Understand the importance of Source Code for Page Rankings

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When search engines look for the best sites to present to customers who have entered key words or phrases, they base their selections on several criteria.
One of them is the placement and use of the keywords on your site. The first indication of how you have used them is found in your Source Code.

You can see the Source Code on your site's landing page (home) and on most any other site by right clicking the Home page and then clicking “View Source”. This is a description of the words on your site. It indicates which words you have put in the most important places. The Search Engines look at your URL, your Site Title, the Meta Description, the Headlines, the Body content, the internal links, and the titles of each of the pages on your website.

Search engines know that sometimes the description that appears on the internet does not always match what is on your site. They want to know what you really are emphasizing. Your title is your most important headline and it describes the "core" of your site message. If your URL, your Title, Your Meta Description and the first line of your content copy and last line of your content copy all use the same words, it is a very strong message for the engines.

You have a better chance of being matched for these words with a customer's use of the words.

In the body content, you should use the words as well without distracting from the interest of the content. There should be images on the page that also use the words in the image descriptions.

Finally, each page of the site should have keywords as part of the title. For example http://www.FulfillmentCo.com/order fulfillment.html

The words you use will not express your whole business, but once you are on top of the page rankings for these words, visitors will see your other services in your title bars. Once you are on top of rankings for one word or phrase, you can start using more phrases to appear at the top of more categories because you will now have more authority.

This is just one ingredient to getting to the top but it is the key ingredient for companies just beginning to optimize. The other way would be to have hundreds of other authority sites pointing to your site with links, but that requires more time and is further down the road in the optimization process.

The Three R's of Internet Success

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Traffic
Retention
Conversion

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) increases traffic. This is often achieved with Pay Per Click until Organic growth can be achieved. SEO consists of optimizing the website for key words so that search engines will match the site with customers queries on Google or other engines.

Optimization is further improved by creating off page connections through linking with authority sites and then Web 2.0 techniques. These techniques are generally categorized into publication of blogs, articles and pr releases. Secondly it is achieved by getting referrals through interaction on Social Media sites.

Retention is the most underplayed aspects of internet success. The bounce rate for even the most popular sites is very high. The highest bounces rates are probably from pay per click advertisers who have taken the short cut of paying for placement instead of optimizing the retention value of their sites.

Finally, a conversion rate of a visitor to a purchaser or sign up is under 10% for most sites. If you visit a lot of sites like I do, the first thing I realize with static web sites is there is no emotional appeal. I often am not certain what the page has planned for me. Most people only give it a few seconds to communicate if they have lots of options.

I feel the next serious answer to retention and conversion is Video. We have fallen in love with it. It is not static, it is alive. It is welcoming and emotional. It can transition from retention to action. By comparison, it is so much more appealing than the static sites that I have visited that a good video has me enraptured. Not to mention that YouTube is now the second largest search engine.

As an example I provide one of the better video sites I have visited. http://digitorialmedia.com
It is time that sites that want to increase sales follow the three R’s and add video.

Web Design and SEO

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Web site designers first objective is to please the owners. Rightfully so.The sites are designed with the name and logo at the top and as pleasing copywriting as can be constructed. The designers create the pages required and then they are delivered and published. Whoever the owner drives to the site is probably equally pleased.

But what have they left on the table? The millions of people who don't know the company and yet want the services. What rarely occurs is a keyword analysis. What is the core business and what key words describe it best? Who are the competitors and what keywords are they using to describe their business? What words do customers use to find these businesses? Placing the keywords in all the right places so the search engines give the site a high rating for those keywords.

It would cost very little for this additional step.

After the site is launched, is someone monitoring the popularity of the site to customer queries and comparing it to the performance of competitors? Are keywords ever adjusted to get better performance and higher placement in page ranking?

The website is a business card, and it is a catalog of services and company character, but even more than that, it is a high leverage vehicle to revenues. Whether a company is bricks and mortar or strictly online, being placed high in page rankings for the unknown customer can supersize balance sheets. That is why keyword anlysis is the first step in website SEO.

Getting the SEO Running

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Most businesses with websites that I observe have made an effort to get everything in place but they haven’t optimized the pieces so that they all work together and create the synergy that increases traffic up to ten times what it is now.

A beautiful wheel without a car isn’t going far.

Not having a website optimized for key words means the competition comes up an equal amount of times in search queries. Having a video that doesn’t really have a focal point indicates an attempt to be “with it”, but maybe not achieving any results.

Having a face book page with no followers or a Twitter account with no entries is the result of someone saying “lets get one,” but no one saying “stay with it.” Having blogs that aren’t publicized or cross linked just under utilizes the original effort.

Putting it all together is like fueling a race car and starting the engine. One of the best conglomerations I have seen is www.SanMateoMortgageblog.com They have a city of interconnectivity and you could spend a few hours following around all their links.

Business is definitely getting the idea, now let’s just get the last 10%.

