Tag Archive for Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands

Should you use Search Engine Optimization or Pay Per Click?

January 10, 2012 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 29 comments

Thanks for being a loyal visitor. Check back often for information on SEO!

Selecting between Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t a case of measuring Return on Investment (ROI). There are big differences between the two approaches and the decision between either is reliant on different factors.  There is a need to understand the differences before a last call is made on your choice between the two or your use of both.

Which to choose – SEO or PPC?

Many internet marketing experts who’ve used PPC  advertising, worried by the ever growing value of PPC or stung by examples of click-fraud (click fraud is where your competitors continue Search Engine Optimization The Woodlandsto click your ads so you are charged and your budget is used up), are looking towards SEO  as a substitute or alternative for their Pay-per-click efforts.  Unfortunately, comparing Pay per click to SEO is like comparing an IBM AS 400 mainframe to an Apple Macbook Pro…there’s simply no comparison. They have distinct differences:  they might be close in that both are PCs, but the differences outweigh the likenesses. Selecting between Pay per click and SEO isn’t a case of tossing a coin.  It’s better to have to have a real understanding of each approach and the way to measure the ROI of each before reaching a decision.

Pay-per-click Ads

The key to Pay per click selling is to think about it in a rather similar way as ‘conventional’ advertising:  the money you pay out ends up in the ‘display’ of your ad for a particular period. The instant you stop paying, your advertisements will be removed. Results for Pay-per-click advertising are instant and quantifiable because you begin to get results inside a few days of your ad being posted on the search website page and much of the time , folks stop visiting your website the instant your ad is removed.

Organic SEO

A search engine optimization campaign, alternatively, can have an outlined start and end point  (outlined by the details of the contract made between you and an SEO company), but the results can last outside the contract’s termination date just because the measures implemented are, to a great extent, “permanent.” Think about an SEO effort as your classic brick-and-mortar conglomerate…you have the place and the goods and the SEO company paints the building, sets up window displays, puts your products on view, and then waits for the buyers to come in.

If your SEO team did the job correctly, folks will ‘wander’ in. You can choose to let your SEO group go after a year and leave everything as is, but folks will still drop by for awhile because their attention will continue to be called by your site’s window displays, exterior painting, merchandising display, or word-of-mouth.  Eventually, your site will drop down in the rankings and will no longer be on the first page, but that can take a few months.

From this viewpoint, it isn’t necessarily a case of ‘choosing’ between Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization.  There are express conditions where one is better than the other, either temporarily or permanently.   For instance, if you want fast results, then Pay per click is the right way to go.  If you want long-lasting results that take longer to achieve, then SEO should be your choice.  Another option is to use PPC until your SEO company’s organic SEO efforts are making you rank on the first page and then drop the PPC.

There are hundreds of thousands of websites out there and if you want to be found for your product or service, SEO or PPC is the way to help others find you.  Hopefully, you can now make a better choice of which way to go.

If you liked this article, please share below, and good luck on your internet marketing campaign!

 search engine optimization the woodlands

Category: Pay Per Click The Woodlands, Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / Tags: , ,

SEO Do’s and Don’ts

October 16, 2009 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 6 comments

You don’t have to be a SEO expert to make a fortune on the web. Search engine optimization is not complicated at all. It may be exhausting and annoying. You may get frustrated. But it is easy if you know the basic rules. Read the following SEO Dos and Don’ts and start making money.

SEO Dos :

1. Stay natural – Search engines like natural behavior. Remember this whenever you get a tempting proposal to pay for software that will boost your search engine optimization and get you to the top search engine ranks.

2. Links, Links, Links – The online world equivalent to: “Location, location, location” in real estate. Links are the foundation stones of your SEO strategy. The quantity and quality of the links pointing to your site are the main criteria that affect your search engine ranking. Never stop creating new links to your site using techniques like links exchanging, articles submitting, affiliate marketing, link buying etc.

3. Page and site optimization – Remember, Search Engines like what human like. Optimize your site according to valuable keywords you have researched.   Make the navigation on your site easy and clear.

4. Automate and delegate – Do not work on your own – use software to automate processes and outsource some of the search engine optimization to others.

SEO Don’ts:

1. Do not shoot and forget – Search engine optimization is an ongoing task. You will not see results in a day or in a month. Do not work on one site or do too much too fast. In other words, add links and pages to your site gradually.  Remember, you want this to look natural!

2. Do not optimize only for the best search engine – Google is not the only search engine and all search engine change their ranking algorithms every once in a while. Do your best to get your site in a high place in at least three of the best search engines.

Now that you have read the SEO Dos and Don’ts, all there is to do is work on your sites’ search engine optimization. It may take time but it sure worth it to drive customers to your site. Good luck.

Category: Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / Tags: , ,

Why Directories are Important for Search Engine Optimization

October 15, 2009 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / One comment

Directories should play a major role in your search engine optimization efforts (well, at least the big and important ones) for the following reasons:

  • Listings within major directories provide “context” to search engines. For example, if your web site is listed in the Open Directory Project under the category Pets -> Weird Pets -> Blue Cats, search engines will assume your web site has something to do with blue cats. Your web site and pages will be indexed faster and might have a better ranking in search results for specific terms (in this case, “blue cats”).
  • Major directories (such as Yahoo! Directory, ODP, Jayde etc.) have high page ranks and as long as you obtain a non-reciprocal listing from them, paid or unpaid, your page rank will benefit greatly.
  • Major directories are often replicated by other web sites (think of ODP, with hundreds of copies) which means that a listing somewhere in such a major directory will cause listings in all replica sites, contributing towards your link popularity efforts and boosting page ranks.
  • The ODP (Open Directory Project) feeds results to Google, AOL, AltaVista, Lycos, Netscape – once again, a presence in ODP can get you quite far.

