In the world of search engine optimization, an organized optimizer rules. By constantly staying on top of your work and new innovations, you can pull together some great results. With the flexibility of the iPad 2, you have a great new tool to do so. The iPad’s unique design, and ability to connect through a 3G network, allows you to successfully perform SEO work on the go. Along with an amazing, user friendly design, the iPad also features a number of applications that are strictly for SEO. The iPad also is an affective way to cross check the effectiveness or your website to an enormously growing population of mobile users. Using the iPad on the go for SEO, is becoming more and more essential.

One of the most important parts of performing essential SEO tasks, is staying organized. With great organization comes even better communication. This can be between clients, co-workers, or potential customers. You must always stay connected with your contacts, to ensure quality customer service, and to stay ahead on your work. You can easily do this with the iPad 2, and its 3G capabilities. You can even use multiple accounts to organize personal, and business emails to be more efficient. This opens up your business capabilities in a number of different ways. First, you will never be playing catch up. Second you can be sure that you will never miss an opportunity. This is very important when you are in the SEO business.

While you may not have all the useful tools on your iPad that your computer may bring, there are many SEO applications that can help. One of the main problems with using in an iPad is the browser. Browsers are portrayed in a mobile version. This can be highly annoying, especially if you are using the SEO Quake bar frequently. One great way to combat this browser issue is to download the “Atomic Web” browser. This application is only $.99, and is worth every penny. This allows you to “trick” the website into thinking you are using a browser like Firefox, Opera, or Chrome. This can be a very useful tool when you are interacting with various web pages. Another great application for SEO on the iPad is “Website SEO Analyzer.” This app lets you do a number of things that eliminate the need for your SEO Quake bar. You can check page rank, alexa rank, and even Meta data. It will also let you see the page size and the page load time. All of these things are important when checking prospective candidates when you are performing link building services.

The most important part when using the iPad for SEO is cross browser detection. With more and more people using mobile devices, you want to make sure that your website is operating the right way through all browsers. The number of users on tablet, and mobile devices is growing every single day. You do not want to missing out on these potential visitors because of a lack of knowledge. The iPad is the wave of the future. Although many have complained about the lack of Flash on iPads, Flash is 100% non-readable by Google. iPad may force you to use other options that make for more visibility through many browsers, and in turn lets Google index videos that may be lost in flash. This is going to be very important in future years. HTML 5 is going to become the norm due to the ease, and friendly aspects is contains. Although not all browsers use the “video” tag yet for HTML 5, this lets you get a head start in the SEO world. Google, and Apple are both very big fans of HTML 5.  You can use HTML 5 in the browsers that read it, and perform if/else functions and revert to flash for those who do not. This will allow you to be a multi-faceted website, and also allows Google to index your site appropriately.

The iPad allows you to perform essential SEO techniques while you are on the go. Using your iPad for SEO can keep you on task, can help you manage your time better, and is a very important tool considering the future of SEO. With a 3G network, an iPad is a great way to stay ahead on your projects, and beat the competition. If you want to keep your SEO business strong, an iPad can also help you to find the best way to optimize your site for the growing number of mobile users. That is something that you do not want to miss out on. Using your iPad, or any other tablet will soon be essential for all SEO businesses.

Are you clueless on how to blog for SEO? This beginner’s guide will take you through simple steps on how to get your blog posts in tip top shape for when the search bots come crawling.

Why Blog for SEO?

There’s two very good reasons you should do this, which lead me to put together this beginner’s guide on how to blog for SEO.

1. Since you’re already taking the time to write the blog, so you might as well know how to blog for SEO.

2. It will help drive extra traffic to your blog in the long term – which is why you’re blogging right?

How to Blog for SEO

First you should plan out your blog post. It might seem like extra work, but believe me it will make the whole process a lot easier. You can download the plan I used to prepare this blog for SEO here.

Topic – First you’ll need to decide on the topic you’ll be blogging about. Ideally it should be a trending topic or something you know is popular with your target audience. There’s no point writing about something no one’s interested in.

Keywords – Probably the most important consideration when tailoring your blog for seo is the keywords you’ll use. Once you’ve decided on your topic, the best way to select keywords is to head on over to the google keyword tool, which will show you a bunch of suggestions for the topic you enter. Ideally try to choose 2 or 3 phrases which have high search traffic and low competition. If you downloaded the plan I used for this post, you’ll see that the phrases I’ve selected are ‘blog for seo’, ‘how to blog’ and ‘beginner’s guide’, which all have low competition and searches in the thousands.

Outline – Next you should come up with the outline for your article which should look something like the below. By creating a good outline all you’ll need to do when it comes to writing the article is fill in the blank. It will also help with keyword placement.

Main Idea

• supporting detail

• supporting detail

• supporting detail

Main Idea 2

• supporting detail

• supporting detail

• supporting detail

Main Idea 3

• supporting detail

• supporting detail

• supporting detail

Tailoring the Blog for SEO

Okay now you’ve got the plan and outline sorted, it’s time to think about how to blog.

Title – First up you need the title, this is probably the most important thing from the SERP point of view. Try to have your primary keyword as close as you can to the beginning; mine is ‘blog for seo’. If you can work a secondary keyword into the title, then have at it. I’ve managed to squeeze in two secondary keywords ‘how to blog’ and ‘beginners guide’. Don’t make your title all about keywords though, remember it still needs to be intriguing and memorable to your target audience.

Subtitles – it wouldn’t be a beginners guide if I didn’t mention subtitles. There are so many bloggers out there who show their clear lack of understanding on how to blog by churning out massive chunks of text and paragraphs with no subtitles. Subtitles make your blog posts heaps easier for the reader to absorb and it also helps prepare your blog for seo by helping the bots understand what your article is about.

Introduction – Your intro should be a stripped down, bare bones account of what the reader can expect from the rest of the article. Try to have your primary keyword as close to the beginning of the first sentence as possible, and ideally keep it to 70 words or less.