3 Essentials of SEO

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Increasing Business from an Internet site requires a strategy to accomplish the following three tasks.

1> Optimize the website for reader interest, retention, and conversion.

2> Optimize the website for search engines. Each has a different criteria.

3> Attract customers to the site by using traditional and 2.0 tactics.

Businesses trying to drive business quickly can engage in Pay per click advertising. The ROI can be enhanced by using analytics to test for key words and target markets. At the same time the site has to be enhanced to retain and convert the visitors to the desired action.

Organic growth is achieved by synchronizing the business, key words, and queries so that visitors get what is promised and what they expect when they arrive. Secondly, it is achieved by using Social Media practices to create followers from the community at large. This can be achieved through blogs, articles, videos, pod casts, press releases, referrals from other sites, and interaction with social media sites and forums.

A well coordinated effort produces maximum effectiveness and ROI over the long term and will yield noticeable short term improvements.

Websites Could Open Like Blogs and Welcome Visitors

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In the hundreds of website I visit, I find that where as they may have high degrees of functionality, they lack the welcoming and warmth that prevents a high bounce rate. Potential Customers have entered a search engine query and have lots of choices. If they pick your site, what is to retain them and make them feel they have made a good choice. I feel there should be more of a transition from searching to listening to what you have to say. Most sites have an immediate call to action. Whereas this approach might be too friendly for you, it expresses exactly what I think is too much formality on many sites asking visitors to make life changing decisions. The below welcome is on a residential mortgage blog that at least extends a welcome and tries to discover why the customer has visited.

Welcome to Home Buying Tuesdays!

Are you ready to buy a home, but don’t know where to start? Have questions about specific financing opportunities and programs? Looking to trade up, but aren’t sure about the market?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you’ve come to the right place.

The actual image can be seen at http:homebuyingtuesdays.com

If it were then to follow up with some immediate alternatives of how to get quick anwers to the visitors questions, it would have transitioned into the "take action" stage which is the goal of the site. I think websites should consider adding videos as a welcome, open with an instant chat window, a phone number to call for immediate assistance, or even a "sign up" to get information and a return call.

Establish a connection immediately and let the visitor know you have been waiting for them. You show there is humanity behind the technology, efficiency, and competence. They are concerned about who is behind the promises that are being made.

Are Companies Getting in Step with Social Media?

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It becomes more evident everyday that big companies know social media is important although they are not always convinced. I see sites that have been created but are without follow up activity. "It's like there, we did it, now what?" If you want to see one organization beautifully integrated with their Facebook page observe www.Sambazon.com/facebook.

Companies evidently haven't seen the proof that it is important to build a community of followers and they probably aren't sure how that following is getting monetized. If you are an individual participating for your own or on your company's behalf, you are aware of the tremendous interaction that can occur.

In the article below partially reprinted from the Star On Line News we see evidence the largest companies are certainly paying it lip service. Noticeably lacking in the comments is any connection with increased sales as a result.

Until we are able to clearly measure the increase in revenues as we can from even pay per click, large companies are going to participate so as not to be left out of the conversation and classify it as excellent public relations and brand building.


"Big business turns to Twitter for marketing

By Heather Lalley,
Associated Press

Published: Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8:32 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8:32 a.m.


Multinational corporations, such as Ford Motor Co. and Coca-Cola Co., are beginning to use social media to increase positive sentiment, build customer rapport and correct misinformation, says Adam Brown, Coca-Cola's Atlanta-based director of social media.

"Having the world's most-recognized brand, we feel like there's an obligation or a responsibility when people are talking about us, we have a duty to respond," Brown says.

Best Buy Co. Inc. riled up the social-media world earlier this summer with a job posting that advertised for a senior manager of emerging media marketing. "

Social Media and Optimizing for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization is important for businesses relying on their website to produce more business. What I find daily is that most websites were designed by great web site designers who often do not understand the true potential of optimization.

Consequently, many executives think of their website as a business card with extra powers, but are happy if they get minimum functionality. Let’s face it, the internet has become a major factor in only the last five to ten years. Most executives were already out of college and firmly placed in the corporate ladder climb.

What more companies now realize, is that their audience has new information seeking habits that cannot be ignored if you want to reach them and have credibility that you are in their world. The 2.0 world is about delivering information in the format or source that consumers believe is their world. They want to do their own investigations and rely on people they trust to give them the low down.

Face Book was started in 2004 by a couple of Harvard students that never intended it to be a business. It soon spread to hundreds of college campuses. Twitter may have started as a fun place to exchange meaningless diatribe, but commerce has found it hard to ignore the gathering of 23 million people a day. It is becoming a new Google of sorts. When you get into the deeper services you can see it is a wired city of commerce.

It’s just beginning. Advertisers go where the people are. The social sites including Flicker, Ebay, Craigslist and others have rerouted the commerce channels. Colleges have not taken Social Media seriously yet, but it is a great path for graduating seniors in this economic climate.

Books like “A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization” by Delina Hay point the way.