Website is a slaes man..Websites do have Life!!!

Nearly 2.6 years of experience in online industry has taught me many things about the internet or online industry. In the long two and half years, I have come across plenty of websites. I had always considered websites as mediators between clients and customers. Their existence is to convey messages to the people. But my experience has changed my perspective about websites. That is why may be so much of respect given to “experience”. Websites are not mere mediators carrying information on them. Websites are like sales man… Even websites have life.

Website is a sales man

Open any website and just sit back and look at it. A lot can be understood just looking at the website. One could categories websites as an active, lively, informative, quite lazy, boring, reserved and few just flashy doing a lot of show off. Every web site which is present on the internet is to serve some purpose. But most of the times they fail to do so because of their appearance. They are just not welcoming.

Few website lack unity in them, it looks like as if things are spread all over the website. I just feel like cleaning it up, which I can’t do and I end up hoping to another website. It is the same thing happens with many visitors. Every website has its purpose, according to the purpose the website should be designed and positioned.

When the website is for b2b it gets a more serious demeanor, formal colors and formal language with right information. The visitor of b2b knows what to expect when he lands in a web page. Consciously he might not make decision on usefulness of website based on its appearance but its aesthetics affects his decisions.  Likewise in b2c, websites should be informative, lively and full of activities, up-to-date to grab the attention of customers. Few website can explain more about products through pictures than text.  In these scenarios giving right pictures and close up pictures are essential to keep the visitor going. Based on product or service and the customers website require modifications.

Websites are not plain information portals websites are like sales people, talking directly to customer and persuading them to take an action but not to t close the window and look for different websites.

Happy week end

SEO design solution deserve this praise

Learning anything is not easy. A good instructor, reliable resource is very much necessary to learn any subject. Having said that dedication, determination and passion is always required to be someone in life.

SEO learning is not tough but no doubt it demands a good instructor. There are many blogs, forums and books written on SEO. This may be boon or bane. Like in adwords there is no common place which gives complete information about SEO, to help a novice. At the same time there is plethora of blogs and forums which gives free SEO advice, but you can rely on their words only if the information is coming from a person, who has real good knowledge and hands on search engine optimization.

There are few blogs which I rely on for my seo clarifications. But one blog which I want to appreciate is SEO Design Solutions. The blog is very informative, with good insights on SEO. Every day I read this blog and make notes from it. I would like to applause whoever is behind this blog, if I am not wrong it must be Mr. Jeffrey L. Smith for providing good information, every day. Yes, I said every day.

I have not got any blog which gives out information in depth like seo design. It looks like as if the blog is on a mission to teach people about seo. I am not telling they have openly discussed all the SEO techniques but to a SEO beginner, the blog is a good start. Kudos to you guys.

Of course I do read SEO book, search journal and many other seo blogs, But SEO design solution deserve this praise.

New website and Long tail keyword

Long tail keywords are no more an unknown theory among SEO people and groups. There are plenty of blogs which educate on long tail keyword theory. And actually it works and eventually it gives you result.

Google reports that half of the search queries are different and unique everyday. So how much ever keyword optimization you have done, a visitor might drop in to your site with a unique keyword, especially with a long tail keyword. Long tail keyword will have less search volume and less competition, that’s why it is easy to rank for a long tail keyword, considering on page optimization of the site is good. Long tail keywords are for all but they are the hope of newly started websites…. I think so.

When you rank for a long tail keyword regularly and consistently then your website gets authority on that keyword. Don’t forget, try to get at least few back links  to the site internal as well as external, with that long tail keyword in the anchor text. Then your position is quite safe till another competitor gets into the race.

A long tail keyword will usually have a set of 4 – 5 words in its keyword string. The singular phrase might have highest competition the next two phrases less and the complete keyword string or phrase will have minimum competition and search volume. Consider the keyword Internet marketing strategy and research Bangalore India is your long tail keyword. The long tail has a lot of combined keywords in it, Internet marketing, Internet marketing India Bangalore, Internet marketing strategy, marketing strategy and research etc. The keyword internet marketing has highest search volume and competition whereas Internet marketing strategy and research Bangalore India will have less competition and search volume.

If your site is new, while planning for search engine ranking start from long tail keyword, because a new site is at the mercy of long tail keyword. You can rank for a keyword like Internet marketing unless and until your site has authority, domain age and good, quality back links otherwise ranking for Internet marketing is something which would happen only in dreams. I don’t want to talk about black hat SEO though.

Once you have optimized for long tail keyword it is quite easy to rank for it, get few back links with that particular keyword in anchor text and now you have got authority on that keyword. At least bunch of traffic starts to trickle in and your site starts to gain authority.

Once you are done with your long tail keyword next, plan to the second level keyword which competitive than long tail and has more search volume. For example you can plan to rank for Internet marketing Bangalore India. Again the same process continues, getting back links and trying to get rank, since your site has started to gain authority and you are ranking for the keyword in long phrase, search engine finds relevancy in your keywords and back links, which helps in getting search engine ranking position for Internet marketing Bangalore India. In this manner eventually you can plan to rank for internet marketing, nothing is impossible.

