You want to market your website properly, isn’t that right? You want as many people to be able to find you and to do this you need to optimize your website for search engines. The best information in the world is not going to be noticed if no one can find it. Likewise - even the best prices will be ignored if there is no one to see them. Search Engine Optimization is the internet’s equivalent of the old business saying “location, location, location”.

Atlanta SEO is particularly useful because of the size of the city. Atlanta is the United States Of America’s third largest city, only eclipsed by New York and Las Angeles respectively. This means that any website geared towards the general American public needs to take into account this very important part of US life. Ignoring Atlanta SEO in your website can be disastrous for your online business - the sheer importance of this city means that you absolutely cannot afford to overlook it.

When designing a website it is important to find a company or consultant that will help you increase your website’s search engine rankings for this particularly important demographic. They will be able to tell you what words to use in your articles that will make sure your website is visible to people who search from Atlanta.

The normal SEO methods of keyword stuffing and overly zealous use of meta tag keywords can backfire, but finding someone who is acquainted with the search preferences of the Atlanta public can tell you what products to focus on and what pages to SEO for the best result. Some of your pages or products might not have SEO potential relative to what the flavor of the day is within Atlanta and the Atlanta Greater Metropolitan Area.

Another thing to remember is that Atlanta is strategically different to your SEO efforts than the other two major cities. This is simply because Atlanta is a Southern city and has a culture that is completely different to Los Angeles and New York. With regards to Atlanta SEO, certain key factors have to be taken into consideration.

The history is very important as Georgia was one of the original 13 colonies to revolt against British rule. Not only that, but it is certainly more conservative than New York or Los Angeles. This pervades the entire culture of the city and the surrounding regions. The people will definitely be searching for different things and this will show in the way search engines represent your website to potential customers.

There are things that you can do to optimize your website yourself to get the potential out of this demographic. Make sure that you have a few pages made directly for Atlanta residents. These pages should include as many words that identify with Atlanta as possible. It is also important to remember to keep your content relative to your products… there is no use in filling the webpage with sports terms if you are marketing creams for elderly people. Atlanta can be a good gateway into the American South West and you should not give up this opportunity.

Are you looking for the BEST Atlanta SEO? Visit http://www.alldigitalmedia.com today to discover low Web Design packages starting at $299!

26 Easy Things you can do to Promote and Optimize your website.

1. Create a Slogan
2. Create a FAQ
3. Optimize your Thank You pages
4. Put a Guarantee
5. Create an Auto responder after a customer submits a form
6. Ad a CMS (Content Management System) to your website.
7. Add a Personal Photo
8. Create a Tag line
9. Add Video or Audio
10. Add a Live Chat
11. Add a Testimonials Section
12. Put up a letter of recommendation
13. Talk about the competition
14. Create a call to action on every page
15. Create Optimized Landing Pages
16. Create a Newsletter
17. Put up your physical address and phone number on every page
18. Don’t obsess about Rankings, Obsess about Traffic
19. Mix High and Low volume Keywords
20. Create 301 Redirects
21. Create a Robots.txt
22. Add your website to Google Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Yelp and CitySearch
23. Use bullet Points
24. Create an email to a friend link, or share this link.
25. Submit your website to directories, DMOZ, Chiff.com, BOTW, Yahoo Directory…
26. Create How to videos

Post by: All Digital Media - Atlanta Web Design

We all know that search engines are very important for the success of a website. Almost 85% of new internet users find good websites by using a reliable search engine like Google.

Search engines like Google fight to index thousands of pages of content found on the internet in the right order depending on several characteristics.

Search engine algorithms may vary with time but you can ensure that you have a website that is filled with SEO optimized, original content so that your page ranks as high as possible on the search results.

The following explains best 5 tips about SEO optimizing your web page:

Appropriate landing page

Apart from finding a great niche and product, it’s also necessary to have a targeted landing page to encourage paying customers. And one great tip I’ve found is that to ensure your landing page does not sell anything at all!

In fact, it should give a valuable resource away for free like a niche e-book, newsletters, mini-course and even tele-seminars that will educate the customer about the value of your product. Not only does it raise customer awareness but it also encourages customers to buy what you will eventually show them!

