This has got to be one of the most remarkable clips I have ever seen. Everyone should see it and that includes you. Thank me later!
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Delicious thisThis article is intended for beginners who want to learn about the wonderful benefits of SEO. This post is part of BonsaiJon.com’s blogging contest. If you like the post, be a sport and leave a comment to the author and help him win. I am sure he will appreciate it.
Step 1 – Prior to starting your SEO campaign check these out…
Most webmasters or business will start thinking about search engine optimization after they have completed their website. This is completely wrong, a good SEO campaign must start even before the website has been designed.
If your business is selling cars you should try to decide if it is more feasible to target the keyword “cars for sale” or the longer keyword “vehicles for sale” on the search engine. Google itself provides several tools that can help you decide what keywords you should be targeting and how you can achieve sales.
‘Google Trends’ is one such tool, it helps you identify the popularity of certain keywords, so it will let you compare if people are typing “cars for sale” or “vehicles for sale”. This optimization tool will even let you compare such search trends in various regions of the world, so people in the USA might be typing “vehicles” but users in Europe might be looking for cars mostly.
‘Google Analytics’ is also a great source of information that a serious webmaster should install soon after launching the website, this tool will give you access to an unprecedented amount of statistics about the visitors of your site. The Google Analytics program can track visitors from various referrers, including of course search engine. The webmaster can compare the landing page and the final sales conversion therefore any tweaking to the website will be based on an informed-decision and not on an experimental and amateurish basis.
Step 2 – Optimizing your website to be search engine friendly.
Websites may be highly optimized for a search engine and rank very high in the results pages whilst be of a low value to humans looking at the page. Therefore having a highly optimized website and getting more traffic does not necessarily translate into more sales. The focus should be on finding an optimum balance between these two extremes of the spectrum, on one side we have a highly optimized website full of text which is dull to a human and on the other extreme we have a website full of flash and photos which is completely useless to a search engine crawling the website
Knowing what people are looking for on your website and giving it to them whilst making the search engines happy will do the trick, nevertheless it’s no easy task. Here are some tips to keep in mind when designing your website:
- Websites that use frames will not be indexed correctly by search engine, therefore it is better if you avoid them in your design. Frames use an outdated HTML method to show two HTML files on one screen and it is very difficult for the search engines to make up which is the ‘content’ screen and which is the menu screen, therefore frames should be avoided and a CSS (cascading style sheets) should be used instead
- Websites using PHP or mySQL may face a similar problem depending on what platform is being used. For example WordPress blogs managed to minimize this problem because plugins are now available to optimize posts and content to achieve an optimum position on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Msn.
- Some content management system will leave your website urls looking something like: www.yoursite.com/archives/2342434&hf.html which will not be indexed properly by the search engines, you can work around this by renaming your html files to proper names eg. www.yoursite/archives/vehiclesforsale.html.
- Search engines love footer links, sitemaps, blogs, and XML feeds, use them
Step 3 – Link Building
So you have optimized your website, the content is right, the keywords have been selected but still the search engines are not ranking your website high on the results page for your keywords. Why is this?
Google was the pioneer of today’s method of showing results based on inbound links, which google calls pagerank. So let us take a simple example where two competing website are competing for the same keyword “cars for sale” and both are optimized equally and are search engine friendly, how will the search engine decide which one to put higher on the search engine results page? Google devised a method to count incoming links to a website and create a pagerank for that particular website, the higher the pagerank the higher the website will show up on the search engine results pages. This method of counting inbound links to a website was later emulated on all other major search engines.
There are two ways of building good backlinks to your website, let me share them with you:
1. Participating in an active community based around your website subject is an extremely powerful link building technique, therefore if you create a blog and post comments on other blogs similar to yours with a backlink will definitely help raise your website pagerank. Posting constructive comments and participating in the virtual community will earn you links back to your blog and your website. Do not just post general comments around as this will earn you the title of ‘spammer’ and you may get banned.
2. Many internet search engine optimization gurus nowadays are suggesting that internet marketers write articles around the same topic/industry of the website and submit these articles in various article directories available in the internet, the trick is to add your website URL in the resource box below the article. This will have a twofold advantage that search engines will add this backlink to your website as a point in favor of your pagerank and will also get you some direct traffic from visitors reading the article.
You may also get links from SEO friendly directories such as DMOZ, yahoo directory and BOTW however steer away from link farms and link buying schemes as if you get caught using these services the search engines will ban you.
Good luck in your SEO.
This post was written by Ian Vella a fellow local Maltese SEO and has built the English Maltese Dictionary
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If you found this post interesting please share it.As you probably already know I have written article about SEO in Malta on the Sunday Times Technology Supplement. I have had some requests to put it online so here it goes.
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If you found this post interesting please share it.Almost 2 years ago my girlfriend had the opportunity of buying out her boss’s business. She was working in the shop for less than a year and her boss decided to go back to her native country Canada. This wasn’t an easy decision to make. In a period of a year and a half I bought a new Car, I bought a house, I changed jobs, I coincidentally we booked a holiday to Canada and now we faced a decision to buy a business.
