Website Optimization Navigation And Visitor Tracking Explained

Writen by David Bain

What is website optimization?

SEO (Search engine optimization) is basically a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. Some optimization consultants aim to 'trick' search engines into artificially inflating a website's ranking by hiding 'keywords' in certain areas of a web page and swapping keyword links with irrelevant partners. Major search engines and other such consultants condem this approach. Although it might result in significant short-term gain, the risk is too great. If you want to maintain a strong, long-term relationship with search engines, you need to continually add original, relevant content to your website, clearly focusing on one topic and one set of keywords per page. All this has to be done within a good website design.

What is website navigation?

Poor website navigation is probably the easiest, quickest way to loose customers and keep them away. You need to make sure that both your customers and search engines can 'navigate' your website with ease. Stick to design standards. Make sure that every page uses that same template - same colours and basic design. Your customers will start seeing you as a brand. In addition, you need to make it very intuitive for your customers to find their way around. Use the top or left hand side of the page for any menus. It's also always good to include text links to each page and have a site map to make sure that search engines can find every page on your site as well.

What is website visitor tracking?

Visitor tracking will tell you where your website visitors are from, how long they are on your website for, which pages they viewed, who referred them to you and much, much more. This information will help you tailor your website content towards people who are already visiting you and help you improve on your conversion rates. There are several good free pieces of visitor tracking software that you can use such as Google Analytics or Statcounter if your hosting package doesn't offer an inclusive service. Once you're getting lots of visitors, you may choose to upgrade and pay for some additional statistics.

© Copyright 2006 www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz

David Bain is founder of the independent business articles resource, http://www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz BuildYourOwnBusiness offers the latest business news & management advice on how best to build your own business - business articles on Strategy, eBusiness, Change Management & much, much more.

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Local Search Optimization A Guide To Getting Started

Writen by Esoos Bobnar

While searching the web these days, it's hard not to notice all those little Local tabs sprouting up in the vicinity of the search field on virtually every major search engine. Within the past year, the race has been to integrate a plethora of advanced features into local search capabilities.

Already we're seeing features like customer reviews and ratings, storefront and product photos, detailed maps with directions, hours of operation, forms of accepted payment, integration with cell phones, and much more is promised to follow. Picture a million paper phone books combined - on steroids and capable of providing instant results for an information-hungry and time-challenged customer base. The potential for local search is really quite staggering!

So what exactly is local search, and how can you best position your business to take advantage of it?

In a nutshell, local search is essentially the Internet's version of the phone book. The difference being that this "phone book" is much faster and far more responsive. For example, suppose I'm in Boston staying at the Harbor View Hotel and in need of a haircut? No problem. I Just enter haircut followed by the zip code of the hotel where I'm staying - 02114 - and I instantly find Richard's Haircutting for Men a scant 0.4 miles east and with directions.

All that took about 30 seconds from concept to completion leaving me with a feeling of satisfaction that no regular phone book could ever provide. I'm now addicted to local search after only a single dose! Throw away the phone book, never mind the concierge.

Now, if that little demo hasn't yet convinced you, chew on this recent finding...

70 percent of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services... Findings also suggest the Internet is poised to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource. Source: The Kelsey Group

Simply put, local search - including local search on mobile devices - is about to dominate the world of brick-n-mortar marketing. Ready or not, here it comes! ...we suggest you get ready now, before it starts costing you a fortune to negotiate the learning curve. Oh, and get used to the fact that the big yellow phone book is well on its way to becoming nothing more than a cheesy doorstop.

How To Get Listed In Local Search

The first step to getting your business listed in Local Search is (surprise) to buy a listing in the offline Yellow Pages (yep, that cheesy doorstop-to-be we just dis'd). Here's why:

Most search engines get the bulk of their local business listings from just two companies: 1)infoUSA and 2)Acxiom.

...or else from Internet Yellow Pages sites which also derive their listings from these two companies. Both have compiled enormous databases containing detailed information on most of the businesses and consumer households in the US and Canada. And much of their data is pulled from your basic Yellow Page and Business White Page directories (aka, the cheesy doorstops).

The good news may be that your business already has a listing in your local Yellow Pages - if not, then you should get one! Don't worry about taking out a big colorful ad with lots of information about your company. We haven't any reason to believe that expensive ads offer any advantage in local search rankings. Nor does lots of business information in your Yellow Pages ad seem to enhance your local search listing's comprehensiveness. It appears to us that any Yellow Pages listing at all will get you included in most local search engines just fine.

By the way, InfoUSA has the more user-friendly website of the two. They provide a way for you to actually check to see if your site is listed with them by using their Directory Assistance Plus web search. And, if you find your business is not listed or is listed incorrectly, you can use their add/update page to correct your listing.

How To Check Your Listing

Once you have a Yellow Pages listing (the cheesy doorstop version), then chances are you'll be found in most local search engines. To check your listing, enter your business name and zip code into the search fields at the following locations:

Google Local - http://www.google.com/lochp

Yahoo Local - http://local.yahoo.com/

MSN Local - http://local.msn.com/ - Still not yet quite as extensive as most other search engines. Don't be surprised if you're not listed.

