Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category.

The vital performance metrics of an SEO Campaign

Brainpulse asked:




Once you are through with the process of optimizing your website, the next big thing you wish to perform is judging the overall performance of your efforts .i.e. your website. After all, it is all about gauging your well-planned SEO strategies that have been focused to accomplish better performance and a high ranking on major search engines. Every search engine optimization campaign is devised with the objective of gaining top rankings on the search engine results pages. However, to actually attain your most preferred position on the search engine index, it is mandatory for you to understand and then implement the important performance metrics that are responsible for getting your website at the top spot and also help you uphold your position on the search engine results page.

Mentioned below are some of the most important metrics that you need to assess while viewing the overall SEO performance of a website.

Rankings: The main motive behind the purpose of getting the top most ranks on the search engines is actually exposing your website to a much bigger and more potential customer base. In fact, this is the reason why it is believed that your ranking is directly proportional to the quality of traffic that your website receives.  Moreover, better quality traffic ensures better prospects of conversions.

Traffic: Traffic referred by search engines is of no use if it does not deliver your targeted visitors. Hence, receiving heavy volume traffic is worthless if it does not carry your potential customers. To maximize traffic conversion, the website owner has to be very specific and particular about his keywords; a website must contain all well researched and most sought-after keywords. Statistically, it is basically the rate of conversion that measures and decides the success rate of a particular website. As an important metric for measuring the SEO success of your website, it is critical that you utilize the right set of keywords and bring the right kind of traffic to increase your conversions.

Conversions: Conversion rate is very important to evaluate a site’s SEO performance. Conversions are actually the number of visitors acting upon your desired action such as buying your product or registering to your site. It can be openly associated with take rates or interest levels of the visitors. Hence, in order to improve your conversion rate, it is quite mandatory for you to work on improving your take rates as well. In fact, things that can improve your conversion rates are concise and easy to understand online forms, protecting personal and confidential information, simple navigations and etc.

Take Rates: And finally, the take rate, which is basically, the percentage of visitors showing interest in your product or service. However, this rate does not indicate that all visitors will eventually turn into buyers. It only provides an estimation of people actually interested in your business.



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How "White Hat" Is Your Web Site?

Kevin Sinclair asked:




Without traffic, a website will struggle to fulfill its purpose, whether it is to inform, entertain or to sell. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques are important because a website or blog that is optimized is more likely to be found on Google, MSN or Yahoo. This in turn leads to more traffic. It is in the selection of these techniques that the differences between white and black hats can be seen.

In the old Western movies, the one wearing the white hat was seen as the good guy; the one wearing black was the bad guy (and the one wearing gray was the shifty guy who did whatever benefited him). In the world of SEO, these terms have significantly different meanings – although some people take the moral viewpoint that the white hat is still the ‘good guy’. On the other hand those who follow black hat techniques would say that being black hat is about competing with the search engines while white hat is about competing with your fellow webmasters.

White hat is the term used to describe techniques and methods that fully comply with the Search Engine guidelines (or as some like to say it is ‘doing everything Google tells you to do’). For example, writing original articles for your site would be considered white hat, while the use of software to generate thousands of pages of content automatically would be considered black hat.

Of course, nothing is that simple in reality and there are numerous areas that would be considered gray. For example, using some form of content generation software to modify PLR (private label rights) material to generate pages lies somewhere between these two extremes.

Admittedly, automatically generated black hat sites can generate some serious short-term profits. However, the search engines are getting smarter with their algorithms and when they discover the use of black hat techniques will generally de-index the pages of a site so that it won’t receive any more traffic from that source. In particular, if the software being used for automatic generation leaves telltale signs, known as a footprint, the process of de-indexing can be rapid.

The other main problem is that many of these techniques generate content that the search engine spiders love, but are useless for humans (although it can make for a laugh to try to read some of it).

White hat techniques focus on developing content that is original and useful to both spiders and people. The main drawback with white hat strategies are that it takes longer to reach your desired goal, but the results can be significant when you reach there. The other nice thing is that there is much less chance that you will be de-indexed by the search engines and that your site, and any profits generated, will be around for the long haul.



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SEO Copywriting Guidelines for Results

Kevin Yeaman asked:




SEO Copywriting Skills Learned Can Help You Attain High Rankings

Have you ever wondered why other websites rank higher than yours for any given competitive keywords targeted?  One of the elements you may be missing is your SEO Copywriting skills which are necessary to author content that achieves the desired results.

You’re Writing for Several Audiences Simultaneously

Always keep your target audience in mind when generating content to be published on the world wide web.  The purpose of SEO Copywriting is to achieve the results of attracting search engine spiders to worthy content that is fetched and read by humans seeking desired products, services, or information. 

Human Audience

Words and thoughts on the page must be organized in a manner that makes sense and compels action, garners emotional response to their needs and desires, and at the same time deliver persuasive attempts to guide visitors towards your “Call to Action”.  Pages should be constructed using desired keywords, or keyword phrases, that match queries in search engines.  If a person prominently sees the exact words they’re searching for, the page will likely be relevant to them.  Your main challenge is to write intelligently using higher level vocabulary content to make it interesting and engaging but also make your web pages easy on the eyes, and simple for site visitors to hone into exactly the information they’re needing.  Scatter a few professional images to add color.

Search Engine Audience

One of our useful copywriting tips for website content is to make sure your page length amounts to 200-300+ words or more.  After completing your keyword research you can design one page to rank for one or more keywords.  Primary keywords should be prominently displayed in headings matched to Header tags (eg. H1 tag) or secondary content (eg. H2 tag.)  Keyword density should not exceed 3-4% and remember to place your most important keywords near the front or top (Keyword Prominence), and highlight them with attributes such as Bold, Underline, Italics, Larger font etc.  If the web page is important make sure to connect it with internal links originating from the same site, as well at acquired inbound links from other like-topic sites.  Remember, a search engine is only a computer applying software with instructions called algorythms.  Major search engines want well organized content that is Unique, Relevant, and has a purpose.

Call To Action

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of copywriting is to compel your reader to do something whether it’s to complete a form, download a document, subscribe to a newsletter, make a purchase or take the trial offer etc.  With carefully crafted content you develop a trust factor and your call to action can then be easily reached.  Give people a reason to do business with you, versus the thousands of other sites and sales pitches.  Product differentiation could be your competitive advantage if you can present exactly what’s so special about your offering and why the visitor should not delay but do it NOW.



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