Affordable Search Engine Optimization Is The Key To Online Marketing

In this day and age, the Internet has quickly become the best and most efficient way to advertise your business's particular services. Affordable search engine optimization has quickly replaced standard advertising and is becoming more and more popular each and every day. The premise is actually quite simple. Almost everyone who uses search engines will automatically
choose from the first few matches that they receive. Therefore, affordable search engine optimization is the perfect answer to increasing your online potential.

On any given topic, there could be upwards of thousands of websites. If your website doesn't even make the first ten listings in the search engines, then you will lose out on an incredible amount of business. Also, the average consumer will be more likely to trust a site that comes up among the first matches, rather than on the last page of the results. However, there are some companies that will charge you an arm and a leg for this type of service. Therefore, finding something in your price range is the answer.

There are many companies that offer this type of service but it is important to investigate their credentials before enlisting them to help your business. There are some companies that say that they are experts in the field of SEO but are in fact just looking to take some money out of your
pocket, without ever increasing your standings on the search engines. A good way to avoid this is to find a company that seems credible and then ask them if you could get a reference from one of their past customers. This way, you will be able to find out first hand whether or not that company will be able to give you the proper SEO service that you deserve.

A professional SEO company will not only drive traffic to your website, but will work alongside of you to ensure that the traffic that comes to your site will be interested in your particular service. There is not much point to having people looking at your site if they have no use for your services. This is another reason to get a qualified professional to help. Proper SEO will drive qualified customers to your website. Customers that are specifically searching for your particular service and who are looking for it at this very moment.

Imagine the possibilities. Whenever anyone online is searching for your service, they are immediately matched up with your company's web site. Once they get to your site, they will realize that you have absolutely everything that they could possibly need. So why would they search any further? Affordable search engine optimization is the single most effective way to
drive more qualified traffic to your site and works better than any other method. This is perhaps the only way to increase your businesses online potential and it doesn't even have to cost you a lot of money. Don't be fooled into thinking that companies that charge a higher rate will give you better SEO service. After careful research and investigating, it is very easy to find a company that will give you proper affordable search engine optimization that will benefit your business for years to come.

With the Internet becoming bigger and bigger each day, you cannot even afford to not take advantage of SEO. The amount of business that you will receive from this simple process will astound you and the profits will amaze you. Before attempting any other online marketing processes, keep in mind that affordable search engine optimization is your first and final answer.

About The Author: Andy West is a freelance writer for Vertical Measures. For more information on affordable search engine optimization services, please visit Vertical Measures at http://www.verticalmeasures.com .

How To Optimize Your Wordpress Blog For Search Engine Rankings

How To Optimize Your Wordpress Blog For Search Engine Rankings If you are using Wordpress platform for your blog, then there are a few things you need to know about optimizing it for search engine rankings. You see, Wordpress blogs are not completely optimized to rank high in search engines.

Once you installed your blog, you notice that your blog is missing some important meta tags and linking structure.

The title tag is also not configured the way you would like it to be. I am talking about your main blog title being included in the title meta tags of each new post you make.

You want your posts to have their own title tag which is the title of the post without the main blog title.

You also need Google sitemap for all your blog pages and ping Google about new changes within the sitemap.

I would like to give you some tips on how you can improve your Wordpress blog optimization factor.

There are so called plugins that you can download free of charge from the internet that will do the job.

Here are the Wordpress plugins that you will need to get it optimized for search engines.

#1 - Seo Title Tag - This plugin will allow you to set custom title for your blog homepage and posts. Title is the most important factor of the on-page search engine optimization so make sure you install this plugin on your Wordpress.

You can find this plugin at: http://www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin/

#2 - Wordpress Related Entries - This plugin for Wordpress will improve your linking structure tremendously. It will allow you to link your blog posts which will have a dramatic impact on your posts being indexed in search engines. Very effective plugin.