Fresh content

Fresh and new content updated daily is one way to ensure that Google keeps returning to your page again and again. Once the search algorithms are trained to realize that the content on your page changes daily and is completely original you are more likely to see your website higher up in page rankings.

SEO optimizing!

You also have to ensure that the content is SEO-optimized. This is possible by using Keywords that are recognized by search engines as related to your product.

Fill your content with an average of 2% of Keywords per page of 100 words. That means your page should run an average of 10 Keywords in a page of 500 words. Do not put in more than that as search engines tend to classify high keyword pages as spam or duplicated content.

Create a lot of internal links where a single article links to another archived articles in your blog or the site itself. This will increase site recognition and page rankings.

Atlanta SEO

Keeping them simple

Don’t flood your site with complex codes like Flash, Ajax, etc. Of course, the site will look great but this just tends to slow down your site and as a result might prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your website properly.

Arranging the Keywords can make or break a website!

Start strong by adding your keywords in the first paragraph and the very first line and the first line of the last paragraph. Search engines like this as it makes it easier for them to classify the article, site and content.

Try to use lateral semantic indexing where you use the same keywords in the form of plurals or related variations. The more the number of variations you put in, the better the page ranking.

There you have it.. The most important thing of all is to take action.

About the Author: Effendy Lie is the publisher of The Internet Marketing Secrets Newsletter to bring business opportunities and sharing the secrets of success in online marketing for those who are just starting out. Visit his Internet Marketing Secrets Blog: http://www.EffendyLie.com to get free tips and resources.

With so much information - and misinformation - available on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) it can be tricky trying to separate fact from fiction.

Coupled with the fact that SEO changes only slightly less rapidly than the weather, it can be downright overwhelming to know where to start.

So, if you’re an SEO newbie looking for a place to start, here’s a look at some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics. What Is SEO?

Even the most beautifully-designed site won’t do you much good if potential customers can’t find it. That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in: SEO helps ensure your site is more visible in the search engines, drive qualified traffic to your website, and convert that traffic into actual customers.

In short, SEO increases your website’s rankings in the search engines by making the pages within your site more attractive to the search engines. The more attractive your site is to Google, the higher its rankings in the search engine results pages. And the higher your rankings, the more likely users will visit your site. Obviously, a site with a result on Page 1 of Google is going to get more traffic than a site buried on Page 14.

If your site is missing from the top search results, then you may not be maximizing your ability to generate new business and add revenue to your bottom line. Let’s take a look at some stats:

* 1.3 billion Internet users
* Over 85% start at a search engine
* Less than 25% will go beyond the top 10 search engine results
* Top 10 results get 80% more traffic than those ranked in the 11-30 spots

Besides gaining better rankings in the search engines, SEO is effective in several other areas as well:

* Branding/establishment as an authority
* Pre-qualified lead generation
* Easily tracked ROI
* Cost savings compared to other mediums such as glossy brochures and yellow pages ads (average cost per lead is $0.29!)

Breaking SEO Down

SEO consists of several key elements that work together to generate increases in a website’s rankings, traffic and conversions: Keyword Selection, Copywriting, Link Building, HTML Optimization and Analytics. Let’s take a look at each element in more detail:

Keyword Selection

The foundation of any SEO campaign is good keyword research. That’s because targeting the right keywords is essential to getting your SEO on the right track. If your sell silver ladies watches, then you’re going to want to rank in the search engines for the phrase “silver ladies watches” and other similar phrases. If your keyword research is off and you target the wrong keywords, then you may not get visitors who want what your site has to offer. That’s why you need to make sure that your site is properly optimized for the most-searched-for keywords related to your business.

Copywriting

Getting potential customers to your site is only half the battle; you’ve got to convince them to buy. That’s where persuasive copywriting comes in. Be sure to tell people why they need your products or services and include conversion points throughout the site. The search engines like content, so you also need to optimize your copy to include your keywords. This includes things like descriptive product pages, built-out content like biographies, news sections, etc. One important point to remember is to keep your most critical content “above the fold” - that’s the area that’s visible to your users before they have to scroll down.

