Image – Page 4 – Get Your Site Rank

Search Engine Ranking

Success Online is Simple. Do What’s Right, the Right Way, At the Right Time

Everyone wants to be successful online these days because the Internet is the only place they feel they can be “boundless” as there are opportunities for just about any market/niche provided that you do things that “works” and avoid things that doesn’t help you reach to your customers and sell your products and services.

You not necessarily need to have a product-related website to become an online sensation. You can promote and sell other’s products as an “affiliate” and still make a healthy income through your website.

But most bloggers, website owners, and entrepreneurs usually make the same mistakes over and over again, and as a result, they usually fail. But success online is really simple. If you do things the “right” things, the “right way, and at the “right” time, you’ll start to generate 5-figure income from your website, within 6 months from now.

Do a keyword research for profitable keywords.

If you really want to be at the top 10 position of search engine result pages, you’ll have to go after profitable keywords that have high search volume, but low competition, so that you can quickly rank .

Keywords such as long-tail keywords and product name keywords are usually profitable as these keywords aren’t targeted by most companies, but people still search for them because of new trends and technology changes that often arise.

But that doesn’t mean you do not “target” on competitive keywords. Eventually, you’ll have to compete with more broad and generic keywords to drive more “targeted” customers.

Do a keyword research, using Google Keyword Planner tool, before you post anything on your website. You’ll have a list of keywords to build content around it and quickly reach out to your “target” audience, as a result, save plenty of time, energy, and money on your end.

Optimize your website.

Once you have a list of keywords in your hand, optimize your website around it. Using these keywords, describe your website in the home page (use “all-in-one-SEO” plugin to do this), create search-engine URLs, submit your site to major search engines, create XML sitemaps, submit your site to feed burners, etc. These small steps may not seem to make a huge difference, but it will ensure that your site is properly optimized for search engines to properly index more pages on your site.

Use keywords in your titles. Most people use titles (headlines and page titles) without inserting keywords in it, or titles that are not relevant to their niche, or simply plain and boring titles that you see everywhere. Instead, try to see which title generates more clicks on your website and use similar types. Visit your competitor’s website/blog to see how they’re pulling all the traffic with their titles, and use them on your pages too.

Use keywords in your content.

Most people think that stuffing keywords in their content will game search engines into believing that the content is highly relevant, and thereby, rank their site higher in search engines. That’s far from the truth. Keyword stuffing will never get your website rank higher, especially after the recent Penguin and Panda updates has rolled out.

Using “keyword stuffing” method to influence rankings of a site is against the Google guidelines which will not only drop your website from search engine rankings, but also ban your website from displaying on it. As a result, not only you will lose your brand and online reputation, but also compromise your online credibility from the eyes of search engines.

Instead of keyword stuffing, use keywords “naturally” and in a balanced way. For best results, focus on including other variations of keywords in your articles, pages, or blog posts to target variety of users who use different keyword phrases to search for the same products and services on search engines.

Create a balance between content vs. links.

Once people land on your website, you have to be responsible to guide them right from the start. Posting contents without any links to other relevant section is like leaving the visitors figure themselves out what to do next. They’ll feel confused and go somewhere else.

Instead, include important links inside your content to continuously guide your visitors on your website, thereby offering good use-experience and helping them find relevant information at ease.

But just don’t overdo it – inserting too many links on your pages will be considered “spam” by search engine crawlers. If they find you’re trying to trick search engines, they’ll abruptly drop you from the rankings and ban your site from displaying in the search engine result page (SERPs).

Interlinking content on your website increases the PR of each page, and affect the overall PR of your website, thereby, making your website more “trustworthy”, the only thing you need to become successful online.

Bonus Tip: Include strong “call to action.”

People are using search engines to find products and services that will help improve their lifestyle. Most of them may not be “ready” to purchase it, but may be looking for more reasons as to why they should buy products from you.

With your content, you can give them enough reasons to show them why your products will help them make a difference in their life. With call to actions at the end of each post, you ask them to take action if they’re “ready.”

Subtle “call to action” will compel people to take actions – signup for newsletter, like you content, comment on it, share it with their friends, or simply order or download products from you.

Although a “call to action” isn’t a sure-fire way to get 100% conversion rate, but at least you will increase it by 50%. That’s how most of the online business makes money from, and you should too.

Include “call to actions” after the first paragraph (if your visitors already know about the product), or with the content, or at the end of the post where they’re ready to take the next step. In addition to text links, you may also include banners, buttons, flash, or any other form of clickable link.

Share your ideas – is success online simple? Comment below!

04/12/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO Facts and Figures

If your site/blog isn’t ranking higher in search engines and driving the amount of traffic to it, you are probably doing SEO wrong. Most entrepreneurs, especially those who do not understand the importance of SEO for their business, simply build their website in a rush and hope that offline marketing like worth of mouth will give them a competitive advantage over others.

With search engine listings, any business has a potentially bring thousands, if not millions, of free traffic (potential customers) to your website. With search engines like Google, any startup can outperform giant companies who spend millions of dollars to rank in the first page.

With that said, we thought you might be interested to learn some of the SEO facts and figures so that you understand how important it is today to be in the online sphere for a long time.

SEO facts and figures you do not want to miss:

Websites that aren’t optimized for search engines will not be found on the Internet.
If you need your website to be on the 1^st page, you’ll have to perform keyword research to find profitable keywords that are worth targeting after.
Almost 85% of search engine users look at the top 10 results on the 1^st page.
By placing keywords in the meta description, keyword, or title tags will list your site on search engines for that keyword
To optimize your website, you’ll have to remember two things – on-page SEO (optimizing content on your site) and off-page SEO (optimizing your content outside your own site).
Blackhat SEO methods such as keyword stuffing (inserting keywords all over the page to influence rankings) and link farming (posting content on low quality sites) will get your website penalized, and at worst, banned.
Hiding text or links into your pages will boost page rank, however, if caught; it will get you banned from search engine result.
Flash based sites aren’t indexed properly on search engines database.
You need to post fresh content if you want to keep your website ranking where it is now, or even higher.
More than 73% people use search engines to purchase products.
More than 70% users click on organic links instead of paid advertisement seen at the sidebar of most search engines.
More than 81% of businesses think that setting up a blog is an important asset.

