Posts Tagged ‘Ethical SEO’

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The Real Truth About Email Marketing Online

Monday, August 23rd, 2010
Find out the truth about email marketing before you begin building your online reputation.

Find out the truth about email marketing before you begin building your online reputation.

Many companies rely on email marketing to boost their online reputation, gain more customers and get news and information to current customers. Email marketing can be a wonderful tool when used with a correctly, however, there is a fine line between a welcomed email newsletter and spam. There are plenty of myths and truths drifting around in cyberspace about email marketing. Being able to distinguish myths from reality will help you go about using email marketing online to increase business, not hurt your reputation.

Here are 5 common email marketing myths that David Fowler recently discussed in his email deliver-ability webinar.

Myth #1: There’s a magic list of words that can’t be used in the content of the message. The truth is, there are certain words that may get the email flagged as spam. However, the online reputation of the company has more influence than the content. Avoid using phases and words like call now, don’t delete, get paid, get started now, get it now, join millions of Americans, no cost, no questions asked, etc.

Myth #2: A confirmed opt-in recipient won’t hit the spam button. In reality, even if someone opted-in for the email message, everyone hits the spam button once in a while, so don’t think you have a guaranteed recipient just because they’ve opted-in.

Myth #3: The definition of spam is abusive email. The real definition of spam is unwanted email. This means that even if you’re only sending out an email once a month, if you’re sending it to opt-out recipients who don’t want the email, you’re spamming.

Myth #4: “My sales will decrease if I use ‘confirmed opt-in.’” Your sales won’t decrease for using confirmed opt-in emailing. Actually you’re building consumer trust, which will earn you a more loyal customer-base.

Myth #5: Authentication will get you delivered to the inbox. The truth is, authenticating messages allows you to manage your sender reputation, and it’s only the first step to building your email marketing identity. Once you’ve made a good reputation, your message is more likely to be delivered to the inbox and read.

Keeping these 5 myths and truths in mind when building your marketing reputation online will help your company have more success in e-marketing which in turn will help you gain more loyal customers.

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Posted in Business Marketing Online, Drive Traffic to Your Website | 4 Comments »

Top 4 Things an Organic SEO Firm Would Never Do

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Many people are unaware of the fact that there are two kinds of SEO firms. Organic, white hat SEO firms, follow Google’s terms of service, don’t spam and don’t endanger your Web site of getting blacklisted. White hat SEO firms organically raise your Web site’s page rank by using keywords, submitting articles and press releases, creating traffic with blogs, social media links and many other techniques. However, there are black hat SEO firms that boost your Web site traffic unethically. These are SEO firms that put your site in danger of being blacklisted on Google which will guarantee that it is never found by anyone. To spot which SEO firms are organic, white hat firms and which are black hat, read the following list of 4 common techniques of black hat SEO firms.

Hiding content. Many black hat SEO firms hide content within the HTML coding of your Web site. One way they do this is to use comment tags to stuff keywords. This will be invisible to the site visitor but not to the search engines, which do not like keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is one way to get your site blacklisted and if you don’t check the HTML coding your SEO firm is providing you with, you could be in danger.

Keyword Stuffing in META tags. Organic SEO firms never keyword stuff because they know how many keywords they can use without overdoing it. However, black hat SEO firms will keyword stuff to get your site ahead at first, but eventually you’ll get caught. The META title, description and keywords should each contain a certain amount of keywords, and any more can hurt your site. The META title should contain one keyword that describes your site overall. The META description can contain one or two keywords that describe why your site is online. The META keywords section should have 3-5 keywords that you want your site to be found for. Any more than this amount of keywords in the META tags can be seen as unethical and can put your site in danger of the blacklist.

Link farming. Link farms are pages that have no other purpose than to list links of unrelated Web sites. They won’t provide any more traffic and if you participate in link farming you run the risk of getting blacklisted. Having a resource page is a better idea, this is where you can list links that are related to the content of your site to provide more information to the visitor. If the sites you link to agree to link back to you, that is an example of honest, ethical, organic SEO.

Doorway/Gateway Pages. These are pages that are designed for search engines. They’re fake pages that are stuffed with keywords and are highly optimized for 1 or 2 keywords that link to a landing page. The typical visitor will never see these pages because they’re automatically redirected to the target page, however the search engines can see them and will flag your site as spam and ban your site from appearing in the search engine results.

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Posted in Ethical Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »

Ethical SEO IS Not To Blame For Poor Sales

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
Ethical SEO is never the cause for poor sales

Ethical SEO is never the cause for poor sales

You are still waiting for your SEO strategies to convert your traffic into customers. Now, this doesn’t mean you should turn to the dark side of SEO and start keyword stuffing, link spamming, creating hidden text and you certainly don’t want to steal content from popular sites to create a scraper site. While these black hat SEO techniques may increase your Web site traffic, they will not convert your traffic into customers, but they will certainly get your Web site banned by search engines. So you need to stick with ethical SEO practices because poor sales are not the result of SEO.

Here are a few examples of practical ethical SEO strategies that could improve those poor sales:

Web site Design: Your Web site may not have initially been designed for SEO and that’s why it took you so long to optimize it, but is it user-friendly? Is it hard to navigate the Web site? Is it loaded with fuzzy images, horrid text coloring and annoying flash videos? Remember that flash videos and vivid images can make a site attractive, but it is more important that the site is useful to the consumer to find out about your company and its products and services. Make sure it easy for traffic to find out how to contact you, if this part is challenging then your traffic will be hitting the back button in no time.  While ethical SEO is important, creating a user-friendly site that users can easily use as a tool to access what they need or want, is crucial to keep them coming back and to converting them into loyal consumers.

Content: Performing ethical SEO techniques and user-friendly site design will attract search bots and people to your site, but if you aren’t saying much or anything at all on your site that could be a problem when it comes to converting traffic to consumers. If you post useful content on your company site it will boost your company’s credibility and appeal. Good content will also increase your site’s search engine result ranking especially when other sites link to your site. So create content that helps people understand more about your company, products, services, industry and which keeps them in the loop on current events that involve your company. It is also a good idea to create a company blog to establish two way communication between you and your site visitors. If you are really creative, you can use your company blog for public relations, marketing, advertising and market research; now, doesn’t that sound appealing?

Products: This may be the hardest part for some business owners to analyze, but it is essential. No matter how useful your Web site is and the ethical SEO techniques you used, if your products or services are not attractive to people then you will not convert them into consumers. Make sure your products or services are not yesterday’s fad by performing proper research on today’s market.

To read the full article about this topic please visit Search Engine Optimization Journal.

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Posted in Ethical SEO | No Comments »

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