How To Improve Your Conversion Rate

What Is Conversion Rate and Why It’s Important
When a web surfer notices your ad and clicks on it, you have a potential customer. If this visitor decides to buy something from you, then you have a customer. This can be described as a conversion because the website visitor was “converted” into a customer.
Your conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the number of pageviews. It is the percent of people that buy something when visiting your website.

The conversion rate can be influenced by:

Ad Quality

Don’t overlook any aspect of your ad: capitalisation, punctuation, how you write your URL, etc. With AdWords you’ll have to discover a more technical side of your own creativity, testing what works best can be the key to your success.
AdWords is the cheapest and most trustworthy way to test your ads. By always assigning two ads to each keyword, you can make the ads compete for the same keyword. The default settings in AdWords ensures that the higher performing ad gets shown more often. After a few weeks you should notice a difference between your ads and you should edit or delete the lower performing ad, so you can test another version.

Finding out which ads work and which ones don’t will help you learn how to write killer ads. Learn from the higher performing ads.
A note of caution: ads are better when they bring in more traffic that converts. The volume alone doesn’t count.

Efficiency of Your Keywords

Keywords contribute to the distribution of your ads. When you place your ad in the wrong place (by using the wrong keyword) you lead users towards your site that aren’t really interested in what you’re doing. They are not your target clients. Your landing page, no matter how good and professional, will never convert them. But you still pay for their clicks.
In this case, having more visitors does hurt. Keep the keywords that bring you targeted traffic.

The Quality of Your Landing Page

The landing page is the final step in your conversion efforts and too many people act as if it should be the least important too. In fact, the landing page is essential. You can’t start an AdWords campaign before having a landing page. You should not have an AdWords campaign up and running before making sure that your landing page has all the ingredients to ensure your success: a clear message, a goal, good copy that leads to conversions, and high usability.
Some people tend to become preoccupied with the “look” of their landing page – forgetting that their page is there to perform a duty, a purpose. When an internet users finds the answer to a problem, they don’t care where they found it or how the place looks, all that they care about is how they can use that answer and if the solution is trustworthy.
Don’t forget that people that find their answer on your web page can become leaders for more targeted traffic, not to mention they could become return visitors.
The Overall Quality of Your Campaign Management
An AdWords campaign becomes better or worse overtime, depending on the way you manage it.
Never stop testing various solutions, improving keywords and landing pages.

Tracking Your Conversion Rate

Tracking conversions is probably the only process that you can automate.
Improve Your Conversion Rate

The most important thing to realise is that more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean more customers.

AdWords is the perfect vehicle in which you can advertise to your exact target market, be sure to use all the settings available to precisely focus on the right users. For example, make sure to choose the right languages and locations you want to target and try not to use broad keywords.

Three steps towards improving your conversion rate:

By writing better ads.
Through better landing pages.
By eliminating unproductive traffic.
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Increase Your Business With Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an incredible tool. With Google Analytics, you can decide exactly what you want to measure on your site. This tool is easy to personalize and get working for you exactly the way that you want.

This is a tool which puts you in control; letting you decide on the specific goals and objectives of the measurements you want from the system. If you only need to know who your visitors are and how they found you, Google Analytics can certainly do that. But the real value of this tool is that you can define whatever filters will best help to analyze the traffic going to your site.

What does all of this mean for you? Let's have a more in depth look to give you a better understanding of how exactly Google Analytics works for you. Google allows you to set all of the specific objectives to pinpoint what you are trying to do in many aspects of website management.

Objective: The big picture - what do you want from the visitors to your site? What is your site's purpose; and how can you work with your visitors to achieve that purpose?

If your site is an e-commerce site the answer is simple - you want to sell things and make a profit. However, you will want to know what is selling (and what isn't) to determine what you should sell more of and what it may be better to remove from your catalogue.

This would be an objective.

Goals: Objectives are the long term aspirations for your site, goals are short term ones. What do you need to do to hit your goal? Do you need to track visitors who enter from a certain page? Or is your goal to sell more of a particular item within a set time frame?

This is possible using Google Analytics. You can set these goals from within the application itself.

Specifics: Knowing your objectives and goals prepares you to really use the full power of Google Analytics. Specifics are the steps you need to take to make your goals and objectives a reality.

For instance, you can set up your dales page and a funnel (using Google Analytics for the funnel) to evaluate where traffic is coming to your site from. Google will be able to tell you where visitors enter and exit your site. This will give you an understanding of how people interact with your site and the kinds of responses your site tends to elicit in visitors. This in turn gives you the starting point you need to go to your pages and fine tune them in order to further your progress towards your goals.

