How much money is spent on SEO each year?
Im looking for a national/world average. I know more and more companies are expected to spend a ton but I would like some sources that tell how much is expected to be spent on SEO. Thanks guys.
Hello Jack,
I was trying to find the article on emarketer.com. It was posted a few months back. However, the article stated that it expects Internet marketers will be spending at least $ 26 million plus on Search Engine Optimization. Social Media Marketing & Email Marketing closely followed.
You can also check out www.seomoz.org they just posted a blog about the future of Internet marketing. They got their info from forrester research. You can go to forrester research and sign up for their newsletter and they will keep you up to date on trends. You can also go to mequoda daily, they are also an online newsletter that provides great information on Interent Marketing trends.
I hope this helps!
Sincerely,
www.ninalewis.org
Originally posted 2009-12-31 02:46:05.
The Ten Important Steps for Optimizing your Website for Search Engines
“The Ten important Steps for optimizing your website for search engines:
In these ten steps we will know ten basics and important steps to optimizing a website to perform better on major search engines. If you will follow these steps correctly your website search engine position website will be surly improve depending on you industry competition.
Step 1 – Keyword Selection
Step 2 – Creating optimized Content
Step 3 – Site Structure
Step 4 – Internal Linking
Step 5 Submissions
Step 6 Link Popularity Building
Step 7 – Title and Meta tags
Step 8 Monitoring
Step 9 social bookmarking
Step 10 Testing
Step 1 – Keyword Selection
Selecting Keyword is the single most important factor in the entire search engine optimization (optimisation) process. Choosing the right and relevant keywords will not only help you in getting good search engine position and targeted traffic but it will also increase you return on investment (ROI).
Example: If you are a company based in UK providing search engine optimization (optimisation) (SEO) services. The first keyword in your mind would be definitely
Keyword Competition
SEO : 73,000,000
Search engine optimization : 63,600,000
Seo Company : 26,800,000
It is possible to get good ranking on these keywords but it will take lot of time and money instead you can target “”Seo Company Uk” and “Search engine optimization company Uk’ this way you are targeting two keyword at a time with less competition that means more chance of targeted traffic and good Search engine positions.
Keyword selection and research tools
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
Site: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Word Tracker
Site: http://www.wordtracker.com/
Step 2 – Creating optimized Content
There has been lot of changes in the search engine algorithms but there is no change in the importance given to quality content. In this step we will focus on how to create optimized and unique content for high search engine positioning using the keywords we have selected in the first step.
Unique and well written content will both grab your visitor’s attention and at the same time, make them want what you have to offer. So write in keeping mind what your audience are looking for and targeted keywords.
First ask yourself some questions:
What services you offer
Do you provide the services your visitors are looking for
Do some research
Provide as much as possible information on the subject. Provide useful and unique information about your industry / subject area it can entice your visitors to visit your website in future. It has found that most of the online visitors search for information about their interests.
Content Optimization
Four important factors for optimizing content
1. Heading Tags – (H1 to H6)
2. Special Text – (bold etc.)
3. Inline Text Links – (Anchor text and alt tags for images )
4. Keyword Density – (number of occurrences of your targeted keywords in a page)
Heading Tags
By default text in these tags appear too large than standard text in a browser. We can customize it by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Tip: Do not use the same tag more then once on a page.
Special Text
It can be used in bold, colored, “”In quotes”" or (in brackets). Using special text will help draw the attention to important information and also add weight to your keywords.
Inline Text Links
Example: We provide seo services and web hosting.
You add a link to related page on your site to these bold words. it gives the reader a way to find the information you are referring to.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the no. of occurrences of targeted keyword in the content of the page. You should not spam the targeted keyword in your content; recommended keyword density is between 4% to 10%.
Step 3 – Site Structure
You must structure your website to attract the visitor as well as the search engine spiders. The site structure will help spiders read your site. Keep the code as clean as possible so search engine spider can get to your content, where you want them to be.
Use CSS to cut down code extra code like for font style, tables, images etc…
Things to remember while planning site structure
Keep URL Short and close to Root of the site
While creating folder and files use keyword
Eg: for a page in web hosting packs www.domainname.com/web-hosting/website-hosting.html
Use Hyphens (-) while splitting name in to 2 instead of underscore (_) as shown in above example.
