Friday, August 21, 2009

10 Steps to Success

You will discover the steps necessary to become a successful web hosting reseller. While there are many ways to build and operate any business, we will look at an approach that has been proven successful by many resellers.

 

Step 1 - Learn the basics
Before we jump into the nitty-gritty details, we'll make sure you are familiar with the basics of hosting and what this opportunity is all about.

Step 2 - Learn about various reseller opportunities
How do you choose? We'll cover affiliate programs, private-label resellers, VPS, dedicated hosting and more!

Step 3 - Get started with a business plan
A business plan is beneficial to your success, and I'll tell you what you need to include in yours.

Step 4 - Sign up for a service
Once you've got your plan put together, it's time to sign up to be a reseller. I'll tell you what to look for, and what to avoid!

Step 5 - Build your own website
Your website is one of the most important parts of your business. I'll tell you what you NEED to include if you want to be successful.

Step 6 - Set up your backend and hosting plans
This is one of the most important aspects of your business, yet overlooked by many resellers. I'll tell you how to set up your business backend to run smoothly so you can focus on building your business.

Step 7 - Market your services
Marketing is the lifeblood of modern entrepreneurs. If you don't know how to market your product, you'll be dead in the water. I'll tell you the best ways to market your hosting services.

Step 8 - Support your customers
This is possibly the most critical aspect of your long term success. Hosting clients are looking for good support. I'll show you how to support your customers and keep them happy even if you have no technical experience!

Step 9 - Get advanced techniques and advice
Get some awesome tricks of the trade that I've learned along the way. Increase your productivity and boost your profits!

Step 10 - Sell your business
Most new resellers don't realize that one of the best ways to make money in the hosting business is to sell your hosting customers and/or entire business. I'll tell you what to do to make sure you're setting yourself up for a profitable sale.


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


Website Design and Redesign

The website design your company commissioned a few years ago may hold a special place in the hearts of some within your company, but the market needs to be gauged regularly to determine if what worked then is what will work today. Your online presence must evolve if you hope to stay ahead of your competition. Mimicry and imitation of the #1 company in your sector is not the answer.

Let Internet Media Solutions help you think ahead, employing not only proven design tactics, but revolutionary methods as well. As a leading Search Engine Optimization Company and Interactive Media Agency with offices in Jakarta - Indonesia, Internet Media Solutions is dedicated to achieving a strategic online presence for our clients through innovation, experience, constant testing and evaluation.


Working in close collaboration with your company, Internet Media Solutions's web designers and developers focus on usability, search ability and corporate branding, creating the most prospect-friendly, user-friendly online experience for your websites visitors.

While we do enjoy some of the more cutting edge tools and methods, we tend to shy away from gimmickry and the gratuitous use of "the next big thing," relying instead on proven and researched technologies that we predict will have staying power.

Affordable, innovative and strategically sound, Internet Media Solutions website designs focus on building your business.

Internet Media Solutions designers have worked for some of the biggest names in business. Contact us for a portfolio sample and URLs to some of our work or to schedule an evaluation of your website design or redesign needs.


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


Top Tips for Web Design

This article takes a look at the top 10 web design tips for users at any level. It will give you 10 complete different points to contemplate when you next begin a site design or when talking to your web design consultant/employee.

Design is never straight forward and web design has the additional unpredictable complication of technology thrown in. This means that you need to consider the consequences of your design decisions and how it will effect the most important people who see your site, the users themselves. The following tips should help you consider this and have a positive effect on your site and its users.

1. Navigation & Functionality
You should never sacrifice overall functionality for artistic extravagance. It is highly unlikely your site will ever achieve its purpose if the people who visit it cannot clearly and easily navigate around it.

Your site should look good but first and foremost consider how someone who knows nothing about the site would think when they landed there.

Something occurring in website frequently these days is Mystery Meat Navigation. This is a term coined by Vincent Flanders and it is used to describe site where navigation structures are so obscure and difficult to process that users cannot identify them at all and end up running there mouse across whole sections of a screen just to identify hyperlinks.

2. Images
People say images are worth a 1000 words and in web design that's true in 2 ways. Firstly an image can do a lot more than text in some situation but secondly they are much, much bigger files with a higher download time.

It is widely accepted users will click away from a page that takes longer than 5-10 seconds to load and every time you put an image in a page you are increasing the likelihood of this happening. Additionally each image you imbed into a page design activates an additional HTTP request to your server so dividing an image into smaller ones or using lots of small images across a page does not solve the problem.

ALT tags should also be factored into the code of a website. They are a huge help to people who have either images turned off in a browse, mobile browsers that can't read the images or a random error preventing the image from showing. They also hold a small SEO benefit.

3. Tables
It is advised that you use CSS and not tables to format a document but in some cases tables can be necessary. Remember one thing however a table cannot be displayed until it has fully loaded. This can potentially cause a huge problem for users as they wait for the page to load, nothing appears then out of nowhere the whole page is done.

Someone is much more likely to click away when nothing is loading than when they can see progress.

4. Fonts
Don't design sites to use fonts only you have, chances are they will be converted into some dull font and ruin the effect you were trying to achieve. Save special fonts for specific headers and convert them to images. Make the rest of your site in standard fonts so that as many browsers as possible will see it in the way you meant it to be. Recommended fonts for high scale compatibility are Arial, Verdana, Courier, Tahoma and Helvetica.

5. Plug-Ins
Plug-ins hold a lot of potential for both users and designers but it can easily be misused and misguided.

Plug-ins have a many forms and uses, the most popular being Java and Flash Player. I have heard a lot of people say that these plug-ins are “safe” and that everyone has them but this is simply not true. Every plug-in has a stack of different versions and connects differently depending on the browser the user is surfing with.

Think if your users will really want to browse to other sites to download a plug-in, restart the browser then navigate back. If the answer is no use other tricks at your disposal to make your page unique and save the big guns that are Flash and Java for times where it is essential.

6. Tags
The “tags” I am referring to hear are meta keywords and description, title, alt and h1 tags. Together these tags help manage your sites search engine optimization (SEO) potential and this is defiantly something not to overlook. Helping people find your site will bring more traffic in and more conversion if you are a retail site.

The higher search engines rank you the more traffic will filter down and the more successful your site will be. Try to keep a constant theme running through all your tags but do so in a subtle way. Splashing the same word 1000 times on your page will only have negative effects so make sure you strike the correct balance between informative and spammy.

7. Browsers
In a perfect world everyone would use the same browser and your website would look the same on everyone's screen but unfortunately this is not the case. Every browser has its own specific functions and styles and learning to make you code cooperate with both can present some serious problems.

The three you really need to concern yourself with are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. These make up a good 95% of the browser market at the very least and while there are some additional popular browser I would not recommend you spend time optimizing code for the rest.

