How to Convert Hits into Sales?

One of the common questions asked by web site owners is: "I’m getting plenty of hits but no sales – what is going on?" This article will give you some tips on how to address this issue.

Your Product

The first area to review is the product or service that you are offering. Does a market exist for it? To answer this question you need to find out whether similar products are being sold on the Internet successfully. If not, you may need to rethink your Internet strategy. If others are selling a similar product successfully, then this would tend to confirm that there is a market for your product.

Next, look at the strategy and pricing being adopted by your competitors. How do you compare? Why should your visitors buy from you rather than one of your competitors? Answering these questions will provide you with valuable information you can use to improve your situation and generate more sales.

Also, take a critical look at your product quality. Does it live up to the claims you are making on your web pages? If not, improve your product so that it does or modify your web page to be more truthful about it.

Provide Solutions

Your visitors are looking for a solution to a problem. Do you know what problems your visitors are looking for solutions to? Does your web site show how your product will solve your visitor’s problem? You will need to put yourself into your visitor’s shoes to better understand what they are seeking so that you can provide the solution they need.

One way to better understand your visitors is to monitor where your visitors are coming from. If they are coming from the search engines, knowing what search terms they are using can provide some clues. You may find some surprises when you review this information about your site. The tool I use to capture this information is WebPosition Gold. More information can be found at the URL: http://www.ksinclair.com/sengine.htm

Once you understand the problem your visitors want solved, revise your web pages to show that your product will provide the solution they need.

Site Design

Your site needs to look like it is a commercial web site rather than an amateur home page. The design needs to be consistent from page to page and it needs to be easy to navigate. Contact details including physical address, phone numbers and email address need to be shown.

Graphics need to be minimized to ensure that your page downloads quickly. Also, ensure that your web host provides a fast connection to the Internet. Most people will not wait for a page that takes a long time to download. They will just move on to your competitor.

Make it easy to order. I recall seeing statistics recently that suggested that a large number of people abandon a web site in the middle of the order process. A common reason for this is that the order process is too time consuming and complicated. Make yours simple and quick and you will lose fewer sales.

Ensure that your web page has a strong headline that grabs your visitors and makes them want to read more. Your headline should in effect say "You have this problem, here is the solution". Your web site should then demonstrate that you understand the problem and that you can in fact provide the solution.

Testimonials and Guarantees

Testimonials and guarantees can have a huge impact on your level of sales. On the web, a key priority is to build credibility. The common methods used are having a privacy statement, publishing a newsletter, publishing testimonials from satisfied customers and providing a strong guarantee.

Take every opportunity to gather comments from your customers about how your product has helped them. Get their permission to publish these comments as testimonials. If need be, provide them with a gift for giving you their permission to publish their comments. A way of getting comments is a customer feedback survey. This can be used for the purpose of gaining testimonials as well as seeking ways to improve your product or develop additional products your customers may need.

A strong guarantee will provide your visitor with greater confidence to purchase your product. Try to make your guarantee simple and without too many conditions. Always honour your guarantee without question or delay.

Conclusion

Getting plenty of hits to your web site is a very positive situation to be in. By implementing some of the hints provided in this article, you can convert these visitors into being your customers.

Read More

Advertising on Your Site: When, How & How Much?

This has been a question I've been hearing a lot from my clients, as more and more of them start looking at their traffic analysis and think to themselves that there may be some income involved :)

First of all, there are a few do's and don'ts when taking advertising on your site, although these can depend highly on what type (industry, target market, traffic volume, etc.) of site yours is.

Do's

• Find out what your competition is doing in regards to advertising on their site. ***Note*** This must be followed with caution, however, since the fact that someone in your industry is doing it may not mean it's a "good" thing to do (See don'ts list)
• Get some rate sheets. Ideally from sites in the same industry as your own, but if not, from major traffic sites (There is a caveat to this, as well, see "Pricing")
• Keep track of your Web stats Even though your Web stats may not be 100% accurate (look for the article "Server Caching: When hits don't count" on Networld), the numbers that your server does log are vitally important, especially to those who may be about to pay you for space within your site.
• Keep your site updated, fresh, interactive, etc. In other words, keep the traffic flow up. There's nothing worse than selling an advertiser on one set of traffic predictions only to have them fall short because you let the site go stale.
• Choose carefully between who you allow to purchase space on your site. I'm sure I don't need to think of examples of ads that would actually drive traffic *away* from your Web site!

