Do you have an online business targeting the Canadian market? Or are you residing or doing business in Canada? If you are, then for sure you have been looking for different methods to boost up sales and yet you have failed to succeed.

This is where hiring an expert takes into the picture. Have you heard about SEO? To give a brief overview about SEO, it is called search engine optimization which is a process that involves the using of different techniques and strategies in order to drive more traffic to your website and eventually convert such traffic to paying customers. How’s that sound? Interesting, right?

However, SEO is something that you do not learn overnight. It requires thorough research, understanding and application before you can say you got it.

Always remember, in business time is money. You do not want to waste every second of your day reading and analyzing what SEO is. You could have use all those hours and days or even weeks to negotiate with investors, gain more customers and etc. As they say, leave this one to the expert.

This is where an SEO expert takes into the picture. He or she is the right person to call. First, such person obtained good knowledge about the Canadian market and the purchasing power of the public.

Second, he or she has an in depth knowledge of what strategies and techniques to use in order to increase traffic which in return bring in more sales for business.

Third, this person does have the qualification to do the job well compared to others since he or she has been an SEO expert for quite some time now.

If you want to hire the best in the business to do the job for you, prepare to pay a hefty professional fee. Some would require you to pay a couple of thousands of dollars in order to hire them to do the job. However, if you are on tight budget there are some experts out there who can offer their services at relatively cheap price. But you should be very careful not to be deceived by their price tags. Just because they are expensive it does not mean they can deliver quality services and not because they are cheap it does not mean that they offer crap services.

You must weigh your options first and compare your chosen SEO experts that you have gathered around through online research. Analyze, if you want you can go ask further inquiries in order to test how well-verse are they in their field of expertise and to check if they are talking for real or it is more sales talk at the end of the day.

Remember, your future business success is at stake here, you only want the best and for sure you will reap good fruits in the years to come.

SEO is Search Engine Optimizing and undeviating often maintenances Internet Marketers adeptly to use the solution to upbraid at the top search engines. SEO focuses on keyword densities, which are the top SEO (search engine optimizing) solutions that web masters concentrate on relevant subjects or services capable of manufacturing their content. Links are prone also, which quality and relevancy instruments into whether a web site will reach top search engines.

For ideal, you would start by focusing on the phrases/keywords that users/enterprise would consider when searching for your products, service, etc. The SEO keywords are what drive visitors to a web page to web sites, which is optimizing and important, since the user will use instantly keywords to locate your website. For instance…employment, recruiters, anchorpersons, head, jobholder, etc. Now, if the client typed in one of the keywords, enjoin he/she find your web site. Probably, since you offer a business for those seeking employment.

In little time, to reach Google’s top ranking you would at least ask for three to percent of the keywords that are relevant with what you are pushing. Cramming is not faithful by Google’s, Yahoo, or kindred search engines. Consequently, the first delineate, centerline, and determinative paragraphs should have your keywords within the body of the article, as well as around somewhere in between.

The charts in SEO Styles

What makes, one site leading of another is the Hit parade. If your keywords are unfailing, it quickens traffic to your web pages, which Google considers. At all, you must yield symptomatic methods that have been using for a long time on the Internet; otherwise, Google’s effect abandons you out.

Keyword selection and research

Take all the time available to research for all your keywords and phrases to use for your SEO campaign; keywords that best describes your area of business, products/services you are trying to promote.

Amount of text per page

Search Engines love pages with a broad content. A website with a long text content and information is in a good chance to get a better ranking than a competitor website with poor content. It is best advised that you can increase your content and text up to 2000 words per page. Write as much as you can about your business, services and use at least 3-4 times the keywords that you are targeting.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is a combination of the number of times a keyword or a phrase appears on your page. The more times the keyword is repeated on your page, the more will its density will be. In a 100 word content, a keyword that repeats 6 times counts 6% in density. The less the density is means that search engine will ignore the term in a search on the particular keyword or phrase. It is best advised to keep your keyword density between 5-7%. Anything over can flag as spam, best known as keyword stuffing

Title and “Alt” Tags in images

When it comes to images used in your website, search engines do not have the ability to read images so it is very important to keep a clear and descriptive title on all your images used in your website, typically in a one sentence of 20-30 characters if possible.

Use text for navigation

As i previously said, search engines do not have the ability to read image content to your website. If your navigation menu consists of images for any reason, search engines will not be able to index the text used on images and it’s links. It is best advised to build your navigation with text links instead of pictures.