Google has made it easy to set up. They'll do the initial metrics and it's all free!

You'll need to add a little code to your webpages; if you aren't tech savvy you can have your webmaster or an IT staffer take care of this part. As soon as the code is placed, Google Analytics will begin collecting stats - in a matter of days, you'll be able to look at all manner of statistics about your site.

Once you're comfortable with the user interface, you can set the goals and specifics for your site. You can access all of this data online; setting your parameters at any time you want.

One of the other many useful features of Google Analytics is the ability to set different sections or "profiles" of your site and watch them independently of others, which heps you to fine tune your site.
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Advance SEO Tips for e-Commerce Site Architecture

If you’ve ever looked at the backend functionality of a successful e-commerce website you’ve probably noticed that its backend is great at having many tasks fully automated to reduce costs and improve efficiency. With that in mind, designing an e-commerce website in terms of architecture and automated SEO tasks will increase the likelihood of reaching high organic ranking. I’ve seen examples of online retailers ranking extremely high with minimal amount of backlinks, purely on the basis of domain trust and smart site architecture.

Here are 10 tips to bear in mind when designing the architecture of the website:

1. Keep products as close as possible to the main root and don’t exceed 3 levels so www.sitename.com/category1/product-name/ would work great, however www.sitename.com/category1/product-name/ which redirects to www.sitename.com/product-name/ is even better.

2. Make your URL search engine friendly by opting for keyword reach URLs such as www.sitename.com/product-name-product-id/ rather than www.sitename.com/script/223/product-code/

3. Keep your links in the site’s HTML site map below 200 to keep the page relevant as possible. Once the page gains authority, listing new products on this page will get the new products indexed quickly.

4. 301 redirect error pages (404 i.e. page not found) to your homepage together with an information message and a search box option using a hash for the keyword query. So a page which does not exist such as www.sitename.com/blue-widget will become www.sitename.com/#blue-widget. Because search engines won’t see any content passed the # and you’ll be using 301 redirect, credit for these page not found links won’t go to waste, but instead will go to the root www.sitename.com/#blue-widget

5. Use canonical tag for your main category pages to increase their relevancy and authority to be distributed to their products so you’d expect to site the category URL as

6. Use nofollow tag for pages with less SEO value such as privacy statement, terms and conditions, log in, sign up, contact us, add to basket etc and keep your link juice following in the right direction.

7. Offer breadcrumb navigation across the site and make the breadcrumb into an H2 HTML tag so you’d expect to see home » category » product name (as an H2).

8. Ensure that disconnected products are auto 301 redirected to the product’s top level category as these products are likely to have some backlinks and ranking. By redirecting the disconnected product to its category you’ll keep some of the link juice following in the right direction and offer better user experience.

9. Use text based recommended products blocks to link between related products to increase their relevancy.

10. Ensure that each product has unique metadata in terms of page title, *page description, H1, image name and alt text based on:

- For page title use + at

-* For page description either leave blank and let Google extract the necessary information based on the on-page product description and the search query or use + from range.

- For H1 use

- For image name and alt text use

Bonus tip – make sure your development server / site isn’t indexed as it might result in content duplication issues. You’ll be surprised how common it is 

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Learn the Basics Before You Try Anything Fancy!

SEO can really be broken down into three essential areas: Architecture, Content, and Links. These are the basics of SEO that you need to understand and get right first. Let’s take a look at some key points to understand in each of these main areas.