Over to you! Have you optimized your website for search engines? What steps do you take to optimize your website and its content? Please comment below!

03/12/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

5 Handly Tips to Reach Out to the Right Audience for Your E-Commerce Website

So you have set up your e-commerce online store with product pictures, specifications, features, and pricings, but you haven’t seen the number of people visiting on it go up?

It’s time that you look deep and analyze why you aren’t reaching out to the “right” kind of people.

Most of the time, people are usually leave their product page that contains specifications, pricings, features in bullet points, and technical jargon product description that doesn’t help both search engines and your visitors know what you’re selling.

Othertimes, the content simply aren’t specific enough to target buyers in the market because you may not be using proper keywords phrase that people often use to search for products like yours.

Here are 5 handy tips to reach out to the “right” audience for your e-commerce website:

1. Write “Content-Rich” Product Descriptions –

Writing “content-rich” product descriptions means including as much information about a product or services in an easy to read manner.

Before writing product description, it’s better to think about all the possible keyword terms your “targeted” audience use to search for it. Once you have the list of keywords, you next job is to create a thorough description that includes those keywords.

Make sure to include those keywords in a natural way. “Unnatural” keyword stuffing will only lead to Google punishing your site.

Make sure to use easy to read, jargon-free, and informative content that includes your major keywords.

2. Create “Relevant” Blog Posts related to Your Products –

Once you’ve creating “content-rich” product reviews, do not be tempted to leave it just like it or promote using social media sites or article submission articles.

Remember Google loves information rich resources that help their users find what they’re looking for? “But what’s wrong with the “content-rich” product descriptions we created earlier?” I hear you scream!

I can understand but unless your website is a well-established site like Amazon, you cannot get high rankings for your product descriptions. In other words, you cannot just rank for product descriptions.

In Google’s eye, you have to establish yourself as someone who’s passionate about their niche: someone who likes to share ideas tips, and more free information to people who are searching for.

So go ahead and just do that. Create a blog section and publish posts that are relevant to products on your online stores. If you’re running out of ideas, you could share the benefits, pros, cons, or write honest reviews, and so on.

Include links to your product pages to allow people to navigate to your store when they’re ready to buy products from you.

3. Spread your content on relevant sites –

Now that you have a great product description and blog posts, your online store is ready for traditional marketing techniques.

You can be creative here and use your imagination to share your content in number of ways, including writing guest post for others, submitting useful tips on content sharing sites like Dropbox, or submitting them on articles directories and your social profiles.

Personally, I share my content on social profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Make sure to join “highly relevant” groups there to reach out to the “right” target audience, really fast.

4. Include backlinks to your blogs posts –

During publishing your blogs or product description pages on external sites as mentioned above, make sure to include a backlink in the signature, or author box.

Include keywords or title of the landing page on the “name” field, the actual landing page on the URL field, and offer a thoughtful comment on the blog or forums you’re dropping your content.

This way, your articles, comments, or threads are more likely to be accepted.

5. Do not forget to use Social Profiles –

In order to rank higher in search engine results, your website has to be well-established and active on third-party websites, your social profiles, and other external websites.

Do not settle if you’ve managed to reach the “right” audience after performing the above four steps.

You can still go one step further to “truly” establish yourself as an industry expert. Once you’ve managed to create a strong online presence, you do NOT have to invest anymore. People on your networks will help promote your business automatically.

So do us a favor – post a brief product information and blog content on your social media profiles. In addition, bookmark your content on popular social bookmarking sites.

When Google finds that your backlinks are coming from variety of sources, not just from search engine results, automatically they’ll love your online store and increase your rankings.

We would like to hear from you. Tell us any handy tips to reach out to the right audience for your e-commerce website (comment below).

29/11/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Search Engine Ranking, SEO for Businesses

Challenge the Norm – From Good to Great Online

Hundreds of thousands of small businesses launch every month, but only handful of them, less than 10%, of them become successful online!

If you want to be among the top 10, you’ll have to follow some simple yet powerful techniques to turn your online business into a successful venture. Here are our top 5 simple rules for running a successful online business:

5 Powerful Rules to Run a Successful Online Business!

1. Keep your website simple and organized.

Most entrepreneurs want to become successful really fast, and they “over-design” their website to appeal cool and stand out from the crowd. Sites with heavy use of flash animations, background music, and tons of graphics only loads it, and not offer great user-experience.

Instead on loading you site with ads and links, why not focus on being well-organized so that your visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for. Is the text on your website is easy to read? Using dark text on a light background is the way to enhance user-experience on your site.

2. Engage your visitors(s).

Actively making your visitors participate on your website is the easiest and best way to build “trust,” “loyalty,” and eventually more “sales.” Set up a “blog” on your website and open it for comments and promote it by sending newsletters, and ask for their feedback. If you’re a big company, add a discussion forum to allow your visitors to create their own topics and share their ideas.

3. Use social profile to share your content.

Set up profiles on major social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest to share, converse, and inform people. Also, include social widgets like Facebook like, or Pinterest badge, on the sidebar on your website so that your visitors can “keep up” with you on their social profiles as well.

4. Do not over-optimize your site.

The hottest topic on Online marketing these days is search engine optimization (SEO). There’s a reason for that – SEO helps optimize your website and pages to rank higher in search engine pages like Google, Yahoo, and Bing so that you get organic (free) traffic to increase online conversion.

