Digi Craft Productions

5 SEO Mottos for Redesigns

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:43:48

5 SEO Mottos for Redesigns

Starting over? Here�s some helpful advice.

I�m often asked to make search engine optimization recommendations during a site�s redesign process. From our clients' points of view, they�re making a major investment and they need to safeguard their existing SEO success in addition to growing their natural, post-launch search traffic and conversions. However, so many different decisions influence SEO from the conceptual stage through launch that it is very difficult to identify a single best practice for SEO redesign.

SEO Motto 1: One Page, One URL

Live by this motto when planning and testing URL and navigation structures: Each unique page of content should have a single, canonical URL.

Some testing and analytics programs append tracking parameters to URLs; and some servers aren�t canonicalized to a single protocol, TLD (top level domain), domain, subdomain, directory or file extension. If you publish a single piece of content in multiple subdomains or subdirectories, your site can suffer from several duplication sources, which can multiply to hundreds or thousands of URLs for the same page of content. The best way to stop content duplication is to ensure that it never starts at the platform and server level.

SEO Motto 2: Crawlable Links

If dynamic content is being served on a page, recite this motto: Navigation must be crawlable with JavaScript, CSS and cookies disabled.

Links provide the ability to crawl a site, passing link popularity and keyword signals. So, a site that is not crawlable will not index by a search engine, which will produce no organic rankings, which leads to no natural search traffic or conversions.

Whiz-bang interactive sites designed in AJAX and Flash are likely to be only minimally crawlable, and only if specific optimization techniques are used. Although search engines are improving their ability to detect hidden spam, it's best to provide an accessible version for SEO and the visually impaired. Expandable navigation, fly-outs and rollovers can be formatted with CSS to be crawlable. Don�t just take your designer�s word for it, there�s too much at stake. Always test your site's functionality on staging, with JavaScript, CSS and cookies disabled.

SEO Motto 3: Crawlable Text

f dynamic content is being served on a page, recite this motto: Plain text must be crawlable with JavaScript and CSS disabled.

HTML text on the page confirms the keyword signals provided by links to a page. Many sites rely on images, video, and other visually engaging content to communicate information to human visitors, but that content is not readable by search engine crawlers. If the only crawlable plain text on the page is the navigational header and footer, then every page will send a very similar keyword signal to crawling search engine spiders. Unique text on each page needs to be plain text, formatted as desired with CSS.

SEO Motto 4: Unique Keyword Theme

Live by this motto when making content and content management system decisions: Every page must send a unique keyword signal.

Every page has a unique reason to exist. The platform must have the ability to expose unique keyword signals on every page in a unique title tag, meta description and keywords, HTML headings, and permanent body copy.

Every template should be designed to contain at least an H1 heading and one sentence of permanent body copy. For very large sites, each field (except the body copy) should be automatically populated with a formula that places specified text from the database in a specified order. Each field also needs to be manually editable to enable individual optimization.

SEO Motto 5: Almost Always Use a 301 Redirect

Any time a URL is changed, recite this motto: Create a permanent 301 redirect.

This mantra is generally abhorred by IT teams, and surprisingly misunderstood overall. But, 301 redirects are the best tool to channel the existing link popularity from old URLs into new URLs. 301 redirects give the site a chance at holding steady and/or growing instead of starting over from scratch, and obeying this mantra is critical to a redesigned site�s SEO success.

302s only redirect, allowing link popularity to wither and legacy URL indexing to remain. 404s can only de-index, which means link popularity withers and neither humans nor bots will receive the desired page. But, 301s can redirect, pass link popularity and de-index legacy URLs.

URL changes can be as small as a single value change in a long parameter string, or as large as static keyword URLs replacing scraggly dynamic URLs. 301 redirects can be done with pattern matching if both the legacy and new URLs follow predictable patterns. If not, determine which URLs have the most link popularity to pass to the new URLs and 301 those directly, while 301-directing everything else to the major category or homepage.

Lastly, be sure to test any 301 redirects with a server header checker. As easy as it sounds in theory, many servers default to 302 redirects, and it can be easy to accidentally implement an incorrect redirect.

Article Credit: www.practicalecommerce.com

Selecting a Search Engine Optimizer

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:27:44

A steady flow of organic search engine traffic can be the difference between a successful website business and a failed one, so choosing a professional to help you optimize your website may be one of the most important business decisions you will make. But how will you decide which SEO professional to hire for an in-house position or which SEO firm to hire as a consultant? Well, you might consider my three principles for selecting a good SEO optimizer. These principles provide a starting place for your decision-making process. With them, you will better understand what questions to ask SEO professionals and how to look for more information about what SEO professionals do or how search engines index, analyze, and rank URLs.

Principle No. 1: Be Sure the Cobbler Has Shoes

Not too long ago, I was working as the marketing communications manager for a multi-billion dollar semiconductor company. We had a great new website, a few rich Internet applications to spice things up, and good web copy. But we wanted to do more, so we began interview SEO experts. One call still stands out in my memory. The conversation went something like this:

SEO Expert: "...so as you can see from what I am telling you, my firm is one of the smartest SEO consultancies on the planet. Why we even invented sliced bread..."

Armando: "So while you were talking, I was searching for terms like "search engine optimization," "SEO consultancy," and "search engine ranking professional" and your firm does not show up on the first 25 results pages."

SEO Expert: "Well you know what they say about the cobbler's shoes."

Armando: "No, actually, I don't know what they say about the cobbler's shoes."

SEO Expert: "Well, the cobbler's shoes are never as nice as the shoes he makes for others."

Armando: "Really, well can you provide a list of the shoes you've made for others?"

SEO Expert: "I'm sorry, we keep client information in strict confidence."

Armando: "Goodbye." (A click is heard.)

Before you hire any SEO professional or cobbler, you need to see some shoes. Have the SEO candidate provide a list of at least ten comparable websites he has optimized and the associated queries those ten websites were optimized for. Then visit the top five search engines�Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, and AOL Search�looking at each search term to see how well your SEO pro makes shoes, so to speak.

If the SEO firm or professional you're interviewing cannot provide this list, move on to a professional who can.

Principle No. 2: Avoid "Guaranteed" SERP Results

If the SEO professional you are interviewing tells you that she can guarantee a top result on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing search engine results pages, he or she is lying.

There is no way to guarantee a top position in any good search engine. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and the like do not have "special relationships" with any SEO professionals.

Furthermore, sometimes there is just too much competition. Yes, like it or not, there are some keyword phrases that your site will never dominate or even rank well for in organic results. Sorry, not every page is worthy of a No. 1 ranking.

Principle No. 3: Analyze SEO Tactics

Ask the SEO professional you are considering about the particular optimization tactics he will use to improve your URL's performance. Take note of these tactics, and do a bit of research. Avoid so-called SEO professionals that use tactics that are not effective or black-hat/gray-hat techniques, which could get your site penalized.

As a specific example of a time-wasting tactic, watch out for SEO professionals that tout keyword density or localized keyword density. Certainly, keyword phrases are important, since we search for keywords. But the idea that keyword density (which is often calculated by dividing the number of times a term i appears in a given document j by the total number of terms in that given document l) measures anything is nonsense. Keyword density, at best, measures an effect not a cause, and an SEO professional that imagines this technique will work is akin to an alchemist.

Some of the black-hat/gray-hat tactics to avoid like the plague include:

Cloaking � Showing one kind of content to human visitors and different content to search bots.
Comment spamming � Leaving comments on blogs or other websites that are designed just to link back to a target URL.
Link farming � Developing pages just so those pages can link back to a target URL.
Link buying � Purchasing links in body copy of sites in order to generate links to a target URL.
Spamglish � Creating nonsensical, keyword dense pages to "trick" search engines.
Shadow domains � Sites that funnel visitors to a target URL by deceptive redirects or similar means.

Conversely, look for SEO professionals that use tactics that seek to make the user experience better, to organize a site according to World Wide Web Consortium recommendations (i.e., proper use of an

tag not using tables for layout), or to use siloing or PageRank sculpting to focus PageRank.

Summing Up

SEO is an important part of ecommerce marketing. If your business has grown to the point that you need help making good SEO choices, you should consider either hiring a professional to work for you directly or retaining a firm to act as an advisor.

