People tend to underestimate the power of article writing and do not realise the effects it can have on ones business. When article writing is done correctly and by a professional, the impact it can have on your search engine ranking is phenomenal.

One of the problems I see as a professional writer is too many business owners cutting corners when it comes to their online content and article writing.  Plenty of money is being spent on creating and branding your product/service, but then many business owners fall at the finish line by producing sloppy content and articles.

If you are looking to enhance your online visibility, then you will need to actively promote your website. Internet marketing can be expensive and this is why it is important for the success of your business to gain as much natural traffic as possible. Gaining natural traffic is all about improving your websites search engine ranking, and this is where article writing truly comes in to play. To make your website attract the maximum targeted traffic, it’s very important for the content of your website to always change and be added to. To gain the maximum benefit from article writing you should hire a professional writer who can optimise your content and provide you with quality information for your website, which the search engines are sure to love.

Search engines work on the basis of keywords that are entered by web searchers, and the more keywords you have will lead to a much higher search engine ranking, which will equal more organic traffic. A professional SEO article writer can add flavour to your keyword oriented content, they can ensure that your articles are optimised with your targeted keywords, but also keep your articles interesting to read and not overly obvious that it has been created for SEO purposes only.

As a business owner you will be busy with the every day to day running of your business, and even though your grammar skills might be up to scratch, it is easy for you to rush and make mistakes. If you choose to take on the job of doing your own article writing, be sure to take care and maybe research on the best ways of optimising your articles before you start. Sloppy content that is full of errors or maybe not enough keywords will do the complete opposite of what you are trying to achieve. It will gain you a much worse search engine ranking rather than helping you climb to that number 1 spot on Google. SEO article writing is a part of your business you really cannot afford to cut corners on, so do the smart thing for your business and hire a professional today.

Here are 12 important search engine optimization tips that can help you rank higher quickly and easily:

1. Add relevant keywords to the HTML meta tags of your site. Include keywords in the beginning of your Meta Title Tag, Meta Description Tag and Meta Keywords Tag
2. Include a relevant keyword in the URL of your home page and subpages
3. Use headings or bold type to emphasize your keywords
4. Include at least one relevant keyword in your domain name if at all possible
5. Include links to websites that rank highly for your main keyword(s)
6. Use H1 and H2 tags for your headlines and include your keywords in each
7. Include links to other professional websites that already rank highly in Google
8. Obtain as many RELEVANT links as possible to include on your website
9. When other websites link to you, ensure they include your main keyword in their anchor text
10. Increase your Page Rank or PR by obtaining more links, controlling outbound links and creating additional content and pages for your website
11. Your site will typically rank higher over time; new domains may not rank as highly
12. Frequently add consistently high-quality, informative content to your website – consistency is key

If you follow the above advice, your website should end up ranking much higher in Google.  This is very important as a higher ranking will also increase the amount of online traffic to your site.

Good luck!

So, your website started merely as an idea and lots of planning and hard work has been put in to its creation, now it is time to start showing the world your final masterpiece which you call your website.

The first step you can take towards your online business success is to submit your website to all of the major search engines. It will not even take you an hour to submit your website to the search engines, but depending on your website and what your business is all about, it can take anywhere between a couple of hours, leading up to even a few months, before your website is actually listed by the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. You may choose to do your search engine submission yourself, or you can hire a professional to do it for you.

Once you have submitted your website to the search engines, you have given the search engines your website URL. From this, the search engine will then be able to send its spider (also known as a bot) across to your website. When this happens, the spider will then read and copy nearly all of your website information, such as the text, links to external sites, your title tag, and some of your Meta tags. The spider will be reading away at your website to understand what it is all about; it will be picking up on all of your keywords so that it can then return this information back to the central database for indexing. Even once the spider has visited your website, it can still take up to a few months before your website is indexed on the search engines.

Tip: The search engines spiders are limited to what they can read and will only follow the basic HTML code of your website. So if you are using any fancy JavaScript, then the spider will completely ignore this because it cannot understand it.

