Cheow Yu Yuan – March 27, 2009
If your website is not indexed by search engines, it will not appear on the search engine listings. Therefore, when your website is live, the first thing you must do is to let the search engines notice your website and index it. In this article, let me share with you 5 ways to get your site indexed by today:
1. Submitting a XML sitemap to search engines. The xml sitemap includes links to every page of your website. It is a file that you can submit to search engines to get your pages indexed. By submitting your xml sitemap, you will notify the search engines about your website and index every page of it. You can upload your sitemap to Google by creating a free Google Webmaster account.
2. Create a HTML sitemap page on your website. A HTML sitemap is very different from a xml sitemap file. A HTML sitemap is a page on your website that is visible to your visitors. It will list down all the links to every page of your site. This allows visitors to navigate your site easily and allow search engine spiders to follow the links and discover all pages.
3. Place HTML text links on your website. Search engine spiders follow HTML text links to discover other pages of your website. Therefore, you must ensure that you use HTML text links for simple navigation menu so that search engine spiders can follow. Also, you should hyperlink keywords within your content and point them to other pages of your site. This is a good way to tell search engines what pages are important.
4. Directory submission. Submit your website URL to a list of SEO-friendly directories. DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and BOTW are important directories that you must submit your website to. It is, however, not all directory submission is free. Some may require you to pay a small fee for your website submission.
Category : Blog &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO
Keyword research determines which keywords you should be targeting with the SEO. Most people think that they know which keywords they should target. Instinct can be a great resource, but it can also be misleading and is almost always not enough. For example, “search engine optimization” gets an estimated 16,000 searches a day while “search engine marketing” gets an estimated 8,800 searches a day. If your gut tells you to target “search engine marketing”, you may get great rankings, but it would only get you half of the traffic that you could have had if you had targeted and ranked well for “search engine optimization”. There are also keywords that you may not be able to rank well for without a lot of time and significant amount of link building regardless of how well you optimize your site. In addition, there are keywords that other people will use to search for what your site offers that you would never even think of. So, in addition to letting you know which keywords are more popular, the research can also provide new keywords to target.
Drawing on the analogy in our search marketing parable (found on the Church Marketing Online blog), optimizing your website without first doing keyword research is like trying to pick apples from a tree without first checking to see if there are any apples on it or if the apples are within your reach. You could end up putting in a lot of effort but going home with little fruit from your labor. So it’s a key component of search engine optimization.
What Do I Research?
There are two main aspects to keyword research. The first is popularity, how often are keywords actually searched for. Unfortunately, Google, Yahoo, and MSN don’t share the actual number of searches for specific keywords; however, there are a few tools online which are generally thought to be pretty accurate and Google does offer a free tool that gives the “approximate” number of searches for some keywords. The keyword popularity tools (other than Google’s) use the search data from a number of other smaller search engines along with a few algorithms to predict how many searches are being made for specific keywords. It’s not perfect, but it gives you an idea of which keywords are most popular. Since Google’s figures come from…well…Google, they are probably the most accurate, but even their figures are only estimates and I’ve found that many keywords return a “Not enough data” result. You may wish to use both Google and another keyword popularity tool.
The second aspect to keyword research is competition research. Competition research starts with analyzing your web pages to determine how competitive your site is both in general and for specific keywords. This is sometimes referred to as page strength. I should note that there are really two aspects to page strength, the general strength of a site and the specific strength of a page within the site. For the sake of simplicity, in this article I will use “web page” for both. The next step is to examine the keywords themselves to see how competitive they are. This is sometimes called keyword difficulty. Determining keyword difficulty is done partially by examining how competitive the pages are that rank well for this keyword, though other methods can be helpful as well. This can be tricky for two reasons.
Category : Blog &Marketing &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO
A brochure should address the most important needs of your target audience and clearly communicate your company’s positioning — the most important benefit you will deliver to your customer, and the reason why you are uniquely well suited to deliver that benefit.
Each day on the site, Sprinkles announces a secret word, such as “ganache” or “bunny,” and the first 25 or 50 people to show up at any of its five stores around the country and whisper that word get a free cupcake.
“On Facebook, we can ask our customers what’s the next location they want,” Nelson said. “What do they think of our next flavor? It’s an amazing way to communicate with our fans.”
Facebook is not just for friends anymore. The free social networking site — blocked in some workplaces as a potential time-waster — is increasingly becoming an inexpensive marketing tool for small businesses.
Sprinkles is among a growing number of small businesses taking advantage of a relatively new program on Facebook, one that allows them to claim their name, become visible even to folks who aren’t on the site, and stay in close contact with their customers. The business, in effect, can act like any other person on Facebook, posting status updates and seeing what its fans are doing.