Don'ts

• Don't use link exchanges or banner exchanges if your site is a 'real' commercial venture. With due respect to these organizations, the ads are rather tacky at times, and every Tom, Dick and Jane has a banner exchange on their personal sites. This is not to mention the fact that the only money flow is in the banner owner's direction, since your 'paychecks' from hosting these ads can quite literally be in the decimals of a cent. (And coming from a Canadian, that's REALLY small change!)
• Don't take ads from adult sites, unless your site is of an adult nature, as well. Like banner exchanges, everybody has 'em, and they do nothing for your commercial site other than slow the download.
• Don't charge the same rates as Lycos or Microsoft, unless
  a) your traffic is upwards of one million hits a day,
  b) your target audience is so specialized that you are one of the very few serving the market.
• Don't put a link or banner with the words "Your ad could be here!" on your site. It looks tacky and basically tells people you are hurting for money. Put a small link near the bottom of your page titled "Advertising Info", or similar, with contact information for the person selling the ad space on your site.
• Don't try selling ads without at least three months of Web stats to back up your traffic claims (that's an absolute minimum, unless you have other publications in which you have advertisers already).
• These are only a few of the typical do's and don'ts, but they're the most important. Much of it is (I hope) common sense. I have, however, seen many a Web site plummet down the black hole of forgotten Web sites due to tacky, tasteless or grossly inappropriate advertising. Remember, in marketing, all money is *NOT* the same!

Pricing

What can I charge for my ads? This is the question I hate the most, because I have to give the most annoying answer: It depends.

It depends on things like; how long has your site been up? How much traffic actually goes through your site? How many other sites link to yours? Do you already have advertisers in your other publications (magazines, newsletters, etc.) Is your site generally open to the public or closed to members or clients only? How much time do you have to guarantee (as much as possible) the continued traffic patterns?

Aside from that, this newsletter is international in nature, so there may be many factors in your home countries that are different from here (Canada).

One of the best solutions to pricing (on any item, service, advertising, etc.) is the simplest: Ask a valued client what they would pay for such a service. It stuns me how many people think their relationships with their client's are one way only. For example, the client asks you questions/requests services and then pays you for it. ASK. Tell one or three of your client's that you are thinking of allowing advertising within your site and what they, if they were interested in such a service, would be willing to pay for it.

Most will give you an honest answer, or a slightly low-balled one (After all, they may well be interested in the idea!) Most clients will also appreciate tremendously the fact that you value their advice and/or opinions and not only their checks!

What else do I need?

Information. A lot of it. To close the sale on any of the well-paying (and more importantly, regular) clients, you will need detailed demographics on who uses your site, which sections are the busiest, what your traffic patterns are like, who else is linking to your site, search engine visibility, your own advertising of your web site, the nature of your site and the products, services or information it offers, your update schedule, major events for the future, and so on.

Naturally, you will probably not need to give *all* of this information to each and every advertiser, since they will individually consider certain types of data more important than others.

You also need to make sure your site is as promoted as it can possibly be. Even after you've done that, do it some more. Get the cross-links with other sites, make sure your current advertising contains your URL. Be active in the newsgroups (in a helpful, contributing way, no spamming!) with your URL in the tagline. Make sure your invoices, faxes, letterhead, etc., have your URL on them prominently. Keep registering in the other search engines (no, you didn't get them all the first time around, and you never will, there are more every week )

To shamelessly plug my own firm, InternAlysis specializes in just the above types of information: Competitive Intelligence. If you're considering advertising as a primary or even consistent portion of your income model, it is highly suggested that you hire an outside firm to take a look at your site and it's positioning with the competition. There are many people out there that tend to miss a lot on the competition, simply due to their own bias.

will be on your Web stats, what they mean, how they should be telling you how to edit your site, and how to present them to your CEO's or your advertisers

Read More

Spin Money from Your Web Site with Rotating Banners

Banners can be found in almost every website. Its popularity as an online advertising vehicle is undisputed although its effectiveness has been under scrutiny lately. Just like radio and TV commercials, we are beginning to click past banners without paying much attention to them. The average click-through rate on banners is only 2.6% - about the same as regular direct mail.