Body – Here’s some simple tips to follow when writing the article body:

• Keep your paragraphs focussed, and concentrate on one topic at a time. Make sure each paragraph is under 100 words.

• Use your primary keyword once every 100 words or so

• Stick to your outline! Have you ever read a blog post that made you feel like you were being pulled in 8 different directions? Fair chance they didn’t use an outline. Articles that use an outline are always more organised and compelling than those that don’t.

Conclusion 

If you’re taking the time to learn how to blog for seo, then there’s a high chance you also want your post to convert, i.e. lead the reader to some form of action. For a blog post to convert successfully, the body should compel the reader toward a powerful conclusion which will drive home what the post has offered and convince them they must take action now.

Although this is just a beginners guide on how to blog for seo – following these steps diligently and persistently will no doubt have a big impact on your blog traffic. And unless your blog is a personal diary, traffic is the point of it right?

What other SEO tips have worked for your blogs?  Please comment below!

Guest Author:  Daniel Smith, the founder of Propaganda House, has over a decade of marketing experience, and as a Social Media Consultant, runs courses and individually consults business’ on how they can grow through the effective use of Social Media Marketing techniques. You can tweet Daniel @propagandahouse or email him here.

Setting up your online shop for search engine optimization is a crucial part of making it a success. There are certain characteristics of web pages that the search engines view favorably, while there are other characteristics that they do not. Knowing what these are and tailoring your online shop presentation to be viewed favorably will land you higher in organic search results than a site or online shop that has not taken these important points into consideration.

If you’re just now beginning to set up your online shop, this is the best time of all to review these points. If your online shop is already open, it’s certainly not too late to make some key updates to your website and its item listings.

A few important points about SEO:

First, the search engines don’t officially publish a rule book on how they evaluate web pages. However much has been researched and published on what they look for and many characteristics are clear. It’s also important to note that the search engines are constantly updating their algorithms and strategies in a quest to deliver the most relevant, high- quality search results. The points covered here are those that are not likely to change in the near future.

It’s also important to remember that you are not just setting up your shop and its listings for the search engines, but equally important is for it to be attractive to online shoppers as well. Setting up your shop with both groups in mind is the ideal.

The following steps are easy to do:

Website Name

Let’s begin with your site’s name. Research suggests that the search engines view long shop names less favorably than shorter ones. It’s also important to place important keywords at the beginning of your shop name. The search engines crawl only the first 66 letters in a title or shop name. So crucial keywords at the end of a long shop name may be missed by the search engines. Naming your shop “Clementine’s Collectibles, Vintage Fashion and Delightful Treasures” will not be viewed as favorably by the search engines as a shorter name.

Website URL

The same is true for your site’s URL, so the URL you choose is also crucial. A long shop URL will not be viewed as favorably by the search engines as one that is shorter. When delivering search results the search engines will favor shops or websites with less than 70 characters over those that are cut off.

Item Titles

For the items you’re offering on your site, it’s important to write your item titles for search engine optimization. This means writing natural titles that are no longer than 70 characters whenever possible. They should contain important keywords at the beginning of the item title.

Here’s an example of an item title that is too long:

Vintage LAGUNA Set White Givre Art Glass Stones AB Austrian Crystals Double Strand Choker Earrings c. 1959 Emerald Green Hat with Chenille Dotted Veil

Here’s an example of how it can be shortened:

Vintage Laguna White Givre Art Glass Choker Earrings Set

And, remember never to keyword spam. Keyword spamming is when keywords are repeatedly used, or when keywords are used that do not related to the item in an attempt to manipulate search results. This also includes listing an item without knowing what the item is. Search engines are keenly honed to detect keyword spamming and it could get your site removed from their search results altogether. Remember, that it is un-appealing to potential buyers as well.

Item Descriptions

Next comes item descriptions. Well-written item descriptions are crucial for proper search engine optimization. They should be composed in a natural style while still including a good number of important, relevant keywords. Studies suggest that the search engines favor longer item descriptions. Item descriptions that are viewed as too short to include enough key information will not be viewed favorably. Again, keyword stuffing or spamming is an absolute no-no.

Here is a list of what points you should be sure to include in your item descriptions:

What is it?

When was it produced?

What company or artist produced it?

What is it made of?

What condition is it in? This includes any imperfections or wear

Are there any distinctive marking?

What are its dimensions?

Website Information

Don’t forget that your website’s background information as well as promotional text are also an opportunity to show the search engines what your site is about. Have you heard the term lately that content is king? That’s because the search engines value it highly when considering what results to suggest in any given search. Having well-written information about yourself and your business, using a range of relevant keywords, will be viewed favorably by the search engines. Choosing natural phrases that contain relevant keywords that describe your site’s items will serve to work in your favor.

Fresh Content

Next, it’s important to add items to your online shop to keep your shop content fresh. Why? Because the search engines less favorably upon sites that are viewed as “stagnant”. In their search results they want to suggest sites with items that are fresh and dynamic, and have something new to offer.

Testimonials

The search engines look favorably upon buyer testimonials so be sure to add some to your site, and update them periodically. The search engines do evaluate whether content such as this is fresh and new.

Links

Search engines will also evaluate whether other quality sites are linking to your site. A link to your site from another quality site is considered to be a form of a “vote”, lending credibility to your site.

Item Photos

While the search engines cannot evaluate the quality of your item photos, research suggests that they do take into consideration how many photos you have of a single item. And remember that multiple item photos aren’t just for the search engines. They’re for buyers who want to see every angle of an item before they decide whether or not to purchase.

Do you find this post helpful?  What other SEO tips have worked for your e-commerce store?  Please share in the comments below.

Guest Author: Karen Frishman is Director of Marketing for Ruby Lane, and online mall specializing in antiques & art, vintage collectibles and jewelry, www.rubylane.com.

What is the one thing I should do to my website that would improve my SEO?  This is a common question I am asked and I always have the same answer.

