Author Archives: Sylvia Patterson

Use Back Links to Increase your Website Ranking

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Back Links are the top metric search engines use to determine who you are,what you are all about, and ultimately how your website is ranked in the search results. In short, links are your website’s heart and soul for lowering your rank. The fastest way to start your link-building efforts is to get that online vote of trust is to submit your Website to free directories, which is one of the best ways to get your business website on the Worldwide Web map.

So, how do you get more inbound links to your website, and where do you start?

Here’s a list of the free top link-building directories to help you get started.

Local Directories

Biglocal.com

BOTW.org/top/Regional/United_States

Loopt.com

Localeze.com

Openlist.com

Outside.in

Superpages.com

Search Engine Local Business Listings

Bing.com Local

Getlisted.org (to double check if you’ve been listed)

Google.com

Yahoo.com

Blog Directories

Bloglines.com

Blogsearch.Google.com

Blogged.com

BlogCatalog.com

Blogmarks.net

DoFollowBlogs.com

MyBlogLog.com

PlaceBlogger.com

Technorati.com

Zimbio.com

Review and Rating Directories:

InsiderPages.com

Rateitall.com

Yelp.com

Directories not only help you get more inbound links but also bring in more qualified traffic and generate leads. As you add your business websites to these directories, make sure you use very specific categories including location, industry-specific niches and anything else that makes you standout! Whether you are locally focused or have branches throughout the country, you need to be listed where people are looking for you. Inbound links pointing to your website from other trusted sources on the Web are like people voting on Google for the best Website!

The Cost of Internet Marketing

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Internet Marketing

The Cost of Internet Marketing

As today’s savvy businesspeople know, to have a strong business, people have to know who you are and what you offer. In other words, you need good Internet Marketing! While a marketing plan will give your business marketing goals, a marketing budget helps you figure out practical steps to achieve those goals. How much should you spend? And where should you spend it?

What goes in a Marketing Budget?

A marketing budget typically covers costs for advertising, promotion, and public relations. Each amount varies based on the size of the business, its annual sales and how much the competition is advertising. Depending on the industry, marketing budgets can range from as low as 1% of sales to over 30%. New companies may spend as much as 50% of sales for introductory marketing programs in the first year. Smaller businesses may just try to match the spending of their direct competitors.

The overall marketing budget should include:

  • Print and broadcast advertising
  • Design and printing costs for all print materials, such as newsletters, brochures, and press releases, direct mail costs
  • Website development and online marketing
  • Public relations such as Press Releases
  • Trade shows
  • Other special events as needed

Let’s try to determine a dollar amount for each of the above categories. Keep in mind, it is usually easier to begin with a base amount for the entire marketing budget, and then allocate it into subcategories.However, each business’s marketing budget will differ, there are basically four common methods used to allocate funds:

1. Percentage of Sales

Allocating a specified percentage of sales revenue is one of the most popular methods for developing a marketing budget. The average allocation usually ranges between 9-12% of the annual budget, while the smallest businesses may go as low as 2%.

If a business is launching a new product or service, advertising and publicity needs are greater, so the percentage shouldf increase. The main advantage to using a percentage of sales is that the marketing budget will increase, or decrease, with the sales revenue of the company. The marketing budget will never spin out of control and deplete sales revenue. This is really the best approach for Internet Marketing!

2. The Flat Dollar Approach

Many businesses simply set a flat dollar amount for their marketing budget. Particularly useful for small businesses, they can base marketing budgets on what they think the company can afford instead of the company’s sales. Picking a flat rate is usually effective for companies looking at a one-time expense, such as specific public relations marketing or a trade show, and not a long range marketing plan.

Defining a flat dollar amount may be challenging in the first year of a business, since there are no past records of sales and marketing expenditures. Many first-time business owners contact others in the field to inquire about their sales and marketing projections, and from there, estimate marketing costs.

3. Matching Competitors

Another method to create a marketing budget is to analyze and estimate what the competition is spending and copy them. This is another simple way to set a budget, since maintaining costs comparable with competitors keeps the business in line with others in the field. However, this method also assumes the competitors are spending the right amount and have a comparable business. If you’re a small business competing with Wal-Mart, obviously you couldn’t duplicate Wal-Mart’s marketing budget. When using this method, the revenue of a business should still be taken into account. However, you could look at the percentage of revenues and match that percentage.