If you want to sell banner ad space on your site, you must come up with a winning strategy to increase the banners' click-through rate. Here are some tips to make your banner advertising more effective:

1. Accept only advertisers whose products or services are complementary to your web contents.

2. Encourage the use of animated banners to attract viewers' attention.

3. Place only one banner per page.

4. Your web page should have a light color or white background for maximum contrast with the banners.

5. Entice people to click on the banners with phrases like "Click here for more information!" or "Win a prize!"

The above measures may attract first-time visitors, but definitely not the repeat visitors. Having seen the same banner in that same spot over and over again, it is unlikely that a repeat visitor would ever click on the banner.

This banner burnout phenomenon can be avoided with a good banner rotation engine. Each time a person goes to your site, the rotation engine will rotate the banners stored in its inventory and present a new banner to the visitor.

The rotation engine can also be used to rotate banners throughout the entire site, in effect, increasing your ad space inventory by many folds. With this system, you can actually run as many banners as you like if you accept advertising on a pay-per-impression basis.

Most advertisers want to place their banners on the main index pages for maximum exposure. As a result, it is not uncommon for popular portal to display up to ten banners on its homepage and none on its content pages. With an automated rotation engine installed throughout the entire site, advertisers need not specify where they want to place their banners. Their banners will be randomly displayed wherever the visitor goes.

Obviously, you need a good banner rotation engine to achieve the above objective - one that will let you track vital statistics such as impressions, click-through, and click-through ratio. There are more than a few banner rotation engines available on the net, but their prices of a few thousands dollars would cut deeply into your profit margins. This is where OrbitCycle comes in.

OrbitCycle banner rotation engine is free of charge! It provides real-time detailed statistics on your banners' impression, click-through and click-through ratio. With OrbitCycle, you don't have to know any type of programming. The program is hosted on OrbitCycle's server, which offers an easy-to-use interface that lets you add, delete and track your banners easily.

You can get the banner rotation engine at http://www.orbitcycle.com. There is no catch! For allowing you to use OrbitCycle free of charge, the company will use 10% of your account's banner impressions to run its own banners or its advertisers' banners. This is a low price to pay considering the fact that most banner exchanges offer a 2-for-1 exchange, which represent an effective cost of 50% for using their services.

Note: Aloha-City has installed a similar banner rotation system in Income Online - a classified ad site for work at home and online business opportunities. The same system can be installed throughout the entire site. Click here for more information on banner advertising in Aloha-City.

Read More

Post optimization Tips to get higher SERP

Let’s talk about On-Page Optimization, especially on posts content. Like everybody said that content is the king, and SEO is the queen. That is the critical area in our site. Blog post optimization gives your posts the best chance for showing up in Google for a predetermined keyword phrase.
I am using a EO plugin, and it give me inspiration to share what are they talking about. There is a technique to optimize blog post for better SERP in search engine result. Not just make a new post, publish and you will get good SERP. At least there are 10 things in their suggestion. What are they? Here is the complete list.
1.    Use Enough Keyword Density.
Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. Try to use it between 2 – 6%.
2.    Add Keyword Phrase in Post Title.
Always include the primary keyword phrase in the page title. Keep the title less than 70 characters in length.
3.    Add an H1 Tag Containing Keyword Phrase..
Most blog CMS’s automatically assign an H1 tag to the blog post’s title. But if you not sure that your theme have it, add H1 tag with the primary keyword phrase in it on the post content.
4.    Highlight Your Primary Keyword with boldface or strong near the top of your content
5.    Add an image with keyword phrase in alt text.
Always make sure to have at least one image on every blog post. Also, include the primary keyword phrase in the image file name and the image alt text.
6.    Add Keyword phrase to first sentence.
From the start of the sentence, you should use keywords that leads your post contents.
7.    Add Keyword phrase to last sentence.
In your post, most of the keywords should be used so that your post may get indexed. It is strongly recommended that the usage of the keywords must be reasonable otherwise you may be penalized by search engines.
8.    Inbound or Internal Links.
It is recommended to link the primary keyword phrase to a page on your website domain with the intent of helping that page rank for that word.
9.    Use more words.
Try to use enough words in your post content so that most of them get indexed in different search engines like Google. It is commonly seen that longer posts are indexed for different keywords.
10.    Use nofollow link for external links.
As you know that this is a DoFollow blog and it receives almost 98% spam comments. So, don’t use “DoFollow” link for external link, except the link have good and important or have correlation with your post. I suggest you to use “Nofollow” link to all of external link in your blog post.