However, many online businesses go way too far!

They “stuff” keywords in their pages, blogs, or notifications. As a result, they not only get dropped from search engine rankings, but also get banned from search engine result display pages too because it’s totally against Google’s guidelines.

Over-optimizing also makes their content less readable and likeable.

5. Keep your visitors coming back on your site.

Almost half of the online businesses thrive because of repeat visitors on their site. There are several ways to give reasons for your visitors to keep coming back to your site. For instance, you can mention that you’ll be posting another post in the series in the coming week (just make sure to post topics that they really want to know more about.) Or, you could send a newsletter informing your loyal customer that you’ll be offering a discount offer on a certain day of the month. Lastly, adding regular helpful tips, tricks, and techniques via blog is a sure-fire way to get repeat visitors to your site.

Do you need SEO services for your small business to rank in the 1^st page of Google?
Contact us for a FREE SEO consultation.

27/11/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Ranking

Consistency is Key – 10 Consistencies to be Kept

A consistent action towards a specific goal will yield result. Constant deviation from it will only waste your time and effort. So, if you’re running in a circle and getting nowhere with your SEO efforts, here are my 10 top consistencies principles that anyone can follow to see sudden rise in rankings in search result pages (SERPs).

1. Write “killer” titles for blog posts, once a day

In order to see your website getting high ROI from your SEO efforts, make sure to write “catchy” titles that hooks people right from the beginning. Writing interesting titles such as “Can’t keep up? 7 Ways to Get Rid of Fat” helps you pull more readers than titles like “7 Ways to lose fat.”

Previous title works better because they’re not only unique, but they also address their audience pressing issue with the simple question “Can’t keep up?” – i.e. people who have tried all sorts of weight loss programs/diets but never achieve their desired goals.

Make sure to include the main keyword in the title once as most people will likely click on the title that are relevant to their searches.

2. Post helpful and interesting content, 3 days a week

Google love websites that offer fresh and helpful content on a regular basis. So, if you’re not writing blogs daily, chances are that your competitors may do and take away customers away from you.

In order to keep the traffic flowing to your site, make sure to post blog posts that are helpful and interesting to read for your visitors.

Make each content not less than 500 word because with fewer words you cannot properly optimize your content for search engines.

3. Edit and proofread content before publishing

Visitors will have a great time reading your content that are well-written, and free from spelling and grammatical errors. On the other hand, no one can read a post that isn’t organized around a specific topic.

Remember that Internet users do have short span of attention. They require small chunks of information related with the search keyword they’ve typed on the keypad.

Proofreading your content before publishing will help you get rid of unnecessary topics, fuzzy logic, and bad grammars/spellings.

When you focus on enhancing user’s experience, Google will automatically reward you with higher ranking.

4. Share your content on social media regularly

Once you’ve written and published your content, share your content on your social accounts where your friends, family members, and potential customers.

You may have a great looking web design and an engaging content, but if you’re not willing to promote it, no one is going to find you on the Internet. Besides, Google loves a website that has a strong social signal.

For every article or blog you publish, make sure to share a brief post on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

5. Comment on at least 3 blogs

In addition to sharing your posts on social media, make sure to comment on top three, or high PR, blogs in your niche to generate free backlinks. If your comments are approved, you’ll have an opportunity to attract a portion of their traffic to your site.

It may sound a small thing, but if you comment on blogs on a regular basis, soon you’ll see rise in your website rankings in ways you never have imagined.

6. Comments on at least 3 forums

Just like commenting on a blog, posting/commenting on forum threads can increase your website rankings drastically. Forums are one of the “trustworthy” sites out there where tens of thousands of people browse through daily to find reviews, tips, tricks, and topics of their interests.

Posting on a regular basis on forum can not only help your website in terms of rankings and traffic, but you’ll also have an opportunity to stay current with the latest trends, techniques and what people are asking for.

So, find top 3 relevant forums in your niche and start commenting on threads for each post you publish on your website.

7. Do a “keyword research” for fresh set of keywords, once a month

Most businesses think that targeting a certain list of keywords is enough to reach at the top position of the search engines. But they overlook that fact that their customers use different keyword phrase to search for the same products and services.

So, do you have a set of new keywords to rank quickly on search engine results?

If the answer is no, then you’ll probably want to contact your SEO professional and ask them to find new set of keywords in your niche and advise you how to make the most out of those keywords.

8. Update website design (plugins, widgets, and themes), once a month

In order to get the most out of your SEO efforts, you’ll have to be at the top of your game. Not only this will set you as an industry expert, but you’ll also prevent your website from unwanted attacks and virus infections.

Yes, updating your website with the latest themes, plugins, and widgets will not only make your website more accessible, but also keep “unwanted” virus and malicious content at bay.

Plus, when your website is updated, it will work better with the latest technologies that arise constantly on the Internet.

9. Participate in a Guest Blogging Campaign

Guest blogging is all about trying to establish a “trust” with Google. Google loves websites that are active online and participate in wide variety of link building techniques, including Guest blogging.

So, if you want to see your website rise up the ladder of search engine pages, then you better connect with like-minded people (other bloggers) in your field and start sharing few posts with each others to leverage each other’s traffic and also to create a strong online presence.

10. Do an Interview with an Industry-expert, once a month

People are often in search of expert advice in their industry because they think these experts have the experience, the know-how, and something else that they lack.

So, if you can find an expert in your industry who you think can offer insightful information that people are constantly searching for, set an appointment for an interview.

Make sure to do your homework before the interview – reading their profiles, doing a background check, learning about their success and failures and how did they handled certain situations, and having all the important questions ready and organized just make the most out of the your interview.

Well that’s it! These are my top 10 consistencies I wanted to share.
Would you like to share yours? If yes, please comment below. Thanks.

22/11/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Online Reputation, Search Engine Optimisation

How Does SEO help in your Online Reputation?