A good SEO professional will always focus on user experience, since that is what search engines focus on. You can expect services like content review; site structure review; web content suggestions, including advice on redirects or error pages, title tags, header tags, and URL rewriting; and keyword research.

Finally, be sure to check out Greg Laptevsky's "8 Tips for Choosing an SEO Professional" and Stephan Spencer's "SEO: Choosing a Vendor" which provide a background for my three principles for selecting a good search engine optimizer.

Resources

Practicle Ecommerce Newsletter posting
Dr. E. Garcia's "The Keyword Density of Non-Sense" provides a great example of why using keyword density is a waste of time.
"Rewriting the Beginner's Guide: Part 4 Usage & Targeting" by Rand Fishkin includes a good description of why keywords are important and what can be done to use them effectively versus trying to rely on keyword density measurements.
Rand Fishkin's blog post "Term Weight & Glasgow Weight vs. Keyword Density" provides a good example of what professional optimizers do measure instead of keyword density.
"SEO Myths That Persist: Keyword Density" is a quick look at why believing that keyword density measures anything of value is a mistake.
"Patterns in Unstructured Data: Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization" by Clara Yu, John Cuadrado, Maciej Ceglowski, and J. Scott Payne provides a backdrop or a discussion of SEO tactics.
Brian Whaley's list of "20 Bad Ideas - Black Hat SEO Practices" is a very good resource for identifying SEO techniques to avoid.
Google's "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" article for webmasters and site owners.

Search Engine Ranking: How to Improve your Search Engine Position

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:35:50

Your search engine ranking depends on a number of factors: assuming you get listed in the first place. If you have managed to get that listing then you can improve your search engine position by means of links back to your website and also by improving your content.

Significant improvements, however, will likely involve radical restructuring of your website, and would have been better thought out before building your site.

Many so-called SEO experts will attempt to make sure that all your meta tags are in place, even though they have little bearing any more on your search engine rank, be that on Google, Yahoo!, BING or Ask.

They might even have a look at your internal linking, but once you have built your website it is too late for that. Your internal linking strategy should have been formulated prior to constructing your website. There are ways to design a site to be search engine friendly, and I use them all the time.

The very first two websites I tried these techniques on each reached page #1 on Google for their main keyword within less than a month. They were listed within two days due to other techniques I use, but their high listings were due to the site design. I then designed a third, and true to form, it reached page #1.

You want that success as well, and it is not difficult to achieve. However, it involves starting from the bottom up, although there is a lot that you can do with your existing website apart from just playing around with meta tags. I am not suggesting that you shouldn't make sure that you have meta descriptions and a title tag in your html, but they are nothing like as significant as the changes I make to my websites to improve their search engine ranking. Not even close!

There are a number of changes you can make to improve your search engine position, ranging from your internal linking to the way you lead the spiders around your site.
Just ask yourself one simple question: what determines your search engine rank on Google? How does Google calculate your search engine position? That's the first thing you have to learn if you want to improve yours. You have to know your enemy to beat them.

It's not only links, as many would have you believe, or I would never have achieved a Page 1 position so quickly. In fact of my two main websites, one is at ~1 and the other at #2 for their main keyword: the titles of their first page. I achieved that by using a silo structure in my website design, but not only that. Many people use silos without achieving high search engine ranking.

I added a little more, and made sure that the search engine spiders moved from one section of my home page to another, exactly as I wanted them to, before leaving for the next page at exactly the point I wanted it to.

It's not difficult, and you can do it too. In fact anybody can get a top search engine ranking, or improve their search engine position (everybody can't be top!), with just a little thought, and by using a couple of simple rules when designing their web pages.

One of these is by using a silo structure, and the other is by careful use of their html, and of their internal links.

NEW - Google�s SKTool - Beta Version

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:13:35

Improves search-engine-optimization and pay-per-click-advertising campaigns.

Thanks to the new SKTool Google has allowed us the ability to see what the search engine spiders see. This is key to creating a successful search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. All we can say is �Hats off to you Google for outdoing yourself again!�

We are now able to examine more than just a list of keywords. Here are the new features:

1.) Keywords

SKTool identifies keywords relevant to your URL that potential customers have been searching for in the past year. The tool also provides a quick link to Google's Insights for Search to help you map trends, identifying when a keyword is hot.

2.) Monthly Search Averages 

Knowing how many search queries a keyword receives each month lets marketers budget and plan for campaigns.

3.) Competition Data 

Using a relative scale, SKTool shows a user approximately how much competition he'll face for a keyword. Personally, I would prefer to see actual data not just a relative representation, but it is helpful. Also, when you see this competition scale on screen, it is represented by a green bar wherein more shading equals more competition. But if you export the information, this scale is converted to numbers between zero and ten�still a relative scale.
 

4.) Suggested Bid Price 

The SKTool also offers advice about how much you should bid for a particular keyword on AdWords. While I would be tempted to inflate these numbers were I in Google's shoes, the SKTool seems to offer a sound recommendation about what to bid if you want your ad to consistently show up in one of the top three spots.

5.) Ad Share 

Based on worldwide search query behavior, the SKTool displays the percentage of time your website appeared first in a search query. While this data makes we feel very competitive, it also provides a great way to see how much of the total available market your campaign is capturing. If you know your conversion rates, you can calculate the likely outcome of a new AdWords campaign.

6.) Search Share 

Similar to Ad Share, this point shows how well your site performs organically.

7.) Where the Keyword Came From

 Under the heading "Extracted from webpage," the SKTool shows you what specific URL it derived a keyword suggestion from.

Google's SKTool provides useful information to help ecommerce merchants make better choices for their PPC campaigns, and if does it well. Even if you use several PPC providers this data can help you make better choices about what words to buy and how much to bid.

Are You a Print Advertiser?

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:11:08

Here are the �Top 4� Ways to Track Effectiveness

In spite of print media�s decline, during the current economy, printed display advertising and classifieds can still provide a solid return on investment (ROI). We�ve seen this most effective among ecommerce merchants who are willing and able to achieve these measurements.

Print media is still a great break from the digital world. I must confess that I still enjoy backing away from the computer, picking up a magazine and flipping through it�s glossy pages. Opening up a magazine from a consumers point of view we think that there are fewer responses to interruptive messages but in reality there is still a measurable amount of consumer response to make it effective. To determine it�s effectiveness, as a marketing and advertising firm, we measure it.

1.) Use Ad-Specific Domain Names

Giving your target customers a specific domain name connected with the message, and/or promotion, within your ad will help you track your conversions. An example of an ad-specific domain name would be www.yourname.com/promotion/ where the �promotion� page will display more information regarding your ad�s message, and/or content. We call this page a landing page and it will be up to that page to convert the visitor into a customer.

2.) Use Promo Codes

Adding a message like, �Receive 10% Off Your Next Order� when you enter the promo code �save10� will help you track your print to online conversions as well. In addition for those who won�t necessarily benefit from the 10% off discount we also suggest adding an ad-specific domain name that brings your visitor to other promo codes as well. This invites the visitor to your website and hopefully there will be an offer they can�t refuse.

3.) Ask Your Customers

When you have a converted customer at hand, and you have the ability to ask them, go ahead. It may sound a little more direct, however you will be more concise with your statistics. I would suggest sending a post-sale email to direct traffic customers asking them how they learned about your business.

4.) Monitor Sales and Marketing Statistics

Perhaps the oldest method for measuring print ad effectiveness, just watch and see if your sales improve. For example, if I sold 1000 Computers in my first month, then placed an ad, and saw sales rise to 200 orders, I would know that my printed campaign was likely working. If however, my sales were unmoved, I would know that my ad was less than effective. This will work even if I use other forms of marketing promotion, as long as I track my advertising statistics.

Advertising is Important, Pay-per-click Most Effective

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:09:34

According to Practical Ecommerce reports in April 2009.

Respondents to an April 2009 Practical eCommerce survey overwhelmingly said that pay-per-click advertising was an effective way to promote an ecommerce store and improve sales. Those same respondents also declared advertising an important part of their ecommerce business.

The survey found that 79.3 percent of those participating believed that pay-per-click (PPC) advertising was an effective way to increase sales, with 27.6 percent of those same respondents saying PPC advertising was "very effective."

