Keyword Optimization

The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:

1. clearly describe the purpose and content of your site, and,
2. allow your site to show up as close to the first results page as possible.
A good position doesn't depend only on your choice of keywords. It also depends on how well do you position those keywords in your web page, and how many quality external pages link to you. However, choosing the wrong keywords can throw off your entire search engine optimization strategy, so you need to invest a few hours and make sure you do it right.

Let's start with your homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word keyphrases is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. That is why, from now on, we will talk about keyphrases, not keywords. Once you have developed your list of potential keyphrases you are ready for the next step: to analyze the demand and supply for those keyphrases, and choose the best ones (those with good demand and not enough supply).

We will first check the demand for your selected keyphrases. For this, we will go to Google Awords Search Term Suggestion Tool:

Google Awords

Google Awords is a popular pay-per-click search engine. You will then type each of the keyphrases you selected, and see how many people search for those terms. This tool will show you only those searches conducted in Overture (and only in one month time). However, the relative popularity of each search term will be very similar in other search engines as well. In addition to telling you if your selected keyphrases are popular, this tool will show you other keyphrases that you may not have thought about, which may even be more relevant to your site.
For example, if your first keyphrase was "Italian Restaurant", the Search Term Suggestion Tool will also display other popular search terms, like: "Gourmet Italian Restaurant", "Northern Italian Restaurant", "Italian Restaurant Pizzeria", "Italian Restaurant Miami", etc. You may also try other keyphrases, for example: "Italian Cuisine", and come up with more specific keyphrases, like: "Fine Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Miami", "Northern Italian Cuisine", "Italian Cuisine Fine Dining", "Gourmet Italian Cuisine", etc.

What you have done is to validate and enlarge your pool of popular, in-demand, potential keyphrases for your web page. The next step is to check the supply, or, in other words, to see how much competition there is for your selected keywords. Naturally, you want to focus on keyphrases where competition is less fierce. For example, choosing "Italian Restaurant" alone will certainly hurt you. There are so many of them that your chances of showing up in an advantageous position within the search results are pretty slim.
Having said that, get your list of keyphrases, go to Google ( http://www.google.com ) and type-in each of them in the search box. Enter your keyphrases within quotation marks (to filter-out less relevant results), and see how many results each individual query produces, making a note of those with a relatively small number of results (less competition). You will stick with the keyphrase that:

1. Best describes the topic and content of your page
2. Is a popular search term according to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool.
3. Generates a relatively small number of results after performing the Google search.
If "Gourmet Italian Restaurant" is the keyphrase that best meets these three criteria, it will become your primary keyphrase. To get even better results, you can choose a second keyphrase to make your page more relevant to an even more specific niche. For example, if your restaurant is in Miami, you can consider "Miami" a second keyphrase. Once you have chosen the keyphrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your site.

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We’ve already put together a list of tips and resources for Twitter beginners, and Part 2 is focused on those who are familiar with Twitter and don’t want to waste time trawling through hundreds of applications which all do the same thing. All resources mentioned were free at time of posting.

Time-saving Twitter tools

• Twitter Tools for Wordpress – This handy plugin automatically creates tweets from your blog posts, so your Twitter followers can grab a link to your new entry straight away. Optional bit.ly URL shortening is included, and you can also post your Tweets as blog entries. If you don’t have a blog yet, you can take advantage of our one click WordPress install and web hosting to get set up in less than a minute.
• Twitoria – This website allows you to unfollow people who haven’t tweeted in the past week, fortnight, month, two months, six months or year. A great easy-use tool which will keep your follower base fresh.
• Hashtags – Just enter a search term to get a list of tweets, trends and people tweeting about that topic recently using a hashtag. Hashtags also displays a popularity graph. This is a useful tool to find out how popular a word or term is so you can get in on a conversation or monitor a trend.
• Friendorfollow – displays your relationships with your followers, i.e. people who follow you but you don’t follow and vice versa, and reciprocal following.  You can also look up the stats for other tweeters simply by entering their username and export data.
• OneForty is a directory of Twitter applications along with ratings and comments. Currently approaching 3,000 tools, it’s a good solution for checking up on apps you’ve heard about and finding the right software for you e.g. the right mobile phone application.