There are many services out there today which offer to submit your website to hundreds of search engines for a fixed fee, only I would advise you to steer clear of such offers as most of these are just scams, as there is not even such a number of search engines exist. The only search engines that you need to submit your website to, is the major ones such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. It is also a good idea to submit your site to as many highly ranked directories as possible, because when people are doing a search on one of the search engines, your directory advert and website link will then be picked up and will display in the search results.   

Basically, when you have completed your website submission, the search engine will read your website, index it and assign a rank to it. No one can guarantee you a high ranking through search engine submission alone. Once your website has been submitted, this is when you then need to be looking down the road of either performing or hiring an expert to work on your search engine optimisation. Your SEO is what will make your website climb the search engine ranks, which will then create more and more traffic to your website.

Google Sandbox is the hottest topic to be currently buzzing around among webmasters. Google still haven’t given any official confirmation as to whether such a thing actually exists or not. So if Google haven’t given any confirmation yet, what started all of the gossip? Well, it started a couple of years ago when Google released an update and still to this day it has not been confirmed but remains a major worry for new websites.

The sandbox effect is a theory that a newly created website isn’t given a Google ranking until Google feel it is appropriate for your site now to be ranked, so instead of your site being allocated a ranking straight away, the theory is that your newly created website is placed in sandbox. This could mean newly created websites could have to wait up to 9 months before they will rank for highly competitive keywords. There are many sites which manage to escape sandbox and get in to the Google index within a week. This is because it all depends on what keywords your site is going to be found under, the quality of your sites content and the number of inbound links you may have already.

So, how can we escape the sandbox effect?

1.       The best way to escape it is to target much less competitive keywords. The majority of websites which get into sandbox are those which went straight in to targeting highly competitive keywords.

2.       It is only ever the newly created domains which get placed into sandbox, so if you can, try to purchase an old domain from someone who is selling theirs or even look out for recently expired domains. Another benefit to having an older domain is the fact that you will not only escape sandbox, but you can also target highly competitive keywords straight away.

3.       There are a few other options which you can use to avoid sandbox, such as sub-domains and deep linking. Deep linking is great for your websites SEO and can make your pages rank highly even if your site is sandbox. Google are also very fond of links coming to your site from edu and gov domains, this will gain you a lot of trust with Google and you will not be sandbox.

If you are the proud owner of a newly created website and it is important to you for your site to do as well as possible in the search engines, then it would be a better idea for you to leave your search engine optimisation to an expert who has years of experience. With all the confusion going around the internet over what is good for your SEO and what isn’t, it can be hard for any newcomer to keep up, and you can often feel like you are being sent around in all different directions and still not getting any further ahead.

Viral marketing involves increasing awareness of a particular product, site or service.  You can encourage people to promote by entertaining them with various methods such as providing interesting or amusing ebooks, games, contests, articles or videos. If what you offer is truly useful, visitors will be sure to forward the viral marketing piece to many others in a very short period of time.  Viral marketing is very effective at helping you increase awareness of your products.

Offering special deals or incentives to visitors is another important aspect of viral marketing.  Businesses can offer a special such as a free downloadable ebook, informative article or exclusive discount to accompany the marketing information or tool visitors will receive. This will increase the number of people who use your service and then spread the word to other people they know. 

Another advantage of viral marketing is the fact that it is safe and very inexpensive.  Any marketing you conduct via viral marketing will not be viewed as spam by email servers.  You can avoid this increasingly common problem because customers who use the viral marketing personally forward it to people they know who will not regard the message as spam.  Many messages sent using other advertising methods end up at the bottom of the delete folder of recipients’ inboxes.

Perhaps one of the main advantages of viral marketing is the tremendous increase in publicity for your website and your products and services. Because your name will become much more familiar and memorable with the viral marketing process, you can greatly increase the volume of online traffic and prospective customers to your website.
 
Devising a creative viral marketing method and presenting effective and tempting offers will help you maximise results.  You should also implement viral marketing with other promotional methods such as search engine optimisation.  You can peak people’s interest by including interesting or unusual information.  Just think about how quickly new rumours spread online about famous celebrities or sports teams.  You can use viral marketing to take advantage of this remarkable power during your next marketing campaign.