If you give your business card to a new friend, or your date, or anyone you meet during the day, they’ll eventually go over to search engine and search for it.

If anything negative comes in the search result pages, it can have a disastrous effect on your online reputation and hurt your business bottom-line.

Although you may not be in a position to prevent all those negative content from displaying in search result page, nonetheless, you can still minimize its impact by utilizing few simple SEO tactics, or better, by hiring a professional SEO consultant.

Use These Simple SEO Techniques to Manage Your Online Reputation

Step #1: Analyze where you are currently

The first important step to manage your online reputation is to take charge of it. For example, search your name in Google. Do you see anything “unflattering” about your business?

If there are pictures, posts, or videos that you’d rather not show it to anyone, not even your spouse or girlfriend, simply delete them or change your private settings to stop them from displaying in search results. Use Google’s URL removal tool to completely wipe them off from the face of the Internet.

Step #2: Start Posting MORE Post Positive Content

In case you cannot get those damaging content removed from your site, then become proactive on your website and post more positive content to bury those negative comments, reviews, and mentions further down in the search result page.

In addition to posting content on your website, spread content around other HIGH authority sites such as Ezinearticles.com, HubPages.com, Squidoo, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ as they carry more SEO weight than normal website.

Step #3. Establish a Business Hub

Another way to bury those offensive mentions further down is to post more positive content around the web, probably on high authority websites and link all of them back to a single page on your website.

Google sees each link to your website as a “vote.” More votes your page has, more valuable Google thinks your page is, and as a result, ranks your website over all pages on search result pages.

This is probably the simplest yet efficient way to bury all negative mentions from the Internet.

Step #4. Automate the Process

You may be able to handle online management yourself for a short while, but as your business grows, things can become unmanageable quite easily.

If you cannot handle your online reputation management tasks yourself, we highly suggest you to outsource them for a small fee.

Proper SEO strategies can help improve your online reputation by creating more positive content about your business as well as create a single brand with consistent content and design elements.

15/11/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Business Development, Online Reputation

Reputation Management for Small Business Owners

If you are just starting out your online business, even if you have a strong offline business, you’ll soon get lost into the sea of the Internet – there are thousands of people competing to be on the first page of Google because there is where the competition is.

But ranking on the first page of Google isn’t an easy walk in the park. You need to set yourself as an industry expert in your niche so that people will trust you, visit your site often, order what you have to offer, which ultimately contributes into setting up a strong online brand.

So you see, you simply cannot overlook the online reputation of your business, but here are few tips.

Reputation Management for Small Business Owners:

1. Optimize Everything

Your potential customers won’t go beyond the first page to find the information, products, and services your offer.

So, if you’re NOT in the first page for brand keywords, no one will find you on the Internet. As a result, few people will know who you are and what you represent.

In order to build a strong online reputation, you have to rank on the first for at least some of the major niche-related keywords.

To rank for keywords, learn the basics of SEO or hire a professional SEO consultant to look after your site.

Follow these 3 simple steps to optimize and promote your site.

Do a keyword research to know which keywords people use to search what you’re offering
Optimize your site and content based on those keywords
Get backlinks from wide variety of sources to generate free traffic to your site (backlinks)

2. Be Active Online

Next you’ll have to take charge of your online business as online reputation doesn’t come out of a thin air. You have to be active online, but it doesn’t mean spending hours on the Internet either.

Simply post a fresh content once or twice a week, offer customer support on your social profiles, and you’re done!

Over time, you’ll have more useful content than your competitors. As a result, you’ll stand out in the eyes of your potential customers.

Once you start to get a decent number of traffic, Google and other search engines will see this as a positive sign (you have something valuable at your site), and hence, they’ll display your website content over others.

Bingo! You have a strong online reputation than your competitors. All your hard work pays at the end, though.

So start a blog, share your ideas, thoughts, product offers on social media sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn etc. Make sure to keep things fresh, fun and balanced!

3. Focus on Providing Genuine Services

People may say anything about your business as you don’t have control over it. But you have total control over one thing – i.e. the quality of your services and products.

So, focus on offering products and services that will help solve people’s problems and enhance their life. When you have more happy customers, their positive reviews and feedbacks will help create a strong online reputation for your business.

4. Encourage others to Post Positive Reviews

Ask each of your happy customers to write honest reviews about you (if you want to become an expert), your business and its products. Most entrepreneurs sigh away from asking their customers thinking they’re too busy, but in fact, your customers will be more than happy to share their positive experience using your products and services if it truly helped them solve their problems.

5. Know How/When to Respond

If you find some negative comments about your business for valid reasons, contact them personally and apologize. Issue a refund for their losses, and follow back with emails as how their problems are taken care of.

However, if the negative reviews are totally “invalid,” do not get angry at them, even if it was a fake post written by your competitor. Instead, contact them personally, and send an email regarding how you could take positive steps to ensure better customer service.

13/11/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Ranking

A Guide to Some of the More Baffling SEO terms

With SEO now playing such an important role in making a site standout online, it’s important to know what a designer is doing to boost your online ranking. Rather than spend hours researching every term you don’t understand, here’s a breakdown of all the information and terms that you need to know:

0-9

301:
A process which re-directs users to another web page. It’s a useful way to send users from an old site to a new page.

A

Adwords:
Adwords is a service developed by Google to help maximise advertising opportunities

Affiliate:
An affiliate site pays a host to place adverts and promotions for products on their site.

Algorithm:
A piece of coding which is used to determine the results of a search online

Alt text:
A way to describe images to search engines. Search engines can’t process images meaning that they use the alt text to determine the content within the picture.

Analytics:
A piece of software which compiles details how a website is accessed and used. The most popular software used by SEO firms to monitor how webpages are used is Google Analytics.