We weighed in the pros and cons and we decided to go for it. We coughed up all the remaining money we had, I took out my life savings and we went for it. It was one of the best decisions we have ever made. Sure the business had it’s ups and downs but that’s natural for any startup business.
Now there is a decision to be made, her contract is ending and the lease on her shop is going higher and the land lord won’t budge, which doesn’t make it feasible for her to keep the same place. We currently have two opportunities. One is a shop just up the road which needs fixing, the other is an established hair and beauty salon which looks absolutely amazing, top notch interior design and a steady flow of clientele.
The major difference is the latter is charging her for rent (of course) and won’t allow her to keep her shop’s name, not even her personal phone, essentially the brand that she’s been building for 2 years. This guy wants people to build his brand, while they pay him for it instead of paying them, it’s a smart move from his part but not smart enough. If she left that salon after 2,3,4 years she would have to start over. Is that worth it? Definitely not.
The reason I am telling you this story is because I believe Brand is Everything. A business owner must understand that You are the Brand and the Brand is You. A brand means “the feeling customers get when they use your product or service”. That is what you should build on. This is what will give you long term value and will gear you to sustainable growth. If you have a chance to make quick money go for it, but don’t sell out your brand.
“What”s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.” – Al Ries
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If you found this post interesting please share it.So I opened my letterbox last night and I found a letter from a Lawyer who has a whole line of letters after her name (35 to be exact not including punctuations) B.A LL.D, Dip. Eccles…. You name it, this lawyer’s got it. A Maltese ISP that is shutting has sent me an invoice for a supposedly unpaid bill for the Internet Service I used between 2006 / 2007.
I can’t believe this company has the audacity to send me an invoice after 2 years with a lawyer. This shows nothing but incompetence to their service, what the hell where their accounts team doing for the last 2 years? Why now? Did they need to hire an external accountant that’s closing the books to notice they had an unpaid invoice in their books? Did they need to send a letter with a lawyer and they couldn’t contact me earlier for this matter to be resolved? If this is the way they conducted business, no wonder they’re shutting down.
The bill is for €125.44, not much, but I’d rather give them to charity than be treated like this. According to the local law, you don’t have to pay a bill that you’ve never been contacted for after the 2 year duration.
What do you think should I pay it and avoid the legal hassle? Or should I stand up for my rights? Do you know a good lawyer?
Arrgh Humbug
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If you found this post interesting please share it.This post is part of BonsaiJon.com’s blogging contest. If you like the post, be a sport and leave a comment to the author and help him win. I am sure he will appreciate it.
These are the principles of integrating web 2.0 marketing with your spiritual end equation… Including how to use tools to create the ultimate leverage.
Do you know how to use the Web 2.0 movement to better your business? It’s important not to latch onto the newest MySpace or Facebook platform. It’s crucial to see the difference between traditional classified ads and Web 2.0 technologies. Leveraging Web 2.0 and your spiritual self gives you a massive amount of marketing capability.
Understanding Web 2.0 Social Media in a New Way
Let’s talk about the principle that makes Web 2.0 so different and effective. Namely, it’s the law of energy intake versus outtake. Lets call the internet a human brain. The internet is a powerful tool like our brain, and we want to use as much of it as we can. When you use the internet properly you utilize all the power that is inside you. You can see everything as a single thought. Now, let’s talk about integrating the net with your spiritual self and the law of energy intake and outtake.
Web 2.0 Marketing With Spiritual Integration
Everything is energy, that’s what the internet really is: a vast source of energy. You can plug into that source in a good way or a bad. For example, in the film -The Matrix- Neo and almost everyone else have a device that plugs into their brain activity. It’s like the internet- we’re all connected. The body consists of a energy system that is attached to the cortex of your brain.
Now, understand that your energy is your brand on the internet. It’s your right and privileged to share your brand and energy. When you create a relationship with someone online you create an energy attachment. Imagine a ray of light attaching your energy (aura) to theirs. You’re now apart of their experience, as they are apart of yours.
Tools and Understanding Communication
Now, if web 1.0 was the first dimension of the internet where we used online classifieds and many forms of emails, etc, then now, Twitter actually represents the next form of communication and human experience through this energy exchange. Twitter is a micro blogging site and more. Its the quickest way to share an experience through the internet, but more importantly to do it through an energy exchange. This also becomes a very profound source of Leverage. Finding the inner you is the most powerful form of this application, and it can be achieved by a very simple process through understand what L.O.V.E really means: Laws of Vibrational Energy. As you become a constant out pouring of this Love, you will reflect the perfect world and ideal situation for you and your family. Good luck on your web 2.0 spiritual equation integration journey.
You can get more cutting edge information about the Laws of Vibrational Energy by following Christopher Vivace on Twitter
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