Read More

How Can Web Hosting Affect SEO?

All of us know very well that the real traffic of website can be gained through SEO. Moreover, Recently google started to count the speed of website for its search engine algorithm. Whenever, someone wants to play some tricks, you should keep in mind that the change webhosting company should not affect your SEO ranking otherwise your all hard work will get a zero value.
 
It has probably taken you some time to achieve your rankings, so you'll want to make sure that you don't have to start from the beginning simply because you have a new web host.  Luckily, you can change web hosting providers without any SEO impact by following a few simple steps:
 
Keep Your Domain Name

If you registered a domain name for your website, you should be able to move it to your new website by using the DNS provided by your new provider.  This is an essential part of changing web hosts — without your domain name, you'll be forced to wait for your new site to be read and indexed by the search engines. Also remember that your domain name is your online identity — which can be even more difficult to recreate.
 
Don't alter URL structures

Think about your website as a whole — it's not just your home page that the engines index, it's every page of your website (and its corresponding URL).By keeping you URL structure the same when you move your site to a new web hosting company, you'll be able to retain your rankings and the valuable inbound links that affect the search algorithm.
 
Pick a reliable provider

You must do your research before choosing a reliable web hosting company. Look for online reviews of your candidates and focus on those that offer an uptime quote of 99.99%. Most of the hosting companies are resellers of other companies and in case of any problem their own account can be suspended. So, try to contact a webhosting company that owns their own servers.

Continuous Work

And at the end of story, I want to say this that a blog or a website can only be succeeded only if the owner posts frequently and updates the website continuously.

Read More

Advantages and disadvantages of the web

The computer revolution that started in the latter half of the 20^th Century is potentially just as significant as the industrial revolution that began two centuries before it - perhaps even more so. One of the major developments to come out of the advances in computer and communication technology was the creation of the internet, an innovation with effects on the economic and social development of humanity that are still evolving and being assessed. Given its huge impact, I thought it would be interesting and instructive to list the main advantages and disadvantages of the internet, which you can read below.

Advantages of the internet

Speed of communication – The internet means that people can communicate using a variety of media types in real time over long distances now. In the past, the telephone and fax machines were the only devices that could communicate in real time and they had major limitations.
Interactive link-up – Unlike traditional media such as books, which are static and read-only, the internet can provide services that constantly update and are genuinely interactive.
Global scale – The world wide web links up the entire planet in a way that has never existed before. It is truly international and brings humanity together.
Pooling of knowledge – The entirety of human knowledge and experience can be stored online and be made accessible to anyone in the world who has a computer and an internet connection.
Freedom of ideas/democracy – For the first time in history, there can be a free exchange of ideas on local, national and international scale. Oppressive regimes now struggle to control their population’s access to news and other information and the internet can be a useful tool for those organizing protests.
New forms of communication – email, webcams, chat rooms, and websites are just some of the new ways that people have of communicating which wouldn’t have come into existence without the creation of the internet.
Wi-fi technology and integration of mobile phone technology mean that people no longer have to carry huge amounts of information around in bulky things like books and CDs when they are on the move, and can instead store information online.
E-commerce – Browsing stores and comparing prices, online banking, buying plane tickers, and ordering products from the comfort of your home is now an everyday reality, thanks to the internet.
Entertainment – The internet has created a revolution in the entertainment industry and provided enormous increases in the choices available for people, whether it’s music, movies, or new forms of activity such as online games.

