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Published
Article
| | Emerging
Methods for Effective Search Engine Ranking | Search
Engine traffic has always been and continues to be one of the best ways to drive
qualified traffic to a web site - it presents information about goods and services
when the interest level is high and it can be acted on immediately. Up till now
opt-in e-mail marketing has been an effective complement to search engine ranking
campaigns; but the never-ending deluge of Spam is rapidly ruining the effectiveness
of opt-in e-mail and helping to add luster to the value and cost-effectiveness
of search engine traffic.
Unfortunately,
the increasing popularity of search engine ranking methodologies is helping to
raise the barriers to entry - as more businesses, ad agencies and SEO firms concentrate
their efforts on creating highly optimized web sites, the competition for keyword
rankings and qualified traffic is increasing significantly. The rules are changing
rapidly and if you expect to succeed you must deploy a sophisticated methodology
that blends technology and processes. Here is a list of five bottom line requirements
that must be adhered to if you expect to generate qualified traffic:
Link Strategy: The web is maturing
and search engines are putting more and more emphasis on link
popularity or page rank or "PR" in Google's vernacular;
i.e. the number of web sites pointing back to your own. If you
are to be successful you must develop and deploy a systematic
process to establish links to your web site with others that
are in your market segment and setup an outbound "link
to" resources page via your own site. This takes an investment
of time and resources - typically you need between 400-800 links
back to your web site to achieve a good "page ranking."
Here is a link to an excellent detailed article on setting up
an effective link popularity strategy: http://www.website101.com/arch/archive143.html
Keyword Fundamentals: Keywords
are the fundamental building blocks of any search engine ranking
campaign - many/many companies waste significant resources optimizing
for keywords that are either wrong; i.e. not targeted for their
market or there is too much competition and rankings will never
be achieved. You must utilize keywords that are targeted for
your market and find those that can effectively drive page 1-3
rankings - WordTracker www.wordtracker.com
has rapidly emerged as the defacto industry standard technology
tool for researching keywords - we've used it for years and
highly recommend this cost-effective and comprehensive service
to our clients and business partners.
Keyword Saturation: Search engine "spiders"
or "bots" are automated software applications that
constantly roam the web to assess what is called "keyword
saturation" via web site content (pages) to identify how
a site should be listed in a search engine database. They typically
look for 3-7% usage of keywords versus the text on a specific
page - you must adhere to their standards if you want to achieve
keyword rankings for your selected keywords. And, to further
complicate matters, top tier search engines all have different
rules for keyword saturation - we highly recommend and use this
software application to help us ascertain and setup the correct
keyword saturation for our client's web sites: http://www.se-optimizer.com/
Optimized
Content: Highly optimized content is still very important as far as search
engines are considered - the more search engine optimized content on a web site
the better. Search engines prefer content that is thematically grouped, loads
fast, is textual with minimal graphics, is highly optimized for keywords (keyword
saturation fundamentals are addressed) and incorporates one or two of your primary
keywords for a specific page in the page title. Site
Maps Essential: Site maps are frequently overlooked when search engine ranking
processes are deployed. A site map not only serves as a quick reference and/or
navigation guide for anyone visiting your web site but it's also used by search
engines to "crawl" (the action a spider or bot takes to review your
web site) your web site to find pages and links. Make sure you include a basic
site map in your optimization plans, it's very important to help search engines
navigate through your site.
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Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development
and marketing experience. He is the founder/CEO of a Northern
California based, privately held, profitable Interactive
Marketing Agency and Software Company, Intelective Communications,
Inc., http://www.intelective.com,
and can be reached via e-mail at Lee@intelective.com.
Intelective Communications also has a European sales and
support office located outside of Brussels, Belgium.
Please click here to Contact us or call toll free 530.432.8764
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"Working with Intelective Communications
is pure joy and enlightenment. They are so much at the leading edge that it's
inspiring to be connected with them in any way."
-Jay Conrad Levinson, Author of Guerrilla Marketing
book series and Marketing Pioneer |
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