Monday, February 27, 2012

Creating a Website - Website Optimization Training

If you were going to ask a programmer or website development expert what website optimization is, their answer will make you believe that you were speaking to someone that spoke another language. They'll talk all about CSS code and java scripts, for example…and how you should not have far too much of this and that in the code, and so on. All of that's great; nonetheless there's loads more to optimizing your site than worrying about complicated stuff that concern programmers.

What I'd like to talk with you about are the things which you as complete beginner can do to optimize your own web site so it can attract your target market and turn them into possible purchasers. Your site must be optimized to do 2 things: Be search engine friendly, and convert visitors into customers (or at the least get those visitors interested enough in your business to take some form of action when they come to your website).

Website Optimization is all about creating a search engine friendly, and adding elements that will convert visitors into taking some form of action on your site.

There are 2 important website optimization terms that you must know and understand:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Conversion Optimization

SEO is composed of elements that must be incorporated on your website, for example: Meta tag optimization, heading tags, keywords on your pages, xml sitemap, image optimization, internal linking, and more.

Off Page Optimization is composed of building links to your site from other sites and web properties. Most of those links should come from sites that are related to what your website is about. As an example, if your site is about cooking, you do not want a link from a site that's about swimming. The more relevant links you have coming to your site, the more the search engines will think of your site as an authority in your industry, particularly if you have links coming from a site that already has got a lot of authority.

By steadily building quality links to your website, you'll cause your listing in Google to rise. This is how folks get first page rankings.

The problem is that too many people target link building before they have optimized the on page SEO factors discussed above. One comes before the other, yet both (one page and off page SEO) are necessary if you would like to ultimately be listed higher than your competition in Google. As you know, the higher you are on the list, the more folks will see it, which equals more traffic to your website.

But now there is another problem...

What happens to all that traffic when they come to your website? The solution to that relies on if you have optimized your site to increase conversions. That's why conversion optimization is part of website optimization.

You must ask yourself what you want your visitors to do when they get to your website. Are you wanting them to fill out a web form? Do you need them to call you? Do you need them to click something? Whatever it is that you want them to do, make it extraordinarily clear.

You must also add elements to your website that interest the sort of people you are targeting. Generally, you need to include images, videos, sign up forms (so you can follow-up with prospects), and so on.

The main thing is to make sure that while you are creating a website, you are also optimizing it at the exact same time.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Have You Been Asking What is SEO? Then Read This

Along your journey of learning the best way to promote your business online, I'm certain you have asked yourself the question, "What is SEO?" SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. That means to optimize your online property in order that it will be indexed and placed in the natural results list of Google and other search engines.

Some folks make the mistake of thinking that they can just pay Google to be included in their list of results. This isn't true!

You can't pay them to be listed in their natural search results (the key list that people look at). Your site and online presence as a whole needs to be optimized in such a way that the search engines' computerized system will include your site on the list. The 1st step to making this happen is to correctly optimize your website in order that it can be indexed.

Google (as well as other search engines) does have what's called a Pay Per Click advertising program where you can pay for inclusion into their paid ads, but your site still must be optimized in a certain way to be on this list too. When you go to Google and type in a search term (often referred to as a keyword or key phrase) for something, the list of results are sites, blogs, articles, promotional releases, videos, etc. which have been indexed in Google.

Before those webpages are placed in the index, Google's robot (also called a spider) "crawls" the content on every one of the pages. After the pages are in the index, Google's robot then sets the relevancy of each webpage to the keyword phrase that was employed, listing the pages ordered by relevancy to that term.

Let's assume that somebody is looking in Google for the phrase “how to lose weight”.

In this example, you may have a site that's all about losing weight, but if the pages of your weight loss site isn't optimized correctly for Google, then none of your pages will be listed in the results. Your target audience will struggle to find your site.

Regardless of whether your website is search engine optimized, it requires a lot of work and time to get it on the 1st page of results for certain popular terms. There are several SEO factors that are important and specific things that must be done directly to your website and indirectly to your site to get the required outcomes.

SEO enhancement of your site comes in two forms: On page optimization and Off page optimization. On page optimization consists of optimizing the individual page elements of your website while off page optimization consists of improving your web pages indirectly through assorted web marketing strategies such as link building and social media activity.