Use a Breadcrumb Trail (Internal Navigation) for every page created

Breadcrumb Trail is a navigation aid that gives users a way to keep track of their location within a website. Using Breadcrumb trails on all pages is a clearcut, standardized way of backtracking from any page, back to the homepage or reversed. You follow the breadcrumb trail back home, so to speak. This is a great way of “explaining” your site structure to Google and other search engines. A breadcrumb Trail helps to keep your website well organized and structured to search engines

Choose a keyword rich domain to use for your website

Choosing a keyword rich domain related to your targeted keywords can be another significant and important tip to achieve better rankings on search engines. Search engines tend to trigger keywords used in your metatags (keywords,description,title) but also in your domain used for your website as well. Go and search for a term or keyword in Google or any other search engine and you will notice that some of your results are triggered exclusively on their domains used rather than their description and titles instead.

Header Tags

Header tags are heading tags in HTML that search engines pay critical attention to them. There are 6 predifined headings, ranging from to which tells a visitor and search engines the topic of the web page. It is best advised that you highlight your main titles and assign a header tag on each giving priority to your main title where H1 and H2 are the strongest and most significant header tags to use in SEO. It is also recommended that you use keywords in your headings for maximum visibility and exposure of your primary targeted keywords.

Avoid Hidden Text

Hidden text is when a text has a similar color to your background color and in result it is invisible to humans to see but visible to search spiders to read. Due to an increase use of hidden text by spammers to increase and boost their keyword triggers on a search, all major engines changed their policy when it comes to hidden text crawls. Consequently, the use of hidden text may result in banning your site from any search engine and should be avoided.

Heavenly ski resort at Lake Tahoe (I can't tell if the lake is tilting or if it's just the way I'm holding the camera...)

Unfortunately, they hadn’t received fresh snow for almost a month, but conditions were good nonetheless.  I guess the grooming team is able to push snow where it needs it most.  Anyway…you definitely can’t beat the 45F temperature at nearly 10,000′.

So I went to Lake Tahoe with a pinched nerve in my neck that radiated across my shoulder and down my left arm.  I’ve been dealing with it since just after Christmas, trying to do what I can, but sitting seems to aggravate it most.  No over the counter pain relief helped at all.  About a week before my departure, I went to a local chiropractor in hopes of relieving some of the pain before my trip–after all, I can’t imagine a ski trip without skiing would be very much fun…    Anyway, he was able to take some of the pressure off of the nerve, providing some relief…unfortunately, apparently my shoulder muscles are all out of whack, seemingly pulling in the opposite direction they’re supposed to.  Well, it’s a good thing my Lake Tahoe hotel (Harrah’s) had a nice spa with some awesome massage therapists who were able to relax those uncooperative muscles to make them at least semi-usable.  So it was ski during the day, massage in the afternoon, eat a small dinner (tough at Harrah’s awesome Forest Buffet) and then crash before having a chance to spend any money at the casino…probably a good thing!

Now that I’m back, I went to the chiropractor this morning, and he did some adjusting and deep tissue stuff…overall I’m feeling better.  It’s not terrible pain for the most part, it’s just always there, and it makes doing stuff with my left arm difficult.  Not to mention it gets worse as I sit longer.

So that’s that.  I’m going to try and rip through the pile of support tickets I have before it becomes too aggravated, if it feels like I’m ignoring you, I’m not…just ask my family.

Oh yeah, I’ve got some cool stuff to show for my time away.  It wasn’t all playtime, honest!

Article Marketing

• Submit to major sites (examples)
1) Buzzle
2) Ezine
3) Suite 101
4) Idea Marketers
5) Go Articles
6) ArticlesBase

• Add to hubs and wikis
• Social Bookmark (examples)
1) Folkd
2) Delicious
3) Digg
4) Stumble Upon
5) Reddit

• Blog
• If good enough..add to site as content

Press Releases

• Submit to major outlets
• Social Bookmark
• Local

Blog Posts

• Write Post
• Participate in your niche. Network with forums, comments, etc
• Submit to blog directories

Affiliates

• Newsletters
• Directories
• Coupon Sites
• Contact bloggers
• New promotions and graphics