Step 4 – Internal Linking
Internal linking means linking to your pages within the website by way of sitemap, navigation bar, footer, header etc. The sitemap should be linked on all pages of your website to get spidered by search engines from anywhere. You should also include Google sitemap on your site to get indexed easily by Google. It adds relevancy to the linked page which directly helps in getting high rank for the linked page
Using text based links with anchor text, footer navigation and use inline text link will improve Your Internal Linking Structure. So spider can crawl it easily add relevancy to the linked page. The closer a page is in clicks from your homepage. The higher the value the page rank is assigned.
Step 5 Submissions
Where to submit:
o Search engines
o Web directories
Major search engines to submit
Google.com | yahoo.com | Msn.com
Major web directories to submit
1. Yahoo (paid)
2. Dmoz.org (most important)
http://www.about.com/
http://www.incrawler.com/
http://www.jayde.com/
3. http://www.wowdirectory.com/
Step 6 Link Popularity Building
There are 2 ways of building Link popularity
o Reciprocal link building (2 way link building)
o Non-reciprocal link building (1 way link building)
Reciprocal link building
There are some basic rules to follow when exchanging links:
Relevancy is more important
Check and make sure the reciprocal link aren’t being blocked and pages are indexed
Link pages with more than 50 links aren’t worth exchanging with
Non-reciprocal link building
It can be in form of paid link, directory listings, social bookmarking, article publishing ,blogs and press releases
Step 7 – Title and Meta tags
Once you have planned and completed the site structure and content integration. Its turn for Title Meta and Description. Unique and optimized title and Meta tags are really helpful in achieving higher search engine positions
Title:
this tag represents information of page this can be in browsers header bar
Meta keywords:
This include the targeted keywords for that particular page
Meta description:
The Meta description shows on the SERPS (search engine results page). It is used in describing the products / services you offer to your customers, you can describe specific pages within your website that shows in the search results page.
You can describe your pages the way you want them to be seen by your visitors in the SERPS (search engine results pages)
Next is alt tags, Alt tags is a white hat SEO practice used very commonly by search engine optimizers
Step 8 Monitoring
There are three basic things in the monitoring process. They are:
Monitoring your search engine positions:
You can go through the searches manually, you can use software like IBP to check your rankings or you can use online. There can find many related Seo tools listed here http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html
Monitoring Back Links
Schedule weekly checks of how many backlinks you have and are your link partners still linking to you
Monitoring Changes in the Search Environment
The last thing you will have to monitor is for changes with the search engines themselves.
Visiting forums and subscribing to newsletters to keep yourself updated about search engines algorithm changes
Step 9 social bookmarking
The social bookmarking is used by many people to bookmark their pages and websites. Using the social bookmarking visitors can bookmark the sites listed in the social networking websites. The popularity of the websites in the social bookmarking world gauged by most favorites websites among the visitors. The most bookmarked website obviously will get more traffic than others and it can also help improving your search engine ranking in major search engines.
How does it work?
In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Webpage Urls, which they find useful. Often, these lists are publicly accessible, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some social bookmarking systems allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.
Most bookmarking websites allows to enter multiple tags for your web pages in order to be searched by the visitors that helps social bookmarking visitors to get relevant and accurate search results for their keywords.
Advantages
1. Social bookmarking helps in promoting your website users market your site.
2. It indirectly helps by building a brand.
3. Generates targeted traffic.
Some important social bookmarking sites
Dig.com | Blink |Del.icio.us |Digg |Furl |Google |Simpy |Spurl |Y! MyWeb
Step 10 – Testing
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now its time to see if all that hard work done has achieved the main goal of reaching the visitor and to convert them to a customer.
o Check for broken links :
o Other script errors
o Ease in navigating site
o visual appeal of the site
o placement of content
o are you able to find what u are looking for
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now you should test your website for errors (i.e. 404 not found error, script errors etc.).
Check for broken links :
Other script errors
Ease in navigating site
Visual appeal of the site
Placement of content
Are your visitors able to find what they are looking for?
“
Sandeep Tyagi
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/the-ten-important-steps-for-optimizing-your-website-for-search-engines-67620.html
Originally posted 2010-08-01 08:35:58.
what is search engine marketing and how do I utilize it for my business?
I have an automotive dealership with a website of pokchev.com, I keep reading about search engine marketing yet I don’t understand how to take advantage of it?
Search Engine Marketing is powerful way to reach out to your prospective customers who are actively searching for products you offer by placing sponsor links on pages displaying results of keywords relevant to yoru business
5 simple steps to place ads thru Search Engine Marketing.