I tell people all they have to do is make their listing in the search engines the one that more people will want to click on. Simple!

Of course, there is a lot in just that simple statement.  First, for people to be able to click on your listing it needs to be seen and for them to actually click on your listing then it needs to offer the answer they are looking for.  Put simply, it needs to say “Here I am and I have exactly what you are looking for”.  Actually, it needs to shout it at you!

So how do you do this?  Well it’s all down to two very important fields on your webpage.  The Title tag and the Meta description tag.  If you are using a content management system to update your pages then the fields are probably called Page Title and Page Description.

Now before any purist SEO specialists chime in and say that the description field has no place in your SEO strategy let me tell you they are plainly wrong.  What they mean to say is that the search engines place no value on what you include in your description field.  However, it isn’t the search engines that click on your listing.  It’s people that do that and they read your page description.

You see as far as I am concerned SEO is not just about getting a high rank in the search engines.  Its real purpose is to get you traffic and for that you need people to click on your listing.  So for that reason alone I maintain that the description tag is a very important field.

So, first of all we need to get your page seen and that means it needs to be placed high in the search results.  This is where the page title comes in.  It is the most important place to include your keyword terms.  Google places a lot of importance on this tag and it expects the words you want to rank for to be in that field.

Don’t make the mistake of many websites and feel you have to put your company name into the page title.  It’s far more important to get your keywords in there and to also make sure the title reads like a proper sentence.  If you can, make it compelling to entice the click.  A good trick sometimes can be to turn your page titles into questions.  If it matches the question in the searchers head then your chances of a click are very good.

Now it’s time to look at the page description field.  As I’ve already said it doesn’t directly impact what the search engines think about your page so you don’t need to worry too much about getting keywords into the description.  What you want to do is make the description very compelling and include a call-to-action.

A powerful tool can be to use the page title to ask a keyword rich question and use the page description to clearly state that the answer to the question will be found if you click on the listing.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say you have a guitar shop in Birmingham that specializes in left handed guitars. So your keywords could be “left handed guitars birmingham”.  In this case your page title could be “Looking for Left Handed Guitars in Birmingham?” and your page description could be “You’ve come to the right place.  Take a look at our massive selection of left handers.  Many are on sale and they are sure to sell out today”.

Did you notice how the description field had a call-to-action and a sense or urgency also?  Click today or you might find all the guitars have gone.  This is a great tactic.

So if you only do one thing to your website I would suggest taking a good look at your page titles and page descriptions.  You’ll be amazed what difference polishing those up can make.

Want to know more about SEO? Why not try Mike’s Free SEO Training Course?

One of the reasons I like ecommerce SEO is that there is a tremendous amount of opportunities to increase the optimization quality of an online store. Unlike service businesses or online brochure websites which typically only have a few pages, a catalog of products creates a great opportunity to increase the amount of content and provide relevance for the search engines.

Here at Best Rank, we spend a lot of time educating clients about optimization and how they can use it to gain a competitive advantage in their marketplace.  Having a specialty in ecommerce, my conversations are often about tips and advice on what online store owners can do to improve their rankings and increase traffic. There are plenty of resources for learning SEO online, but not a lot specific to ecommerce.

For those interested in getting their hands dirty, I have created a list of 62 Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization Tips & Ideas. Of course there are tips here that apply to non-ecommerce sites as well, but ecommerce SEO does deserve its own list.

The list is in no particular order. If you have some tips or feedback you want to add, please feel free to comment .

1. Do a search in Google using site:www.yourdomain.com. This allows you to see what pages of your website are being indexed and how they look. The results should be keyword rich and have call to action for users to click.

2. Do a site: search in Google for your competitors. While you are looking at your own indexing, look at your competition. Are their search engine results better optimized or better written? Don’t let them win.

3. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to find keywords. If you have an Adwords account you are probably familiar with Google’s Keyword Tool. If not, you can use Google’s External Keyword Tool Be sure set the match type on [exact] so you are looking at the number of searches for that specific keyword.

4. Don’t forget text on your homepage. Graphics are attractive and are great for users. Be sure that there is some html text on the homepage as well. If you have to put it near the footer, fine. Just make sure it is somewhere.

5. Be sure your homepage title uses your 3 most important keywords. I prefer to limit any given page to focus on 3 keywords. Some people like 4 and some people 2. Your homepage optimization is really important to tell the engines what your site is going to focus on.

6. Choose 3 keyword phrases to focus on per category page. I use the similar 3 keyword rule for category pages as well.  I will sometimes use only 2 if it is focused. Of course you are then going to make sure these keywords are used in the title, content, etc. but we will get to that later.

7. Be sure the top keyword for the page is first in your Title tag for all category pages. The first word in your title tag is the most important.

8. Be sure to customize the product pages Title.
If your ecommerce software allows dynamic insertion, use it. For example, if you can tell the system to use specific elements of the product in the title, use it. You can use product names, manufacturer, and SKU. They are all valuable.  If you don’t have a lot of products and your software allows for custom title writing, be sure to write custom titles.

9. Format the Title For Relevance & Clicks.
This can apply to categories and products. The formatting of a Title I like to use is “Keyword Phrase 1 | Call To Action or Benefit Using Keyword Phrase 2 and 3 if possible”. For example: “Hospital Towels | Wholesale Medical Towels On Sale”

10. Use .html or .htm for page naming. If you are using a CMS system and prefer no extensions such as /keyword/ that is fine too. While using .html may be considered old school, it still works. We all know that everyone claims that search engines treat most pages extensions equally, but my experience has seen differently. It’s still a good practice.

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Guest Author: Jason Kreidman is the Vice President of Business Development for Best Rank, Inc.  Jason has been building, managing, and marketing ecommerce businesses for over 14 years and now assists other merchants in getting results online.

