15Degrees-NORTH Blog

Search Engine Optimization

February 14, 2013

Search engine optimization or Pay-per-click?

As soon as one decides to venture into the murky world of internet marketing the first question that needs to be addressed is whether to focus solely on organic search engine optimization techniques or pay-per-click promotions (Google Adwords). Even though one would always prefer to harness the benefits of both the methods choosing one among the two can be a necessity because of initial budget constraints.

A lot of research has been performed to prove one better over the other. Organic search engines optimization has time and again been proved to offer several benefits over a pay-per-click campaign. Recent studies shows that people tend to click paid search links less than the unpaid ones. Users tend to ignore the sponsored links and directly hover over the organic list generated by the search engines. The main reason attributed to this is trust. People tend to trust organic result much more than the paid ones. Some searchers even find the paid links annoying as they take the top place in any search result. People feel that unpaid results are more relevant as they are placed higher because of their relevance to the context and not because they have paid to be there. Searchers find organic search results as non-biased and hence more valuable. Today searchers are aware of the distinction between the paid and unpaid results of search engines and they tend to consider the unpaid results more than the paid ones.

But if search engine optimization is so good why would anyone go for pay-per-click advertising. There are of course certain benefits associated with pay-per-click advertisement as well. Pay-per-click advertisements tend to produce results MUCH more quickly than standard search engine optimization but then organic search engine optimization is considered to produce result that last longer than the pay-per-click advertisements.

I view my sites in this way. When it' a new site you are going to have zero traffic from organc search for maybe up to 6 months! Start a PPC campaign and target your main keywords to generate some instant traffic. Of course monitor your budgets tightly on a monthly basis. This approach will get the traffic flowing. Now at the same time work hard on your organic SEO campaign, build your links and constantly add fresh content to build your site. After a time you will start to see FREE traffic from this work. Do a little bit everyday. Of course it's not free traffic LOL as you work damned hard for organic SEO traffic but you know what I mean. You DO NEED a monthly SEO and internet marketing budget so be serious about it!

I have written two courses on this subject but decided for 2013 to rewrite them both so watch this space for the new versions later this year.

Mark

May 4, 2012

Website Architecture and Search Engine Optimization

Two important components of web designing are website architecture and search engine optimization (SEO). Web architecture, as the name suggests, is an overall approach to the design of the system and just like an architectural monument, it requires planning into functional, aesthetic as well as technical domains. The end result, as always, is user centric. Proper interaction of the website with the internet is kept in mind while designing the architecture. Semantic web and web 2.0 have dramatically changed the way web architecture is perceived, with more emphasis on the information's structural aspects.

The above mentioned two concepts have enabled sharing of unstructured data in a uniform manner, providing a common platform. Web architecture is often confused with web designing, but while web design is more of a practical task, which incorporates various other tasks including architecture, website architecture is more of an intellectual concept, which requires proper chain of thought before the actual design. It also includes coding to make the site faster and more attractive, resulting in an enhanced viewer experience.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another integral component of the art of web designing. It is akin to what is known as 'advertizing' in financial terms. Essentially, it is required for any web page's success that more and more viewers visit the page and this is possible if the website is listed right among the top search results of any search engine. This is taken care of by SEO. It has to manage the web page in such a way that it shows up as among the most relevant results in almost all kinds of searches, be it news, local, image or academic search. Optimization for searches began in the early 90s, when the concept of cataloging by search engines came into practice. With growing market and competition, the urge to be listed the first as a search result became more, as the user's attention span and time availability reduced, leading to great technological advancements, than a single 'spider' search.

There are some useful methods under SEO. Indexing one's web page to the popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing is one of the most logical ones. These engines use 'crawlers' to find the relevant pages and the web pages, once indexed, need not be submitted again. Then, there is the concept of preventive crawling, where the webmasters can shield some part of the web page from getting indexed, which aren't desirable or relevant. Improving the visibility of a site by cross linking its pages to provide more links is a useful method. For image searches, image search optimization is also essential to ensure a page's visibility. This can be done normally through using high resolution images and providing relevant description about them, trying to match the keywords as close as possible.

