Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

SEO And 301 Redirect: How They Work Together

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

The following article lists some simple, informative tips that will help you have a better experience with Search Engine Optimization.

One of the worst things that can happen to your site is to have an internet user try to locate your site through the use of search engines and encounter a ?page not found? or a ?404? error screen simply because you changed or retired your old URL’s SERP position for a new one, and you forgot to provide a way for your site visitors to get redirected to your new URL.

This can be disastrous for your business as this can have a negative effect on your possible clients. Keep in mind that it is very easy for them to go to another, more accessible and easier to find business. One way that you can actually prevent this from happening is by providing them with a 301 redirect that will basically lead them to your new URL even if they try to access your old URL found on search engines.

What is a 301 Redirect?

Before anything else, we first need to discuss what a 301 redirect is in order for you to get a better idea as to what steps you need to take for the entire process.

A 301 redirect, or a permanent URL move, is actually the most efficient, and the only acceptable means of redirecting URLs or web pages from a search engine standpoint. Using other types of redirecting can get you in trouble with most search engines, so if you want to be able to preserve your search engine rankings, make sure to use this type of redirect for your site.

The best time to learn about Search Engine Optimization is before you’re in the thick of things. Wise readers will keep reading to earn some valuable Search Engine Optimization experience while it’s still free.

When do you need to use a 301 Redirect?

When you decide to retire your old URL, or change your old URL’s SERP position to a new one wherein you may need to move pages around or change the names of your files while preserving your site’s page ranking in search engines, then this is the time that you should use the 301 redirect since it can offer you exactly that. Using the 301 redirect basically lets the search engines know that all links currently on the web will now belong to the new web page.

This is also a great tool for you to use if you want to be able to consolidate websites and avoid duplication. This is useful when you have affiliate sites’ ID’s linked to your home page’s unique URL since you will be able to let the search engine crawlers know that these affiliate sites are actually the same page. This can actually benefit your site’s search engine page rankings sine you get credited for the other affiliated links to your site, while preventing the search engine robots from indexing them, creating duplicate contents in its database.

Also, when you do acquire a competing site, you do not need to run two separate sites anymore, but simply use the 301 redirect to simply get all the traffic going to the other site redirected to your site instead.

What is the difference of a 301 redirect with other similar programs?

You can actually achieve the same type of redirecting process using other types of similar programs, such as a 302 or JavaScript redirect, or a meta refresh. These types of programs will be able to redirect traffic to your site just like a 301 redirect, but it is only with the 301 redirect that you can inform search engines that the other sites actually belong to you already, thereby avoiding any problems that may arise later on, such as getting flagged down as having duplicate content.

How do you use 301 redirect

There are a number of ways that you can use the 301 redirect, depending on what it is exactly that you need to redirect and to where. The most common type is to redirect your old URL to a new one. All you need to do is to simply go to the control panel of your web host’s page, and select the ?redirect? option there. Simply fill in the blanks with the necessary information and select the ?permanent? redirect option to activate the 301 redirect.

Redirecting an additional domain using 301 redirect requires that you set it up with your web host as an add-on domain by registering that additional domain under your domain registrar and changing the domain name servers (DNS) to that of your web host, after which you simply need to select on the ?add on domains? option under your web host’s control panel.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest acquisition: Free Adsense eBook and make sure to claim your free adsense ebook download!

How to Use Search Engine Optimizers

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of making a web site visible and friendly among search engines. It is most likely the most vital aspect of designing your web site. Several commercial web sites are designed and created by individuals who know little about SEO. The long page generally has the information and several other links that people need to know about to optimize a web site for search engines. You have to know more about the “search engines only index text”.

On Indexing

When designing and optimizing the web site, you have to keep in mind that they generally do not index images, Flash is not indexed excellently too. Even though there are several exceptions to the approach, search engines only index text, even though search engines have been improved and are more intelligent. They are also now more capable of indexing files like graphic file captions and PDFs, as well as some of the text in a given Flash file.

