Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing Specialists

The latest project for search engine optimisation specialists Ameliorate has scored a success for search engine marketing ( SEM ) in the launch of its latest website promoting and selling heelys skate shoes. The site was launched just over a week ago and is still under construction but due to organic SEO it was crawled by MSN and Yahoo within 2 days.

Independent research confirms that advertisers receive the highest ROI from Sponsored Search in Google, Yahoo, MSN when compared to e-mail, banners and other forms of online advertising.
ROI for Online Advertising Method.

With Overture, you bid for placement in search listings and set the price you're willing to pay for each sales lead. Unlike direct mail, you won't have to pay for mailing lists, printing or postage, and you won't pay for impressions as with banner ads and tiles. You pay only for the sales leads that actually click through to your site.

When you advertise with Overture, you'll receive the highest ROI because you can:

Start for as little as £60.
Set your own cost-per-lead.
Pay only when potential customers click through to your site.

Overture's Sponsored Search maximises your ROI and is the proven choice for online advertising. No other media drives results like Overture.

The search engine marketing industry experienced tremendous growth over the past few years, especially in paid search. But research indicates demand will level off. As the industry matures, major players are looking for areas of future growth. That's why all the interest in local search; first by Yahoo!, followed by Google and MSN.
eMarketer projected search marketing growth at 40 percent in 2005, reaching $5.4 billion. Paid search gets about 82 percent of that, while organic SEO gets about 10-12 percent.
Forrester projected 33 percent growth in search marketing this year, slowing to 10 percent growth annually by 2010 at projected revenues of $11.6 billion.

By John Klien posted 16th January

Here are some good advice, however, I am sure there are lot more to add to this list.

1. First and foremost is design. This includes usability for both visitors and search engine spiders. You can be #1 on Google, but if your site irritates your visitors, it is useless. So make it comprehensive and easy to navigate. I would suggest that every website has a "static site map". Not just for your visitors, but also the SE's (helps increase search engine saturation. Please no pop-ups, pop-unders, flashing animations that cause seizers, etc. Just keep it "crisp". Also Flash animations, frames, and too much JavaScript can be frowned upon by SE's. (A lot of use JavaScript along the way, so be sure to call the JS source file rather then adding the full code into the page.)
2. Choose the right keywords. This is extremely important. Optimizing a site takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work. Doing this targeting the wrong keywords can be devistating. Find relevant keyword sthat are searched for often. Make sure you target "phrases" rather than single keywords. For example, targeting "hosting" alone will not help you. There are too many search results. But targeting "web hosting provider", "web hosting service", and "hosting business" will get you more realistic results (and a ton of traffic). Plus you are still targeting "hosting". I would suggest targeting ONE "reach phrase" and TWO "realistic phrases". Three phrases may seem like a lot, but not when one or two keyterms is in all three phrases. When this occurs, things don't get watered down, giving better results.
3. Page optimization itself. Yes, SE's still use meta tags. Some more then others, but they are just as important as page content. If an SE ignores let's say the Keyword Meta Tag, then so what. It doesn't hurt to use it for those you give it a little relevancy, so be sure to optimize your meta tags. Next of course is body content. Use your most targeted keyword phrase within the first 200 words of spiderable text. What do I mean by spiderable text? I mean image alt tags, anchor text (links), and body text (especially in headings bold text, and even in Italics). But make sure it is readable and do not keyword stuff or spam. It will only hurt your placement, and even worse, your site could get banned. So a liitle at a time is best. Every time your site is re-indexed, check your placement in the SE's, then make minor adjustments, then check again after indexing, and so on. NOTE: Try not to get obsessed with things like "Google PageRank". If your pages themselves are optimized (and you do not spam), your site will rank well.
4. Content, content and more content. Any "relevant" content will due, as long as it is useful to the visitor. Original content is best (but more difficult). This will not only add quality pages to your site, but attract visitors. The more often new content is added, the more of an increase in repeat visitors. Make sure it is useful and relevant to your site, or you will only "water it down" which can have an opposite effect. Good content will then incourage others to link to your site. The infamous "backlinks". Link popularity is very inportant for both ranking high in the SERP's (search engine results pages) as well as sending traffic to your site through these links.
5. Branding. This is also important. It's an old but very effective method. Even four year olds today know what "Google" is, and "Pepsi", "Coca Cola", "Xerox", etc. How many times have you said "grab me a Coke" instead of "soda" or "pop". Or "Where can I Xerox this page" instead of "copy". We all do it without even realizing it. Now "branding" or creating an "Icon" is very, very difficult and may never "take off", but starting now certainly won't hurt. How, well create a physical image or icon that says your business (without having to say it). How many times have people seen the Nike symbol with the words "Nike" before the symbol alone said it? A lot is an understatement, but images do stick.