Architecture – Can Your Site Be Crawled?
One of the first problems that a website has to address is whether or not their site can actually be crawled by the search engine spiders. You can have the best content in the world, but if the search engine spiders can’t get to it you won’t reap the benefits! Here are some things you can do to help your site be more crawl-able:
Avoid things like JavaScript or Flash navigation. Both of these kinds of navigation are not crawled very well by search engines at this time. This could change in the future, but for now it’s best to just avoid JavaScript and Flash navigations.
Keep your site’s architecture as flat as possible. Don’t have tons of levels in your architecture. Keep pages as close to the root as possible. In other words, mysite.com/folder/product is much better than mysite.com/category/subcategory/other-folder/product.
Stay away from parameter strings in URLs. By having parameter strings in URLs you could have multiple versions of the same content and will have to learn how to properly use the canonical element. You can avoid this by not using parameters. Instead, have a static URL for each page whenever possible. For example, mysite.com/productname.html is much better than mysite.com/?prod-id=abc123&cat-id=def456.
Use internal linking appropriately. Whenever it makes sense, link to other pages in your site from within the content of the page. Don’t just rely on your navigation to get people (and search engine spiders) to where you want them to go. (More about internal linking.)
Sitemaps are your friends. Make sure your site has both an HTML and XML sitemap. (More about sitemaps).
Content – Is It Optimized?
Once you have your website’s architecture set up the right way, the next step is to make sure that your content is well-optimized to help your site rank for your main keyword phrases. Here are a few basic guidelines to follow:
Don’t target too many phrases per page. You may have a list of 50 keywords you want to target, but you should only focus on 2-3 main phrases per page. Create other pages around additional phrases as needed.
No spammy stuff! Don’t do any keyword stuffing, alt stuffing, meta spamming, or any other spammy techniques. They don’t really work well anymore anyway.
Use your keyword phrases in titles, header tags, etc. By using your keyword phrases in your titles and header tags you can give them more emphasis.
Use your keywords in your content. Don’t just rely on your titles and header tags. Don’t overdo it; make the text read naturally but make sure you include your keywords and variations of them in the content.
Links – Getting Juice from Other Sites
Setting your site up the right way is one step, but getting traffic to your website takes a lot more than just using keywords on your pages. The other big key to getting a good rank on the search engines is to get other sites linking to you. By getting these links you are showing that your site has credibility and is worth ranking well. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind when you’re building links:
Use a variety of techniques. There are a lot of things you can do to build links: directories, articles, social bookmarking, forums … the list goes on and on. Mix up what you’re doing and get a variety of link types coming into your site. (More about link building)
Spread your links over a lot of domains. It’s important to get a lot of links, but it’s also important to get a lot of links spread over many domains. If you follow tip #1 this shouldn’t be much of a problem for you.
Use keywords in your anchor text. One problem that I’ve seen over and over is that someone will build links to their site using either their name, their business name, or their URL. This is nice if that’s what you want to rank for, but if you want to rank for a keyword phrase you have to use that phrase as the anchor text of your link.
Use a variety of anchors. Don’t just use the same keyword phrase over and over again. Mix it up so that you aren’t spamming one phrase too much. This will help your link building look more natural.
The work is never done. Don’t think you can just submit to a bunch of directories and your work is over. SEO is an ongoing process.

Article By:Dan Patterson

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5 Black Hat Techniques To Avoid In Internet Marketing

Black Hat is a name for cheating or manipulating the search engines to get better rankings. Many internet marketers are tempted to toe the line and cheat the search engines. So what exactly is Black Hat?

The bottom line is that the technique is black hat if it is unnatural or unethical. If the search engine is tricked into ranking a webpage higher than it should, there is something fishy going on. You should not use these methods in the first place, but just in case you are contemplating it, here is a short list of 5 Black Hat Techniques you should stay away from.

5 Black Hat Techniques To Avoid

I have listed these techniques in no particular order of severity.
1. Webpage Flooding

Ever seen a salespage that said this: Create a 1000 page website in 10 minutes? The black hat people use a script that instantly creates 100’s and 1000’s of pages with keyword stuffed content. It may have worked in the past, it may still work – if you’re silly enough to do it, but the point is this: Google will catch you out and give you the big old slap eventually. Bad idea #1.
2. Invisible text

This one is so outdated, it’s not even funny! The Black hat technique is to place a white text (with keywords) on a white background. Great idea, if ‘only’ people read websites. But search engines are colorblind and can read all the writing. Bad idea #2.

3. Cloaking

Cloaking is an outdated technique that shows one page to Googlebot (the search engine spider) and another to the visitor. Why do they do that? Well, the idea is to show you, the reader, a page that sells, but another keyword optimised page to Googlebot. Bad idea #3.
4. Keyword Stuffing

Google wants to read a natural page that makes sense to human visitors and rank it according to it’s own merits. Stuffing keywords in everywhere possible isn’t just unnatural but it’s also a very outdated method that will get you pushed down the searchengine rankings very fast! Bad idea #4.

5. Doorway Pages

A Doorway Page is a specially built webpage that is only designed to attract a ranking with the search engines. It then redirects automatically to the ‘real page’. This is still a very popular method and is used widely by SEO firms to profit. Beware! This is Bad Idea #5

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Best SEO Practices – 3 Areas Not To Ignore

SEO, is an extremely critical component of any internet marketing strategy. Optimize your content for search engines and get found by people who could help you earn a living.