You can do several things when designing or redesigning a web site to get more treatment in the search engines. You can choose to optimize the home page for the most relevant and important keyword or keyphrase, as well as other pages that can be optimized for the given product. If you choose to sell various products on various pages, every page can be optimized for the given product. You can organize items this way. You should use SEO on at least several pages to get the results you want. Do not optimize pages wherein you do not have public content. Avoid pages that have “private policy” and “contact us” as well.

Choose the Right Domain Name

The more authentic information about Search Engine Optimization you know, the more likely people are to consider you a Search Engine Optimization expert. Read on for even more Search Engine Optimization facts that you can share.

The domain name may not be entirely substantial in changing your search results ranking, but it does help you become more visible to other web sites and target users. Try to use the same words or terms that best defines your topic. Try to view other existing sites and find out which domain names they use.

The Web Hosting Company

You should also invest in a good web hosting company. Free web site hosting can provide you with some visibility, but you should not expect to be at the top of the list. You should have your own static IP address, which means that the numeric IP address should be very stable. It should not differ each time someone types your URL, which is also referred to as a dynamic IP address. Huge hosting companies usually use dynamically assigned IP addresses that function the same way. Search engines prefer static IP addresses for several technical reasons.

Final Tips

Aside from using the main keywords that your target market will most likely use, you should also incorporate secondary keywords to optimize your web site more. Keyword stemming is another useful approach, wherein you use words that have the same stem or come from the same root. The use of synonyms can be good for your web site too. You should try to optimize for synonyms of the target keywords, together with the main keywords.

Links are highly important if you want to rank high. Try to use as many backlinks as you can. Look for links from other related and similar sites. Look for the origin of inbound links as well.

There’s no doubt that the topic of Search Engine Optimization can be fascinating. If you still have unanswered questions about Search Engine Optimization, you may find what you’re looking for in the next article.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest acquisition: Free Adsense eBook and make sure to claim your free adsense ebook download!

The Myths in SEO

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Some people follow the book accurately when it comes to SEO. However, you have to understand that there are common myths that may only be detrimental to the growth of your company. Some of the approaches that used to be effective before may no longer be useful today, since the market and search engine crawlers are smarter. Debunk some of the basic myths and make the necessary improvements in your site to boost sales for long.

Myth #1: SEO Involves Techniques That Fool Search Engines

Fooling search engines mean that you are also fooling human users. Real SEO techniques involve more than just optimizing content, using marketing schemes and getting additional links. A number of tactics can be used depending on the persons you are dealing with.

Some of the useful strategies that can be used for SEO to last a long time include benchmarks, competitive analysis, search marketing strategy, keyword analysis, web design, user experience, creative copy writing, server side issues, ongoing link building, code optimization, information architecture, ongoing content development, web analytics, other channel marketing affecting SEO and conversion analysis.

Myth #2: Search Engines Aren’t Used That Much

Based on research, around 4.9 billion searches are done every month by 133 million unique searchers. Search engines have become one of the most common tools used for people to gain information. Majority of internet users rely on search engines to get to different web sites, pages and companies. Search engines lead you to different online businesses and shops where you can instantly shop and get more updates. You have to determine how much useful and relevant content is available in the market, then aim on becoming an authority in the industry.

If you don’t have accurate details regarding Search Engine Optimization, then you might make a bad choice on the subject. Don’t let that happen: keep reading.

Myth #3: SEO Doesn’t Work Because You Do Not Have Many Visitors

Keep in mind that SEO doesn’t promise instant and significant results. You have to use the different marketing tools and strategies together with the approaches and SEO to make everything work together. Experts recommend that you spend about 6 months after the implementation phase to evaluate the results of SEO.

You also have to ensure that your web site can back up all the methods you have incorporated. If your site is not easy to navigate, does not have sound and unique content and is not relevant to the people you are targeting, then your SEO efforts will be rendered useless.

