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“Articles about what else...SEO for now!”
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The following articles appear in various forms around
the web. It's time to bring them home and share them
with you. I have even written a blog that I post to from
time to time various thoughts and information. Feel free
to peruse it by clicking the link below. It's hosted at
Blogger.com, a great service which I also recommend
people use.
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To reach the DocMurdock Blog Click here
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**Note - We're in the process of redoing our content,
updating and also getting some writers to create some
content for display here with links to additional
resources. Please bear with us while we make these
changes and we hope you enjoy reading some articles
we've written.
What is Search Engine Optimization?
Actually what people refer to as SEO should really be
termed WSO or
Website Optimization. This is a set of actions taken by
an individual or
company to make their website more visible to people who
use the
Internet through resources such as
http://www.google.com/
or other
search engines.
The Internet itself is similar in nature to a card
catalog at your local
library. Those of who remember the drawers full of cards
can relate to
this analogy. Others may get lost in it. With the
drawers, there were
cards that had the "exact" location of a book or
magazine in
alphabetical order that we might be looking for. We
opened the drawer,
thumbed through the cards, found our book title and then
wandered
aimlessly down the aisles hoping that:
1. the card was in the right drawer
2. the book was not checked out
3. the book was returned to its proper place on the
shelf which
matched the contents of the card.
How does all of this relate to your website? Your
website is the card in
the drawer. There are people out there searching for
your card, and
since your website is available all the time and many
people can check
it out, you want to ensure that your card is correct,
and that it sticks
out from the rest of the cards in the drawer so that you
are noticed.
That is Website Optimization.
How do I do this and is it difficult? Well there are a
number of ways
and yes it's difficult. I will not lie to you. I make my
living doing
this for clients. This is all I do, and it takes a lot
of time to get
it just right, but more on that later.
There are software packages that can do this for you.
Some are very
nice, others are very cheap. Expensive is better, cheap
is just cheap
and frustrating. There are services out there that are
expensive, and
there are others that are cheap. You get what you pay
for and for the
cheap ones there are no guarantees.
How do I get started with WSO? First off, look at your
website, what
does it say? What market is it trying to address? Is
there a product you
are selling? A service you are promoting? What makes you
stand out from
your competition? Are there words or terms that you
could use to
describe your service in two or three words? Like maybe
website
optimization...or economical website optimization...or
car
waxer...beautician extraordinaire...things like that?
Search Engines, those things that send out little robots
and spiders
(these are good spiders and friendly robots) at night to
scour the
entire internet and catalog billions of websites look
for certain things
to stand out on a web page:
Title - Probably the single most important part of a web
page. Make this
something descriptive like:
Bob Johnson's New, Terrific Auto Repair Service not
Bob's Web page
Short, to the point, and using some of the keywords that
describe your
service or product. Here it's Auto Repair Service, it's
New, and it's
Terrific.
Description - The second most important item on the
page. Make this
relevant to the content (typing) that you have on your
web page.
Bob's New Terrific Auto Repair Service is the most
experienced auto
repair shop on the coast. Servicing All types of autos
from 9am - 5pm 7
days a week. We offer early bird service on Fridays and
Free Car Washes
to all clients who pay by cash.
Keywords - Select about 5-6 words/phrases per page in
your site that
describe your product or service, and separate them with
a comma. This
line would look like: auto, automobile, service,
terrific, new, free car
wash, pay with cash.
Keywords are important, but not 100% necessary in WSO.
Why 5-6 per page?
Because with anything more than that, the search engine
will get the
idea that you're all over the place vs. being niched
into an area of
business which you're referencing on your site and
you'll lose ranking.
Additionally this shows focus in your business and it
impresses your
clients.
How do I find these keywords? Use the following tool:
Yahoo Search Marketing Keyword Tool
This tool known as the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool
is one of the
most widely used methods of finding out what subjects
people are
searching for. What products they are searching for,
what services they
search for.
Enter your words like this: star wars or use something
like
business plan sample and when you click the button, you
will be
presented with a listing of how many times that word or
words was
searched for in the past month. Picking the higher
ranked ones will be
good for your site.
At DocMurdock we use
WORDTRACKER exclusively for our keyword
searches.
Word Tracker while costing money does deliver premiere
results and we
highly recommend it. In fact, just follow this link and
you can sign up
for the service today.
Most website design products, or online website creation
tools offer a
way for you to enter these keywords into your website
code easily. Once
this is done, your site will be more available to
searchers on the web
following the next and last step: SUBMISSIONS
SUBMISSIONS -
What is a submission and how do I do it? Submission is
the process of
presenting your "card" website to the librarian for
entry into the
Internet. The librarian let's call her GOOGLE (for this
example) has a
place called a submission page or a place to add your
URL to. In the
case of GOOGLE you can find this page at:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
This page allows you to type in the URL or (Uniform
Resource Locator
(address)) of your web page and a description (Comments
area). Once you
have done that, you click the button named: Add URL
Clicking this button asks the librarian to send out the
very special
spiders and robots to catalog your card/website at their
next possible
time. They will do this and if you are a webwatcher you
will see your
page climb the listings. Keeping it there is where
services like mine
come in.
FREQUENCY -
Frequency is key in Website Optimization. This is where
my services come
into play. Most working individuals do not have the time
or the desire
to spend their days and nights making sure that websites
not only get
submitted, but stay ranked on the search engines. I do.
I make the time
for each of my clients and help them get more business
as a result of
visibility of multiple pages. See, everything that was
mentioned above
has to be done for each and every page on your website,
and it has to be
done more than once a month. I have the time for that.
You don't. You
need to promote your business, talk with people, create
products,
perform services, etc...Oh! and you need to have a life
afterwards. My
work and business is to make sure that your website is
very popular,
very quickly, and it's what I do best.