SEO isn’t something you’ll learn overnight. And, it’s not something that is an exact science. But here are three of the best SEO practices you should pay close attention to.
1. On Page SEO

On page SEO is a practice that’s essential for any online entrepreneur. By optimizing every page of your site, you increase the chances of it being found by the right audience.

It’s important to note that search engines don’t index websites alone. They index web pages. Every page of your site has potential to be a gateway to a visitor who may become a client, so learn as much as you can about on page SEO elements.

Areas that you’ll want to pay attention to include: meta descriptions, permalink structure, site navigation, intrasite linking, authority linking, keyword usage, image tags, and h1, h2, and h3 tags. Learn how to optimize these elements and you’ll be well on your way to implementing some of the best SEO practices around.

2. Off Page SEO

While search engines pay attention to what’s on each page, they also look at off page SEO factors. Things that happen outside of your webpages but point to your webpages can impact your visibility online. Links drive traffic to your site and result in search engines taking notice.

Use social media and bookmarking sites, article directories, blog comments, guest posts, press releases, and other methods to point links to your web pages. And, not any links will do. Volume is good, yes… but the more tightly connected the subjects, the better.

3. Social Media

Social media sites should not be underestimated in terms of search engine optimisation tactics. Use bookmarking sites, news sites, microblogging, and forums to help you gain exposure in search engines. And, because of the social nature of these sites, you’ll drive people directly there as well as reap the benefits of viral marketing.
Best SEO Practices

If you try to find the best SEO practices and strategies, you’ll hear a dozen or two different suggestions. Focus on quality on your site, follow solid on and off page SEO strategies, utilise social media, and analyse your results to see what’s working.

Through quality, assessments and striving to continuously improve your SEO, you can not only dominate the search engines but you could also dominate your niche in terms of internet marketing success.

Article By:Sean Rasmussen

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The PageRank Algorithm

The original PageRank algorithm was described by Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin in several publications. It is given by
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
where
PR(A) is the PageRank of page A,
PR(Ti) is the PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A,
C(Ti) is the number of outbound links on page Ti and
d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1.
So, first of all, we see that PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually. Further, the PageRank of page A is recursively defined by the PageRanks of those pages which link to page A.
The PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A does not influence the PageRank of page A uniformly. Within the PageRank algorithm, the PageRank of a page T is always weighted by the number of outbound links C(T) on page T. This means that the more outbound links a page T has, the less will page A benefit from a link to it on page T.
The weighted PageRank of pages Ti is then added up. The outcome of this is that an additional inbound link for page A will always increase page A's PageRank.
Finally, the sum of the weighted PageRanks of all pages Ti is multiplied with a damping factor d which can be set between 0 and 1. Thereby, the extend of PageRank benefit for a page by another page linking to it is reduced.
The Random Surfer Model
In their publications, Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin give a very simple intuitive justification for the PageRank algorithm. They consider PageRank as a model of user behaviour, where a surfer clicks on links at random with no regard towards content.
The random surfer visits a web page with a certain probability which derives from the page's PageRank. The probability that the random surfer clicks on one link is solely given by the number of links on that page. This is why one page's PageRank is not completely passed on to a page it links to, but is devided by the number of links on the page.
So, the probability for the random surfer reaching one page is the sum of probabilities for the random surfer following links to this page. Now, this probability is reduced by the damping factor d. The justification within the Random Surfer Model, therefore, is that the surfer does not click on an infinite number of links, but gets bored sometimes and jumps to another page at random.
The probability for the random surfer not stopping to click on links is given by the damping factor d, which is, depending on the degree of probability therefore, set between 0 and 1. The higher d is, the more likely will the random surfer keep clicking links. Since the surfer jumps to another page at random after he stopped clicking links, the probability therefore is implemented as a constant (1-d) into the algorithm. Regardless of inbound links, the probability for the random surfer jumping to a page is always (1-d), so a page has always a minimum PageRank.
A Different Notation of the PageRank Algorithm
Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin have published two different versions of their PageRank algorithm in different papers. In the second version of the algorithm, the PageRank of page A is given as
PR(A) = (1-d) / N + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
where N is the total number of all pages on the web. The second version of the algorithm, indeed, does not differ fundamentally from the first one. Regarding the Random Surfer Model, the second version's PageRank of a page is the actual probability for a surfer reaching that page after clicking on many links. The PageRanks then form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all pages' PageRanks will be one.
Contrary, in the first version of the algorithm the probability for the random surfer reaching a page is weighted by the total number of web pages. So, in this version PageRank is an expected value for the random surfer visiting a page, when he restarts this procedure as often as the web has pages. If the web had 100 pages and a page had a PageRank value of 2, the random surfer would reach that page in an average twice if he restarts 100 times.
As mentioned above, the two versions of the algorithm do not differ fundamentally from each other. A PageRank which has been calculated by using the second version of the algorithm has to be multiplied by the total number of web pages to get the according PageRank that would have been caculated by using the first version. Even Page and Brin mixed up the two algorithm versions in their most popular paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine", where they claim the first version of the algorithm to form a probability distribution over web pages with the sum of all pages' PageRanks being one.
In the following, we will use the first version of the algorithm. The reason is that PageRank calculations by means of this algorithm are easier to compute, because we can disregard the total number of web pages.
The Characteristics of PageRank
The characteristics of PageRank shall be illustrated by a small example.