Myth #4: SEO Happens Only Once

SEO takes time to develop and you need to evaluate and assess each approach to determine if it should be improved. Search engines view about 100 to 200 factors or signals to know its relevance as well as decide how to categorized search results. You have to give SEO constant attention because there are several other sites and pages that also promise unique content, entertaining media and other tools to entice the target market.

Always brainstorm on how you can further improve your techniques like integrating with other offline and online marketing, creating new content, building new links and refining your optimization approaches. If you have spent some time, money and effort creating the groundwork for your SEO, you have to ensure that operations continue to function and drive the right clients into your web site. SEO is not a one-time event. It needs checks and refinements every now and then.

Hopefully the sections above have contributed to your understanding of Search Engine Optimization. Share your new understanding about Search Engine Optimization with others. They’ll thank you for it.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest venture: GVO and make sure to claim your $1 trial membership!

SEO Techniques for Beginners

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

In today’s world, it seems that almost any topic is open for debate. While I was gathering facts for this article, I was quite surprised to find some of the issues I thought were settled are actually still being openly discussed.

If you are not quite familiar with the processes and tools of SEO or search engine optimization, you can rely on different programs and individuals available online. As a beginner, you will find that everything is relatively easy to understand, provided that you have the right background and know your customer, products and services very well. Your company can benefit more through the heightened visibility and improved search rankings.

Boosting Page Ranking

The title is one of the most important parts of your web site or content. This is the name which you find at the top of the window of the web browser, or Title Bar. The title has to be descriptive but brief and short. It should also contain the targeted keywords that are highly related to your web site. The search engines also present the title in the search engine results. The title should therefore describe the site’s content so that users can be more interested in entering your site time and again.

Keyword Use

The keywords are also important when using SEO techniques. Several web masters overdo keywords though, which you should avoid. You can rank high if you use keywords wisely, but your site can also suffer or lose credibility if you overstuff. You can find a lot of support in using and adding keywords, like ALT tags, other areas and anchors. These are generally used to help boost the keywords. These should also be relevant to the image or place where you plan to link.

You can see that there’s practical value in learning more about Search Engine Optimization. Can you think of ways to apply what’s been covered so far?

Most individuals try to stuff keywords in a lot of different areas in the site or article. As a general precaution, you should try to optimize a single page with no more than 3 keywords or keyphrases. You can safely use secondary keywords or terms by using keyword generating tools online. Start with one or two keywords and avoid overusing these. Tertiary keywords can also be used which are related or similar but not the same as the main terms. Using alternative keywords help drive other potential visitors that come from different areas and use different related terms.

Understanding Meta Tags

Meta-tags have two parts namely the description and the keywords. The description should generally be short, but it should also be both descriptive and logical to the reader. Several times, it will be the text that is found under the title during the search. You should aim for the reader to have a minor overview of the page. Include content that will help them understand what they need to expect when viewing the page or site and drive them more into clicking on your web site. The keywords should be the very same ones you used while running SEO research. These should also be used in the page text.

Using Links

The search engine spider can easily locate your site as other sites create web links leading back to your site. These links will be counted as a vote of support. More quality pages on the page link will eventually lead to higher search engine ranking. Submit your link to popular directories and use more links in your signature when joining online discussion boards and forums.

Always have informative and new content on your web page to keep your target market interested and keep linking back to your site. They will also refer other potentially interested individuals to your page over time.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest venture: GVO to claim your $1 trial membership!

Newer is not Always Better When it Involves Search Engine Optimization

Friday, October 9th, 2009

We live in a world where everybody wants the latest and greatest, somewhere along the way we have come to the conclusion that the newer something is the better. If we are buying a CD it has to be the latest release from the new one hit wonder, we don’t care if the song writer couldn’t tell melody from harmony or that the singer is incapable of carrying a tune, all that matters is that it’s new. Each fall hundreds of people scramble to get to car dealerships, frantic to drive the next years models, barely capable of waiting for them to be unloaded off the truck, it doesn’t matter if we are six months behind on car payments on last years model which is in perfect running condition, we’re blinded by all the bells and whistles that the new cars have to offer. People will stand in a long line, overnight, in an electrical storm to simply to spend an unhealthy amount of money on the latest electronic gadget just because it is brand new, we don’t care that in just a few months it will be a fraction of the cost, we have to have it now.

