Starting Internet Business from SEO Point of View

Starting Internet Business from SEO Point of View

Today we are going to discuss , how to start an internet business from a SEO Perspective.

1) Buy OLD Domain Name instead of New one:
From my experience, I recommend buying old domain names instead of new ones. As I have seen old domains performing better in search engine’s ranking wise than new ones. Not only with age comes trust and authority but it is easier to rank high in google with old domains names compared to new ones. Microsoft has filed a patent on October 10, 2006 for Ranking Domains Using Domain Maturity and google has a similar patent as well.

If you are wondering where to buy old domain names then Domain Tools is the place to do so. They provide excellent option to search for expiring domain names via their Advance Auction Search Page. You can search domains based on TLDs ( .com, .net, .org or other ), Dmoz or Yahoo Listing, Age, Rank, Length, Alphabetically or Registration Year.

2) Get Exact Match Keyword Domain If Possible:
When it comes to Exact Match Keyword Domain name, then you are allowed to make exception to point #1. Google really loves exact match keyword domains and gives them special treatment. For example, if you go to google and search for Bikram Mann you are going to see my site www.bikrammann.com in the top 10 results as of today. To be honest, I have not done any link building optimization as of this post writing but still i rank in top 10 results for my domain keyword. You can also see another example from my previous post Importance of Exact Match Domain Name. to clear your doubts further.

3) Get Top Level Domain Name Extension:
.Com Extension of the domain name is the most popular and it is considered the industry standard. Just take a look at all the big brand’s COCA-COLA,TIFFANY, PEPSI, MICROSOFT, GOOGLE etc. They all use .Com Extension of the domain as their main website. Since this version is so popular, even if you end up developing a brand name on different extension, people will still search your brand name by adding .com at the end of the brand keyword. Moreover, .com version of the domain name will always rank higher in search for that particular domain keyword ( which you are going to end up developing a brand )compared to other extensions.

If you can afford, I would recommend that you buy .net, .org and .co.uk along with .com version of the domain name. Because in the near future, once you develop a brand name, over 50% of your traffic is going to come via your brand keyword. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to want bite off your pie which you earned by your hard work. So, what they might do is register .net, .org or .co.uk version of your domain name and start generating profit of your brand.

Now you might be thinking, even if i buy these four domain name extensions what about the rest 200 plus extension left ? To answer this question lets take an example that if somebody buys .de extension of the domain name and launches a competing website to feed off the brand name. Now what you can do is launch .net, .org and .co.uk version of the domain name and push him down the search results. Extensions .com, .net and org will always rank higher than any other extension of the domain. If you are big brand then you can also register a trademark for your brand keyword and take violator’s domain by filling trademark infringement case against them.

4) Renew the Domain Name for Length of 10 Years:
On October 11, 2006 Google filed a patent ENTITY DISPLAY PRIORITY IN A DISTRIBUTED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM in which there is an interesting line on page 2, #40 about domain name registration.

40. The method of claim 38, wherein the domain-related information is related to at least one of an expiration date of the domain, a domain name server record associated with the domain, and a name server associated with the domain.

In simple English the above would mean that Google can calculate a score based on expiration date of the domain, name server records associated with that domain, and a name server associated with the domain. As you can see from the above patent, domain name expiration date does matter in Google search engine ranking. So, it wouldn’t hurt to register the domain for longer period of time.

If you think logically calculating domain name expiration date as search engine ranking factor would make sense. Because a spammer wouldn’t want to register a domain for a period of 10 years, just to throw it away the next year. I would highly recommend that you register your domain name for period of 10 years. As this will show that you are serious about your business and going to be around for long time.