The survey asked Practical eCommerce readers to grade various advertising methods based on how effective they were at increasing online sales or increasing web traffic. The advertising methods queried were PPC ads, banner advertising, online rich media, online video, podcasts, print advertising, radio ads, television ads, catalogs, and direct mail. But PPC greatly exceeded the alternatives as the most favored method for both driving web traffic and closing sales. In fact, when asked if they purchased a particular form of advertising, 85.7 percent of respondents said they bought PPC, placing a vote of confidence with their hard earned dollars.
Advertising Is Important

The survey also showed how important advertising is to ecommerce retailers. In a question about whether advertising was important and why, respondents unanimously said that advertising was extremely important.

"Yes advertising is important," said a survey respondent from California. "We focus online because that's where our customers are. Social networking and Twitter are effective. People have to know you before they'll give you their money."

"Absolutely advertising is important!" said another survey respondent, who also criticized the survey itself. "Outside of PR, advertising is the most cost effective way of getting your message out to a mass audience. PS: This survey could have been designed much better...both in the questions and responses."
Half of Respondents Bought Print Advertising

Perhaps surprisingly, 50 percent of those responding said that they purchased print advertising. In harder economic times, print advertising has suffered, with eMarketer and others reporting a 5 percent drop in magazine advertising spend in 2009 compared to the prior year. What's more, many of those surveyed did not believe that printed advertising was an effective vehicle, with 29.6 percent saying that print was not effective for driving web traffic and 34.6 percent believing that print ads were no help when it comes to selling products.

Direct Mail Also Popular

Some 54.6 percent of those surveyed devoted part of their advertising and promotional budgets to direct mail. This was a greater percentage than those that purchased online banner advertising (44.4 percent), rich media ads (37.5), or online video (36 percent).

Source: Practical eCommerce

Is Your Web Site Being Attacked?

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:07:29

ScanSafe has counted more than 3,000 infected Web sites, up from 800 just a week ago.

The U.S. Computer Emergence Response Team warned on Monday, May 17th, 2009 that a new attack that peppers Google search results with malicious links is spreading quickly.

This attack has been spreading quickly and increasing in intensity infecting thousands of legitimate Web sites. It can be installed through known flaws in Adobe�s software and once installed it steals FTP login credentials to the victim�s Web site and uses this information to spread further. It also hijacks the victim�s web browser and replaces all the google searched items with links chosen by the attackers.

Security experts started tracking the attack in March, when it had infected several hundred Web sites, but in recent weeks the number of infected sites has jumped dramatically. The attack has been called Gumblar because at one point it used the Gumblar.cn domain, though on Monday it had switched to a different one.

Security vendor ScanSafe has counted more than 3,000 infected Web sites, up from around 800 just over a week ago.

According to Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher with ScanSafe, that kind of continued growth is unusual. Attackers have launched many widespread Web attacks over the past few years, but after a few months the total number of infected sites usually drops as Webmasters clean up their servers.

With Gumblar, more and more sites are now being infected. Landesman believes it's because Gumblar's creators have been good at obfuscating their attack code and making it harder to spot on infected sites. And because they've been stealing FTP login credentials, they've been able to use a few new tricks to get their software onto the sites. "They're doing things like changing folder permissions � and leaving behind multiple ways that they can get back into the server," she said.

Still, Web attacks have become so widespread that Gumblar remains a relatively small-scale phenomenon, according to Symantec Security Response Product Manager John Harrison. Last year, Symantec counted 18 million online attacks against its customers. With Gumblar, it has counted 10,000. "It's really just another day with drive-by downloads," he said. "There really are so many of these."

Security experts say that if you're using a fully-patched system with up-to-date security software, you should be protected from these attacks. To date, they've worked by hitting the victim with malicious PDF or Flash files.

Resource: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/165108/web_attack_that_poisons_google_results_gets_worse.html

Using Social Media To Drive Traffic

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:11:15

SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of website that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.

SMO As Guerrilla Marketing

The nature of Social Media Optimization is such that it could be considered form of guerrilla marketing. Website owners and blog owners have the choice of either investing money or their own skills and time in order to generate traffic from social sites. As long as your efforts are directed appropriately, the more work you put in the more reward you will reap.

SMO As A Link Building Technique

Social optimization also has a happy side effect - it helps to build your link profile so you will usually gain search engine traffic in the long term. Becoming a part of an online community is essential to your social optimization and this, in turn, will naturally provide links to your website. The links will usually be from relevant pages based on a similar topic to that of your own page. The more popular social sites are also given a lot of weight by certain search engines.

Optimize Your Existing Site

Create genuinely interesting, intriguing, or informative pages. Includes images, links, video, and collaborative tools so that visitors really get involved when they do visit your site. SMO is basically digital word-of-mouth and if your website doesn't offer some kind of appealing experience to your visitors, then it simply won't attract the positive word-of-mouth that you want.

Add new pages, if necessary, so that you can include more information. However, don't just add pages for the sake of it - ensure that each page really does have something unique to offer. A website still needs to be well structured.

Get A Blog

Add a blog. Every website has potential blog posts in it so find yours and start blogging regularly. Blog posts tend to attract links from other blog posts and those in turn will spread the word of your website. The more popular your blog becomes, the more value it is perceived to offer and the more visitors you will continue to get.

Be active in those blogs that are within your industry and use your link where permitted and relevant. Don't spam because that will lose you more friends than it will make but if you offer relevant information and a forum or blog allows you to link to it, then offer an insightful comment and provide a link.

Be Active
Being active is a vital part to your whole SMO campaign. Simply registering with social bookmarking sites and content sharing sites is not enough. You need to be involved, post regularly, and generally become a part of the community. If you don't have the time or the inclination to do this then find somebody else to do it instead.

Some Social Sites To Join

You really do reap what you sow in terms of SMO. Determine the sites that are most suitable to your website, join them, and become an active member. Choose some broad topic sites as well as some that are specific to those interested in the industry in which you operate or topic that you cover. Look at social news submission sites, content sharing sites, bookmarking, and networking sites and try to get a broad coverage of all of them. Here are just a few of the sites you should seriously consider using:

Social News/Media Sharing Websites

Reddit - Reddit is a very popular social news website that boasts a lot of subscribers and covers a wide range of topics. 
Digg - Initially, Digg was reserved to technology and related topics but is now a broad topic news site that again has a lot of subscribers and regular readers. 
Newsvine - Not as popular as the two above but offering a slightly more formal tone to its content. Again, a good range of topics are covered.

Social Networking Sites

MySpace - It may be largely riddled with spam but there are still too many genuine users for you to ignore MySpace. You don't have to be an unsigned band to take advantage either. 
Facebook - Has caused quite a stir and offers users the chance to create and distribute their own applications as well as content. Another very popular site. 
LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and businesses. It can really help to build a huge network of partners, customers, and other useful contacts in a business network.
Twitter - Twitter is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006, Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices.

Social Bookmarking Websites

del.icio.us - Register, store bookmarks that you find useful, and include a bookmark to your own website and use a public profile. 
Stumble Upon - Same again. Alternatively you can add a Stumble icon to each of your pages, blog posts, and other media and let your readers do the walking for you.

Buttons For Your Pages

Many social websites offer a button that your readers or visitors can use to automatically add a page. Bookmarking and content sharing sites, in particular, have these buttons and if you've ever read a website or an article site then you will have seen the Digg This and Stumble buttons at the bottom of each entry. Users registered with these sites can click the button and quickly add your page. The most popular websites are usually displayed on the high traffic home pages delivering yet more visitors to your site.

Offering Quality

The Social Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for promoting your business, but it needs to be done properly and carefully. Simply tagging, bookmarking, and sharing every page you have regardless of its quality will not bring you the desired results. You may find that it does you more harm than good in the long run.

Ten Of The Internet's Best SEO Tips!

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:47:15

A good tip is a great gift to those who are in need of advice, I love the quote "give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day - teach a man to fish, you will feed him for a life time!"

If the tips are on SEO, they are bound to attract attention. So, we've compiled a list of TEN of the best SEO tips to be found on the Internet. Don't believe us? Find out for yourself now!