You can find this plugin at: http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2006/02/02/wordpress-rel
ated-entries-20/

#3 - HeadSpace 2 - This plugin will allow you to completely customize your meta tags of all your pages within your blog. You will have full control of how you want it to be configured. You can edit the meta tags right from the post editing page.

You can find this plugin at: http://www.urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/

#4 - Google Sitemap Generator - This plugin will automatically create a sitemap for all your Wordpress blog pages. It will also automatically add your new posts into the sitemap and ping Google to inform about the new changes. It's very important that you install this plugin on your Wordpress blog, which will help with your pages being indexed. If you are running your
blog with a website you could also add those pages to the sitemap you created.

You can find this plugin at: http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-gener
ator-v2-final

Those are just a few excellent plugins that you can download for free and start using them on your Wordpress blog. They will have a huge impact on your search engine rankings and overall performance of your blog.

Always make sure you have your main keywords in the main title of your blog with description and keywords meta tags.

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Experiments and Results: Targeted vs. Untargeted Traffic

Most webmasters are always looking for new and inventive ways to drive traffic to their website. There are many proven methods of getting the traffic to a website, but if that new increase in traffic does not convert into sales, then is it still worth the effort that you put into getting that traffic?

I had a discussion recently with a colleague about generating traffic from outside of our target market. As a result of our discussion, we decided that we certainly could utilize various markets to get a huge boost in traffic, but since this traffic would likely not result in any conversions, that there was really no point in spending the time and effort on going after that traffic.

In a previous "experiment" on one of my websites, I started using the social networking tactic to generate traffic. I bookmarked a page of my site and submitted to many of the standard sites like, www.digg.com, www.reddit.com, www.furl.net, www.spurl.net, etc.

By doing this, I was able to get a huge increase in traffic to the site for a couple of days. The problem is, that I did not get one single conversion from this new traffic. I used a catchy
headline and a good description of the article that I submitted to the social networking sites, good enough to get people to come visit the page anyway. But with the lack of getting a single
conversion, it really did not seem worthwhile to me to do again in the future.

Now I know that some of you might be thinking, "Well, his sales pitch must be terrible" or that "His website is poorly designed." If this were the case, I would have no problem admitting to this, but when I compare the untargeted traffic that I received from the social book marking sites to the targeted traffic that I see from organic searches I can see a big difference in conversion rates. The targeted traffic that comes from organic searches generally results in a 5-8% conversion rate. The untargeted traffic resulted in a 0% conversion rate.

How To Talk To Prospects Who Are In Your Target Market

The above results lead me to believe that a much better use of my time would be to focus more on the targeted market and to stop wasting time on the untargeted visitors. There are many
techniques that can be used to find prospects in your target market. Many of these techniques are old news to experienced webmasters.

Some of these methods include contextual marketing through programs such as AdWords, posting on relevant forums, improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the organic traffic, and submitting articles to article repositories. You can also buy paid advertising in newsletters that cater to the people who are most likely to buy your products or services. These are just a handful of the methods that a Webmaster could utilize to get in touch with his or her target market.

Each of the above listed methods has their pros and cons.

Time commitment and ongoing financial commitments are two of the cons that are mentioned on a regular basis.

The pros given with all five typically represent tightly targeted traffic, suitably primed for conversion to paying customers.

The Dick Cheney Analogy

The Dick Cheney analogy has often been used to talk about this subject. Should you use the Rifle Approach or the Shotgun Approach?

The Rifle Approach lets you pinpoint your target and to hit it with great accuracy and frequency. The Shotgun Approach is sending a number or projectiles into a flock of birds and hoping you hit something. Dick Cheney proved that the shotgun sometimes hits its mark. (tongue-in-cheek people, tongue-in-cheek.)

For example, if you are selling health related products, then a media buy in WebMD would make good sense. People browsing WebMD are already interested in health and therefore are more likely to buy your health related products. People who are browsing on Myspace are not motivated to think about their own health at the time they see your ad, so your chances of success with Myspace ads are greatly diminished.

So, if you are going to expend time and money to attract visitors to your website, shouldn't you take care to primarily target people who are most likely to buy what you are selling?

Playing The Odds To Our Favor

Sure, a shotgun approach can sometimes hit its mark; we know that. But, if your cost for advertising or time expense is exactly the same, why aim for 1-2% when you know you can hit 5-8% doing something else?

We still mix-and-match our advertising approach. We aim most of our projectiles at the 5-8% conversion targets. We still aim a few projectiles at the 1-2% conversion prospects, because it
allows us to reach people that we may not be able to reach otherwise. But, any method that we use that consistently turns 0% is taken off of our plate forever.

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Trey Pennewell writes for LinksAndTraffic.com, owned by Bill Platt. Bill's team specializes in creating content-driven linking strategies that establish one-way inbound links to his client's websites, helping his clients to gain traction and better positioning in the organic search engine results. Bill has moved his businesses into new offices in Stillwater, Oklahoma. If you would like to learn more about his link building methods, feel free to give Bill a call at 405-780-7745
between 9am and 6pm CST, Monday through Friday. Or you can visit his website at: http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com

Some Financial Pros And Cons Of Practicing Search Engine Optimisation Specifically For And In The Uk.

Economic pragmatism would be the main reason. If I have a dispute with a client having an office in the UK - not that t his ever happens, of course! - I can go to court in the UK and in the first instance get my case heard locally and in the second instance have the further option of sending the bailiffs round when the defaulter simply ignores any court judgment against them.

If the client is based abroad, then the chances of bringing them to book are remote and improbable if they exist at all. Being a one-man band, I don't deal in the sort of figures that make extradition a realistic proposition, and suggestions of invasion or all-out war evaporate when I wake up. Nor, reverting to pragmatism again, is it feasible to sue them locally and, while the local public bar would no doubt be packed with eager volunteers, it's an expensive effort sending the boys round.

So from the point of view of resorting to legal redress, sticking to UK based clients makes sense.

It can be embarrassing, though, working in the UK and trying to explain our archaic and exploitative banking system. Clients from more enlightened countries (read; anywhere else on the planet) find it hard to believe that the money they sent by bank transfer a week or so ago has yet to emerge from that mysterious bourne where money temporarily vanishes to when it enters the British banking system and appear in my account. "Certainly we paid it", they indignantly assert in response to my timid query about, er, actual payment for my services. I feel like an idiot trying to explain that despite the interim period I still haven't seen hide not
hair of any remittance.

I've known my bank to indignantly deny any knowledge of any monies being in the system the very day before it appears in my account, right up till closing time. I've logged into my online account the next morning and there the money is, in some cases to my intense relief. Paypal money can be transferred between international accounts in a matter of moments, so how can the banks possibly justify not operating at the same speed? My guess would be that they can't justify it but a succession of supine governments allows them to get away with this, bad for all other business though it is.

This regularly presents me with a dilemma - has the client paid me for the work already carried out or not? Should I do more work for them effectively on their say so - and remember, this is likely to be someone I've never met or spoken to even on the telephone, that's the nature of the business, you communicate by email - or do I do work instead for a known and reliable client who lives, relatively speaking, just up the road? Obviously, I have to do work for the known client as I can't live on assurances, which in some cases can mightily displease those whose patronage I would dearly love in order to be able to expand my business. Rosy visions of future prosperity have been known to gloomily recede under these circumstances.

So there's good and there's bad aspects to practicing search engine optimisation in the UK.

About The Author: Bill Kruse is a UK-based SEO with a site at http://www.kruse.co.uk/

Internet Search And SEO

Internet Search

For the last decade the Internet has emerged itself into an integral part of our everyday life. What previously was mostly a network of research institutions has become an unprecedented medium for commercial and social use. With the number of web pages now exceeding 12 billion it is extremely difficult to find information without using search engines.