Link Building

Think popularity contests ended in high school? Think again; you’re not so lucky. Link building is like one big online popularity contest, and the search engines like the popular kids. Your success in the search engines depends, in part, on the amount of relevant incoming links to your site. Of course, having lots of good links also drives customers to your site, which is a good thing, too. Links can come in various sources, including directories, business partners, organizations, social media sites, and much, much more.

HTML Optimization

Title tags, header tags, Alt tags, Meta-descriptions — the search engines want your site’s HTML to be descriptive and clean. Search engines want to know exactly what your page is about; they don’t want to sort through a bunch of extraneous code to figure it out. That’s why you’ll hear SEO types talk about the importance of having clean code and how to use CSS to make that happen.

Measuring Success

No SEO campaign is complete without analytics. After all, if you aren’t measuring things like traffic, link popularity, and conversions, then how do you know if your SEO strategies are working? Programs like ClickTracks and Google Analytics help make the number-crunching a little easier. When analyzing an SEO campaign, it’s important to only make one change at a time so that you know which changes are effective.

If you want to have an effective SEO campaign, you need to include each of the five SEO elements listed above. Keep in mind the information here just scratches the surface of these topics, and there are certainly other more advanced SEO strategies that can benefit your site as well. These building blocks, however, are the perfect way to get your SEO campaign started on the right track.

Check out our SEO case studies or get a free SEO analysis of your site now!

About the Author: Collyn Floyd is a marketing and public relations specialist with The Karcher Group, a web development and search engine marketing firm based in North Canton, OH. She is passionate about helping The Karcher Group’s clients achieve greater online traffic, leads and sales through search engine optimization and marketing.

Affiliate is a word synonymous to “referrer”. If you are into affiliate marketing, this means that you are the intermediary link between the owner of the goods and the clients.

The owner of the products and services that are being sold online is called the merchant. But the merchant does not market his services directly to his customers. For that job, he relies on middlemen like you, who are the affiliates.

Simply put, you are only the person who is making the sales happen. You are the salesman, who receives his money as a part of the commission that he makes from his sales.

So if you make no sale, you get no money.

To promote a product in order to earn revenue from the sale, you will need an affiliate program. The programs actually help you by driving the traffic of visitors to your site. It is very difficult to choose the right affiliate programs, since there are so many of them out in the Web world, and only a few that you can blindly trust.

More importantly, when the companies that you are working for go under, they might not even let you know, so that your payouts turn out to be very small, and sometimes, months go by and you never get to see your payday.

Another disadvantage of the affiliate marketing is banners. If a company gets its banners all over, a lot of confusion is created in the web sites so that the visitors start to face too many options. In such cases, they become easily overwhelmed and deterred.

Affiliate tracking could also turn out to be a bit of a problem. The companies will assign special code to you that you have to use in order to report your sales. This code assures that no other affiliate gets your pay by mistake.

You must have this code pasted in your site correctly and without errors so that you do not lose out. Or else you may send a lot of potential clients without any reimbursements.

In order to look for an affiliate program, all you have to do is go to the search engines and type in the keywords. You will get many affiliate programs displayed soon, but before you make your choice, it is better that you read up the reviews and see whether people had any problems while using those programs.

The affiliate marketing mainly depends on the craft you possess in marketing goods and services to the clients. This will determine your success and failure in this business.

You can start to use the available tested marketing methods after adding certain tweaks of your own creativity to them.

There might be certain obstacles in the way, but the affiliate marketing is still very important -especially if you hoard the skill to sell even a fridge to an Eskimo! You will get your pay according to every sale you make, and this situation turns out to be pretty simple and easy.

About the Author: Christopher Freville - If you are interested about the best affiliate marketing programs and how you can earn through it, you might want to consult the works of Christopher Freville who is one of the most successful online base entrepreneurs. You can visit his site for more information on affiliate marketing tactics.

The following is a list of 25 factors in a scale 1 to 5 to help you determine how important each one is to your Search Engine Optimization Efforts.