When link building, many SEO practitioners face the question: Should I focus on getting thousands of backlinks, or a few quality backlinks? The answer is you want to get as many quality backlinks as you can. Building tons of links might sound like the most effective means of improving your visibility in the search engines, but quality is and always has been more important.

Think about it like this:

Backlinks are like human citation on the web. The way we link out to sites expresses how we feel about them: better sites get more links from more authoritative sites. Just as an expert’s opinion on the news is held in higher regards than your average Joe, a link from an expert site is respected the same way. If you were looking to lose weight, whom would you trust more: an experienced dietician or some random guy you met at the supermarket? Just like we trust those with more credibility and experience in our day-to-day lives, Google trusts sites that display experience and authority more as well. This principle applies directly to link building and how we practice it.

Let’s say you’re the guy from the supermarket earlier, and oddly enough, you actually know your stuff. No one is going to necessarily believe what you have to say without further proof or evidence. But what if there was a health expert nearby that verified your opinions? With the support of an expert, your opinion would now be held in higher regards by others. Similarly, you have a small niche site on health; Google isn’t going to see you as much of an authority. But if you got a link from an authoritative health site…I think you get the idea.

If you are getting a ton of backlinks from non-expert, non-authoritative sources it is going to take a lot of links to achieve anywhere near the results you want. You can improve your rankings somewhat effectively with these types of links, but it takes a ton of them. To compare backlinks with real life again; how many people would it take to convince you of a stranger’s opinion if none of these people seemed qualified to make judgments about said stranger’s opinions? 5, 10, 200, 1,000? In other words, you would probably demand the support of many people if none of them were experts in order to trust this stranger. In the same fashion, Google is not quick to trust and increase the rank of sites with just profile links and other non-authoritative links. However, each one does count a little bit, and I mean a little bit.

We always want to aim for quality over quantity. Vast quantities of low quality backlinks can help, but the core of your link building strategy should revolve around acquiring high quality backlinks. These quality links also often send traffic to your site which is a huge added benefit. You’re not going to get any additional traffic from profile backlinks which is going to leave you entirely reliant upon Google and the other search engines. Most people find a balance in their link building efforts between the two. Find what works for you, and stick to with it until you hit the top.

Guest Author: Ben Jackson is an SEO expert/enthusiast and founder of www.seodiscovery.org.

Are you trying to build backlinks on a budget?  Just because you don’t have tons of cash to throw around on fancy SEO services, your website does not have to get stuck on page 5 of the search engines.

Here are four of the top no-cost link building techniques that get results fast:

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is a fairly fast and painless link building technique, but most people do it incorrectly because they spam blogs.  Whether you do it yourself or pay someone else, blog spamming doesn’t make sense and won’t get the results you want.  The problem with useless spammy comments is that they don’t get approved.  This leaves you with zero backlinks.

Here’s the right way to do it:

Post a thought provoking, informative comment that might pique the interest of readers.

The benefit, you ask?

For starters, your comment is much more likely to get approved if you actually provide value.  This will increase the number of readers who click-through to your site.  You want people to see your comments and think, “Hey, that’s a great point.  I wonder what else he/she has to say…” *Click*.

If you can establish yourself as an authority in your comment, the people that click-through to your site are already mentally prepped to have more trust and respect for your opinions.  This means they’ll stick around longer, subscribe, maybe even make a purchase, or share your site on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The only other part to the blog commenting equation is finding blogs to comment on.  There are two ways that I consider the best options for finding blogs to comment on.

The first is to use Drop My Link.  You can search for specific types of blogs such as KeywordLuv blogs and add your keyword in the search.  This will help you find a lot of relevant blogs to comment on.  I suggest searching for KeywordLuv blogs first since they allow anchor text, they are “do follow”, and they add a link to your most recent post if you have a blog.  It’s definitely a big win situation.

For the other blog-finding tactic, I suggest using the SEOQuake plugin for Firefox to sort each page of results by PageRank (PR).  A page doesn’t have to have a high PR to be worthwhile to comment on, but it definitely helps.

In summary, using the above techniques will help you quickly find blogs that are relevant, allow anchor text,  are “do follow”, possibly have high PR, and  allow backlinks that attract visitors plus you get an extra link to your blog…and oh yeah… it’s all at no cost.

Google Blog Search

Another great way for finding relevant blogs is to Google your keyword and then click on the “Blogs” link on the left sidebar of the search results page.  This is going to reveal the most relevant blogs/blog posts to your keyword as well as many of the most recent posts that relate to your keyword.

This tactic has advantages and disadvantages compared to the blog commenting tactic explained above.  Its strong suit is that it is more likely to get you traffic and help you rank in the long-term, but no short-term.

The blogs found on Google are all going to be fresh and up-to-date.  A lot of the posts you’ll find with the first technique will find older, less maintained content.  The advantage here is that your comments will be more likely to be approved (faster as well), they’ll have more opportunity to get you targeted traffic, and finally they might end up with PR in the future.

The Google blog search technique has a greater focus on traffic now, and rankings later.  Used together, these blog commenting tactics will help you get that sought after targeted traffic both in the short-term and the long-term.

RSS Submission

In case you didn’t know, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  In other words, it’s a quick easy way to get your content all over the web.  If you have a blog then you already have an RSS feed, but if you don’t, you can still create an RSS feed for your site with www.Html2rss.com.  It’s free and awesome.

There isn’t much of a strategy with using RSS.  Basically, you just want to submit your site’s feed to a bunch of RSS/Blog directories.  These submissions will be found by the search engines and add more backlinks to your profile.  They will also help get your site indexed or crawled more often.