Link Building

• Directories
• Find ads that pass seo value
• Contact sites
• Contact bloggers with giveaways, trials, and exclusive promotions
• Viral videos
• Local links and associations (yelp, yellow pages, chamber of commerce, etc)
• Charity or sponsorships
• Check and steal competitors links
• Always look for new potential links with search engine link searches
• Look for guest blogging and comment section opportunities
• Employee blogs, distributors, past donations, and current partners

Conversion Rate Optimization

• 5 second test
• Focus groups and polls
• Variations of sites tested on adwords optimizer

Social Media

• Facebook posts and ads
• Connect and update on networks like Linked In, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc
• Promotions
• Participate in relevant online forums
• Social bookmarking

Analytics

• Identify weak pages
• Traffic analysis for PPC and SEO
• Any site issues
• Conversion funnels
• Best selling products

PPC

• Monitor and optimize
• Test: Try new ads, text, and landing pages weekly
• Test low bid strategies vs higher position strategies
• Use analytics to tweak

SEO

• Keep up with statistics (# links, PR, SERP Rank, Traffic, etc)
• Use analytics to alter and improve
• Check keyword trends
• Research new keywords
• Monitor competition
• Keep adding fresh content
• Update existing content to maximize its usefulness
• Local and mobile
• Read SEO blogs and attend conferences

Business Development

• Stay on the lookout for new ideas, trends, and strategies
• Stay up on competitors prices and adjust accordingly
• Implement promotions
• Fix and improve site functionality
• Outside partnerships
• New products and new verticals
• International sites, content, and SEO
• Be on the lookout for new tech programs, outsourced services, & marketing deals

Content Management

• Fix old and implement new content (faqs, descriptions, resources, etc)
• Look for new ways to update layout for best SEO and user experience
• Fix any broken links, products, or any other issues
• Keep site graphics fresh
• Copyrighting for various advertisements, marketing materials, etc

These are a few of the simplest, must do steps in order to market and optimize your retail website or blog. There are many other things you can do, but this will help get you started.

In our days, every business needs a website in order to stay ahead of the competition. Because of this you need to make sure that your site has an attractive design and also that it is user friendly. If the users cannot easily find the information that they need on their site then they will surely look somewhere else. This is also the easiest way to lose your clients.

The information that you have on your website needs to be accurate and up to date. You should definitely take the time to write something new every day. SEO spiders are looking carefully at those sites that have fresh information and they rank them it better. Keywords are also very important as they will be the primary tool that will help your website get high rankings.

If you are not sure how your website should look like then what you should do is to gather a focus group and ask them. Users know better what they want and how they want the information to be displayed. When clients find your website easily then you can be sure that the search engines will be impressed and will upgrade your rankings.

Find out what are the best SEO strategies for your line of business. Just like in a relationship you have to know everything that there is to know about your business just like people try to learn all they can about their partners. Starting a SEO campaign is probably the best thing that you could do for your business, however, you should know that there are some things that require an expert’s touch. This is why it would be better if you asked for the advice of some specialists.

But as effective as SEO is, it only works if it’s done correctly. Here are the three key steps to running a successful search engine optimization campaign:

1) Create. Every SEO campaign revolves around the creation of content. That content, whether it is articles, blog posts or videos absolutely has to be high quality, informative content. Remember, the goal of your campaign is to introduce your business and products or services to your potential customers. The last thing you want to do is make a bad first impression by cutting corners and publishing low quality content.

2) Publish. Once your content is created, you have to get it out in front of your audience, and that means publishing it online. But don’t feel like you’re limited to publishing content on your company website. You can also publish articles, videos and other content in article directories and video sharing sites like YouTube. You can even publish your content through social media sites like Facebook.

3) Promote. Even though your content has now been created and published, your search engine optimization efforts are only just beginning. Keep in mind that there are millions of other businesses out there, all competing for attention, so it’s not enough to simply slap up a few articles on your company blog and wait for the leads and sales to come pouring in. To maximize the value of your content, you should promote it by:

Building backlinks – In order to increase organic traffic to your content, you need to boost the ranking of your articles, videos and blog posts or other content in the search engines. Content with high quality backlinks will be given a higher ranking in Google and the other search engines, making it easier for your potential customers to find your business when they search for key terms that are related to your company and products or services.

Sharing with Social Media – Another effective SEO strategy is to share your content on Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites. High quality, engaging content can quickly “go viral” as it is shared between friends and contacts. Your content may also be linked to or republished on other related websites and forums, further boosting your content’s search engine rankings and leading to a flood of new visitors, leads and sales.