Let your content drive your website. Content is the king, the absolute truth and nothing but. Well-researched, authoritative and unique content that uses the keywords strategically to obtain top rankings, and attract inbound links is a MUST! Never compromise with the quality of your site's content.

Another royalty you can't do without are Links! Focus on building a network of the best quality backlinks for your website using your top keyword phrase(s) and your website name. Only link with sites that can offer you something substantial to chew up on. If it's not good, don't bite the bait!

Are you suffering from Pagerank obsession? Don't! Pageranking, despite what many SEO experts say, are just a small part of your SEO plan. The ranking algorithm is complicated; believe us when we tell you, a lower pageranked site can actually surpass a higher ranked site. So get a good night's sleep and rethink your SEO strategy. Pagerank is a great determination of a websites popularity, however, it won't be the major factor in gaining website traffic.

Stay fresh and update regularly. Yes, if you want to climb higher on search rankings ladder, make sure your site has fresh and useful content. Regularly updating your website's content is the best way to catch the eye of the search engine robot.

Dig for top search phrases instead of single keywords. The search phrases used by people and incorporated in your content will make it easier for your website to show up as a relevant search result.

Getting localized is also a very important SEO tip that few may share with you. When developing the content for your site, make sure you keep 'localization' in mind. This helps you win brownie points with the local users and the cherry on the top is that you get local customers. We recommend creating state and city specific pages to attract website traffic that would have previously never visited your website.

Always use text links on your website pages if using Java script for image maps, image links, or drop down menu. Since spiders don't follow Java script properly, text links are crucial from a SEO point of view. If your navigation links are images, place text links somewhere on your pages as well.

Always keep SEO in mind when designing your website. More importantly, your website designer must be an expert at Organic SEO. Try to design a simple website that doesn't have heavy Flash. Less graphics will give you better crawl-ability and trust from the search engines. This is because search engine robots crawl the text rather than images or Flash. Also ensure that your pages load quickly, we believe this will make a positive impact for the search engines.

Use search friendly URL's and meta tags, this will help to improve your rankings. If you change your URL's for sub pages, consider using 301 redirects to fix the file names and transfer page value.

Finally, proof read your all your content including taglines, copy etc. and make sure all the links are working before you go live with it. Always provide quality information on your website, getting the visitors is a hard and time consuming process, so make sure your website visitors like what they find when they visit your website!

My opinion is this, a great website is an always evolving and improving website. So work hard, and reap the benefits over time!

About the Author: Joel McLaughlin

The Importance of Tracking Your Web Site Traffic

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:49:21

You have a web site. You have web site visitors. You even have web site sales. Everything seems to be working: why should you go through the effort to track and analyze your web site traffic?

The fact is, the importance of tracking your site traffic is not stressed nearly enough. At most, people say, "Sure, I track my site traffic. We had 5,000 hits last month!" But that, quite frankly, isn't "tracking your site traffic." That is a simple datum, and it doesn't tell you anything about your site or your site traffic.

The importance of tracking your site traffic lies in the fact that proper web traffic analytics will help you answer these key questions:

Am I reaching my target market?

If you went about developing your web site systematically, you probably spent time researching and defining your target market. You then designed your site to reach those specific people.

But all your research was still - at its base - a hypothesis. You made assumptions about how to reach your customer base. Tracking your site traffic will verify what is actually happening on your site (who is coming and what they are doing), compared to what you expected to happen.

How are people interacting with my site?

Sure, people are coming to your web site. But what are they doing there? Do they hit the home page and leave? Do they go immediately to your free section and never browse your sale items? Do 90% of the people who click on your online payment form subsequently abandon it?

Tracking your site traffic will allow you to see how people proceed through your site, where they spend their time, what they do, and any problems they may be encountering. And that information can help you significantly improve their user experience - and your sales.

Where is my site traffic coming from?

To drive traffic to your site, you are likely engaged in multiple marketing efforts. You may have search engine optimized your content, engaged in article marketing, and developed reciprocal links from key partners. You may be involved in a pay-per-click campaign. Perhaps you also explored email marketing or print advertising.

Web traffic analytics will tell you exactly how successful each and every one of those marketing efforts is. You will then be able to cut the fat from your marketing plan and focus on the most strategic and productive campaigns.

What trends do I see?

The web is a constantly changing place. What worked last year may not work this year. You can't rely on the mantra "we've always done it this way" and expect to see consistently positive results for years on end.

By tracking your site traffic, you will be able to see trends as they unfold: trends in who is coming to your site, how they are interacting with it, what they want, how they buy, etc. You will be able to respond proactively to changing patterns, rather than reactively scrambling to fix a situation after it has become a major problem.

If you are serious about using your web site as a tool for business, tracking your site traffic is an absolute essential. The questions above just scratch the surface of what web traffic analytics can do for you. But the bottom line is this: tracking your site traffic provides you with quantifiable data to allow you to make wise decisions for your business.

Does your website comply?

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:04:06

Maintaining website compliance is as important as changing your oil!

If you let your car run on old oil it will eventually break down and cost a lot to fix. It is important to maintain your website so that it continues to meet compliance standards. As with public buildings, transportation, services, and other resources or locations, public information on the World Wide Web needs to be accessible to persons with disabilities. The standard for determining accessibility to information on the Web has been set by the World Wide Web Consortium ( www.w3c.org ) and is the set of standards used in Canada for determining capability and compliance with accessibility for government and non-government web sites.

It is expected that all federal and provincial government-funded Web sites will be W3C compliant in the near future. Much of this drive was the result of the implementation of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2001 which directed all government entities in Ontario to establish Accessibility Advisory Committees that assessed all aspects of accessibility and made recommendations regarding areas of improvement.

There was some early expectations that compliance would be mandatory by now, but capacity, compliance and enforcement of these policies has not been addressed. It is expected that the further development of web information will adhere to W3C standards on a voluntary basis for the foreseeable future.

Digi Craft also provides an online site compliance validator that can be accessed for free at:

http://www.digicraftproductions.com/tools/check-your-w3c-compliance.php

Digi Craft maintenance plans can help your web site to be meet W3C Priority 1 and 2 standards and most sites score between 80 and 90 per cent in the Priority 3 standards. This would allow any Digi Craft maintained site to be rated "Conformance Level Double-A" by W3C. The Triple-A conformance level can be achieved through additional user effort on the use of descriptive Alt Tags and imbedded data that can be read by the assistive device technology used as interpreters by individuals with visual or hearing impairments.

Digi Craft maintenance plans feature provide this capability and automatically include:

1. Breadcrumbing in the standard navigation system
2. Not using drop down menus from the navigation buttons
3. The automated site map development system
4. Meta Data customization and automation features
5. Alt Tag customization features
6. Internal search engine systems
7. Printer-friendly pages that can be set in extra large font sizes

Many Digi Craft site owners are not even aware of the compliance that their sites exhibit, as they are in industries that do not require or appreciate this feature yet. This has affected them positively, however, as they have demonstrated accessibility compliance leadership inadvertently.

Ecommerce keeps companies alive

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:40:20

More retail manufacturers are deciding their own fate.

As you may already know we are all feeling the results of an economic recession. We have noticed that more and more people are resorting to the internet to make their next purchase. Consumers in a whole are trying to save money on their purchases and find it very convenient to go online to do a comparison. We have helped many retailers and manufactures take advantage of this opportunity. Since there is less and less consumers coming into the door lately we have to bring the store to the consumer, through the internet.

Comfortairdirect.com is one website that has helped a high end mattress manufacturer beat out their competition during a pinch in consumer spending. Through our online ecommerce application and marketing strategy we've been able to not only help them maintain their bottom line but create an entirely new form of revenue. This Park Place Corporation owned mattress manufacturer now is benefiting from having to rely entirely on their distributors to move their product.

If you are looking to put your business on the map through a turn-key ecommerce solution we'd be happy to discuss your ideas and see how to make them work for you. This "recession" is an opportunity to grow your business in ways you may have not thought of. Setup a free consultation with Scott or John and we'll be happy to help you get back online!

SEO is often misunderstood

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:36:03

SEO, SEM, W3C: What does all this stuff really mean?