Ask Jeeves Local - http://local.ask.com/local - Not quite as good at word parsing as Google and Yahoo. For instance, sees timeshare as different from time share. Be specific in your spelling and punctuation of your business name or category.

AOL Local - http://localsearch.aol.com/ - Divides its results into directory-like categories, so you may have to drill down a few levels to find your listing.

A9 Local - http://a9.com/ - Not really a local search engine, but A9 does have local features, as well as their own Yellow Pages. Type in your business name and zip code and see what comes up.

If you find your business is missing from any of these local search engines, most of them provide an interface to allow you to add your site. Look around for a link that says something like "Update Your Business" or "Information for Business Owners". Chances are good that even if your site is listed, your business information may be incomplete or inaccurate and you'll probably want to update and improve your local search listing.

Esoos Bobnar is a search marketing specialist and one of the head researchers at SearchEngineNews.com, a company which publishes an award-winning Search Engine Book, as well as a monthly report on the latest search engine marketing techniques.

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Keyword Research And Product Lines

Writen by Halstatt Pires

As you have probably heard over and over, keyword research is a pivotal step for success. Taken a step further, it can develop your product lines for you.

Keyword Research and Product Lines

Finding success in e-commerce can really be boiled down to one theme. Identify the needs of your prospects and provide a solution for them. It is that simple. You should write out that statement, print it out and hang it over your monitor. If you stray from this theme, you will have problems making money.

Keyword research is the key to identifying the needs of your prospects. When doing the research, you should identify the phrases they are using to search for solutions to their needs. Most people understand this concept, but fail to take the process to the next step.

More than a few people have said they do not want to pursue rankings under a set of keywords because they do not carry such products or provide such services. If you have ever said the same thing, you are blowing it.

Remember, we are identifying the needs of prospects. If we do not have products or services oriented to an easily identified need we identify through keyword research, what should we do? We should get products or figure out a way to supply the service!

Assume we have a site selling hiking and backpacking gear. We have backpacks, guide books, tents and so on. When doing our keyword research, we find out our prospects are also looking for writing journals in which they can record their hikes. Since we don't carry hiking journals, we want to avoid those keywords, correct? NO! We want to find a line of writing journals for hiking and add them to our catalogue of products. We value our prospects and that means providing them with solutions to all of their needs. By doing so, they will return to out site again and again when they need new hiking gear.

One of the more difficult things for online businesses to pick up is the fact that you should never design your site based on your view of your business. Your prospects should design it. By this, I mean that you should look to keyword research to identify all the product lines and/or services you are going to offer.

Find out what your prospects are search for and ignore everything else. Follow this guideline and your site will evolve into a revenue producer.

Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - providing internet marketing services.

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9 Ways To Keep Google Happy

Writen by Rick Hendershot

A recent Google patent application has the SEO community buzzing. At a bare minimum this document reveals the direction Google is taking its future search criteria. Changes in the way Google will be evaluating pages for search rankings are intended to address two major problems:

- Search engine spam, and

- Ensuring that "fresh" documents score higher than "stale" ones

Here is a summary of some of the general principles outlined in the document. Most SEO specialists agree these are reasonable principles, and it is only a matter of time before they are adopted.

1. Anchor text of links is still very important. Focus on your anchor text. It should contain your most important keyword.

2. Google expects that anchor texts will vary. A lot of identical anchor text suggests an "unnatural" linking pattern. Anchor texts should vary, but contain related phrases.

3. Google will record when specific links were first discovered, and watch how they change over time. Links with a long life span are considered more valuable than links with a short life span. This adds support to the link delay theory -- that links do not start "counting" until they have been in place for a few months. So get working on those links right now, but don't expect immediate gratification from Google.

4. If a new website gets a flood of new inbound links, this will be an indicator of possible spam activity. Links should be introduced gradually and according to a consistent pattern.

5. Google acknowledges that there may be link "spikes", and so an influx of new links will be interpreted as legitimate if some of the links are from "authoritative" sites. Go after links from authoritative sites.

6. If a stale webpage continues to receive new incoming links, it will be considered fresh. Keep adding links pointing to important pages.

7. Links from fresh pages will in some cases be more valuable than links from "stale" or old pages that have not been recently updated. Get links from pages that are active. If you have high value links from important sites, develop a strategy for keeping those links fresh.

8. Google places more value on a site where link growth remains constant and slow. Slow and steady wins the race. Keep getting those links.

9. Pages with many inbound links will require proportionately more new links in order to remain fresh. The assumption is that the more links a page has, the more it should be getting in the future. Otherwise it starts slipping into the "stale" category. Focus more attention on your most important pages.

Regardless of whether of not Google implements all of these criteria, the general direction is clear. More importantly, these points make good SEO sense, and provide a very good place to start when planning a link strategy.

Rick Hendershot publishes the Linknet Network, a group of websites and blogs that offer web owners advertising and link promotion opportunities.

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