Choosing a Good Domain Name
If you are at a stage where you are choosing a domain name remember that is an important step in your online presence. There are various good guides on how to choose a domain name, but from an seo perspective it is best to choose a domain name that is keyword specific and directly related to your activity.
It is possible to buy a domain name and receive traffic to your website through that domain immediately. For instance a misspelled domain name of a popular word will often receive traffic because people type in the word incorrectly. Of course you don’t to market your activity with a misspelled domain name. However, just like a misspelled domain can bring in traffic so can a domain that is keyword specific ie. meditation.org. Many people will type this directly into their browser bypassing Google or any other search engine. I would suggest looking into keyword research before actually choosing the keywords for your domain.
You can try the Google Keyword Tool which will produce estimates of how many people look for specific keywords in a given month and year. The tool will also show the advertiser competition for specific keywords. The best thing to do is to choose a popular keyword/s with the least amount of advertisers (competition). Remember that search engines like Google assign a priority to the keywords in your domain name, but even more so when your content is also optimised for those specific keywords.
If you are an established brand it’s best to run the website in your organisations name. It is a common practice that a large organisation or a company purchase additional domains for their individual product or service websites which are also marketed independently. This type of practice tends to generate a lot more traffic and convert much better.
What SEO software can I use?
Filed under: Link Building, SEO Techniques, Software Reviews
I think that without a doubt one of the best SEO tools that are available today is the SEO Elite for $167 and SEO Administrator for $129-$199.
SEO Elite
It is well worth this kind of investment in my opinion. I’ve used this SEO software quite successfully for over two years now and I’ve definitely saved money in a long run. Most SEO professionals use this software, or very similar custom made software to manage SEO campaigns on behalf of their clients and charging a fortune for it!
The best thing is that even if you are a novice SEO or a webmaster and need to bring in more traffic to your site this software will help you with its easy to follow instructions. Creating SEO campaigns using SEO Elite is quite intinuitive even for a beginner. If you’re more advanced you can use its more advanced options. To buy the software click here.
SEO Administrator
Another great SEO software is the SEO Administrator. This is really a great tool and I find it better than SEO Elite, and it is also cheaper because you can get the standard version just for $129. At present the company is also offering a free expert edition worth $199 in exchange for a link from a page with a Google PR of 3 or higher. A great offer which will probably soon expire. :( Or maybe not, it’s a great link bait and will definitely help the company with its SEO and link building campaigns. Offering the software for a link is very good way of getting quality links pointing to your site and in effect increasing your keyword rankings and volume of visitors.
What’s SEO and why should I care?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. This means optimising a website, often by cleaning the code or changing certain aspects of the site to make its content and structure search engine friendly and easily accessible to search engine robots (also known as spiders or crawlers), as well as visitors. This is a single most important factor of web presence, because what good is a website if people can’t find it on the web. So you can build the greatest website the world has ever seen but if it’s not properly indexed by the search engine robots not many people will see your site, unless you spent considerable amount of money on offline marketing.
SEO is still the cheapest and the most effective method of marketing your website and in result advertising your products or services to a wider audience. The reason it is most effective is because in comparison to other forms of marketing it is a ‘pull strategy marketing’ rather than ‘push strategy marketing’. Pull marketing is when people search for the information that you provide and are ready to learn about (or even buy) your products/service at that precise moment, and push marketing is more like TV/radio ads where people are usually not looking for the product/service being advertised at that specific moment. Needless to say ‘pull marketing’ converts a lot better.
The best thing about SEO is that you don’t really need any money to do it. Of course if you have a budget in place it helps, but it is not a must! Money helps in an aggressive type of SEO campaign but there are many other creative ways to accomplish the same goals without spending a fortune.
PPC Click Advertising - Why Bother?
The fastest way to create traffic and boost your sales is PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing. Paying each time someone clicks a link to go to your webpage may prove to be a very successful way of advertising. However, it must be done right. You would not believe how many companies lose millions because their PPC campaign is not optimised as it should be. Similar to email marketing, ppc campaign can be narrowed down to user geographical location, language, interests etc. Well executed PPC marketing campaign includes keyword research, keyword monitoring (looking at the traffic that each keyword brings and optimising to save money and increase ROI), copy writing, modification or creation of well optimised landing pages.
Who would want to use PPC marketing?
Pay-Per-Click marketing is a great way to immediately get your site on the first pages of giants like Google or Yahoo for the keywords of your choice. Using PPC is popular among people who need results quickly. My suggestion is this: If you’ve got the budget and an interesting product/service which is not extremely competitive use PPC, but also work on natural search engine optimisation and link building. Once you start substantial amounts of natural traffic from search engines you can then start to focus mainly on link building.
Email Marketing Can Be Very Effective
Email marketing, if done correctly can prove to be a very successful method of marketing your products or services. Companies like eBay, Amazon, Mercedez Benz, CNN, McDonald’s and many other use email marketing on regular basis to reach wider audience and gain potential costumers. Email marketing can be a very effective method of directing targeted audience to your website.
Unfortunately it is too often abused. That is why if you’re thinking about email marketing please only use opt-in email lists. That means the list was created because people signed up to receive relevant information. Another thing to remember is to focus on your specific target audience. This will save you a lot of money, because you will narrow the campaign down to specific kind of people, but in addition to that you will also see better ROI (Return on Investment).
Submitting your Website to Link Directories
Most SEO professionals will tell you that it is not enough to place your links in directories and search engines. In fact, most people will tell you that it is better not to do that, since that may seem like spam to Google. In fact I have seen websites disappearing from search results after an aggressive submission campaign and I have also seen websites that went up is SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) after a smart execution of such a submission campaign. Such campaign must be done in moderation! My advice is to submit your websites only to directories that have a minimum PR (pagerank) of 2 or 3 and do no more that 100 submissions per week per website. Also, always submit your web link to a relevant category. Although I am not a big fan of directory submissions, such campaign works best when your domain is already well established (at least a year old) and you just need a push in the search results for a given keyword. You can use that keyword as your link’s title. Another word of advice is - do not start your search engine marketing with directory submissions if you’ve got a new domain and a new website! This will only slower the process of indexing your website. What you want to do first is to get quality links from trusted websites (PR of 5 or higher) and let Google discover your site through those links.
Search Marketing is Cost Effective!
Search marketing has become one of the most important means of promoting products, services, and ideas that capture the attention of internet users, both local and international. European markets report that they pay about 2 Euros for each time a surfer clicks their paid listing. 55% regard this cost to be relatively cheap where average cost per lead is $0.45 for Search, $0.55 for Email, $2.00 Banner Ads, and $9.94 for Direct Mail. A good search marketing strategy will take you a long way. Developing a good search marketing plan is the most crucial aspect of successful search engine marketing campaign.
With a good search marketing plan in place someone has to do the actual job of performing all the task required, including SEO (Search Englin Optimisation), PPC (Pay Per Click), and Link Building. It is better to leave it to people who know what they are doing. This way it is done much quicker and usually cheaper because various specialised tools and resources are readily available. Prices depend largely on the amount of work that is required. For limited budgets it is best to use networks such as Elance. I have used this network of providers very successfully, so I can definitely recommend it. Of course it is always better to use a provider with 100% positive feedback and with at least five projects under their belt.