If you run an online business, you should definitely include viral marketing as one of your advertising methods.  It provides you with a simple, inexpensive and effective method of encouraging others to spread the word about your site, increasing online traffic and helping you to build a solid reputation for your business.

Marketing Small Vs Large Businesses

Competing with larger companies who have many years of experience and aggressive marketing professionals can make marketing a small business very challenging. Smaller businesses need to discover a way to stand out from their competitors by proving to their clients that they can offer something new or different. Focusing on a local customer base can prove advantageous over global markets.

Marketing Budgets

Another disadvantage is that small businesses usually have a much smaller budget than larger companies. Small businesses often rely heavily on the support of the local community and local customers to purchase their goods and services. What many small business owners don’t realise is that they can gain support from the local community and obtain much higher search engine rankings by utilising local online business directories effectively. Another advantage is the inexpensive cost; this is very important if your company has a limited marketing budget. Make sure you consult local online business directories so you can add your business and start to climb the search engine ranks and expand your customer base beyond your community.

Article Promotion

Article promotion is a very effective method of improving your search engine rankings. You can attract more visitors if your company website includes articles with advertising advice and tips geared for local businesses. Articles are very different from general business content included in business websites. Whenever possible, you should add links to your company websites within the articles. Another option is to include one link designed for local businesses and another one that is more geared for general businesses. Articles are a very effective method of increasing traffic to your website; leads generation is a crucial component to marketing any successful local business.

Search Engine Optimization

When you are marketing, you also need to ensure that any websites targeting local businesses are search engine optimised. SEO friendly sites are very effective for marketing local businesses. You can dramatically increase your profit margins by targeting locals with local business categories. The technology is very easy to use, and many websites provide affordable and competitive solutions for online marketing. Another advantage of search engine optimization is the fact you can tailor your marketing campaigns; you can attract prospective clients who live in the area and are more likely to utilise your services, purchase your products and become long-term customers. Remember to focus locally when you are marketing so you can attract a greater number of new clients in your area.

You should incorporate static improvements to your website such as organizing keywords density and title tags and including proper meta tags.  However, providing fresh content is even more important to ensure spiders continuously find your site.  Each time new content is added, the spiders will discover that your site has changed.  The data centers will then update the information concerning your site.  Search engines such as Yahoo! or Google consider sites that frequently add new content to be active and thus more relevant to online visitors.  Search engines apply the very same principle if pages of your website that have been indexed continue to be modified or updated on a frequent basis.

Each time a search engine visits your website and discovers new content, it will recrawl your entire site.  Search engines also consider how often your website content is updated and maintained when they assign a particular ranking.  You may be wondering if there is a difference between adding new content to your website or merely altering existing content.  One simple solution is to ensure the existing content of your web pages are automatically modified.

You can include a minor change to the code on your web pages to that the content will change with every page refresh.  Crawling spiders will detect new online content, and they will return periodically to ensure their index is current.  As soon as they discover that a web page has changed, the spiders will establish a new date to recrawl your site.  The advantage is that the new date will be even sooner than the last one.  When they revisit your site, they will discover once again that your site has changed.  This will cause them to recrawl your site even sooner, at which point they will see even more new changes.  Although some spiders have an hourly or daily crawl limit, this loop will continue indefinitely. This can help you to greatly increase your search engine rankings in a very short period of time.

If your website ranks highly on search engines and online directories, it will reach a much larger target audience who uses the keywords you have included.  Therefore, conducting keyword research is essential to the success of your online marketing campaign.  They are so crucial that they can even make the difference between succeeding and failing in your online or offline business. 

It may be difficult to know which keywords you should use in your particular marketing campaign.  Here are some helpful hints to consider when you’re conducting keyword research:

·         Instead of using a generic keyword to describe your products or service, choose more detailed or focused ones.  For example, the keyword “shoes” can also refer to horseshoes, shoe horns, dance shoes, etc.  Choosing a descriptive set of keywords such as “Discount Athletic Shoes Canada” is a more suitable choice; it will not only describe your product in more detail, but will also lower your competition because you will be competing against only the websites that sell “Discount Athletic Shoes Canada” rather than shoes or shoe-related products of any kind.