Many online merchants state that search engine optimization (SEO) was a very important part to their current website traffic and plays a large part in their marketing efforts. However, we've noticed that many of their techniques have been considered as "black hat" SEO tactics. An example of this would be purchasing links as an effective way to increase their website's ranking.

The following survey was created by Practicle Ecommerce, a web organization that helps the online community understand the ins and outs of good online ecommerce. This survey was conducted over the entire month of January 2009, and had 117 qualified ecommerce merchants respond. Collectively, 94 percent of the merchants said that SEO was part of their current marketing efforts. And 62.4 percent believed that their SEO efforts accounted for 50 percent or more of their site traffic.

The majority of online merchants can identify ethical SEO practices and tactics like keyword-focused content, internal linking and siloing.

It was unfortunate to see that many of them did not know the difference between good SEO practice and "black hat" SEO tactics. For example, 69.5 percent of respondents said that purchasing paid links was at a somewhat effective SEO tactic. But paid links that transfer PageRank are really an attempt to trick a search engine into displaying less qualified results. Moreover, 53.9 percent of those surveyed said that keyword stuffing, another poor and potentially unethical practice, was at least somewhat effective.

Only 25.6 percent of the merchants surveyed had ever hired a paid SEO professional to help them. Many of the respondents said that SEO services were just too expensive for their company or that they believe there was enough information available for free to do a good job without professional help or training.

How To Use Copywriting To Boost Your Online Business

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:24:26

Copywriting, which is the mostfundamental skill in any online business, is an important part of Internet advertising. It is the art of writing sales and marketing materials, which can promote your business on the Web. Being able to learn and master this art can help your business stand out from all the other online businesses of the same type.

The Effect Of Copywriting On Your Online Business

Copywriting can either boost your business into success, or it can run it into the ground, and it can depend greatly on how good your sales copies are. Learning how to use words to properly promote your product or service can generate a great amount of sales for your online business and bring you thousands of members to your mailing list. It can even boost your web site traffic through word of mouth if you write a copy that is intriguing or buzz-worthy.

Effective Copywriting For Your Web Site

Copywriting is effective in online marketing because the words or phrases that you use to entice your targeted audience can be placed on any web site and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time, as long as they are placed on proper portals that will attract possible customers for a specific product or service.

Keep in mind that internet users are constantly looking for information and solutions for their problems, so you should learn how to communicate directly to your target audience and give them the information that they are looking for.

Know how to captivate them by knowing your visitors' needs and desires. Talk to your customers, and address their concerns. Remember that you are irrelevant when it comes to enticing people availing of your product or service, so make sure that you focus on them and not on you.

You could have the best product or service in the world, but if you cannot make your audience feel that their life would be better if they owned what you are selling, then, it is of no use. Pull the visitor into the copy, so you can present your product and make your offer.

Make sure that you write from the perspective of your target audience, and not on yours. You can only do this if you understand your target customer, so learn what their motivation is, and apply that to your copy. You can also create a sense of urgency in them, to make them feel the need to click on your link as soon as possible. Create an impression of scarcity through your words, and explain why they need to act now.

However you may choose to approach your target audience, remember that what you need to do is get their attention, so you can make your offer, and you can do this with a good and direct headline. You usually have pre-headlines that set-up your main headlines to attract the attention of the category of prospects that you want to rein in. Let them know what you have so they will know exactly, if you carry what they need. Tell them what your product is by giving them details. And if you think they don't need it, make them feel so with powerful copy.

Use paragraphs that are friendly by using short sentences and simple words. It is highly suggestible to itemize the benefits of the product, so you can give your visitors a better view of what they are getting. Have plenty of possibilities to make sure that you have at least one unbeatable and unique benefit that can convince a prospect to buy your product or service.

You can also include something extra as a bonus. Make sure that it has value, so people would be more enticed to buy your product or service just to get it.

Aside from the extras, you can also focus on your product or service for enticing your visitors by building-up your product, telling them that the price of the product or service is a good value. Tell them what makes your product unique, and what sets you apart from your competition. You can prove your claims by adding testimonials or sales statistics to your copy.

Making your words sell through your sales letters is guaranteed to increase your conversion rate.

Powerful Copywriting And Search Engines

Since there are over billions of individual pages on the Internet, getting your potential customer to find you in cyberspace is not easy; but with the help of search engines, they are provided a means of doing just that. Learn how to manage search engines to boost your web site's traffic, and increase the rate of conversion of your online business.

Effective and concise search engine copywriting can dramatically increase your web site's targeted traffic, and you can do this by optimizing its use. When using search engines, you need to make sure that you are using keyword phrases that will bring specific traffic to your web site.

Analyze your competition and check what type of keyword phrases are being used most often, to give yourself a better chance of increasing your web site hits. Make sure that your targeted keywords are found in your filenames, title, headline, and description tags, as well as your web site content.

Copywriting is a fundamental skill in online businesses. Because the Internet is primarily a visual medium, you need to come up with copy that makes your page stand out over the millions of similar pages online. Keep your copy short, concise, and meaningul. Most of all, make it hypnotic.

Remember that having the best productin the market is not enough since you also need to learn how to motivate your audience to buy it. Fifty percent of successful sales depends on powerful copywriting. Make yours count.

About the Author: Jeremy Gislason - Want to launch, reinvent & grow your online biz dramatically? Discover a breakthrough membership site considered as the #1 source of supply for most hot-selling digital information products on the web

Websites could get film-style ratings

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 09:42:10

Courtesy of Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - The kind of ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the Internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said. Burnham told The Daily Telegraph newspaper, published on Saturday, that the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites.

"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff -- the UK and the U.S. working together -- the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying in an interview.
Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibility.

"This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Burnham told the paper.

Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said. Any moves to censor the Internet would go to the heart of a debate about freedom of speech on the World Wide Web.

"If you look back at the people who created the Internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham told The Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now." He said some content should not be available to be viewed.

"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."

Burnham, who has three young children, pointed to the example of a 9 p.m. television "watershed" in Britain before which certain material, like violence, cannot be broadcast, and said better controls were needed for the Internet. The minister wants new industry-wide "take down times" so that websites like YouTube or Facebook would have to remove offensive or harmful content within a specified time once it is brought to their attention. He also said Britain was considering changing libel laws to give people access to legal help if they are defamed online.

PageRank: What Is It? And How Do You Calculate It?

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:50:59

by Armando Roggio

Google�s PageRank technology plays an important role in how online stores show up in search results. Understanding how this ranking system works will help ecommerce merchants improve their search engine optimization (SEO) and potentially increase website traffic.

PageRank is a proprietary mathematical formula (algorithm) that Google uses to calculate the importance of a particular web page/URL based on incoming links. The PageRank algorithm assigns each web page a numeric value. That value is a particular URL�s PageRank.

The underlying assumption is that links are analogous to �votes� for a page�s importance. The more votes a page has, the more important it is. What�s more, votes from important pages/URLs have more weight than votes from unimportant ones.

In this Ecommerce Know-How, I will (1) discuss why PageRank is important and (2) provide an explanation of how to use a simplified PageRank calculation to make sound SEO decisions about internal linking. In all, this article should give you a foundational understanding of this ranking system. And in future installments of Ecommerce Know-How, we will build on this fundamental PageRank information and apply it to SEO techniques like bot herding or siloing.

The Importance of PageRank

�Using PageRank, we are able to order search results so that more important and central Web pages are given preference. In experiments, this turns out to provide higher quality search results to users,� wrote Google�s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (along with Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd) in their January 29, 1998 paper, The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web.

In spite of this paper and the complex calculations it included, Google�s exact recipe for ranking web pages is not public information. But there is enough data available to make some educated guesses and assumptions about the PageRank algorithm and a search engine�s basic procedures.

Our search assumption goes like this: Jack starts a search for the phrase �golf clubs.� Google first seeks relevant pages that include content matching Jack�s query. Once Google has located the relevant pages, it ranks those pages based on importance�that is PageRank. The first page/URL listed on the Google results page had the most PageRank out of all the pages that were relevant to Jack�s search query. The last page/URL listed had the least.

Good content that matches a search query determines whether a given web page/URL will be included in Google�s results. But PageRank determines the order relevant pages are shown in.

PageRank is important then because it will determine if your site shows up first or last when a potential customers looks for your keywords.