Here are ten of the most popular, highest PR RSS/Blog directories:

www.bloglines.com – PR 9
www.plazoo.com – PR 6
www.icerocket.com - PR 6
www.blogcatalog.com – PR 6
www.bloghop.com – PR 6
www.portal.eatonweb.com – PR 6
www.blogged.com – PR 6
www.bloggapedia.com – PR 6
www.feedcat.net – PR 5
www.feednuts.com – PR 5

One way you can get creative with RSS feeds is to mix and match the URLs with the above mentioned site.  What you can do is essentially compile a list of helpful URLs into an RSS feed with some of yours as well.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is an excellent method for building links.  They’re fast, simple, and effective.  In addition to getting backlinks, social bookmarking also drives traffic, and is great for indexing.  If you created a site recently that you want indexed, you’ll want to start bookmarking.  A Digg or Delicious bookmark alone can get your website indexed in mere hours.

Because of how easy they are to build, bookmarks are great for linking to your homepage and every other page on your website as well as linking to articles, web 2.0 properties, and other backlinks to your site.

One easy-to-use and free tool for bookmark submission is www.socialmarker.com.  It semi-automates the process and takes you site to site while you simply copy and paste your way through.  Another free tool that many SEO practitioners swear by is www.onlywire.com.  The free version of the service only allows 300 submissions per month, but it completely automates the process which allows you to move on to other tasks or even leave the computer while doing your bookmarking.

These popular link building techniques have been used for years by search engine optimizers and Internet marketers, and will not be going away.  Remember, you don’t need expensive software or services to rank well and get traffic to your site.  You can accomplish all of this with just a little bit of effort.

Learn more about the above strategies in this SEO course and laugh your way to the top while your competitors add up their SEO bills.

What other favorite techniques do you have for link building?

Guest Author: Ben Jackson is an SEO expert and enthusiast, and founder of www.seodiscovery.org.

Commercial websites aren’t cheap to build and maintain, and if you own a business with a website you probably want something to come from that expense. For some businesses that means a sale, for others a lead, and for yet others it’s clicks on paid advertisements.

Regardless of what you want from your website, it seems obvious that more traffic to the site would help with all of the above…right? Yes and no.

Before you drive more traffic to a website, it is important to make sure that your website is doing what you want it to do as efficiently and effectively as possible. There’s no point pouring more water into a leaky funnel. Enter conversion optimization.

If one were to define conversion optimization, the definition would be quite simple: making a website simpler and easier for customers to use.

Have you ever made a purchase online? Filled out an online form for more information? Signed up for an online service? If yes to any of these, how was that experience? Easy? Frustrating? Keep those experiences in mind as you read the following.

Though conversion optimization techniques can range from the ridiculously simple to the incredibly complex, the process can be broken down into 3 steps: Research, Measure and Test.

Research

One of the most beneficial things you can do, both for your business in general as well as your conversion rate is to exactly define and then thoroughly research your target audience. Only when you really know the people you are trying to reach can you craft a compelling message that will get them to do what you want them to do.

Visit successful websites in your industry, as well as successful websites in different industries that cater to the same demographic, and make notes about the site. Go through the following steps on each site:

1. Start at the home page, search for and locate a product you want, and add it to your cart (or start at the home page and find a contact form, if lead generation is your goal.) Make a note of how many steps were in that process, whether it was easy or hard to find the product/form, and anything else that stood out to you.

Also pay attention to how you feel and the colors being used for backgrounds, headers and buttons. Colors can evoke an emotional response, so keep that in mind.

2. Spend some time looking at 3-4 product pages. Are the product photos clear, attractive, and detailed? Can you zoom in or rotate the product image? Is the description clear and compelling? Is the price clearly displayed? Does the product page mention things like free shipping, discounted pricing, or anything else that would motivate you to make that purchase? Is what you need to do to buy that product obvious? Is a return policy and/or privacy policy visible? Make notes about all of these things on at least 3 product pages.

3.  Make a purchase. If you don’t want to spend any money, you can stop at the point that credit card info is required, but it is highly recommended that you test the process from start to finish. Consider it an investment in market research. If you do lead generation, fill out the form with your real info (so you can see how they respond to potential customers later on.)

Do they force you to create an account to make a purchase? How many pages/steps are in the checkout process? Does it estimate your shipping costs? Can you ship to an address other than your billing address? Does it force you to duplicate information? Is it frustrating, or simple? Do you see security elements in place (VeriSign, TRUSTe, 128 bit encryption?) Are you comfortable making a purchase from the site?

4. See what happens after you make a purchase or fill out the form. Does the company contact you, and if so how quickly? By phone or email? Are they courteous and personable? Did the product arrive quickly, well packaged, as described?

By following these steps, you’ll learn what is and isn’t working for your competitors. Distill what you’ve learned into a list of things that you think were helping conversions. Keep in mind that at this step you are simply going to make a list of hypotheses, things you want to test on your site, so trust your gut. If any step in their process was difficult or made you uncomfortable, feel free to leave it off the list.

Measure

If you don’t have analytics in place, such as Google Analytics, then all your research and testing will have been in vain. You can’t very well conduct a test without data!

Make sure that your analytics tracking code is properly installed on each and every page of your website. The quickest way to do this is by using ObservePoint. If analytics code is improperly implemented or missing from a page, visitor interaction with that page will not make it into your analytics data. That’s a bad thing.

The most important thing you can do in your analytics program is to define and track your conversion funnels. Knowing the necessary steps to a conversion can help you to tighten the funnel and more effectively funnel visitors to the action you want them to take.

Monitor this funnel for pages that “leak”, where visitors are leaving or doing something other than what you want them to be doing. These leaky spots are where you want to test conversion optimization changes, fixing the leaks so to speak.

Test

Now that you have a list of things to test and the tools in place to measure, start testing them one by one on your website. The easiest way to do this is by using Google’s Website Optimizer tool. This tool integrates with a wide variety of content management systems, and allows you to A/B test changes to your pages by showing 2 different versions, rotating with every other visitor.

In this way you can test your hypotheses one by one, determining with hard data which is the best way to do things. DO NOT GUESS. Test everything. When you’ve had at least 500 people view each version of the page, you have the minimum amount of impressions you need to declare a winner. More is better, but 500 is enough.