As with most good things in life, you need to make efforts to get into quality directories. Although detailed instructions on how to submit your web sites are always provided by the directories, there are certain aspects to consider before you start hunting for directories and submit your web sites:

  • Start with Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project: being listed in the two of them is worth more than being listed in all other directories together! You will find soon enough that, unfortunately, being listed in these two is the hardest thing to do: Yahoo requires a $299 annual fee for regular web sites (only non-commercial sites qualify for a free listing) and $600 for adult sites, while ODP is free but you need A LOT of luck to make your way into it. ODP is so large yet is strictly human edited, which means the waiting time for a listing can extend to even years! Make your search engine optimization duty to submit your web site, but don’t get your hopes too high.
  • Religiously follow the submission guidelines provided by directories: read them as many times as you need to make sure you will not upset its editors by submitting your site the wrong way, with inaccuracies, the wrong description style, or to the wrong category.
  • Try to find niche directories if your web site’s content is suitable for that. For example, if your web site covers Marketing topics, focus your efforts into finding a Marketing-only directory (such as MarketingWHO.com) and submit your site there: search engines love links from sites relevant to yours!

You will probably come across many directories with paid inclusions: use your common sense to appreciate if it’s worth it or not. A good criteria is to check their Google Page Rank: if it’s at least 3 levels higher than your site’s Page Rank, it’s probably worth spending the money for the inclusion fee. However, do look for directories with a flat, one-time fee rather than recurring monthly or annual fees: you’ll end up spending less money!

In the end, remember a simple rule: if it’s too easy to get into a directory, it’s probably not worth the effort to get into it!

Category: Uncategorized / Tags: ,

Get Links & Traffic to your Website!

October 7, 2009 / Search Engine Optimization The Woodlands / 10 comments

Link-building is still the best way that search engines determine relevancy.  Link-building is the most important part of a search engine marketing or search engine optimization campaign.  Here are some great ways to build links back to your site and drive traffic to your website all at the same time.

YouTube:  Use this like a social media site. Build your profile with your website link in the description box, comment on videos either by writing or doing your own YouTube video.  Alternately, you can find a popular video, make a video with a similar title and description and it will come up on the right when others are looking at the popular video!

Articles:  Write articles with good content and spin them so you don’t have to write several articles.  When writing the articles, put links using keywords back to some of your inner pages.  Submit these articles to article.  You can write an article or press release and send it to your local online paper and print paper with links back to your site.

Contests:  If you hold a great contest, bloggers will blog about you and link to your site.

Lists:  Write a list, like “10 easy ways to get free traffic” or “Great ways to buy links” and post it on Twitter so others will see it.  If people like your post, they will write about it on their site and link back to you, or they will Tweet about it.

Widgets:  Build a widget, like a calculator, a Firefox extension, Google phone application and add a link back to your site.

Outbound Links:  Google sees relevant outbound links as being almost as important as back-links.  Link to relevant sites with high Page Rank.  Link to education sites and to government sites that are relevant to your website or blog.  Ask for a link when you make a sale to a customer and ask for links from your suppliers when you place an order.

Create a page:  In Wikipedia, create a page about something your business does or look for a wiki with a relevant topic.  You can add to a page that is already there that is relevant to your topic and then add yourself at the bottom as a reference.  This is tricky and you can’t spam Wikipedia, but they have great link juice if you can do it correctly.  Even though these are nofollow, it still helps!

Social Media Sites:  Set up a FaceBook Page.  Set up a Twitter account for your business and put your webpage link on your Twitter page.  Link your Twitter and FaceBook pages.  Have links on your website that link to each of your pages on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.  Have areas to retweet your blog posts and links to place your information on Stumbleupon, Technorati, Delicious, Digg, etc.  Put a listing of your business into Dmoz.  Create a Squidoo page and give useful information about your business, or put a link to your widget or tool on the page.

Classified ads – don’t spam them – offer something free (a free .pdf about something that you have on your site, article, etc.):  With Craigslist, watch what you post – limit the number of words.  If you want to know more about posting on Craigslist, go to Easy Ad Forum.  A friend of mine has a computer repair business, puts ads selling computers in a classified ad, and gets tons of calls for his business from that one ad:  Ebay Classified Ads, Walmart Classified Ads, US Free Ads, Backpage Classifieds

Forums:  Post regularly on forums – give people help, tips, etc.  After a certain amount of posts, most forums will give you a signature with your url at the bottom.

Contributions:  Donate to a charity and ask for a link from their page to yours.  Make quality content contributions to forums and blogs, not spam, and link back to your site using your keywords.

Blogging:  blogging, either responding to others blogs or creating your own, is a great way to get links and traffic to your site.  It’s best if you can be the first person to comment on a popular blog because you get traffic from your comment!

Content:  Write useful content and write controversial content!  People like to talk about controversial topics and will blog about your content.  It’s also great to put a blog on your site because you are adding content regularly and Google loves that.  Email your friends and business acquaintances and have them read and Tweet your posts.

Three Way Linking:  For this to work you must have three domains, either all yours or in combination with other webmasters.  If you have Domain One, Two, & Three, link from Domain One to Domain Two, from Domain Two to Domain Three, and from Domain Three to Domain One.  This is not seen as reciprocal linking and looks more natural.  You can use more domains than just three.

These are just a few of the many ways to get links from others.  You don’t want to spam people and you don’t want hundreds of links in a day because it doesn’t look natural and the search engines won’t like it, so take it easy!  Make sure your web content is good quality content so people actually want to read what you have to say!

Category: Search Engine Optimization / Tags: , ,
 
Blog by JaxWorks