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SEO & Internet Marketing

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Month: October, 2008

SEO Is Not A Quick Fix

21 October, 2008 (16:21) | SEO | By: SEO

When planning your Internet marketing for your website, SEO alone is not enough. The customers you receive from search engines should not be what your entire marketing plan consists of. SEO is a long-term strategy for increasing your targeted customer base for targeted searches related to your business. It’s one apect of your overall Internet marketing strategy.

Why is SEO alone not enough?

SEO isn’t a quick fix

If you didn’t design your website with SEO in mind from the beginning, it won’t have the optimized architecture to develop on effectively. The foundation must be planned out systematically before pouring the concrete, so to speak. It takes a considerable amount of time to evalutate and plan your SEO strategy — you must research your competition, define and target your keyphrases, customers and goals, among many other things.

SEO isn’t something you can just turn on

Site architecture needs to be defined, anchor text links need to be written, Titles and Meta descriptions need to be created, and page copy generally needs to be  complete. On-Page Optimization
That said, there are many out-of-the-box solutions, such as when using WordPress with a few SEO plugins — these are naturally SEO friendly and ready to go.

SEO needs time to age

After your website has been planned out in terms of SEO, it will start to receive more targeted search engine traffic. But even that is a slow process. Traffic will increase incrementally, and get better over time as the on-page SEO work begins to mature and your network grows.

SEO needs link popularity

On-page SEO is only part of the equation for more search engine visitors. The success of your SEO depends on the overall link popularity of the website; Off-page optimization. Link building and Off-page optimization take time and planning, just like On-page optimization. Links need to be targeted, with anchor text that correlates with the on-page SEO work.

SEO needs to be done in conjunction with other marketing

Use SEO to supplement your other marketing strategies. It’s a good idea to perform other online marketing campaigns such as

  • paid search
  • email marketing
  • blogging
  • social media marketing, etc.,but also offline marketing such as
  • direct mail
  • print advertising
  • radio spots, etc.

There’s a lot that goes into a successful Internet marketing campaign; when done correctly it’s a worthwhile, long-term investment for nearly any business with a website. Just make sure to build SEO into your marketing plan from the get-go and not make it an afterthought.

Hugh MacLeod Interviews Seth Godin on His New Book “Tribes”

16 October, 2008 (07:19) | Marketing | By: SEO

Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist and professional blogger, known for his ideas about how “Web 2.0″ affects advertising and marketing.

Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. One of the leading Marketing gurus and an A-List blogger inspiration to many.

Tribes, Seth GodinA Few Excerpts From 10 Questions For Seth Godin

Hugh:  For the benefit of gapingvoid readers not yet familiar with your work [all 14 of them], let’s get the main schpiel over and done with: From your perspective, what is “Tribes” about?

Seth: It explains why top-down, buzz-driven media is the past, not the future.

The world has always been organized into tribes, groups of people who want to (need to) connect with each other, with a leader and with a movement. The products, services and ideas that are gaining currency faster than ever are ones that are built on a tribe.

Harley Davidson and Apple are titanic brands for the very same reason. They sell a chance to join a group that matters.

On the concept ‘Everyone is a Marketer’ / ‘Everyone is a Leader’

If ‘tribes‘–connected, motivated groups of people–are the engines of growth, then it seems clear to me that what marketing means today is leadership. If you’re boring or staid, no one will follow you. Why would they?

Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn’t mean they’re in charge, it doesn’t mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change. Those people are the only successful people we’ve got.”

Marketing as a Story

“So much traditional marketing is built around the idea of “Merit” i.e. good quality, good prices etc. But the older I get, I keep asking myself, “What’s the story here? What’s the REAL story that people are GENUINELY going to want to tell other people?” Do you see Storytelling as a form of Leadership? How about vice versa?

In All Marketers Are Liars, my point was that people buy stories, not stuff, and it’s stories that spread, not stuff. An iPod made by Garmin wouldn’t be an iPod, would it? It’s the story and the affect and the whole aura that makes it worth $200.

Leaders tell stories. Gandhi or King or Che or yes, Rush Limbaugh. They tell stories. The stories matter and the words matter. Of course OF COURSE the product has to live up to the story, the service has to be there, the story has to be true. But no story, no idea, no marketing.”

If people trust the words written on a blog, if people come to like and identify with the person writing the blog, you have all the elements necessary to create a popular community focused on the creative output of just one person. Or in the case of a product — if the product tells a story that people relate with — this is the essence of brand marketing, telling a story.

This is why any person with a passion, a hobby, or a skill, and enough motivation to produce content on a particular topic — or someone that is selling a brand with a unique story — can build an audience, keep people coming back — and from a business perspective — ultimately, monetize that traffic, make the sale, and establish a leadership position.

…a lot of heavy stuff here from two of the leading marketering philosophers of our time.