Mark

December 8, 2011

Website Architecture and Search Engine Optimization

Mark

January 30, 2011

Optimizing an Existing Website

Now that you have a website and there's all this great information on it you want to get more and more people to your site. This is the realm of SEO, Search Engine Optimization and getting your site optimized is easier than you may think. It takes a little time and some effort but you will see benefits from it over time.

The way a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo works is by searching specific key words on the site and tying them to the active search at the moment. If you site is not set up to project those keywords in a manner the search engines look for, you won't get many hits on the search engine. This means less hits to your website.

If you are using a blog, there are many add-ons you can get for your site that will help you to optimize your site based on those keywords. These normally appear as a keyword or tag bubble on the page. You may have seen them, it's a collection of words and some will appear larger than others. These are the keywords a search engine will pick up on when searching sites.

There are also places in the code for the page called Meta tags. These are collections of keywords, which are placed in a very specific place in the page's code to trigger search engines to find them better. You can easily add keywords to this area, just look for <Meta tag> and add your keywords in that area. This is manual way of doing it but most current software has a way to add it for you.

Once you get some of these in place, it will take a little while for the search engines to actually update themselves with newer copies of you site. Search engines will run off cached versions of your page so they can search faster all the time. Once your page is re-cached you will begin to see your site appearing closer and closer to the first page on searches.

Once you have done the initial SEO on your site you need to make sure you keep up on it and update you keywords on a regular basis.

Mark

August 17, 2010

What is ethical search engine optimization?

Ethical search engine optimization refers to getting noticed by search engines 'without trickery'. The need to beat the competition has resulted in many webmasters finding ways to get to the top by whatever means possible. Whether these means can be called ethical search engine optimization is being hotly debated. Some in the industry question whether ethical search engine optimization is even possible.

Some SEO service providers market themselves as offering ethical search engine optimization. These providers claim to use tried and proven ethical search engine optimization techniques and as such do not cross the line.

Some major search engines such as Google and Yahoo will not index some web pages if they do not employ acceptable ethical search engine optimization practices. Websites that are found to not be using ethical search engine optimization are sometimes blacklisted.

Those who employ ethical search engine optimization do not indulge in some of the following practices: keyword stuffing, writing articles that are irrelevant to the site, and using hidden text.

The differentiation of ethical search engine optimization providers has given rise to new terms in the SEO industry. The most commonly used terms to identify ethical search engine optimization from their "unethical counterparts" are "white hat", and "black hat".

Mark

May 25, 2010

SEO Traffic

Getting traffic to your website or blog can be as difficult as getting hundreds of backlinks or as expensive as taking out ads at popular websites. It can also be as simple as using a few SEO techniques to make sure your site is getting the traffic it needs through popular search engine searches. By using the principles of search engine optimization, you can get a better placement in the search engine results and more traffic to your site. This traffic is known as organic traffic, and the search engines are not paid for these placements. The search engines benefit by giving their users the information they're seeking, bringing them back to the same search engine again for the next search.

So, where are the search engine placement rules? In a perfect world, perhaps they would be written out for all to see and benefit from. But search engines keep these secret, leaving site owners to speculate about what has worked for them and what has not. By drawing on all of that experience, you can see what the best techniques are for getting high placement to bring in more traffic to your own site.

Keywords

One of the easiest SEO techniques is to master the use of keywords. The keyword density is the percentage of the article made up of the keywords you have chosen. While most search engines won't say exactly what percentage they are looking for, there is an optimal percentage range for each search engine. For this reason, the recommended keyword density will vary, depending on what SEO resource you read. Most sources recommend a keyword density of anywhere from 1.5 to 5 percent.

Getting the keyword density you need can be done in one of two ways: counting the words in each piece and placing the keyword enough times, or using a keyword density tool. If you choose to count, just divide the number of times a keyword appears by the number of words in the entire piece. The answer is your keyword density percentage. If you use a keyword density tool, you can paste the copy directly into a box, click a button to calculate the density, and be given the answer. Either method is reliable, so it's just a matter of personal preference which one your choose.

Original Content

To get good search engine rankings, you also need good, original content. If the item has been printed elsewhere, it will not rank as well as if it were original to your site. Getting your original content should be an ongoing process, however. If you put all of your content on a site at one time, never adding to it, you will not rank as highly as if you added to it often. Search engines like large sites, and they like sites that continually add to their content. A stagnant site is not one that is likely to be looked at again and again, and search engine owners don't want their users being turned off by them.

