9 Simple Steps toward a Search Engine Optimized Website

Search Engine Optimization - An Introduction

Search Engine Optimization is probably the cheapest and most cost effective form of Internet marketing. In fact some studies indicate Search Engine Optimization as being the second most effective marketing strategy. The increasing popularity of Search Engines and the fact that good quality and cost effective traffic can be brought through them to websites has led to the development of a whole industry that revolves around how to make Web pages/Websites more search engine friendly or in other words better optimized. The result of this advent of Search Engine Optimization industry is the feeling among webmasters and novices in the industry that SEO is like rocket science and has to be handled by professionals only. Thankfully, the truth is that anyone can search engine optimize Websites. All it takes to optimize a Web site and get better ranking and traffic are 9 simple steps.

The 9 Simple Steps

1. Select Right Keywords

This is THE most important step and can easily be the reason for your ranking ahead or ranking below your watch sites (competition). Identify the words or phrases using which people search(might search) for your Web page on the Internet. If you sell dog food, your keywords must have something to do with "dog food". Do not use irrelevant keywords, even if they get you more traffic. If you are not sure of the keywords to be used, use any of the following tools to find good target phrases:

• Overture is a great tool for assessing popularity of target phrases.
• Googleis great for brainstorming target phrases.
• Word Tracker can help you assess popularity and compare how the competitors use the target phrase.

2. Analyze Competition

Determine who your competitors are. It is quite simple; search for the keyword on popular search engines. The sites that show up above your page are your competitors. Analyze those sites and find out how effectively they have used the targeted keywords. Remember that the more popular a target phrase is, the more competition there is likely to be. Sometimes, it makes sense to target a less popular phrase where you can corner the market rather than aiming for the highest popularity phrase.

Check out yours and your competitor's link popularity. In many engines, you can type: link:http://domain-name and get a link count for that particular site. The more the link count, the better.

3. Page Creation and Optimization

After identifying the keywords, create Web pages by targeting one word or phrase for each page. One common mistake most novice SEO's do is dump many keywords into a page. Not only does it make it difficult for you to rank high for each of those keywords, but also it makes the page less readable.

i) Make sure your keywords are present in the following places:

• Title tag
• META tags: Description tag and Keywords tag
• Body text: Heading tags, comment tags,alt tags and prominent places on the page content

ii) Conduct HTML validation for your Web pages. HTML validation helps you find out the errors in HTML code, which may prevent search engines from indexing your site.

iii)Then check and ensure that your pages are Spam-free. When your page elements, such as Title tag, META tag, and body text, are stuffed with repeated keywords, search engines may consider them Spam and ban your site.

4. Visual Review of Page

• Check whether your site has usable navigation.
• Ensure you have informative and readable content. Good content will ensure that your page appeals to human visitors as well as spiders.

A badly written page may get a good ranking on search engines, but visitors will move away from your site with the same speed they came in. Although Search engine spiders that grade your site will not look for visual appeal, directory editors and human visitors will!.

5.Link Building

Get inbound links from quality sites. Quality sites are those that rank high on search engines and/or have a good Google PageRank. If the sites are in someway connected with the theme of your webpage that will help increase your rank better. DO NOT turn to link farms for link building this can get your site banned in search engines.

6. Submitting to Search Engines

If you have followed steps one to five you are ready to submit your webpages to the search engines. Chances are the search engines found your webpages through the links that you built but if they some how missed your webpages don't worry you can always let them know that your pages exist through Search Engine Submission.

You can refer the below link for details on submission to search engines

Altavista

http://addurl.altavista.com/sites/addurl/newurl

All The Web
http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php

Google
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

MSN
http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

Yahoo
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

7. Submitting to Directories

Search Engines consider Web Directories as expert documents. A presence in popular directories can help you get a better ranking on search engines. You can submit your site to popular directories, such as DMOZ, Yahoo!, World Wide Index, and Microsoft bCentral. For more information on Web Directories and guidelines for submission.

8. Maintain

Search Engine Optimization is a continuous process. Popular Search Engines keep making changes to their algorithms i.e the way they rank webpages quite often. Thus it is imperative that you continually optimize your pages based on the current algorithms to achieve high ranks.
It's important to measure your rankings atleast monthly. Re-optimize any pages that drop in rank and then re-submit or wait for the search engine to revisit the page.

9. Tracking

Ultimately, it is not top rankings you are really after, but more traffic and sales. High traffic is not something that automatically follows top rankings. It is something you get by ranking high for "good keywords". Thus it is important that you track your website usage using a good log file analysis program and find out which keywords and which keywords bring in most visitors to your pages. Use this information to optimize your pages better for these terms and search engines.