Anchor text:
The anchor text is the actual text in a web link. It shows the exact page that is being visited by users and gives an indication to search engines about what will be found on that particular part of a website.

Authority Site:
A site that has lots of links connecting to that page. Authority sites are often well ranked by search engines due to their high levels of traffic and connections to related content.

B

Backlink: A link from external sites that direct back to the main page where content and information is stored

Black hat: This group is used to describe SEO tactics that could stop a site being listed on search engines. Involves tactics such as spam emails, fraudulent content and links to malware/viruses

Blog: A section or website which often posts content about a subject or topic. It can contain all forms of content such as articles, pictures and videos.

C

Canonical URL: The best webpage that relates to a topic that someone is looking for. There can sometimes be issues surrounding similar canons on sites that are spelt the same or have sub-pages

Clickthrough Rate (CTR): The CTR measures the number of people who click on an advertisement linked to a particular phrase or keyword. Clickthrough ads are often thought to gain more traffic than banner ads.

Cloaking: Cloaking occurs when websites present different data and information to various search engines. It is a technique that falls on the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour depending on the search engine. Also known as link cloaking.

CMS (Content Management System): A way to manage and post content on a blog or website. Some of the more popular CMS software includes WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

Content: The actual body of a page. It is made up of text, pictures and images to give a website substance and appeal.

Conversion Form: An area on the site that lets someone gain information about who is visiting the site and why they are there.

Crawl: A crawler travels to different websites through the links placed on each page and gathers data on a particular subject or topic.

D

Directory: A place online where sites can be listed by their industry or topic for interested browsers to find

Domain: The physical address of the website. Often needs to be purchased from a web host

Duplicate Content: A piece of content that is similar to something posted by another web site. Having duplicates can hurt a site’s ranking.

F

Feed: A service which provides contents to a user or company when it’s posted

FTP (File Transfer Protocol): This is the way file transfer between computers are monitored.

G

Gateway: A part of a site that opens up users to the rest of a website. It can be either directly found on the web page or indirect through search engines or third party hosts.

Google Authorship: Google Authorship is a way for authors to directly link their published content on the web to their Google+ profile. It allows authors and publishers to network all their work into one place.

H

Headings: A larger piece of text that is used to sum up the main content on a page.

Hit: When an external piece of information visits a particular site. Lots of hit often means a popular website

HTML: The main language used to create a website. It puts everything into place to determine the shape, look and size of a page. It is the main way for search engines to identify and find a page in its listings.

HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol): HTTP is the way information is transferred from the website’s home location to an internet browser. It is the most common way for a web server to connect with a web browser.

I

IM (Internet Marketing): An industry where companies use the Internet to promote or advertise a product or business.

Impression: An impression is where someone will visit a webpage for the first time.

Inbound Link: An inbound link is a link made by an external site and is a good indicator of a strong website

Indexed pages: The pages which are stored by a search engine

K

Keyword: The phrase or search term entered into a search engine by a user

Keyword Density: The ration in which a key word or term is included in a text

Keyword Stuffing: A time where the key word appears too often in a text. Frowned upon by search engines.

L

Landing Page: The first page which users see when they are directed to a website

Lead Generation: Is the process in which interest is created in a product or business. When someone is considered to be a potential customer, they are tagged as a lead

Link: A way to travel from one related site to another. Having lots of links can strengthen the ranking and appeal of a site

Link building: The way to gather and create links for a site.

Link Juice: A tool to help search engines rank search engines. Often focuses on the amount of links found on a particular page

Long tail: Long tail keywords are key phrases which often contain more than 2 words. Long tail phrases often contain a lot of details e.g catering firms in Melbourne

M

Meta Description: A small summary placed on search engines which describe what is on that particular page.

Meta tags: Meta tags are short phrases which tell search engines what the main subject are on a web page. Often 2 or 3 are needed to ensure a good ranking.

N

Nofollow: When a link from one site to another is blocked. It can be a way to stop competition from getting an advantage from your site.

Noindex: A command which stops a site or page from being included on a search engine.

O

Offpage: This refers to SEO methods that aren’t directly related to the webpage itself. It includes techniques such as link building.

Onpage: This looks at SEO techniques that directly affect the status of the webpage. This includes inserting keywords and meta tags.

Open Source: Open source platforms are programmes which lets designers tweak coding and functions thoroughly to sit their particular need and purpose.

Organic Search: A way of producing results on a search engine through similar phrases or words that might be entered by a user.

P

Page Rank: The SEO ranking given to a webpage by search engines on a particular key word. The ranking ranges from 0 to 10 with 10 being the highest and 0 being the lowest.

Page Title: The name of the website that appears on the top of a browser. It needs to contain the main keyword of that site.

Page Views: The total number of times a page has been viewed by browsers

Panda: Panda is an algorithm used by Google to check the SEO qualities of a website and determine how they fit in with the policies used to determine rankings on Google

Penguin: Penguin is a programme used by Google looking to search for any black hat SEO techniques used by websites. It demotes their ranking on the search ranking if they violate any terms or conditions.

Plugins: Plug-ins are components and features of software which can be implemented into other programmes to monitor or enhance performance. Plug-ins are often used to help monitor the SEO features in web contents and articles.

PPC (Pay Per Click): A basic advertising method which allows for sites to generate income for whenever someone clicks on an advertisement created by an external source such as Google.