Even internet service suffers from the right now syndrome. For years we were content with dialup service. Sure it was slow but it was that or nothing. Heck we hardly noticed that it took hours to download a simple, days to upload a couple of pictures, download a video… that was practically unheard off. We didn’t know any better. Now that the world has found out about all the new options for internet service we have to have that. It doesn’t matter that it is double the monthly cost or we have to default on are student loans in order to purchase the necessary equipment. If it is cordless, faster, and designed with the latest technology we have to have it…right now.

We don’t care if the old stuff is made with better materials, last longer, and is cheaper. In our minds old equals junk.

Search engine optimization is one spot where we should force ourselves to shed our weird inhibitions about old stuff. When it comes to search engine optimization, age rules over youth.

Now that we’ve covered those aspects of Search Engine Optimization, let’s turn to some of the other factors that need to be considered.

Search engine optimization is the art and science of making web pages attractive to the search engines. The more attractive a web site appears (search engines are attracted, not to beauty, but to repetitious algorithms) the higher it ranks in the search engines search result. A low ranking could potentially be the kiss of death to an internet based business because studies have shown the internet users seldom look past the second page of hits.

Search engines use web crawlers to determine a websites ranking.

Older websites and the webmasters who manage them have had more time to develop and maintain their algorithms. They are already itemized and ranked by the search engines, in some cases it can take three months for a web crawler to get around to spidering a brand new website that has been submitted to the search engine, old sites are already appearing and gaining customer recognition. If an older site has been around long enough to have earned a loyal customer base, even if a shuffle in the rankings causes the aged web site to be bumped from prime ranking position, loyal customers will still look for it.

If you’ve picked some pointers about Search Engine Optimization that you can put into action, then by all means, do so. You won’t really be able to gain any benefits from your new knowledge if you don’t use it.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest venture: GVO to claim your $1 trial membership!

Controversy Lends a Helping Hand to Search Engine Optimization

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

It is always wonderful to hear good news. Hearing good news makes us feel good about ourselves, the people around, our dog… heck the world is a better place when we have good news.

Good news might make us feel good about ourselves and the world but there is something deliciously appealing about bad news, especially if it is about someone other then ourselves.

Bad news makes good news copy. Celebrities know that. I once watched an interview with a well known, highly controversial, singer/songwriter, and performer. The newspapers are always full of articles and stories about his exploits (he and I share the same home state so I think the papers I read have probably double what papers in the rest of the country print). The interviewer asked this singer about one of his recent escapades. The singer kind of chuckled and shyly admitted that while the episode had happened it had been blown out of proportion. When the interviewer asked why the singer did nothing to correct the allegations the singer bluntly replied…money. Each time someone accused him of doing something awful kids started to rush to the stores to buy his CD’s, partly because his name was being splashed all over the airwaves and was fresh in their minds when the perused the music department, but also partly because their parents were trying to ban his music from the house. When he was on his best behavior he didn’t get any media attention and his record sales plummeted. So, since the singer is anything but stupid and he has a deep appreciation for the things money can buy, he goes a little bit out of his way to perpetuate his bad boy image.

Bloggers are another group of people who understand how swiftly controversy spreads. They know that if they write about something that is controversial there will be a flood of readers reading their bogs and leaving feed back. Before you know it a dialogue has started, sometimes it isn’t a peaceful dialogue but it’s a dialogue just the same.