Once you have a winner, implement that change on the site and move on to the next hypothesis. Test, measure, test, measure, working your way down the list. Add to the list whenever you think of or discover a new possibility and test some more.

By researching your customers and your competitors, testing potential changes, and monitoring how people interact with your website, you’ll be well on your way to increased conversions.

Guest Author: Sam McRoberts is the CEO of VUDU Marketing, a Utah SEO company. He has been involved with online marketing since 1999 and has worked with hundreds of clients, from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies.

I am still getting a lot of question about Google Instant, and I am sure it’s because everyone is concerned about their search engine optimization efforts, so I thought it may be best to clarify this in a post.

Google Instant is real time search that was launched a few months ago to help make searching faster and more user-friendly.  According to Google, here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:

• Dynamic Results – Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Predictions – One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
• Scroll to search – Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Google Instant works from any of the popular browsers, and the main difference between Google Instant and regular search is that Instant populates the results page before the user has completed typing their search query, giving you different suggestions. There’s no need to press Enter to generate search suggestions. Users instead select from the suggested terms or look below to see what websites come up as they are typing.

Searchers can also turn off Google Instant if they choose not to use it.

Most importantly, you can stop worrying. Google Instant does not kill SEO nor does it have any impact of rankings of search results.  Google Instant search results will show three paid ads and one organic listing while the auto-complete box is activated. This means it’s likely click-through-rates on the first and second listing will rise, while those in the third and fourth position will fall.  Thus, this may increase competition if you are using Google PPC.

If you haven’t already done so, here are a few best practices for Google Instant that you can do right away:

For SEO:

1. Edit your website’s meta titles on your main pages to include both the main keyword or phrase and a call to action.
2. Integrate new long tail search terms into your search engine optimization efforts. Use your analytics software to monitor these terms performance and find out how your users have adapted and what kind of impact it made.

For PPC:

1. Refine your negative keyword lists as necessary to lessen the chance of your ads are not displayed for less relevant terms.
2. Monitor click-through-rates carefully because many advertisers will be focusing on broader terms, and this can lead to a lot of competition.

If you need more information, there were a couple of excellent article written about Google Instant.  These will help you make changes to your SEO and PPC plans, if necessary:

Google Instant 101

Google Instant – 10 Things Marketing Teams Need to Know

Are you still using Google regular search or have you switched to Google Instant?

Dealing with clients having very high expectations that are hard to meet is not an uncommon thing for search engine optimization (SEO) providers. Since SEO is an always changing industry, and techniques and methods get outdated very soon, lots of misconceptions take birth in the mind of potential clients which eventually gets transformed into unrealistic expectations. So, it becomes very important for every SEO provider to clear all kinds of misconceptions a client may have before taking on optimization projects.

Here, we’ll cover the most common unrealistic SEO expectations clients usually have and how they should be addressed.

1. Speed of ranking improvement – Normally clients have a misconception that the amount of time required to take a website from page 2 to page 1 is the same as the amount of time it takes to bring a website from page 3 to page 2 of search results. Ranking of a website depends on many factors (links, domain age, content, onsite factors, etc.,  and the amount of effort and time required increases exponentially when one has to compete with websites on page 1 as compared to time and effort required when competing with websites on page 3 and so on.
2. You can’t rank for everything – The other unrealistic expectation clients usually have is the desire to rank for all the keywords in their niche.  Only the most relevant pages can rank at the top for a keyword, and one can’t make a website highly relevant to all important keywords. Also, since most SEO’s work on a fixed monthly budget, increasing the number of keywords will dilute the overall impact for each keyword. So either they have to increase their budgets or limit themselves to specific set of keywords.
3. All backlinks are same – Time and again, we see clients who think that all links require the same amount of effort and are of the same quality, which enables to take decisions on the basis of number of links (i.e., a link from a free link directory is similar to editorial link from an authority domain). A quality backlink is much more effective than hundreds of spammy poor quality links. So, one should consider both quality and quantity of links before hiring a new SEO provider.
4. Rankings not traffic – Some clients also get too obsessed with rankings of their website that everything else – conversion rate, web design and traffic quality take the back seat.  Rankings are important but are not very effective if the traffic they send is not relevant, or if the website is poorly designed that it can’t convert traffic into leads.
5. Fixed targets – Most clients have fixed targets like “we want to rank number one for web design in three months,” which is a wrong way to judge the performance of a SEO provider. The effectiveness of a SEO program must be evaluated on the basis of overall improvement – increase in traffic, increase in business, and increase in number of subscribers and so on.
6. Rankings shouldn’t drop – Do not panic if rankings of your website drop by a few positions. You are not the only one who wants to be at the top.  Also, search engine algorithms keep on changing, so ranking fluctuations are very normal in SEO. As long as you are seeing improvement in traffic and in your business, your SEO program is performing well.

Do you provide SEO services and would like to share some more misconceptions clients have? Please feel free to share them with us in the comments below.

Guest Author: David Smith works for Conversion Rate Optimization Company Invesp and enjoys writing on SEO, landing pages, conversion optimization and affiliate marketing.

It hasn’t been long since Google stated that they would officially be taking speed into account as a ranking factor in their search engine algorithm. Although it is only one of approximately 200 ranking factors, it is a rather significant one from a usability perspective.

Having a slow website doesn’t necessarily mean that you will struggle to rank within Google, but the search engine ultimately wants to put user experience first – so if your website has great content, is well targeted, and has a fast load time – you stand a good chance of achieving search engine visibility across a core level of terms.

1. Combine External Files

Even modern-day browsers can only load a set number of external files at one time, and for image and JavaScript heavy websites, this means that they have to go through a number of iterations to be able to efficiently load your content for the users. As an example, a website may have 5 external CSS files, 4 JavaScript files, and 10 images on one page. By combining the external CSS into one single file, and doing the same with JavaScript, you can reduce that load time quite significantly.