The only thing you can do is do your best and stay away from browser specific functions, you'll never make someone get a new browser.

8. Pop Ups
Something that is very important to remember is that the user should be in control of their browser and desktop. Do not place unnecessary pop ups and window opening links everywhere and the user will feel they have lost control of the site, become annoyed and close the windows.

There are some exceptions to using the (_blank) attribute but I would steer clear whenever possible.

9. Text Layout
Text is part of your design to and positioning it correctly on the page is very important. Try to get all the copy you need as early in the design process as possible. This means you will be able to design around the copy instead of trying to cram it into smaller spaces because someone wrote twice as much copy as they said they were going to.

Use the right alignment for the right situation, remember 99% of people will prefer left align and while justified look aesthetically better it can be very difficult to read in longer bouts.

10. Site Search
In this day and age finding what you want on a website in paramount. After you have followed the first tip on navigation you should also provide a search bar on your site so that a visitor who cannot immediately see what they are looking for can search. Many internet studies have seen the success of these smaller additions to your site and free ones are available from Google and many other SE operators.

Conclusion
Taking these 10 tips into account will help you design a more user-friendly and successful website, sometime it may seem like they are hindering your grand design but failing to take notice may result in your site being a very pretty stop sign for browsers. Just because you can find your way around your Flash menu system that takes 6 minutes to load doesn't mean Mrs Smith who needs the product can.


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


Blogging – Ways To Improve Visibility

Let's say for the sake of argument that you have a business blog. You have participated in online forums in your industry and now want to pass along information in a more personally directed format.


Your blog is new and site visits are not as strong as you would like. You post a link to your blog in the signature line of forum posts, but you are still hoping more people will drop by.


Starting a business blog can be a bit like starting a website – it can take a while for it to gain a following or even for search engines to index and rank the blog site.

There are a couple of things you can do to improve the visibility of your business blogging missives.

1) Duplicate posts on one or more social media blog.
This idea is useful when you have social media pages that include the ability to blog. Your presence on these sites may align you with a different audience than those who might visit your primary blogging site. In many cases you can cut and paste information and allow it to reach out to other potential customers.

With the linking capability in social media it is entirely possible your blog may be visited by those outside your network of friends as visitors click from one profile to the next in search of something interesting. Perhaps they will find something used on your social media blog.

2) Use your established connections on forums or message boards to your advantage.
Beyond simply placing a link in the signature line of your forum posts make sure to see if there is a ‘water cooler' or ‘open line' section on your favorite forums. If so you have the capability of posting a summary or teaser in those general discussion areas with a link to your blog. This may resonate with those who are already familiar with your personality on the forum and they may be inclined to learn from your expertise. Make sure you abide by the rules of any forum you may use to implement this strategy.

You may encounter forums that do not allow outside links in posts or any posts that gives the hint of being business oriented. Know the rules of the forum before you utilize this strategy.

Your business blog can be an important way to reach out to others. This is true for those who may already know of your business as well as others who convey trust based on the sense of trust already extended by other forum members.

In essence you can use social media and forums to grow your blog presence as you wait for search engines to help make it easier for others to find you online.

The growth of business blogging would seem to be a strong indicator that this form of information marketing is not only a valuable resource, but also a great way to improve site traffic to your primary business site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies remain the most useful key in the visibility of any site, but while you wait why not use every available tool at your disposal. In this case that would be forum and social media for improved blogging visibility.


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


Web Design Tips

When someone sees a beautiful web design, he or she can't help but fall in love with it and wonder how it was done. However, designing a web would take more than just your knowledge in color, texts and images. It involves codes. But you can learn those in no time so there's nothing to worry about. Moreover, there is a science behind web design and the following could help you be more scientific with your designs.

Usability Testing
The secret here is to let someone who is not familiar with your site have a look at it. As much as possible, be in the room while they are testing your site. Take note of the things that they click on and the things that they ignore so you will know what to improve.

Browser Testing
Do not make the mistake of thinking that your web page will look good at any other browser because it looks good on your favorite one. Remember that the same browser could be used on another operating system and it may not look the same. What you need to do now is to check your page on every possible combination of OS and browser.

Use Log Files
Including log files can be very tiresome, however, it can also be very useful. It helps you know where viewers go from your homepage, what they mostly click on and what pages are least visited. Using log files can help you gather information that can help you modify your site and eventually lead your viewers to the page where you want them to go.

Don't be afraid to recreate
One of the biggest advantages in web designing is the freedom to change web pages and layouts. Don't be afraid to change designs that don't work. Designing a web can be a lot of fun and involving science and structure into your designs will surely attract your viewers.

Use accurate titles for every section
Web browsers tend to scan pages and sections so make sure that your page or section titles are consistent and accurate. In this way, they can be sure that they are being led to the right section of the site. Avoid ‘Click Here'

Links are very important in web pages. However, avoid using the text ‘click here' when leading your viewers to another page. Instead use a descriptive and more appropriate text.

Improve Readability
Now is not the time to show off your collection of fonts. What's important is for your customers to be able to read what is written on your site. Therefore, use attractive but readable texts to attract readers and customers of your site.

Proofread
Even the most excellent writer makes grammatical and spelling errors. You wouldn't want your site viewers to think you're an amateur, would you? What you have to do in order to increase trustworthiness is to proofread everything that is written in your site. Remember, less mistakes or lack of errors can add to your reliability points.


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


Web Design Facts

Fact 1:
We can't deny the fact that when browsers enter a site, they look for something that is relevant to their needs. If they ended in a particular site through advertisements, then they would expect to see something related to that ad.


Fact 2:
On the other hand, when a search engine scans a site's contents, it looks for contents which are useful enough for other sites to reference. It expects to locate a content that is consistent with the keywords.


Fact 3:
Moreover, visitors who go to a shopping cart would expect to find photos with high quality, a variety of applicable views and lastly, a concise and clear description and costs. They also expect that the cart should work in all types of browsers.


But sad to say, some viewers do not find what they need in a website or sometimes they have a hard time going around the site. The following things should make you aware on the things why web sites fail.

One fact that web designers must know is that people wouldn't enter your site unless they know their way around it.

Due to this concern, web designers must take into consideration that they need to conceptualize user friendly and easy to understand websites. For most customers or viewers, very extravagant design won't matter as long as they don't get lost in your site.

Your competitors are just a click away
When designing your web site, think very carefully on things that could give you a plus over your competitors. Think of the things that you can offer your customers in order for them to stay on your site and choose you above all else.

People hate slow websites
Designers must understand that searchers can be very impatient when surfing through sites in the Internet. Therefore, designers must find a way to minimize the slowness of websites and at the same time offer viewers with quality contents.

