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Tag Archive for Optimization Seo

bikram | August 6, 2010
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Website Traffic: Turn Left, Turn Right, Look Stop and Go

Traffic, visitors, customers, subscribers, readers, or people, whatever you may call it. It is the thing we want for our websites, regardless of the purpose of the website. Traffic is “the most important” thing. And traffic in itself means different thing to different people. For some it is something that you get as an result of search engine optimization (SEO), while for others it may be something that you get after investing some dollars in online ads (PPC, media buying, banner ads, Facebook ads, etc.). So what exactly is the nature of traffic; that is to say, what are the types of traffic?

There are two categories under which every type of traffic could be classified. Those categories are:

  1. Paid Traffic
  2. Free Traffic

Paid traffic

The traffic for which you have to pay even a single dime to the traffic source falls in this category. Traffic from PPC (Pay Per Click) ads, PPV (Pay Per View) ads, CPM (Cost Per Thousand) ads, Facebook ads, MySpace ads, sponsored tweets, banner ads, sponsored forum posts, etc., are the examples of paid traffic. And I must add here that your SEO agency does not fall in this category.

Paid traffic is said to be of high quality. It is believed that people clicking on the sponsored links are those who actively seek the solutions — whether informational or transactional — to their problems. But a proper care and due diligence is required on the marketer’s part to reap benefit from this source, for a small mistake can possibly cost you hundreds and thousands of dollars, if not whole business.

Free Traffic

Free traffic is the traffic that you get from Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engines, or traffic even from twitter, Facebook profile page, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, or any other social bookmarking or networking sites. Even traffic from classifies websites fall under this category.

Any traffic for which you do not have to pay to sending source is called free traffic. This is the best traffic you can imagine to have, and most of the Internet marketers focus on getting this. But some sources are too slow to deliver results — like SEO (search engine optimization).

For years, free traffic (unlimited) was supposedly Holy Grail of the online marketing industry, but soon the marketing community realized that paid traffic is also a good bet. And they started investing in it, big time. Paid traffic is worthy of admiration, for this is not something that depends upon the search engine’s (read Google) mood swing (read algorithm updates).

Google and other major search engine do affect paid traffic as well, but not the way it affects free traffic. It is advisable, therefore, to have a balanced mix of both kinds of traffic in your traffic getting plan.

That’s it for now. In the next article, I will talk about some traffic getting strategies. I am hoping to make it a series. Let’s see how it comes up. Till then keep reading.

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | July 9, 2010
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Small Companies Game for in-House SEO and Big Ones for Outsourcing

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a time and money consuming work. In its 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report — SEO Edition, MarketingSherpa, a leading online marketing agency, has found that smaller companies that have less than 100 employees tend to have more in-house SEO staffs, whereas, bigger organizations that have more than 1000 employees have been seen inclined towards hiring outside specialized agency to do the SEO work.

The report also revealed that when it comes to investing it in paid monitoring and measuring analytics solution the big companies invest a lot (15% said they do), in comparison to small companies (only 4% said they do). But, companies of all sizes fared equal when asked about their investment on buying inbound links. 4% respondents (across the board) said they do. See image for complete data.

SEO- budget-by-corp-size

The study suggests that the deeper the pocket is the more investment one does on SEO activities, and companies with more financial resources tend to outsource the SEO work more.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | March 28, 2010
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How to Get Tons of Traffic for Your Blog

I don’t know what you know about blogging, or what your mom told you about it. But, if anyone told you that anything is more important than traffic the person was entirely wrong. It is the traffic for which we do everything. If traffic were free then we wouldn’t have created quality content, nor did we have done any kind of promotion. Getting traffic is the ultimate goal. Let’s examine 3 sources from where you can get unlimited traffic.

3 sources of unlimited traffic

Search Engines

Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc., are classic sources of sending traffic to your website. Search engines are the most used method of pulling traffic to one’s website. Everyone either uses it or hopes to use it, and almost all the websites are optimized to that end as well. People put lots of money in optimizing their websites so that the websites could be found in the search engine. Optimizing your blog is not very big deal, at least not the basic optimization. You can read SEO Simplified series that I wrote to get idea about search engine optimization (SEO).

Social bookmarking sites

If this is not your first day on the Internet then you must have heard about Digg, StumpleUpon, reditt, mixx, flocked, and other social bookmarking sites. As they say it getting on the top page of digg for one day is more valuable than being on the New York Times best selling list for one month. I know this is a bit of exaggeration, but you got the idea. Digg, and StumbleUpon are two social networking websites that sends a huge amount of traffic provided you have quality content. You must bookmark your articles on as many social networking websites as you can without being addicted to it.

Twitter

Twitter is the new black. There is nothing like twitter. It has the power to overthrow Google in its own market—search. Some folks claim twitter sends them more traffic then they get from Google, the big daddy of search engine industry. Twitter has become a staple in any marketing plan constructed across the globe. Getting follower is very easy on twitter, but getting quality follower is very difficult. You need to provide quality content for that. Twitter followers only convert if you get good quality content to them.