Google�s Search Procedures

A Google user submits a search query.
Google searches all of the pages/URLs it has indexed for relevant content.
Google sorts the relevant pages/URLs based on PageRank scores.
Google displays a results page, placing those pages/URLs with the most PageRank (assumed importance) first.

Simplified PageRank and Ranking Power Estimates

Google does not disclose its exact PageRank formula. But it is a pretty safe bet that calculating PageRank is not easy math.

The folks at SEOmoz have come up with an excellent guess about the PageRank algorithm in their paper, The Professional�s Guide To PageRank Optimization. And I recommend that paper for site owners that want to know how to estimate a page�s actual Google PageRank and don�t mind spending $39.99.

But when it comes to making certain good choices about SEO (particularly internal linking choices), you don�t really need to know a URL�s actual Google PageRank. Rather, a simple model that estimates the effect of one SEO strategy or another is just as good. For example, you�ll be able to compare two different internal linking strategies, estimating how each one will affect a page�s rank, without having to employ higher mathematics.

PageRank for a given page = Initial PageRank + (total ranking power � number of outbound links) + ...

Google assigns every new web page an initial PageRank score. For the sake of our example, that initial PageRank will be 1. If I create two new product pages, page A and page B, those pages would each have an initial PageRank of 1.

A link from page B to page A would effectively be a vote for page A�s importance, and that vote would increase page A�s PageRank to 2�page A�s initial PageRank plus the value of page B�s vote. Page B�s vote is worth its PageRank and is called ranking power.

If we add a new page C, and page B also linked to it, page A�s PageRank would fall from 2 to 1.5 while page C�s PageRank would rise from 1 to 1.5.

Adding more links from page B to either page A or page C will not change things, since only one link from page B to page A distributes ranking power. A second link would not add additional ranking power.

With just this simple model, we can now start to test some SEO tactics for internal linking. Simply plot out two or more scenarios, adding up each page�s PageRank to determine which tactic will work best for a given goal. For example, let�s imagine that your ecommerce site has five pages, including a home page, a category page, and three product pages, what is the best navigation strategy if your goal is to boost your category page�s rank? Interconnecting every page would give the category page a total PageRank of 2 as in Figure A.

Linking product pages to the category page only as shown in Figure B, would result in a PageRank of 5 for the category page, making it the better choice.

Summing Up

In this Ecommerce Know-How, I explained why PageRank is important
and provided a simple model for estimating PageRank for internal linking
tactics. This model is not faultless, but it should help you make informed
choices about the SEO tactics you use.

Break Through the Frustration of Optimization

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:20:04

"I am an artist," the man proudly proclaimed. "I don't care," the critic proudly responded. "The frame is too large, the colors are dark and it will not match my furniture," the critic further explained. Many times web developers experience a similar scorn but not always from humans. A site has been designed with an interface that pops with beautiful GIFs and JPEGs, dazzles with Flash and functions like a charm with JavaScript. The search engines do not care. The content, the keywords and the tags do not correspond with the criteria of the search engines. Therefore, you are ignored. It is a struggle between art and science that frustrates many. The responsibilities of web developing -- the art -- clash with the role of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- the science. That is why some companies and development firms are designating web developer and optimizer as two distinctive jobs. Yet many smaller companies and shops still have the web developer fulfilling both roles. The problem is that optimization is becoming challenging and competitive. So here is some information to help start the optimization before, after or during the developing. Content It's all about the text. Remember that optimization is all about the text. Search engines are text driven but there are still some basic HTML tags to keep in mind (i.e., h1, h2, meta tags, title tag). SEO helps improve search engine results but does not guarantee top ratings. Patience and realistic goals will keep the frustrations low. Search engines have to crawl a site to determine what a site is about. This takes time, usually about a month, before crawls and indexing are completed by the various search engine spiders. Take time to think (a lot) about the purpose of the website. Write down a lot of stuff in a word processing program even if it sounds silly at first. Then edit what you wrote. Edit some more, get some feedback and then start working on the keywords and keyphrases that identify the unique quality of your website. Keywords and Keyphrases Keywords used to be easy. Those days are gone. Keywords are highly competitive. Using two-word or three-word, maybe even four-word, phrases makes optimization less frustrating. A keyword phrase (keyphrase) helps identify the uniqueness of a website. The keyword "game" will generate about 1 billion(!) results. The keyphrase "card game" will generate about 50 million results. That is a difference of approximately 950 million. The keyphrase "magic card game" will generate about four-million results. Time will need to be spent finding unique keyphrases but the benefits of narrowing the results, with multi-word phrases, provides a better chance of being noticed. Keyword Density The density formula is D = WC/KC (D = density; WC = word count; KC = keyword count) For major keywords target 3-7% density For minor keywords target 1-2% density Keyword density measures how relevant keywords are in a page. The formula density = word count divided by keyword count will provide a general idea of the density percentage. For major keywords try to keep the density between three and seven percent. For minor keywords keep density between one and two percent. Try to optimize between five to ten keywords per web page. Avoid the unethical practice of keyword stuffing. You will be penalized and possibly banned from the search engines which is worse than doing no optimization at all. Keyword stuffing uses various techniques but it is basically stuffing a page and/or meta tag with several occurrences of a keyword or keyphrase. Keyword stuffing will result in being banned from the search engines. Meta Tags The meta tags are important although some will disagree. Meta tags have fallen out of favor because these tags used to be the magic solution to optimization. Not anymore. Keywords and content are more beneficial in getting a web site in top rankings. However, meta tags are still important. Meta tags are a part of the HTML and are used by most search engines to find a description of your website. Therefore, no question about it, use the meta tags for description and keywords. Place these meta tags below the title tag on your page.The keyword meta tag helps you keep track of the keywords and having these meta tags give a small boost to search engine ranking. While it is true that meta tags do not perform the magic they once did it is better to have the tags than to have none. Think of meta tags like vitamins. Vitamins are not necessary for being healthy but vitamins do provide a healthy boost. Title Tag The title tag should be unique for every page because every page will or should have different information regarding your website. Therefore, some pages will have some but not all of your total keyword list. For example, let's say that your web site provides information about card games; one page has data about magic card games and another discusses bridge card games. The title tag of the page with information about magic card games could have a title like Magic Card Games available at ourwebsite.com. The bridge card games page would likely have a title of Bridge Card Games at ourwebsite.com. The name of pages should also have keywords like magic_card_games.htm orbridge_card_games.htm. Developing websites is fun. Optimization can be a chore. Yet by focusing on content, keywords and tags you have a good start to decreasing the frustration of optimization. Granted there is more to optimization than the items addressed in this article but these are the items that can be and should be tackled first. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About the Author: Lawrence Roth in an independent web developer who owns and maintainsrothline.com. Lawrence has worked on various e-commerce and website projects. Lawrence writes articles and stories to submit to online publications

How To Determine Your Website Page Rank

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:55:29

How good is your Web site?
Is your Blog up to par? There are actually websites that will measure the ranking of your website. For those of you that don't know what page rank is, it's a tool put together by Google that determines the effectiveness or efficiency of your Web site.
The higher your page rank, the higher your Web site is listed in the various search engines, and that means more traffic to your site. This, in essence, means more people are looking at your site, your products, your services, thus putting more money in your pocket in the form of paying customers.
If more people are going to your Web site then less traffic is going to your competitors' Web site. Unfortunately most people don't even know what page rank is but those visitors that do will place your website in a higher esteem than your competitors and feel that your content is much more valuable and insightful.
Now you are probably wondering how page rank determined? And more importantly how do you increase your page rank?. Well, let's look at the first part of that question.
One way to help determine your page is when another site links to your page with a back link. The more back links you receive from other pages the higher your page rank. It's a good idea to make sure the back links are coming from sites that have content on the same theme as yours. This process can get quite involved and a little messy because all back links don't carry the same weight or force. The higher the page rank that a link is coming from the more beneficial it is in terms of boosting your page rank. So if you get links from a lot of pages with low page ranks it will not have as strong an impact as a few pages with higher page ranks.
Now this is the complicated part: If you have a page that has a page rank of 7 and it is already linked to 10 or 15 other pages then it will not be any more beneficial to you than a page that has a page rank of maybe 3 or so. There is only so much linking that a page can do. It's almost like the law of diminishing returns, in other words after awhile it begins to have the opposite effect.
Another way to improve your page rank is through the use of web directories. Not only will this increase your page rank but it will also increase the traffic to your site. So if you submit your site to a large number of Web directories you will be able to increase your rank. There are a number of web directories you can submit your website or blog to.
There's a host of other items that will definitely help you to increase your ranking and the general traffic flow to your Web site. Also if you are curious about the page ranking of your own site you can see exactly where you stand by doing a Google search for page rank. This should help you to find some of the sites out there that measure page rank. Once you find a site all you have to do is put your own URL in the designated box and you will have your answer. A page rank of 6 or higher is very high.