Searchers look for relevant information
Dr. Jim Jansen of Penn State's School of Information Sciences and Technology said, “A web site has to be relevant to a searchers needs. Otherwise, by the time three minutes have elapsed, 40 percent of searchers will have moved on. While some may have found what they wanted, others may simply have given up and move to a different site." When designing web pages, designers can't help but become graphic artists with the aim to make your site look great but sometimes lacking in information. Therefore, remember that while it is important to make your site attractive, it is equally important to place in your site the information that visitors need.

Sites should have clear abstracts
The first thing that appears on the result page as an answer to a search engine query is the site's abstract. The abstract explains everything about your site. According to a study done by Penn State, more users or searchers can be drawn to a site with the use of an abstract. That is if the abstract is informative enough and gives relevant and enticing information about the site. Dr. Jim Jansen said, "For site developers, if you want to be looked at, it is absolutely critical that the abstract be crystal clear about the purpose of your Web site."


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


Web Design Basics

When designing something, a designer should first go through the basics of designing. Whether he is designing a print design or web design, he must know the dos and do not's. The following items will help you know the basics of web designing as well as some techniques that are specific to coming out with the best web layout.

1. Create a design that seems friendly.
There are actually a lot of web designs that scare people away and not attract them. If you want people to return to your website, make it soothing and light. Keep your site as friendly as possible.

2. Create a great homepage
When designing your website you should keep in mind to conceptualize a homepage that would attract your viewers. Remember that the first page that your customers see can also be the last. So learn to create a page that will attract your visitor's attention and then draw them deeper into your site.

3. Keep in mind the principles in designing web sites
Remember to apply your design principles such as balance, contrast, emphasis, rhythm and unity. This will serve as your guide and will help you conceptualize a good web design.

4. Think small in terms of graphics
Slow pages can be really very annoying. Whether you like it or not, one cause of slowing the pages is large graphics. To avoid such problem think of using images with a size of 10-12 kb.

5. Use graphics that fit the content
Just because you have a wonderful picture of you and your boyfriend doesn't mean that you should include it on your website. Use images that are appropriate and that connect with your site's content.

6. Don't use blinking images
There have been studies proving that blinking images actually annoy people. If you want to use them, though, use them sparingly. You wouldn't want your site viewers to leave your page just because of an annoying blinking image.

7. Stay with standard layouts
Try to use a layout that is simple as possible. The 3-column layout might sound corny and boring but it helps to keep your readers stay where they are and keep reading your site's contents. Keep in mind that readers and site viewers stick with things that are simple and easy to understand.

8. Use standard fonts and limit the number of different fonts
Use standard fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Geneva, and Helvetica. They might seem too familiar but they look better on most browsers. Now, you don't have to worry whether your fonts will work or not.

9. Don't be greedy
Though ads help you make money by posting them on your site, keep in mind that people visit your site because of their perceived content and not because of the ads that you put in it. For all you know, these ads may drive your viewers away, if they are too many, and could possibly make you lose money.

10. Remember your readers
Understand that, unless you're writing a site for yourself, your site's content should include topics that your viewers might want to read.


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


The Impact of SEO Web Design on Search Engines

SEO web design is a concept which emphasizes great architectural design principles based on how the search engines determine relevance and site information. The design should be able to give out the information that the user is seeking and at the same time be easily navigable. This is part of search engine optimization because the SEO web design should also be able to satisfy robotic crawlers and spiders in their quest for information regarding the website and other data.

SEO Web Design and Site Optimization
Search engine optimization is more than just a trend nowadays. It is used and applied by almost all sites on the internet that aim to make money and reach online popularity. Among the many strategies of optimizing a web site, SEO web design is one of the topmost priorities.

The impact of the design of the site on search engine robotic crawlers or spiders can help raise the ranking of the site. This is where SEO web design comes in. There are many ways to make the web site more attractive to robotic visitors and human visitors alike. Actually, spiders and crawlers from search engines do not mind the overall aesthetic value of the site. All these robotic crawlers need is the information it can get from the site. The tricky part is how to put relevant information in the site in order for the crawlers to properly index the site due to its relevance. SEO companies who specialize in optimizing web sites must also know how to put a site in front of others in order to bring it to the attention of the Internet users. The search optimizers who will handle your site must be able to know the right strategies to place the web site ahead of others in its field through accepted methods of optimization.

SEO web design is a competitive area where web designers, or what I prefer to call website architects, work hard to come up with ideas and designs that are aesthetically appealing and relevant at the same time. There has to be consideration for ease of getting around the website, being appealing to a wide range of visitors and finding the right place for the website. Making a a basic, visually appealing site is easy with the many technologic advances available today, the problem with these advances are that they are sometimes quite tricky to use thus making your website difficult to navigate in. SEO web design should be easy to use and friendly to both human and robotic browsers.

Easy navigational access can be done by making the pages of the site easy to navigate to and having easy to understand and use button or labels to click on. The pictures and images on your SEO web design should be just the right size and scale to enable users to see them promptly after clicking instead of taking a very long time to download. Waiting for images and other graphics to load can be off putting for most visitors and will eventually lead them to another site which is more optimized and easy to view. Even spiders and crawlers will give up on a site which is not easy to navigate and get into.

The overall appeal of the SEO web design should not only be focused mainly on the niche that it is targeted on but also for Internet users who might have stumbled onto the site. SEO web design should have a universal appeal even for the most specialized type of sites on the Internet. Some webmasters or website owners could opt for specialized SEO web designs and these can also be done with the targeted audience in mind. It will also benefit the site if it is indexed as it should be. You might want to have a specific SEO web design which is built around the entire concept of your site and this can add to the ranking if you are quite specific with what you aim to sell or market. If you are marketing a specific product or information, SEO experts can focus on this product or information and build the SEO web design around it.

Another aspect of SEO web design that needs to be considered is what your competition is doing. The saying, “know your enemy” is the key here. You do not want to have the same boring marketing strategies as the competition. Why? Because it is a good idea to keep abreast with what they are doing and how well they are doing in this field. There are many site optimization tools that can help analyze and determine what is needed for the site. Hence, in regard to SEO web design process, content is one of the prime needs and tools of making the site rank high during searches. Finding out or identifying the right keywords to integrate into the site can be crucial in making the site among the top ranking ones. Keyword search tools and having keyword rich content and titles can help to optimize a site efficiently.

SEO web design experts should also bear in mind that there are web strategies that may be unacceptable for search engines. Using these underhand or black hat tricks to perpetuate a site in rank can cause the search engines to ban the site and also the SEO web design company that did the search engine optimization work for it no matter how well the SEO web design is.