Hopefully the information presented so far has been applicable. You might also want to consider the following:

The same thing can be true about websites and search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the art and science of making a web site appealing to search engines. Search engines determine the attractiveness of a website by sending out web crawlers that look for algorithms placed throughout the website. The more algorithms a website has the higher it gets ranked during a search.

A second thing several search engines look for is something called link analysis. Web crawlers look for how many links lead back to the website. The more links leading back to a website the higher that website will rank.

Controversy is a way to get a lot of links to your website fast. For example a breeder of Ball-headed pythons went to an exotic pet show to purchase some more snakes for his store. While he was at the show the police stormed the pet show, using excessive force to remove several of the exhibitors. You snapped several graphic pictures of the event, photos you later post on your website where you sell the snakes you breed. Others see the controversial photos posted on your site, they tell their friends and customers. To simplify things the owner of the second pet store posts a link on his site that attaches directly to yours. As more and more people hear about your photos, more and more links to your site are created. The next thing you know you are ranked on the very first page of the search engines hits.

In addition tot the boost in your ranking you have also sold nearly all of your saleable snakes. Controversy really does sell.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest venture: GVO to claim your $1 trial membership!

Common Mistakes in SEO

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

When you’re learning about something new, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of relevant information available. This informative article should help you focus on the central points.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a complicated process, especially if you are not very familiar, or well-versed, with the method. A lot of SEO beginners, and even some professionals, continue to commit the same mistakes when they do try to use SEO, thereby making it harder for them to get the results that they desire for their site’s page ranking.

Fortunately for you, by simply determining what mistakes they make and avoiding them, you can actually fair off better than those people who commit them, even if you are an SEO beginner. If you are already well-versed with the SEO process, then learning these mistakes won’t hurt your chances either, but rather, help improve them.

Wrong or irrelevant keywords

A lot of people try to use popular or common keywords in order to get people to their sites, regardless if the keywords that they use have any relevance to their site or not. You may be able to generate traffic using this type of method, but since you are not offering relevant content based on your keyword, people visiting your site will just end up leaving simply because you are not offering any content that they are looking for. You are actually getting traffic of market that isn’t even interested in your site or its content, so you just end up with nothing.

Avoid doing this method, instead try to focus on using genuine relevant keywords, so you can direct traffic of possible clients to your site, and not just useless web traffic.

Overuse of keywords

Another mistake that people do when they try to optimize their site is by over-using keywords, or using them repeatedly in the title, tags and body. They believe that by overloading their site’s content with their chosen keywords, they will be able to trick search engines, and improve their site’s page ranking in the process.

Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. Search engines will be able to detect if you are committing the over-use of keywords, or ?spamming?, and if so, your site will pay the ultimate price by getting itself banned from the search engine’s index.

Good or relevant content missing

You may believe that even if you do not offer any good or relevant content in your site that your site itself is still good enough to get and keep the traffic that you are able to produce, but this, however, is not the case, as good and relevant content is what will get people, or your possible clients, to stay to your site.

People are driven to go to your site with the keywords that you have chosen, but it is your site’s content that they will be looking for, so make sure that whatever keywords you have chosen to use, those keywords will direct them to relevant web content in your site. Do take the time to write good and relevant content in order to ensure that your site would continue to do well against others offering the same thing. Remember that the only way that you can get your site to stand out against other sites would be your site’s content.

Truthfully, the only difference between you and Search Engine Optimization experts is time. If you’ll invest a little more time in reading, you’ll be that much nearer to expert status when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.

Wrong HTML codes = HTML errors

If your site commits a lot of HTML errors when people try to access it, even if it has very good and relevant content, chances are people will visit your site a whole lot less. So before you submit your site to search engine directories, you need to check and double-check your HTML codes to avoid any problems with your site, such as slow loading time, browser conflicts, and low page ranking.

Too much graphics

Bear in mind that search engines detect texts when indexing, analyzing and checking sites, and are not programmed to look for graphics, so creating a graphics-rich site will not give it an edge over other sites in terms of SEO, but can actually have the opposite effect. Since search engines are not programmed to look for graphics, they may bypass your site, giving it a lower page ranking.

