A Guide To Search Engine OptimizationHow To Boost The Rankings Of Your Websites |
ConclusionSEO Tools, Software & Services That May Help You Tools to monitor your website You can’t just put your website on the net with right keywords and all the right touches and expect your traffic and ranking will remain constant. As the web is an ever changing landscape, you have to keep track of your own web results like what is happening with the competition and also the best and highest ranked sites. There are many useful tools to help you find out what exactly is happening. 1. A tool which you can use to test your own website links or other websites for broken links: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html 2. With this tool you can check search engines for the number of back links to your URL i.e. other web pages linking to your site: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/ 3. It sometimes becomes important to know where the servers of your hosting company are physically located. Because, some search engines like Google have the ability to filter search results based on their physical location called geotargeting. This could be used to determine why your site is showing in only a certain country. This link can also be used to research the country location of a particular competitor’s website: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/ 4. In order to track the location of the visitor or a customer to your website: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/ 5. In order to check the Yahoo! web ranking of your’s or your competitor’s website use : http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank/ 6. Here is a link to check the web ranking of a website using a Mac or Apple computer: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/pagerank-mac/ 7. You need a Google AdSense account for using this. This link provides you with charts and reports which will help you analyze traffic, clicks, and results from your AdSense advertising http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-charts/ 8. If you have an AdSense account, you can analyze your website address or another website address to see what Google ads will be displayed when the customer selects certain website names or keywords: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/ 9. This link will take you to a cooperative advertising network where you can join to display and share your ads with other website owners: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/ 10. You can add the Search Functionality on your website which uses Google. This works only if your site is listed in the Google Index. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/search/ 11. Here are some links to free website counters which you can use on your website to track your traffic and hits: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/counter/ http://www.amazingcounters.com/?ref=gad033 http://www.cyber-counter.com/signup.php http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html http://www.free-counters.net/ The use of automatic Submit tools for the major search engines and directories may not be desirable. If you submit to some search engines incorrectly your pages could actually be deleted permanently from their index or directory. At the same time, you may find manual submissions too time consuming. Experts have suggested that you use software that submits pages as if you were doing it by hand. TopDog, Web Position Gold and Submit Wolf Pro are good choices. Some others are: CommandoPro Submission Software, Add Web Site Promoter, VSE Be Found (Mac), Submission 2000. Be very careful in selecting the company or service that you hire for search engine optimization, if you do not wish to do it yourself. Beware of those who promise top engine rankings through the use of Meta tags or by building doorway pages or using link farms or cloaked pages (submitting pages that are different from the actual live pages). If the firm tells you that you need to improve content, position keywords carefully, and seek quality reciprocal links, perhaps that is an indication of a good firm to work with. 10. Determining Return On Investment With SEO We have looked at various strategies and options related to search engine optimization. The key determinant that you have to use to formulate your own strategies would be to ascertain the ROI from your plan. There seem to be a surfeit of techniques, suggestions and tips for SEO. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Moreover, the importance of each option is closely linked to your own objective, and consequently your budget in terms of management time and expenditure. How do you measure ROI? Americans conduct an estimated 790 million searches per week, according to research from ComScore Media Metrix. The Yankee Group reports that only 20 percent of U.S. companies tracking their search referrals are measuring performance beyond the initial click-through to the web site. This is very low. The key to a successful search engine marketing strategy is constant testing, revising and optimizing based on metrics. In order to maximize your return on investment, you must measure the performance beyond click-through—by measuring the complete interaction of your visitors with your site from acquisition to conversion to retention. Search engine marketing is similar to advertising and other marketing campaigns. The marketing people would be interested in knowing the results of any campaign and most often the result is desired in terms