Do You Really Need SEO for Your Website?

I have often come across clients / companies, who are doubtful or rather a bit scared to implement SEO for their websites. They are concerned about the delayed results achieved by the process. (We SEOs know that search engine optimization is not a rocket science and it takes a lot of efforts and patience to see the sites ranking on top search pages. Don’t we?) But people who are unaware of the potential of SEO are always reluctant to adopt organic SEO for their websites. Rather, they are happy with the instant results obtained through PPC.

PPC is good. In fact, while preparing an integrated Internet marketing strategy for any project / website, I always consider PPC as a major point as it helps your online business going until your SEO gains momentum.

But, one should never ignore the fact that SEO can do wonders for any business. The latest data of Hitwise shows that the share of paid search traffic has declined by 26% in the past year as compared to other traffic sources. But this should not be taken as a drop in paid search traffic. Rather the opposite is true. In fact, organic search traffic has surpassed that of paid search and the slice of paid search share has become smaller.

So, what do you think now? Does your website really need SEO? Would you really like to lose that major chunk of traffic coming through organic search?

Just rethink……

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SEO Tip - Deeplinking

Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

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Are You Fulfilling the Purpose of Your Website?

Life has a purpose and so a website has. The purpose of your website depends solely on what you want to achieve through it. Let's examine concepts behind various types of Web sites as you look for the model that fits your organization the best.

• Advertisement
• Prospect Generation
• Direct Sales
• Business-to-Business Sales
• Customer Support
• Education

Whatever be the purpose of your website, it can only be achieved when it reaches to maximum number of prospects. And this can only be achieved when your website ranks well at the top result pages of the Search Engines. Your website must mark its presence in the search results otherwise it is possible that you are offering best of the services and products, but still you can not sell them because there is no web traffic. When your website ranks high on SERPs, it attracts maximum online visitors, thus helping achieve your business / website goals.

To be ahead in the competition of the online world, your websites needs to be search engine friendly and here SEO comes into picture. SEO can make or break the purpose of a website. It’s the job of a good SEO consultant to keep a website ahead of its online competitors thus fulfilling its purpose.

As an SEO consultant, I have worked on number of websites with varied purposes, but the most sites I have come across are sites seeking to generate business and revenue through online world.

You would not like it at all that you lose the major chunk of your business that is sure to come from the Internet. To succeed, a website must be a carefully targeted, wisely-designed, pay-its-own-way tool which adds to the bottom line. In such cases, Internet marketing experts advise to implement SEO strategies so that your website can also rank well at the top Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). SEO can help you reach to your new prospects and increase revenue from your website through online sector.

Through search engine optimization you are earn big revenues. You can seek advise from an Internet Marketing expert and SEO consultant who can guide you on preparing and implementing an SEO strategy that will work for the Search Engines. He / She can also guide you on other aspects of website designing, usability and accessibility to make your website more Search Engine friendly and usable.

So, to fulfill the purpose of your website, make it Search Engine friendly, implement ethical SEO techniques and see the web traffic flowing to your site.

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Class C IP and Its Importance in SEO

IP addresses hold a very important place in the world of SEO and Internet Marketing. It’s a major factor that decides the fate of the ranking of any websites on the top Search Engine results pages (SERPs). Before preparing the SEO strategy of any website, any SEO consultant should also consider the IP address. IP addresses also play a major role in the backlink strategy of websites.

Before discussing Class C IP and its importance in SEO field, let me first describe IP address in brief.

What is an IP Address?

Every machine or computer on the Internet has a unique identifying number which is known as an IP Address. A typical IP address looks like this:

• 216.27.61.137

IP addresses are normally expressed in decimal format as a dotted decimal number (like the one shown above). This is done to make it easier for us (humans) to understand and remember the address. But computers communicate in binary format (0 and 1). Thus the same IP address in binary format would look like:

• 11011000.00011011.00111101.10001001

The four numbers in an IP address are called octets, because they each have eight positions when viewed in binary form. If you add all the positions together, you get 32, which is why IP addresses are considered 32-bit numbers. Since each of the eight positions can have two different states (1 or 0) the total number of possible combinations per octet is 28 or 256. So each octet can contain any value between 0 and 255. Combine the four octets and you get 232 or a possible 4,294,967,296 unique values!

Classes:

Five classes of IP ranges are available: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D and Class E. Each class allows for a range of valid IP addresses. All IP addresses are broken down into 4 sets of octets that break down into binary to represent the actual IP address.

The octets are used to create classes of IP addresses. The octets are split into two sections: Net and Host. The Net section always contains the first octet. It is used to identify the network that a computer belongs to. Host (sometimes referred to as Node) identifies the actual computer on the network. The Host section always contains the last octet. There are five IP classes plus certain special addresses:

• Class A - IP addresses with a first octet from 1 to 126 are part of class A. The other three octets are used to identify each host.

• Class B - IP addresses with a first octet from 128 to 191 are part of this class B addresses. Class B addresses also include the second octet as part of the Net identifier.

• Class C - Class C addresses are commonly used for small to mid-size businesses. IP addresses with a first octet from 192 to 223 are part of this class. Class C addresses also include the second and third octets as part of the Net identifier. The last octet is used to identify each host.

