How Do You Drive Traffic to Your Site?

If you are new to internet marketing, you would have discovered that driving traffic to your website is a formidable task. However, if you learn the ropes to drive traffic to your website, you can reap a ton of rewards. Here are some creative ideas that may help you.
Start blogging on several sites and leave comments on other people’s blog posts. Make sure to include your URL and hotlink where possible. Remain focused on your issue as you need to make sure that you write to get approved and captivate your readers. Write to establish trust as an expert on subject. Putting in all the efforts and getting it trashed as spam is such a waste of time.
Add as many suitable themes, extensions and widgets as possible to your blogging site. There are so many free add-ons to make your site attractive. Consistently analyze your site to see how you can make it user friendly, stimulating and attractive rather than a run of the mill boring site. Their visit should fulfill their desire to get information and new experience. Add intriguing and interesting podcasts, videos and audios to your site.
Enlist your friends and ask their help to spread the word about your website. They can use their website, contacts, blogs and contacts to drive traffic to your website.
Sign up with a social bookmarking site and share your bookmarked site with other readers who share the same interests as you. Add reference and links to your websites. Most social sites are used by many people as specific interest search engines. Add the bookmarks to your site and increase your traffic. Analyze as to what products users are searching for and add links to interesting and relevant products. The more such links you have bookmarked, the bigger your following will be. The more appealing information that you impart to the readers, the more they will return to your site for new information.
Use social photo sharing sites like Flickr to drive readers to our website. Attract them by adding smart tags. Write a post in your blogsite and link to your Flickr page. This way both the sites will work together to drive traffic to your site.
Twitter is another useful tool to drive traffic to you site. Make sure to tweet every post or comment you make. Use tools like bit.ly to shorten your links to post pages and link them in your tweets. Make sure not tweet only those links. Intermittently tweet some other useful information, tidbits, quotes, humor etc. to keep your tweets interesting. This will also increase your Twitter following and work in unison with your blog site. One more thing make sure to add a link to your site in your Twitter profile. That will drive more traffic to your site.
Add links to industry specific sites and network with them by contacting them. Most will be pleased to help you build your web traffic and promote the common cause.
Submit your feeds to as many blog site directories as possible. This is a good way to drive up traffic from other sites to yours.
Modify your posts to the article and submit to as many article directories as possible. Use the resource box to drive traffic to your site and create valuable backlinks to your site. When ranking your page, search engines give higher weight to backlinks from articles published in many reputable article directories.
Your strategy to build traffic should be to first and foremost offer what the reader wants. You service a valuable purpose when you provide them with interesting information, products and services

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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Why is SEO So Important for E-Commerce Websites? The Basics.

In this modern age, it is increasingly important to make sure your websites are optimized for the major search engines through the use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices.  The current top three search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Let’s face it though; Google is the major player and they set the standards when it comes to the Internet search industry.
There are a few basic practices you can follow to make your site more friendly to the search engines and thus rank higher for certain keyword phrases when users search for them.  You just need to make sure you are conducting these practices properly.  Being at the top of the search engines for your target keywords is a make or break factor for the success of your business.
There are millions of websites in existence and there could be thousands competing for the keywords you are trying to rank  for.  The Internet is a very competitive marketplace so it is vital to stay on top of the current SEO trends.  Not being recognized by the top search engines can be very frustrating, especially after putting a lot of work and money into creating and designing your website.
Each search engine uses a different algorithm to conduct their searches.  These algorithms are kept secret by the companies and are always changing.  However, there are numerous people whose jobs consist of attempting to deconstruct these algorithms to figure out how the engines rank pages.
In order to increase your web page’s rank in the search engine results, take the following advice into consideration:
Keywords:

• Remember that content will always be king.  Fill your web pages with relevant information that will help visitors – search engines love this.
• Fill your content with your target keywords but don’t overdo it by stuffing keywords into your pages.  You need to keep your keyword density to no more than one anchor text keyword hyperlink per 100 words of content.  If the pages of your site contain relevant keywords to a searcher’s search phrase then your site has a higher likelihood of appearing on the results pages.
• Be specific with your keywords.  If you are selling “Men’s Nike Air Jordans” target that phrase not “Michael Jordan shoes.”
• When choosing keywords, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher.  What would you search (WWYS)?

