Build Better Search Engine Results

There is a lot of buzz about how to get better search engine results these days. Let’s get right through the buzz part and talk about how this is done. Some of this might be old hat to you, but I think you’ll learn something new and very useful. Let’s go through the whole process, from basics to something new.

First, build your keyword “wish list”, research your keywords, prioritize them, and then optimize your web site with each applicable keyword. Areas best to optimize and work with initially are: Meta tags, alt tags, page content, links, etc.

Now we’ll discuss the powerful stuff that truly can build visitor traffic, customer loyalty, your business and ROI.

Here’s the secret, keep your site fresh by adding content to your web site in the way of “how to” articles, industry articles and tips. What does this do for you? Google and the other big guys will index more often, your pages will be more sticky, so search engines have something to grab and hold on to, plus you’ll offer more value to your visitors. Whether its writing articles or tip’s, write about what you know.

Writing articles: make your articles about 300 words, and don’t write only with search engines in mind, write with your readers in mind to inform them. So by having a balance between writing for search engines (incorporating your keywords), and writing for your readers you’ll have the right mix.

Writing tips is a great way to keep your site fresh because they can be shorter than regular articles and quick to put together. This is another good way to get better rankings, again for two reasons, Google will keep coming back more often to index your site and there is more content to grab.

Of course after writing articles and or tips you’ll want to place them in a designated area on your site. The articles can be submitted to ezines or other article type directories also. You will get solid links coming back to your web site from the article directories.

And last but not least, you can put together a blog to add both articles and tip’s here. The search engines will index them giving you more visibility for both readers and search rankings.

Do we need to use a Google sitemap?

Are all of your web pages being crawled and indexed by Google? How do you know? Are you using dynamically generated pages, if so they all may not be getting grabbed by Google. Even if you are using good old straight HTML pages, they still may not all be getting indexed. Another reason to be using a sitemap is if your site is new and has only a few links. Sitemaps also help speed up the process of Google finding your pages. So whether your web site is new, dynamically generated or straight HTML, a Google sitemap is highly recommended. You should also have a traditional sitemap included within your website, so your visitors have a good idea where your pages are located and that a solid link structure is established.

Article Writing for Search Engines

If you are considering how to provide better website content to your website then article writing is a great way help. Search engines love content, keeping your site fresh will provide better customer retention, better rankings and better traffic to your site.

If you’re writing articles (article marketing) to increase your website marketing efforts then article optimization should be utilized along with it. What’s article optimization? It’s essentially the process where when writing an article the verbiage is optimized specifically for the search engines and your website.

When article optimization is used throughout the process it allows the article to be more search engine friendly. Why is that important to you, because it allows the article to become a very powerful marketing tool.

You get best of both worlds, well actually even more. You add value to your site by giving the reader another reason to come back, something interesting read, and powerful content is added, keeping the site fresh. One of the main things that's not being utilized enough is keeping websites fresh, it will get crawled and indexed more often, helping get better rankings / listings, which the search engines love. And lastly you are adding those all so important incoming links. How’s that you say? Well not only should you add the articles to your site you should distribute them to ezine directories and other industry portals on the web. And if you’ve ever tried to get high quality incoming links before you know how difficult and time consuming that can be!

I’ve been asked fairly often, why this powerful marketing tool isn’t used more often. To name a few, first most people either feel that they don’t know what to write and two, it can be very time consuming. Plus the “how to” part of article optimization is not common knowledge. In other words it’s one thing to write an article about your industry and another to make sure it’s optimized well for the search engines like Google. Google and others look for certain things for ranking purposes, such as the keywords and keyword density to name a few.

The main things to remember are, write about what you know, as you write think about what keywords might be important to the reader and the search engines, as in what people may use to locate your site in search engines. And two don’t revolve your whole article based on keywords or you may not have a “reader friendly” article or a “search engine friendly” article. By thinking too hard about how to plant keywords in your article may back fire and may not be the success you were looking for.

So if decide to write the article and not optimize it, I recommend using an SEO firm for assistance. If you decide to do neither, you could hire a professional copywriter and SEO person or a firm that does both.

Tim Frisch is the owner of SEO Help Desk http://www.seohelpdesk.com/ and has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is a professional search engine optimization company providing SEO training, SEO coaching, SEO campaigns, SEO consulting and SEO analysis. To see how your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

What is SEO (search engine optimization) and why does it matter to me? SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The term used to describe the Internet marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimizing a website, including the content and structure of the website's copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.

Actually most search engine optimization campaigns are done backwards, how so? Most SEO campaigns are an after thought. The best, less expensive, more efficient way to do it is to plan it during the time the website is being designed. Why? Because a search engine friendly website is going to bring you a better ROI. Why? Because the search engine optimization process and website development go hand in hand. If the SEO is performed afterwards there are certain things that can’t be done because the site structure itself would need to be modified, a major make-over on a new site, not a good idea.

What’s the alternative? Essentially the completed site is optimized based on the current website design. If the basic SEO components aren’t already built in the site, like selecting the right keywords, meta tags, well written page content (for both the visitors and search engines), incoming links, etc, then they need to be added. Either way the website needs to be analyzed and appropriate action should to be taken.

What kind of action? After the site is analyzed, the basic components are added throughout the website then the appropriate links need to be located and added. Lots of care should to be taken while building links. High quality links are the only links that should be considered, one of many gauges that can be used (regarding links coming from other websites) is the Google page rank, a minimum of 3 should be considered in my opinion, 10 is the highest on the scale.
Another way, that’s probably easier and more realistic to get incoming links are links coming from articles that you’ve written and distributed to ezines and industry related portals or you could trade your information (articles) to other websites and they could provide a link back, again using the Google rank as noted before.