This brings us to the end of our discussion on traffic getting sources. We will continue this discussion in the next blog post. Send me your suggestion and feedback on this blog post.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | July 12, 2009
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SEO SIMPLIFIED: SEO Myth-Buster

We are done with the lessons on the on-page SEO optimization, and if you are following the series from the beginning (Click here to go back from where we started), you must be knowing by now, what search engine optimization is all about. Indeed, there are stuffs like link-building, back linking, deep-linking etc. still left to discuss, which we will do in the course of time, but still, I believe, this is the right time to debunk some of the common search engine optimization myths.

Myth 1: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or website optimization is Rocket Science.

Well, you already know this, and you also no it’s not that difficult. And Rocket Science, forget about it! This is not even 1% closer to it. The idea that you have learned so far, and the ones you will be learning in the coming articles, is what SEO is. The things we have talked about are only the ground on which any SEO empire is or will standing.

Myth 2: I am lagging too far behind. I will never catch up, and cannot learn to optimize my website.

Well, you cannot learn to fly a kite, by reading a book on aerodynamics, velocity of wind, wind power, or by studying the flight mechanics, or anatomy of a kite. You will have to take a kite and try to fly it, if you want to learn to fly a kite. Similarly, reading 32-volume encyclopedia on SEO will not teach you search engine optimization. You will have to practice it to learn it. Learn the basics and take the kite out to give it a flight.

Myth 3: I am done with submitting my site to search engines. It is time to party now.

Not yet! By submitting your site to all the search engines and web directories, you have just taken a baby-step in the direction of making your site popular. There are many more things to do. Do not hang your sword and armor, not yet, the war is still not over. By submitting your site to the search engines and website directories, you have just announced to the world that you are also there. It will take some effort and time in reaching to the first row, and much more time to get the VVIP seat.

Myth 4: Indeed, it is too much time consuming.

I saw that coming, but the answer is no, it’s not. And by the way, if you have the basics of SEO in place then you must be writing the content from different perspective, designing the website according to SEO norms and even keeping the source code in sync with SEO, so you have already devoted a fair share of time. No more sweat. Well, not exactly. A bit more sweat.

Myth 5: Do I have to submit it to 1000 search engines? Or the number is 1,000? Man, this search engine submission is a hell lot of work.

No, you do not have to, and for the starter, there isn’t 1000 search engines, forget about 10,000. If anyone is asking you to pay him to do all the search engine submission then you better watch out. Submitting your website in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and one or two local search engines is enough. If you want you can add Ask, AOL etc. as well, but in no way you need to submit your site in all the search engines. Having said that, I must add submitting your website in every possible search engine will not hurt, but do you have that kind of time?

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , ,
bikram | April 2, 2009
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SEO SIMPLIFIED: AN OVERVIEW

Web 2.0 – the post-dot-com Internet burst – has demystified the Internet.  The esoteric knowledge that kept the gurus of Web 1.0 in business – the pre-dot-com Internet burst – is no more a mystery to the average surfer.  Creating a web site, designing a stunning banner and having a cool design for the web site are no longer exclusive; every Joe knows the tricks of the trade.  The Internet has leveled the playing field; its tools, techniques, knowhow and expertise are public domain now.

The democratization of media and knowledge is creating some exciting opportunities.  More and more people are going online to meet their financial, social or informational needs.  In the process, many of them also create web sites, blogs, forums, etc.  This indeed is an exciting time for them; creating web sites, managing contents, overlooking design elements and technical parts, these all make them feel in control.  They are in control, indeed, but the control-bubble pricks when they find that despite their best efforts visitors are not pouring in!  They created intuitive designs, original content, and breathtaking graphics, but still no one is coming to appreciate the work.  They understand the fact that it is not possible to call everyone personally and invite each of them to their web site.  But the question still is how to pull the visitors to the web site you have created?  Well, the answer is SEO.  This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in to play.  SEO is so highly spoken of because this is the mechanism, which you can use, to make other know about your web site.

Like other things on the Internet, SEO is also not something to be feared about.  In the bygone days, the things to fear about were Photoshop and HTML and if you have mastered them successfully, you can master anything.  It is just the hoopla around SEO that makes it sound impossible or very tough for the common user.  This series will take you through the entire process of Search Engine Optimization, and in the process we will also bring the so-called gurus down, in the sun, from their air-conditioned suites of the metaphorical Ivory tower.

The process of SEO begins with defining the purpose of your web site.  The objective of your Internet venture should be clear in advance, because the idea of a proper domain name will stem from there only.  The knowledge of the objective of your web site will help you in searching appropriate keywords, for which your web site will be optimized in the later phase.  Once the objective is clear and keywords finalized, the third step in the process is to find a good domain name that should ideally include one of the main keywords.

We will again return to keywords once the domain name is purchased.  This time we will do keyword ranking and write content using the keywords we finalized earlier.  In the process of content creation, we should focus not only on keyword density but also on keyword frequency and keyword proximity.  The next step in the process will be HTML optimization and adding meta tags, and we will conclude our onsite Search Engine Optimization journey by submitting our web site to search engines and various directories.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,