4. Marketing Plan Objectives

Often considered the most effective budgeting method, this method uses the objectives in the marketing plan to determine the marketing budget. The budget is developed by estimating the expenditures needed to achieve the desired marketing objectives. Although this method of budgeting is very realistic based on the needs of the business, it is often limited by available funds, as the desired budget may exceed what has been set asidein a given year. However, many believe this method is the most logical for determining a marketing budget.

Summary

Whatever approach is taken, a formal budget helps define the marketing needs of any business. By establishing a detailed marketing budget prior to the start of each fiscal year, and then on an annual basis, make sure any changes to parallel the growth or decline of the business.

By analyzing marketing costs and the results and on quarterly basis throughout the year, You can easily determine the effectiveness of your Internet Marketing budget. If you manage your Internet Marketing properly, you might find yourself in the position of figuring out how to allocate a larger percentage to your Internet Marketing, due to higher sales revenues!

How to Determine Your Search Engine Marketing Budget

Search Engine Marketing No Comments
Marketing Budget

Both small and medium sized business marketers are in the dark about their marketing budgets and in particular, about search engine marketing (SEM) budget. For Example, CyberAtlas reported that 58 percent of the internet marketers surveyed budgeted less than 1 percent of their annual marketing budgets to SEM, while 20 percent allocated 25 percent or more.

In this same study, 62 percent of business marketers reported receiving 50 to 75 percent of their visitors from search engines. In addition, we know traffic comes from search engines. Furthermore, we know this is targeted traffic because user searches are purposeful and self-directed. So it’s hard to understand why online marketers aren’t budgeted to take advantage of this vital marketing strategy.

Creating a Marketing Budget

Research shows U. S. corporations allocate 6 percent of gross revenues to their marketing budgets (on average). The rule of thumb is 4 to 10 percent of gross revenues for an effective marketing budget. The amount ranges from 1 percent for industrial B2B firms to 10 percent or more for consumer packaged goods, which can be higher when introducing new products.

Small to medium businesses will sometimes make a rough estimate of sales revenue, cost-of-goods, overhead, estimated gross profit, etc., then allocate anything left over to marketing. A better strategy is to estimate what your competition is spending and try to match that.

Using the industry average of 6 percent, your marketing budget for every $1M in gross revenues would be $60K per year, and ideally $15K (25 percent) of that will go to SEM.

Expense Justification to Management

There are a number of compelling reasons for substantiating Search Engine Marketing in your Internet marketing budget.

  • Most Web site traffic comes from search engines.
  • Search engine traffic is highly targeted.
  • The number of Internet shoppers in the USA is 245M and rising. .
  • SEM is cost effective compared to other marketing strategies.
  • Search engine text links provide branding and more conversions than banner ads.
  • The most compelling reason is that traffic comes from search engines.
  • The Georgia Tech GVU User Survey reported 85 percent of respondents found Web pages from search engines. Since then, other studies have reported 50 to 80 percent of Web site traffic comes from search engines. Both Jupiter Media Metrix and Nielsen/Net Ratings have reported shoppers use search engines to find product information online.
  • Equally compelling is the fact that search engine traffic is highly targeted. That’s because users initiate their searches for a reason – to find information, products and services.
  • The Georgia Tech GVU User Survey reported 86 percent of respondents were searching with intent to buy.

Another good reason for justifying the expense is the fact that the Web continues to grow and the number of users with Internet access is climbing. This means more traffic on Web sites, and a good portion of these will be shoppers.

  • Nielsen//NetRatings reported 498 million people have Internet access worldwide. In the U.S., 66 percent of adults have Web access. Jupiter Media Metrix reports that corporate spending is on the rise. Ecommerce Times predicted over $1 trillion will be spent online this year.

You need increased Web visibility to maintain market share, and SEM is one of the most cost-effective online marketing strategies you can buy compared to other advertising methods.

  • Marketing Sherpa case studies have reported increased revenues of 24% to 500% for companies conducting SEM campaigns. One case study compared SEM to banner ads and direct mail, reporting that SEM resulted in higher conversions at a lower cost-per-click and lower cost-per-acquisition.

SEM text links provide branding while producing the leads needed for sales conversions.

  • According to NPD Group, SEM performs better than banner ads for brand recall, as search engine text links proved more memorable than banner creative. Secondly, the number of online purchases made on sites found through search listings exceeded those made through banner ads by a large margin (55% vs. 9%).

Internet Site Visiblility

This should give you all the information you need to establish a marketing budget and to justify SEM in your marketing campaign. It’s important to make your site visible, and the best way to start is with targeted, search engine traffic.