Related Links :
Internet Media Solutions l Superhostindo l Jababeka Business l Ayo Kencan l Kesaksian Kristen l Lirik Lagu Rohani Kristen


Hitwise Search Intelligence Tool: Data on Steroids

It's been described as being “like nosing around in the competition's trash…only it's easier (and legal).” Hitwise's Search Intelligence Tool 4.0 offers some important improvements over earlier versions. But all that functionality comes at a price.

First, let me give you a disclaimer on this review: I didn't have a chance to use the tool myself, and its $50,000 to $60,000 yearly subscription fee (which can scale down if you want to have fewer people able to use it at your company, a smaller number of categories covered, etc.) is enough to make anyone pause. But if you've ever wondered what the ultimate SEO tool would look like, this can't be too far off.

Fortunately, Hitwise provides a five-minute video on its web site that gives a very good description of Search Intelligence. It includes an audio element, so make sure your speakers are turned on. The video reminds you to do so before it starts, and gives you a button to click to start it once you turn them on. The video is both concise and comprehensive without being overproduced. I especially liked that it was divided into smaller pieces that covered each part of the product separately, which the user could click on if he or she wanted to jump around and look at certain specific features (it still played automatically in a specific order if you chose not to do this).

As Christine Churchill points out in her intensive review of the Search Intelligence Tool, it's really a suite rather than a single tool. But I'm getting ahead of myself. In case you're not familiar with the company, Hitwise has been around since 1997, providing a network-based approach to Internet measurement. Hitwise's founders wanted to be able to report on more than just the top web sites and monitor the online behavior of more than a relatively small number of people; they knew that kind of information would be much more useful to marketers than what was available at the time.

According to its web site, Hitwise “captures the anonymous online usage, search, and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users.” It offers a variety of products, and its data and releases are regularly quoted in the press when questions of Internet usage come up. And it's no wonder; the company covers more than 800,000 businesses across over 160 different industries. With that kind of data set to draw from, you'd expect the Search Intelligence tool to deliver something special.

The video divides the suite's tools into seven sections, though, as Christine Churchill notes, they “are well integrated and intuitively linked.” It all starts with a rankings tool that gives you an overview of the forest, so to speak. The tool lists the most popular sites in more than 160 industry categories, starting with a display of the top 20 sites and their share of the market for the most recent week. You can display the full list, which might show hundreds of sites.

Naturally this is not a static tool. You can use calendar drop-downs to change the date and time range covered. You can also build your own industry by clicking on check boxes next to sites and saving them in a custom category for analysis. It looks like a great way to keep track of a group of particular competitors.

The charting feature is great for making comparisons; most marketers will want to use it for comparing the traffic of two or more web sites (up to 10). You can compare them based on different metrics over a period of time long enough to pick out seasonal trends. You can also compare different keywords. Just put in the data and the tool displays a very clear chart with many points labeled. If you're wondering why you're seeing a certain spike in the chart, you can hover your mouse over the spike (as Churchill describes doing) and investigate events that can be tracked on the web that might have caused the spike (such as mentions in the press, product releases, etc.). You can even check into where the traffic came from by looking at the site's clickstream for that time period. Some of this reminds me of a recent Google beta called Google Trends, which I reviewed some time ago for SEO Chat.

Speaking of clickstreams, the clickstream tool comes with enough possibilities to make your head spin. The idea is deceptively simple: it tells you where web traffic is coming from for a particular site or industry, and then where it goes after it leaves the site. Think about what this means though: finding out where people are coming from might help with choosing partners, and finding out where they're going could give you a clue as to whether you've served their needs (hint: if you see a competitor looming high in this part of the clickstream data, you might need to rethink a few things).

As Churchill notes, “this is not information you can get from your own logs.” Another point worth keeping in mind is that the tool can show you clickstream data not just for your site, but for your competitor's, so you can see where their traffic is coming from and going to as well. It can give you “an insightful peek into how competitors are getting traffic, where they are losing it, and how their flow patterns compare with yours,” explained Churchill.

If you're concerned about the performance of your keywords, you'll want to check out the search term intelligence tool. It shows you which keywords web surfers use when searching across different search engines, and what sites get traffic from which keywords. As for many of the tools in this suite, you can track a particular website (yours or a competitor's) to see which keywords attract the most traffic to that site. Clicking a particular keyword will show you which sites receive traffic for those terms. You can also use this tool for keyword gap analysis (see what keywords your competitor is drawing traffic for that you aren't), expanding your own keyword list with the search term suggestion tool, and examining the ubiquitous “long tail” of overlooked keywords that could lead to conversions.

The demographics and lifestyles tools let you see what kinds of web surfers visit thousands of sites. You get breakdowns based on gender, age, location, income, and more. Hitwise teamed with Claritas and Experian to bring you this information. Web site audiences are also divided by “lifestyle,” giving you a picture of what a web site's audience does off line as well. Check out this information for you and your competitors, and you can see what kinds of people you're reaching – and, importantly, what kinds of web surfers you aren't reaching, which might represent untapped opportunities for your company.

The conversions tool provides custom reports that let you know how customers interact with particular portions of competitive web sites. These reports can tell you which tactics work best to for selling (converting) customers, such as making use of affiliates or particular keywords.

Finally, Hitwise Answers can guide you to seeing opportunities you might otherwise overlook. It prompts you with preset questions in particular areas and topics to consider what you can do to grow your business. The video explained that the questions are organized by particular marketing objectives: benchmarking, search marketing, affiliate marketing, advertising and content partnerships, and business development. One example question has you considering which web sites your competitor receives traffic from that you do not. The answer is shown on the next page of the tool. The suggestion here is that these are web sites you might want to consider for some kind of affiliate or partnership arrangement.

On the Hitwise blog, Heather Hopkins ran a series of three posts showing what kind of data you can discover with Search Intelligence 4.0 and highlighted new features in this version of the suite. “It is the ability to report the paid and organic split that is new,” she explained. “For each term, we can also see the rate at which consumers reached the site from a paid or organic link and rank the search terms sending visits to the site from either paid and organic traffic.”

She then took a look at the MoneySupermarket site. She determined easily that more than nine percent of the site's traffic came from the search term “car insurance” and that more than 80 percent of the traffic arrived at the site as a result of clicking on a paid listing. This might be because MoneySupermarket appears at the top of second page or the bottom of the first page for organic results for “car insurance” in Google UK, but it consistently appears within the top four paid listings. This is a way to show that a paid search advertising campaign is paying off.

In the third part of Hopkins' series covering the use of Search Intelligence 4.0, she showed that The Sun (a UK newspaper) received 20 percent of its traffic over a period of four weeks from paid listings. Compared to its competitors, that's very high. By looking at the top 20 paid search terms sending traffic to The Sun over those four weeks, you can see that many of them were sports-, news-, or celebrity-related terms, like “steve irwin,” “football scores,” etc. What was the take-home lesson here? “It can take time to move up in the organic search results and paid listings can be an effective way for content owners (such as tabloids and broadsheets) to respond to current events and to appear among the top of the search engine results,” notes Hopkins.