5) Get Dedicated IP Address for your Domain:
If you ask ten different SEO Experts that what role does dedicated IP address play in search engine ranking, you are going to get ten different answers for it. The truth is Google algorithm does favor sites with dedicated IP addresses vs shared IP Addresses. Sometimes having a shared IP address could affect your sites ranking and authority. For example, lets say the IP address where your website is hosted, has 20 other sites hosted as well. Since, you cannot verify niche of sites that are hosted on that particular shared IP address, you could end up becoming a neighbor to wrong sites like gambling, porn, content farms etc. So, Google might put in the same bracket as of those sites.

I would highly recommend that you get a dedicated IP address for your site as there is nothing to loose by doing this. Now days, on most of the hosting providers, you can get a dedicated IP address somewhere between 1 to 3 dollars.

6) Get Reliable Hosting Provider:
It is very important to have a reliable web hosting provider from an seo perspective. Because if your website is having frequent down time, more chances you have of loosing your ranking in search engines. I have seen sites shift from #2 position in google to #5 position within a period of day or two just because the website was down for that period. Now some of you might be thinking, why would google lower the ranking of sites based on their down time. The answer is simple because when your website is down, search engines cannot crawl your site to get updates thus in return affects your ranking. Also, if you are running an e-commerce site it affect your reputation and you are going to loose sales for the period of time your site is down or inaccessible.

7) Get Attractive Web Design Done:
Website Design has nothing to do with search engine ranking in general. But having a professional web design does put good impression on a new customer. To me professional web design symbolizes Quality, Professionalism and Trust. Because getting attractive web design is not cheap at all. It can range anywhere from 2,000 ( starters ) to 10,000 USD ( high end ). Today there is a lot of competition in the internet market, no matter what field you choose but a good design can differentiate you from the others. Not only good design but the choice of colors can make impact on your sales. The impact might not be huge but even if 10 extra people buy from you because of the impression that your web design put on them, you just made some extra money and if we think the whole purpose of SEO is to increase ranking thus increasing the sales in return.

8). Get HTML and CSS validation:
9) Write Killer Title and Meta Description:
10) Use Keywords in Image Names & ALT tags :
11) Use Search Engine Friendly URLs instead of Session ID’s:
12) Provide RSS Feed:
13) Provide HTML and XML Site Map:
14) Have a Privacy Policy and About Page:
15) Have Search Box visible on all pages:
16) Focus on Usability:
17) Have a Company Blog:
18) Add your site to Google Webmaster Tools:
19) Track Traffic with Google Analytics:
20) SEO Copy Writing:
21) Provide Live Chat Option:
22) Show Trust:
23) Have a Favicon Icon for the Address Bar:
24) Have a Robots.txt file
                  http://www.bikrammann.com/http://www.bikrammann.com/

Justify The Value Of SEO

Justify The Value Of SEO

Justify The Value Of SEO


Most people do not set the expectations right with search engine optimization (SEO) effort. I was reminded of this when speaking with the prospect, who asked what kind of return on investment (ROI) is expected for his commitment to the EES.

“I expect an exponential growth, something like 20X the traffic that I currently do,” he said. “If we can get a number 1 ranking for a keyword, it should be sufficient to get us there, do not you think? ”

A Top Ranking Is not it enough

Your goal can not be # 1 on a keyword. This is not a goal.

What if you get the highest rank for the keyword, and something happens, like a big turn Google’s algorithm? Then you have lost your ranking for a keyword. What then?

Although everyone has one of the keywords you drool, a solid, long-term presence in search engines is one which balances its presence through a series of keywords.

A “goal” should be increased traffic, and – at the end of the day – to grow your business (more leads, more sales, and ROI).

SEO SEO vs. Paid

Many people find it easy to budget for paid search. They understand the basic principle:

* Spend a dollar for every click.

* Set a budget of $ 10 000.

* Get 10,000 clicks for keywords that I want to “rank” of.

But what if you could get 20,000 clicks to invest that same $ 10 000 in SEO, PPC advertising instead? Was not this a better deal?

To be fair, the above example is an oversimplification, only intended to make a point. The 20000 can be increased by 10 percent in “good” traffic – traffic that is relevant to know, is transformed into a lead or sale, or at least show some quality metrics (eg time on site).