of increase in company revenues. Name recognition, brand image creation and other outcomes are important; however the bottom line is sales. ROI should be able to determine your website’s conversion rate in terms of the ability to persuade your visitors to take the action that you desire them to take. At the same time, the success in terms of increase in sales depends on several other factors such as the competitiveness and value in your product or service offerings and the quality of your website to induce the visitor to take action. The search engine marketing effort is to bring the right targeted visitor, and bring the visitor to the right section at the right time. Converting such a targeted visitor to a customer is not within the ambit of SEO. How does search engine optimization compare with other options for online advertising and promotion? Jupiter Research predicts that by 2006 the spending on E mail marketing shall be $ 9.4 billion, whereas the spending on online advertisements shall be $ 15.6 billion, and that on digital marketing initiatives such as campaigns, promotions, sweepstakes, coupons etc. shall be around $ 19.3 billion. Forrester predicts that total online advertising spend should be $ 42 billion by 2005 a significant 9.5% of total ad spending. Costs in search engine marketing include the cost of optimization services as well as the paid inclusion and pay per click programs. Typically the cost of optimization for a small to mid-sized site through a firm may run from a few thousand dollars to over $ 50000 for a large site. If you do it in-house consider around four person months’ work plus around two person months of maintenance time over the ensuing six months. How do you compare costs per click or costs per thousand impressions for search engine optimization vis-à-vis other forms of advertising? PwC report that the effective cost per thousand impressions or views (CPM) for an online ad is around $ 3.50 for a general site (though it could be higher at $ 10 to $ 100 for other specialized sites) compared to $ 19 for newspaper ads and $ 16 for Prime-time TV. The CPM for search engines is certainly higher, but then it leads to targeted impressions. Thus it is important to look at targeting and conversion rates, not just CPM. Clickthrough rates for ad banners, in general, can be as low as 0.4 to 0.5%. Conversion rates would show you what percentage of visitors actually resulted in business. As discussed below, this may be easier done in e-commerce sites. Cost per click for important keywords at Overture could be as high as $ 0.50 to $ 5 or $ 10. The average bid reported according to one source is $0.73 per click (for Overture). Thus this is already lower than the cost per visitor for online ad banners. Overture can only cater to a small percentage of search traffic, while Google, Yahoo and others comprise the larger portion; thus it can be said with certainty that SEO is the most cost effective ROI generator. Balancing Paid Search Engines and programs with Free Search Engines for maximum ROI It is crucial that you optimize your performance with both Paid programs as well as free listings. Search engine marketing is like playing 3-D chess—it is complex and multi-dimensional. To win, the marketer must not only select the right keywords and align them with content that matches the user’s query target, but also select the right search vehicle for each keyword. The marketer must weigh the value of long-term results gained from organic search listings against the short-term returns of paid advertising. In most cases, the right answer is to have a balance of both. It is a misconception that free listings do not generate traffic. In fact, the top 2 free listings receive more than 50% of the clicks. This is too high a number to ignore. You would be missing out on important traffic if you completely ignore free search engines. On the other hand, paid listing bring you focused traffic. This again supports the fact that a balance of both kinds of listings is extremely vital for successful Search Engine Marketing. ROI Tracking Tools There are several tracking tools that measure the traffic coming to your website and that can identify what search engines and what keywords have brought that traffic. Moreover tracking tools can also tell you what the visitor has done online, including page visits, time spent, actions taken (relevant for e-commerce sites or query/contact forms) and so on. You will have to find your survey methodologies to relate the traffic history to the revenue results. Some of these are mentioned below: DoubleClick's DART http://www.doubleclick.com/us/advertisers/adserving/dart5/ DoubleClick's DART paid placement and advertising ROI tracking tool generates web-based reports on cost per click, number of clicks, overall media cost, conversion rates, gross sales, return on investment (ROI), and net profit. Such tools are suited to online merchant sites. WebTrends from NetIQ http://www.netiq.com Offers server-based software to determine how many visitors are coming to the Web site, where they're coming from, what they're doing on the Web site, and which search engines are sending the most traffic, along with which phrases drive the most traffic from each search engine. HitBox from WebSideStory http://www.websidestory.com/ It uses a different data collection method, by enabling site owners to add code to their site. It tracks the same type of information that the WebTrends product does. Urchin http://www.urchin.com/ This is another useful measuring and tracking