Conclusion

At first glance, search engine optimization may look like magic; but actually all it takes is 9 simple steps. Search Engine Optimization is a simple continuous process that helps search engine do their job more efficiently. It does take a lot of time and patience but stay the course search engine optimization pays for itself in increased revenue. It is worth the time and trouble.

If you follow all the above-listed steps, you will definitely see an improvement in the search engine rankings for your keywords. The best part is that you do not have to spend any money on the expensive search engine optimizers!

An Introduction to Title Tag Optimization

Title tags are the words that appear at the very top of your web browser, and they tell the search engine what the page is about. For example, see the top band of this browser. You will see "Title Tag Optimization - Search Engine Optimization Tips ". This is the title of this page.

Before discussing how to optimize the Title tag, lets see how exactly it looks in your website's HTML code.

< Title of Your Web page Here< /title >
< name="description" content="Brief description of the contents of the page">
< name="keywords" content="keyword phrases that describe your web page">
< /head >
< meta content="Brief description of the contents of the page" name="description" >
< meta content="keyword phrases that describe your web page" name="keywords" >
Title Tags - The Myth
"The Title tag doesn't really do much".

Is that a myth or the truth? Let's see! Title tags function much like the title of a book. Say for example, you need a book on "Search Engine Optimization". You walk into a library, search all the titles, see a book titled "Search Engine Optimization Tips", and take that book. Interestingly, there were some other books in the library, which had more information on Search Engine Optimization than the book you took. But, their title didn't convey that. Search engines also do the same thing: they look at the title of a web page and decide what it is about. There is no doubt among the SEOs regarding the importance of Title tags in Search Engine Optimization. One of the steps to increase a website's rank is optimizing the Title tags.

How to Optimize Title Tag?

Of all the tags, Title tag is definitely the most important when used correctly. When calculating your web page's relevance to a search, most search engines consider the content of the title tag as one of the parameters and display that content in search engine results pages (SERP). Title tag therefore needs to be carefully constructed in such a way that it increases your website's position in the SERP, and it is attractive enough to encourage a surfer to click on your link.

Similar to writing your site content; write your Title tag for your audience first and the search engines second

• Have your keywords in the Title tag: Including the keywords in the Title tag increases the relevance of your web page, when someone searches the web with that keyword.
• Keep the Title tag short and readable: Search engines don't prefer long Title tags. In fact, Google prefers short Title tags. Because some search engines display Title tags in the search engine result pages, make them informative.
• Use different Title tags for different web pages in your site: Never give the same Title tag for all the web pages. The Title tag of a web page must be relevant for that page.
• Don't include your company name in the Title tag unless you think it will attract more users. Instead of your company name, you can consider a suitable keyword.
• Never keep the Title tag empty and never use irrelevant words in the Title tag.

Pay attention to writing your title tag. Don't ignore them, they are a powerful tool and must be used to their fullest advantage. The Title tag helps the search engines decide the theme of the web page being crawled for indexing. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by all search engine algorithms. Also remember, each page in your website is unique and needs a different Title tag. Place the most important keyword phrase for that specific page in the Title tag, and the page will get a certain boost in the search engines. Yahoo and MSN Search are especially influenced by keyword-rich Title tags. Look after your Title tags and they will look after your site traffic.

Hospitality and Search Marketing

By, Max Starkov and Jason Price

Search engine marketing is an essential component of the hotel direct online distribution strategy. According to Forrester research about 80% of overall website visits begin in a search engine or a directory service. Many other surveys also show that up to 85% of Internet users rely on search engines to locate relevant information on the Web (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc). Search marketing is an extremely dynamic field. Search algorithms change, new search techniques and formats introduced, new search services launched, new challenges emerge on a daily basis that keep search marketers busy. The implications of all this in hospitality are enormous and some highlighted in this article.

Background

In 2005, online travel sales will account for an estimated 30 percent of total travel sales- up from 25 percent last year and 21 percent in 2003, according to a recent report by Merrill Lynch. By 2007 online travel sales will represent 39 percent of all travel revenue, with growth from direct suppliers outpacing that of online travel intermediaries.

In hospitality, last year over 25% of all revenues will be generated from the Internet (20% in 2004, 15% in 2003) (HeBS, PhoCusWright). Another 25% of hotel bookings will be influenced by the Internet but transacted offline through call center, walk-ins, group bookings, and even via email inquires. Indeed the explosive growth in online hotel reservations was best illustrated when for the first time in mid 2004 Internet bookings surpassed GDS bookings.

The same Merrill Lynch analysis concluded that search engines are driving much of the increase in online bookings. This report estimates that travel search technology accounted for $600 million in direct bookings last year. What’s more, it predicts that search-related bookings will double each year through 2007.