Having said that at the sight, he stopped. “I never really thought that way.”

SEO ROI: No guarantees?

Do not get me wrong. I understand that SEO is very different from the PPC.

With SEO, there are no guarantees. Chances are that, for any reason, you will never achieve a solid ROI from SEO. Some of these reasons may include:

* You took the wrong people / EES.

* IT team can do what is necessary to fix things, which lead to better rankings / traffic.

* You can not / will not create content that will result in a note / traffic.

* The expectations were turned upside down to reality.

* No keyword search volume you are interested in the destination – no amount of number one ranking could never be the same ROI.

SEO can be high risk, high reward. When I say “high risk”, I do not mean the kind of high risks associated with the ability to be banned / punished in the search engines to tactics such as hacking, cloaking, spamming, etc.

My point is that even if you work as a search engine guidelines, there really are no guarantees, because we do not own the search engines. Search engines are a third party, we have zero control.

A “good” ROI on SEO

If you invest $ 10 000 per month in one SEO action (whether in personnel costs or agency), you must have an idea of ​​what a “good king” looks like.

Maybe you’re one of those who have realized that the cost per click paid search is getting higher for keywords that have been addressed. Perhaps reached a point where it is difficult to argue that the money spent worth it?

Say you sell a $ 100 device, and net 30 percent of each sale ($ 30). If the average cost per click is $ 1 and the conversion of 10 percent on the sale of $ 100 invested in paid search clicks to a sale of $ 100 100 in which offsets $ 30.

Unless you care about brand value (which I would say that people should consider at least a little when trying to assess the PPC and SEO), is not a good ROI. In fact, this is not a return on investment. It is a waste.

What do you need this investment will pay? Without some ‘math: For every 100 visitors to convert on 10 percent will go on sale with our $ 30. We would have 3000 visitors and 300 sales. There are 300 sales would be worth $ 30,000 ($ 300 X 100/each) and there would be net of 30 percent of this (9,000 dollars).

Now we have something to work.

Do we feel that we can put $ 7000 a / month of resources (money / time, etc.) to SEO to help achieve the goal of winning 3,000 visitors? Or, perhaps the conversion rate is very late and is closer to 5 percent?

Maybe we need 6000 visitors? Are we willing to fund this “cost” (in the first months of research, etc.) to hope to achieve return on investment potential for the month, then?

When you have identified how and / or can operate SEO ROI so you can begin to discuss what value / opportunity could be and what the risks and rewards can be.          
                    http://www.itinfocube.com/

SEO Expert to Organic Web Strategist

SEO Expert to Organic Web Strategist
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become more involved over the past couple years including additional activities that need to be performed to stay competitive. An SEO has been upgraded to “Organic Web Strategist“, according to a blog post on SEOmoz by Rand Fishkin.

Sometimes it’s difficult for the average business owner to understand the value of organic search engine optimization, but you should realize that by gaining a #1 ranking on Google for a keyword that would drive 5000 new and relevant visitors a month to your website would mean (even at 1% conversion rate) would equal 50 new sales a month! When you multiply this with your average customer value you can determine how much revenue a #1 ranking would produce on just one highly relevant keyword phrase.

To get an idea of how much additional SEO work is needed to compete, below outlines activities by the SEO era. By no means is this an exhaustive list but provides an outline of how SEO has become more involved, more work. There’s more competition than ever before so it takes more work to get that coveted top tanking for your best converting keywords.

Before 2004 SEO consisted of:

Accessibility:
Crawlability of Wesbite
Spider-Readable Content
Search Engine Friendly Navigation/Architecture
Limiting any Duplicate Content Issues
On-Page HTML Sitemaps

Keywords
Basic Keyword Research
Keyword Targeting for Individual Web Pages
On-page in-content Text Links

Link Building:
Reaching out to other webmasters
Directories
Blogs and related Sites
Guestbook and Signature links

Search Verticals:
Images

From 2004 to 2008 SEO expanded to include the below items in conjunction with the items above.