This looks like an excellent suite of tools. As I noted at the beginning of this article, though, it is very expensive. Hitwise has a variety of other tools on its site, however, that may be less pricey. If you want the ultimate online marketing intelligence tool, however, and can afford to pay for it, this is the most feature-rich and easy to use suite that I've come across.


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Thinking About Keywords for PPC Ads

You've optimized your web site for certain keywords to get to the top of the search engine results pages. Now you're looking at doing an AdWords pay-per-click campaign, and you're once again confronted with the issue of choosing keywords. Where do you start?

You probably have more questions than answers at this point. if you've tracked where your visitors came from to get to your site (and what search terms they used if they came from the search engines), you might have a good start at answering some of those questions. Since you ARE spending money on these ads by bidding on clicks, you need to choose carefully. Using keywords that are overly broad can bring in traffic that looks but doesn't buy, while keywords that are overly specific might bring in too little traffic.

When Sandy Parish wrote about keyword ad strategies recently for Media Post Publications, she used an enlightening example to demonstrate the issue. She wanted to buy a birthday present for a tech savvy loved one -- something that was different from what she usually got him. She wanted something unique, but she hadn't even thought in specific terms about the type of gadget he might like. It was clearly time to go to the search engines and start thinking out loud.

The first search term she used was "unique gift," figuring she'd see "an interesting selection of unordinary gifts," as she recounts it. The ads that came back tried to sell her on the wonders of cologne and shaving products, which are hardly unique by anyone's definition. So she attempted to get a little more specific by searching for a "unique gadget." That got her somewhat closer, turning up items such as digital music devices. But it still didn't quite meet her needs.

It wasn't until Parish went through a bit of trial and error that she found the winning search term: "unique high tech gadget." That was a very good, specific description of what she was looking for, and it "brought up an ad for a new invention-type item that suited my needs," she explained. Her story illustrates the kind of targeting you will need to do, and how you will need to think, to make the best use of your money as you choose your keywords.

When thinking about what kinds of keywords you want to use for your search ads, it helps to know what criteria Google uses to decide where to place its ads. Google uses an equation that takes two factors into account: the maximum cost-per-click of the ad for the particular keyword and the keyword's quality score. The maximum cost-per-click is obvious, and the equation itself is actually pretty simple: your ad's rank equals the cost per click multiplied by the quality score.

It's the quality score that's complicated. Google explains that the overall quality score "considers the keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) and the relevance of the keyword, your ad's text, and landing page." As far as your ad's ranking or actual position in the SERPs, important factors include your keyword's CTR, ad text relevance, and your keyword's relevance to a user's search query.

It's important to note that Google's ad ranking system is not based solely on price; relevance plays a strong role. So at least in that sense, you won't be "locked out" of the top position if you can't afford to pay top dollar. Of course, a high CPC helps -- but there are reasons you might not want to pay a lot of money (I'll get to that in just a bit). Given the factors that go into your quality score, you want to make sure your keywords and ad text are relevant, and you want to build a strong click through rate. This is no surprise; Google wants to maximize its income, and the best way to do that is by putting ads that perform well near the top. You can get a higher position than ads with a higher click through rate than yours, but you'll have to pay a lot more money to do that.

This really highlights the importance of making sure your ad, landing page, and products are truly relevant to your chosen keywords. Relevance is the more cost-effective strategy. As Parish explains, "It is never beneficial to pay top dollar to keep an ad in a high position for a keyword that isn't highly relevant." Those cologne and shaving product advertisers may not have looked at it that way, but frankly, by targeting "unique gift" as a keyword, they were wasting their money. It isn't so much that "unique gift is too broad of a keyword; it's that it isn't relevant enough.

If you've selected keywords for your web site, you've been through the process of keyword research before. You know that it starts with brainstorming as many candidate keywords as possible. Then you go through a process of elimination to choose the ones that are most relevant. Next you need to research your chosen keywords in the search engines (to check up on the competition). This is where Wordtracker or other keyword research tools can help.

So you may already have a list of keywords that work well for your web site in organic SEO. Fortunately, your goal with organic SEO and with PPC is the same, at least in part: attract visitors to your site. Especially with a PPC campaign, you want to attract visitors that are highly likely to convert. This is why making sure you use relevant keywords is so important.

Let's go back to Parish's example. Some of the advertisers who turned up when she searched on the phrase "unique gift" would have been wiser to invest their money in keywords such as "shaving products" or "electric razors." Perhaps not as many people would have seen the ad, but those who did see it would have been more interested in buying what they had to offer.

Let's take a look at the winning example. "Unique high tech gadget" is a pretty specific keyword. That means it doesn't turn up very much in searches, so it very likely attracts a lot less traffic than the keyword "unique gift." But the traffic is better targeted. Even though it's a very specific keyword, it isn't the specificity of the keyword that attracts visitors as much as the relevance. Someone performing a search on that keyword is very interested in buying (or at least has some very definite ideas about what he or she likes to browse!).

So how do you make sure your keywords are relevant? You need to think like a customer, and to do that you may need help from someone else. You may have your own ideas about what kind of search terms potential customers would use when looking for your product, but are they accurate? Check the tracking you've done on the visitors who came to your site from search engines; find out what searches they performed. Ask your friends what words they would use to describe your offering if they were searching for it in the search engines.

So does this mean that broad, general keywords are a waste of money? Not always. Keep in mind that you only pay when someone clicks on the ad, so you have a little room to experiment. You just might be able to find a creative way to make it work. Parish suggests that those who want to try a broad keyword "offer a lower bid amount, and make sure the ad copy describes how the keyword can be associated with the product." She comes back to the shaving products advertisers to offer some sample text: "Unique Acme Technology Shaves Close & Makes a Great Gift." You have to give the searcher a compelling reason to click on your ad.

Still, by and large, fine tuning your keywords is a very good idea; it will reduce competition and give you more targeted traffic. So don't just sell widgets, sell "green widgets," or "high tech widgets," or "glass widgets," or whatever kind of widget is most likely to attract a click and a conversion...so long as you can show in your ad how your offering is highly relevant to that keyword. That's not going to be easy given how little space you have, but it can be done.

While you're at it, you should remember that "thinking like your customers" means more than just thinking like some random person who wants to buy your products. You need to know where your customer is coming from (in more ways than one) to know how they will look for you. For example, if you're trying to reach customers from a particular region, use that region's terminology in your ad. Depending on the what part of the U.S. you're from, for instance, that gloriously overstuffed sandwich is a "hoagie," a "sub," or a "hero." Get it right, especially if it affects what keyword you use.

