Archive for the ‘Work’ category

The Internet Marketing Handbook

November 20th, 2009

from: http://www.seomoz.org/dp/the-internet-marketing-handbook

The Internet Marketing Handbook is a free resource that contains almost 100 tools and learning resource that help to master Internet Marketing. It was compiled by Danny Dover and is the result of literally hundreds of hours of study and practice in marketing online and search engine optimization techniques. The information below represents the web’s best resources and tools. All of the items listed below are available to the general public and most are free of charge. Enjoy!

Niche Marketing: Finding Hot Markets

November 13th, 2009

How to Find SEO Competitor Keywords, Social Media & Backlinks

November 9th, 2009

from: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-find-seo-competitor-keywords-social-media-backlinks/7827/

In the past I did quite a few posts on competitive research:

Today I am going to focus on what you can learn from your competitors if you are smart enough.

First of all, a few things to take note of:

  1. Your established competitors, who have been in play long enough, have probably come across numerous pitfalls and learned how to cope with them;
  2. The fact that your competitor has been exploring the niche much longer than you doesn’t mean he is now doing everything right;
  3. Promoting a site without proper competition research means to promote it blind;
  4. By merely copying your competitor, you will never be able to surpass him;
  5. If you focus on finding what your competitor is doing profoundly wrong, you have good chances to get ahead of him.

Keeping all that in mind, let’s see what you actually can learn from your competitors.

The Keywords

Keyword research is both difficult and tricky. The only way to effectively refine your list is to test it in practice (PPC campaign may help you with that).

Your competitor may have already tested the keywords and chosen the best ones that both generated good traffic and converted. I do not suggest relying on his keywords completely. But if you take time analyzing and comparing several of your competitors’ on-page and off-page keyword targeting, you can make your list much better.

How can you do that?

Quick tip: don’t forget to compare which terms your competitor tried to rank (i.e. which terms he is using throughout the site) and which terms he ended up ranked for. Thus, you will be able to do better than him.

The Backlinks

Those who linked to your competitor, will most probably want to link to you. Again, the key here is not to copy step by step but to do better. So:

The Social Media

Check where your competitor has found his topical community. Make sure to analyze how the social media users react to your competitor, their feedback and comments, what they like and dislike.

3 Smart Ranking SEO Tips You Better Be Aware Of

November 6th, 2009

from: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/development/smart-ranking-seo-tips/

3 Smart Ranking SEO Tips You Better Be Aware Of

By Ayaz Malik on October 31, 2009

This article will take a little insight in several most popular ranking systems around here and teach you how to get better Google pagerank, get better results on Alexa and Moz ranking systems as well. Many of these tips will seem very basic and easy, but that’s so through – optimization is not hard, bust just requires small but regular time investments. If you can use those tips in daily basis, then you definitely get some great results! For example, check on 1stwebdesigner.com website which is only a little bit more than one year old, but has got really high rankings!

I wrote a post Learn SEO by Improving Important Web Ranks a few months before but now I guess it’s the right time to upgrade and elaborate it because Google and other search engines are changing their policy at high pace. First we need to get head into three of the most important ranks on web:

  1. Page Rank
  2. MOZ Rank
  3. Alexa Rank

1. Page Rank:

google-pagerank-logo-seo-smart-tips

Nowadays there is a big fuss that Google removing page rank or it’s the end of page rank. Well yes Google have removed page rank from webmaster tools, but still I don’t think it’s an end to page rank because this topic is going on from past 4 years. That is why we will talk about improving page rank as well.

Page rank is one of the most important and commonly talked about ranks on web. its the heart and soul of SEO and getting traffic from search engines. Page Rank is said to be an estimate of your site’s popularity on the web by measuring the number of websites linking to your site, assigned by Google. Page Rank is determined by Google Links not Inbound Links!! This is an important part to understand, Google links and inbound links are not same. Inbound Link means that links pointing to your site from another site, while Google links are an extract of the quality inbound links. In Short Google links are taken from the inbound links, but only quality links.

How to improve your site’s Page rank:

Improving page rank is a difficult but still not so difficult task to do. You can easily get about PR 3 in first two months. Sounds impossible? Well not actually I can do that with a challenge :) , I have done that to plenty of sites. So how to? Some very Simple Techniques!!!

  • Optimize your homepage for search engines.This includes proper page Title, Proper Keywords, Proper Description and most of all Proper Content. Now what do i mean by proper?

