Archive for the ‘Ethical Search Engine Optimization’ Category

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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 | 1 Comment »

How E-Commerce Stores Can Benefit Greatly from Organic SEO

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Many owners of e-commerce Web sites do not bother with any type of search engine optimization, simply because they don’t think it works for online stores. However, the truth is that organic SEO can greatly help online stores gain Web site traffic which will in turn boost more sales. Here are some organic SEO tips from Helium.com especially for e-commerce sites.

Domain Name: Make sure your domain name is something that’s easy to remember and describes exactly what your store is.

Page META Tags: Each page of your Web site should have a specific META title, description and keywords. Search engines use the META information to index the pages of your site. Make sure to give a name or a title to each category and product. Make sure the titles are very descriptive and under 70 characters long. The META description should include keywords and be less than 200 characters long. The keywords need to be phrases you think someone would use when trying to search for a product or specific item in your store.

Page Content: Make sure to write a description about each product. One of the biggest mistakes e-commerce sites make is forgetting to put text on the product pages. This is very important for the search engines to index the page. The text should include the name of the product, the brand and specific features that make it different from other products.

Images: Make sure to add tags and descriptions to all images. This gives search engines more content to index. Image tags need to tell what the photo is about using keywords. Include the type or product, the brand and the product’s uses.

Customer Reviews: Having user-generated content on your site allows the content on your site to charge often, which lures search engines back to index more pages. Also user-generated content encourages company-client interaction, allows customers to interact with the company and each other and give feedback on the products they’ve purchased. Customer feedback also works to improve your online credibility because people will be more likely to buy from your store if they read notes from other satisfied customers.

Using organic SEO on an online store site is very similar to optimizing any Web site. Regular updates show your customers as well as the search engines that you care and once you begin to add SEO to your e-commerce Website you’ll start noticing more traffic which will turn into more profits. For more infomation, read the full article on Helium.com.

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Posted in Natural Search Engine Optimization, Organic SEO | No Comments »

3 Key Elements for SEO Web Site Development

Friday, August 13th, 2010

When it comes to marketing your business, there’s a lot more to web design than just a pretty web site. Your site must be search engine friendly for search engines (and potential customers) to find you. Here are 3  important elements for SEO Web site development.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “Content is King.” This rule should apply to every page of your web site. Write informative and engaging content, sprinkled with relevant keywords. The keywords should fit into the text as naturally as possible – don’t just list them or repeat them too often so that the text sounds like it’s sole purpose is to include keywords. Also, don’t neglect pages just because they seem like they don’t need any content (ALL pages need content!). For instance, a products page should not just list the products being sold. Include a paragraph about the products in general, and then write a description of each product.

META tags are lines of text found in the coding of the page. While they may not seem important, since they are “behind the scenes,” your page is much more likely to be indexed if you write your METAs correctly. First, they need to be in the correct order – META Title, META Description, and then META Keywords, followed by a robots tag. The META Title and Description should be unique for each page. Keywords should be relevant to that page and also under 200 characters.

Web robots will not scan everything on your website. There are certain elements they avoid, like images and scrolling text boxes. Also, Web robots have a hard time scanning JavaScript, so it’s better to avoid it when possible. Including images on your web site is fine – people love pictures! However, keep in mind that since robots won’t crawl them, so if there is a company name or keyword in the image, it will not be seen by the search engines.

While there is a lot more to SEO Web development, these three elements are a good place to start, and using them will help to increase your search engine rankings.

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Posted in Business Marketing Online, SEO Web site Development | 2 Comments »

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