Search Engines & Search Behavior

Search engines and search marketing has received much global attention. Search engines are as pervasive as the Internet. Google is now a public company with a market cap of $80 billion; MSN launched a new search engine; AOL announces the creation of its own search engine; and traditional marketing budgets are being rewritten for search marketing and the web.

Top Search Engines Ranked by Search Share, July 2006:

(2006 Nielson/NetRatings): Source Net Rating from SearchEngineWatch.com

• Google | 49.2%
• Yahoo! Search | 23.8%
• MSN Search | 9.6%
• AOL Search | 6.3%
• Ask Jeeves | 2.6%
• Others | 8.5%

In recent years research firms have begun studying the influence of search on consumer behavior, and its impact on the travel industry. They have identified online users as only somewhat satisfied with search results and are willing to switch from one search engine to another showing very little loyalty. Here are some more of their findings:

Search Behavior:

• 1 in 2 Internet users will use one or more search engines in a search
• 1 in 3 use a search engine tool bar installed on the web browser
• 17% use search engines for specific reason: Yahoo to search music; Google to search for a song
• Relevance is still the driver; sponsored results have to be relevant
• 3 out of 4 will start at the search engine when going to a website
• 22% are looking for a website they already have in mind

(Keynote Research)

Search engine loyalty is low:

• Searches on one search engine occurs on other search engines
• 58% of searches conducted on Google are then applied to Yahoo or MSN
• Loyalty cannot be taken for granted
• Loyalty is low b/c switching cost is low

(Nielson NetRating)

Search in Travel is Destination Focused

Unlike other e-commerce categories, Internet users search for travel and hospitality services and offerings within the context of the destination. Therefore the search engine strategy for travel and hotel websites is subject to a different methodology than what the generalist SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies offer. Marketing a bank, eyeglass store, or dental office does not factor the characteristics or intensity of the destination. Nor do generalists differentiate travel search behaviors from general online consumers.

A destination-focused search engine strategy requires in-depth knowledge of the travel and hospitality industry, extensive destination research, destination target keyword analysis, and destination search behavior. Only a destination-focused search engine strategy can help the travel and hotel website leverage the popularity of the destination to its benefit.

Search in Travel (includes hospitality):

• 73% use search to find travel; 27% went directly to travel site
• Travel is top 4 category in use of search requests and some studies report in the top four types of searches
• Travel searches originating from a search engine tends to lead to travel being purchased two weeks out.

(Performics)

With such vast numbers of searches originating from search engines, clearly search engines are an essential component to the hotel’s direct online distribution strategy. Ranking high on the engines and consistently staying there along with matching the right budget to compete effectively are all major competitive issues with advertisers online.

Why Search Engine Ranking is Important - “The Golden Triangle”

The order in which the hotel appears on a search engine is of absolute importance. As far back as 2002, the Bear Stearns industry report Web Storm Rising stated, “Our research uncovered that being listed in the top five assures the highest level of bookings, and that after the fifth slot, bookings drop dramatically. Approximately 50% of people on the first page will go to the second page and so on.”

Over the last year or so, a new term, “Golden Triangle” has entered the search marketing vernacular. Novel research using beams of light that bounce off the eyeballs of online test users and onto a conditioned computer screen, captured certain patterns of online viewing behavior when on search engines. The highest concentration of visualizations appeared on the top three to four listings in the natural listings and top one to two in the sponsored listings. Basically a triangle began to form as more people tended to look in this top corner of the page now referred to in search marketing as the “Golden Triangle.”

Here are some other findings:

• Drop off begins after the 3rd natural listing
• First position in sponsored links drew 28% of visualizations
• Beyond the rank of 8 in the natural listings, there was a 50% drop off
• Bear Stearns 50-50 rule no longer stands; more like 80-20
• People who search below the fold are “more deliberate” seekers (may suggest have something already in mind to find)

So the conclusion drawn from above is that competing on the search engines by appearing as early and as often as possible is of increasing importance. How a website achieves top position is not a simply adjustment of the web page and the money starts to flow in but a concerted effort that requires time, expertise, and resources in website optimization and search marketing.

In hospitality, search marketing is part of your online distribution strategy. We have all become travel agents with our desktop, laptop, PDA, or other electronic devises and the strategy is to reach your specific customer segments when they are searching for you.

Lodging companies that do not have the marketing budget of the major intermediaries must rely even more on search engine referrals. Therefore good positioning of your hotel website on the major search engines is of critical importance and can directly affect your bottom line.

Note : The above article is based on collection various resources.

Concept of Database Marketing

There is a quote by "Thomas Prendergast"
"The Big guys know database and if you don't your lost!"

Database Marketing is a powerful and competitive weapon - especially on the Internet. The growth of database marketing is rooted in the small business philosophy of staying close to the customers, under-standing and meeting their needs and treating them well after the sale.