• Class D – Class D IP is used for multicasts and has a first bit value of 1, second bit value of 1, third bit value of 1 and fourth bit value of 0. The other 28 bits are used to identify the group of computers the multicast message is intended for.

• Class E - Class E is used for experimental purposes only.

Below is a listing of these addresses:

Class Address Range Supports

Class A 1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254 Supports 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks.
Class B 128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254 Supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks.
Class C 192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254 Supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks.
Class D 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 Reserved for multicast groups.
Class E 240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254 Reserved.

Importance of Class C IP in SEO?

To increase the backlink of websites, in the era of spam, many webmasters started creating multiple website on same server, linking each other thus trying to improve the ranking of the websites on the SRPs.

Search Engines identified this issue and started avoiding links coming from similar IPs. As it is very easy to get different D class IPs on same server, Search Engines also started avoiding Links from same C Class IP. So when Search Engine find that you’ve a link coming from same C Class IP on which your website is located, the backlink will not have any importance.

So for a successful backlinking strategy, it is always advisable to get links from websites on different C class IP. If you source more than one link from same C class IP, you will get benefit of only one link. Please note that you will not get penalized if you’ve link coming from same C class IP, but you’ll not get any advantage either.

So if you are doing the link exchange specially if you don’t have your own server, do check if the person you are linking to has a different C class IP than yours.

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Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

This is a very fast moving world and the technology is evolving every moment. This is a techno era and to keep pace with the ever evolving technology, we need to keep pace with the changing time.

When we create a websites, we do the cross browser compatibility check. But how many of us (please note the %age) really check the mobile friendliness of our site? We are happy, if our site is compatible with multiple browsers. But have you ever thought about those users who access your website from their mobile phones? Today, when the whole world has become mobile and nothing is static, we can not afford to forget the importance of mobile browsing.

One more reason to make your website mobile friendly is that in countries like India, where internet penetration is low, mobile penetration is quite healthy at almost 300 million. Estimates show that the number of web-enabled phones outnumber the number of PC internet users in India.

So as a webmaster, if you want maximum exposure for your website, don’t forget to make your website mobile friendly.

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Google Webmaster Tools Now in 40 Languages

Google has recently launched Webmaster Tools in 14 new languages. This makes the total language support count to 40. The tool has been launched in languages like Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Filipino, Greek, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Portuguese (Portugal), Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Webmaster Tools, with the launch in these languages, joins other Google products like Google.com, AdWords, Gmail and Toolbar to reach the 40 Language Initiative.

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10 Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank

1. Install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as your homepage.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website.
3. Encourage your friends, your site visitors and fellow webmasters to use the Alexa toolbar.
4. Always place your URL in webmaster forums that will get webmasters to visit your website.
5. Create a webmaster tools section on your website and write content that is related to webmasters.
6. Get Dugg or Stumbled which will bring massive numbers of visitors to your website and will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank.
7. Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites.
8. Develop quality content to attract and maintain a large audience.
9. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.
10. Great link-worthy content will help to increase the website traffic organically and passively increase your Alexa rank.

Now you have ten ways to boost your Alexa Rank and increase your site’s monetization potential.

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Alexa Ranks – How Worthy They Are?

As an Internet Marketing Consultant, I have come across many clients who are very much concerned about the Alexa ranking of their as well as their competitors’ websites. As a professional Search Marketer, this is my personal opinion that Alexa ranking hardly matters when the success of internet marketing plan for any website is measured.

What is Alexa and Alexa Rank?

Alexa.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Alexa is a website that provides information on traffic levels for any website and the Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users who’ve visited a website with the Alexa toolbar installed.

The schema of Alexa ranking is based on the level of traffic each website receives from the number of people who visit a website with the Alexa toolbar installed.

This traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical data that is gathered from millions of Alexa Toolbar users. This ranking is a combined measure of page views and visitors and is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time. A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic. Alexa simply provides a rough snapshot of what is going on and does not mean that much by itself.

Problems with the Alexa Rank

The main problem with Alexa ranking is that it is heavily skewed towards websites which have a large webmaster or web savvy audiences because of the fact that they are much more likely to have installed the Alexa toolbar than the websites whose visitors are unaware of Alexa. This makes Alexa a vastly inaccurate method of measuring a website’s reach, traffic and potential.

But unfortunately, Alexa is still heavily used by webmasters and ad networks while measuring the value of advertising on any website and is considered as a central element in site monetization strategies.

However, if you really want to increase your Alexa rank, watch this space for the next post where I shall explain the methods to get started with Alexa and give you some handy tips and strategies that can be used to increase your Alexa Rank dramatically in the short and long run.

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Analyse Your Competitors for a Successful Internet Marketing Strategy

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management, as defined in Wikipedia, is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context through which to identify opportunities and threats. Competitor profiling coalesces all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment.

Competitor Analysis is an important element of the strategic internet planning process. Like any other successful marketing plan, an internet marketing plan also requires thorough and in-depth analysis of the competitors to be successful to generate the desired online business. It is an essential component of the corporate strategy and thus requires a very systematic approach to prepare a robust internet marketing plan.