Learn to avoid these SEO mistakes, and you should be able to do a whole lot better than others.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest site: Power Copy Club to claim your FREE membership!

Search Engine Optimization Simplified

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

The following paragraphs summarize the work of Search Engine Optimization experts who are completely familiar with all the aspects of Search Engine Optimization. Heed their advice to avoid any Search Engine Optimization surprises.

Chances are good that at some point in your life you ran a search on an online search engine and instead of one hit you received pages and pages of possible hits. Have you ever wondered if the order the websites appear on search was just a random grouping or if they had been placed in a specific order that just appeared disorderly to you? The answer is that there is a very elaborate system used to determine where a website appears during an internet search. The process is something called search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is the science and art of making web pages attractive to search engines.

Next time you run an internet search look at the bottom of the page. Chances are good that there will be a list of page numbers (normally written in blue) for you to click if you can’t find exactly what you are looking for on the first page. If you actually look farther then the second page you will part of a minority. Studies and research have shown that the average internet user does not look farther then the second page of potential hits. As you can imagine it’s very important to websites to be listed on the first two pages.

Webmasters use a variety of techniques to improve their search engine ranking.

See how much you can learn about Search Engine Optimization when you take a little time to read a well-researched article? Don’t miss out on the rest of this great information.

The first thing most webmasters (or website designers) do is check their meta tags. Meta tags are special HTML tags that provide information about a web page. Search engines can easily read Meta tags but they are written with special type of text that is invisible to internet users. Search engines rely on meta tags to accurately index the web sites. Although meta tags are a critical step in search engine optimization they alone are not enough to have a web site receive top ranking.

Search engines rely on a little device called a web crawler to locate and then catalog websites. Web crawlers are computer programs that browse the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Web crawlers are also sometimes called automatic indexers, web spiders, bots, web robots, and/or worms. Web crawlers locate and go to a website and “crawl” all over it, reading the algorithms and storing the data. Once they have collected all the information from the website they bring it back to the search engine where it is indexed. In addition to collecting information about a web site some search engines use web crawlers to harvest e-mail addresses and for maintenance tasks. Each search engine has their own individual web crawlers and each search engine has variations on how they gather information.

Most webmasters feel that proper use and placement of keywords helps catch the attention of web crawlers and improve their websites ranking. Most webmaster like to design their websites for ultimate search engine optimization immediately but there aren’t any rules that say you can’t go back to your website at any time and make improvements that will make it more attractive to search engines.

Sometimes it’s tough to sort out all the details related to this subject, but I’m positive you’ll have no trouble making sense of the information presented above.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, still letting you get Unlimited Web Hosting from ONLY $1/month

Designing a Web Crawler Friendly Web Site

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

The most successful online businesses all have one thing in common. They all knew how to make search engine optimization work for them.

Search engine optimization is the art and science of making websites attractive to the internet’s search engines. The first step in successfully achieving stellar search engine optimization is to lure search engine’s web crawlers to your website. Web crawlers are computer programs that the search engines use gather data and index information from the websites. The information the web crawlers gather is used to determine the ranking of a webpage.

One of the fastest ways to hamper a web crawler is to construct a website that has frames. Most search engines have crawlers that can’t penetrate the frames, if they can’t get into a webpage to read it then that webpage remains unindexed and unranked. Two search engines, Google and Inktome, have web crawlers that are capable of penetrating frames. Before submitting your website to a search engine do some research and find out if they have a crawler that is incapable of penetrating any frames.

If you have written frames into your URL it will probably be worth your effort to go back and rewrite your URL’s. Once you have rewritten your URLs you might be surprised to find that the new addresses are easier on humans as well as web crawlers, the frameless URLs are easier to type in documents as links and references.

Sometimes the most important aspects of a subject are not immediately obvious. Keep reading to get the complete picture.

