Search Marketing Information

These days, the exciting visuals on websites have started to overshadow the meat of the content, the words. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but really, how many words does a dancing monkey or rotating starburst convey to you? How can that bouncing frog in the upper left hand corner of the page tell you what you need to know about?

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Labels: marketing, writing

Increase Site Traffic with Social Bookmarking

Guerrilla marketing, viral marketing and grass roots marketing are all a part of social bookmarking. Learn why you should do it and where you should do it with this SEO tip.

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Labels: bookmarking, seo

Using Keyword Rich Anchor Text & Heading Tags

Article with tips about how to optimize ALT tags, heading tags, keyword rich anchor text, file names, and using bold and italics.

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Labels: marketing, seo, seopt

Search Engine Optimization Process

Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your site “search engine friendly” so that search engines will be more likely to rank your site highly in search results. With so many millions of websites competing to be found via search engines, it is wise to make it as easy as possible for a search engine to recognize that your site is a valuable match.

Many people new to the world of search engines assume that there is a significant human aspect involved to search engine rankings. That is, they think that a team of people review websites and then ranks the website accordingly. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Search engines are purely automated things. Google indexes over 4 billion web pages. It would be impossible to employ enough people to categorize so many. Therefore, search engines have automated computer programs called “search engine spiders” that look at each website and determine under which search terms it should appear.

So what exactly is done during optimization to make a site more search engine friendly? The process is multifaceted, and not easily pinned down to one or two steps. Because of this, search engine optimization is often viewed as a vague, almost nebulous process, but its many aspects are actually well-defined. Search engine optimization is something that involves the entire website: its design, marketing strategy, copy, structure and popularity.

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Labels: search engine optimization, seo

Writing Sales Copy For Website

Your homepage is the first thing that your website visitor sees, so it better be good. It’s your hook. But contrary to popular belief (and sometimes natural intuition), your goal for a homepage is not to inform or to tell anyone anything. Your #1 goal for a homepage is for your website visitor to click forward and not back. That is, it is to convince them that you have something on your website worth spending their time on.

If you’ve ever taken a sales class in anything, they’ll tell you the first step to selling is making the customer say “yes” to something, anything. That’s why telemarketers always ask you stuff like, “What would you say if I told you I could save you 10% on your phone bill every month, and it would only take you 10 minutes of your time today?” Because what are you going to say? I don’t want to save 10%? Of course not. You have to say, “Well, I guess that sounds pretty good.”

Clicking is the web version of saying “yes” in the sales world. So your first step is to make the customer want to click forward. Fortunately, you don’t need to tell them much to do that. To do that they only need to be able to answer two things:

What’s in it for me? Where do I click?

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Labels: website copy, writing

SEO Guide

SEO Guide covering the basics of natural search engine optimization with overviews of website compatibility, content and keyword analysis, site structure and linking.

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Labels: search engine optimization, seo

Increase Your Website Conversions

There’s a lot of hype about hits these days, but let’s face it: A successful website isn’t just about how many visitors, or hits, you can attract. It’s about sales. If you get 10,000 visitors a month, but only 1 sale, what good were the other 9,999? On the other hand, if you get only 1,000 visitors a month, but 20 of them buy..well, you get the point. A successful website is about conversions and for that you need qualified leads.

A successful internet marketing plan will focus on directing qualified leads to your website that will convert to sales and increase your conversion rate. Your conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors that purchase your product or service. Taking the above examples, if you had 10,000 visitors, but only 1 sale, your conversion rate would be 1/10,000, or .01%. That’s pretty lousy. If you had 1,000 visitors a month, and 20 sales, your conversion rate would be 20/1,000, or 2%. That’s much more respectable.

What’s a good conversion rate? Depending on your industry, a good conversion rate will typically range from 2% to 5%.

How do you increase conversion rate? There are two parts to any sale, or conversion.

1. Attract qualified leads. If you’re attracting people who are already interested in your product or service, then half the work of the sale is done before your visitor’s arrival.
2. Complete the sale. The second part of the sale happens on your website. Do you have the right graphics, verbiage and usability functions to convince your visitor to complete the sale?

Tip #1. Target the right search phrases. What will people be typing into search engines to find your product or service? You want to come up on the first page in search engine results, but for what search phrases? It’s almost always a bad decision to focus all of your efforts on the broadest search terms—you want targeted search terms for targeted leads.

For example, just because you sell Dalmatians, doesn’t mean you should focus all of your efforts on coming up on the first page of search engine results for the term “dogs”. Think about all the things people could be looking for when they type in such a broad search term: information for a school paper, a dog lovers blog, images of dogs for a business brochure. But what about if you came up for the search term “Dalmatian puppies in Houston”? Wouldn’t that bring you more targeted leads—leads that are halfway ready to be converted to sales?

Tip #2. Pay attention to your descriptions and titles. You can think of the description and title that show up in search engine results as a little mini-ad. It needs to accurately describe what the visitor will get when he or she clicks through to your website, or your potential sale could get discouraged and turn away.

So remember, next time you’re looking at your website hit counter: There’s another number you should be paying attention to. How many sales did you bring in this month, and what does that say about your websites ability to turn hits into cash?

About the Author
Sean Odom is a professional SEO Consultant based in Houston, Texas. For more information about Sean, please visit www.SeOpt.com.

Labels: marketing, seo

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Online word processor and spreadsheet program that allows you to create, share and store documents safely via your web browser. For more information visit the following SEO Consulting website.

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Labels: google

Houston Health & Wellness Center Offers Holiday Wellness Package

New Weight-Loss Supplements, Laser Hair Removal, Botox Injections, and PhotoFacials Add to the Comprehensive Care Provided by Houston's Top Health & Wellness Facility

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Labels: health, houston

Search Marketing Information

Sunday, March 04, 2007