Surfing the web on my laptop (Advantages and disadvantages of the internet)

Source: Self

Disadvantages of the internet

Information overload – It is becoming increasingly difficult for people to keep up with the amount of information they can receive over the internet. Many workers now spend a large proportion of their lives just reading and answering emails, for instance.
Lack of privacy – It is virtually impossible to control what personal information people put on internet and once it is out there, you cannot take it back. Everything from embarrassing photographs to slurs on your character, or information such as phone number or address can all cause problems.
Pirate media and illegal file sharing – The ease with which digital media can be copied and shared means that artists and creators now struggle to keep their intellectual property rights on things that they create, whether it is music, film, writing etc.

Attention span shortened – There is evidence that the internet is influencing the way that we think and that we are now more focused on absorbing only short snippets of information. This means that we often have a broad coverage of knowledge, but it is shallow – traditional media, such as books, gave us far more depth.

Pornography - The internetis saturated with pornography, making surfing it an uncomfortable and potentially traumatizing experience for parents and children.
Spam and unwanted advertising – Although the internet’s aims may be noble, in practice, much of it is clogged up with unwanted advertising and we spend a lot of our time online just trying to sort through it or avoid it.
Information and identity theft – The internet makes it very easy to steal massive amounts of personal data from individuals and organizations. The impersonal nature of the internet makes it easy to fake an identity, or steal someone else’s.
Cyber warfare –The increasing dependence of modern societies on the internet means that cyber warfare is now a reality, with the potential for countries to have their military systems, transport, media, hospitals, power and communication networks etc. knocked out by cyber attacks.
Social disconnect – Some psychologists are concerned that increasingly people are socializing virtually instead of doing it face to face, which may cause emotional and social problems, especially for children and young people who are still developing.

Read More

Blogger Navbar: What Is Blogger Navbar And It's Advantages and Disadvantages

Blogger Navbar appears at the top of every blogger by default. Blogger Navbar is powered by Blogger. Blogger Navbar can play an important role for your blogging. It's really an useful tool for every blogger. This page contains information related to Blogger Navbar. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of Blogger Navbar, are also mentioned.

What is Blogger Navbar?

Blogger Navbar is a navigation bar which is located at the top of every blog by default. At the time of blogging, Blogger Navbar can be very useful thing. But sometimes it creates some problem. By the way, Blogger Navbar contains the following things:

• Blogger home link
• Search box
• Flagging link
• Next blog link
• Create Blog link
• Sign In link (If you are not signed in)

Advantages of Blogger Navbar

There are many advantages that Blogger Navbar offers. Some of the advantages are:

• You can easily serarch other blogs
• You may flag the blog which contains may objectionable or if any blog copies your blog's content to another blog.
• You can easily move next blog by clicking NextBLog link. It's randowm and you will be moved to that blog which is recently updated.
• You can move to your Dashboard if you are logged in.
• You may also Sign in or Sign out.
• By clicking the B sign, you will easily redirected to www.blogger.com

Disadvantages of Blogger Navbar

In fact there is no disadvantages of Blogger Navbart except visual. Sometimes, if you customize your blog design, Blogger Navbar usually does not fit to your blog's design. So, it does not look nice. To avoid this type of disadvantage, you may do one of the following:

• Change the color of Blogger Navbar according to the design of your blog
• Remove or delete Blogger Navbar form your template
• Hide Blogger Navbar by Default and will appear when you place the mouse cursor over it

Read More

Check Your Historical Search Data with Google

Google is quite busy these days implementing new features on the Webmasters Tool section. The most recent addition, under the “Statistics” tab, is a feature that lets you access the top search queries on your website.

For each search query you can see its position on the SERP (search engine results page) and the percentage that it represents from the total queries where your pages appeared. Additionally, as the Google Operating System blog reported, you can also see the top clicked search queries. This information is quite useful to determine the headlines that work and the ones that do not.

