your company website, a blog and your own personal domain name then that’s a potential 12 top spots on Google. Since there are only 10 page 1 listings this increases your chances of being at the top pretty considerably. That’s effective reputation management.

But how about personal branding? I’m a writer. I write SEO content, ghostwrite blogs and write fiction and poetry. I have also worked as a journalist. A personal domain name with a CV and portfolio is a good marketing tool. While I still have to develop my domain name, I am looking forward to the day that it is actually drawing in some new business and fans. That day should not be far off.

On personal domain names, you can count me in favor. I’m sold.

Why should I trademark my domains? What are risks if I DO NOT trademark my domain names? (startups.com)
Can someone trademark my domain name simply as a means of extorting it away from me? (startups.com)
WHOIS Domain Name Search | Webmaster Blog (domainmacher.com)
How to Choose a SEO friendly Domain Name? – BlogSouls (domainmacher.com)

March 08, 2010 | Allen Taylor | Comments 1

What Complications Does Social Media Marketing Give To SEOs?

If you are a working SEO I’m sure you’ve noticed the rise of social media marketing. I’m curious if this has given you any complications in your business. What challenges, if any, does social media marketing give you in your business?

Obviously, there are benefits to marketing through social media, even for SEOs. But is there a downside? Have you lost business from your SEO clients who went seeking a social media alternative? Or have you noticed that social media results from your competition have edged in on your organic search listings in some niches? Have you tried to use social media for your own marketing only to find it a waste of time?

I use social media and I’ve used it successfully. But I’m interested in knowing what challenges you’ve had with it and how you overcame those. Discuss.

Why Marketers Fail at “Social” (socialmediatoday.com)
Organic Search Engine Optimization is Critical to Success (ronmedlin.com)
Is Social Media Ruining Your Sales? (thecustomercollective.com)

February 16, 2010 | Allen Taylor | Comments 1

How Important Is Blogging For SEO?

Since I’ve started blogging I’ve seen blogs go from very important for search engine ranking factors to somewhat important. Let me explain how I’m using these two phrases:

Very important means influential in multiple ways with no negatives.
Somewhat important means influential in multiple ways with some negatives.

I still believe blogging is important for SEO. Add a blog to your website and blog to it every day and you will improve your site’s search engine rankings. It’s almost a guarantee. But, there are some practices that used to not count against you that will now count against you if you engage in them. And there are other practices that do not benefit you as well as they used to.

Examples: When I first started blogging it was common to see three sites enter into a three-way reciprocal link circle and all of them benefited. You can’t do that any more. Also, blogs within a network could all link to each other and all of them benefited. That, too, has ceased to be a benefit.

Granted, the above examples apply to static websites too, but bloggers were using those methods very extensively and suddenly the rewards were not there any more. Blogging then lost some of its luster because many SEOs started multiple blogs for the purpose of link building. Google killed it.

So, to what extent does blogging still help you with your SEO? Does an off site blog proffer any benefits? How about some discussion …