·         Choose keywords that will appeal to your target audience because of certain qualities related to your product or service

·         If you own a local business, target localized keywords to ensure your website appears in localized search results

·         Use keywords that highlight specific needs of your customer that they often type into search engines

·         If you have a niche market or specialized customers, use common industry-related terms or jargon.  For example, if your website sells products for hospitals or nurses, look for keywords that have high search results and are often used in the medical community

If you follow the above suggestions, you will receive more highly targeted traffic to your website.  This will normally result in a much higher ROI.  Choosing specific keywords will produce much higher search volumes, but much lower competition.  Therefore, be sure to conduct detailed keyword research before your next online marketing campaign and watch your sales soar!

Use Targeted Keywords in Domain Names
Effective SEO involves determining the keywords that relate to the topic of information, product or service you will be providing.  Whenever possible, try to match the test used in your domain name to these targeted keywords because this will enable the search engines to understand the purpose of your website.  For example, a website entitled “BlueWidgets.com” will be very effective for anyone who happens to be searching for a blue widget.  You can choose to include any keywords you like in your domain text, but they will not present you with the same advantage as using targeted keywords.

Include Relevant Content On Your Website
You also need to ensure the content you include on each of your web pages related directly to the specific search terms for which you want to rank highly.  This may range from comparing your product to similar alternatives to including testimonials or reviews or explaining your concept or product in detail.

Match Relevant Topics with Title Tags
Every title tag for your website should match the particular topic of each page.  Any other pages should contain URLS that match the most important keywords, as well as the title.  You can use bold or a larger font for any target search words, but be careful not to overdo it.  Over-optimization may be viewed by the search engines as spam which could hurt your ranking.  Instead, make sure that every page is readable and useful for all of your online visitors.

Establish Links To Your Website
Another important element to effective SEO is to establish links that lead back to your website from other domains.  Many people underestimate the importance of proper link building.  If other websites don’t show them where your site exists with a link, search engines will fail to even realise your domain exists.  You can increase the ability of these links to improve your search engine rankings by doing the following:

• Match the readable text of every link to targeted keywords
• Ensure links are located on related pages that discuss similar topics
• Try to obtain links from other websites that already have a high ranking

Although the details of the SEO process continue to change on an almost daily basis, it’s very important that you learn the basic strategies involved.  The techniques listed above will help you rank higher with the search engines and promote your online business more effectively.  Remember that many keywords are very competitive, but you can rank for longer key phrases that ask specific questions by including comprehensive information on your website.  As your links to continue to grow and time passes, your site will eventually begin to rank higher for many of the shorter targeted keywords and phrases.

The word “hits” is commonly used these days and can cause confusion for many website owners, because in reality your traffic should not just be seen as hits, it should be split in to two groups, hits and visitors.

A visitor: This can be described as a unique person entering your website that then goes on to other pages and browses your site. No matter how many pages they look at, they will still only count as one visitor in your server logs. For example, if a person entered a website which sells golf supplies and they look at a certain brand of golf ball; they would then be counted as one visitor despite how many differing brands they may choose to then browse.

A hit: This however is different in the way that it counts every time a person moves to a different page on your website. Meaning every time a visitor moves to a different page on your website, it will create a hit in your server logs. For example, a hit in the same golf supplies website would be for every different brand of golf ball that the same person chooses to look at.

So now that you know the difference between a visitor and a hit, which one should you be keeping your eye on when analyzing your website stats? Well, it is just as important to be watching your visitors as it is your hits. Your site visitors are important because this allows you to clearly see how many unique people are being directed to your website. It is always good to see how many different customers your website is attracting.

Your website hits are also important in the way that they show the number of pages that are currently being viewed on your site. You can use this information to see how well your website is doing its job. Is your website landing page enough to entice your visitors to dig deeper and spend more time on your website, reading more and more of its content and what it has to offer. Or are people simply hitting on to the first page and then quickly moving on?

So, here you have it, the difference between a hit and a visitor and if used correctly when analyzing your websites traffic, you can use them together to see how well your website is performing. Never underestimate the power of your website stats; it is analyzing these that will give you some insight in to the future of your website.