Meta Tags (Title, Description & Keywords):

• The title tag is the description of the current page you are on that appears on the top bar of your web browser.  For SEO purposes, you need to use your first targeted keyword at the beginning of your title and try to describe what your website is all about In 10-15 words.
• The keyword tag consists of the list of keywords you have put together in your market research.  Search your competitors websites and see what keywords they are using then rank them in order of relevancy from first to last.
• The description tag is a short explanation about the content of your website and its topic.  Keep this under 20-25 words and try to use at least three to four target keywords.  This is what users will see on the search engine results pages under the link to your site.
• For the best SEO results, edit the meta tags for each page of your website to match the contents of that specific page.

Submit Your Site to the Search Engines:

• It is a quick and painless process to submit to the top search engines.  Simply visit the websites of the major search engines and fill out the corresponding submission forms.
• You should also submit your website to the DMOZ.org directory.  It can take a few months to get listed but it is a great SEO technique and most sites listed in the directory get higher priority in the search results over sites that are not listed.
• Patience is a virtue when it comes to submission.  It can take days or weeks for the search engine spiders to actually crawl your website and get indexed.

Build Links by Submitting Your Site to Directories and Niche Websites:

• The more meaningful links from high ranked websites linking to your site, the higher your search rating.  However, this does not mean you should practice “link farming” or paying for links.  This is considered a negative practice and can actually have a negative impact on your results rating and can even get you banned from the search engines.
• The best way to be featured in directories is to make a profile with a link to your page.
• Article marketing is another very valuable SEO tactic.  Write articles with keyword hyperlinks pointing to your page.  Other sites are happy to have quality content and you obtain linkage, so both sides win!  You will also see direct traffic from these links which will help your site gain popularity.
• Link building is a time-consuming process that can take long periods of time to see real results, so again – be patient!

By following these simple SEO tactics, you can raise your ranking in the search engines!
 
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
Collectibles : Pogo Games

SEO & Social Media Marketing To The Rescue

Now that the website is live, we just sit back, celebrate at the launch party with a bottle of bubbly and wait for all that traffic and recognition, right? Dream on!
Internet marketing and online promotion require ongoing attention and acute care. The good news is that this part of the “web-dev” process can be the most fun and bring the most joy – both emotionally and financially. Checking your website stats and seeing that you have ten times the traffic increase when compared to last month, and having to hire additional help to respond to all of the contact form submissions can be very exciting times for any online business. (Yay! #success) Where do I start then?
A properly crafted website well on it’s way with this.
During the website development phase great care and attention was taken to lay the ground work for a sound SEO (search engine optimization) foundation. Well thought out page titles, meta tags, keyword sensitive copy-writing and a solid interlinking system should have all been in place. Having these items in place will greatly help in increasing your relevance in the eyes of major search engines. Web directories and Search engine submission
One of the first steps after launching the website should be submitting your site to the top web directories and search engines. Getting listed can sometimes cost a nominal fee and at times can be a long process, so it’s important to get the ball rolling.
Getting your site known and listed on directories can help in numerous ways:
People who use these directories can find your site
Lets the search engines know that your website exists
Provides links back to your site from some top page ranked sources
Link building
Link building is another important step in promoting your website. Having in-bound links listed on highly reputable and relevant websites is probably at the top of Google’s long list of criteria for determining your pages rank. Make sure that your approach with link building is ethical.
(Not-so-good practices such as using link farming services can quickly make your site disappear in the eyes of the major search engines.) The Best practices of getting your links listed on websites that are relevant to yours can direct visitors to you as well as making search engines say: “Hey if that top ranking website thinks that your site has reputable and relevant information then it must be so.”
Best practices for link building include (but are not limited to) the following:
Writing articles for websites or blogs and including a link back to your site in your authors bio
Writing articles and submitting them to article publication services
Adding a link on your site to a website you hope to get your name on, contacting them and asking for a reciprocal link in return
Having content on your website that is actually inbound link worthy
Keeping your content fresh
A very large mistake many people make after launching their website is never adding new content or updating existing pages. This hurts your visibility in numerous ways. If there is never anything new to see visitors will never feel the need to return. The same is true for search engine spiders – they want to eat up and index all of your new content.
Top experts also feel that search engines give more importance to sites with frequently updated content as the info must be time relevant. Spiders keep track of how often new content is added to your site and determine the frequency of their trips back to you based on this data.
The more content you produce, the more visits you’ll have from all your friendly neighbors on the net. Harnessing social media.
Using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter can help keep you in touch with your fans, tribe and client base. Social Media is a great avenue for building upon old relations and creating new ones as well. The viral nature of social media marketing also provides huge potential for exposing your website to an exponential number of people, friends of theirs and their friends’ friends, and so on ad infinitum.
There are many ways to market your website and get your name out there so that your people find you.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
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SEO: How To Research For Free