We regard a small web consisting of three pages A, B and C, whereby page A links to the pages B and C, page B links to page C and page C links to page A. According to Page and Brin, the damping factor d is usually set to 0.85, but to keep the calculation simple we set it to 0.5. The exact value of the damping factor d admittedly has effects on PageRank, but it does not influence the fundamental principles of PageRank. So, we get the following equations for the PageRank calculation:


PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 PR(C)
PR(B) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2)
PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2 + PR(B))
These equations can easily be solved. We get the following PageRank values for the single pages:
PR(A) = 14/13 = 1.07692308
PR(B) = 10/13 = 0.76923077
PR(C) = 15/13 = 1.15384615
It is obvious that the sum of all pages' PageRanks is 3 and thus equals the total number of web pages. As shown above this is not a specific result for our simple example.
For our simple three-page example it is easy to solve the according equation system to determine PageRank values. In practice, the web consists of billions of documents and it is not possible to find a solution by inspection.
The Iterative Computation of PageRank
Because of the size of the actual web, the Google search engine uses an approximative, iterative computation of PageRank values. This means that each page is assigned an initial starting value and the PageRanks of all pages are then calculated in several computation circles based on the equations determined by the PageRank algorithm. The iterative calculation shall again be illustrated by our three-page example, whereby each page is assigned a starting PageRank value of 1.
Iteration PR(A) PR(B) PR(C)
0 1 1 1
1 1 0.75 1.125
2 1.0625 0.765625 1.1484375
3 1.07421875 0.76855469 1.15283203
4 1.07641602 0.76910400 1.15365601
5 1.07682800 0.76920700 1.15381050
6 1.07690525 0.76922631 1.15383947
7 1.07691973 0.76922993 1.15384490
8 1.07692245 0.76923061 1.15384592
9 1.07692296 0.76923074 1.15384611
10 1.07692305 0.76923076 1.15384615
11 1.07692307 0.76923077 1.15384615
12 1.07692308 0.76923077 1.15384615
We see that we get a good approximation of the real PageRank values after only a few iterations. According to publications of Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, about 100 iterations are necessary to get a good approximation of the PageRank values of the whole web.
Also, by means of the iterative calculation, the sum of all pages' PageRanks still converges to the total number of web pages. So the average PageRank of a web page is 1. The minimum PageRank of a page is given by (1-d). Therefore, there is a maximum PageRank for a page which is given by dN+(1-d), where N is total number of web pages. This maximum can theoretically occur, if all web pages solely link to one page, and this page also solely links to itself.
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Social Media Marketing: Marketing Techniques and Guidelines to Implement It!

Social Media Marketing is marketing through social media networks and online communities. Social Media networks generally attract a lot of users. They are online platforms where users share thoughts, discuss ideas and interact with each other on a variety of subjects. Social Media is a meeting of minds where everything is user-generated. The user gains prominence in a social media network. His ideas, thoughts and opinions gain utmost value and importance. Social Media is the easiest route to reach the customers.

Social Media Marketing is a type of internet marketing which leads to achieve branding and marketing goals through participation in various social media networks such as Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Hi5 etc. Social Media includes websites where news, photos and videos are user-generated. Many innovative and interesting social media networks mushroom in the online world everyday. Sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Furl, Reddit, Del.ici.ous and others are social bookmarking sites where users bookmark their favorite web pages and share with others information about web pages which they find interesting or useful. All these websites include certain mechanisms to allow users to vote for the content submitted by the other users. Through this, a particular content’s popularity is gauged.

