Link-building And SEO
Posted: May 1, 2012 Filed under: Search Engine Optimization Leave a comment »When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, link-building (i.E. Getting links from other websites to point to yours) is probably the biggest factor that affects your search engine ranking. This is because while it is easy to edit one’s website to increase its relevance, it is much harder to get people to link to you. Every link to your website is considered a “vote of trust” to the search engines. Google uses its patented PageRank method to calculate this trust factor, and use it together with over 200 other signals to rank websites in their search results. Google’s PageRank has a scale of 0 to 10, but it is updated less often these days because of website owners selling textlinks on their high PageRank websites.
Today, the search engines do not only look at quantity, but also the quality of those backlinks, including the website’s theme, content of the page, text surrounding the link, placement of the link, number of external links on that page, the keywords used in the anchor text, how long has the link existed, and finally the linking website’s own trust factor. More importantly, the growth rate of the backlinks (known in the industry as Link Velocity) should look natural to the search engines. Gaining thousands of backlinks overnight may get your website “sandboxed”, i.E. Your website will be buried deep in the search results.
Some of the common places to obtain backlinks are from article directories like ezinearticles.Com – a favourite among SEO consultants. However, this requires writing original and quality articles, because all submissions are reviewed by an editor. The same goes for online press release sites, although, you have more freedom with the content and can openly promote your business. Links from web directories have been somewhat devalued by the search engines and do not have as much weight as they used to. You can also pay bloggers to review or write about your products and services – they usually include a disclosure to be transparent to their readers about the arrangement.
Taking Advantage of Keyword Matching in Adwords
Posted: April 28, 2012 Filed under: Search Marketing Leave a comment »Google Adwords is the most popular online advertising platform in the world and is able to reach 80% of the Internet population. Although the system was designed for the end-user in mind, it isn’t as straight-forward and simple as it seems. A powerful feature in Adwords that is often overlooked is the Keyword Matching feature. Basically, there are 4 types of matching – broad, phrase, exact and negative keyword matching. The following illustrates how these matching options affect your ads, for the keyword “running shoes”:
1) Broad Match – this is the default option and your ad is triggered when someone searches for any word or phrases related to shoes, in any order, and it doesn’t matter whether its singular or plural, e.G. “shoelaces” or “tennis shoes”.
2) Phrase Match – triggers your ad when the searched word contains your keyword and in the same order, e.G. “the best running shoes in Singapore”.
3) Exact Match – triggers your ad only when the search word exactly matches your keyword, i.E. “running shoes” and nothing else.
4) Negative Match – prevents your ad from showing if the searched word contains your keyword, i.E. “running shoes”.
The best way to determine negative keywords is to let your Adwords campaign run for a month, then generate a Search Query Performance report from the Reporting tab. Look at the list of actually searched keywords and block those that are not relevant to your products and services, e.G. A payroll outsourcing company may want to block the word “jobs”. Doing this can save you quite a but of money in the long run, especially if you’re in a very competitive niche.
The Keyword Matching option will allow you to target potential customers even more specifically. This will tighten the number of ad impressions, and as a result, show increased CTR which will eventually affect the Quality Score positively.
Watch Video of An introduction to Google AdWords
Pay-per-Click Programs for Malaysian SMEs
Posted: April 20, 2012 Filed under: Search Marketing Leave a comment »
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the easiest and most efficient means of online product promotion, that allows companies to advertise in the search engine results. Some of the most popular PPC advertising programs are Google’s AdWords, Yahoo’s Search Marketing and Bing’s Ad Center.
The most popular program is arguably Google AdWords, which lets you reach out to almost 80% of the total Internet population. Through AdWords, your ads appear at the top and right-side of the Google’s search results whenever any given search term is entered. As Google is one of the most frequently utilized search engines on the internet, utilizing their advertising service is a great investment idea. In addition, you can set your ads to also appear on Google’s Display Network, which comprises a huge number of websites that participate in their Adsense program.
AdWords also has the most advanced feature set, among the 3 PPC programs – most notably the free Keyword Tool and integration of Analytics. Google also provides other supporting services to help advertisers design their campaigns like Insights and Trends.
PPC vs SEO
Posted: March 10, 2012 Filed under: Search Marketing Leave a comment »
The debate is on, between those who believe in the powers of Pay Per Click (PPC) and those who believe in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which is, according to some, is free of charge. Is PPC really effective or just a waste of money, and is SEO really free?