What keywords are your competitors using? You can get some idea of this if you put in the keywords related to your product and check what comes up. You could also do a View Source on their web sites to see what kinds of keywords they're using there for ideas.

Think like your customer. Keep it relevant. Remember that your goal is not only traffic but conversions. If you keep these thoughts in mind, they will help you build a successful foundation for your PPC campaign.


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How to Effectively Choose Your Web Site`s Keywords

If you're serious about trying to land tons of free traffic via search engines then choosing keywords is going to have to be a serious investment for your business. In part one of this two part series, I am going to show you how to go about choosing keywords. In part two, I am going to show you how to use your keywords on your Web site.

Whether you plan to do it yourself or hire a professional, I'm sure you will find that once you are done reading the series you will have a better understanding of how to better target search engines while keeping your visitors happy.

The Importance of Keyword Selection
A common question many people ask is "What keywords should I be targeting for my site?" It is an excellent question to ask because choosing the keywords that you put on your Web site should not be taken lightly. Keyword selection should be considered a major part of your total marketing strategy.

The words that you put on your Web site are eventually going to be indexed by the search engines, unless there is something preventing a spider from crawling your Web site. The textual content on your Web pages is how search engines will classify your Web site and how people will find your Web site when using a search engine.

The most basic idea behind selecting the right keyword is choosing keywords for which people are actually searching. It is important to think like your target audience and not to think like an expert or someone well versed in your profession. Let's say I have a Web site for a ski resort. Now, I would not target the keywords "ski" or "snowboard." These terms are far too generalized and will have a ton of competing sites.

We are targeting people who want to go skiing. If a term is too general then you will have visitors who are looking for anything related to skiing and snowboarding, not visitors specifically looking to go skiing. People who are looking to go skiing are not typing those keywords in the search box. The type of people who are likely to come to your resort will be searching with keywords that look more like these: "ski resorts," "discount ski vacations" or even select localized terms like "Colorado ski resorts."

You also would not optimize a Web page for a single keyword like "doctor." With all the specialized areas in the medical industry you want to target people searching for specific doctors or specific health problems.

You can apply this idea to any business if you derive your keyword list from the various products or services you offer. If you sell a specific line of a product, or sell a particular manufacturer's product you may find that people are searching for those terms more than generalized terms. Some specific examples of choosing keywords from a specific line or manufacturer are "Dell laptop computers " or "Harry Winston jewelry."

You should develop your content by focusing on phrases instead of single keywords. When you do this you will be driving people to your Web site who are looking for precisely what you have to offer and you will be avoiding people who are not looking to buy your product or service. Now if you provide your new visitor with exactly what they want, you have a highly motivated potential customer right on your Web site.

I must stress, do not waste a single second of your time optimizing your Web site for keywords for which no one searches. You must perform keyword research on all of your keywords. Your keyword research is going to provide you with important data that will help you decide which keywords you should target. The two most important factors you want to analyze when choosing keywords are the number of times that term has been searched for and the number of competing Web sites that show up in the search engine results for your keyword.

Finding the number of competing Web sites is fairly simple. Just go to your favorite search engine, type in your keyword and see how many sites are returned in the results. Unfortunately, figuring out what the majority of the people are typing into the search box is not as easy to figure out.

Thankfully there are a number of tools, free and paid, available to aid in keyword research. Let's take a look at those now.....

Keyword Tools - The Keyhole To Free Traffic
Keyword tools allow us to peek into the world of search engine traffic. The greatest benefit keyword tools provide those of us who are searching for the "perfect" keyword is the popularity of the search term. You REALLY need to know if people are searching for the terms you are going to spend a lot of time promoting over the next, oh, three to twelve months (give or take). So how do we go about finding out how many times a keyword has been searched for?

Let's start with some of the free tools available to us. It goes without saying, but the free tools are quite limited compared to some of the more popular paid keyword tools. But hey, it's a cost effective way to tell us what we need to know.

The most popular free keyword selector tool is Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. To use Overture go to http://inventory.overture.com/

Enter the phrase you want to learn more about and click the button. You will then be presented with a list of terms that are closely related to your term as well as the number of times that your term was searched for in the previous month. Check out the results for my key phrase -- "Colorado ski resorts."

While there are more results returned by the tool than shown here we can see that my example key phrase was searched for 4583 times. I can also start to build my list and try different combinations of words using the suggestions given by the Overture Keyword Selector Tool.

As you can see there are over 1.5 million Web sites already indexed for the term "Colorado ski resorts." This term would be considered highly competitive and more than likely a very tough keyword to use to get into the top 10 results. While I wouldn't shy away from targeting this keyword in the long term, finding alternative key phrases to target would be much smarter for getting traffic in the short term.

Paid keyword tools are services you pay for that allow you to delve deeper into the keyword statistics. Most get information from their own database of billions of search queries from a number of different search engines around the world. You can use this information to find what people are searching for, which search terms generate the most traffic, and which search terms to target in order to grow your online business.

Two of the more popular keyword research services are Word Tracker and Keyword Discovery. The two services have some unique features that make them different but they both revolve around the same process of starting with a generalized keyword and then searching their databases for terms which are related to your initial keyword. The major difference between the two tools is probably the different "keyword spinners" they have available.

Once these tools find all the keywords that they think are related to your initial keyword, you are presented with a list of keywords from which to choose. In most cases, the first dozen keywords returned are the keywords you will select. The keywords that are lower on the list usually have a low number of searches performed.

A really good feature of the keyword tools is the "keyword spinner" tool. It is used to help you find alternative keywords which you may not think of right away. These tools help you find terms with plural endings, present tense or "ing" at the end, and even misspellings. Now the idea behind spinning the keyword is to give you ideas. You still must find out whether or not people are typing that term into the search box! Many people make the mistake of assuming it is good to use different forms of the word without doing the research first.

After you determine your keywords the tool then applies the Keyword Effectiveness Indicator, or KEI. KEI is a logarithmic scale that aims to quantify the effectiveness of any search term. It is similar in principle to the Richter scale, commonly used to measure earthquakes. The very best keywords have high popularity (as in a large number of searches), but are not very competitive, that is they do not appear on a large number of pages.

So, are keyword tools worth it? In my opinion they are. These tools help you find keywords faster than it would take you to do manually as shown above. That alone is worth the price of admission. There are some really excellent tools and keyword spinners that the paid tools have available but the free tools just don't. So if you're a DIY SEO, invest in a keyword tool subscription.

Once you have your list of keywords, it's time to start preparing to put the words on your Web site. Start reviewing your keyword list and begin to logically break your keywords up into groups of 2 or 3 key phrases. By logically, I mean start thinking about incorporating those words onto one page in ways that make sense to your readers.