R

Redirect: A way of transferring someone from one page to another automatically

Robots: Robots are tools used by websites to measure and collect data from other websites on the Internet. May also be known as crawlers, bots or spiders

RSS Feed: A way for users to subscribe to content on a website and receive updates whenever something new is posted

S

Search engine: A site which lets users search for a particular term or subject on the Internet

SEM(Search Engine Marketing): SEM is the techniques and methods used by websites to promote pages to search engines and gain maximum online exposure for their brand or company

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): SEO is the process needed to make websites appeal to search engines and ensure they are ranked well to a specific term or phrase.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page): A results page showing all the relevant websites related to the user’s search term. Most pages display 10 results at a time

Sitemap: A place which lists all of the different pages belonging to one website

Slug: A slug is an abbreviated version of a URL web address designed to make it appeal to search engines. Slugs often incorporate just the main keywords and subject of a page

Social Media: A type of website where users talk with each other discussing their favourite topics. One of the best type of website to post links and appeal to a wide audience

Spam: Unwanted content that aggravates users or deemed unnecessary to that particular subject

Spider: A system which gathers information about different websites and computer programmes

T

Traffic: The actual visitors to a website:

Traffic Rank: A system which compares the busiest websites on the Internet.

U

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The entire web address that is found in the toolbar of the browser

Unique Visitors: These are the number of different browsers who visit a webpage at any one time. They are usually indicated by a different IP address.

W

Web 2.0: This is the new form of web pages which are designed to encourage more interaction with browsers visiting a webpage.

White Hat: The techniques used by SEO firms which are accepted by search engine to generate a ranking for a website

Widget: A program created by a website that can be downloaded onto a computer and give information about a subject or topic.

11/11/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Brand Reputation, Online Branding

How You Can Brand Your Business Better Online

What simple steps you could take to brand your business better online, without breaking your bank?

Branding your business the “right” way has several benefits for entrepreneurs running their online business.

Proper online branding efforts helps visitors immediately know what the company is about, what they offer, and why they are different from the heap of other competitors.

In addition, proper branding also helps entrepreneurs become clear about what they represent. This way, they can focus their efforts on their “core competencies” rather than being “everything for everyone.”

Today, proper branding also helps online entrepreneurs to rank higher in search engine result pages because search engine such as Google loves businesses that are well-established, genuine, and who are for the long-run.

With that said, let’s look at few simple yet potent steps to help you build a strong brand to skyrocket your online business success:

How You Can Brand Your Business Better Online?

1. Brand Name –

Brand name states what you do and who you are. However, brand name isn’t just picking up your personal name to identify your business. No one will know about your business through your name. For instance, having business name such as “JamesSmith.com” won’t tell your people what you have to offer.

So instead of using your personal name as your brand, you can use niche-related keywords as your business name.

For example, if you’re in a web design and development field, choosing a brand name such as “WebTech,” or “WebDev,” or even more specific phrase such as “ASPDotNetDevCenter” would perform better to help establish your brand better than rather pick up your name such as “JohnSmith.com.”

So identify what keywords people use to search businesses like you and select a short name that is easy to remember yet powerful to leave a lasting impression on people’s imagination.

2. Design –

The next thing you could do to build a strong online brand would be to build a visually attractive website. Your website has to be welcoming. Just think how people will feel once they land on your website.

Is the page loaded with too many ads, or does it even load quickly?
Is the color scheme doesn’t match the tone and theme of the industry you’re in?
Is the theme customized and stands out from the rest or it’s just like blog or site people usually visit?
Is it responsive?

Invest little money on purchasing a professional and relevant theme that reflects the type of industry you’re in. A professional and responsive theme cost less than $15 so don’t worry about burning your pocket.

Similarly, change the content to suit your needs playing around with widgets, plugins, and website settings to make it user-friendly. Do not worry that your website doesn’t come out as professional as you’re thinking. It will take some time to fine tune and tweak things around until you have a site that looks exactly the way you want it to.

3. Logo, Symbols, and Colors –

The world’s biggest brands have always been using a “single” image that reflects their core vision, ambitions, and activities. Just look at the logo of Coca-cola, Apple, Microsoft, and Manchester United. When it comes to soft drinks, without even thinking about it, people often think about Coca-cola. Similarly, when it comes to high-end gadgets, people invariably think about Apple – iPad, iPhone, iPod, and other gadgets.

Your business is no different!

We’re sure you have a vision and mission for your business. Now, if you could only find a highly relevant logo, symbols, or colors that represent those values, you’ll be in better position to build a strong online brand for sure. Once you’re finalized a color, symbol, and logo for your business, it’s time you place them on your website, social profiles, create business cards and banners out of it so that everything looks consistent.

4. Slogan or Tagline –

Slogan and tagline are keyword phrases that help tell something about your brand. It could be very specific, just like the slogan that Nokia uses – “Connecting people” or it could be vague like “Just Do it” like Nike uses.

It doesn’t matter that your logo text and slogan or tagline be the same.

In fact, a study showed that the more contrast there is between your logo text and the slogan, the easier it gets for people to remember your brand.

Sometimes, your slogan could also be slightly long which could appear as a mission statement. But if you’ve communicated what your logo is about in your tagline, people will easily identify you online. Later, you can always strip those long keyword phrases down to two or three word phrase just like the most famous brands have been doing for over decades.

5. Content –

Your content has to reflect what your brand is about. That means sticking your content topics that revolves around the main theme of your business. Sometimes people want to get adventurous and write on topics that may sound like similar content to your niche, but in fact, they’re no helpful for people whom you’re targeting in the first place.

This usually happens when you’re out of topics to write in your niche.

I have been spreading my content around several niches, but as my blog is only about Internet Marketing, writing content on programming and web design may have gotten more views on my Facebook pages, but they weren’t popular like the ones I’ve written for Internet Marketing niche.

If you’re running out of topic, I would suggest you go over your content again and look for keywords that could give you a relevant content on your niche. In addition, do not forget to read comment from people as it’s one of the best ways to generate highly relevant content in your niche.

08/11/2013/0 Comments/by Online Ion

Search Engine Optimisation, SEO for Businesses

SEO is here to Save Your Day

Small business owners usually have “insufficient” time or “limited” budget to invest on SEO that can actually skyrocket the success of their website.