How Google Search Affects Your Business

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Google Search

Google first announced Search 3.0 referred to as “vertical”, “universal”, or “blended, search” – back in 2007 that upgraded its Search 2.0 algorithms or “text-based results” (web pages) to add different kinds of results such as video, images, and news, and in 2009 added “real time search” integrating updates from Twitter and other social media sites into search results.

This article explains how Google search affects your business for those who want to better optimize their web presence utilizing the new algorithms.

1) It is all about Real Estate

SEO (search engine optimization) is all about providing content that people link to and is  optimized for certain keywords so that specific web pages would show up on the first page. (i.e.: Top Ten Listing)  However, those 10 spots are now cut down significantly. Some of that real estate is now reserved for different kinds of content across the web – video, photo images, etc. – that are on their own ranking algorithm.

With the opportunities to get on the first page of search results limited, businesses need to create multimedia content to take advantage of the new algorithms. Today, that means posting videos to YouTube or photos to Flickr, and linking articles and multimedia content to optimize the search results.
2) Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

SERPs may contain advertisements. This is how commercial search engines fund their operations. Common examples of these advertisements are displayed on the right hand side of the page as small classified style ads or directly above the main organic search results on the left. With this new, visually appealing, search results part way down the first page of search results, there is now a visual barrier that focuses users’ eyes even more on the top of the search results page. This means few people scroll to the bottom of the page or go on to the second or third page.

For optimized results your Web Site must be at the top of the first SERP and be one of the first 10 search results.

3) How To Brand Your Web Site?

Creating content is the optimal means to attract potential clients who are there to learn about and engage with your brand, not only on your Website, but social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. So, how do you turn YouTube video views into leads and sales for your business when SERP real estate is going to multimedia content? This is just one of the ways how Google search engine optimization affect your website development.

Always give people a way to further engage with your company, whether it’s by including a link to your website or blog article in the video description. Be sure to include your logo or an action call within the multimedia you posted. By referencing and linking your videos to your articles, you will optimize the chance of ending up in prime real estate.

William B. Weeks Jr.

How a Small Home Business can use Twitter – 5 keys

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Twitter Social Media

Synopsis: Many individuals and small home business owners don’t see how Twitter can help them market their business. However, major retailers have already gotten the hang of the Internets fastest-growing and most talked-about social media site and are using it to their advantage.

  • Dell announced it’s made $7 million in sales through Twitter, just by tweeting with “no strategy” in particular.
  • All of the major Automobile companies use Twitter to advertise their vehicles.
  • A number of Major Airlines like Jet Blue and Southwest are using Twitter
  • Companies can utilize Twitter Internally to notify their Employee’s current news events or HR updates.
  • Hotel Chains are utilizing Twitter to advertise special rates and enhancements to their properties.

How can you use Twitter to grow your Small Home Business? Here are 5 basic tips to get you started.

  1. Create a profile. Fill it out completely, providing a good description of your business, and a link to your company Web site. You may want to set up two or more Twitter accounts – perhaps one as a customer-service channel, and another as the main company page.
  1. To Start: First off can search for Twitter users in your area of interest who have a lot of followers and watch what they’re saying. Follow them – some will follow you back and you’ll start to build an audience. You should find influential Twitter users such as Peter Cashmore of Mashable (@mashable) or Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and read their Twitter tips. Think of Twitter as your own personal branding system. You can Tweet news, quotes, or anything you think provides value. If it doesn’t you will find out very quickly!
  2. ReTweet. Start retweeting interesting posts from others. Participate in discussions. Search on your company name and find customers with problems – then solve them. Share news about your company too, but keep it to about one-quarter of your total posts.
  3. Create Interest. Hold a contest, take a poll, make a Twitter-only free offer, ask a question, or start a hashtagged discussion thread (a key word that begins with the # sign).
  4. Start a blog on your company Web site and post links to your posts on Twitter to draw visitors over to your URL.
  5. Promote your site. Feature your Twitter handle prominently on your own site and in all your marketing materials to help customers and prospects connect with you on Twitter and build your following.

William

SEM – Search Engine Marketing

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Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization (both on-page and off-page) as well as through advertising (paid placements, contextual advertising, and paid inclusions). Depending on the context, SEM can be an umbrella term for various means of marketing a website including search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages, or it may contrast with PPC, focusing on only paid components.

Method and Metrics

There are four categories of methods and metrics used to optimize websites through search engine marketing.