The first step of any online campaign is deciding what you want to be known for, particularly when aiming for a stronger presence on the search engines. These terms or search phrases that you wish to be seen for are called ‘keywords’. Researching and implementing these keywords into your website is crucial to the success of your website. It is vital that you look into both the search volume of each keyword and also the competition levels. By conducting a bit of research first you will gain a good understanding of how your market looks online, and also what keywords you could realistically achieve good positions for.
There are many ways you can conduct keyword research. The internet offers different tools, both free and paid for, and in addition to that there are some commands on the search engines that will also give you some clues. Free tools such as Google’s Adword’s keyword tool give you a basic look into monthly search volumes and competition levels, however it is sometimes questionable as to how accurate these figures can be. If you want to step it up a notch, you could try paying for software such as Word Tracker. Word Tracker will give you a much more thorough analysis of each word and ultimately give you a better view of the market.
For most people, using the free tools and search commands are enough to give a good idea of what keywords you should target with your website. Listed below are a few useful search commands that you could use to do a little research:
1. “In URL : ‘keyword’”
By typing this into a search engine and replacing the word ‘keyword’ with your keyword, you will get a list, and more importantly a number, of websites that are using your keyword in their URLs. This will give you a solid idea of how many websites are directly targeting your keyword.
2. “In title: ‘keyword’”
2nd most important to the URL, the meta title is vital to targeting a particular keyword. By using this command you will be able to see how many websites are using your keyword in their meta titles.
3. “In text: ‘keyword”
This command will give you a really good rounded view of the market. It will produce a list of websites that are talking about your keyword. The perfect keyword is one that has a substantial amount of traffic, yet a relatively low competition level. Of course, the keyword must be highly relevant to your website and business to ensure that any traffic that comes from the search engines is looking for exactly what you offer.
You will probably find that when you start to look into keywords, by varying the phrase slightly you can find keywords with high traffic levels and low competition…this is exactly what you are looking for. Also, don’t ignore keywords with low search volumes; if these keywords are relevant to your website the traffic they could bring could be a lot higher in quality if you are targeting a niche area.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
Collectibles : Pogo Game

How Much is Too Much to Pay for SEO?