On the other hand, Social Media Marketing is also a vibrant marketing strategy for marketing your site. You can manage the creation and distribution of content through the social media easily and effectively. Social Media is the latest kind of viral marketing. Messages sent through social media reach customers quickly. There is also no fear of the message being twisted or misinterpreted in the process. Moreover, in Social Media Marketing, you can expect a great inflow of comments/critiques and reactions for your marketing messages. In a way, all these will help you know the expectations of your customers. It is indeed a step in gauging customer psychometrics.

Social Media Marketing is the most popular upcoming marketing concept of the dotcom world. There are various marketing techniques which are very closely related to social media marketing, such as Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Social Media Optimization. Social media sites provide a huge variety of subjects, topics, and discussions to choose from. A social media web site can be defined as a common ground, where individuals gather together to share their views and opinions. Social media has also adapted various mediums such as audio, video, and textual mediums. There are few guidelines in order to successfully implement social media marketing. Improve the ability of your website, so that it can be linked to other sites easily. All the incoming links are unique, so treat them properly by providing dedicated space for them.

In order to be successful at social media, the following steps can also be very useful. First, create forums on your own web site. Provide interesting topics so that people would like to participate and interact with each other through your site. Keep updating information and news to attract your visitors. Compose podcasts and use the clips to promote your products.
Social Media Marketing gives exposure for your site in a larger site or amidst a larger group of people. Use the social media in the best way possible and gain results.

Visit:http://www.iwebtra.com

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SEO and the social media factor

In the past year, social media has become a vital tool for internet marketing. Experts say that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are now essential for search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. In a bigger scale, SEO is becoming an essential part of ad campaigns in general.
These days, major brands have profiles in Facebook and Twitter, where they can interact with clients and customers at a more casual level.
Twitter is crucial for SEO and advertising. Brands with a Twitter account can use it to update people about its latest developments, offers, and products. Companies can also use its Tweets to redirect browsers to its sites.
Social networks contain a vast market that spans all demographics. In the last estimate, there were over 400 million member in Facebook and more than 80 million in Twitter.

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New Google PageRank to WebRa

It appears that Google has decided to remove PageRank from the Google Webmaster Tools. Surprisingly it hasn’t been removed from the Google Toolbar yet. I’m sure this is on it’s way though.
What will they call the new PR?
Many other SEOers in the field have been excited to see that the PR was removed from the SERP. Wait, what is Google going to call the Search Engine Page Rank – (SERP) now? Well, from what I hear (through my sources), that the SERP is now turning into the Search Engine Web Rank – (SEWR). Yep, it looks like SEWER to me too.
How does the new “WebRank” work?
Basically,
(and if I’m correct) Google has changed the algorithm to go from using links from anywhere to excepting relevant site links and using those links to determine the site’s worth. If you have relevant INCOMING links, you’re linking to similar sites, and you have a high quality of content – you should fare well in the changing SEO ranking. It looks like the days of SPAM buying links is finally behind us.
What are your thoughts on this and how will do you think it will effect your SEO campaigns for your clients?

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10 Things You Need to Know to Get Started on Twitter

A huge number of companies now have a Twitter presence. Some massive brands use the micro-blogging platform to manage their reputations and spread awareness. Other smaller firms use it to build relationships and directly find work and sales.

But whatever you want to achieve, what do you need to know in order to get started?

Some brands are still scared, or at least cautious about taking that first step onto Twitter. So let's run down this list of 10 tips on the best ways to get started on Twitter.

1. Using Twitter is Simple; Using it Well is a Challenge

However complicated it may seem when you first log on to your new account, Twitter is a simple platform.

You can write 140-character updates that will be seen by your followers and also watch a news stream of comments left by people you follow. To direct a comment at a specific follower, simply prefix their name with "@" -- for example, "@kevgibbo + your message."

Send a direct message (one that can't be seen by anyone other than the recipient) by prefixing a name with a "d" -- for example: "d kevgibbo + your message."

Twitter has also created new grammar -- the hashtag. This allows people to conduct simple searches and see what people are saying about a topic -- for example, #leadersdebate during the U.K. election.

Some people use the hashtag ironically or to convey humor, without expecting their chosen term to catch on. For example, someone might tweet about how marvellous their recent SEO campaign has been and then add #modesty.

That's the bare bones of using Twitter. Using it effectively is much, much harder, which you'll see in the next nine tips.

2. Twitter Needs a Strategy

Before you begin investing time and energy in Twitter, sit down and work out what you want to use it for. Using Twitter only because everyone else is using it won't win you success.