Keyword Use Factors

The following components relate to the use of the user’s search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

Keyword Use in Title Tag 4.9

Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header

Keyword Use in Body Text 3.7

Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page

Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords 3.4

Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords

Keyword Use in H1 Tag 3.1

Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase

Keyword Use in Domain Name 3

Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com

Keyword Use in Page URL 2.8

Including target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase

Keyword Use in H2, H3, H(x) Tags 2.8

Placing targeted terms in the H2, H3 headline HTML tags

Keyword Use in Alt Tags and Image Titles 2.6

Using target keywords inside alt HTML tags and img title tags

Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags 2.3

Positioning keyword in HTML text with strong/bold attributes

Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag 2

Utilizing keywords in the meta description tag in a webpage’s HTML header

Keyword Use in Meta Keywords Tag 1.2

Utilizing keywords in the meta keywords tag in a webpage’s HTML header

Page Attributes

The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords

Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure 4

Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page

Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages 3.5

Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?

Age of Document 3.4

Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant

Amount of Indexable Text Content 3.2

Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page

Quality of the Document Content 3

Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating

Organization/Hierarchy of Document Flow 2.8

The construction of document text flow - i.e. journalistic style generally dictates a detail-oriented introduction, a broad level overview of the issue and increasing specificity and detail as the article continues.

Frequency of Updates to Page 2.4

The number and time frame of changes made to the document over time

Number of Trailing Slashes (/) in URL 1.9

Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar 1.8

The literal correctness of spelling and grammar as related to the language of the document

HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards) 1.4

Validation of HTML page code as per the W3C consortium, an authoritative body on the standards of web-compatible code

Site/Domain Attributes

Global Link Popularity of Site 4.4

The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity)

Age of Site 4.1

Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership)

Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site 3.9

The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword

Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community 3.9

The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world

Rate of New Inbound Links to Site 3.5

The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain

Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query 3.1

The topical relationships between the full content of a website and a user’s given query

Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Clickthroughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, 2.8

Metric of click-through-rate, time spent on a page/site, direct navigation via bookmarks, etc. that Google may be measuring through use of their toolbar, free wifi, Google analytics, etc. (note that this is purely speculation as Google has never publicly admitted to monitoring or recording this data)

Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google 2.6

Google is occassionally suspected or accused of applying manual manipulation to a domain or page (note that this factor refers specifically to positive ranking manipulation)

TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc) 2.6

The top-level domain extension of the site. Note that some domains, such as .edu, .gov, .mil and others have restrictions on who may purchase them

Rate of New Pages Added to Site 2.5

The amount & frequency of new, spiderable documents added to the domain over time

Number of Queries for Site/Domain over Time 2

The frequency of searches for the domain name or the company/organization’s brand as measured through Google’s search query logs

Verification of Site with Google Webmaster Central 1.3

Inbound Link Attribute

These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page.

Anchor Text of Inbound Link 4.4

Global Link Popularity of Linking Site 3.6

Topical Relationship of Linking Page 3.5

Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community 3.5

The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world

Age of Link 3.2

Topical Relationship of Linking Site 3.1

Text Surrounding the Link 3.1

Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain 2.8

Temporal Link Attributes (when in time the link was created/updated) 2.5

Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, ca, co.uk) 2.5

PageRank (as measured by the GG Toolbar) of Linking Page 2.4

Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

These components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots 3.8

Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index 3.6

External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites 3.6

Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages 3.3

Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming) 3.3

Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links 3.3

Very Slow Server Response Times 2.8

Inbound Links from Spam Sites 2.1

Low Levels of Visitors to the Site (Measured via Toolbar, Clicks in SERPs, etc.) 2.1

To View the full list and more comments about it Go To
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Following are the 9 Biggest SEO Mistakes which Web Designers & Web Developers should avoid.

Splash Page

I’ve seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link “Click here to enter” on their homepage. The worst case — the “enter” link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.

This is fine if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site; otherwise, you’re making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is probably your website’s highest ranking page and gets crawled frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.

Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.

Non-spiderable Flash Menus

Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can’t be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.

Image and Flash Content

Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can’t read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.

Overuse of Ajax

A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because, ajax content is loaded dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.

Another disadvantage of Ajax — since the address URL doesn’t reload, your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.

Versioning of Theme Design

For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (i.e. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.

“Click Here” Link Anchor Text

You probably see this a lot where people use “Click here” or “Learn more” as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high for “Click Here”. But, if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, than use, that topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It’s much more descriptive (and relevant) to say “learn more about {keyword topic}”

Warning: Don’t use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.

Common Title Tag Mistakes

Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That’s like telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same topic and one isn’t any more unique than the other.

