blogging 102

Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes If you are in the market to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) firm, selecting the right vendor can be a daunting task. In recent years, SEO has gained immense popularity and acceptance as a formidable marketing technique, so it should come as no surprise that SEO firms are popping up in various shapes and sizes: one-person SEO consultancies, SEO-only firms, combined SEO/Development firms, traditional ad agencies offering SEO, and even offshore SEO enterprises. But which of these options will deliver the best results for your business? Which can you trust to suggest – and possibly implement – changes to your site? The fact is that true Web marketing success requires knowing the web business inside-out, including programming, design, usability, and SEO. Here are four reasons to hire a firm that offers both SEO and Web development: 1. Get a truly search friendly site. SEO-only firms tend to be focused on top rankings. While rankings... 

Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes One of the biggest reasons people visit websites is to get information. If you can regularly provide fresh, quality content on your website you can expect to be rewarded by visitors and return visitors. What’s more, you will be rewarded by the search engines. I recommended that you add new and original content to your site as often as possible, ideally once a day. Regularly adding fresh and original content: - Keeps your site visitors coming back - Continually adds value to your website - Makes people more comfortable buying from your site - Establishes yourself as an authority in your industry - Greatly helps your site rank higher in search engines All of the above factors translate into revenue. We all know how hard adding original and fresh content is, especially if you’re the business owner. You have to be original, creative, organized, thoughtful and motivated, and above all, able to write. So what’s a website owner or business owner... 

Reading time: 14 – 24 minutes In few ways RSS is pretty much identical to HTML, the language normally put in place to create websites. As is the case with HTML, webmasters opting for traditional search engine optimization techniques when creating an RSS feed will come to know that their RSS feed is getting additional exposure and interest. Below mentioned measures can go a long way in optimizing an RSS feed for search engines: 1.) First and foremost, the title should consist of pivotal search terms. In simple terms, the title should be up to the mark and not misleading, while still pinpointing keywords. In an ideal scenario, the title should generate curiosity among the readers to read on, not mislead them. 2.) Secondly, it is of utmost significance that you display RSS feeds properly. Theoretically speaking, majority of webmasters display their feeds as content on their website. Remember to use PHP, ASP or HTML when displaying a feed, as this can lead search engines to spider the... 

Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes We’ve all heard about it-it seems like all the buzz right now in the search engine marketing industry is RSS. If you’re a website owner, than there are two ways your website can benefit from using RSS on your website-you can provide an RSS feed or, for the not-so-technically-inclined folks like me, you can use an RSS feed to keep your site’s content fresh. RSS is a way to syndicate website content. According to Wikipedia, “RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by (amongst other things) news websites and weblogs…the RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data.” Wikipedia goes on to say that “A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled web pages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major web sites, as well... 

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes By Craige Stacey Recent studies suggest that more than 80% of new visitors to any web site get there as a result of a search engine query. If this study is to believed, it certainly suggests that working to get high rankings in the search engines might be the most effective thing you can do to bring traffic to your site. The following 12 design tips will help you get started in optimizing your site’s search engine placement. 1. Design for Specific Search Engines – there are hundreds of different search engines, but for best results you should design your site to take full advantage of the search criteria of the big three – Yahoo, Google and MSN. If you can get high rankings in these three, you won’t need to worry about the other search engines. Knowing how these search engines rank sites (as well as why they will penalize a site) is important. The rules change often, but the tips below are the most current. 2. Know your target audience....