Once you have rewritten your URL’s it is time to start submitting your website to search engines. Some webmasters like to use an automated search engine submission service. If you decide to go with the submission service you should be aware that there will be a fee involved, the minimum fee is typically fifty-nine US dollars. This price should keep a few URLs on the search engines for a year. Other webmasters like to avoid big fees by submitting their website to individual search engine on their own.

Once your webpage is submitted to a search engine you need to sit down and design a crawler page. A crawler page is a webpage that contains nothing else expect links to every single page of your website, Use the title of each page as the as the link text. This will also give you some extra keywords that will help improve the ranking the crawlers assign to your website. Think of the crawler page as a site map to the rest of your website.

Typically, the crawler page won’t appear in the search results. This happens because the page doesn’t have enough text for the crawlers to give that individual page a high ranking, after all its nothing more then a portal to the rest of your site and your human users won’t need to use it. Don’t panic if it crawlers don’t instantly appear to index your website. There are a lot of websites available on the internet that need to be crawled, indexed, and then ranked. It can sometimes take up to three months for a web crawler to get to yours.

Now you can understand why there’s a growing interest in Search Engine Optimization. When people start looking for more information about Search Engine Optimization, you’ll be in a position to meet their needs.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, now giving away Free Adsense eBooks for a limited time only

Search Engine Marketing-How it Differs from Search Engine Optimization

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

The following article covers a topic that has recently moved to center stage–at least it seems that way. If you’ve been thinking you need to know more about it, here’s your opportunity.

Search engine marketing is a set of marketing methods used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages. Types of search engine marketing include; search engine optimization, pay per click, paid inclusion, and social media optimization. Search engine marketing differs from search engine optimization which is the art and science of making web pages attractive to internet search engines.

Non-profit organizations, universities, political parties, and the government can all benefit from search engine marketing. Businesses that sell products and/or services online can use search engine marketing to help improve their sales figures.

Some of the goals of search engine marketing are to develop a brand, generate media coverage, and enhancing a reputation, and to drive business to a physical location.

If you do not feel confident enough to try your own search engine marketing there are several companies that will be able to help you out for a price. If you decide to go with a search engine marketing company take your time and shop around, find a company that really suits your own businesses search engine marketing needs.

Most of this information comes straight from the Search Engine Optimization pros. Careful reading to the end virtually guarantees that you’ll know what they know.

Stay away from companies that promise top rankings. Most companies that promise tope ranking are more interested in your money then they are in keeping your business. Quite often this type of company will charge you top doller, spend a few days making sure your website has a few basic requirements and that is the last you hear from them. This type of search engine marketing company is not really interested in repeat customers.

Tread carefully around companies that promise first page rankings on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Make sure these companies are talking about sponsored listings and not just natural listings. Companies that are only after natural listings traditionally charge a large monthly fee, using a small portion of the money on sponsored listings, and pocketing the remainder.

The false promise most commonly used by shady search engine marketing companies is the money back guarantee. Generally if you read the contract very carefully you will lean that these companies have a very strange idea of major search engine. Companies that have a money back guarantee typically don’t deal with the search engine movers and shakers like Google and Yahoo, instead they use small obscure search engines that are hardly ever used.

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) was created in 2003 to offer the public educational resources about search engine marketing and to also promote search engine marketing. Currently SEMPO represents over 500 global search engine marketing companies. Sempo is happy to offer their resources to the public for free. SEMPO has offers search engine marketing training courses for any and all interested parties who would like to expand their knowledge of search engine marketing. SEMPO’s objectives are to teach search engine marketing strategies, techniques, and successful practices, to increase the availability and quality f its professionals, and to offer training courses that will help to establish a benchmark for search engine marketing. The cost of a SEMPO training course can range anywhere from five hundred dollars for a fundamentals of search marketing class, to over two thousand dollars for an advanced search advertising course.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson (Click on the link to learn more about me)