By Ammon Johns Internet Marketing Consultant

What is SEO?

Searching is the second most commonly performed activity of all Internet users - right behind using e-mail. The majority of Internet users use search engines and web directories as their primary method to find information or resources on-line.
However, with approximately 4 billion web pages publicly available on the World Wide Web, and growing competition in every sector of the provision of data and services, the raw chances are that these people will find other sites than yours for the vast majority of even such searches as relate to your products.

Search Engine Optimisation uses knowledge and observation of exactly 'how' search engines, such as Google, MSN and Yahoo, and web directories decide which web sites to return as results for queries, and applies this to attain significantly higher placement for particular (proprietary) documents and sites. SEO is the process of assisting the search engines and directories to accurately evaluate which search queries your web content can answer effectively, and additionally seeks to place a certain 'bias' in your favour for ranking your sites within the search results for those queries.

How important is SEO?

In recent studies, top e-commerce and information web sites were discovered to receive up to 85 percent of all of their visitors (and customers) from search referrals. Without doubt, for the vast majority of on-line companies, SEO provides the highest possible ROI of all marketing and promotional activities.
More than 80 percent of Web users find the sites they're looking for by using a search engine, according to both Forrester Research and Georgia Tech's GVU Center User Surveys. Every single day, 57 percent of Web users search the Internet, making search the second most popular Internet activity after e-mail (according to Statistical Research, Inc.).
Search listings outscore banner and button ads by more than two to one on measures including awareness, likelihood to click-on, and overall opinion, in a recent study by NPD Group. The survey also found that consumers are five times more likely to purchase your products after seeing search listings versus banners.

Search engines drive extremely targeted traffic. The visitor who finds your site through a search engine is already actively looking for exactly what you provide. You can't find a more targeted form of marketing than that.

As the number of pages on the Web grows, so do the number of pages indexed by the search engines. Several engines have moved from the millions of pages indexed into the billions. With this kind of clutter, high rankings are no accident. They have to be thoughtfully planned and executed like the other tactics in your marketing mix.

According to industry leader Search Engine Watch, only 7 percent of searchers will go beyond the third page of listings. So if you're not in the top 30 search results, you may as well not be there at all.

Let's outline all of that one more time. Without SEO you are quite possibly throwing away up to 85 percent of your potential customers and visitors, and a full 80 percent of your potential customers will find their way to a rival business instead.

By Elisabeth Osmeloski

Most companies begin looking for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services with a narrow focus: achieving top rankings for certain keywords. The question is this: how can those companies be sure their "chosen" keywords are actually appropriate to their marketplace or will successfully generate qualified visitors that convert to sales once they reach the website?
In some cases, the answer is simple, but the extensive keyword research done by an SEO professional may in fact produce a very different set of keywords that prove to be more effective and perhaps were not considered by the client initially. The nuances of search engine algorithms, related synonyms and topics, actual user behavior and the competition within the marketplace all factor into the results returned in searches. For this reason, your SEO vendor should provide advanced analytical and strategic marketing skills.

SEO Is Evolving Internationally
Currently the industry is moving to the term Search Engine Marketing (SEM), a more encompassing view of all tasks an SEO professional should perform, yet revolves around the basic tactic of optimizing websites for search engines (SEO). The value of taking on an experienced SEO consultant can extend far beyond top rankings, which often occur naturally with a well-researched and planned SEO strategy.
SEO professionals brought into a website project early in a consulting role will help ensure the site is properly optimized for both users and search engines. The Internet marketing consultant evaluates the overall landscape, makes recommendations for improved site performance and marketing copy, recommending adjustments to the strategy as trends develop within the lifetime of a website.

The knowledge and skill of an experienced SEO & SEM professional will be most effective from the beginning of the website development process. Too often, search engine marketing is only considered as an afterthought, commonly creating obstacles that need work-arounds or significant website changes which could have been avoided if SEO was part of the planning stages.
However, all is not lost - with today's abundance of pay-for-placement options, it is possible to experience high-quality traffic and become a force in the marketplace. But buyer beware - your marketing budget should be a significant amount for your industry and tracking methods need to be in place to properly assess the response and conversions of your campaign to effectively maximize ROI (Return of Investment) and reduce marketing costs.

