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  1. SEO: You’re Doing It Wrong

    April 9, 2012 by guest_author

    Practically everyone who owns or operates a website is aware of the importance of SEO, or search engine optimization. Unfortunately, in their zeal to create a site that will win top ranking among Google and Google-wannabes, they often make mistakes that actually harm their ranking instead.

    Are you guilty of any of these seven goofs?

    1. Not Focusing on What Makes Your Business Unique

    Anyone can plug a bunch of generic keywords into a website, but do your keywords actually describe what is special about you and your business?

    Think about why customers should choose you over your competitors. Have you been in business longer? Are your prices unbeatable? Do you offer exclusive brand names that other businesses can’t? Figure out the strengths of your business first, then select your keywords to highlight them.

    2. Failure to Research/Brainstorm Creative Keywords

    Have a brainstorming session that represents employees from every level of your business like engineers, marketers, sales staff and employees who provide frontline service. Ask them to suggest keywords that best describe your business. It’s also a good idea to use the free Google AdWords Keywords Tool for ideas.

    3. Chasing Search Engines Instead of Customers

    It’s possible to have a company website with a relatively high search engine ranking that isn’t — in the least — attractive to customers. Yes, it’s important to pay attention to the ever-changing search engine algorithms, but remember one thing: in the final analysis, your customers — not the search engines — will be the ones doing the buying. Don’t use gimmicks that alienate them.

    4. Keyword Cramming

    This is one practice that can make your site unattractive to customers and penalized by search engines. Keyword cramming, sometimes called keyword stuffing, means using keywords over and over to the point where the text on your site no longer makes sense. It’s better to shoot for a keyword density of two to four percent and to work the keywords naturally into your prose.

    5. Ignoring Customer’s Vocabulary

    We all know that many professions have their own language. Have you ever tried to make sense of a doctor’s report or a legal document? Not fun. When you select your keywords, make sure you use laymen’s terms. For instance, say “mousetrap” instead of “rodent disposal unit.”

    6. Weak Content

    In website development, content truly is king. Be sure your site offers visitors plenty of useful information about who you are and what you do. If you are not confident in your ability to create strong, informative web pages, it’s well worth your while to hire a freelance writer who can get you on the right track.

    7. Ignoring Link Exchanges

    You will rank higher with the search engines — and with customers — if you link to other respected sites in your industry and if they link back to you. Take some time every week to check out the top ranked sites in your field and offer a link exchange.

    Many people make search engine optimization harder than it has to be. If you focus on identifying your business’s unique strengths, choosing logical keywords and offering useful content, you should do just fine with both search engines and clients.


    This is a guest post by blogger Mary who blogs on SEO and issues related to buying and selling the mousetrap.

    Category SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

  2. Top Quality Content Equals More Traffic

    April 9, 2012 by guest_author

    If you own a business blog and you want to create more traffic, adding high quality content will help. It’s not as hard as you might think to get the content you deserve for your blog. You can add content in many ways and below you will find the most popular.

    1.  Allow Guest Posting

    One way to get fresh content for your blog is to allow guest posts on your blog. Talented writers will provide you content at no cost and in exchange they get to include a resource box or an author bio box with a link back to their website or blog. This trade-off works well for many, and can allow you to get the fresh content you need.

    2.  Syndicated Content

    You can also use content that’s not exclusive to your blog. Many article directories and many writers can provide you with content you can use on your blog. This type of content doesn’t cost anything, but you don’t own the rights to it exclusively. This means others can also use it on their blogs or websites.

    Understand if you use syndicated content you need to mix it in with unique content from another option. This will help to keep the balance you need on your blog for the best possible search engine optimization possible.

    3.  Outsourcing

    Probably the easiest way to get new content for your blog comes from outsourcing. Many writers can provide you with top quality on any subject from small business investment ventures to Washington DC Web Design.  Whatever the subject is, you can find a writer that will provide the content for you.

    The one drawback to outsourcing is the cost. If you want to get high quality content you can’t choose writers that charge very little. Expect to pay at least $20 for a high quality 500 word post.

    4.  Write it Yourself

    Finally, you can write the content yourself. If you enjoy writing, can write high quality content, and have the time, then writing your own content might be the best way to go. This won’t cost you anything, but your time, and you can control the type of content posted to your blog.

    If you decide to write your own content, you will want to make sure it’s perfect before posting it to your blog. Bad content won’t help you in the same ways as high quality content. Your goal is to gain traffic from your blog and this means you need the benefits of search engine optimization. These come from high quality content written for the reader.

    Whether you decide to pay someone to write for you, allow guest authors to submit content, use syndicated content, or write it yourself, adding fresh content to your blog can help your search engine rankings and bring you more traffic. Providing new content for your readers will also bring them back more often, giving you the chance to market to them once again.

    By guest blogger Stephanie who specializes in writing about Washington DC Web Design.