Corporate marketing is tied to BIG, general marketing or advertising campaigns with a single untargeted message. This message may be based on the companies Unique Selling Proposition (USP). However, customers have different needs and a single USP spelt out to the whole market is no longer enough.

Messages must be tailored to specific segments of the market and ultimately to the market segment of one, the individual customer. Computerizing the customer database makes it possible to address messages more specifically and market additional products to each customer.

The characteristics of fully fledged database marketing are ....

1. Each customer and prospect is identified as a record on the marketing database; markets and market segments are groups of individual customers.
2. Each customer and prospect record contains not only identification and access information but also a range of marketing information. It also includes information about past transactions and about campaign communications.
3. This information is accessible before, during and after the process of each interaction with the customer/prospect, to enable "you" to decide how to respond to the customer/prospect's needs.
4. The database is used to record customer/prospects responses to campaigns.
5. The information is available to marketing policy makers to enable them to decide such things as which target markets/segments are appropriate for each product/service etc.
6. Selling many products to each customer, the database is used to ensure that the approach to the customer is co-ordinated; and a consistent approach developed.
7. The database eventually replaces market research. Marketing campaigns are devised such that the response of customers to the campaign provides information, which the company is looking for.
8. Marketing Management automation is developed to handle the vast amount of information generated by DBM. This identifies opportunities and threats more or less automatically! This is fully fledged marketing automation. Very few companies have succeeded in doing this; but many have it as their goal.

DBM presents many challenges to management. It requires careful maintenance of great volumes of detailed customer data. Accessing the data, interpreting it, and using it to drive or support the marketing function requires a long-term marketing systems development policy.
It also requires computing and marketing people to work together, often educating each other. And, it may well require most people in the company to forget their traditional way of doing business.

DBM will only work if dealing with customers is viewed as an on-going process (Customer Contact Process).

The ladder of loyalty is a key concept in DBM.
1) No awareness of business or product/service.
2) Awareness of business
3) Awareness of product/service
4) Positive perception
5) Reognition of personal benefit
6) Enquiry
7) Objections overcome
8) Sale of product or service
9) Entry into continued relationship.

DBM is used to move customers up the ladder.

The essence of database marketing is communicating directly with the customers and asking them to respond in a tangible way. It provides the means for the customer or prospect to respond and is set up to measure and fulfill the response.

It sets up or reinforces a relationship with the customer, which is "fulfilled" when we follow up a customer's response to our communication. Fulfillment may be in many ways; a personalized email, a telephone conversation, sending literature (pdf), a sales visit, attendance at a web seminar, exhibition or store, or sending products to the customer.

So DBM is a broad discipline, not a separate marketing communications medium, but a way of using any medium to elicit the desired response.

Source :- Veretekk

Role of an SEO in Internet Marketing

Today search engines play a great role in providing information about every thing, whether you want information about any latest movies, songs, foods, hotels, any specific services every thing is provided by search engines.

But there is one question arises which information is helpful to user & which is not? This question is very common between the users who uses Google, Yahoo, MSN for finding services & other information, because in this corporate world every one wants that, their services will reach to the users & there is lot of competition for this & the result of this war of corporate world is suffered by the users.

So what should be the solution for providing right information to users. Yes now this is the right question. The popular search engines follows some strategies & the websites who follow these strategies will listed in SERP. The strategy of these are very simple, they says that, the websites are content rich & the content will be well presented. The search engines hates the flashy & heavy images.

Now the another question arises, how the websites are designed & developed according to search engines ? This is again a good question. To develop & designed websites according to them somebody have to do deep research of Google, Yahoo & MSN. But who will do this, a designer, a developer or someone specialist in search engines. Yes a specialist, a specialist who know all about Google, Yahoo & MSN, will optimize websites according to the them. From here the role of SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) comes who will do optimization for your websites.

A SEO assist in designing & developing the websites according to Google, Yahoo & MSN. But the work of SEO is not ends here, it has total responsibility to promote the website, so that more people can reach to websites & use the services, products & information. The SEO community is related to marketing industry, that's why it brings more focus on to the end-user. Due to this marketing background SEO's enables to find the targeted audience.

But how to find an effective SEO expert, who will bring you in front of their corporate world. All are proving that they are best, but the best is one who gave results. GateSix Technologies is specialist which offers SEO services of web site to build up your corporate identity, increasing your product presence across the world and make to stay ahead of your competition. If you are looking for leadership status or maintaining your leadership status, GateSix is the right choice for your search as a Search Engine Optimization Company. Gatesix is expertise in helping to strategically improve your search engine placement with desired keywords by using innovative and widely accepted search engine optimization technique and implement search engine marketing campaign to have the top ranking among your competitors.

So why are you standing behind in the crowd, & waiting for your turn, just try Internet Marketing Services of Gatesix.