One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress theme. In case you didn’t know, the title tag of the default WordPress theme isn’t that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn’t this search engine friendly? Because, every single blog post will have the same text “Site Name > Blog Archive >” at the beginning of the Title Tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.

Exceeding the 65 character limit:
Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including spaces) to get your message across or risk it getting cutoff.

Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn’t make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:

“Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures” “Photo” and “Photography” are the same word repeated twice but in different ways because your audience might use either one when performing a search query.

Empty Image Alt Attribute

You should always describe your image in the alt attribute. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can’t see images so your alt attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.

Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search results. For example, Google image search brings me hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms “abstract” and “dj”.

Unfriendly URLs

Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in, however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL’s are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.

Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356

These things are the pillars of Search Engine Optimization and so to your web site’s success path.

Search Engine and Website Optimization

SEO is an essential part of website optimization, involving the formatting of a web page so that search engine algorithms score it highly for the relevant keyword.

Each page should be optimized for only one keyword so that the page is listed in as high a position as possible for that keyword.

If you understand how search engines work you will be able to apply your knowledge of SEO to optimize your website and ensure, not only a listing, but a search engine listing worth having. So, exactly how does a search engine such as Google work?

The answer to that is that nobody knows - except some Google employees of course. However, by carrying out certain actions and analyzing the results, it is possible to come to certain conclusions as to what Google are looking for and using that information to your advantage. Keep in mind, however, that the number of variables Google is evaluating is believed to reach three figures, so you will only ever scratch the surface, but we know that some of these are given more weighting than others.

SEO variables come in groups, and your website optimization strategy should take as many of these into account as possible. These groups can be categorized into increasingly narrower sets, the broadest being on-page and off-page optimization. The variables with most weighting are currently believed to be:

1. ON-PAGE WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION

On-page optimization is, as the term suggests, carried out on the web page itself. This can either be on the visible part of the page, or in the underlying source html code. This optimization can be further classified into:

a) The Keywords. Each web page should be optimized for one keyword, and can contain a few sub-keywords for which the page might also be listed. These, however, are less important than they once were in view of Google’s latent semantic indexing (LSI) algorithm. That is another subject! The choice of keyword is important, and there is software available (free and not so free) to help you choose the best keyword for your needs. Do not overuse keywords - instead use lots of related text and synonyms to tell the spiders what your page is about.

b) The Title. This ‘title’ is not visible on the page, but contained within the html ‘Title’ tag prior to the ‘Body’ section of the page html. It should contain the keyword, and is the title that appears at the head of the search engine listing for the page.

c) Meta Tags. In SEO, the Meta tags, again contained prior to the visible ‘body’ section, provide the search engine crawlers or spiders with information about your site. The only tags of use today are:

i. The Description Meta tag. This describes the content of your site and is shown in full or part below the title in your search engine listing. Include your selling point and any toll-free number you might have.
ii. The Keyword Meta tag. Not generally used, but who knows - it costs nothing and does no harm.
iii. The Robots Meta tag should be used to block any page from spiders that you don’t want visited, in case they dilute the overall site relevance. For example, duplicate sales pages. Use it blank even if you are not blocking anything.

d) Headings Page and paragraph headings should be in bold text within H (heading) html tags, H1 for page and H2 for paragraph headings. Use keywords because heading tags stress the importance of the text within them, especially if formatted bold.

e) Navigation Links

i. Your navigation is best if made using keyword anchor text and with a small description of the page linked to just below it.
ii. Try to arrange your html so that the spider sees your body text first, followed by the links that will lead it away from your page. Most importance is placed on the first 100 words and the last paragraph, so don’t let these words be your navigation links.
iii. Pay attention to your on-site linking strategy. There is a formula you can use to maximize the PageRank points for each or any individual page.

2. OFF-PAGE WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION

Off-page optimization is a massive subject, and would require a separate article to even scratch the surface. It includes techniques such as one-way back links, reciprocal linking, article marketing, directory submissions, interlinking your own sites and blogs, use of social bookmarking sites and social networking, Twitter and so on.

These SEO techniques can in many respects be more important than on-page SEO, and it is not uncommon to see a page with no content but adverts listed at position #1 on Google due solely to the number of other web pages linked to it.

