We pick up here where we left off last time. We had just discussed the importance of unique and consistent users as well as the current state of content. Today we will discuss the other 2 huge concerns for any launching website.

Design: Size may not matter but looks sure do. Which of us hasn’t been searching for content or information and the web and rejected a website not for it’s content but because it was hard to read or navigate? Your website doesn’t have to be the most beautiful and complex. In short it just needs to be easily accessible to as many users as possible. What does this involve? Consider the following:

Colors: Make sure all colors match in all web browser formats. Test them in as many formats as possible. There are many color wheel web site matching color sites on-line…take advantage of them.

Access to Info: Don’t be sneaky and out smart yourself. I’ve seen many websites that try to lead you to a PPC or Affiliate site without offering any benefit. Though you may get the inebriated or otherwise distracted click…most users hate this technique and will leave your site.

KISS: As they say…keep it simple stupid: Keep your content relevant and encourage outside input. Address the most common concerns of your reader first and always provide a forum for feedback. Most readers who submit comments or questions will come back for a response…even if they hated your original post.

Linking: As we discussed earlier in the ‘Red Queen Theory’, for every advancement a predator makes…the prey must also advance. In this case, most search engines have algorithms and formulas that are designed to recognize useless links. For example, if you have a site that sells or provides information for teens…a link to a pornographic site is not a valid link. This is easily obtained through linking software and outsourcing but provides no real value to website, even if that site has a million hits.

Most websites will still supply linking but only with approval. For instance, if you provide business consulting most sites will ask to see your web page, portfolio, and have a phone call or other contact before an exchange takes place. This is a good policy for long-term web-sites since some websites may actually lower your SEO ratings.

In conclusion, the days of the quick get rich web schemes are gone. You should look at your website as a long-term not short-term investment. Plan for an initial investment and schedule a promotional budget for the first year. Only on the Internet do people believe that a venture can make them rich overnight. It may still happen…but it is the exception and certainly not the rule.

Popularity: 84% [?]

Share This

Do you remember when search engine optimization meant nothing more then building a website with keywords and search engine submission. The world of the web has changed a great deal since then. In psychology they have a predator/prey relationship known as the ‘Red Queen Theory’. This name comes from famous idea communicated in “Through the Looking Glass”, better known as “Alice in Wonderland”. Upon arriving in the kingdom of the Red Queen, Alice discovers that people have to run as fast as they can just to stay in place. The same is true in the world of nature. The ‘Red Queen Theory’ represents the idea that for every advancement of the predator the prey also advances; thus we all run as fast as we can to keep our place. So, what does this have to do with SEO?

In the beginning we all figured out how the search engines were rating pages; the methods were pretty straight forward. Pages were basically ranked by the number of relevant keywords and popularity. Popularity could be established via search engines, advertising, or paying firms to directly visit a number of times. However, as people began to exploit the weaknesses of this system, the system evolved. In fact, no one but a precious few Google employees knows how they rate their websites in total now. However, there are some methods being promoted that have come to light that are proven to improve your web site rankings. The following is the first in a series directing you on how to use the most common methods and an explanation of the correct/incorrect ways to utilize them.

Unique and Constant Users: It is nice to get unique users but there is reason to believe that pages are also ranked by the amount of consistent traffic they receive. It is pretty easy and cheap to get a “one hit wonder” site and search engines have figured this out. You can go to an outsourcing site and for about $.25 per hit, you can pay for as many ‘unique’ web hits as you want. This is why most sites now consider not only unique users but consistent users. To gain this audience it is important to provide content that is useful and compelling. You must offer content that will draw visitors which brings us to…

Article/Web Content: Article and web content can also be obtained through outsourcing. Understand, the days of plagiarism whether from another source or yourself are over. Search engines will penalize you if they see the same content repeated on more than one page. ‘Article Spinning’ was created to provide a simple answer to this. Simply put, ‘Article Spinning’ is taking the content from one article and changing the words just enough to try and fool the search engines so they recognize it as new content. There are even software programs to take a single article and spin it into many. This is still somewhat effective, however, search engines have begun more extensive searches to look for this method and as the software is introduced to the public, it is also incorporated by the search engines. If you want to effectively promote your site…it is important that you have authentically valuable content. The web has grown to large to compete with anything less. You can still use outsourcing, but put thought into what content you want to offer and specify your articles as much as possible.

Keywords: SEO 101

Popularity: 38% [?]

Share This

Understanding the meaning of search engine optimization (SEO) - It’s the process of improving the amount of volume of traffic to a website via natural or organic results through the search engines. The higher you rank, ultimately the more visitors you will receive depending on if your site is optimized for the proper keywords.

SEO can target many different types of natural searches, from image search, video search and local search. To really understand SEO you must have a somewhat understanding of how the algorithms work and what people search for. Things that help to create higher rankings include:

• Making sure your code is clean
• Using the proper linking structure
• Making sure your site can be crawled
• Using the proper meta data
• Adding good unique content

There are different kinds of SEO, white hat and “Black Hat” tactics being the more popular terms that you will hear about. You want to steer clear of blackout SEO which is any method that tries to trick the search engines into giving you a higher ranking. Things that are considered black hat SEO tricks: Using link farms and keyword stuffing. I hope this post helps clarify and explain exactly what SEO is in Layman’s terms.

Keywords: What is SEO | SEO | SEO for beginners

Popularity: 46% [?]

Share This