Focus on SEO Before You Launch Your New Website

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:18:25

Are you launching a new website? There's no better time to think about search engine optimization than prior to launching a new site. By giving consideration to your on-page optimization factors, you can increase your chances of achieving top organic search results. To prepare your site for easy indexing, be sure to follow these basis guidelines: 1. Design your site in html or similar format that minimizes the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make your code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engine spiders to read your content and prescribe the appropriate Google PR to your web page. 2. Make sure that your meta tags are coded properly and include the Robots.txt tag. Many individuals downplay the importance of meta tags. Although meta tags themselves won't drastically change the organic ranking of your site, they do create the display text users will see when your site appears in search results. If your meta tags are search engine optimized and compelling, you increase the changes of improving click-throughs. 3. Apply the proper tags to your page. H1, H2, and H3 tags are a great wall to call attention to your content and promote your keywords and keyword phrases. Try to use each tag at least once, but don't force the issues. You want your text to flow and appear normal. In addition to ensuring that you've made your page easy to access and presented text that is optimized, you also want to consider other factors that can help long-term with your SEO efforts. So often, web designers get caught up with on page factors, that they overlook the requirements for establishing a foundation that supports long-term initiatives. In particular, consider adding pages that you can add to over time that support link building and accessibility for search engine spiders. Be sure to include: 1. An html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on you site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly. Your sitemap should be in both html as well as xml. Although users would not access the xml sitemap, search engine spiders use this version to crawl websites. Additionally, key search engine submission resources like Google's Webmasters Tools require xml site map versions. 2. Include a partners page. Previously referred to as a links page, the partners page is essential for reciprocal linking. This strategy isn't as powerful as developing one-way links, but until your site has been assigned a Google PR, one-way links can be difficult to acquire. So begin your link exchange program with a partners page that allows you add or remove link quickly and easily. 3. Submission pages that encourage new content. One of the most powerful seo techniques is the addition of new content. Make it easy for your users to add or submit content to your website. When search engines see new content, they rejoice. Don't underestimate how important it is to make it simple for your browsers to add or submit content. When focusing on search engine optimization, especially with a new website, follow the basic ideas outlined above. There are a number of other factors to consider as well. However, you should always start with a strong foundation - a site design that meets basic SEO standards but one that also supports your long range search engine optimization goals.

SEO Explained For People with Real Jobs

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:57:59

When talking to clients about marketing their business online I am asked "How do you get to #1 on Google?" While this article is not specially about how to become #1 - I will explain what the process is and what's involved. Despite our widespread acceptance and use of the internet - I am always surprised by how many people really have no idea what SEO (search engine optimization) is about. They instinctively know WHY they like to click on that first listing in the natural results; but they don't have the first clue HOW it got there. Making matters worse is the fact that the internet world is largely unregulated and still being figured out - so it seems that everyone has their own "best practice" and definitions of things like SEO. I usually tell clients that their intuitive feeling of WHY they trust that first listing is that - simply put - it's the best result for the phrase you type in. People seem to understand that. However most people don't really understand why one site would be better than another so here goes with a layman's explanation� What is SEO, really? SEO is the process of configuring a website so that it has a chance to show up in a search result for a particular phrase. In other words it is our way of telling Google, Yahoo, or MSN what we think our site is about. Many of the search engines have a slightly different formula for how they determine these results. But the short version is that they look at different factors of each website page, rank them and then give those results to you. Why is SEO Important? One word sums it up - competition. Depending on what study you read, there are as many as 20 billion web pages being indexed at any given time. The major search engines do their best to go through these pages and catalog them so that they can tell you about it if you use their website to search. With so many website pages out there competing for similar phrases it is absolutely critical to make sure you are using every tool at your disposal to make sure your customers can find you when they are looking. OK, So What Should I Be Doing for SEO On My Site? The good news is that doing SEO correctly is not complicated. The bad news is that it is time consuming and requires regular attention in order to maintain results. Our advice is to ethically follow these simple guidelines for best long-term results: Good site structure - as simple as this sounds many people overlook this. Every day we see sites with heavy flash animation, dated frame designs, pages that don't work and broken links. The bottom line is that if you can't easily navigate a site without problems chances are the search engines can't either. And if a search engine can't go through your site you have absolutely no chance of showing up for a key phrase - no matter how pretty the flash. Good meta-data - Clients often draw a blank with this one. Meta-data is geek-speak for the page titles, page descriptions and keywords that you enter for each page. Each page on your website should have a unique title and description that summarizes what that page is about. We often see 2 problems with meta-data. The first is that it is simply overlooked. I am stunned at how many sites have www.yoursite.com as the page title for every page - that's wasting prime online real estate. The 2nd problem is spam. Putting in a page title or description that does not accurately match what the page is about is considered "spamming" a search engine. Doing this will get your page thrown out of the index and ruin any chance of showing up for a key phrase. Relevant content - People seem to understand that good content is really what they are looking for when they search for something. By "relevant" we mean that the content is specific to the topic in question and recently updated. More and more we are seeing sites that have regular updates or blogs showing up higher in the search results than sites which have larger quantities of older, "stale" content on them. Our recommendation is to add well-written, grammatically correct and spell-checked content to your website on a regular basis. This ensures that, over time, your site will become a "resource" to those looking for phrases related to your business. Responsible link building - This is perhaps the least understood part of SEO. In a nutshell search engines consider a link from another website to your website as a popularity vote. Think of it as power rankings for websites. In general the more sites which link to yours, the better; as this shows your site is relevant to the given topic. Sadly though link building, like keywords and meta-data, have been abused by many site owners with schemes such as link farms where sites are setup simply to house links to other sites. We encourage careful and responsible link building with sites that are related to yours or through appropriate directories and article banks. So there you have it - SEO explained for people with real jobs. Like most things it's not really that hard but it requires discipline which is where most people get off track. If you would like help with SEO for your website, or other online business needs we would love to hear from you.