SEO is an extensive subject, but you can improve your chances of getting a high listing if you take advantage of what is known. Information is available, some of it genuine and some opinion. Make sure you find the former and avoid the latter in your website optimization strategy.

About the Author: Peter Nisbet - These are the basics of SEO. For the details that determine succes or failure visit SEOcious where Pete also offers a free SEO course.

I’ve seen it many times. A new entrepreneur is excited because their website just went live after weeks, or even months, of hard work. But the excitement doesn’t last long when they see that they have yet to make a sale. Or maybe they’ve only made one or two. They’re not covering their expenses, and they’re certainly not making enough to live on.

I make sure to tell them not to worry, because it’s happened to all of us. Especially with a new website. And there is an answer. Or, I should say, a few answers.

There are some steps you can follow to make sure you are doing everything right to maximize your sales. Look through the list below. If you can say definitively that you have taken all of these steps, then you should see a big increase in your sales. Here you go:

1. Make sure there is a market for what you’re selling

By now, you’ve probably heard a lot about finding your online niche. If you did your research properly, you should have found a market that has a problem that you can provide an answer for. That’s probably the most important part of your business.

If you haven’t done the proper research yet, get started now. Use a keyword tool like Nichebot or Wordtracker to find what people are searching for online. And visit the forums to see what people are talking about and what problems they need to solve.

Don’t skip this step. It’s important that internet users are going to want what you’re selling or your whole business is lost before it even begins.

2. Make sure that you’re selling something that solves their problem

If you’ve found the right niche, then you should have some idea about what their main problems are. Do some research to find out what they need to solve that problem, then offer it to them. That’s the formula in a nutshell. Don’t let your product stray from the main topic. Solve their problem, and you’ll have success.

3. Make sure you’re getting enough traffic

It’s difficult to make a good decision about how effective your sales process is if you haven’t had enough traffic to your website yet. I recommend waiting until you’ve had at least 1,000 visitors. Anything less and you won’t really have enough data to work with. Be patient.

4. Find out where your traffic is coming from

It’s important that you are getting targeted visitors to your website. Make sure that if you’re using pay-per-click advertising you’re bidding only on words that are right for your market. If you’re selling cell phones, you don’t want visitors who are searching for land line phones for their office. Remember who your visitor is.

5. Test different headlines

Your headline is the first thing your visitors see on your site. Make sure it’s compelling and gets them to keep reading. How do you do that? Simply by testing different headlines and seeing which one works best.

You can do that by rewriting it every now and then and checking your stats, or you can split test your headlines using Google’s website optimizer. Website optimizer is part of your Google adwords account. If you don’t have an adwords account, you can get one free at a href=”http://adwords.google.com”>http://adwords.google.com.

6. Make sure your sales copy is effective

The last thing you want to do once you have a visitor reading your sales copy is to distract them with something that isn’t leading directly to a sale. In other words, leave out any links to other websites, forget about adsense and banner ads, and don’t start talking about things that don’t relate to your subject.

Concentrate on your sales message and proof elements, and dispelling any doubts they may have about giving you their money. This includes using testimonials if you have them, a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and good strong sales copy that keeps them interested all the way through to your “buy now” button.

7. Test different price points

It’s hard to know what’s the right price for your item right off the bat. You may have it at the price you’re willing to pay, but that may not be the price everyone is willing to pay. A lot of people will expect to buy something in your market within a certain price range. If your price is too high, they’ll shop elsewhere. If your price is too low, yes too low, they might think that what you’re offering is of poor quality. You can answer this problem by simply trying out different prices to see what works best.

8. Make sure your order processing works properly and is easy to use

Test all of the links from your “add to cart” buttons all the way through to your “thank you” page. You can normally run a $0 test before you go live with most shopping cart and merchant account systems. Obviously, if your ordering system isn’t working right, you’re not going to see any sales.

Also, make sure that it’s easy to use. Get a friend to run through it for you. It may make perfect sense to you, but that doesn’t mean that it will for everyone. Let some other people try it out and see if they get stuck anywhere. Chances are good that if they do, then others will too. If everything isn’t as easy as possible to use, then some people will just leave rather than trying to figure it out.

