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When in Doubt Turn to SEO Consulting

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When you don’t know the answer to a question what do you do? Do you stand stagnant in the wake of bewilderment? No, acute businesspeople don’t do that. They move forward toward progression. What about online traction? How can your brand make the most of online properties and engagement? Do you have immediate answers? Is adopting a search engine optimization campaign worth your time and investment? When a business is unsure about proceeding, it’s a good time to seek SEO consulting rather than full-fledged services.

Here’s why.

Not Regulated

The SEO industry is not regulated. What does that mean? You are feeling sick, possibly hosting the flu. Will you go to anyone who calls themselves a ‘doctor’ for treatment? Of course not- such sentiments are silly to entertain. However, such a dynamic exists in the SEO vertical. Anyone could practice. Not all providers are good at it.

If your business has limited understanding of SEO, then it is much better to slow the pace and approach SEO consulting first rather than adopt services. It could save your business a lot of time, money, and grief. A consultation will provide a better understanding of how to proceed.

Many Options

What exactly is search engine optimization? More pointed, what types of elements does it imply? Do you really know all your options? What if you think you need a lot of link building, but what you really need is content? How can you make a distinction regarding immediate and long-term needs? SEO consulting helps prioritize and realize. Experienced professionals elucidate high-priority needs while counseling upon proper implementation.

In-House or Outsource

What types of SEO elements could be addressed in-house? What elements warrant years of experience and expertise? SEO consulting helps clients differentiate between tasks, which could be addressed in-house and those needed to be outsourced. Moreover, consultants can help prioritize, as referenced above. For instance, content production could be handled in-house for a limited time until more online traction is garnered; at that point it may be best to have an agency address content needs. Of course, varying brands will have different needs.

Conclusion

The sales cycle of SEO warrants time and thought. Be patient. Learn more about the industry and afforded options. Hasty decisions usually wind up costing businesses additional money in the future. Understand your needs. Use SEO consulting to help devise a strategy, then commence from a position of better understanding.

Stephen Craig is a part of an elite team of SEO consultants and enjoys writing about the latest trends in search engine optimization. Follow him @SCraigSEO.




Thinking about applying SEO to your business website?

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A good majority of people are on the internet nowadays. Today almost every company has an online presence, selling music, insurance, tvs, clothing etc.

But if we don’t know a site to go to for a product, what do we usually do to find a suitable site? We use a search engine to help find our results, but usually we’ll look at the first few results, and maybe the next few, then move on -so its become something of a race to try and get to page one on Google. But how do you get your business to page one on Google? This is where SEO comes in.

SEO stands for ‘search engine optimization‘, which is basically where your website is tweaked and maintained to make sure you can bring in a maximum amount of visitors to your site, which in turn will help you power your way up the rankings. So how is this done? Search engines such as Google work on the ‘key words’ that you type into them to help you find what your looking for. Knowing what the most searched for phrases are important, as you can optimise the site to include those words, making yourself more likely to be found underneath them. Search engines penalise for over using a phrase, but don’t under use it either. Have as many keywords as you want, but have a select number to really focus on, usually the ones that get typed into a search engine the most. The keywords can also vary from page to page on the website, to get a certain page to page one status on a search engine, so customers can go straight to the product page. Search engines know about  the keywords stored on websites and individual pages by sending their search engine robots, known as ‘spiders’ to view the search engine and a few of the site pages.

So in general, SEO can help get more people to see your site, which can lead to more people buying from you and a increase in business.

Interested in finding out more about SEO or giving your site an SEO review? Click on the links to find out more

The reason why valid HTML code is important to your website

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The validity of the HTML code is a very important aspect of web site promotion, but many webmasters overlooked it.

Do you know what is valid HTML code?

Most web pages are written in HTML. Every document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules because HTML has its own grammar, vocabulary and syntax like very language.

Those does not follow the official rules is called invalid HTML code. HTML is constantly changing like any language. It’s very easy to make mistakes as HTML has become a relative complex language.

Why is valid HTML code important?

Search engines will find the relevant content of your web site via parsing the HTML code. If there is errors in your HTML code, search engines might not be able to find everything on the page.

The crawler programs of search engine obey the HTML standard. Only if your pages are compliant to the HTML standard can they index your site. Make sure that there is no mistake in your web page code, or they might stop crawling your web site and lose what they’ve collected so far because of the error.

Although most major search engines can deal with minor errors in HTML code, a single missing bracket in your HTML code can be the reason if your web page cannot be found in search engines.