  1. Keyword research and analysis involves three “steps:” ensuring the site can be indexed in the search engines, finding the most relevant and popular keywords for the site and its products, and using those keywords on the site in a way that will generate and convert traffic.
  2. Website saturation and popularity, how much presence a website has on search engines, can be analyzed through the number of pages of the site that are indexed on search engines (saturation) and how many back links the site has (popularity). It requires your pages containing those keywords people are looking for and ensure that they rank high enough in search engine rankings. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. The followings are major tools measuring various aspects of saturation and link popularity: Link Popularity, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Marketleap’s Link Popularity and Search Engine Saturation.
  3. Back end tools, including Web analytic tools and HTML validators, provide data on a website and its visitors and allow the success of a website to be measured. They range from simple traffic counters to tools that work with log files and to more sophisticated tools that are based on page tagging (putting JavaScript or an image on a page to track actions). These tools can deliver conversion-related information. There are three major tools used by EBSCO: (a) log file analyzing tool: WebTrends by NetiQ; (b) tag-based analytic programs WebSideStory’s Hitbox; (c) transaction-based tool: TeaLeaf RealiTea. Validators check the invisible parts of websites, highlighting potential problems and many usability issues ensure your website meets W3C code standards. Try to use more than one HTML validator or spider simulator because each tests, highlights, and reports on slightly different aspects of your website
  4. Whois tools reveal the owners of various websites, and can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues

Paid Inclusion

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages. Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies, the most notable being Google.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator. Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be cataloged on a regular basis. However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently. A per-click fee may also apply. Each search engine is different. Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success. More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!,] mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling. Others, like Google, Ask.com, do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing where advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such.

Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization, since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking, and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months. Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

Questions

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy, and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[ by Consumer Reports Web Watch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines.

Summary

Search engines are constantly adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers. This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

Business Development

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Business Marketing

Business development is a combination of strategic analysis, marketing, and sales. I can help you create the right marketing strategy in order to generate sales leads, negotiate effectively and close deals. I can assist you to identify new business opportunities—whether that means new markets, new partnerships with other businesses, new ways to reach existing markets, or new product or service offerings to better meet the needs of existing markets and then to go out and exploit those opportunities. If you don’t position yourself with the right business development and marketing efforts, your chances of growing as a business are greatly diminished. I can assist you in identifying and capitalizing on these growth opportunities.

Through our company Gate One Marketing, my partner Per-Erik Olson and we will provide complete services for a wide range of Small Businesses and Start-ups companies, from Hi-Tech to Artists, Authors, Tennis Pro’s, Manufacturers Representatives, Nutritional Companies, Dry Cleaners, and Charities by providing Website development,Search Engine Optimization, Start-up Business Plans, and services such as Logo’s, advanced Pay Per Click Marketing, and Press Releases!

We are a full service Internet Marketing Company that can convey  your message. We work with you to meet your goals and requirements.

It is our commitment to our customers that sets us apart from the others!

Just ask, we will provide references!

Inbound Links in SEO

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Inbound Link Marketing

On-page optimization is an essential first step in using inbound links as you will ultimately get much more leverage having links from other sites to yours. Inbound links in the past where to just be a good source of referral traffic. Today, they can influence your search engine rankings as well.

Google was the first search engine to use links as a significant ranking factor. Now all the search engines rank your Website to a certain degree. Google viewed a link from one site to another as a ‘ballot’ for the target site. The more ballots you have, the more authoritative your site is considered.

There are two main benefits gained through each link:

  • Better SEO authority of the linked-to page and increase in authority of the site as a whole
  • More relevancy of the page for the keywords that are used in the link’s anchor text

Please Note that not all links pass value. Webmasters can add a ‘nofollow’ attribute to an outbound link in order to achieve this. For example Links from some popular sites such as Wikipedia are all nofollow. You can verify whether a link passes value by checking its HTML code. Just use your favorite browser.

Link Building with Head Terms vs. Long Tail Terms

We have now discussed how to identify the search terms that your site would benefit from targeting. However, different link building techniques may be required, depending on the competitiveness of a keyword.

Head Terms

Ranking for highly competitive head terms typically requires a more diverse source of links pointing to the appropriate page that targets the term. The links will need to use the corresponding keyword as the anchor text as often as possible.

Mid and Long Tail Terms

Pages that target less competitive mid-to-long tail terms don’t typically require as many external links. Instead, sites can rank for these terms by gaining authority through strong, trusted links, often to the front page of the site. Solid information architecture and good on-page keyword targeting will then provide the relevancy signals needed to rank for these terms.