Step 1: Visit the URL(s) -
http://yahoosearchmarketing.com
https://adwords.google.com/ads
Step 2: Choose Keywords (tools on the URLs assist you in the process)
Step 3: Write Search Listing for each of your keywords
Step 4: Determine the Bid amount for each of the Keywords {Payment is on cost per click basis (you pay the search engine only when your linked has been clicked on)}
Step 5 : Set up a payment account, a self serve system allows your credit card to be billed after the clicks have been delivered
Originally posted 2010-01-08 09:56:29.
Can someone please tell me what search engine optimization is!?
I’ve been searching all day, and I’ve been reading that your blog can be successful or fall falt on it’s face based on what you know of search engine optimization; SEO. I know what it is (sort of) but I don’t know how to do it, I don’t even know if there IS a "how." So I’d be grateful if someone told me what SEO is, and how to use it. Thanks.
What do you mean tags? You mean like the links on my site (well, in my case a blog) that describe my posts and stuff?
SEO
is the optimzation of your website content, html and links to your website in order to enhance your search engine listings as well as your buyer’s experience.
There is a how. Have a look at: http://www.getintogooglequick.com/seo_basics.htm
Originally posted 2010-02-13 17:50:26.
Write Google AdWord Ads that Get Results
Have you been searching for a way to improve your AdWords ad copy? If so, then what we have for you today are three proven tips to increase your PPC ad conversions.
Writing an AdWords ad is all about reaching out to your target market in the most specific manner. You will experience disappointing results if your ads use general language written in a general way. You should never talk in general terms in an ad because the ad needs to focus on one item, only. It is when people who are searching see your ad, and they immediately know what it’s all about. The meaning in your ad directly relates to what ever it is you’re selling. After you perform solid keyword research, you must arrange them logically into ad groups which are related groups. Google will let you know if your ad groups are not quite right because you’ll see it in your quality score. Doing so will help your qualtiy score, and that is first hurdle you have to overcome with any campaign.
A call to action is an integral part of all good copy, and that includes PPC ad copy. When in doubt, test; and that is what you should do with your ads because some marketers respond differently than others. It just makes logical sense to have one since people that will be seeing your ad won’t know what they need to do once they click on the ad. Your ad will become more tight and focused with a call to action. Again, it really depends on your particular market, so test different kinds of call to action statements. You will just be providing clear directions for the reader, and most of them will appreciate that even if they don’t know it.
AdWords ads can be made much more powerful with the use of story. We’ll explain how you do this because we know you’re scratching your head. You’ll be simply saying something that grabs their hearts and causes them to have sympathy or empathy. This will help you connect with them on a higher level and let you achieve what you want. There are many other things you can do to boost your AdWords ads conversion rates.
Cool Links:
amazing widget
the amazing widget bonus
Originally posted 2010-12-26 06:37:50.
Is there an SEO advantage of hosting my blog on an external established Blog system rather than my own?
I have a business blog section on my website. It’s basically an area of the website I can regularly update so that the content on my website is fresh. This is supposed to be good for my website in terms of search engines crawlers (apparently they’ll return more often).
But would I benefit more if I also have a blog in a proper blogging environment such as Blogger, WordPress etc. with links to various related pages in my website. I guess the upside would be that I would have relevent inbound links but the downside would be that I wouldn’t have the blog on my own site which means no regularly updated content.
Unless I run the blogs simultaneaously, but would that be seen as some sort of Black Hat technique due to the content being duplicated on an external blog which is linking back?
HELP!
Thanks in advance.
Having both blog on my website and on an external system is an option I’m open to, although I feared that I may be marked as a black hat by Search Engines.
If not then I may as well go for that.
You seem right on the ball with this one…
Believe me, if you do both, I can assure you that you wont be marked as black hat, don’t worry about it. I suggest that you do both, it will truly help you in the end.
However, if you need to chose one or the other, which do you think will attract more visitors? Clearly, it seems like your goal is to rank higher; but itsn’t the goal in the end to recieve more visitors?
If you have an outside blog, how many people will see it? Will it do anything for you? Will you market that blog? If so, how?
How many people are currently looking at your website? Will a blog on your website help retain visitors and help sell your company from there?
Depending on the search engine, there’s far more to SEO than just links; inbound & external. It’s also how many clicks on the page once visited, how long vistitors stay on the page, and so on.
Inwhich case, having both will help trumendously!
Originally posted 2010-01-21 16:06:28.