2. Reduce Database Calls

Each time your website has to query your database for user information (or other data); it is time that is added on to the overall performance of the page. By using static information where possible (such as hard-coded page titles and META data), you can reduce the amount of calls made to the database, which will ultimately reduce the load time of the website.

3. Image Optimization

There are many different things that can be done to images to reduce the overall load time of a website – with the two main ones being file size and utilizing image sprites. Try compressing images before uploading them to your web server, and reducing the file size when saving using programs like Adobe Photoshop. Image sprites are another great way to shave seconds off the load time, by combining common images (such as navigational buttons) into one interchangeable image that is positioned based on absolute CSS rules.

4. Choose an Appropriate Web Server

Many business owners who don’t necessarily know a lot about the internet may make the mistake of choosing a cheap hosting package when looking at website options. Although cheap packages can be great for low-traffic websites, they can really hamper popular ones. Select a web server that will meet the bandwidth and technical requirements of your website, ensuring it is in the target location of your main user’s country.

5. Put JavaScript at the End of the Web Page

Although most web development tutorials encourage you to include the external JavaScript files and code within the top of the web document, it is actually more efficient to place it at the end of the file. If you are linking to a JavaScript document that is particularly large, or one that is hosted elsewhere, it can sometimes slow the whole website down due to it being one of the first things that are loaded. Place any external JS files at the bottom of the web file, that way the main content will load first, and the user will be able to at least begin looking at your website while the remaining files load.

6. Avoid Flash or Image Based Websites

This should be a given with today’s websites, but it is shocking how many sites are built solely using flash, or with large images used instead of background colours. Avoid things such as flash intros to your website (or at least have a “skip” button if you simply MUST have one), and avoid using large flash banners and navigational menus. JavaScript and AJAX can do a lot of what flash was once famous for – and it is much more web efficient.

Guest Author: This was a guest post by Axon IT – a Manchester IT support company catering to businesses throughout the UK. Axon IT removes the stress and headaches of dealing with IT, and can be found posting regularly on their blog.

Website owners are always seeking new ways to improve their organic rankings and to gain some popularity through SEO practices. There are several known techniques to help improve a site’s SEO such as title text, keywords, and various link building options, but one of the fastest and easiest ways to gain SEO points while incorporating all of the above is often overlooked by many website owners. It is Blogging.

Many webmasters will focus their SEO efforts on their static site and overlook the added juice blogging can lend to it. Because a blog can be updated easily with new content, it offers more of an opportunity to try various methods of SEO to see which work best. Let’s take a look at a few.

1. More Indexed pages, High Authority

A simple commercial site normally contains 7-10 pages so you can only get these many pages in the search engine index. But with the help of blog you can easily add fresh content at regular intervals. For e.g. – If you update your blog 5 times a day, 20 times a month, at the end of year you’d be having 240 more pages in the search Index as compared to other sites. And, higher is the number of your pages in search engine index, more will be the chances to get found by your target audience.

2. You can target more Keywords

Keywords are a very important part of SEO, but often hard to figure out or target. While you may be attempting to target one keyword or keyword phrase, your analytics may tell you that your customers are getting to your site through another.

In the case of a website, you would have to rebuild each page in order to accommodate these new keywords. This is very time consuming and costly. However, if that same site has a blog, a post (or two) could easily be created to target the new keyword or phrase. It is much easier to add a post in a blog. Plus it is far less confusing to your visitors.

3. Split Testing

Blogs are a great way to split test your information. You can easily create two posts, covering the same topic, but written with different keywords or offering a different product or service from your site. Then, you can check to see which post resulted in more clicks to your product pages. You can always eliminate the post that is not working well and maybe you will get lucky and find that both were equally successful.

4. Natural Link Profile

Blogs with unique and high quality content acts as link magnets. A well researched and written article is more likely to attract natural links than a pure commercial website. Not only it will help you in your organic rankings but will also give a natural look to your overall link building campaign.

5. More Internal Links Mean More Time On Your Site

Blogs also makes your visitors to stay longer on your site. By creating internal link chains, you can easily connect your visitor from post to post, feeding them more information about the benefits of your product or service as they go. The more time they spend, the more invested they become, and the more likely they are to buy in.

Don’t overlook the SEO benefits of having a blog for your website. Here we have listed a few well known techniques, but there are many other ways you can use a blog to gain a lead in the search engine wars. Just look at it as a way to offer a constant flow of information to new and established visitors and you will surely think of numerous ways to use it to your benefit.

Guest Author: Patsy works for Go-gulf.com, a web design Dubai Company that provides web design solution in Tehran, Sharjah and Middle East.

Millions of people from all over the world produce content for the Internet on a daily basis. It is almost impossible to keep track of everything that is written and posted. Search engines are the number one tool that people use to sift through all of the content that is available on the Internet. However, when people search for something, they usually end up clicking through only the first few results that show up. This means that you need to optimize your content for search engines. This will allow your content to show up as one of the top results when people search for the topic you are writing about. However, it is important to place too much priority on search engine optimization. You will also want to make sure that your content is high quality and pleasing to readers.

Producing Good Content for the Internet

You need to have solid, relevant content before you can even start to think about search engine optimization. You should try to set yourself apart from the thousands of other articles available on the Internet. You need to offer people something that they cannot get anywhere else. Do some research on what is already available about your topic. You should think about ways that you can improve upon what is already out there and make it more relevant to readers. The content that you produce should also be well written. Nobody wants to read something that is filled with errors and misspellings. You should write in a way that is clear to your reader. You have to understand your audience and give them what they want.

Search Engines Use Keywords

After you have produced content that is worthy of being read, you need to understand how search engines work. Search engines enter all of the text on a website into a very large database. Search engines go through this database when something is being searched for. Websites are ranked based on relevance. The relevance of a website is usually based on how often the word or phrase that was searched for appears.

You should select one keyword or a couple of keyword phrases that you think best represent the content that you have created. You will want to make sure that these keywords appear throughout your article. However, you should be careful to not overdo it. You want to have your keywords appear naturally throughout your writing. It should not be obvious to the reader that you are stuffing your content with keywords.