Category : Blog
A growing number of businesses are making Facebook an indispensible part of hanging out their shingles. Small businesses are using it to find new customers, build online communities of fans and dig into gold mines of demographic information.
“You need to be where your customers are and your prospective customers are,” said Clara Shih, author of “The Facebook Era” (Pearson Education, 2009). “And with 300 million people on Facebook, and still growing, that’s increasingly where your audience is for a lot of products and services.”
Start Small
For most businesses, Facebook Pages (distinct from individual profiles and Facebook groups) are the best place to start. Pages allow businesses to collect “fans” the way celebrities, sports teams, musicians and politicians do. There are now 1.4 million Facebook Pages and they collect more than 10 million fans every day, according to the site.
Businesses can easily create a Web presence with Facebook, even if they don’t have their own Web site (most companies still should maintain a Web site to reach people who don’t use Facebook or whose employers block access to the site). Businesses can claim a vanity address so that their Facebook address reflects the business name, like www.facebook.com/Starbucks. Facebook pages can link to the company’s Web site or direct sales to e-commerce sites like Ticketmaster or Amazon.
Category : Blog
As businesses large and small are adapting to the rapidly evolving new media platforms, several case studies show how they are using Twitter to attract customers and close sales.
These companies, including Etsy, JetBlue, NakedPizza, Pepsi, and Levi’s, are leading the way and showing small and large businesses that micro-blogging can be a powerful sales tool. From coupons to simple product updates, Twitter offers an opportunity to connect and maintain customer relationships.
Among the many case studies of companies that use Twitter to increase sales is Dell Outlet. Dell Outlet, which refurbishes and sells Dell computers, uses coupons to drive traffic directly from Twitter to its Web site. The Twitter Web site case study states: “Do the coupons work? Big time. Not only do they get retweeted and picked up by coupon sites, both of which spread the brand name, they also drive sales. Dell Outlet has booked more than $3 million in revenue attributable to its Twitter posts.”
Category : Advertising &Blog &Marketing
Jason Sadler - Wearing T-Shirts
I was intrigued by this article here. Don’t feel like a fool!
From the why-didn’t-I-think-of-that file, we present Jason Sadler, a man whose full-time job is wearing T-shirts.
[We’ll pause for a moment to give you a chance to kick yourself.]
Here’s how it works: Every day, he wears a T-shirt from a different company. He blogs about it. Tweets about it. Uploads photos. Plus, he does a live-streaming video on YouTube every day at 3pm, where he answers viewer questions.
“I am a full-time T-shirt wearer,” Sadler explains.
Companies pay him anywhere from $1 to $365 to wear their shirt, based on the day of year. Jan. 1 is $1, the 2nd is $2, and so on, until Dec. 31, which is — you guess it — $365.
Category : Blog
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fairly hot topic these days. Every business wants to know how to get found online.
Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends is running a short information-packed webinar entitled:
Getting Found in Search Engines, for Beginners
These two bullet points jumped out at me, since I have clients who are trying to navigate this new frontier:
- Simple techniques you can do yourself to improve your website so you can get found by potential customers in the search engines more easily
- When and how to hire SEO professionals — over the years I have hired a number of search optimization and marketing experts and I will share some tips for what to look for
I’m planning to listen in and tweet about it. Please join in, if your schedule allows. If not, you can check the Twitter feed using the hashtag #SMBTOOLS. I’m a fan of TweetChat.com for these sorts of events, so you can use the hash tag to enter the room, as they call it.
Category : Advertising &Blog &Business &search engine optimization &SEO
What is the purpose of a business card? It should be designed to attract and acquire new customers to your product or services. It is not only one of the most cost effective advertisements, a networking and lead-generating tool, Not to mention a visual representation of you and your business. The bottom line is if it is not bringing you business and presenting a professional image of you and your company, it is not working.
For most people, especially for those just starting in business, the business card is the only marketing tool used.
People frequently think a business card that can be designed and printed on their home computer will be a good enough tool to get them noticed and remembered. The truth is business cards are one of the most overlooked of all business tools. A well-designed, professional card makes a professional presence; a homemade business card typically gives the impression of an amateur taking a stab at being in business.
Please post your comments below:
Category : Advertising &Blog &Business &Business Cards &Marketing
I think this is a really informative article, especially if you are trying like everyone else to get your site listed higher in the search engines. It is small things like this that always takes you over your competitors.
In great news, Google, Yahoo and MSN have agreed upon a XML sitemap standard.
What’s this mean to you? Well, you just need to create one XML sitemap and you can submit it to all three engines. I’ve been doing that for a while and didn’t seem to have any problem but now it’s official.
Category : Advertising &Blog &Business &Business Cards &Marketing &search engine optimization &Search Engine Ranking &SEO &Sitemaps