The other part of search engine optimization that’s important, actually most important, content. Content is king, but again another challenge in the SEO process. If you feel you are not sure how to develop the appropriate content, then it might be a good idea to hire a copyright expert to assist with the actual writing and or re-writing and an SEO expert for optimizing the content.
To recap, plan the SEO while designing the website (if possible), make sure the website has all the basic components before launching and submitting, work with a professional SEO and copyrighter and of course while engaging with a professional web designer.

Tim Frisch is the owner of SEO Help Desk http://www.seohelpdesk.com/ and has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is a professional search engine optimization company providing SEO training, SEO coaching, SEO campaigns, SEO consulting and SEO analysis. To see how your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

How to Get Local Targeted Web Traffic

Getting local targeted web traffic to your website, can require a few different adjustments for your keywords and website content. First let’s discuss how to increase your odds regarding your keywords, since this the foundation of SEO or (search engine optimization). Which keywords you decide on will depend on how specific of a geographic area you want to focus on is. For instance if you sell exercise equipment in Orlando, Florida and you have a brick and mortar store also, and want to drive visitors physically to the store. You might want to use the key phrase “exercise equipment orlando florida”, as apposed to “exercise equipment” or “exercise equipment florida” (by the way you shouldn’t have to worry about case sensitive words). This will give you a much greater ability to be found in the search engines, because your web site will be ranked higher and more visible.

One of the places to find the best keywords for this purpose is in Overture and Google. You will be able to tune and fine tune each keyword for your subject matter and geographic area. You will be able to get a feel as to how many searches have been done and how popular the words are. Plus you will get an idea how to use pay per click (non organic Internet marketing), maybe this is a type of marketing you may want to consider.

Of course all areas within the web site will need to be optimized with the same keyword criteria, such as your meta tags, body content, etc. An additional area to consider is locating the best places to link with. For example, a few places highly recommended are local business portals, national directories that would be exercise related and Chambers of Commerce.
Since this Internet marketing strategy is more locally targeted as apposed to most, which are marketed globally, the whole mentality should be geared toward local marketing only. Using printed collateral is an excellent way to drive people to your site, since you’re local, cards or mailers or flyers are good.

Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines have search capabilities to help with local marketing. Plus when these are utilized your site will be picked by additional search engines and directories which will give you some what of a snowball effect. So to recap, when planning your local Internet marketing strategy, always keep in mind local methods to promote and be specific to your geographic area.

Our website: http://www.seohelpdesk.com . For questions: http://www.seohelpdesk.com/contact/mailus.cfm . To see where you rank in the top search engines: http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/

If I'm not a website designer or an SEO expert, how can I keep my site fresh and get high quality links? Write about what you know best, your business. Add those articles to your site and distribute them to top article directories. By adding articles to your website you've helped keep your web content fresh and by adding the articles to directories you've added high quality incoming links. Just a word of caution, you don't want 100% of your links coming in from these kinds of methods. You want links coming from related websites and top directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ. For more information or questions answered go to http://www.seohelpdesk.com/contact/mailus.cfm or visit our website at www.SEOHelpDesk.com.

Are meta tags important to my search rankings? There are several components that effect search engine rankings. But to answer the question, yes they are important and should be used in each page of your site (if you want it listed in the search engines). You should include title, description and keyword tags. For more answers about SEO (search engine optimization) ask us at: http://www.seohelpdesk.com/contact/mailus.cfm or visit our site at www.SEOHelpDesk.com.

Following up on web leads properly can make you more sales, plus you will be building business relationships. Business relationships are more important than a sale.

So you’re getting high search engine rankings, well that’s great! You’re getting lots of qualified traffic, wonderful! You’re getting a high conversion rate, what else is there?. Overall you’re having a good measure of success, that’s great right? When you make your reply back, make a sale or what ever the goal is for your website, what do you do next? Do you toss the contact or sale to the side and wait for the next one? Are you trying to grow your business or not? If you’re not following up on every contact multiple times, for every sale, every form filled out from the customer or potential customer, your competitor will be!

Let’s talk a little bit about leaving sales 101 and graduating to real-world bite you in butt relationship building. It’s not an option whether you should or not, it’s when are you going to make it a very serious part of your web marketing strategy (if you’re not ready)? You can be building a referral based business today and grow your business faster, stronger and easier. How many emails do you send out and don’t get a response back? How many times have you tried to close a deal and couldn’t get the person to return your phone calls and or emails, probably a lot, right? It sounds like you’re trying to get a sale and NOT build a relationship. If you focus on building relationships instead of making sales you will be building a “referral based” business. How much easier would it be to have people contacting you to “buy” as apposed to you “selling” to them?

Having said all that, of course we know how important it is to keep in contact with customers, but sometimes it’s just another thing we have to manage. Using email and phone calls can be unsuccessful methods to build those relationships. Have you ever received a hand written greeting card from someone, of course you have. But how about from some you bought something from? Maybe? How’d it make you feel? How about just getting a card in the mail and NOT opening it up? We always open them up, right? But what if it had been an email or phone call? The email could have went in to their spam folder and never had been opened at all, our phone call may have went to their voice mail and disregarded.

Try the card follow-up system it works great! You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.


Written by Tim Frisch, owner of SEO Help Desk , he has been assisting companies build business online since 1998, and offline for over 25 years. SEO Help Desk is good resource for most aspects of SEO. Including building business business relationships online and securing more sales through your website. Find out where your website is ranked in the search engines, get a free ranking report at http://www.seohelpdesk.com/free-search-engine-ranking-report/ . Find out more about building a referral based business at Get The Sale .