Search Engines Like New Content

A lot of search engines will display new content ahead of content that has been on the Internet for months. This means that you should always be updating and refreshing your content for websites to make sure you rank highly on search engines. Constantly updating content will also help you attract new readers and keep old ones. People will be interested in frequently visiting your site to see if any new information has been posted. In addition, adding new content will allow you to practice your writing skills. You will find that your new articles will flow better and be more readable. You will also get more practice in using keywords so your content will be optimized for search engines.

Do you do keyword research before you create your content?  What content strategy have you found helpful for your business?

It’s easy to take the idea of search engine optimization for granted. Yeah, the marketing landscape is abuzz with all things SEO today, but did you even know what the term “search engine optimization” meant ten years ago? The term has no doubt covered a lot of ground in a short period of time.

But let’s forget about SEO for a brief moment (gasp!). Trust me, it’ll be OK.

We spend a lot of time and money trying to make our businesses look good to Google. Maybe it’s time we listen to what Google already likes about our business and do something about that.

“What the hell does that mean?” Let me explain via a personal experience.

Shortly after I started blogging a few years ago, I experienced a less-than-optimal situation at my local gym. With one post, I ranted about it. Soon thereafter, I decided to try to be a small part of the solution instead, so I wrote a post filled with my own gym marketing tips. It was a short-lived and somewhat related departure from my normal topics (namely, marketing leadership), so I immediately returned to my regularly scheduled programs.

Here’s the deal: I’m not a gym marketing expert. I have expertise in certain areas of marketing, and I have frequented lots of gyms over the years, but I’ve never really combined the two. I was simply just giving my unsolicited advice on how gym owners could make things work a little better.

However, Google doesn’t quite see it this way. In Google’s eyes, I’m an authority on just about any phrase related to gym marketing. I get a minimum of 20 visits a day from people looking specifically for gym marketing tips. It wasn’t my plan, and it wasn’t on purpose. I’m not sure if the post is constructed well or if it’s simply a void niche, but Google has decided what I have to say on this topic matters.

Which got me thinking ….

How to Leverage Surprising Inbound Keyword Phrases

Let’s face it: expertise is in the eye of the beholder. If Google thinks I know what I’m talking about, and comments and emails and other analytics confirm that I know what I’m talking about, then maybe I know what I’m talking about. But how do I take advantage of such an unexpected gift?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but my pondering has led me to these six options, and I’d love to hear more.

1. Accept advertising for the specific post. Any niche is going to have its major players. If Google’s looking to you when it comes to certain keywords, then these top dogs probably should, too. If you’re entire site isn’t dedicated to the topic, then run-of-site advertising probably doesn’t make sense to them. But an ad per post probably would. Email them and make them aware of the traffic you’re pulling for specific keyword phrases, and then give them a price. You could do banners or simple text links. This is probably the easiest and most immediate way to leverage this traffic. In my example, I could go find software programs for gyms or even authors who write on the topic of gym marketing.
2. Build your list. Forget cash, at least directly. Build your email list or subscriber level with a special, targeted call to action within the post. Or set up an autoresponder that expands on the specific topic. Then, hopefully, your delivery of valuable content over time will build trust, which in turn could lead to business.
3. Create an information product. eBooks, white papers, videos, automated presentations, video, podcast, whatever. If your ideas on the niche have legs, let ‘em loose by creating a more robust information product. You could give it away and leverage the list-building and linking to your site as your form of currency, or you could sell these items at a reasonable price. Just be sure to link the title of the product to the keywords that are most often bringing people to the site. Might as well give them exactly what they’re looking for.
4. Use affiliate links that make sense. Whether you’re keeping it easy with a simple Amazon.com affiliate program or something a little more robust with a service like Commission Junction, affiliates oftentimes take a lot of the grunt work out of selling. Find some products that fit your niche and just post them. Or you could find creators of products that would make sense for you to peddle and offer to set up an affiliate program for them. Then everybody’s winning.
5. Manufacture your own hard good. Go ahead and go old school. Make an actual, tangible product, be it a book, a widget or whatever. No need to feel confined to the online space if an offline product is what people are looking for.
6. Build a company around it. If you’re really feeling ballsy, and if the niche is really ripe for the picking, and if you’re passionate about the niche, then maybe there’s a business waiting for you here. Just be careful: opportunities like this are great at taking your focus off of what you’re really good at it. Make sure you enjoy centering your business around this new niche, or else you’ll be miserable.

Remember to harness and harvest the gifts that Google gives you every single day. Google will let you know where you really stick out. If you can figure out a way to leverage it, you’re a step ahead.

I have no idea which of the above ideas I’ll move forward with, if any. If you were me, what would you do? What other ideas do you have for ways to leverage surprising niche keyword traffic?

Guest Author: Brett Duncan offers common sense for marketing leaders at his blog, MarketingInProgress.com. He spends his days as Senior Director of Global Online Solutions for Mannatech, and his nights chasing a crazy little boy around the house in between brief moments of cheering on the Texas Rangers. He lives in Irving, Texas. Sign up for his free newsletter now if you like practical, thought-provoking marketing tips.

After a partnership agreement was signed exactly one year ago, Yahoo! has finally started testing organic and paid listings from Microsoft Bing this week. Yahoo! states if all goes as planned, users should expect Yahoo!’s organic search results to be powered by Bing around August/September.

The organic search transition will happen automatically. However, if you perform SEO on your site and ranking high in these search engines is important to you, I recommend keeping a close eye on any updates and tips from both Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Yahoo has already provided its users with three valuable tips:

1. Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that work best for you.
2. Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate.
3. Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Microsoft platform crawler, as Bing listings will be displayed for approximately 30% of search queries after this change, according to comScore.

I also found the Yahoo! FAQ page to be extremely helpful in answering some the questions I had.

Here’s to a smooth transition!