Accessibility:
XML Sitemaps
Quality Content Creation – no thin content
Rel=Canonical
Issues with the Nofollow Tag

Keyword Research now includes:
Keyword Difficulty Analysis
Keyword Commercial Value
Keyword Usage in Images
Keyword Manipulation generally in Footers

Link Building added:
Social Media Marketing specifically for Link Building
Press Release and PR Tactics
Content Syndication
Badges and Widgets
Embedded Content
Guest Blogging
Article Marketing
and more

Search Verticals added:
Local SEO, Maps and Google Places, Bing Local, etc.
Video
Shopping
News

Here is the over all picture in 2011, these SEO activities and responsibilities include:

Site Accessibility
Developing a website that can be easily crawled and indexed

Market / Keyword Research and Targeting
Picking and testing the right keywords, knowing they convert via PPC tests, and then employing them effectively for organic search

Content Strategy
You need a plan on how to leverage your businesses resources to develop useful, valuable, relevant and share-worthy material

Content Creation
Creation of blog posts, evergreen content, infographics, interactive works, apps, tools, and more

Link Building
Investigating, tracking and acquiring high quality links

New Search Protocols
Schema.org, Rel=Author, Video XML Sitemaps and more

Search Verticals
Images, local, video, news, blogs, social, mobile, product, and more

Community Management
Creating and participating in conversations around your brand/sector in beneficial ways to drive awareness

Social Media Promotion
Utilizing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+1, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, etc., to improve reach and social buzz

Social Network Reach
Improving the size, depth and breadth of your social networks to reach more potential customers and connections

Reputation Tracking
Watching your brand’s search results, social media remarks and web content to track success and monitor danger

Local / Maps Optimization
Optimizing for placement in local search and local portals, both web and social including monitoring local activity

An Organic Web Strategist then would be defined as having many more online marketing responsibilities than the basic or advanced Search Engine Optimizer – as it incorporates many facets of the growing social web. Any business that wants to succeed in the future needs an experienced SEO Company aka organic web strategists to get the results and the ROI that will allow you to continually expand your online marketing efforts.
                                  http://www.firstplacepositioning.com/

Google’s SEO Strategy

Google’s SEO Strategy

Google’s SEO Strategy




As an online marketer or business owner you are always looking for the SEO strategy to increase you’re traffic, conversions and sales. We have built our entire business around helping people do just that (and we’re pretty good at it).

If you’re experience is anything like mine you are inundated with offers that promise the world when it comes to traffic. SEO Strategies, tactics, ninja tricks… implement that, do this, put your link here… All of it with the sole goal of getting more eyes on your page, and that’s great, we all want more traffic.

We talk a lot about the overall seo strategy in our business and how implementing the right SEO strategy will help you to achieve your goals, and the freedom that comes with it.

Matt Cutts, a top Google software engineer, recently shared a video with me on Google+ (by the way we are in the Incoming PR labs testing Google+ right now, go ahead, click the +1 in the upper left, we’ll be sharing our results soon). Anyway… Matt’s video is about how Google is constantly working to improve its algorithm and the results displayed to users, that is at the core of Google’s SEO strategy. Check it out:
Whew! 500 algorithm changes a year, that’s a lot to keep up with! In fact, the Google algorithm is way too complex to keep up with. By focusing on the algorithm itself and trying to “game” the search engines you may see some good short term results, but when the next big change comes you could be in big trouble, that’s the wrong seo strategy.

I’m often asked why the now infamous Google Panda/Farmer updates did not effect our clients (in fact it even boosted many of them). The answer is simple, we follow the same overall seo strategy Google does: Create a better user experience by providing people what they are looking for.