    By Proper I mean that your title, keywords and description should not consist of extra stuff like numbers, stop words (and, or etc.), same keywords must not repeat more than 3 times in title and description. In Content Optimization Keep your content clean, fewer images, Use your main keyword in H1, also try to use keywords in h2 and h3. (For Details see this post : on page Optimization)

  • Install Google Toolbar
  • Start using Chrome Browser since they take data of sites you are browsing.
  • Post your site’s Links to these social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg, Deddit, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkzDirect etc.
  • Nofollow outgoing or not so important links. How to do that?Normal Links: <a href=”http://www.sitename.com”>sitename</a>

    Nofollowed Links: <a href=”http://www.sitename.com” rel=”nofollow”>sitename</a> (See This post for more: Nofollow)

  • Ask for sites with same focus for link exchange, Don’t hesitate to ask they won’t say no trust me :)
  • Avoid using URL Shorteners if you are bookmarking your site’s link in social bookmarking networks, because with this the inbound link goes to the URL Shortener site not you. Twitter is exception since it nofollows all links.

In about two months u will achieve Page Rank 1-3. If you want to improve your site’s Rank and push even further please see this post: Link Popularity Building

2. MOZ Rank:

Moz rank is some what like link juice estimation. Link Juice just like page rank flows from page to page of your site or links to others sites on your pages.

In simple words the more quality inbound links you have the better moz rank you get. Quality links are considered as inbound links on sites whose page rank is higher than your site. For example if my site’s page rank is 2 then putting link on site who’s page rank is higher than 2 or 3 would be considered as quality Inbound link, of course by using proper link posting method.

Proper Link posting is something like this:

Normally if u post a link u do it like this. <a href=”http://www.sitename.com”>Site Name</a>. Well yes u did made a link but not quality link. Here is how u can optimize your link. <a href=”http://www.sitename.com/” title=”your-keyword”>Your Keyword</a>

Now what’s different in it? You are using a title attribute which strengthens your links focus and instead of using link on your site/brand name it’s better to use your keyword in it.

Once you do this and get a grip on SEO Moz tools you will easily control the flow of your link juice in your site and can control your site’s SEO to some extent

3. Alexa Rank:

alexa-ranking-seo-smart-tips

Ok, everybody knows what it I won’t get into details is. Just simple to improve alexa rank just install alexa toolbar and browse your site daily. Refresh after a few minutes or so in a week you will improve your rank to about 200000 places. Note also this will work only to really new and fresh sites, for well established websites you still need traffic to get ranked.

Want even more??

  • Optimize your homepage for search engines (it’s very simple just read this post : onpage Optimization)
  • Ask members of your site or friends to install alexa toolbar and browse your site.
  • Even More?? Install alexa toolbar on a network of computers and set your browser’s homepage to your site so whenever its opened your site sends a hit to alexa , thus your rank improves..

When u will go through all these steps just to improve your site’s rankings once, you have learned SEO.

Testing Your Site (A/B testing)

October 30th, 2009

from

Find out what works best by using A/B testing on your website.
By Melissa Campanelli   |   Entrepreneur MagazineApril 2006

Not long ago, A/B testing was solely available to large companies–it was time-consuming, expensive and required much IT help. But now, many companies offer hosted testing and optimization services affordable to smaller businesses.

That’s good news for e-tailers seeking to improve their sites. A/B testing (aka A/B split testing) allows you to test two versions of your website. You can measure how customers respond to both versions and then optimize the site based on that information. Kefta, Offermatica and Optimost are three leading companies that offer A/B testing; services run about $10,000 per month.

RingCentral Inc. in San Mateo, California, is one growing e-tailer that’s had success with A/B testing. The multimillion-dollar telecommunications firm targets small businesses and sells its services exclusively online. Last summer, the company worked with Offermatica to run some A/B tests with the goal of boosting the percentage of visitors signing up for its services.

RingCentral tested various elements of its site, including the home page. Two versions were prepared: one with a laundry list of features–more graphics, links to a user guide and FAQs–and one with a detailed description of the benefits of working with RingCentral. RingCentral learned that the page with more links to additional information led more people to the sign-up page.

After changing the site accordingly, the 35-employee company saw a 46 percent increase in overall sales by year-end. “Thousands of people look at our site each day, and we have many ways we can present information to them,” says Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral’s 45-year-old founder. “A/B testing lets the public vote–basically with their wallets.”

To be effective, A/B testing should be ongoing. Some additional tips from Offermatica CEO Matthew Roche:

1. Run tests on the registration or shopping cart page. Says Roche, “Improving these areas generally provides the greatest impact on the bottom line.”

2. Focus on big elements. Instead of testing text color or font size, says Roche, focus on areas such as product, pricing, primary copy, images, offers and calls to action.

3. Test heavily trafficked campaigns in two weeks or less. Says Roche, “This creates better answers fast.”

Originally published in the April 2006 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine