Search engine optimization (SEO) is very essential if you want to successfully earn money online.

Because of the importance of SEO, many website owners spend a lot of money and effort improving their website ranking on search engines. This article outlines the key benefits of SEO to your website and to your online business’ success.

SEO helps to increase the ranking of your website on search engines. When your website ranks high on search engines, it means you get high volumes of traffic that is directed to your web site through the search engines. More traffic means more sales.

SEO helps you to save money on paid advertising. If your website is well optimized and receives large volumes of traffic through search engines, you get a large volume of traffic coming to your website through organic links on the search engines. This means that you do not have to spend money on other advertising tools such as Pay Per Click (PPC).

Optimizing your website for search engines and using your keywords and phrases in this process ensures that you get targeted visitors on your website. If you use all your keywords and phrases in your articles and website content, it means that your website is visible on search engines for your relevant keywords. When people type your keywords on search engines, your website ranks high on search engines.

SEO helps you dominate your niche. If your website ranks high on all major search engines, and for all your keywords, you soon dominate the niche and become an expert in your niche or topic. This builds a good reputation for you, which further drives more traffic to your website.

With all these benefits of SEO, it is important that you start to optimize your website for search engines today!

Philip Chua

gvo

Have you ever wondered how a search engine works? It must be fascinating figuring out how this search tool could direct you to several websites that are relevant to your keywords. Or, have you experienced instances where the link that supposedly contains your keywords is not exactly what you have in mind? You would probably think that there must be something wrong with the search engine that it generated irrelevant results.

How does a search engine work?
Two things figure greatly in making search engines work effectively and efficiently: the electronic search spider and the sitemap.

What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is basically a page or pages that serve/s as a directory by listing all the links to all documents and files found in a website. It is not merely a random listing of links, but organized in such a way that it gives the web user an idea of how all the information that can be found in the site fits into an outline or framework. It is like viewing the table of contents of a book, or viewing the “concept map” of the site’s content.

What is a spider?
In SEO language, spider is not an animal found in your closet. This electronic search spider is actually a bot which collects data and copies content to be stored in the search engine’s database when keywords are fed into the search dialogue box. The spider reads the content of the site and sends another bot to follow the links and copy the content contained in them.

What purpose does a sitemap serve?
A sitemap like any other map gives directions to a navigator. It primarily targets search engine spiders so that they are properly directed to your site and to the links where keywords entered in the search dialogue appears. As such, it is actually a useful tool in search engine optimization. A well organized site map would guide the spider to find the information it needs when keywords are entered during a search operation.

As an additional beneficial consequence, sitemaps have proven to be useful even to web users. Since a sitemap displays all the links to information found in a website, it helps the user to search for a particular topic in mind. Many users also use the sitemap to navigate between pages in a site.

What are the benefits of having a sitemap for my website?

1. No page would be left unturned
Going back to the purpose of sitemaps, having one would mean faster and easier tracking and crawling of spiders all over your site. As a result, search engines would surely get to the view all the pages of your site and not just the pages containing random keywords.

2. Easier navigation for site visitors
Once a web user has accessed your sitemap, they need not go back to the search engine page to look for what they need. If what they are looking for is in your site, then they would have an easier and faster way of locating it.

3. Potential advertising value
If it so happens that a relevant product or service company reaches your site, then it would be easier for them to see how best they can position themselves in the different pages of your site as a paid page advertisement.

4. Encourage greater traffic to your site
If your company website has a sitemap then potential buyers would have an easier time in accessing your latest products and services. Moreover, they would not miss out on any product that might be off future interest to them since the sitemap would display all information found the site.

How are sitemaps formatted?
There are at least three major types of sitemaps: indexed, full categorical, and restricted categorical. An indexed site map appears as an alphabetical listing or directory.
A full categorical map displays all links classified into categories; while a restricted categorical sitemap displays all links listed in a chosen category at a time. The full and restricted sitemaps are very similar except that the former displays all links in all categories all at once in a page, while the latter focuses only the links under the selected category for easier and less eye-straining viewing.

The most widely used format is the full categorical. Based on the results of a 1999 SURL study on sitemap designs, the full categorical format is most preferred by users since it is easier to search for topics within the site and it allows easier comparison between and among categories.

Some tips in setting up your sitemap

1. Link the sitemap only to your homepage.
This is to ensure that the spider starts searching from your homepage down to all the pages listed in your sitemap. In this way, no page would be left unvisited by the spider.

2. Do not go beyond 30 pages for a sitemap.
Large websites having 50 or more pages should not go beyond 30 since this adds more pages to the site, and might make search engines think that the sitemap is a link farm. Also, this prevents overcrowding of links which could be tiring to view.

3. Check all the links listed in your sitemap.
It can be discouraging when you click on a link only to find out that nothing is displayed. Test your sitemap; click all links in every page to make sure that all links are indeed linked to the right page.

4. Give keyword-rich titles to sitemap links.
Keyword-rich titles give your site more advantage in being searched properly under the right category. But be sure to have this sitemap link linked back to the sitemap (e.g. back to sitemap).

5. Provide a short description for the links in the sitemap.
Doing so would give readers a better idea of what to find in the link and save them time on surfing.

6. Be consistent in designing your sitemap with the other pages of the site.
Employ a recurring design and the same HTML template for all pages to establish identity and build character to your website.

Now that you have learned basic things about sitemaps, maybe it is time for you to build one for your site.

Philip Chua

gvo

The Internet has now become an important medium for product and service advertisements. Almost every company that can afford print, radio and TV advertisements have also ventured into placing ads on the Internet.

But with millions of websites out there being visited by millions of computer users, how can you make sure that your ad can be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users? Here are a few tips.

1. Place an ad on the websites frequented by your target customers. Before doing this, you need to define who will be your target customers. Placing an ad on sites that they usually visit will increase the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed your target customers.

Also, consider the website’s search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it. External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site. This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site. Check if many of your competitors have ads on this site.

2. Placing ads on some sites cost some money. However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site. This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Also, having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking. This is similar to making a statement that your site’s content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3. Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet marketing. You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked. If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses. There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4. Choose your domain name wisely. It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement. Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5. Make sure you have useful content on your sites. While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site. It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines. So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6. When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers. What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site? Also, use specific keywords or key phrases. Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7. Track your ads. Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC. There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales. You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on marketing products and services, sell the benefits. It will help your marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications. Product specifications may not mean much to customers, unless they know what these stand for (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords. While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results. Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results.

Philip Chua

gvo