This method may be quite useful for new sites. For new sites it is very difficult to rank in search engines and there are lots of controversies on Google sand box. Don’t loose hope because you are a new player in the block and Google likes old sites with authority, you can start with the long tail keywords, it is said, at least one year is required for a new site to gain Googles affection, and in a year of time you can cover your long tail keyword and you are set to face big players of World Wide Web.

The long pause

Though  I had not planned to take such a long break from blog writing, lack of original idea and content made a such delay in coming up with my next blog entry. Finally something I have got to offer you which is original thanks to all blogs which have contributed to my thought process.

So my next entry on New websites and long tail keyword

Chaos over Keyword Research Part – 1

Any one who is into internet marketing would know how important keywords for a site are; and SEO is not an exception, keywords are veins of SEO too. The optimization process of any site starts with identifying the right keywords for the site which can bring traffic to the site. There is plenty of stuff written about keyword research and mapping on internet which will help any SEO beginner to understand the process. In simple words the keyword research process goes like this; select the keyword which has more search volume and less competition; I call it as a hypothesis and optimize for it.

Ok. Even I started my keyword research; the process of selecting the right keyword after reading many articles, blogs written on it. The keyword research process didn’t turn out be as interesting as I thought because arriving at the perfect keyword was quite a tedious, prolonged job and just to realize that after so much of effort you have not arrived at the right keyword. Quite depressing!!!
The first hurdle which I came across during keyword research is the keyword tool. Though I was using WordTracker and Keyword Discovery (the free version) the results were not impressive. Both tools had different set of numbers for the same keyword which didn’t match. I was considering keywords whose search volume falls in between 40 – 150 as an optimum keyword with good search volume and less competition. Don’t know who had put this bit of knowledge in my mind but I was using this method. But eventually I realized the data base of Wordtracker is from US and UK, and I was looking for something targeted to India. So I crossed out word tracker tool from my keyword tool list. It makes me to think that there is an opportunity for an Indian to develop a keyword tool for Indian market…hmmm… from business point of view not aware of the feasibility and other calculations so let me drop that idea and focus on keyword research.

In the mean time Google keyword tool came to my aid. Thanks to Google for their decision to change the search volume from single digit to actual number and also providing the option for geographies, I could select any country and get the keyword search volume for that geo. I was glad.

Keyword research process doesn’t stop here; the process of finding out the competition for keywords is an important step. Every one must have read that keywords whose competition falls bellow 3million, if optimized well for these keywords then good SERP is assured. Many people are aware of this method and many search engine optimizers practice it. But usually a good keyword won’t fall under 3million category. So again you have to strategies well, to rank for a keyword with good search volume and competition. I usually check the search volume, competition for the keyword and then take the first 10-20 SERP attainders and check how well they have optimized their site for that keyword, (check for loose ends, of which I can take advantage) their page rank and other stuffs and verify for my chances of ranking along with them. Quite a lengthy process but if it is done well even you can compete for those positions (lets not think about other factors).

This is the method I follow; it is lengthier and exhaustive than but elating if you get a good keyword to optimize.

My SEO Learning started like this

It’s been nearly nine months and today I decided the day to start my SEO blog. My SEO learning blog has born. When I got into SEO it was quite a blank and gloomy way because there was no one around me to tell what SEO is and any information related to it.

SEO was for me then more or less started form keyword research and ended up with meta keyword tag. I can’t believe my knowledge was so minute. Thanks to my reading habit which made me realize, SEO is like a vast sea and I am at the sea shore and waiting to begin my voyage.

As the time went the important things which I learnt was, content optimization, more on navigation and technical front and other hell lot of SEO stuffs. Then onwards it is a continuous learning process, I was glad when I found the importance of header tag and now, reading source code gives more pleasure than the webpage.

I was quite astonished  when one of my colleague mentioned doing SEO means not only

making the site search engine friendly but at the same time, optimizing the site better than competitors.

First doing research on keywords then the search volumes and then finding out how well others have optimized their site to that keywords and asking the big question, do I have space to stand along with them? The questions were many but surely quite insightful.

The element which I still need to learn and practice is scrutinizing and dissecting my competitors’ site to know how they have done the SEO to their site. The efforts are going on…. but I was glad when I got a site which has done keyword stuffing and successful in gaining second positions in Google SERP for the keyword “internet marketing”. The keyword with such a huge search volume and all SEO experts competing for those top positions the competition is quite gigantic. The company which came in the second position had over optimized their site for internet marketing keyword. In the whole page the word “Internet marketing” repeated four times where as the source code was saying 24 times. The site had each and every image and bullet in the web page named after internet marketing. Also the site has successfully fooled Google and shining in the second position of SERP. Let’s see for how many days….

It has proved me that I am finally getting the flair of analyzing other sites. Thank god I learnt it finally. No doubt it was a long journey with everyday learning about search engine optimization and now I have reached at the island called SEO strategy for different websites. Finally I have learnt that, SEO varies from site to site depending on their service depending on domain age depending on brand and non brand and audience. So my voyage has taken different route to SEO strategy…

By the way have I maintained the keyword density above…. Oh! I missed it again.