How To Choose Domain Names For SEO

11 October, 2008 (07:17) | Domains | By: SEO

Selecting Your Domain Name

Nothing happens on the Internet without traffic. Generic keyword style domain names get a lot of organic type in traffic for nothing more than the keyword weight or gravity of the name itself. These are also the ‘catchy’, or ‘brandable’ names. When choosing a domain name for SEO purposes, there are a couple of main factors to consider:

* Rankability (& Linkability)
* Brand

Google tends to give weight to keywords in the domain name. This increases the importance of selecting a good name. Aaron Wall

While Google gives weight to domains with keywords in the domain name, there is also the risk of having too generic a website name that Google might penalize for keyword stuffing, or that no (legitimate) website owner would want to link to. In Bali, the domain name market is saturated for terms like ‘bali villa rental‘ (Bali is also ranked one the Top Island Destinations in the world). Would you remember any of these website names?

  • www.indobalivillasrental.com
  • www.balivillasforrent.com
  • www.bali-direct-villa.com
  • www.ultimate-bali-villa.com
  • www.hotvillarental.com
  • www.balivillacottage.com
  • www.balibestvillas.com
  • www.balihomevilla.com
  • www.baliprivatevacationvillas.com
  • www.accommodation-bali-villas.com

Probably not. These names are far too generic and they all blur together without distinction. Realistically, no one is going to remember these domain names. This brings us to the importance of mixing Rankability with Branding.

Brand

Brands are a mark of distiction. Brands are memorable. If you are using a generic keyword stuffed domain name, it risks seeming too generic (like the examples above), and it lacks credibility. In a crowded market, brand offers a point of distinction. Balance is suggested here in terms of a domain name for your website.

The balance in terms of Branding and Ranking for your domain name can be boiled down to a simple equation that looks something like this:

  • Generic + Term
  • Keyword + Generic
  • Keyword + Brand

eg. SeoBook, Internet-Marketing, CheapFlights — these domains have both an element of keyword & branding mixed together. Since Google is looking at keywords in your domain and you also want users to remember something about your domain, this equation offers a memorable domain name solution.

Linkability

People with legitimate websites are more likely to link to a branded & memorable domain name, then a spammy keyword-laden domain name. Keywords + Brand are important; I personally wouldn’t want to link to a site such as www.villa-bali-villas.com

Choosing a .com  VS.  .net/.biz/.org  VS.  Country Code TLDs
Dot com’s hold the most weight in terms of domaining and for general search terms, simply because dot com’s are the most readily understood domain extension. Many people will simply append the subject matter they seek with ‘.com’ in their address bar, expecting to find products and services that match the generic keywords they entered. However, most all of the really good .com’s have already been bought. That being the case, there is ample opportunity in using country specific TLDs for region specific websites, as discussed in Domain Name TLDs The Golden Opportunity. It makes sense that Google ranks ccTLD domains higher when the searcher is in that country.

3 Essential Facets of Optimization

7 October, 2008 (06:16) | SEO | By: SEO

There are three distinct facets of search engine optimization

  1. On-page optimization
    On-page optimization is not difficult. It does however take time to make sure all the pieces are in place. This kind of optimization should occur not only on the main web page of a web site, but on every single content page within that site.The very first question to ask when seeking to optimize a web page is: What keyword(s)/keyword phrases is this page targeting?

    • HTML coding: <TITLE>, <META NAME=”DESCRIPTION”>, <META NAME=”KEYWORD”>, <H1> or other headline tags.
    • Keywords within the body text. Concentrate on your users first, then modify for search engines.
    • Proper ALT tags on your images
    • Internal linking structure of your individual website pages (including your site map)
  2. Off-page optimization
    Off-page optimization is also a key ingredient to success with search optimization. Off-page optimization primarily involves

    • inbound link acquisition
    • the building and management of a substantial inbound link portfolio (the quantity, potency, and relevancy of your backlinks)
    • utilization of proper anchor text for your inbound/outbound links
    • email newsletters

    This is an ongoing process.

  3. Content production
    Often the most overlooked phase of optimization. In order to build a truly sound SEO foundation, a site must constantly be growing in terms of indexed pages of relevant content. The more individual Web pages filled with relevant content, the better a site will rank in the major search engines. There are various ways of creating substantial amounts of content. Create a blog for your website. Create a discussion forum.If you are working with an SEO consultant that highlights the importance of content building – in addition to proper on-site and off-site page optimization – then chances are that you’ve found yourself a winner.

3 Basic Areas of Website Architecture

1 October, 2008 (08:11) | Website Design | By: SEO

  1. Domain & URL Structure
  2. Link Structure
  3. Page/Code Structure

Implementing a strong, search engine friendly website architecture enables your SEO efforts to be more effective; not only does it reduce issues that can prevent search engines from effectively spidering your website, it can also help visitors more easily navigate and interact with it.

Start Small
The thing about SEO is that you don’t have to do it all at once. Get your site on a solid architectural foundation, perform your keyword research so you know what keywords need to be targeted, and then start optimizing specific pages for specific keywords. Start small, optimize for the terms that are likely to produce the best results and then over time, as your site gets established start hitting some of the more competitive phrases.

Remember, there is no quick-fix to SEO, it’s an ongoing process. So long as there are more keywords to target, there is more SEO to do. Plan for the long-term approach and tackle it a little at a time, building upon solid architecture.