If you can implement some basic SEO techniques, you have a much better chance of getting one of the coveted top spots in the search results. And, these results aren't dependent on your ad budget or whether your backlinks stay in place.

Mark

August 7, 2009

Just What is SEO then?

Hi Guys

A question I get asked a lot is. What's SEO? Search Engine Optimization. If your business has a website, you're using the greatest tool in the small business world - the internet. Now you need to learn about search engine optimization. You've got a beautiful web page with a great design. Effective search engine optimization makes sure your target audience can find you. This is where search engine optimization services come in. Search engine optimization helps make sure your website attracts the people who really want your service or product. A search engine optimization service can help improve the traffic flow on your site. Search engine optimization is used by every successful website. Don't underestimate the importance of search engine optimization - it can mean the difference between being on page one or being buried somewhere on page 200.

How does search engine optimization work? Search engines aim to provide relevant results. Search engine optimization helps the search engines recognize your website as relevant. Specifically, search engine optimization helps identify your website as being relevant to what someone searched for. Search engine optimization helps attract more clients because it puts your website closer to the top of the page rankings. By investing in a search engine optimization service, you will get more hits than you would otherwise. This means more traffic for your company and ultimately, more business for you.

Mark

November 13, 2008

Websites and SEO

You can create the greatest of websites with the most important information known to man but, if people can't find it, what good is it? This is why special care must be given to making sure your website is easily found on a search engine. The best way to do this is through Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Search Engine Optimization is the process by which you make your website a lot more attractive to the spiders used by search engines to scour the web as it looks for websites. A spider is a term for searching sites for specific keywords that people use when they search for things online. If you site is optimized well, it will show up on more and more search results.

This means you get more hits to your site.

One of the first steps is to make sure you are filling your site full of the specific keywords related to what you are placing on your site. You can look on sites like Google for information about how people are searching for the information you are hosting.

There are some ways to make sure you are getting found easily. The first are tags. Many website have what are known as tag clouds on their main pages. These are groups of keywords in one location, which helps those search engine spiders find you. There are add-ons you can get for popular blog software packages such as Word Press, which will fill in your tag cloud for you making your site much more attractive to a search engine.

Google also has some great tools you can use to see exactly what phrases people are using to find your site and you can add these lines to the meta tags of your website as well. If you don't know what a meta tag is, there are add-ons for these as well. They go into the code of your website on each page and add another level of attractiveness for search engines.

Check back each week to see if the way people look for the information you have changes so you keep up to date and keep your site at the top of web searches.

Mark

December 14, 2007

SEO: Traffic

Getting traffic to your website or blog can be as difficult as getting hundreds of backlinks or as expensive as taking out ads at popular websites. It can also be as simple as using a few SEO techniques to make sure your site is getting the traffic it needs through popular search engine searches. By using the principles of search engine optimization, you can get a better placement in the search engine results and more traffic to your site. This traffic is known as organic traffic, and the search engines are not paid for these placements. The search engines benefit by giving their users the information they’re seeking, bringing them back to the same search engine again for the next search.

Keywords

One of the easiest SEO techniques is to master the use of keywords. The keyword density is the percentage of the article made up of the keywords you have chosen. While most search engines won’t say exactly what percentage they are looking for, there is an optimal percentage range for each search engine. For this reason, the recommended keyword density will vary, depending on what SEO resource you read. Most sources recommend a keyword density of anywhere from 1.5 to 5 percent.

Getting the keyword density you need can be done in one of two ways: counting the words in each piece and placing the keyword enough times, or using a keyword density tool. If you choose to count, just divide the number of times a keyword appears by the number of words in the entire piece. The answer is your keyword density percentage. If you use a keyword density tool, you can paste the copy directly into a box, click a button to calculate the density, and be given the answer. Either method is reliable, so it’s just a matter of personal preference which one your choose.

Original Content

If you can implement some basic SEO techniques, you have a much better chance of getting one of the coveted top spots in the search results. And, these results aren’t dependent on your ad budget or whether your backlinks stay in place.

Mark

June 29, 2007

Search Engine Optimisation: Link Popularity

Hi All

We have finished our first FREE SEO tool on Link Popularity. Check it out I am sure you will find it usefull for something :)

Mark

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