In part two, I will show you how to put those keywords to good use within the content of your Web site.


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Integrating Your Keywords into Your Content

Once you have done your keyword research and you determine the keywords you want to target, integrating keywords into your content is probably the most important part of the entire content optimization process. It's silly to think that you would do all of this research and then not properly use the keywords in your web site. So let's make sure that doesn't happen.

You can invent many ways to implement and write your content for your web site so that it will do well with both your readers and the search engines. Let me discuss some ideas that I use when writing content; hopefully it will help you when you go to write your web site content.

The two most common questions I am asked are:

* What is the most important tag in which to place your keywords?
* Where or in what position should my keyword appear in my tags?

The answer I always give is the same. Throw all of that malarkey out the window.

The real way to ensure that you pages are written so that the search engines index your site for your target keywords is to write targeted, keyword-rich content. You want to have at least 300 to 400 words of keyword-rich content on every page. This will give you enough copy to define each page while allowing you to target specific keywords.

So when I write for the search engines, I focus on two to three keywords or key phrases per page, and I focus my writing based upon proven copy writing techniques that have been used by marketers for decades. It includes the basics of starting off with a headline, followed by a bolded statement, and then a paragraph of keyword-rich copy.

The idea is to have at least 300 to 400 words on a page. You can insert even more words, but make sure that you maintain your focus on your target keyword throughout the page.

As I said before, when your write from an authority position or as an expert it can be easy to write or speak in general terms because you have such a high level of understanding or it's "your world." Go back and ensure that you make your general terms more specific. For instance, it's easy to put a link on your site or say to your visitors "our products" or "our service." Use specific terms, such as "our home improvement products" or "our helicopter snowboard service." Generic terms do not tell the search engines anything and visitors will not find you if you are not specific.

It is important to understand that using technologies such as Flash, image files, and video do not have much of an impact on rankings because these files can not be indexed by search engines. The content embedded in these files may provide a better user experience. However, it means nothing to the search engines. Using ALT tags can help the search engines understand what it is the file is displaying, but nothing can compare to the use of pure text on your web site.

Another common issue that arises often enough that it's worth mentioning here is the use of content management systems and "What you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) editors. These tools are becoming more common because they can be used immediately by novices to update their web sites. While these tools definitely do make the web site publishing process more efficient, there can be some pitfalls.

First, you need to ensure that the tool you use produces your content as pure text. I have seen a number of sites that use a CMS tool and the system changes the content that is displayed to the public into a Flash file or an image file.

The use of these tools can also produce poorly written HTML code, which can cause search engine spiders not to index your web site. So it is important to make sure if you use a content management system that the HTML code validates. It's even better if you can work with your developers and programmers to ensure your web management system produces search engine friendly content.

Secondly, the "abuse" of CMS tools can hurt your search engine rankings because it's so easy to change the content on your web site. Changing your content a lot does not give the search engines a good idea of what your site is about. Your pages need to be published and remain constant if you want to perform well.

I always recommend a tool that allows you to add pages to your web site and build your content. Avoid CMS tools that only let you change the information on a set number of pages. Your web site needs to be able to grow and expand. A system that only allows changes will force you to consistently remove content. The result will be diminished rankings.

You need to develop your content for your readers. That's the bottom line. I am sure you have seen web sites out there with a ton of unrelated keywords slapped somewhere on the page just for the sake of rankings. Not only are those pages horrible, they are an insult to every visitor coming to the site.

Those pages are not published for human consumption but for a "dumb" robot. Yes, there is an obvious reason that those keyword rich sites rank well but they will never gain any popularity or momentum with web users. Guess what? It is possible to write great content for humans and also get the same results as the sites built for the robots. The difference is that when your site makes sense to humans, it follows that it makes sense to the search engines, but it doesn't work the other way around.

If your keywords are true to your site and your business then putting together your keyword rich content so it makes sense to your visitor should not be a problem. It will take some creativity but here are some ideas to help you think more like a copywriter.

As I stated before, writing content as an expert for a broad audience can have its pitfalls. It's important to be descriptive. Always ask -- and answer -- the questions of who, what, and where when you go about writing or re-writing your content.

For example, many web sites have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page. On many sites you'll see FAQs or at the top of the pages you'll see Frequently Asked Questions. Frequently Asked Questions about what?

A creative SEO will use every opportunity to place their targeted keyword in their content. By simply adding "about Colorado skiing adventures" to the end of FAQ, I am adding more descriptive text to my content which will both please my visitors and the search engines.

You now have a better understanding of how to choose your keywords and then think creatively and weave those keywords into your content. The most important point I can leave you with is to make sure you truly invest in your content for your readers and not invest your time and money into ranking well with content that doesn't appeal to humans. Your visitors are your key to success.


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Keyword Themes Increase Visitors, Rank Higher and Decrease Marketing Budget

Web development, keyword themes and search engine optimization are like many other jobs we do every day. Take cooking, landscaping or decorating for instance. Perhaps you remember a popular spaghetti sauce commercial for Prego. After a character asks the cook if they have remembered to use a long list of ingredients, the cook answers, "It's in there!" This is my Prego approach to using SEO and specifically, keyword themes as a web development guideline.

In Web Development, Keyword Themes Stack the Odds in Our Favor
Don't think of the search engine as having millions of entries per keyword or phrase. Understand that there are 1,000 entries and that's it. The rest exist in a black hole in space that will not be seen in time to earn you a dollar or a visitor.

Looking at the results for any key phrase, the statistics tell us that there are, for example, 489,876,431 entries. On closer review, we can verify that 489,876,431 entries are never listed on the major engines. There are in fact only 1,000 entries listed for a search.

If you aren't in that first 1,000 of those millions of reported search engine statistics, your site has no search engine representation. That means it is impossible for anyone to find your site except those to whom you specifically give the address, totally defeating the purpose of having a web site in the first place.

The keyword theme helps us overcome the outrageous odds stacked against our sites.
Using specific search engine optimization formulas in our initial web development, we can produce several related key phrases that effectively boost our placement in search results. Not only can we be sure to be among the 1,000, using this strategy fully should get your site in the top 25 within 30 - 45 days or sooner.

Let's use basic html to illustrate this idea, which involves making an original keyword phrase the theme that ties our images, tags, titles and links, headings, and sub webs together.

You have a product, idea or service in mind. Develop a sentence of less than twelve words that says the most important things you want to communicate. We'll use the title of this article as an example.

Web Development: Keyword Themes Increase Visitors, Rank Higher & Decrease Marketing Budget
Perhaps you wouldn't think of using so many words as a base key phrase. But look at how many opportunities and combinations in which we can use these keywords without violating those vague rules of overuse otherwise known as spamming the search engine.