If you miss some important tags, of close some tags improperly, search engines might ignore the complete content of that page.

How can you check the validity of your HTML code?

Luckily, you can have free services to check the validity of your HTML code. The most common HTML validator is the W3 HTML Validator.

It is a service to check HTML documents for conformance to W3C HTML and XHTML recommendations and other HTML standards.

The validator will tell your what errors are on the page when you enter the address of a web page on this page.

Although not all HTML errors will cause problems for your search engine rankings, some of them can keep web spiders from indexing your web pages.

Valid HTML code is very helpful for search engine spiders to index your site, so you should be sure that you have corrected the biggest mistakes in HTML code.

Easy Tips for SEO

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Do you want to increase your SEO skills, here are 10 tips on how to optimize your website to ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold

Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page once or twice, do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears.

Deep linking

Make sure that you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. The search engine will think that your websites have a lot of worthwhile content when it finds other websites are linking to different pages on your site. The search engine will consider that your site is a shallow site of little value or your links were just generated by automation instead of by the value of your site if you have all your links come in to the home page.

Newsletters

Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links are available for many years in their archives.

Become a foreigner

Try to get a business address in one of the foreign countries. Both Canada and the UK offer many directories for websites of companies.

Multiple domains

Search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might want two or more. Also, only home pages are accepted by directories. So when you have several topics, it might be worth having several domains to support their own websites.

First come, first served

Search engine robots will only follow the first link they find to any particular page and they won’t follow additional links to the same page. Please also include text links in your navigation bar when you must have image links, and make sure that the text links show up first in the source code.

Not anchor text

Don’t overdo the anchor text. As the anchor text are looking the same, you should not overdo it, otherwise it may make your inbound links look like automation.

Titles for links

Links can get titles, too. It can help visually impaired surfers to know where you are sending them via making titles for links. Furthermore, some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Article exchanges

You’ve heard of link exchanges, article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish others’ article on pudding pops with a link back. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in other country with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links.

Site map

A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. With the help of a site map, the search engine robots will find every page in two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. A small site map is also called the navigation bar.

There is a lot more to do with search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.

The Power Of Backlinks For Increasing Your Traffic

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Backlinks Are The Key to Traffic

Generating a great website is only part of having an Internet presence.  If no-one can find your site when searching then you might as well not spend any time building your site.

The most important thing that you can do to have an effective web presence is have other web sites link to it.  Typically, there are 2 types of links, one-way and reciprocal.  Both are easy and effective strategies to building traffic but one is much more effective than the other – one-way links.

Reciprocal links are when you link to a site and that web site also links back to you.  This was the most popular type of linking a few years ago and is still widely used.  Some site owners get great traffic by using in a link exchange service or system created specifically for reciprocal links.  A link exchange is a group of site owners that exchange links with one another.

The other type of linking is called one-way linking.  This is when one site links to your web site; however you do not place a link back.  Sometimes you may agree to exchange backlinks to different sites which is called an n-way link exchange.  Google really prefers this type of linking compared to reciprocal linking.  But, it can be very difficult to get a one-way link.  There are three chief strategies for getting one-way links: submit your web site to directories, give away something significant that includes your link, pay for a link on someone else’s high ranking web site.

1. Creating backlinks by submitting your web site to directories is generally free unless you choose to upgrade.  Directories are special web sites that list other web sites that visitors may be interested in and are usually hand edited so they have additional authoritative weight in the search engine algorithms.  There are software applications that can help with the tedious procedure of filling out directory web forms.  One of the least expensive is Directory Site Submitter.

Directory Site Submitter will let you create and manage multiple projects with multiple sites per project and then help you submit to over 400 free directories.  The links from these websites will be helpful for SEO reasons more than actual traffic.

2. A great solution is to give away something of value that contains your link.  Articles are very common since so many people need site content.  They are cheap to write and can be effective at drawing one-way links to your site.

3. Steer clear of purchasing links on sites for SEO purposes.  It can cost up to $100 a month or more to put your link on a high pagerank site and it still might not be counted in the search engine formula.  Google has frequently said that purchasing direct links will not be of benefit for SEO.  However, you might still use this technique to drive traffic from a high traffic site to your site.

The real truth is that if you are working to build  long term income, it is going to take a while before your web site becomes profitable.  A long term strategy for a site may take six months or even a year for it to start generating income.  It is also important to start building back links at once.  Choose your links carefully.  Make sure that you are not choosing links from low level web sites, scraper web sites or backlinks from bad neighborhoods.