Finally, you can also filter the search queries for specific periods (e.g., one week ago, two weeks ago, one month ago and so on) and for specific regions (e.g., Google India, Google Canada and so on). For a more complete review check out “The Blogger’s Guide to Google Webmaster Tools.”

Related Posts

• Useful Google Operators
• Google’s Blogger hosting tons of spam blogs?
• Google Cheat Sheet

Read More

Using Google Webmasters Tools Won’t Reveal Anything About Your Site

I am a big fan of Google Webmaster Tools, and one of the messages on the Daily Blog Tips newsletter is about why you should use this tool, and how you can use it efficiently.

Then a couple of days ago I received the following email in response to my advice (I’ll keep the identity of person anonymous for obvious reasons):

I have built many, many websites, and over the last couple of years of testing and re-testing, I have come to find out that my websites do better by NOT letting big G* have complete access to them.
I started out by doing exactly that. Submitting all my websites to big G’s Webmaster tools. Why? Because all the people “In the know” recommended it. Well, guess what? I could never figure out why I could never get my websites higher than the 2nd page.
Then, I read an article by a not so very well known Internet marketer who was making millions. Everyone blew him off and called him crazy. I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to him personally and what he revealed to me was simply amazing.
I decided to give it a try with some of my sites that were not doing very well. I took them out of G* Webmaster tools (there are many other ways of tracking you know) and low and behold. Most of them were on page 3 or worse before. After taking them off G tools, within 2 to 3 weeks, they were on the first page and making money.
The way I see it now, it’s like letting the government into your life. The more they know about you, the worse they make it!

As you can imagine I don’t agree with this argument, and here is why.

When you create an account on Google Webmasters Tools and submit your sites there you are not, by any means, giving Google more or less access to your website. You are not giving them any more information than what they already have by crawling and indexing your site over time.

The only thing they ask is that you confirm the ownership over your site (either by plating a meta tag on the header of your template, or by uploading an HTML file to your server) so that they can show you the information they have about your site, and give you advice to solve problems, should there be any.

In other words, signing up for Google Webmaster Tools won’t affect the information Google has about your site. It will, however, give you the opportunity to discover how Google sees your site, and this information can be very valuable.

Here is a personal example to illustrate the point. A couple of years ago I noticed that most of the pages of this blog started losing its search rankings. I couldn’t figure what was wrong, since I was not doing anything wrong or shady. After a couple of weeks I finally remember to log into the Webmaster Tools, and I found that I had a huge number of “Unreachable” crawling errors. This basically meant that the Google bot was not being able to crawl my pages for some reason. I then discovered there is a wrong setup on my server blocking the bot, and once I fixed that the rankings came right back.

There are many other valuable features and diagnosis tools offered by Google inside the Webmaster Tools. Now does Google offer all of this to webmasters because it is an altruistic company? Not all. Google is just doing what is sound for its business interests. If they help webmasters make their sites as good as possible, it will be easier for Google to crawl them and to sort the information around the web more efficiently (not to mention that better websites will get more traffic, and if they are AdSense users they will make more money both for Google and for themselves).

That is why I don’t buy the “Google is out there to get webmasters” theory.

What the person mentions in the email could even be true, but it would be just a coincidence. Adding or removing your site from the Webmaster Tools should have no effect on its search rankings. It is the same thing when people add or remove AdSense from their websites and search rankings go up or down. People think things are related, but it is just a coincidence.

Anyway this is just my opinion, and given that everyone is entitled to one, feel free to write a comment below with your thoughts on the issue.

Read More

The New Google Algorithm Farmer- What SEO/SEM Professionals Need to Know

It's official! While there has been talk of an upcoming algorithm change from Google for at least a couple of months, these past couple of weeks saw a definite change in the way that Google ranks those sites on the web vying for top placement in its listings. So what is the big news? This algorithm specifically went after content farms and in addition to a broad extent low quality sites that have been gaming the system for higher rankings. Since the algorithm targeted content farmers, this algorithm has been nicknamed The Farmer.

If you read our recent article: "Google Moving Against Content Farms- What Does This Mean for SEO?" You probably were already on the look-out for the coming algorithm change. Now that the algorithm has taken effect, the SEO/SEM community definitely knows a little bit more about it, however there are still a few things that require more research and information.