tool. 11. Resources The final section of this guide focuses on some of the most popular and effective tools as well as resources for the Search Engine Marketer. We discussed earlier, the importance of using various software for all aspects of Search Engine Marketing. This section lists out some of the very useful software tools. It also highlights a few comprehensive sources for Search Engine News and Information. The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) was formed recently with the objective of increasing awareness and promoting the value of Search Engine Marketing Services. This is this biggest organization in its field comprising of more than 300 reputed Search Engine Marketing firms. SEMPO’s mission is to not only increase understanding of Search Engine Marketing amongst marketers but also to provide core educational materials about tools, vendors, consultants, programs and successful search engine marketing campaigns. SEMPO represents the common interests of more than 300 search engine marketing professionals and provides them with a credible voice in the marketplace. To achieve its objectives, SEMPO will demonstrate how search engine marketing programs have become important components of the marketing mix. SEMPO’s website can be accessed at http://www.sempo.org We studied a few ROI tracking tools in the earlier section. Listed below are some of the tools that cater to other aspects of Search Engine Marketing. Alexa Alexa, an Amazon.com company was founded in 1996 and provides various services ranging from Web Search and Site Stats to a load of other marketing tools for the webmaster. The site can be accessed at http://www.alexa.com Keyword success SEM tool suite Keyword Success provides a host of tools for the Search Engine Marketer. These include tools for monitoring web pages with keyword alerts, keyword density analyzers, listing simulators to improve search engine rankings, and tools to measure success of keyword campaigns. The site can be accessed at http://www.keywordsuccess.com/search-engine-optimization-tools.asp LinkPopularity.com LinkPopularity.com runs a service that lets you know the link popularity of your website with most of the popular Search Engines. This is an extremely useful tool considering the importance of link popularity for Search Engine Marketing. The site can be accessed at http://www.linkpopularity.com Live Keyword Analysis This tool as the name suggests analysis your website’s keyword density. All you have to do is insert the insert your keywords and the text of your web page and automatically receive feedback about your keyword density. This tool can be accessed at http://www.live-keyword-analysis.com Tools from Marketleap Marketleap offers a set of Search Engine Marketing and Analysis tools. These tools also give you critical data necessary to help you improve upon your current search engine marketing efforts. Some of these are: ? Keyword Verification tools to check whether for a particular keyword your website would be ranked within the top 3 listings of Search Engines ? Search Engine Saturation tools that calculate the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain ? Link Popularity Check that gives a complete analysis of your link popularity. The site can be accessed at http://www.marketleap.com/services/freetools NetMechanic HTML Code checker This tool checks the HTML code on your web pages for errors. Some of its functions include testing links, checking HTML code, rating page load time, and checking spelling. The site can be accessed at http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm OptiLink Link Reputation Analyzer This tool analyzes your site to a top site for Search Engines. It provides recommendation on how to change the linking structure to improve the ranking of your website. The tool can be accessed at http://www.optitext.com/optilink/index.html PositionPro Position Pro™ is a combination of tools providing you the ability to analyze your entire website like a search engine. It helps in finding pages that are acceptable to Search Engines, optimize keywords for content and phrases, and other tools for improving search engine visibility. This is a very useful tool. The site can be accessed at http://www.positionpro.com Website Management Tools Websitemanagementtools.com offers a variety of solutions that analyze how well your website promotion strategy is working and where to focus your website promotion efforts for optimum results. The tools include website ranking manager tools and robot manager tools and can be accessed at http://www.websitemanagementtools.com/ There are many other similar tools available on the Net. A few other tools worth checking out are: ? Robots.txt Validator - http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi ? Search Engine Optimizer - http://www.se-optimizer.com/ ? SEM ROI Calculator - http://www.pageviews.com/calculator.htm ? SEOTool Set - http://www.bruceclay.com/web_tool.htm ? SiteSnar - http://www.sitesnare.com/ ? WebPosition Gold - http://www.webposition.com/ ? WebRank - http://www.webrank.com/ ? WordTracker - http://www.wordtracker.com/
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Browse Site2. the Different Between Se & Directory 3. Algorithms, Crawling & More 4. Submitting Your Url to Google 7. How Does Inktomi Rank Web Pages 9. How to Boost the Rankings of Your Pages 10. Must Have Features Your Web Site 11. Bonus Tips to Get Repeat Web Traffic 12. Web Hosting Services and Domain Names |
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