SEO in simple words can be defined as the art of optimizing your website to ensure high rankings on search engines, thus effectively increasing the amount of traffic you get from them. SEO is the most important factor in ensuring that your website is well ranked in search engine results for search phrases that are relevant to your business. This involves a lot of hard work, but the results will pay off if you adopt a systamatic implementation strategy.

Alright! Lets move on and learn how to implement SEO – the proper way.

• Recently google has published an excellent guide about SEO – Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, download and go through it. There is no better way to start on Search Engine Optimization than the guide published by the search giant itself. I can suggest more readings but we are just starting on SEO, so lets not get confused, read, apply (a must if you are serious about learning) and move to next step.
• Signup with Google’s Webmaster Tools, they are designed to assist webmasters in indentifying SEO issues related to websites. Try to read and put into operation everything suggested to improve your website rankings. If given proper attention, they help your website tremendously to perform better in search rankings.
• Go to your Web Analytics account, go through every report, check, who is sending visitors, look for more popular pages/contents. Compare the results, is your website doing better than what you had in Step by Step SEO For Beginners – Part One.
• Time for Google Website Optimizer, run experiments, find the set of contents that work best to maximize your conversion.
• Links Links Links – If you want your website to stay, you need a steady in-flow of quality links. I am compiling a comprehensive list of link building techniques, so please visit back soon or subscribe to the RSS feed (you don’t wanna miss it, one solid piece of info, can make you thousands of dollars). Meanwhile check this out – Promotion & Link Building.
• SEO is an ongoing task, keep track of search engine ranking factors, design your own methods of promoting websites and record the results.

Believe it or not, SEO is not that big of a secret, most of the information for successful results is already available online. You just need to put the pieces of puzzle at the right places. This is where your own methods/techniques/theories jump in, test them, mold them as per constantly envolving search engine algorithems.

I tried to keep the steps as simple as possible and I am sure that if you complete all the tasks on this list you will be well on your way to becoming a successful SEO.

Your feedback is welcome, suggest anything you feel appropriate to improve this SEO guide.

Part One of this tutorial can be reached at Step by Step SEO For Beginners.

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SEO Online Marketing, SEO

There could be shortcuts, but believe me if you seriously want to stay in the SEO game, learn it the proper way. The way to learn anything is to want to learn it, go at it, get it wrong, fix the problem, try again. However, guides like these, help and give you a head start, because you don’t have to waste time on compiling what actually needs to be learnt and in what order. Over the years I have gone through countless step-by-step guides while trying to understand search engine optimization. For starters, following is a compilation of the most useful steps towards learning SEO.

Learn how to make a basic website

Before getting into SEO techniques it’s vital to know the basics of web development. Follow the steps mentioned below to develop the necessary web development skills required to become a successful SEO:

Learn basics of HTML - Don’t step back, writing HTML is much easier than you think. If you are reading this and know how to use a web browser to load a website, you can code HTML. Try this excellent tutorial, just focus and follow.

Build a CSS driven website – All of the presentation and styles with CSS i.e. No Tables! Check this comprehensive tutorial.

Test your website in different browsers - Each browser interprets your website code in a slightly different manner, which means that it may appear differently to visitors using different browsers. While most people use Internet Explorer, a sizable portion of your users will use other browsers such as Firefox, Opera or Safari. Therefore it’s important to check your web design on different browsers to ensure all users view the webpage as it’s intended. Browsershots is a comprehensive service, offering multiple versions of browsers for various operating systems.

Choose your keywords - Getting the right keywords is everything, so be careful. You are just starting out, pick keywords that are less competitive. You might be wondering why am I choosing the keywords here (under the heading “Learn how to make a basic website “)? Well! all of the SEO game is played around the keywords. Selection of a proper domain name based on your chosen keyword plays a vital role, that’s why we are doing this step before registering a domain name.

So how do you know which keywords are good to go. This is a vast subject and needs a lots of articles dedicated solely to this section. But for the beginners, choose a keyword, say your business name, go to Google and search for yourself. If the result shows a small amount of low quality websites, use it as your keyword(s). If competition seems high (you see loads of high quality web sites) to rank for, try some variations.

Register a Domain Name & Find Suitable Hosting – This is again not as difficult as it sounds. There are tons of choices out there. I have good experience with Hostgator and WebSiteSource, you can use anyone of these. However, you are free to make your own decision, just make sure you shouldn’t be paying high and the domain name should be included for free as part of your hosting package. For your domain name, use your keywords from above. If your keywords are not available as a domain name, choose different keywords. (Although having similar keywords to your domain name makes SEO much easier.)

FTP/Upload your website files to your new hosting account - The are literally hundreds of FTP programs available on the web. I use FileZilla, the free FTP solution. FileZilla is open source software distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License. You many also ask your hosting provider for instructions.

Add a sitemap - It is a page (or sometimes more than one page) that contains links to all of the pages on your website. Depending on the size of your website, you can simply create a page with links to all of these pages.

However, if your site is getting large you might want to automate the building of the page, there are many tools available on the internet to allow you to build a site map. A search on any of the major search engines will bring up plenty of choice. I use xml-sitemaps, because of it’s simplicity and feature rich nature.

Sign up for Google Analytics – This free tool will help you improve website ranking by tracking visitors to your website. Applying this to your website is very easy, detailed instructions are included by Google.

Search for your keywords in big search engines – Wait for 7 days and then check how your site is ranked/positioned in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). I generally use Search Engine Positioning Tool (saves lot of time). It is fine if your website doesn’t show up at this point, however, if it does come up (congrads), record how it ranks in a spreadsheet.

Wait couple of weeks for Google Analytics to gather data and let search engines find your website (if they are still searching for it )

Part Two: Learn & apply SEO to your website

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SEO Online Marketing, SEO, Web Development

Email marketing normally doesn’t get the required attention, but studies prove it’s actually the most effective and efficient marketing tool available to online entrepreneurs. It can be the most lethal weapon in your arsenal, if you have got a targeted list of opt-in subscribers. It can deliver highly personalized messages at a fraction of the cost of other media, and provide readily measurable results. Some tips for effective and appropriate emails:

Well Structured Yet Casual

Emails straddle the line between business letters and talking to someone over the phone. They should be well structured so that recipient can understand the message and respond, at the same time casual enough to fit the medium. Some odd situations may require a formal email, but as a general rule, try to achieve a conversational tone in your message.

Provide Context

Now-a-days people involve themselves in a variety of tasks at the same time and may, therefore, need a reminder of relevance of emailed information. Provide background information, such as reason for the message and/or description of any documents you may attach.

Empathize

Emails play a vital role in building cooperation and trust, let the recipient know you understand and respect his/her point of view. For example, to introduce your recommendations, start with “I understand your goals and recommend that we…” or “Based on the priorities you outlined for us, the next item we address will be…”

Call to Action – A Must

Always remember that the call to action is probably the most important aspect of your email. It’s the action your want your visitor to take when they read through your email. Call to action comes in different forms it may be a heading, a button which stands out, a text link or a banner. Whatever you decide to incorporate in your email, it has to be prominent, stating clearly the required action and deadline (if there is any).

Include Contact Information

Many business people look for contact information at the end of e-mail. This can be a quick, convenient way to access a phone number. When contacting someone, always include your name, occupation, and any other important identification information at the end of message. Most e-mail programs let you attach a “signature file” automatically at the end of message. Set it up.

I am sure there are many more, please jump in and share yours…

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Email, Online Marketing, Tips & Tricks Effective Emails, Online Marketing, Tips