Keep in mind, in today’s competitive Internet environment, if you would like a successful website then you will have to do at least as much or more SEO than the sites on the first page of search engine results.

Key WordPress Search Engine Optimization Factors to Focus On

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A caboodle of advice is available on the web with reference to the things folks ought to do to gain good rankings with Google and other SE’s for WordPress pages.

It’s easy to get confused when you consume everything that is out there, because some people agree with others while some totally disagree and offer different advice.

You can be very suspicious of any advice given by someone who says you should use search engine submissions, or employ FFA sites. What is pertinent to gain outstanding rankings was highlighted recently in a survey performed by SEOmoz of a number of search engine optimization experts.

In summary, here are the 4 most important SEO ranking factors, according to their consensus opinion.

The Right Keywords in the Title

The use of the correct keywords when writing the text for the title tag of a WordPress page is extremely important. Not only does it help with higher search engine rankings, it also assists with higher click-through from the search engine listings to your page. It’s of reduced use to be listed high in the results and not receive that many clicks. The ultimate goal is to get as many visitors to your pages as possible.

The SE highlights in bold the keywords that were used by the web surfer. When the right keyphrase of the title is shown in bold, it stands an improved opportunity of being noticed and receiving a mouse click. Notwithstanding, bolded keywords aren’t the only element to think about when crafting the page title tag.

A wisely crafted title tag, that tempts the user to click through, can give you a lot of additional clicks. It is better to receive a hundred clicks from listing number 5 with an eye-catching title tag compared with fifty clicks from position number three with a badly written title tag, right?

Anchor Text used by Links to Your Site

The anchor text that is used in the hyperlink that points to your web site from an external site counts a lot in the SE algorithms to figure out what your site is focused on. And, what your web site is all about influences to a large extent what keywords it will rank for in the search engine listing.

If at all you can exert any influence on the anchor text that other web sites utilize when they link to your site, then it’s an extremely productive investment of your time.

A larger number of sites that link to your web site with a certain keyword, or variations of that keyphrase, will cause the SE’s to more easily believe that your site is all about that particular keyphrase.

It is far more advantageous if the content of the destination page on your site contains that particular keyphrase and phrases similar in meaning.

The Global Link Popularity of the Web Site

Search engines calculate the relative importance of a web site by using the volume of links that are pointed to the site. This includes both the quality of hyperlinks and the quantity of hyperlinks.

The more different sites that have links to your site, the higher the SE’s will rate the deemed importance of your web site.

Building links does not stop. There can never be a sufficient number of links pointing to your website.

True, it’s possible to build links too fast and that can raise some alerts in the algorithms of the search engines.

However, if it’s done as an ongoing effort with a longer term outlook, every link deserves the effort of acquiring it. The links all add up to a higher perceived importance of your web site.

Internal Linking Structure of the Site and the Ensuing Link Popularity

Naturally, some of your web pages will obtain more links than others. Those that don’t get lots of links could be the real money pages that you’d desire to rank well in the search engine listings.

The internal linking structure, as well as the anchor text employed in the internal links, is how you distribute PageRank inside your own site. The wisest approach to success is to install the plugin for WordPress SEO that is explicitly built to do that.

Some SEO experts say that an internal link to a page carries the same value as a link from an external page. That doesn’t mean your web site will rank with nothing more than internal links. What it means is that you can get a certain page ranked by pointing internal links to it even though it doesn’t have a lot of external backlinks, on the condition that the remainder of your web site has accumulated enough PageRank from external backlinks.

Search Engine Strategy Basics

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How much you succeed can be directly tied to how much SEO work you do, good internet marketers know that SEO is very important.

Using SEO techniques you can ensure that your website comes up at the top of searches and you get a ton of new traffic to your site. The process of SEO involves choosing the best keywords for your website content.

In this article we’ll show you several key ways that you can optimize your site for search engine spiders.

  • Know all your keywords and make sure you use them not only in titles but in content too. Doing this will make sure that your niche specific keywords will come up high in the search engines when people are using them in searches. Having your site show up in search results will get you way more traffic.
  • When designing and building your website, make sure that your keywords are in your web page headings and sub-headings.
  • Have high quality, unique and fresh content on your website. Duplicate content can result in your website being penalized by search engines. Having fresh content means that your website will get indexed by search engines and more people will visit your website because you have useful content on your website.
  • Submit your site to lots of web directories. This will help your site get found more easily by search engines.
  • Make links with other sites that are similar. In and Outbound links can greatly improve the popularity of your website. To get lotsof inbound links, try article and forum marketing, simple tricks that can drive lots of traffic. Link exchanges with other similar sites will help.
  • Get a blog and use your keywords daily to post about things in your niche. This increases the authority and ranking of your blog so that you can rank better and get more visitors to your site.