Most of the link building tactics discussed later in this chapter can be used either to target specific head terms or simply to build the authority of the site, depending on your specific needs.

Tools for Link Research

Finally, It’s often useful to know about the links your site currently has. This information can help you make decisions regarding whether to aim for more links that will build site authority or to focus on deep links with specific anchor text.

Researching your competitors’ links can also be valuable, particularly in identifying link opportunities or niches that could also be useful to your link building campaign.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

Yahoo! provides a free tool that lists up to 1,000 of the links to any site. Enter your domain name or a particular page, select the ‘Inlinks’ button, and change the settings to ‘Show links: except from this domain.’ Also select ‘to: entire site’ if you’d like to see links to the whole site rather than just a single page.

These links are not in any particular order, and the list will include links that do not pass any value as well as those that do.

Open Site Explorer – http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

This tool provides information about the top 1,000 links to a site. These can be filtered to exclude links that do not pass value. Additional information about each link includes the anchor text used and the authority of each linking page.

The Open Site Explorer tool also includes reports that showcase the most popular pages on the site, the most common anchor text used to link to a page or site and other information about the strength of the page.

SEO – How to Get Found Online

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Internet marketing

The Internet has dramatically transformed the way people learn about and shop for products and services. Just ten years ago, companies reached their consumers through trade shows, print advertising, and other traditional marketing methods. Today, consumers start their shopping by looking on the Internet first, using search engines, blogs, and social media sites. For companies to remain competitive, businesses’ websites need to be found online by their customers already searching for the products and services that you are selling. Today it is now possible for a small business to actually compete with larger companies if you create the correct SEO for your Website.

Businesses must get found online by the customers searching for their products and services in the three main areas.

  • Search Engines – Google, Yahoo, Bing, and MSN
  • Blogs – Blogger and Digg fro example.
  • Social Media – Technorati, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

 Search Engines

Customers most frequently go to the search engines to research and purchase products and services. Is your website getting found by consumers looking for you?

Please Note: Organic Search is Best!

In the example below; If you look at the Search results, you can see that there are 3 parts to the search. Next to the RED lines is Paid Search Results and the Green represents Organic Search Results.

Paid Search Results are those listings that require a fee for the search engines to list their link for particular keywords. The most widely used form of paid listing is Pay Per Click (PPC), where you pay each time someone clicks on the link in your advertisement. The price increases with the competitiveness of the keyword.

Organic Search Results are gathered by search engines’ web crawlers and ranked according to relevance to search terms. This relevance is calculated by criteria such as extent of keyword match and number of links into that website. Ranking in the organic search results is better because not only is it free, but research demonstrates that people click on the organic results 75% of the time and paid results only 25% of the time.

How Does Google Decide

Google and the other search engines rank websites in search engine results pages according to the relevance of to the search terms. This relevance is calculated by looking at both on-page factors such as the content on your site and off-page factors in the form of inbound links to your website. Off-page factors are some of the biggest influencers in your website’s ranking in search engine results.

How To Use Search Engines

 1. Find Keywords

  • Search Volume – Given two different keyword phrases, optimize for the one with the larger number of searches.
  • Relevance – Choose keywords that your target market is using to describe and search for your products and services.
  • Difficulty or Competition – Consider your chances for ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword phrase. Look at the sites ranked in those first 10 slots, their authority and relevance to search terms, and then create a strategy to overtake them so you can secure a spot on that first page.

2. Use On-Page SEO

  •  Place keywords in the page title, URL, headings, and • page text.
  • Optimize your page description for maximum click-through-rate when your site ranks in Google searches.
  • Place keywords in other “invisible” places on your site, • including meta-keyword tags and alt-text on images.

 3. Use Off-Page SEO

  •  Build more inbound links from other sites into yours.
  • Each link serves as a recommendation or a reference to tell the search engines that your site is a quality site.
  • Build more links within context, i.e. those with • valuable keywords in the link anchor text (the text that is hyperlinked to your site). Link anchor text provides context for the search engines to understand what your site is about.

Build more links from trusted websites. Just as references from well-respected friends and experts offer more value, so do links from trusted and well-respected websites.

Link-building tips

  • Submit your website to directories like Google Yahoo , Bing, and Business.com
  • Communicate with others in your industry through blogs and other social media

Create compelling tools (such as an interesting Software Application) or A Blog.