From this base key phrase, we have many chances to fall in the target range of the visitor looking for the content existing on our page.

Briefly, we can state some SEO understandings that are talked about in many other places and are a basis for this concept.

* The title of the page will be the first instance in which our phrase is seen. This should not be more than 12 words long.
* A description of the page follows, which should also lead with the key phrase words in the same order as the title.
* Tags will be seen next, with key words presented in the same order as they are in the page title and description.

Tags and description of course can be much longer than 12 words, but should start out with the same words placed in the same order as the page title.

Think of theme the same way you do when landscaping or decorating a house. You may use the color blue, for example, in different places throughout, to tie the project together and create a unified appearance.

Images, links, tags, headings and titles can work the same way as the color blue. They present an opportunity to use the words in our key phrase, to tie our project together and present a unified appearance for both spider and visitor.

When we landscape or decorate, the color "blue" is not our entire theme. Not everything is blue, but blue would be one of the colors that we see first and often. We may not consciously think, "Blue was used in the flowers at the curb and then again in the plantings leading up to the front door, and again in the entry." However, the impression was created and we may just think, "Very nice yard."

Taking the same approach, let's look at the title for this article again.

Web Development: Keyword Themes Increase Visitors, Rank Higher & Decrease Marketing Budget
All the words in this phrase create our theme. In our web development landscape, we are going to sprinkle this keyword theme throughout the web site's design. If we think of the words, or groupings of words, in the title as different colors, we easily understand that we don't have to use all of the words in a specific instance to achieve the effect of developing our theme.

If we want to use two or more of the words from any place in our key phrase, we only have to use them in the order they appear in the title.

A heading that means " Stack the Odds by Making a Keyword Phrase Your Theme " can be rearranged to say:

"In Web Development, Keyword Themes Stack the Odds in Our Favor".

This technique allows us to make different parts of the phrase prominent, or appear closer to the beginning of a sentence, title or paragraph. At the same time it keeps the words of the broken original in logical order so it can be counted as a recurring keyword phrase.

For example our title phrase is:

Web Development: Keyword Themes Increase Visitors, Rank Higher & Decrease Marketing Budget
We use words from the original to create a separate but related keyword phrase:

"In Web Development, Keyword Themes Stack the Odds in Our Favor."

We can use many different combinations of the phrase, but using them in logical order will create varieties that will help boost the search engine rank, by keeping the content focused.

In this article, our most important ideas fall in this order:

1. Web development and keyword themes
2. Increasing visitors
3. Ranking higher in search
4. Decreasing marketing expense

Accordingly, the first "color" in the theme that we want people to notice is "Web Development: Keyword Themes." This is also the "color" we want them to see most often. It is the most important message of our article.

We know that we will reach a saturation point where this most important phrase has been used too often, and the search engine will begin to penalize us, banishing our web to that black hole we spoke of earlier.

This is where the theme formula will keep us out of trouble and in the top ten.
Because certain areas on every web page naturally lend themselves to optimization, these are areas where we can "legally," logically and without spamming, use the theme concept to our advantage.

Plant the idea of the keyword theme and prominence in your mind. Now, apply the same strategy we used to create this phrase,

"In Web Development, Keyword Themes Stack the Odds in Our Favor"

to creating keyword phrases when you develop:

* Titles
* Meta tags
* Headings
* First words
* Links

The title of our page has already been created.
Notice that both the description and the keyword tags contain words other than those in our theme. Still, even in the keywords, the most important part of the theme phrase is listed first and all three tags use the same order.

The previous tags are established primarily for a search engine robot's benefit.

Now we can manage the areas that our visitors see, the header, links, heading and text.
Look at this screen shot of a web page from the visitor's point of view. Just as we have arranged the hidden content so the spider will know what we offer, here, we have arranged the visual content to do the same thing. This creates a cohesive theme that is easily understood.

Let's break down the steps.

In our header image, the major "colors" in our theme are present.

* Web Development
* Keyword Theme
* Increasing Visitors
* Ranking Higher

Because this is an image, we can take a little liberty with the keyword order since these are human visual words that the spider can't read. Adding robot language to the image by naming it something like "webdevelopment-keywordtheme" will create more relevance and substance. We can and should also add an alt tag, screen tip and a link to the header image.

Our navigational text links come next. They too provide an opportunity to extend our keyword theme further into the page, and in logical order. Don't forget to include screen tips, or titles, in the links. These links will be internal, but the advantage is that the names of the links and the links themselves will be extremely relevant.

Tip:
When your domain is not keyword related, make your links point to a folder that is related. The first link is Web Development. The link can lead to "mysearchsite.com/webdevelopment" then name the page "keyword-theme." So your page link would look like this:

· Mysearchsite.com/webdevelopment/keyword-theme.htm

After the links, we want a heading. The heading, like a subtitle, lets both human and robot visitors know what is coming on the page. In our example, we have used the key phrase. When we format this text as a heading class, the search robot will know that these words classify the text that comes after and are important.

Have you noticed that we've used the first important keyword theme idea several times and we have yet to address the text portion of our page? Since we have our layout in place, and have used the major phrase extensively in developing our page, it only requires a few more instances in the actual text to have a page that is optimized for the chosen keyword phrase.

At this point we have a chance to give our page more depth by treating each of the "colors" in our keyword theme phrase the same way we've treated the first four words. Optimizing for the three additional key phrases will give us a page that is very dense in content, relevant to our topic and more likely to be search listed for more than one keyword.

We can intentionally add images that can be optimized for "increased visitors," "ranking higher" and "decrease marketing budget."

In the same way, we can add links, headings and tags that correlate with other parts of our keyword theme phrase. This helps us to pick up representation on search pages for keywords other than our most important.

Since most people like to have a number for reference, keep the use of each keyword phrase to five. That is, no more than five instances of one phrase combination in:

* Images
* Titles - including link titles
* Alt tags
* Headings (limit of 2 for each phrase)

Links are the exception to limits. You can have as many links with as many of your key phrases in them as you can possibly find.

The web development bonus for using this theme strategy is that it also allows people with different configurations to better enjoy the content on our web pages. By using alt tags we have made it possible for those who don't allow or can't get images to get a better idea of the intent our web site serves. We have also made the text and images richer for our visitor by using screen tips to help define our meaning. Headings, links and pictures are related and help us to tell the story we want.

To learn more about using images as SEO, see this article: How To Optimize Images To Increase Rankings

For more information on how to use tags and choose keywords, see here: Search Engines: How to Make Them a Tag They Will Love

Following this strategy strictly on my last three web development jobs netted very happy customers who are are enthusiastically promoting my business to everyone they know. That's a little SEM bonus we can all use!


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