3. Your Account Must Look Professional

Before you start using your Twitter account, make sure it looks professional. Update your bio, add the company logo as an avatar, and customize your page.

Some people's first interaction with your brand will be via Twitter, so make sure it's as professional as your website and office space.

4. You Should Search for Mentions...

Monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand, products, well-known staff -- any terms that people might conceivably use in reference to you.

Twitter will present you with any specific mentions of your account name but you can also run searches. Using software like TweetDeck allows you to set up permanent searches and be presented with relevant tweets as they happen.

5. ...and Reply

You're using Twitter in order to have conversations with people. If there's a positive mention of your brand, thank the person who made it. If it's negative, then get your customer service team to address the problem -- often a positive resolution can turn a critic into a fan. If someone asks a question then answer it.

Be as polite on Twitter as you would be at a conference or some other industry event where you deal with people in person.

6. Spamming Harms Brands

Several brands (and even politicians) have fallen down on Twitter because they don't really understand how people use it. The platform is social and has to be used socially. If you're intrusive, you'll alienate the people you want to win over.

Tweet links to blog posts, comments, thoughts, questions, even special offers now and again. But don't simply pour out sales pitches. People won't follow you and anyone encountering your tweets won't leave with a good impression of your brand.

By the way, following thousands of people to try and build your own followers is spam, even if you aren't sending them sales pitches.

7. Automated Actions are Useless

Twitter needs to be hand fed because it's all about quality, not quantity. You can't automate personable, social tweeting.

Also, the roll-out of top tweets means that quality is already beginning to be more rewarded, while those aiming for quantity of tweets will quickly gain a bad reputation as spammers!

By auto-following new followers, retweeting mentions, and automatically tweeting blog posts, you may have a working Twitter account, but it won't be working well.

8. Your Followers Want Value

Why should people follow you on Twitter? What will they get out of it? Whether it's humorous tweets, inspired analysis and tips, links to fascinating blog posts, industry breaking news, or discount vouchers, you must add value to their Twitter experience.

Otherwise you're spamming and you'll struggle to gain any followers.

9. Make Your Tweets Retweetable

You may only have a few followers -- certainly at first. So you want your followers to retweet your posts to their followers, spreading the word about your brand. If your tweets are valuable enough, then that shouldn't be a problem.

Also, make it easy for people to retweet. Keep your comment as short as possible because, when people retweet it, they will have to add "RT username" at the start. If you've used all 140 characters, then people will have to edit your words or chop off the link -- or, even worse, use the new retweet button!

10. Twitter Magnifies Mistakes

Get it wrong on Twitter and you risk a storm of mockery, especially if your brand is well known. Or, if a disgruntled employee tweets something abusive from your corporate account, it could be retweeted hundreds of thousands of times before the company even knows it's happened.

Even a small brand that tweets too intrusively will find that recipients complain to their followers.



When you work out your strategy, work out some ground rules and make sure that everyone using your account understands them.

Doing social media badly is far worse than failing to do it. So behave well on the platform and treat people as you would like to be treated.

By Kevin Gibbons,

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How to Measure Success in an SEO Campaign?

If you own a website, you're already doing SEO. The e-commerce platform you choose, information architecture of your site, product marketing copy, meta data, and more all affect your organic listings in search engines from day one.

As you continue managing the site, you're constantly changing your search engine visibility, so it's important to know if things are on the right track. It takes a combination of several quantitative and qualitative measurements to get a good grasp on the state of your SEO.

Quantitative Factors

• Rankings on a set of keywords used to be the method of choice for SEO measurement. If you want to rank for "tickets" and you move from the bottom of page one to the top of page one, then you've met a goal. However, this mindset is limited to the keywords you focus on -- users will come up with tons you didn't consider. Additionally, what you see in Google isn't necessarily what everyone else sees, due to several factors such as personalization and geography. Not to mention the fact that rankings don't equal clicks -- someone has to choose your listing over those around it.
  
• Natural search traffic is the next logical spot to consider. Pulling this data from your web analytics package will give you traffic trends, allowing you to compare them to SEO project dates. Assuming your numbers aren't inaccurate, a common problem, you also need to put these in context of the whole site.
  
• Percent share of total traffic helps with context. Perhaps traffic is down a little, but is the whole site down? It may be a seasonal issue or a brand issue reducing traffic.
  