How much is too much to pay for SEO? (…or should you try to do it yourself first?)
Yes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an excellent way of getting leads.
Yes, good SEO can level the playing field between you and competitors.
Yes, you should do some level of SEO.
…but how much is too much?
Too much? Good question.
You’ll find that everybody that uses the word “Internet” is going to suggest that you engage in SEO and many will make you an offer to do it for you. There’s nothing wrong with that as far it goes. But what you have to decide is how much you should pay for having it done.
Some Perspectives On Paying For SEO
Here are a few important tips to help you decide the answer to that question:
(1) First, make sure you really do need outside assistance. If you’re looking for better SEO placement for relatively unique or so-called “long tail” key words (e.g. “pine street rental condominiums” ) it might be worth trying it yourself before you involve an SEO consultant or SEO firm.
(2) SEO is not rocket-science. Mostly it’s monotonous drudgery. So what you pay should not be about hiring “expertise”. The SEO effort is more like 90% drudgery, 8% experience, and 2% expertise and you should compensate accordingly.
(3) The value of SEO boils down to “clicks” – preferably clicks that result in a sale conversion. SEO should be measured on the same cost-per-click basis any search-engine-marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign would be – i.e. the basis of ROI. If you don’t know how many clicks or orders you want, do not engage SEO until you do.
(4) SEO is not static and optimization is competitive. You may be on the first page today but your competitors aren’t necessarily going to sit still forever. You could be bumped at any time. So if you’re not prepared to maintain an ongoing and strategic SEO effort – no matter what the competition does – then save your money.
(5) Search engine “secrets” are just that – secret. The search engines aren’t telling them and anybody that claims to know the secrets is just guessing. It doesn’t mean they can’t help but it’s not as if they have some special advantage. Impossible.
(6) Frankly, from the search engine point-of-view, if your site doesn’t have enough useful and relevant content to be on the first page, ethical SEO notwithstanding, eventually it won’t be. This is the objective of the search engines and there’s little likelihood that the SEO “expert” pitching you is going to out-think Google, Yahoo!, Bing and others in the long run.
Is Doing SEO Yourself An Option?
It’s almost always worth taking a first crack at SEO yourself. Often only a little effort can make a significant difference. If you do want to make the effort, invest a few dollars in a do-it-yourself SEO guide and try to adhere to the following minimum suggestions:
(1) Focus on keywords that are realistic. You’re not likely to get a good placement with a keyword like “real estate” but you might get first page with a keyword like “Hill street real estate”;
(2) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in the link to your page. Instead of saying “click HERE” make sure the text for the link says something like “for more information about HILL STREET REAL ESTATE”;
(3) Make sure your keyword is mentioned in your page title, your keyword list, your page content, bolded page content;
(4) For every keyword you’re interested in, make sure you have an appropriate page to focus on it (and that it complies with #1, #2, and #3 above)
(5) Register with search engine webmaster accounts so that you can submit your site to them quickly and efficiently (search for “google webmaster”, “bing webmaster”, or “yahoo webmaster” to find the details).
Don’t Forget Links
Lastly, if you going to make an initial stab yourself, understand that quality links to your site are a vital factor in your ultimate placement. The more the merrier. To get a head-start on building links to your site, do the following:
(1) Enroll in all relevant local or regional directories – (search “free directories” to find lists of these); many will be free, some will want nominal fees or backlinks. You decide.
(2) Ensure that any press releases and announcements you make refer to your site and specific pages within it.
(3) Post pages of your site to delicious.com or to digg.com and to similar bookmarking sites.
(4) Ask local friends and business acquaintances if they will exchange links with you.
(5) On the other hand, DO NOT sign up for paid links without the guidance of someone experienced in Internet marketing.
Do these things sound particularly difficult? No.
And well worth taking a stab at by yourself. From there you can decide whether its desirable or worth the cost to pay for SEO services from a 3rd-party.
No Matter What You Do…
You need to think in terms of what kind of return you are going to get on your investment. The calculation is simple: Divide the total SEO cost (yours or a 3rd-party’s) by the number of orders/sales you’ve received as a result of the effort. Then compare that cost-per-sale against your margin-per-sale. If you have margin left over, you’re in the right territory. If you don’t, you’ve got a problem.
The bottom line is that when you talk with any SEO service provider, you must think in terms of ROI. Not in terms of “secrets” or first pages or top spots, but ROI. (Note: it is theoretically possible to be on the 3rd page and still get a positive ROI – not likely, but possible) If the ROI doesn’t work, then search engine optimization may not be for you and other Internet marketing methods might yield better results and a better ROI.
 
Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
Collectibles : Pogo Game

Optimize Your Images On Search Engines

Starting competitive advantages in the business is vital both in online and offline aspects. If you are a business organization, you need to distinguish your organization from the competition, especially if your business is not on commodity products. You can easily distinguish these advantages on the internet because of the already established fundamentals of the business.
For some companies, they get their edge from targeted advertising from high-traffic websites. For others, it is through social media marketing.
But one relatively easy way to drive relevant traffic to your website without too much effort is to optimize your images for search engines. Think of it as a tiny webpage within the website structure. It is recommended for you to include an anchor text, descriptive tagging, and URL structure to maximize results.
Search for the Right Image
Successful bloggers, writers, and website owners know the value of using the right image for their text content. It adds another dimension to articles and enables readers to appreciate their webpage even more. However, many fail to use images for search engine optimization purposes. It is in fact a good way to drive backlinks and visitors. There’s no need to upload your own pictures. A lot of stock photos are available from free from sites like Flickr and iStockPhoto among others. It is also a good idea to use Google Search to find good photos. Make sure that you are not violating any copyright if you do this (look for Creative Commons licensing).
Make Proper Use of Keywords
Keywords are an integral part of any search engine optimization effort. It is used to optimize all kinds of digital assets from videos to podcasts. You will really benefit if you use keywords wisely for your images. Rename the image because having “012345RR.jpg” as the file name isn’t going to help. It is a very simple step and can go a long way in helping your website rank better.
Use Descriptive Text
It is important to use descriptive tags, file names, and alt text for your images. This is because search engines cannot read images and would use its surrounding text as reference. Make use of this feature by adding keywords on the descriptive text, anchor text, and any other tags (related to the image). Bear in mind that anchor text is one of the most important elements to optimize your image effectively so take advantage of it.
As you can see, image SEO is a straight-forward process that provides tenfold benefit from your efforts. Follow the guidelines outlined above and you’ll see your more traffic coming in from image search soon.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
Collectibles : Pogo Game

Meta Title Tags are Gold

How to write compelling page titles
From an SEO perspective, the title of the webpage is very important. These are the words that describe what your page is about and are the first words that a search engine sees when it crawls your webpage looking for content to add to its index.
The page title is also what the searcher sees in a search result – so the page title is very important in describing what the page is about and if the title meets the searcher’s criteria, then it is more likely to be clicked on and your page opened.
It is safe to assume that the majority of searchers these days will be tempted to either click or ignore based on the content of the title. This is like your ad in the natural search section of the search engine results page.
Now that the impact of the title of the webpage is obvious, let me explain how to write an effective and powerful title.
First the basics! The webpage title aka the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page. So, as no two pages on your website are the same, hence why should their title tags be? Therefore, as a general rule, title tags for each page on your website should be unique. This is an added bonus from an SEO perspective, because now you can target many more keywords and spread your reach across search engine indexes.
The second thing to consider is whether you want to add your company name in the title tag? The answer is that it depends on your branding strategy. If your company name is a known brand, or if you want to promote your firm name as a brand or if your company name consists of keyword(s) that you want to target such as ABC Family Solicitors targeting the keyword “Family Solicitors”, then by all means add your company name in the title tag. If not, then use the limited but valuable space to add your targeted keywords. If you do decide to add your company name, make sure that it is at the end of the title. This is because you want search engines and your visitors to first read
the targeted keyword(s) for that page and then the company name.
It is important to remember that since the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page, you need to make sure that the title tag is relevant. For example, the title tag for an about us page is “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”. Hence, the title tag does its job of informing what the page is about. Now, you might have noticed that instead of “About Us – ECommerce Partners”, we added “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”.
The reason is because “Website Design Company” is one of the key phrases we want to target and so, we replaced “About Us” with “About Website Design Company”. This brings out an important point. We need to do a keyword analysis before we write an effective and powerful title tag.
Keyword mining and analysis is a very important part of writing compelling page titles and is a part of the Search Engine Optimization service that First One On provides to their clients.
The next step after keyword analysis will be to write down title tags for each and every web page on your website.
Please be careful when writing title tags and never, never over stuff keywords in the title. Doing so will undermine the power of the title tag and defeat the purpose of better ranking in the search engines. The title tag is the title of your web page and so it must be relevant and meaningful. Remember, this is the title in your AD in the natural search listings of the search engine.
General Suggestion: You cannot promote all of your keywords in one page. Normally, you should promote 3 to 5 keyword phrases per page. The ‘Title tag’ should contain up to 3 important keywords that match to the body of the page content. If the keyword you are trying to promote is highly competitive, you can consider repeating the important keyword twice in the first 100 words of the page content.
Limit the length of the title keywords to 65 characters or less, including spaces. There’s no reason to have the engines cut off the last word and have it replaced with a “…” Note that some search engines are now accepting longer titles and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters.
Use a divider when splitting up the keywords. We generally recommend the use of the “|” symbol aka the pipe bar. Others choose the arrow “>” or hyphen “-” and both work well.
Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 heading tag can be valuable from both a SEO keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to the page from the search result listing will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked on. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they’re reasonably certain fits their intended search query.

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com
Collectibles : Pogo Game