Twhirl is a good choice for those requiring a simple, unobtrusive client whilst HootSuite offers a lot of features ideal for business users. It’s also important to keep an eye on the development plans for each application so you’re aware of what features are intended for the near future. Just because you’ve found a suitable client doesn’t mean you have to stick with it – it’s an area which is increasingly growing and increasingly competitive – but consider the impact on any stats or analytics you may be tracking to avoid confusion or loss of information.

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Twitter in itself can be very overwhelming, and that’s without worrying what tools and resources you need to manage your account properly. So we’ve done the hard work for you and compiled a list of our favourites.

Twitter for Beginners

We’ve divided our list into two parts; this one for fledgling tweeters and one for fully-fledged users (keep an eagle eye out for more advanced tools in Part 2, coming soon), but it’s worth checking them both to make sure there’s nothing you miss.

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With more and more social media sites popping up everywhere, the craze to have the next Facebook or Twitter continues to be relentless. Wikipedia lists ‘some notable, well-known’ active social media sites  – ‘some’ being 190 – and even has a separate page for defunct websites, showing that this competitive trend shows no mercy.

So with almost two hundred ‘notable’ options out there, how do you know which to use for your site and how? Facebook and Twitter are the most obvious choices, but it’s essential to take time to create a strategy and see what works best for your particular needs.

Take time to find the sites relevant to you
Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Investigate what’s out there, and make two lists of potentials – one for pages that require very little maintenance (e.g. a StumbleUpon link), and one for sites that require frequent updates and monitoring (e.g. Facebook).

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In this article I will point out a new way of marketing your business website by using a blog. Why should you care about blogging, that’s just something web designers or egotistical teenagers do to look cool in class. If Microsoft believes that business blogging is important then who are we to ignore it?.

Non Compete culture

Companies worldwide, and from my own personal experience especially in the UK, are very scared of giving away the smallest hint of what they actually do for their clients. Their perspective is often that any information they make available could be valuable to their competitors; they could get an edge over them if they knew their prices.
The Less Customers Know, The More We Can Charge

UK companies have a tendency to hide their prices and instead give an awkward quotation form for their services, even though they may supply competitive prices and a reliable service. If you picked up the phone they can probably give you a quote straight away.

Be Personable

There is an attitude that the less the client knows the more we can charge and to a great extent this is true. But these companies are missing a new wave of marketing, one that is transforming companies images and actually making business approachable and personal, even Microsoft, the brand tarnished with the evil corporation badge for so many years, has seen the error of its ways and is using blogging to become more personable.

Blog Marketing Gains Trust

The blog marketing scheme works by creating something that is mostly lost on online trading; trust. That website could be run by anyone with a few services to throw your way, you cannot actually judge what the company staff are actually like and there’s no way you can truly estimate the level of integrity the company has and how specialized they actually are.

These are all trust issues affecting paying customers choices every time they look at your website.

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Directory submission
Directories are not an effective method to build quality incoming links but they will build volume and are a good way to get the ball rolling. Most will have a low Page Rank and pass very little link juice on, but when added all together, it could be enough to get you up to PR1. Rather than try to submit to each one manually it is quicker and just as effective to use a bulk submission service. A quick search for “directory submission” will bring you back a list of potential suppliers. If you know of directories that deal specifically with your niche, make sure you manually submit your site to these as well to build relevant incoming links.

Twitter
Make it easy for your visitors to retweet your website/ articles with a retweet button. Also set up your own account to push news items, blog articles, and special offers to engage with your site’s users on a one to one level. Twitter exclusive offers or resources are a good way to build your follower base quickly.

Social bookmarking
Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Reddit, Sphinn, Design Bump… there are dozens and dozens of social bookmarking sites, some broad others targeting specific niches, and they have the potential to be major traffic drivers for your website. Submit your site yourself and provide visitors with the ability to submit directly from your website as well.

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A dedicated server is a web server that is devoted to one customer, thus giving that customer all of the resources they need to effectively run their website without worring about experiencing server space or bandwidth other pitfalls. Although dedicated servers are available to every customer, they are usually only used by larger businesses due to their high cost and overwhelming amount of server resources. Most small business owners would not necessarily need a dedicated server, but nonetheless it is a common solution for small business owners as well. One of the reasons why a dedicated server is so suitable for the large business owner is because the server setup is completely customizable and expandable. The following reasons should help you decide if a dedicated server would be suitable for your online business.

Multiple Domain Hosting

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