Search engines appeared almost immediately once the WWW was born. A pioneering search engine called Archie was created in the University of Montreal in 1990 and was used to search files located on public FTP sites. The first search engine created to crawl and index text files on the web, World Wide Web Wanderer or Wandex, was introduced in 1993 in MIT and worked
on principals similar to those used by the modern web search engines.

However it was not until late 90s when search engines have become the major tool to find information on the Internet. Before Internet directories such as Yahoo! or BestOfTheWeb were used to locate web pages. But it didn't take long for web users to recognize the usefulness of the Internet search, once indexing and ranking algorithms have reached a state where search engines were able to quickly return highly relevant results

Search Results Relevancy

It is all about the relevancy of results. In their infancy search engines were utterly vulnerable to abuse. Originally search engines used to index file names and later meta-tags. It doesn't take much to stuff file names and meta-tags with popular keywords which are irrelevant to the document's content. When a user queried a search engine with a keyword he received results that couldn't satisfy him. That is why Internet directories with pages classified into directories by human reviewers were far more useful than the search engines of those days.

The problem of relevancy has become increasingly important with the growing commercial use of the Web. The profits of commercial websites depend on their exposure and if there is anything that can help improve the exposure in search results - it must be done. And the first attempts to influence the search results by using popular but not relevant keywords to drive more traffic were made.

With their increasing computational and storage capacity search engine have become able to index the entire content of a page. But it was still possible to abuse search results by using excessive keyword stuffing, hidden keyword-rich text or many other spammy techniques. Basing solely on the page content it was impossible to ensure the relevancy of search results and more advanced ranking algorithms were introduced.

Search Engine Optimization

But even modern sophisticated search engine algorithms are not perfect and can't guarantee 100% relevancy. There still exist many loopholes that can be exploited to manipulate search results. Search results manipulation is not necessarily an unethical conduct. Consider three biggest travel websites: http://Travelocity.com, http://Expedia.com and http://Priceline.com. They provide booking service of a similar quality and are equally relevant for keywords like 'vacation' or 'airline tickets'. But nevertheless they rank differently in search results, and it is natural for a lower ranked site to try improving its position by using search engine optimization techniques.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is about defining what factors influence the placement of a page in search results and adjusting these factors to obtain a higher position. To optimize the relevance of a page you have to adjust keyword frequency and proximity, add keywords into headings and bold text. It must look natural though - excessive keyword stuffing might have
negative effects. To increase the popularity of a page you must obtain incoming links with targeted keywords in the anchor text, and make sure that links come from authoritative pages but not from irrelevant link farms.

Search engine optimization is an extremely dynamic field. Once a loophole in ranking algorithms becomes known and widely used, search engines change their algorithms to neutralize its effect.
Every algorithm update can drastically affect positions and traffic of websites utilizing aggressive crash and burn optimization strategies. Such strategies are based on the most recently discovered loopholes and tricks and are able to put your pages into top positions quite quickly. Their effect however lasts only to the next algorithm update.

Another far more time-consuming approach is the creation of websites with high quality content following so-called Google quality guidelines. This approach emphasizes the website's value for users and persuades against using tricks to manipulate search results. In short - good websites
eventually will rank high. But it takes years and tons of effort to make a site popular this way. Some sites are by their nature difficult to promote this way. For example few grocery stores can afford turning their websites into top Internet grocery portals; it just wouldn't be worth the effort.

SEO alone can't guarantee a lasting effect. Not using SEO at all requires too much effort to promote a site. The wise way to make a website popular is make sure that it is useful for users, obtain quality incoming links and do not forget to fine tune your pages focusing the targeted keywords. Follow the famous Brett Tabke's Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone -
after four years it is still a valid approach.

About The Author: Oleg Ishenko, Berlin, Germany. BSc in Telecommunications Industry Business Management. Master student in Humboldt University Berlin. MCSE and MCDBA certifications. Get more useful information at our Comprehensive SEO and Online Marketing Research - http://www.seoresearcher.com