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More Hits Are Good For My Website
- A Myth You Should Avoid
I hear this all the time. "I can get you listed on
100,000 websites for $29.95" and..."I can get you
100,000 hits on your website for the same price". Avoid
these like the plague.
First off you don't need a 100,000 visitors to your
site. What you need is 100,000 CLIENTS on your site
searching for your product or service. Very simply
you're not going to find many people doing this for you.
DocMurdock™ will do this. Our mission is to find people
looking for your product or service and bring them to
your website so that you can sell them. While we don't
guarantee more sales, we'll get you people who want your
product to come and look-see. If your sales message is
clear, you'll sell them. We help with this as well.
How do we do this? We evaluate your site for things that
pull people in. Things that are magnets for people and
attract them to stay on your site vs. things that repel
them and send them to your competition. We also scour
the web for those people and lead them to your site so
they'll buy your product or service.
If you have an auto parts site and people show up
looking to buy flowers...you're sales will not increase.
If you have flowers and they show up to buy
flowers...you're in the money. This is our objective.
More sales for your company. More revenue. This is why
we term what we do "Revenue Optimization" not Website
Optimization. Kids optimize websites, and there are a
lot of kids out there doing it. But...all the hits in
the world are not going to increase your revenue, if
they're not from people searching for your product.
With us, your hit counter may actually go down. It's not
a bad thing, it just means that the people who are
actually looking for your product or service are finally
coming to your site. Another of our objectives is to
increase the stay time of visitors. If they're there for
less than a minute...sales will dwindle. If we put
things in the right places, give them a call to action,
ask them to do something, we keep them there. The longer
a potential client is on your site, the more apt they
are to purchase something.
Give them a reason to stay there. Offer them something
free, ask them to subscribe to a newsletter, buy
something, see something, get something for free...there
are many ways to keep a client on your site. Use
attractive colors. Go out and see what the hottest
websites are using for color schemes. Do those fit your
business or your brand? Who are you using for branding
and marketing? Check out
http://www.howstudios.com for the best
in the business. Howard Lim. Give him a call and tell
him I referred you. He's great, and what he will create
for you will help your business convey an image of
greatness, one that will sell your product quickly.
100,000 websites...MYTH. There are really only 5 to be
concerned with. One of them is listed to the right;
GOOGLE the others vary from time to time, but keep in
mind MSN, YAHOO, ALEXA, DOGPILE as some primary
candidates to submit your site to.
Good luck and may your website rise higher every day.
Are
Your Keywords Making Money For You?
I built my website, it's perfect. My chosen subject of
the website is Computer Support Services. Of course this
is an example, but moving along, what should my keywords
be?
Keywords are what people type into a search engine to
find something on the internet. These words are what
drive user requests.
Words to live by I like to call them. Why? Because on
the internet your website will live and die by the words
you use, or the words I use when you hire me to optimize
your site.
How many words should I use?
What should they say?
How many phrases should there be?
What's a phrase?
First off, let's cover what a keyword is. A keyword is a
word or collection of words used to describe your
website. For those doing their own website design these
words are applied in what is called a meta tag such as
the following:
meta name="keywords" content="these words, would
describe, your site"
Keywords should say something about your website. They
should also directly reflect the content of your site.
They should not be random words that have nothing to do
with your site, or you. If they are, you can expect that
your page ranking will fall rather than rise. Of course,
you will still have to submit or resubmit your website
to keep your page in the eyes of the various search
engines.
The number of words and phrases should be no more than
21-22, or a combination of the two. I have seen sites
that had over 780 keywords, but no content to support
them. Even if there was content there to support that
large number of words, it's fruitless to have that many
words. Most search engines will ignore anything over the
22 words limit.
A phrase is defined as more than one word. "Real Estate
Sales" is a phrase. "Real, Estate, Sales" is a
collection of keywords. Both of these if used in a
search would render completely different results.
Short, to the point, and using some of the keywords that
describe your service or product. Here it's Auto Repair
Service, it's New, and it's Terrific.
Description - The second most important item on the
page. Make this relevant to the content (typing) that
you have on your webpage:
Bob's New Terrific Auto Repair Service is the most
experienced auto repair shop on the coast. Servicing All
types of autos from 9am - 5pm 7 days a week. We offer
early bird service on Fridays and Free Car Washes to all
clients who pay by cash.
KEYWORDS -
Select about 22 words/phrases that descibe your product
or service, and separate them with a comma. This line
would look like: auto, automobile, service, terrific,
new, free car wash, pay with cash.
How do I find these keywords?
Use the following tools:
Word Tracker while costing money does
deliver premiere results and we
highly recommend it. In fact, just follow this link and
you can sign up
for the service today.
Yahoo Search Marketing Keyword Tool
This tool formerly known as the Overture Keyword
Suggestion Tool is one of the most widely used methods
of finding out what subjects people are searching for.
What products they are searching for, what services they
search for. Yahoo purchased Overture and renamed the
service into Yahoo Search Engine Marketing. Yahoo has an
extensive and sometimes defeating editorial process
which while refining ads can sometimes result in their
release being delayed by days causing advertisers to
miss key release dates and sometimes lose hundreds,
thousands or even millions in potential revenue.
Enter your words like this: star wars or use something
like business plan sample and when you click the button,
you will be presented with a listing of how many times
that word or words was searched for in the past month.
Picking the higher ranked ones will be good for your
site.
How does keyword selection help sales? It helps in the
sense that by selecting the correct keywords, your site
will be more visible, found more often in searches, and
as a result of more visitors, eventually you will get
more sales. Please make sure that the BUY IT NOW message
on your website is clear. If not, all the optimization
in the world will not help your sales increase.
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©1995
Michael
Murdock, DocMurdock All Rights Reserved.
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