There you go. Eight steps you can follow with your site to make sure that you are maximizing your sales. Just from my own experience, anytime I was able to say that I went through all of the steps above completely, I saw significant improvement, and found good success with my website. I believe that you will, too. Good luck.

About the Author: Mark Yarrobino is the president of Maroon Enterprises. One of their websites, Home Business Endeavors (http://www.homebusinessendeavors.com) was created to help internet users find the right information about starting their home based business while avoiding online scams.

The most important function of a website is to help a company to sell their services/products to new clients.

When potential new clients/tourists need to choose between two companies with whom they aren’t familiar, they are most likely to compare the websites. This is because a website is almost the only method for a person to actually see beforehand what he/she pays for. In general, more than 90% of these potential new client’s decisions are decided upon the impression that is reflected from the website, regardless of the competence of these companies. The general truth is that most potential clients do not know how to technically compare companies, and therefore trust that the website’s professionalism will reflect the expertise.

Therefore large amounts are invested in corporate website development.

Unfortunately most companies tend to overlook the importance of building a trusted web presence. Without having a web presence with authority almost no new visitors will end up at your website. And since every company wants to expand, they need to focus on improving their web presence in order to increase the chance of getting new customers.

The best and most effective long term solution to increase your web presence is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is a highly specialized field that focus on improving the amount of trust the rest of the world will have in your website. The more trust you have, the more potential new clients will visit your website daily.

The amount of trust your website has, is most of the time determined by search engines (for example Google, Yahoo, etc.). This is because the search engines have the most advanced mathematical algorithms available today, hence the acronym, SEO. Of all these search engines, the world’s most accepted benchmark of website trust is known as the Google rank (or page rank) of your website. Therefore, if you could increase your Google rank, your number of new visitors to your website will most certainly increase.

Google Rank of well known organisations’ home page:

4/10: Pick n Pay, Steers, KWV, News 24
5/10: Anglo Gold, Checkers, Spur, Shoprite, Nedbank, Old Mutual
6/10: Anglo American, Absa, Stellenbosch University, Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, Mobil, Virgin, Standard Bank, Die Burger, Sasol
7/10: McDonald’s, Ford, General Electric, Nike, Coke
8/10: General Motors
9/10: Microsoft, eBay, Amazon
10/10: Google, Facebook

Another reason why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important is because of the quality of the traffic (website visitors) you receive on your website. If somebody visits your website due to a search engine query, as opposed to other reasons (such as typing in the web address/clicking on a link from another website, etc), the new visitor will most likely already be looking for your services. For example, if someone types in the word “wine” in Google, they are probably looking for wine. So if your site comes up first on Google you can probably sell a bottle of wine if your offering is satisfactory. The contrary is that the person accidentally lands on your website, but has no immediate desire for the product or services.

Please note that it is possible to buy quality traffic, but this is expensive (depending on the product value and competition) and only effective in the immediate short term i.e. while it is active. SEO has a long term cumulative effect and is relatively inexpensive to maintain once a certain level of optimisation is reached.

Tips when hiring SEO experts:

- Whenever using a company in order to improve your SEO, always check out the Google Rank of their website. Since SEO is not that well known in management circles, there is a lot of companies that will try to sell SEO skills while there own SEO are terrible.

- Also try to get some form of guarantee. It is very rare that marketing companies ever give guarantees about the effects of their efforts, but if they actually do, you know they are serious about their skills.

- Try to get clear benchmarks to calculate the results of the SEO campaign. For example monitor the number of visitors that your website receives that came from natural search engine queries during and after the time of your campaign. (If your marketing team don’t know how to get these figures, don’t use them!)

- Make sure your SEO team have a clean record. Sometimes SEO companies may get desperate in order to get results and might step over the moral line by trying to fool search engines with unnatural ‘black hat’ methods. When caught out, these websites are usually banned from search engines and will not show in any search result. To look into any company’s track record simply Google them. Disgruntles clients tend to write their bad experience in public forums that will normally be listed in Google’s search results just below the company’s own website.

Good luck with your marketing campaign!

About the Author: Wim Conradie is a majority shareholder in Matogen Corporate Web Development (www.matogen.com). He studied electronic engineering, computer sciences & industrial engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and started first web development business in November 2003. He has a ‘passion for business and adding value to other busnesses’.