As a search marketer, you should be aware of your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and their overall online activities. Very often, competitive intelligence and analysis is taken for granted in the search industry and the search marketers rarely spend any time getting to know the competitors. You can learn a lot of things by studying your competitors and pick up new tricks and techniques from them. A complete competitor analysis would study in detail all aspects of each of your competitor's internet marketing strategy. Analyzing your competitors will help you to understand their strategy, their tactics, their level of success, etc. which is very crucial to the success of your online marketing strategy. One good method of studying your competitors is by signing up for their emails, read their content and get to know their sites.

Google alerts are good tools to keep a track of your competitors. These alerts notify you when something changes for your competitive keywords as well as when you and your competition are mentioned online.

Why Competitors’ Analysis?

Competitor analysis has various important roles in your internet marketing strategy. It helps you to:

• understand your competitive advantages/disadvantages relative to your competitors
• generate understanding of competitors’ past, present (and most importantly) future strategies
• provide an informed basis to develop strategies to achieve competitive advantage in the future

Questions To Be Asked While Analyzing The Competitors:

The following is a useful list to keep in mind:

• Who are our competitors?
• What threats do they pose?
• What are the online activities of our competitors?
• What are the objectives of our competitors?
• What internet marketing strategies are our competitors pursuing and how successful are these strategies?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors?

Competitors’ analysis is not a one time thing but a regular process that is needed to stay ahead. The industry is always changing and so you need to do constant research and study of your competitors to stay on the top.

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Integrating SEO with SEM

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is a division of online marketing that seeks to promote any website by increasing its online presence and/or its visibility in Search Engine Result Pages. Some of the methods or techniques which are being used for SEM are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), sponsored or paid listings (PPC), online banner advertisement, affiliate marketing etc.

Technically, banner advertising and affiliate marketing are parts of Internet Marketing instead of SEM but I have included these under SEM because of the fact that usually affiliates adopt general SEO techniques to rank the affiliate websites in the organic or natural search listings. Similarly online banner advertisement relies majorly on the number of visitors and page visits to any website.

In this post, I am not going to explain the techniques but would focus on the fine line which differentiates SEO from SEM and the methods which can help us to integrate any SEO strategy with marketing plan to generate more online business.

SEO is actually one element of SEM which means optimisation of any website to make it Search Engine friendly and get higher rankings in the organic search results. Various website designing, web architectural, web usability, accessibility, technical and content guidelines are followed to make a search engine friendly website. But this much is not enough for a complete SEO process. Unique title and meta tag creation, off page optimisation and other techniques are involved to configure the website with the targeted keywords and rank well in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP)s.

The common notion is that the SEO task is accomplished once the rankings are achieved for the desired keywords. But this is not true as higher ranking in the SERPs do not ensure increased business. There are various other factors which decide users’ clicks and/or conversion rate of any website and hence the fate of its online business. Following list explains how we can increase clicks to a website and enhance its online business:

1. Keywords: Keywords are the foundation of any successful SEM plan. Proper and thorough keyword research helps in laying a solid foundation to the plan. The chosen keywords must satisfy two major criteria: relevancy and popularity. There can be numerous search phrase related to the theme of any website which can draw innumerable visitors to the site. But here the question is conversion and not the junk traffic. Increased traffic does not always mean increased sales. One should always keep in mind the geo location, demographics etc. while choosing the keywords. Also the keywords should be able to convey the purpose of the webpage. If the page is selling any product, then the search phrases should be able to tell the web surfers the actual purpose of that page.

Let us take the example of an ecommerce website that is selling only handmade paper. If generic words like paper, handmade paper etc. are used as the keywords, then the possibilities of driving more traffic are much higher. But how many of the clicks will get converted when a user looking for information on paper or handmade paper finds out that the site is selling handmade paper? In this case if the keywords buy handmade paper and/or handmade paper supplier are used, then the conversion rate would be much higher.

2. Title and Description: Title tags are one of the most important SEO ranking factors. But it is one of the most important conversion factors also. If the title is simply a set of keywords separated with delimiters, then it fails to attract the potential buyers. The title and description tags of a website should be sale statements with the strategic placement of the keywords.

3. Landing Pages: Do not ever mislead the visitors and send them to a wrong landing page. Many times, pages like about us, contact us sections optimized for potential keywords to increase the range of keywords. This leads to a big disaster for the SEM plan of any website as the users get irritated when they are looking for some good handmade paper bags and eventually land on the contact us page of handmade paper bags manufacturer.

4. Irrelevant Textual Content: A lot of textual content on the pages merely to accommodate the keywords is not advisable. This confuses the visitors and diverts their attention. If you really want to say something, then only add unique and relevant content on your page else restrict the page content to short and crisp text strictly related to the theme of the page.

SEO and SEM go hand in hand and we can not consider them in isolation as the final aim of the internet marketing plan for any website is to increase the online visibility and the business. So don’t just do SEO for your website, do SEO in integration with SEM to achieve the goals on a broader canvas.

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