The engines now look at a large range of elements of a web site to determine its relevance and rank against certain keywords. These include, but are not limited to:

• Accessibility (Technical Strategy): The site architecture and crawler-friendliness impacts the ability of the engines to access and understand a site. This includes how the code is written, URL structure, navigation, link structure, dynamic content and the use of Flash and images.

• Content & Keyword Research (Content Strategy): The actual visible and invisible words on the pages of the web site. Optimised content has a significant impact on improving ranking within organic search result listings. This needs to be presented in search engine friendly format.

• Links (Linking Strategy): Every link leading to your website is considered to be a “vote” for your site. The more high quality links leading to you, the more important you must be, especially if those links come from other important sites. The words that make up the link are also important.

Unfortunately, the SEO industry is littered with cowboys who steer away from the above, and are all about ‘guaranteed 1st page rankings’ or ‘search engine submissions’. Both of which if you hear, you should RUN! If you have made the decision to outsource your Search Engine Optimisation, make sure you do your homework. One thing you should not do is shop only on price. Shop on ROI for your dollar, and shop on the agencies desire to understand your business and its marketing strategy, and their ability to tie the SEO back to that.

SEM is a term that can be commonly used alongside SEO and stands for Search Engine Marketing. SEM emerged in response to sites such as Google offering fees to be included or featured at the top of page listings and the appearance of Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. Paying for exposure has changed the basic methods of Internet marketing because instead of simply using SEO to generate high rankings, websites can now pay to be listed above the “free listings” on Search Engines, increasing traffic to their sites through money and not necessarily by just utilizing natural techniques.

Working a webpage for superior SEO involves being able to detect and evaluate the relevance of certain types of keywords and phrases that people use in Search Engines to find the types of products or services a business offers. This includes web content, tags, meta tags and the links within your page. It also involves manipulating HTML codes for your page to help rework your site navigation (how people are getting to and from your webpage) and to eliminate any problems that may stop your page from being indexed on these sites.

The best ways to achieve top listings on Search Engines is to follow their SEO guidelines and not to try to cheat the system. Many times companies promise to bring a website “to the number one spot on Google rankings in less than 3 weeks!” but use tricks that eventually get flagged. These types of “tricks” can include keyword stuffing (hiding or using keywords in unnatural and exaggerated amounts), link farms (sites which directly link to each other numbering into the hundreds), and page cloaking (showing two different webpages to visitors and to Search Engines). When these tricks are caught, which all eventually are, sites like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing will drop the abusive site in rankings, remove it completely from their listings, or banish the company forever.

The best bet for any business to achieve good rankings on Search Engines is to have content and links that practice exceptional SEO and that follow their guidelines for organic listings. You can do this by learning yourself or by hiring a professional writing services firm to do it for you. If you wish to market and expand your website in a more aggressive manner, then consider SEM, and look into investing in a PPC campaign to gain quicker exposure.

Create a video blog…instantly. ]]> http://kansieo.com/2008/08/05/what-are-seo-and-sem/feed/ 0 http://kansieo.com/2008/01/25/caffeinated-content-for-wordpress-v-250/ http://kansieo.com/2008/01/25/caffeinated-content-for-wordpress-v-250/#comments Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:04:01 +0000 kansieo http://kansieo.com/2008/01/25/caffeinated-content-for-wordpress-v-250/ Alrighty, a mostly bug fix release.  Now the plugin will try to use cURL if it’s available.  If not, it’ll use fsockopen if it’s available.  If neither of those work, you need to change your web hosting service.

Translation–as your post is being created, it’ll automatically be translated to your chosen language (German, Dutch, Spanish, Arabic, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional)).  It works as well as Google Translate.

On the vein of Google Translate, I fixed an issue that rendered my translation useless.  Thanks Google!

Anyway, since there is plenty of new stuff in this release, please let me know if you have problems!

1. There are already plenty of blogs holding tactics out there, blackhat, whitehat, greyhat, bluehat…you name it, they come in all flavors.

2. I’m not really a very good blogger.  Too much effort that I could be spending on improving and “testing” my software.

So really, while I’m trying like heck to keep this blog updated like no other blog I’ve ever updated, it’s rough going.  I can barely muster the discipline it takes to write a post a week!

Believe me, it’s worth a lot more than what you’ll pay for it.

Oh yeah…the promotion is only valid for the next sixfour days so jump on it now OVER!