These steps can help to increase your website ranking on major search engines, Follow them, use your keywords in everything you do and you’ll see more traffic directed to your websites.

Have you considered using PLR content to supplement your site content?

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OK, I’ve seen all the GURU’s talking about it for months now so i decided to finally go and check out what all the fuss was about. I joined a membership site called PLRpro a little over a month ago. I haven’t actually used any of the articles I’ve received on any of my sites yet, but I will be soon. The quality of the articles are very good.

Just like you I was a little skeptical at first, but I have to say I was SERIOUSLY impressed. The quality of there PLR content was great, but what I was really amazed with was the amount of free resources that were in there. I thought I was just signing up for content but with all the resources in there it’s been like my own personal coaching from the experts.

In fact, if you want to see what I’m talking about have a look at http://www.ninetydaychallenge.net It’s a fool proof system, it tells you exactly what to do, where to do it and on what day to do it on from start to finish and guarantees you’ll make money.

Anyway, here’s a basic overview of what your PLRPro membership contains:

440 articles across 11 niches (40 articles in each niche)
Full keyword research in each niche
Affiliate lists for each niche
Header Graphics for each niche
5 Website Templates each month
Articles done in 8 languages
50 PR4 sites that you can get links from to get your sites indexed and crawled

I’ve also found that they’ve added new resources in the month I’ve been with them and there are some fantastic additions to the service planned for October. I can’t wait!

PLUS here’s a few of the things they normally keep secret:

You’ll have access to their Automized Site Builder
Specialized WordPress Installer
Automatic WordPress Uploader
181 Page VRE Handbook (I’ve slowly been going through this and it’s very helpful)
SEO Training (includes 6 part Video Program)
PPC Training
Plus more….

They really do put together the full package… you’re not just paying for content, with all the extra’s this is probably the only membership you’ll ever need.

As far as the PLR Content game is concerned, they truly offer the best package out there bar none.

If you don’t believe me, check out what others have to say at PLRpro.

Finally updated WordPress

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I have a lot of blogs. A LOT of blogs. I’ve been delaying updating them because I knew it would take forever.

I’ve slowly been updating my installations over the past week. For my newer domains it wasn’t such a problem because I could use Fantastico to update them … and since their newish they weren’t all that out of date.

However all my older blogs, including this one, moved servers twice last year and I lost the ability to automatically update with Fantastico when I moved the sites to new servers. If I’d done fresh installations using Fantastico to install WP on the domains and directories first and then transferred my former databases into the new installations I could have avoided this problem, but that’s not the way things worked out.

Oh well … I don’t mind manual updating the blogs. It just takes time.

I’ve had a problem with my blogs for a little while. My problems started back when the Bad Behavior plugin had a problem a couple of months ago. Remember something with the blacklists went wrong and it blocked people out of their WP installations until they either turned off their plugin or updated it? Well I did the update and I updated my Google Sitemaps plugin at the same time and ever since then I had an error message whenever I published an article (on 7 different blogs!) and I don’t think my do follow plugin was working correctly either.

Well now, along with updating this blog to WP 2.3.3 I’ve also updated Bad Behavior (it’s latest version is 2.0.13 if your keeping track) and Google Sitemaps ( Version 3.0.3). At first I thought I still had a problem, but I refreshed the permalinks and tada – it’s all working well again.

I wasn’t that far behind in updating WordPress. I think this blog was 2.2 … so it hasn’t been that long since I updated. However, WP has done a lot of updates in recent months and between the problems I was having with the plugins and being behind in upgrading WP I knew it was time to upgrade. I won’t fall so far behind again!

So far I’ve updated 6 new domains plus this domain. Now I’ve got 7 blogs on Feverishthoughts.com and one on yet another domain to manually upgrade. It will probably be a few days before I’m completely done … sigh.

Google sites – coming soon

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I don’t think that there’s much that Google doesn’t have it’s hand in these days.

The latest news is that we’ll soon be able to create websites on Google. The sites will run on Google servers and I imagine will be fairly easy to use for non-techies. By that I mean you won’t have to know much if any code to create a website of your own within a matter of minutes!

Here’s a news story I found that discusses Google’s latest step into the world of website creation:

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