Archive for December, 2007

Diluting Your Keywords Can Kill You

You wouldn’t water down your cocktail would you? Well then stop diluting the strength of your keywords!

When I say diluting your keywords I am referring to tactics like keyword stuffing. For instance, a title tag that includes five of your keywords in it will dilute the strength of any one of those keywords. Instead, use only your top two keywords in there and they should be similar terms. The same thing goes for your meta keywords and description tags. Basically one would create lists of around 5-7 keywords to target on any given page. But targeting any more than this dilutes the strength of any one of those keywords and may also confuse the search engines depending on how closely related those keywords are.

Diluting your keyword strength is similar to the idea that if you have too many links going out of any given page, that you dilute the flow of PageRank to those links within your site. So if you were to target 3 keywords in your title tag you would be diluting the weight search engines might attribute to the words in your title tag. Using only two of the keywords in the title tag gives more strength to those two terms. And with competition on the Web growing at an exponential rate you need all of the strength you can get. This idea is not as important when talking about the meta keywords and description, but it is still important to remember.

Any professional SEO consultant will know these things so make sure that you are not using too many keywords on your pages, that may be holding you back from ranking. And when you are writing your content, or determining which keywords you will be assigning to which pages, always remember to not get greedy and use too many keywords on each page.

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Posted on December 30th, 2007 by search_junkie  |  No Comments »

How Comparison Shopping Engines Work

Comparison Shopping Engines, or CSE for short, are THE best way to sell products online. Other than organic SEO, CSE data feeds have been the most successful campaigns for e-commerce merchants. If you sell anything online then you can utilize the CSE to sell more products. Some examples of comparison shopping engines are Shopzilla, NexTag, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, Google Product Search (formerly Froogle), Yahoo! Shopping, and Pronto.

The Basics

Comparison Shopping Engines work on a CPC (cost-per-click) model. So you submit your products to them in a special format, typically a .csv file in Excel, and they post your products, descriptions, and prices on their site. When a visitor clicks on one of your products they are taken directly to your product page where they can make the purchase. Typically you are listed with many other merchants on the site that are selling the exact same product or very similar. So if you are competing directly with other merchants, selling the same exact product, then typically you will need to provide a cheaper price, higher store ratings (reviews/ratings), cheaper shipping, or be higher up on the page in order to beat the competition. Most CSE allow their visitors to calculate shipping and tax right there in their site so that shoppers can see who truly offers the cheapest price. That is what comparison shopping is all about and that is why people use CSE to shop and compare prices and merchants quickly!

The Meat And Potatoes

Visitors that come to your site via comparison shopping engines will convert at a much higher rate than other visitors. Why? Because the visitor from a CSE is much further down the sales funnel. They have already done their research and due diligence and now they are looking to purchase. The majority of people that find your products via organic rankings or PPC are doing research for a purchase at a later date or an in store purchase. This means HIGHLY targeted traffic that is actually ready to make a PURCHASE!

The other thing that makes CSE a great sales channel is that click costs are fairly low, unless you are selling electronic, but even then the costs are low compared to some of the PPC costs associated with electronics keywords. That means that you as an e-commerce merchant can get targeted traffic at a very fair price. Obviously the higher your average order size is the easier it will be to make a profit but even if your average order is under $100 you can use the CSE as an additional, and very profitable, sales channel. If your average order is under $100 you will need to monitor your results alot closer than you would have to with a higher average order size, but again you can still be profitable.

The Bottom Line

If you sell products online then you need to be using the comparison shopping engines to sell more! Configuring, optimizing, and managing your CSE product data feed(s) can be a daunting and time consuming task. Each engine has their own specs that you need to meet and optimize for, plus each engine allows you to submit feeds at different times. Basically, its alot of work but it can be profitable if managed correctly. There are a number of companies, like Channel Advisor, that offer tools to help you manage CSE data feeds. But they can be very expensive and you still need to do alot of the work. I offer CSE management at a very reasonable rate and with exceptional results backed up by analytics that spell it all out for you. The comparison shopping engines are a fairly untapped resource for e-commerce merchants. Either way that you decide to go about it, run it your self, hire and independent consultant, or hire a firm, you can increase you sales significantly by submitting your products to the CSE.

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Posted on December 26th, 2007 by search_junkie  |  No Comments »

Page Not Found - Why The 404 Page Can Be Your Best Friend

Custom 404 pages are probably still one of the most overlooked things by both SEO firms an in-house SEO teams. The problem is that not enough people are educated on the 404 and why you need to have a customized one for your visitors. The 404 error message, or Not Found, is an HTTP standard response code that basically means that the client is able to connect with the server but that the server could not find the page requested. This usually happens when a user mistypes a URL or when you have broken links to pages that do not exist anymore. You would be surprised how often the 404 page gets served!

Plain 404 page

The Problem

The problem for the user is that a standard blank white 404 page with that standard text can be confusing for users. They may feel that they are on the wrong site or, even worse, that your site is down! Plus that standard 404 page gives the user no where to go, there is no navigation there to take the user back to your site. So many times you can lose that precious visitor, that you have spent so much time and effort to get, because you did not have a custom 404 page.

What is a Custom 404 Page?

A custom 404 page, at its most basic level, is a 404 error page that you design to have links back to your site so that the user can click back to the site and get back on track. The sky is the limit from there! You should have compelling text letting the user know what happened, why they are at that page, and how to get back. Many companies are now getting clever and are creating very funny 404 error pages to entertain the users and kind of apologize, through laughter, to the visitor. This is the 404 page for the eVisibility, the company I work for.

eVisibility 404 page

Others use the entire navigation, search box, RSS feed, advertisers, links to popular posts, news links and more. Others out the search box on their 404 pages, or add a link to their sitemap. All of these things are good because if a spider finds a 404 page they will continue to crawl and index the entire site and not get stopped by a 404 page. Here are some other great 404 pages that people have done:

404 book

tysontatecom_404.png

The bottom line is that in order to make your site more user friendly for your visitors and the search engine spiders, you need to have a customized 404 error page. Plus it gives you the opportunity to express your creativity and to be witty, just look at some of the examples in this post!

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Posted on December 19th, 2007 by search_junkie  |  4 Comments »

Section 508 Compliance - Have You Been Sued Yet?

Have you been sued yet? Well Target.com has, and if you are even somewhat concerned about your site then you need to understand section 508 compliance.

“Section 508 refers to a statutory section in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (found at 29 U.S.C. 794d). Congress significantly strengthened section 508 in the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Its primary purpose is to provide access to and use of Federal executive agencies’ electronic and information technology (EIT) by individuals with disabilities.”

The issue mainly boils down to the use of alt text on images which are used to describe what that image or link is about. The reason for using these are so that visually impaired individuals can navigate and use Websites by utilizing programs called screen readers that will read the alt text out loud to them. Essentially the screen reading programs vocalize what is on a site. I also feel that one needs to use hyperlink title tags on all text links on a site, this is the equivalent of image alt text, so that screen readers can tell users where text links go.

Alt Text

This is a pretty big deal considering the lawsuit that Target is going through, but this is by no means new news. Savvy SEO professionals have been using alt text and hyper link title tags for years! The reason is that it is yet another place to add your targeted keywords in the code. I have even seen the mention of section 508 compliance seal the deal on very large and competitive SEO pitches to fortune 500 companies. You really get the two fold benefit of making sure that your site is compliant and also getting to slip your keywords into the page a few more times.

Posted on December 12th, 2007 by search_junkie  |  No Comments »