    Category SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

  3. Split Testing Tools

    March 16, 2012 by admin

    Split testing is undoubtedly a precious method for businesses aiming to increase their profit and maximize their advertising costs. And now, it is time to know about one free online tool for conducting A/B split testing.But before moving forward, you should know the difference between a basic split test and a multivariate test.

    Split Testing vs Multivariate Testing 
    A basic split test and a multivariate test differs on how immediate results are expected and analyzed. With multivariate testing, you test more than one–or all–elements of your page at once, which is contrary to uni-variate split testing that runs tests for page elements individually.

    The advantage of the multivariate testing is that you can conduct it for a shorter period of time and can improve a page’s performance immediately. Instead of creating individual versions or samples for each page, you rotate different elements on the page; however, this method requires a considerable amount of traffic to get qualified results. Despite this, A/B split testing still remains to be the best way to optimize the conversion rate of a site over time.

    Free Split Testing Tool
    Conducting a quality split testing experiment can be done without buying software or paying for a service. Google, a high-traffic site, conducted split testing for its page once, wherein it used 41 different hues of blue to determine which one appeals best to visitors. It has all the capacity and reason to do such an exhaustive test because it is very rich in traffic and it relies primarily on performance.

    Now, online marketers can’t thank Google much for its free split-testing tool–Google Website Optimizer. You can never go wrong with this tool because it is advanced in terms of features, allowing you to conduct both uni-variate and multivariate split tests. Aside from being reliable and user-friendly, it can be used with existing web page URLs, it does not affect your ranking on SERPs and does not yield duplicate results.

    Setting up a split test with Google Website Optimizer can be performed whether or not your know HTML or JavaScript.

    First, you identify the page or pages you want to test. It is better to test pages with high traffic in order to finish the test faster.
    Second, define the elements you want to test, and remember that you only change one element at a time.
    Third, supply tag to the original page, the variation page and the conversion page in order to track their performances. Then, enter the webpage URLs into the program and preview them before setting them to work.Google Website Optimizer conducts the experiment by rotating the elements for every new visitor to the page. That is, it serves page 1 for the first person, page 2 for the second, page 1 again for the third person, and the process goes on until a definite amount of conversion is achieved.

    There are other split-testing tools that can be found online, but most of them are proprietary. Nothing will harm you if you choose Google’s tool or any other paid tool out there.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

  4. Split Testing

    March 14, 2012 by admin

    Once you have a complete website and you become a member of some networks, it does not mean that you are ready to go for a CPA Marketing campaign.

    Although you are sure that you have enough traffic for your site, you can never be certain that 100% of this traffic is going to convert. So, your personal task before plunging straight into grabbing a product and starting to campaign is test your site’s effectiveness to consumers.

    The word is “split testing” Split testing, alternately called A/B testing or A/B split testing, is a method used by web designers and web developers to make web pages–or an entire website–meet a marketing goal, which is to generate the highest profit that it can get from traffic.

    The importance of split testing is that you will know the behavior of your visitors depending on the arrangement of various elements in your site or landing page. For instance, you will know if changing the image on your page will generate more conversion, or if putting the shopping cart button at the left side of the page will cause a higher conversion rate. Particular details like these can indeed affect the behavior of your visitors, and can greatly influence the profits you gain in your site.

    Why Should You Consider It?
    There are several good reasons why you should consider this testing on your pages, especially the pre-sale page.

    First, only marketers serious about revenue generation do this, as it gives them knowledge on what combination of elements on a page can produce the best results for their campaign.
    Second, split testing will set you on the favored top of the competition once you implemented the positive results of the experiment.
    Third, you maximize your advertising budget because if your site doubles its conversion rate, your return on investment also increases two-fold. The same amount you spend to promote your site with 50 conversions a month will now yield 100 conversions for the same period.

    How It Is Done
    When you split test, you change the look or arrangement of the different elements on your page, which are the heading, sub-heading, opening paragraph, images, call to action, offers, hyperlinks, submit button, and colors. Test each of these elements separately or at least 2 or 3 elements each time.

    In a basic test, you have your original page with the default appearance, and then you create a variant page with the element/s changed. One element should be tested at a time, which can take long depending on your traffic. It is necessary to test the first-six page elements because these have a greater impact on conversion rates.

    Once the test is finished, you should determine the statistical significance of the conclusion of the test. To know whether to use the original or the varied version of the element, you should follow this rule: The numerical difference between the two results must be greater than the square root of the sum of the two results. Or simply, the formula Y-X > √X+Y, where Y>X

    Say, if the result of page A was 10 conversions, and the result of page B was 7, then their difference is 3. Their sum is 17, and the square root of that sum is 4 (rounded down). The difference of the results(3) is lower than the square root(4) of the sum, so the result of the test is insignificant. Therefore, you should use the original of that element and not implement the change.

    There are more things you should know about split testing, but there are other times to tackle those.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

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