• Some final metrics on traffic are often overlooked in SEO. What does your traffic do on your site? Take one look at the page and run away screaming? Or do they actually stick around and buy something? Ensuring people are landing on the right pages, targeting the right terms, and even creating compelling landing pages are part of SEO. Keep track of things like bounce rates, goal conversion rates, revenue, andorders sold for natural search. Ideally, you have attribution set up to have an idea of how natural search revenue fits in with other sources.
  
• Another number to consider is keyword exposure, or the total volume of unique natural search phrases driving traffic to your site. The higher your volume, the better you're capturing long-tail phrases and exposing your brand to a varied audience. You can also find this in your analytics reports.

Qualitative Factors

• SEO is partly a function of public relations, where your brand needs to be well represented in search engines. Are your listings reflective of your brand message, or are they just a list of disjointed phrases? Better listings also mean higher CTRs.
  
• Your e-commerce team -- from copywriters, to merchandisers, to coders -- is always affecting your search engine standing. Making poor build decisions today may haunt you in expensive SEO fixes later. In that way, you need to also measure success by considering how well your e-commerce team is educated in SEO.
  
• Another set to consider are site-specific considerations, best determined by an SEO expert usually. How well indexed is your site? Are other sites linking to your site? These will help give you an idea of your site's success in reaching its potential.

Conclusion



Clearly, measuring SEO results is more difficult than building a single graph. Trending all of the above metrics will give you a much better picture of your natural search health than any one number. Additionally, keep tabs on qualitative objectives such as brand message, team education, and having a well-crawled and well-linked site.
Once you have your results, remember that SEO isn't like buying spots for a marketing campaign. It's much more like usability or accessibility in that it is a component of e-commerce. Paying close attention to results will keep long-term

By John Greer,





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How Did I Get More Traffic To My Website?

1. Set up my Google ad words campaigns for my main keywords using Market Annihilator.
2. Started Facebook advertising
3. Got a bunch of links back to my website using an article submitting service. 
4. Created a couple of mini optimized sales pages for other keywords I wanted to dominate.  I still have about 100 pages to add but the ones that FWF and I have set up have worked great.
5. Used the Market Annihilator Google local business ninja strategy to put my business to the top of the local listings.
6. Edited my sales page to further optimize and strengthen the keyword density for the cities I was targeting. I used to go after a couple of other cities but they were too far away from my area so I decided to replace those keywords with my main cities.
7. Did the blog posts 7 Secrets to Outsourcing your business and How to Duplicate yourself on KickBackLife.com blog and this generated a ton of traffic and got me a high level site linking back to mine.
8. I always used my blog post titles to optimize my blog for my main keywords.  So if I was talking about “How to Eat Like a Champ” I would put in my blog, “Markham Personal Trainer reveals how to eat like a champ”.  This makes my posts more search engine friendly.
   
   
   In addition, I’m constantly searching for ways to improve my fitness site and blog and I go through FWF for all my website and design needs.
   
   
   Article by Dan Go

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Yahoo launches news blog using search engine marketing techniques

July 6th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

Search engine giant Yahoo has launched a news blog which takes its lead from the world of search engine optimisation. The firm is going to create news content based on what its users are searching for by using common search engine marketing tools - such as search analytics software.

Called Upshot, the news blog will use common search terms to set the company's news agenda. The team behind Upshot will consist of six bloggers and two editors. They will be supported by Yahoo's huge team of search engine optimisation experts.

The move signals a shift towards search-generated content as a means of boosting website optimisation strategies for Yahoo.

In an exclusive interview with The New York Times, Upshot editor Andrw Golis said that while the search information provided by Yahoo's search engine marketing team would be a useful tool, it would not necessarily dictate the project's whole news agenda.

"The information is valuable because editors can integrate it into their decision making. It's an asset. It's a totally amazing and useful tool that we have at Yahoo," he added.

Meanwhile, James A. Pitaro, vice-president of Yahoo Media, told the news provider: "This idea of creating content in response to audience insight and audience needs is one component of the strategy, but it's a big component."

So it seems Yahoo has finally cottoned on to what every SEO Company has been doing since time immemorial, which is thoroughly researching what end users are looking for when they head to their favourite search engine, and hitting them with relevant content that incorporates a number of search terms they are likely to use to track that information down. Another word for this strategy is search engine marketing.

It seems that while writing content based on SEO information is new to Yahoo, it is something that everyone with a basic knowledge of search engine marketing has been doing for a long while.

Yahoo appears to be a little behind the times with this one, much like it was with its search engine optimisation style guide, which was published earlier this year and came 15 years after it began working in the search engine sector.
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