Featured, Keyword Reseach, SEO »

Why keyword research is crucial in your SEO campaign
[26 Apr 2008 | 2 Comments | ]
Most websites fail to achieve high search engine rankings because of badly chosen keywords. Identifying and qualifying the correct website keywords are absolutely crucial to the success of any website. There is no point selecting keywords that have low search volumes as they will attract very few visitors to a website. Equally choosing general site keywords where there is already a high number of websites competing for those keywords is not a smart move. This will result in a website struggling to achieve a high placement on the search engines, simply because the site is competing with thousands of other websites for the selected keywords.

General site keywords which are most commonly searched for will be used by thousands of different websites and competing with these already established websites may not improve your search engine ranking at all The ideal solution therefore is to identify keywords with reasonable search volumes but with a much lower number of websites competing for those keywords.Keyword Research is a vitally important aspect of a search engine optimisation campaign and is one of the most important parts of online marketing. Extensive keyword research will help to identify the most relevant search terms used by potential customers and should be the first step of any search engine optimisation project.

Although the initial idea of keyword research can be daunting there are various online keyword research tools available that will help to identify the strongest performing website keywords, such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. It is worth test driving a number of different keyword research tools, as many of them work differently and provide different data.

It is not a good idea to use the keyword research tools available on Google and Yahoo Search as these will only provide limited information and can create a false impression. The data provided is only based on the previous months search activity. Therefore, as an example, keyword research for ‘winter sports’ is unlikely to produce huge volume of searches if the research is conducted in the middle of summer!

Most customers are likely to use search terms containing 2 or 3 keywords when searching for a particular product or service. Therefore websites containing mainly single keywords are unlikely to produce high levels of search traffic. The use of single generic keywords are also more likely to produce a lot of non relevant traffic to a site. For example, if a customer uses the keyword “computer” they may be looking for a new desk top machine, the latest laptop or even a computer repair engineer.

The more targeted website keyword phrases that can be identified the better, as this will enable the easy creation of keyword rich content which will not only improve search engine rankings but will also increase the number of visitors to the site. The use of general site keywords needs to reviewed and refreshed as a website develops. For example, new website keywords will need to be identified to promote a new product or service.

Keyword research is a significant role in the development of a website and if used correctly will make a significant difference in any online business.

Featured »

Good on Page Search Engine Optimization Practices
[12 Apr 2008 | One Comment | ]

There are some key SEO factors that can affect the success of the web page actually how it is going to be displayed, but many of them have nothing to do with the design web page.

On page search engine optimization can be defined as the factors limited within the page that communicate to the search engine’s what the web page content is and how it is helpful to the visitor. On page optimization should include words in the title of the web page, content of the web page, the internal links on the page, and how the page is structured.

Here are a few on page optimization practices to help get the best results for your web page:
Content Optimization
Each page needs to be themed around the conversion goal of each page individually. The content of every page should be unique, fresh and original. Instead of being keyword stuffed it should be relevant to the context and business oriented. Each web page should be optimized with proper headlines as well as appealing page titles that can easily be read to the viewer.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are crucial on page optimization factor. Most important Meta tags are title and description Meta tags. Title tags are brief description what your web page is all about. Search engine bots get an exact idea about the theme of you web page after reading the description tag
Use of Unique Title Tags for all pages
Using different title tags for all the pages of a website will definitely work for your better ranking in search engines. Try to accommodate your main keywords and search phrases in your title tag and highlight them as much as possible but the title should always reflect page content.

Alt Tag Attributes
Alt tag attributes are used to describe text-links and images. They are shown if you move the mouse over links and images. Besides, the alt-attribute is shown if the image (yet) loaded.
Good Use of Anchor Text
Your anchor text or links to other pages and websites should be titled concisely and descriptively and include a call to action if possible.

Internal Link Structure
All your website pages should be organized and linked with each other strategically to help increase the conversion goals of each page. Search engines consider web pages that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant.
Sitemap
To ensure all of your pages are visited by search engine robots, submitting an XML sitemap to the major search engines like Google lets them know about there is a new site and crawl it to determine its content and relevance. An XML sitemap contains all of the text links from all of your web pages.