No matter what the approach, the ongoing maintenance of SEO and Internet marketing (SEM) tactics is critical to the overall success of a website, as techniques and opportunities change so rapidly within the search engine optimization industry.

Feature article Shane Borelli

When preparing to build a new website, or redesign an existing website, planning for success in the search engines is a crucial First Step. Even before you choose a color scheme, choose a design strategy that will enhance your chances for success - not work against them.
While many website designs work well in the search engines, some work much better than others. And there are a few website designs that are just plain difficult and best avoided. If receiving traffic from search engines is important to your website, then discuss design implications with your web developer or SEO consultant before the website design is agreed upon, and the actual building begins.

What difference can website design make?

By "design", we do not mean background colors and font styles, but rather how the website is pieced together both structurally (site architecture) and contextually (information architecture). The difference between good and bad design choices can be clear as night and day. The difference may mean having all of your website information indexed in the search engine databases - or none of it.

Take Flash for example:Flash is a powerful, vector-based animation software that allows web designers to create beautiful websites with rich graphics and robust interactive functionality. Sounds good, right?

The problem is that, until very recently, no search engine could "see" Flash files, or any of the content inside them. Even now, Google is the only search engine that does read Flash files. Google reports this is only a trial period, and they will read only links inside Flash files - not any other content, such as text. This means that even the most appealing, informative, and useful website may never see any significant traffic from the search engines if the site is built with Flash and without regard to how search engines work. So how does this going to affect Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Patch it up or start over?

Virtually any existing website can be modified to perform better in the search engines; starting over from scratch is seldom necessary. However, sometimes starting over is the smartest thing to do.

Workarounds have been developed and refined to enable the use of advanced design features, including Flash, without losing important exposure in the search engines. If properly implemented, these workarounds do work and you can seemingly "eat your cake and have it, too."

The caveat is that once you start implementing large-scale workarounds - it's hard to stop. Each time new content is added to the website, the necessary workarounds must also be added or modified. Therefore, a website that is rife with workarounds may easily become more expensive to maintain over the long term than simply starting over with a better design strategy.
The lesson here is to plan well - speak to an experienced developer or SEO consultant - and build your website right the first time.

Since the emergence of SEO as an industry a few years ago, many of the basic principles highlighted in the following article as still as valid then today. Our industry has moved on massively since that time and it is now a core business tool to develop an effective internet marketing strategy that ALL internet business must ascribe to in order to maximise ROI and potential profits.

Feature article by Anne KennedyNovember 2001 --

The Internet has grown to nearly two billion pages. To keep up, search engines are consolidating and sharing resources in broad based efforts to index as much as possible for their users and maintain profitability at the same time. The resource load on top online search media is heavy and growing, and so is the trend toward conserving demands on bandwidth, transaction volume and server space. This means SEO has changed.

What works today is searchable content, links to and from your site, and judicious use of paid placements. Savvy Web marketers need to make sure the content of their website appeals to target users and is clearly accessible to search engine spiders, and link their sites to relevant and popular sites. The SEO tactics that worked last year may, in fact, decrease rankings or worse, remove your site entirely from search databases. If your site's search rankings depend on any of the following, your SEO is out of date. If a Search Optimizing Service suggests these techniques, find one who is current on website marketing best practices.

Resubmitting/Automated submitting:Submitting a site more than once in a short time frame is considered spam by the major search engines. AltaVista gives preference to older submissions, so resubmitting a site, thereby tagging it with a fresh date, will actually decrease the site's ranking. Google prefers to find a site, rather than have it submitted. Why? Repeating submissions overloads their resources. Submitting a site by automated software, even for the first time, is frowned on by all the major search media. AltaVista has made auto submissions impossible. Human directory editors will label a site spam if it is repeatedly auto-submitted to them.

Indexing in hundreds of search engines:There are only a handful of search media that matter for most Web sites: Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Google, LookSmart, About.com, The Open Directory Project, Lycos, Excite, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves and Overture (formerly GoTo). While there are also topic--specific search engines, most of the other so-called "search engines" on the longer lists are just links farms which automatically swap links between your website and lots of irrelevant sites, no substitute for a highly targeted and relevant links to a from your site.

Free submissions:Nearly all the major search media have some form of revenue-raising paid placement plan. While all but Overture assure you placement only, not ranking position, these are extremely effective at quickly gaining critical links from popular web media, helping to improve sites' performance in search results. Paying a subscription fee is the only way the Inktomi database, with its finite number of URLs, will guarantee that a site is replaced in their database when it refreshes every 48 hours. The good news is sites that change content frequently will have their new content indexed quickly by Inktomi, and appear in the partners using that database: MSN, AOL, and Overture's secondary results.