Argument 1: Conversion Rate vs Traffic
For those who believe in PPC, the argument is that PPC has a better conversion rate compared to SEO. This statement may be true, since PPC looks more like a targetted advertisement based on keyword search, and that will attract visitors who genuinely seeks the product for purchase.
However, SEO generates high traffic. It is estimated that 88% of traffic for a site comes from SEO efforts compared to only 12% estimate from PPC. This is because SEO will push a site to a top rank, and for visitors who are acquainted with the differences between a search result and an advertisement result, they might ignore the advertisement result from PPC. In fact, the SEO will be able to capture those who initially thought about researching on a product, which eventually becomes a sale. In fact, some newer search engines with some very strict algorithm without advertisement influences, will only show results of sites based on SEO.
Argument 2: Customizing
PPC can be easily customised. When you decide to change the keyword for your online marketing, PPC can change it immediately and come into effect within hours. However, this cannot be done by the SEO since any change will require a search engine spider crawl to index the content of the changes. But then again, PPC can only allow you so many words in the advertisement box, as opposed to the SEO which may utilize the title tag to properly craft a piece of message that will entice customers.
Argument 3: Set-up
PPC can be easily set-up, since it is actually driven by the singular factor of advertising dollars. However, do remember that if it is easy for you, it is also easy for your competitors. There is no definite competitive advantage over here, except for ho w much money you are willing to spend for the PPC campaign.
Meanwhile, SEOs are different. SEO will need to take into consideration a lot of factors such as content, URL, searchability of your site, the type of programming used for the site and many more. If your content is strong and your SEO brings it up to the top ranks in a few months’ time, it is more likely to stay there unless there is a change in Google’s algorithm or your SEO strategy is beaten by a competitor.
Argument 4: Staying on Top Ranks
Many people will argue that PPC actually lets your site stay on top rank, since it is paid advertisement and surely the search engine will put you there automatically until your contract expires. However, once the contract expires, your site will no longer be up there that easily.
Integration
In reality, PPC and SEO should both be used as a strategy to get things moving. PPC is a solution for the short term top rank of your site, drawing in the first traffic to boost your ranking. Google’s, for example, takes into consideration not just the content and the usual stuff that is virtually on the site, but also the number of visitors. If the number of visitors for the site is high, Google will also consider that this site is valid with valuable information, hence bring the site to a higher rank.
It is not healthy to try to split both functions from each other, as both has their own strengths. A wise SEO professional will combine the usage of both methods, using PPC to help boost the ranking first before SEO picks up the site into a top rank. This way, both methods will complement each other pretty well, ultimately for the benefit of the company.
SEO Writing that Attracts a Crowd
Posted: May 27, 2011 Filed under: Search Engine Optimization 1 Comment »While most writers may see the task of writing as a personal endeavor, using the appropriate SEO techniques will allow you to use your writing prowess to benefit your business. While most people usually see the need to hire an additional person for this specific task, there are certain guidelines that you may follow to make this task as profitable as possible even if you were to carry it out yourself. Here are some tips that you may look into if you are interested in writing for search engine optimization purposes. Make sure that you consider all these factors to make the task as profitable for you as possible.
First and foremost, it is important that you learn about the various techniques that you may use to find out which keywords will benefit you the most. After all, there is no point in writing even a single article for search engine optimization purposes if you do not have the right keywords to use. If you writing about a certain topic, the best thing that you can do is to think about the different words that are related to your concept and to include as many of them as possible in your article. This way, you would be able to attract more site traffic and increase our chances to make profit.
It will also be more beneficial to you if you use the appropriate keyword research tool in finding which words and phrases will benefit your SEO measures the most. Believe it or not, certain techniques will allow you to simply use search engines to find the most beneficial words to use. There are also various programs and applications that you may employ to achieve this purpose. Simply choose one that will be easy for you to use and incorporate it to your online marketing plan.
Another factor that you should consider in using your writing skills for search engine optimization purposes is the importance of using the keywords in the appropriate frequency. If you were simply to repeat the keywords in a succession, there is a big chance that the search engines will see through it. To maintain a good search engine rating, it is imperative that you use the keywords for just the right amount of time. Avoid using it every sentence, for it will give your article a poor rating, but avoid using it sparingly as well.
While you may be specifically writing your SEO articles to gain good search engine rating, you should keep in mind that people will be reading your articles as well. Because of this, you should see to it that you use the right pieces of information for every single piece that you write. Make sure that you will keep them as error-free as possible to see to it that everyone who will read it will get the appropriate amount of satisfaction from it. This way, you would not only be able to get more traffic to your site, but you would also be able to establish a good reputation among the members of your target market.
