Successful Website Design
Marketing on the Internet starts with an effective website. A good website is much more than a pretty design – it needs to be well designed, well worded and well structured for search engines to present optimum value. At the same time, it must be designed with the ultimate goal in mind: converting visitors into prospects and converting prospects into buyers. All of these factors will have a bearing on the ultimate success of your website and online marketing campaign, so it’s important to get it right from the start to make sure you’re reaping maximum return from your marketing dollars.
Appearing Natural in the Eyes of the Search Engines
The search engine optimization game is constantly evolving, and to keep on top of it you need to maintain consistent link building efforts while also keeping an eye on the developments and buzz around the online community. Some of the most valuable information available comes from blogs and industry publications, and keeping up to date with it is essential to being able to effectively optimize your website.
As almost any source of SEO information will tell you, there is a real emphasis on appearing ‘natural’. What is meant by ‘natural’ is to structure your link building in such as way as to make it appear completely unforced – to make it look to search engines like your site has merited links from a diverse range of sources, using diverse anchor text and linking to a range of internal pages. This is harder than it seems, and the sophistication of Google in particular makes it even harder to pull off. So what info do you need to optimize your site in a way that won’t quickly flag the attention of the search engine algorithms?
Website Promotion Using SEO
In terms of search engine optimization, the on-page attributes are only part of the equation. A successful SEO campaign also requires link-building, which means garnering links with your keyword as the anchor text (replacing ‘Click Here’ with ‘YOUR KEYWORD’) from other websites.
Search engines count one-way links to your website as votes – the more votes you get, the better your site ranks. This is complicated slightly by the fact that some votes are significantly more weighted than others. For example, a link from a .gov domain will (all things being equal) be seen as more credible than a link from a .info domain, and will ultimately be of more benefit to your search engine placement. The trick is, therefore, to pick up as much link-weight as possible, and SEO experts are almost unanimous in their belief that this is best achieved through a natural mixture of both high and low credibility links.
Effective Anchor Text To Improve Rankings
The ‘anchor text’ is the keyword or key phrase you use when linking from some another website to your own. This is the hyperlinked text that is visible to the human eye. In order to improve your Google search engine rankings, make sure you also focus on which anchor texts you are using when building links back to your website.
To see an example of how powerful this anchor text is, go to Google and do a search for the phrase “click here”. At the time of this writing, there are over 1 billion results when searching for that phrase. It would be almost impossible to get anywhere near the top of those results. This spot is currently held by the adobe site, due to the fact that many websites have linked to the adobe site with the phrase “click here”.
Online Searches have finally overtaken phone books
Online search engines have replaced phone books for 54% of Americans searching for local businesses. As a result, it is now more important than ever for businesses to ensure that they have a high-quality online presence. If not, they may never truly realize the power and potential of the Internet to deliver qualified, low-cost sales leads.
It’s widely accepted that businesses that market online have the ability to both reduce their overall marketing costs while also reaching more targeted prospects in order to add to their bottom line. The Internet is no-longer up-and-coming: it’s here and now, and if you’re not leveraging it to its full potential for your business, you are significantly reducing the effectiveness of your marketing. If you’re currently using direct mail or display advertising as a part of your overall strategy, the Internet can help slash these costs and can even improve response rates from within the local community.