Without SEO, your website will be just like any other flyers or business card you will hand out to people, which will through personal contacts and word of mouth. This will take an enormous time on your part to build a substantial number of views to really make a good online income.

However, an “optimized” website will help bring you plenty of traffic to your site!

That means a properly optimized website will you reach out to your “targeted” audience who are searching for similar products and services you’re offering, right at the time they’re looking for it.

And your website will be promoting itself 24/7, even while you’re sleeping! Awesome, isn’t it?

SEO is definitely here to save your day!

Do SEO right, and you’ll get FREE traffic (lead) on a daily basis. Yes, SEO is one of the most “cost-effective” marketing strategies that will get you lead on a daily basis without burning your pocket.

Not to mention, a business website “optimized” for SEO gives you an unparallel chance to compete with the bigger guns out there.

Do it yourself vs. Hire SEO Agency?

If you can afford to hire a “professional” SEO consultant, by all means do it to optimize your website correctly to see high ROI on your online marketing efforts.

If you cannot afford hiring a professional to perform your SEO, then sit in the drive seat and do it yourself. If you’re spending time doing SEO yourself, better do it properly to get the maximum benefits in terms of getting more traffic and exploding your search engine ranking.

Here are few reasons why SEO will help save your business:

1. More than 250 million people search businesses through the Internet (search engines) –

SEO is definitely the most “cost-effective” way to market your business website and reach out “laser targeted” audience in the least amount of time possible.

Just optimize your website properly by taking care of both on-page and off-page SEO and watch the explosion of FREE website traffic to your site.

According to a recent study, more than 250 million people in UK use Google, Yahoo, and Bing to search for business as it’s the most convenient and cost effective way to learn more about the brand and its products and services.

That means, business websites is no more only a yellow page listing or a business card. These days, people use their website to make profits online. And you should too.

2. More than 88% of people find you from search engine’s 1^st page results –

People usually find the most “relevant” websites through the first page of major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing as they’re optimized to be there in the first place.

These websites will likely contain the MOST relevant information that people are searching for.

So if your site (page) is ranking in the first page of these search engines for certain keyword terms that people search in high volume, be prepared to thousands of views, click-through-rate, and conversion on your website.

It’s been found that more than 88% people find you through the Google’s 1^st page. Proper SEO strategies will help you get to the 1^st page that most people crave for.

3. SEO helps drive “laser targeted” traffic directly to your site –

SEO includes a vital step known as “Keyword research” that will help actually target your website content – blog posts, product and services pages – directly to people who are looking for.

Keyword research will help you find the “top keywords phrase” that your targeted audience frequently uses to find products and services you are offering.

Once you have the “profitable list of keywords” at your disposal, all you have to do is try to rank for those keyword terms by doing proper “on-page” and “off-page” SEO techniques.

4. SEO helps build a positive online presence –

If you’re website is on the 1^st page of a search result page but when people click through it, they do not find “relevant” information on it, they’ll be skeptical about buying product and services from you.

On the other hand, if you have a strong online presence – positive reviews on third-party websites, strong social media presence, blogs, press releases, and YouTube channels among others – people will have no problem trusting your brand and purchasing what you have to offer.

You not necessarily need to have a product-related website to become an online sensation. You can promote and sell other’s products as an “affiliate” and still make a healthy income through your website.

Related article: Consistency is Key – 10 Consistencies to be Kept

Do a keyword research for profitable keywords.

If you really want to be at the top 10 position of search engine result pages, you’ll have to go after profitable keywords that have high search volume, but low competition, so that you can quickly rank .

Keywords such as long-tail keywords and product name keywords are usually profitable as these keywords aren’t targeted by most companies, but people still search for them because of new trends and technology changes that often arise.

But that doesn’t mean you do not “target” on competitive keywords. Eventually, you’ll have to compete with more broad and generic keywords to drive more “targeted” customers.

Do a keyword research, using Google Keyword Planner tool, before you post anything on your website. You’ll have a list of keywords to build content around it and quickly reach out to your “target” audience, as a result, save plenty of time, energy, and money on your end.

Related article: Top 5 SEO Statistics for SMEs

Optimize your website.

Related article: How Does SEO help in your Online Reputation?

Use keywords in your content.

Related article: SEO is here to Save Your Day

Create a balance between content vs. links.

Once people land on your website, you have to be responsible to guide them right from the start. Posting contents without any links to other relevant section is like leaving the visitors figure themselves out what to do next. They’ll feel confused and go somewhere else.

Instead, include important links inside your content to continuously guide your visitors on your website, thereby offering good use-experience and helping them find relevant information at ease.

Interlinking content on your website increases the PR of each page, and affect the overall PR of your website, thereby, making your website more “trustworthy”, the only thing you need to become successful online.

Related article: SEO is here to Save Your Day

Bonus Tip: Include strong “call to action.”

People are using search engines to find products and services that will help improve their lifestyle. Most of them may not be “ready” to purchase it, but may be looking for more reasons as to why they should buy products from you.

With your content, you can give them enough reasons to show them why your products will help them make a difference in their life. With call to actions at the end of each post, you ask them to take action if they’re “ready.”

Subtle “call to action” will compel people to take actions – signup for newsletter, like you content, comment on it, share it with their friends, or simply order or download products from you.

Although a “call to action” isn’t a sure-fire way to get 100% conversion rate, but at least you will increase it by 50%. That’s how most of the online business makes money from, and you should too.

Related article: Challenge the Norm – From Good to Great Online

Share your ideas – is success online simple? Comment below!

With search engine listings, any business has a potentially bring thousands, if not millions, of free traffic (potential customers) to your website. With search engines like Google, any startup can outperform giant companies who spend millions of dollars to rank in the first page.

With that said, we thought you might be interested to learn some of the SEO facts and figures so that you understand how important it is today to be in the online sphere for a long time.