Who Was Targeted by the Farmer Algorithm?

This algorithm change which took effect since late February is said to have affected between 11% and 12% of the search queries in the United States. As of the moment, it is not sure when the algorithm will affect other regions in the world.

Some of the major website properties that were affected included article distribution sites, aggregated content sites (those sites that republish original content from others), sites that mostly sell products with little or no content associated with them, and in general sites that don't have unique or high quality content. Generally speaking, if a website's goal is to monetize content that is not original or high quality, then it is likely that the site has been targeted by Google.

Who Has Benefited from the Farmer Algorithm?

Generally speaking, those sites that have or will benefit from this algorithm will be sites that create unique, high quality content. Obviously, white hat SEO always included creating high quality, unique content as a prerequisite for obtaining long term quality results, this fact hasn't changed.

Tips for SEO/SEM to Avoid the Wrath of Farmer

If you noticed a sudden drop in the Search engine result pages or if you want to avoid a sudden drop in the future, here are some tips that should help you avoid the raft of the Farmer algorithm.

Make sure that the vast majority of content that you post on your website is unique and original. Obviously, you may have to post product descriptions or technical specs that come from a manufacturer, however when possible, create original and unique content in addition to this republished content.

Consider using the Original Source meta tag from Google: meta name="original-source" content= http://www.somedomain.com/article1.html More information at: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=191283

This meta tag directly tells Google that the content you have on your site is original- this way if someone plagiarizes your content or duplicates it in anyway, Google will know the original source and you should get all the credit from Google.

Another good tool to checkout is at www.copyscape.com This tool will scan the net looking for duplicate content so that you can identify specific pages on your website that need to be re-written so they are 100% unique.

Be choosy with the type of articles that you distribute. It should be noted that while Google has targeted many article distribution sites, you will not be penalized for having your content on these sites- the more likely possibility will be these back links will have less power and thus be less effective- so there is no need to remove any of your content from these sites.

Be careful how you monetize your content. Obviously, those that heavily advertise on their site will receive extra scrutiny from Google. If you use content to lure traffic for monetization, definitely use unique content and do not rely solely on aggregated/republished content.

Obviously, the Farmer algorithm has only been out for a couple of weeks, so SEO/SEM professionals are still researching its broad effects. As always, we'll keep you updated as well if we find important information.

Read More

Make Your Website More Panda Friendly

The recent Google Panda update has raised the bar not only for SEO experts but also for web designers. It’s getting tougher and tougher to rank well and that means that you really have to pay attention to all designing and Google ranking factors. When we do this, search engines rewards us because we are rewarding our audience and providing them with the information and experience they are looking for. The following points will help you to make your website panda proof:-

1.Content is key:The Panda algorithm update emphasizes providing assurance only on websites that contain unique and useful content. This will help users better find content relevant to their search. If you provide web page content that is unique, relevant, high quality and preferably 1000+ words, your site will likely be rewarded with improved rankings and therefore, increased traffic.

2.Above the fold design: Narrowing your header images, removing header banner images and pushing more content onto the top of your site will help with Panda.

3.Web Page indexing: A website with more than 100 web pages and maximum pages indexed by Google would be considered as a Panda friendly website.

4.Page rank: Page rank is still one of the most important factors. PageRank is an independent measure of Google’s perception of the quality/authority/credibility of an individual web page. It does not depend on any particular search phrase. Google conveniently reports this as a number from 0-10 (10 being the best).

5.Check your Domain registration: Domain registration for five years helps to enhance authority points. This is a small tip, but every little bit helps.

6.Webmaster tools: It enables webmasters to get a better idea of what Google “thinks” about their web sites, how the Google “spider” sees them, and what improvements could be made.

7.Social media proof: Google Panda takes social media trends seriously and content that is loved by social media sites like Twitter and Facebook gets better position in search engines.

8.Optimize for Fast Load Times: Avoid flash, single background images in the website. Google tends to favor sites that are snappy, quick, and fast.

Read More