Meta Tags:Few search engines consider meta tag content in current algorithms anymore to determine rank. While the meta description tag shows up on some search results, search results usually return snippets of content from pages. Long meta tags, or meta keyword tags containing words that don't appear in content will actually downgrade a sites' ranking.

Doorway Pages:While there are some logical applications for creating simple pages that point to a larger site, those created to appeal to individual search engines are frowned on by every major online media. Top search engines have a huge and growing workload trying to index information on the Internet. Excess pages only clutter their paths, impede progress, and generally tick them off. Not a good thing, since the search media make the rules about how the Web is indexed.

Cloaking (aka Dynamic page swapping):Every major search engine says they will ban your website if they catch you engaging in the deceptive practice of using one set of data on a page to attract a search spider, and then swapping in your real home page to deliver to the searcher. While cloaking goes on, and some don't get caught, you really have to ask yourself if it's worth the risk of having your IP address banned form the Web for all time.

Each month, Google refreshes its index, going through a process known as the "Google Dance". Every few months, the methods use to determine search rankings change, often making sites which previously had good rankings totally disappear from the index. Below are ten suggestions to avoid losing out to this "Google Quake":
1) Sites with a good network of inbound links seem to be less prone to the Google Quake. Make sure your sites are in the ODP (DMOZ), Yahoo and Looksmart. Your site should have good links from other sites within your subject area, and a good set of internal links (although you should never depend on these alone). Think of your inbound links as roots holding up a tree - the more you have, the harder it is for the tree to fall over.
2) Use deep content to keep a stable base for your keyword pyramid [1] . Even if you lose out on major target keywords you'll always be picking up substantial amounts of traffic from searches on the less popular terms.
3) Work on methods to increase your conversion ratios. If you lose 10% of your visitors, but your conversions increase 20%, you gain overall.
4) Pay per click should be kept ticking over. If necessary, slightly increase bids to keep traffic moving forwards.
5) Make sure your site has unique content to benefit from word of mouth referrals. Now may be the time to issue press releases and think of other areas for promotion.
6) Use the opportunity to refresh, refocus and if necessary take a break. Take the time to browse the forums and find the latest SEO techniques.
7) When traffic picks up again, set aside a cash pile to allow for the occasional shake up. As with stocks and shares search positions can go down as well as up. If you are optimising for a good spread of websites rather than having all your eggs in one basket, you should always have some gains in rankings each month.
8) Use this opportunity to get other people to look at your site, and give constructive criticism. Make sure you act on any comments.
9) Keep adding new content, remembering that spiders visit all the time. Even if you do not see any changes in rankings for your major target keywords, any additional content you add may still be indexed for more specialised search terms.
10) Remember that Google isn't the only Search Engine. Although it accounts for nearly half of all searches, you should still aim for good visibility on all the others, even if that sometimes means a lot more work.
This article (C) James Avery, Yourslice Ltd - Nov 2002

Delivering guaranteed search engine positioning and business from a website is a much more difficult task than simply writing a website. Most people only complete the first stage of building an internet business by having a website written for them by a web designer but fail to complete the process.
Furthermore search engine optimisation and internet search engine marketing require different skill sets than web design - just as electricians are not plumbers!
Therefore, in order to generate business from the internet you also need to use a search engine optimisation firm with the right SEO and internet marketing skills. Skills required to get your business to secure top organic search rankings against keyword search terms within the major search engines of Google, Yahoo and MSN and to provide you with a tangible ROI. SEO Specialists have identified 5 key components to a successful approach to SEO. Keyword Selection, Meta Tages, Content, Links and Design.