4. Always Measure & Analyze

  • Track the number of inbound links, keyword rank over time and compared to competition. You can use Alexa Rankings to do so!
  • Measure real business results: number of visitors, leads, and customers using tools like Google Analytics

 Get Found Online By Using Social Media

What is social media? Media (content that is published) with a social (anyone can add to and share it) component. Social media is like a business networking reception without the constraints of time and space.

  • Social Media is Inbound Marketing
  • Social media helps with SEO
  • Social media promotes your blog
  • Social media is permission centric
  • Since the conversation has started it’s time that you’re aware of it and develop a strategy for engaging in it and using it for marketing your products and services

Use Social Media

1. Some Guidelines for Engagement

  • Try to meet people and start conversations, become a active member of the community and don’t just join to advertise your products or services
  • Add value to the community – answer questions and help others.
  • Ask questions – trust experienced users advice

2. Publish, Share, and Network

  • Publish: Everyone can publish anything for everyone
  • Publish everything you have anywhere you can
  • Monitor what others publish and promote it
  • Empower your customers to publish and share with others

If you are new to internet marketing it is essential to seek the advice of experienced Internet Marketers that can help you get started and succeed! Feel free to contact me and I will be happy to consult with you!

William

SEO Basic Principles

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SEO For Website

Since SEO is so competitive, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to get your site on a first page of search results. But as a content creator, you can help bump up your site’s ranking just by optimizing the text and links.

The SEO Basic Principles

  • Offer original content with genuine value and relevance to your readers.
  • Strategically seed your copy with keywords that describe your content and that correspond with the phrases people are using to perform their searches.
  • Embed keywords where they matter most: in the title, headings, links, metadata (part of your page’s source code), and image and video tags.
  • Make every page of your site unique: In addition to original content, each page should have its own topic, title, and page-specific keywords (though you can use the highest-volume keywords throughout your site—see “Keyword Research Tools” for assistance in finding the best keywords).
  • Deliver on the promise of your keywords: Don’t lure people to your site with words that don’t accurately represent your content.
  • Link to other relevant sites, and encourage those sites to link to yours.
  • Optimize your site for people first—through clear, concise writing—and for search engines second. Implement SEO without turning your text into nonsense.

For Example:

This Search is my name WBWeeksJr. What I am looking for is to check that the SEO I performed on my site actually moved me to number 1 in the Search Rankings which it does!

Please Note:

All the SEO copy-writing skill in the world won’t help your site if a search engine can’t read it. This is the case with text saved as an image: The image looks like a blank portion of the page to a search engine. Avoid saving text as an image.

How search engines read a webpage

Even though people and search engines scan webpages differently, there are some similarities:

  • Page title. Both people and search engines need to know at a glance what a page is about. The page title, sometimes called the <title> tag, is inserted in the code of a webpage. You’ll see it in the top bar of a Web browser, as in the following example.
  • Headlines, emphasized words, and lists. Both people and search engines know that anything called out in headlines or subheadings, in boldface or italics, or in bullet-ed lists is likely to be important. Make sure headings, links, and lists in your Web copy are called out with HTML tags.
  • Introduction and conclusion. Readers will scan your opening paragraph or your summary for quick information. And search engines, to understand what the subject of a page is, look for keywords throughout that page, including at the top (the introduction) and the bottom (the conclusion). But don’t just shove keywords into the top or the bottom of your page—distribute them evenly throughout.
  • Related links. Humans appreciate options for more information. Search engines, too, like to see that you’ve linked to other websites and that other websites have linked to yours.

What Search Engines and People Like

  • Verbosity. In the search engine world, verbosity means substantial, relevant, original content. Do fill your page with words, but write succinctly: Make sure that every word you write is relevant to your audience and to the topic you’re addressing.
  • Good writing. To a search engine, good writing means using variations of your keywords, including those with different endings. For example, if you are targeting the phrase job interview, use the singular, plural, -ing, and -ed forms, such as job interviews and job interviewing.

What Search Engines and People Dislike

  • Poor writing. Search engines are more likely to penalize your website when you stuff your copy with unrelated keywords, strand a list of keywords at the bottom of your page, and rely too much on headlines and links. Your entire page should be relevant: Like a muffin with the right amount of blueberries, it should have juicy keywords distributed evenly throughout, but not so many that they overwhelm the whole.
  • Broken links. Search engines want to provide a great experience for their customers by directing them to a useful and informative website that works properly. Broken links tell people and search engines that a site is poorly maintained and will give people a bad experience.