Google’s real seo strategy is to give people the results they want, at the top of the page, every time. It’s easier said than done. Try a few searches using the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google’s home page. If Google were to succeed in its ultimate seo strategy that button would return exactly what you were looking for every time.

But the algorithm is not perfect, it will always be evolving.

So as an online marketer or business you can focus on the algorythm, making changes that get you quick traffic. I often find it is very easy to get lost in the minutia of all the tactics. Doing anything it takes to get higher rankings in the search engines. The problem is that you are missing the secret sauce, the one thing that will put you at the top of the results and keep you there almost indefinitely, the SEO strategy.

That secret sauce is embodied in Google’s seo strategy, they talk about it EVERY DAY, they give you a clear path to follow, all you have to do is follow it. Focus on your users experience. Give them exactly what they were looking for when they searched for your keyword. Unique, engaging content focused on the subject they are interested in. Now that’s an seo strategy!

By targeting keywords wisely and then giving the searcher exactly what they are looking for you create a powerful winning combination that converts like crazy.

Simple SEO Strategy: Give them what they want! (TM)
                                               http://incomingpr.com/

Web Analytics Tools

Web Analytics Tools
Overview: These free and paid tools allow you to track what keywords are sending you traffic, what keywords are profitable, and what keywords lose money. As soon as you start tracking results your campaigns get more efficient because you start focusing on the results.

Tracking where you already rank does not alert you to potential areas of opportunity that you have not yet focused on, but if you track conversions you know what those keywords are worth, and it is easier to rank for keywords related to words you already rank well for than it is to rank for a whole new basket of keywords.

At the bottom of this page is a free video about using web analytics tools.
Free Analytics Tools

These tend to be limited in feature set and give themselves sitewide links on your site, or require you to trust giving a major search engine like Google virtually all your marketing data.
Google Analytics - powerful full featured analytics tool. Even allows you to track your ROI by keyword for each AdWords ad position. Google AdWords also has internal split testing and conversion tracking software & offers data integration with Google AdSense that you can't get with any other web analytics tool.
Google Website Optimizer - allows you to A/B split test landing pages and track how well Google AdWords traffic converts.
Piwik - realtime open source web analytics program
Open Web Analytics - similar to Piwik, but more lightweight. Also comes with the ability to record the browser screen on user's sessions.
Site Meter - starts off as free, but charges for advanced features
Stat Counter - starts off as free, but charges for advanced features and bandwith usage.
Webalizer - default log analyzer on many servers.
Analog - default log analyzer on many servers.
Awstats - another popular default log analyzer on many servers.
Cheap Paid Analytics Tools
Clicky - cheap web based tool similar to Google Analytics. A few less features, but you get realtime data and are not giving all your data to Google either. Also offers a cheap white label analytics package convenient for SEO firms looking to add another revenue stream to their businesses.
Mint - affordable downloadable analytics program that you set up on your own server. Unlike most other paid analytics programs in Mint does not track conversions.
WordTracker's Strategizer - helps bucket data from Google Analytics into groups to help you spot opportunities to grow your organic search footprint
Affordable Business Analytics Tools
Yahoo! Web Analytics - formerly known as IndexTools, free for users of Yahoo! advertising & ecommerce solutions, available via their consultant network partners.
Weblog Expert - Downloadable log analyzer. Starts at $75.
Clicktale - specializes in customer heat maps
Crazy Egg - somewhat similar to Clicktale in providing analytics visualization
Usability Feedback
User Testing
Feedback Army
Silverback
more options
Expensive / Enterprise Premium Tools
Google's Urchin
Adobe's Omniture
WebTrends
comScore's Digital Analytix Suite
IBM's Coremetrics
Background Information on Web Analytics

If you need more background on analytics try the free 44 minute video by Avinash Kaushik.


Related Categories
ppc tools - tools to help you track and refine your PPC campaigns
competitive research tools - these tools will show you keywords sending traffic to competing websites
Know Any Other Tools Worth Suggesting?

email me seobook@gmail.com
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