Meta Keywords Advice

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:34:05

Do not use the meta keywords tag. Many people still think of this as a quick fix for SEO. It's not. Google no longer uses it. Yahoo is perhaps the only search engine that still uses the meta keywords tag but places very little weight on it. By placing this tag on a web page, the primary beneficiary is your competition. How so? The meta keywords tag gives your competitors a nicely formatted list of your important keywords. Don't believe me? Try the free keyword research tool at the end of this article. Most people agree that this tag is useless (read Danny Sullivan's 2002 Death of a Meta Tag article). I'll take it a step further and argue that it's hazardous. I know many people won't agree with me, but here's my argument: Search engines used to rely heavily on the meta keywords tag to guess which keywords were relevant on a web page. Now search engines are sophisticated enough to examine the actual keywords in the body of a web page. Major search engines place little, if any, value in the meta keywords tag. There is more risk than reward in using the meta keywords tag because your competitors can view the meta keywords tag and can steal your keywords. What do I mean by "steal" your keywords? By placing the meta keywords tag on a page, you are, in effect, giving your competitors a list of your important keywords. They can then use these keywords and buy PPC ads or optimize their own site for your important keywords. Why give them this sort of business intelligence? Having invested time and money on exhaustive keyword research to identify the important keyword phrases to use for your own SEO and PPC efforts, why on earth would you make a list of your high value keywords public? Perhaps a concrete example will help illustrate the point. I was playing with the keyword tool, entering domains of other search engine marketing firms to see if they were using the meta keywords tag, and, if so, what keywords they included. Plugging one site into the tool, I noticed the keyword phrase "targeted traffic" in the meta keywords tag. Looking at the site's home page and even viewing the source, that phrase is only in the meta keywords. Nowhere else. This is what people do - they just stick their important keywords into the tags. You don't have to study the title tag, study the meta description tag, see what alt text is "behind" the images, examine the content of the page, look at the links, etc. In other words, you don't have to take the time to think like a search engine or reverse engineer a competing site. Your competitors give you all of their important keywords in their meta keywords tag. I've never thought of "targeted traffic" as a keyword to optimize for or to buy with PPC ads. Perhaps I'll run some PPC ads and see if it's a valuable phrase for SEO. Point is, I'd never have thought of it if it wasn't in a competitor's meta keywords tag. Here is our meta keywords advice: do not use the meta keywords tag. Instead, make sure the title of your web page has your important keywords and that those keywords are repeated in the body of your web page. If you want to, create a meta description tag. The search engines do use that meta tag, but it's not essential for SEO. Creating good content is essential. Each page should have useful content and include your important keywords. Don't try to stuff all of your important keywords onto a single page. Create pages around a theme, a small collection of keyword phrases. For instance, target 1-3 keyword phrases per page. Write a title that incorporates those keyword phrases. If the title seems awkward from the point of view of your audience (site visitors not the search engines), scale back the number of phrases and try again. If you choose to write a meta description tag, it should reinforce the keywords already in the title tag. The body of the page should then include those important keyword phrases. Again, though, the content of the page should be written for your site visitors and not seem awkward. Since many web sites do still use the meta keywords tag, we have developed a free keyword research tool that will analyze the meta keywords of your competition. Use the tool to see what keywords your competitors are embedding in their meta keywords tags and then research these keywords using other freely available tools. When I begin work for a new client, I ask them for a list of their competitors' web sites. I plug those into the tool and it gives me an instant list of keywords. That's only the beginning, a starting point for further keyword research. These companies have spent hours upon hours performing keyword research. I can take 30 seconds, scrape their meta keywords tags and have solid keyword ideas for PPC ads to create or SEO work to perform for a client. That, coupled with the fact that Google doesn't use the meta keywords tag, convinces me that it's downright silly to use them. As time goes on, I expect online businesses to become a bit more savvy regarding meta tags and this tool will no longer provide a quick start. In the meantime, use the free keyword tool and crush your competition! To view orginal posting please copy the following link into your web browser: http://www.searchengineguide.com/richard-ball/meta-keywords-a.php Author: Richard Ball Date Published: October 31, 2005

What Corporates should know about Online Marketing

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:28:48

The most important function of a website is to help a company to sell their services/products to new clients. When potential new clients/tourists need to choose between two companies with whom they aren't familiar, they are most likely to compare the websites. This is because a website is almost the only method for a person to actually see beforehand what he/she pays for. In general, more than 90% of these potential new client's decisions are decided upon the impression that is reflected from the website, regardless of the competence of these companies. The general truth is that most potential clients do not know how to technically compare companies, and therefore trust that the website's professionalism will reflect the expertise. Therefore large amounts are invested in corporate website development. Unfortunately most companies tend to overlook the importance of building a trusted web presence. Without having a web presence with authority almost no new visitors will end up at your website. And since every company wants to expand, they need to focus on improving their web presence in order to increase the chance of getting new customers. The best and most effective long term solution to increase your web presence is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is a highly specialized field that focus on improving the amount of trust the rest of the world will have in your website. The more trust you have, the more potential new clients will visit your website daily. The amount of trust your website has, is most of the time determined by search engines (for example Google, Yahoo, etc.). This is because the search engines have the most advanced mathematical algorithms available today, hence the acronym, SEO. Of all these search engines, the world's most accepted benchmark of website trust is known as the Google rank (or page rank) of your website. Therefore, if you could increase your Google rank, your number of new visitors to your website will most certainly increase. Google Rank of well known organisations' home page: 4/10: Pick n Pay, Steers, KWV, News 24 5/10: Anglo Gold, Checkers, Spur, Shoprite, Nedbank, Old Mutual 6/10: Anglo American, Absa, Stellenbosch University, Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, Mobil, Virgin, Standard Bank, Die Burger, Sasol 7/10: McDonald's, Ford, General Electric, Nike, Coke 8/10: General Motors 9/10: Microsoft, eBay, Amazon 10/10: Google, Facebook Another reason why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important is because of the quality of the traffic (website visitors) you receive on your website. If somebody visits your website due to a search engine query, as opposed to other reasons (such as typing in the web address/clicking on a link from another website, etc), the new visitor will most likely already be looking for your services. For example, if someone types in the word "wine" in Google, they are probably looking for wine. So if your site comes up first on Google you can probably sell a bottle of wine if your offering is satisfactory. The contrary is that the person accidentally lands on your website, but has no immediate desire for the product or services. Please note that it is possible to buy quality traffic, but this is expensive (depending on the product value and competition) and only effective in the immediate short term i.e. while it is active. SEO has a long term cumulative effect and is relatively inexpensive to maintain once a certain level of optimisation is reached. Tips when hiring SEO experts: - Whenever using a company in order to improve your SEO, always check out the Google Rank of their website. Since SEO is not that well known in management circles, there is a lot of companies that will try to sell SEO skills while there own SEO are terrible. - Also try to get some form of guarantee. It is very rare that marketing companies ever give guarantees about the effects of their efforts, but if they actually do, you know they are serious about their skills. - Try to get clear benchmarks to calculate the results of the SEO campaign. For example monitor the number of visitors that your website receives that came from natural search engine queries during and after the time of your campaign. (If your marketing team don't know how to get these figures, don't use them!) - Make sure your SEO team have a clean record. Sometimes SEO companies may get desperate in order to get results and might step over the moral line by trying to fool search engines with unnatural 'black hat' methods. When caught out, these websites are usually banned from search engines and will not show in any search result. To look into any company's track record simply Google them. Disgruntles clients tend to write their bad experience in public forums that will normally be listed in Google's search results just below the company's own website. Good luck with your marketing campaign!

We Want YOUR Feedback

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:17:59

After releasing Version 5.0 we have pulled out ALL the stops with this current web site build. Not only does it showcase new technology that is available to our customers but it gives our customers a chance to share their thoughts and opinions with us! With that said we invite you to navigate through our site and take note of the positives, and negatives, then reply back to this blog post so we can learn how to better serve you. With out YOU Digi Craft would be nothing so we greatly appreciate any and all your comments and critiques.

Happy Surfing

Scott Stenzel
Email Me

Happy Birthday!

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:51:34

It is Friday March 28th, 2008. Hector Ortiz is celebrating his birthday today and we at Digi Craft wish him a very happy birthday.

Turning the Page

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:43:49

It has taken a lot of ingenuity, patience and perseverance to get Digi Craft Productions to where it is at. The launch of Version 5.0 has brought out the best in our capabilities. We are very thankful to have such a wonderful team of knowledgeable individuals who strive to be the best in their fields. This unique combination of talents allows us to have the ability to serve our customers with only the best.

Here's to an awesome 2008 and to the release of the new web site.

Cheers!

Mary J Blige & Jay-Z Heart of the City Tour

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:09:01

Digi Craft teams up with Media Evolutions to create motion graphics video content for the Heart of the City Tour. The tour features Grammy Award winning artist Mary J Blige and rapper/entrepreneur Jay-Z. We were brought on to the project a week before the show opened in the American Airlines arena in Miami Florida. The schedule was unforgiving and sleep was not an option. The project begun with having to make twenty nine different looks for each of the songs. Each look had to follow specific design ideas that Mary J Blige and her husband Kendu Isaacs wanted to see on the screens. The most difficult part of the project was not to over produce each segment. It was very tempting to spend all day on just one song. As content creators, we strive to make every piece of content that hits the screen completely original. But with such a tight time constraint the only way to get quality imagery is with the help of some pre produced content. It wont be the last time that iStockphoto saved our lives. Sometimes there simply is not enough time or budget to create 100% original content. When it was all done, it was an incredible feeling to watch the show and how it all came together. We thank Mark Argenti and Ian McDaniel from Media Evolutions for bringing us on to help with this project. It was an incredible roller coaster ride that all payed off at the end.