So what are the benefits of organic over paid search?
Pros:
1)Greater Click-throughs: People trust "organically grown" search results more than they do sponsored results. While the engines business is supported by paid ads, many consumers prefer the organic search results. Due to the contextual nature of organic search, the listings can be more relevant and offer a greater depth of choices. Therefore, while paid ads can play an important part in your marketing strategy, ultimately it is the organic search results that will more likely yield the greater click-through rates when all other things are equal. Therefore, it's this type of listing that will maximize the traffic to your site whenever you climb to the top.
2) Power of Branding: More and more large corporations are investing resources into organic search to gain the marketing benefits of promoting their brand. For example, most consumers would expect to find Dell.com in a search for computers. If your company does not show up for the keyword results in which you'd expect to appear it can be embarrassing. Consumers may wonder if Company X is as important as they once were if they don't even show up in MSN, Yahoo or Google. Conversely, inserting your brand in the top search results can give the impression that your company is important. Therefore, smaller companies can give the impression of big business importance by securing aa better position in organic search than their larger rivals.
3) Greater Trust Equals Greater Conversions: Most adults learn to apply a healthy dose of skepticism when they see a commercial on TV, a banner ad on the Web, or a sponsored ad on a search engine. After all, we know those ads are commercially motivated and may not always be the most relevant product or solution for our needs. It may simply represent the company that was able to spend the most money to get their message in front of me. Sometimes bigger companies do offer the best products, but there's no guarantee. There's certainly not the same level of trust that we see from visitors arriving from organic search. Organic search can, of course, be commercially influenced. However, a recent survey shows that people tend to trust organic results compared to sponsored listings. On the whole, you should see more visitors from organic search converting to sales, assuming your rankings were for targeted, relevant keywords. In the business world, ROI, or Return On Investment, is king. Fortunately, organic search can give you the high ROI you're looking for or your boss is demanding.
4) Organic is Free: After all these years, it's still free to submit to Google, arguably the most popular of the organic search engines right now. Google has always been adamant about not charging for inclusion in its index of 4.2 billion pages. Most other organic engines will also index you for free, although some like Yahoo do have paid inclusion options. Paid inclusion simply guarantees your page will get indexed quickly and stay indexed for as long as you maintain your subscription, but does not promise a particular ranking. However, if you have a Web site with good quality content and links from third party sites, paid inclusion is "nice-to-have". It can be very useful in getting pages indexed or re-indexed quickly. This allows you to quickly test various page designs and to feed news and other time-sensitive content to the search engine as quickly as possible.
Cons:
1) Organic Rankings are Not Automatic: With organic listings, you cannot simply hand over a certain amount of money and be guaranteed to quickly and automatically achieve any ranking you desire. Instead, achieving positions in organic search requires the proper technology, skill, and know-how. There has always been a cloud of mystery around the process of achieving top rankings. How's it done? Where do I start? That's why resources like this newsletter and products like WebPosition Gold are essential to a business's success in search engine marketing.
2) Organic Rankings Require an Investment in Time: The age-old adage of "nothing worthwhile in life ever comes easy" rings true with organic rankings. While they are monetarily free, simply submitting your pages to the search engines is not enough to bring in a flood of new visitors to your Web site. Far too many businesses have been fooled into spending £49 or £99 to submit their site to "thousands" of sites, 99% of which are obscure names you've probably never heard of. The key is that someone doing a search on a major search engine must be able to easily find your Web site.
If your site is buried at the bottom of the list, or simply fails to appear in the first few pages of search results, you can kiss your chances of being found good-bye. The key is to use responsible best practices to create pages that are highly relevant to the keywords that apply to your Web site and the products or solutions you have to offer. . In other words, optimize your pages for search engine visibility and see how fast your position improves. To do this, you simply need to know what each search engine needs for maximum visibility. Then tweak your Web page's content while paying attention to off-page factors like the number and type of links coming to your page. Tune the pages of your site to the preferences of the major search engines and then watch your rankings and traffic climb.

While optimizing your Web site to rank well for organic searches takes more effort than simply buying an ad, it can provide your business with one of the highest ROI results that you're likely to find. Numerous studies have placed search engine optimisation at the top of the list of the most effective forms of online marketing. Its low cost, high relevancy, and high conversion rates make it an ideal marketing vehicle for almost any business.

Sponsored links are marketed as a sure-fire way to lure consumers to specific Web sites, but a Penn State study shows most online shoppers don't take the bait. "Consumers have a bias against the links that businesses pay search engines to provide," said Jim Jansen, assistant professor in the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). "By themselves, sponsored links appear not to be a viable business model and should be only one part of an online advertising campaign." According to recent reports, businesses spent an estimated $8 billion to sell their products and services via sponsored links in 2004, despite little evidence that such advertising successfully directs traffic to Web sites. More likely to hook consumers are the organic results or those results returned automatically by the algorithmic operations of the search engine, Jansen said.

Please refer to http://SEO-International.blogspot.com for further readings and advice on this. Google and other search engines also provide advice as to how it is important to have sponsored links in the initial period of an internet business, however, it is far more important to have an optimisation strategy for long term to benefit from ROI and better market penetration.

Check out the new internet search engine optimisation blog at http://SEO-international.blogspot.com. They are undertaking exciting SEO projects at the moment - one to watch!