SEO facts and figures you do not want to miss:

Websites that aren’t optimized for search engines will not be found on the Internet.

If you need your website to be on the 1st page, you’ll have to perform keyword research to find profitable keywords that are worth targeting after.

Almost 85% of search engine users look at the top 10 results on the 1st page.

By placing keywords in the meta description, keyword, or title tags will list your site on search engines for that keyword

To optimize your website, you’ll have to remember two things – on-page SEO (optimizing content on your site) and off-page SEO (optimizing your content outside your own site).

Blackhat SEO methods such as keyword stuffing (inserting keywords all over the page to influence rankings) and link farming (posting content on low quality sites) will get your website penalized, and at worst, banned.

Hiding text or links into your pages will boost page rank, however, if caught; it will get you banned from search engine result.

Flash based sites aren’t indexed properly on search engines database.

You need to post fresh content if you want to keep your website ranking where it is now, or even higher.

More than 73% people use search engines to purchase products.

More than 70% users click on organic links instead of paid advertisement seen at the sidebar of most search engines.

More than 81% of businesses think that setting up a blog is an important asset.

Over to you! Have you optimized your website for search engines? What steps do you take to optimize your website and its content? Please comment below!

So you have set up your e-commerce online store with product pictures, specifications, features, and pricings, but you haven’t seen the number of people visiting on it go up?

It’s time that you look deep and analyze why you aren’t reaching out to the “right” kind of people.

Most of the time, people are usually leave their product page that contains specifications, pricings, features in bullet points, and technical jargon product description that doesn’t help both search engines and your visitors know what you’re selling.

Othertimes, the content simply aren’t specific enough to target buyers in the market because you may not be using proper keywords phrase that people often use to search for products like yours.

Here are 5 handy tips to reach out to the “right” audience for your e-commerce website:

1. Write “Content-Rich” Product Descriptions –

Writing “content-rich” product descriptions means including as much information about a product or services in an easy to read manner.

Before writing product description, it’s better to think about all the possible keyword terms your “targeted” audience use to search for it. Once you have the list of keywords, you next job is to create a thorough description that includes those keywords.

Make sure to include those keywords in a natural way. “Unnatural” keyword stuffing will only lead to Google punishing your site.

Make sure to use easy to read, jargon-free, and informative content that includes your major keywords.

2. Create “Relevant” Blog Posts related to Your Products –

Once you’ve creating “content-rich” product reviews, do not be tempted to leave it just like it or promote using social media sites or article submission articles.

Remember Google loves information rich resources that help their users find what they’re looking for? “But what’s wrong with the “content-rich” product descriptions we created earlier?” I hear you scream!

I can understand but unless your website is a well-established site like Amazon, you cannot get high rankings for your product descriptions. In other words, you cannot just rank for product descriptions.

In Google’s eye, you have to establish yourself as someone who’s passionate about their niche: someone who likes to share ideas tips, and more free information to people who are searching for.

So go ahead and just do that. Create a blog section and publish posts that are relevant to products on your online stores. If you’re running out of ideas, you could share the benefits, pros, cons, or write honest reviews, and so on.

Include links to your product pages to allow people to navigate to your store when they’re ready to buy products from you.

3. Spread your content on relevant sites –

Now that you have a great product description and blog posts, your online store is ready for traditional marketing techniques.

You can be creative here and use your imagination to share your content in number of ways, including writing guest post for others, submitting useful tips on content sharing sites like Dropbox, or submitting them on articles directories and your social profiles.

Personally, I share my content on social profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Make sure to join “highly relevant” groups there to reach out to the “right” target audience, really fast.

4. Include backlinks to your blogs posts –

During publishing your blogs or product description pages on external sites as mentioned above, make sure to include a backlink in the signature, or author box.

Include keywords or title of the landing page on the “name” field, the actual landing page on the URL field, and offer a thoughtful comment on the blog or forums you’re dropping your content.

This way, your articles, comments, or threads are more likely to be accepted.

5. Do not forget to use Social Profiles –

In order to rank higher in search engine results, your website has to be well-established and active on third-party websites, your social profiles, and other external websites.

Do not settle if you’ve managed to reach the “right” audience after performing the above four steps.

You can still go one step further to “truly” establish yourself as an industry expert. Once you’ve managed to create a strong online presence, you do NOT have to invest anymore. People on your networks will help promote your business automatically.

So do us a favor – post a brief product information and blog content on your social media profiles. In addition, bookmark your content on popular social bookmarking sites.

When Google finds that your backlinks are coming from variety of sources, not just from search engine results, automatically they’ll love your online store and increase your rankings.

We would like to hear from you. Tell us any handy tips to reach out to the right audience for your e-commerce website (comment below).

Hundreds of thousands of small businesses launch every month, but only handful of them, less than 10%, of them become successful online!

If you want to be among the top 10, you’ll have to follow some simple yet powerful techniques to turn your online business into a successful venture. Here are our top 5 simple rules for running a successful online business:

Related article: 10 Ways to Sky Rocket Your Online Viewership

5 Powerful Rules to Run a Successful Online Business!

1. Keep your website simple and organized.

Most entrepreneurs want to become successful really fast, and they “over-design” their website to appeal cool and stand out from the crowd. Sites with heavy use of flash animations, background music, and tons of graphics only loads it, and not offer great user-experience.

Instead on loading you site with ads and links, why not focus on being well-organized so that your visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for. Is the text on your website is easy to read? Using dark text on a light background is the way to enhance user-experience on your site.

Related article: How to SEO Your Way to Online Success in Your Industry

If you need your website to be on the 1^st page, you’ll have to perform keyword research to find profitable keywords that are worth targeting after.

Almost 85% of search engine users look at the top 10 results on the 1^st page.

Do you need SEO services for your small business to rank in the 1^st page of Google?
Contact us for a FREE SEO consultation.