Have you ever been to Las Vegas? Taking an elevator all the way up to the top of the Eiffel Tower offers great views of the Sin city. But it also makes you realise that before Rafael Rivera set his foot in Las Vegas Valley, there was nothing but plain abandoned dessert. Only the discovery of water rich springs started bringing all this traffic to Nevada dessert to become a prime location for a shop facility and town. Now imagine that your website, without much traffic, is just like that dry piece of land 200 years ago.

The days of putting an advert in the Yellow Pages and waiting for the phone call are over. Simply registering your website to various search engines is just the beginning of the long journey. That’s when Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes and the sooner you get started, the faster your business will grow.

Did you know that about 36% of internet users consider a company listed among the top results on search engines to be a top one within its field and about 60% of users click on a website link within the first page of results? Being listed in the Top 10 of natural search results should be a key priority for every online business. About 85% of searchers click on natural results comparing to paid results that appear on the top or side of the search engine results pages and are only half are as visible to searchers and mostly less effective.

There are numerous SEO techniques you can use to improve your natural traffic. The best start is to optimise the website itself. However, the first and most important issue to start with is to know your competition, analyse it and learn from its strengths and weaknesses. Then put yourself in the skin of searcher who is looking for product or services related to your business. What keywords would he put in the search query box? What results would he be interested in seeing? Don’t forget about optimising images on your website to make them visible to search engine spiders who crawl your website to find information related to your search query. Pay attention to writing quality articles and avoid sloppy texts that are hard to read. Focus on link building with subscribing your site to related directories and communities.

And update, update, update…

Understanding how people use search and what they search for is crucial for website publishers and SEO practitioners. Retail is among the first most searched categories followed by entertainment. It is based on one simple assumption – people love shopping, they always have and they always will. The amount of money spent on online shopping has grown despite recession and that’s what your business should benefit from. Placing your advert on relevant websites or exchange links is the best way to do it. Just be careful because unlike Las Vegas you don’t want your website to be related to any gambling or sex links!

Since El Rancho Vegas became the first hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip in 1941, 35 million people visit Vegas year round thanks to its entertaining facilities built in the middle of the dessert.

With sophisticated SEO you can bring as much traffic to your website as you want, so it becomes The Las Vegas of the Web!

Author
Xenia Slosarcikova constructs and implements SEO campaigns for a wide variety of businesses. Please call her on +44(0)1242 222878 or email xenia@themarketingfarm.co.uk.

Google PageRank works just like that. It ranks websites on the scale 0 to 10 points depending on their popularity the same way those school kids would rank their schoolmates. The one with the most relevant links/connections is the winner. Now what would you do to make sure your website becomes next year’s most popular?

• The most important thing to do is to secure as many links pointing to your website as possible because Google PageRank ranks websites according to the number of links leading to your page. Every click on your page is akin to a vote. The more votes you get, the better ranking will be.

• Submitting to search engine directories is very important because many of them allow you to post free links to your website, which increases your opportunities to be listed higher. As it is going to be a free link it is an easier option compared to trying to gain links from other related websites which may either ignore your link or request payment.

• Joining forums and and publishing articles are other important means of how to help your search engine ranking. Always sign off articles and contributions with your website signature. Just remember to only join forums related to your website for maximum benefit. It may bring back more potential clients and be a good advertisement for your business.

• Create and distribute ezines linked to your website.

• Register with Google webmasters and create a site map for your business to make it entirely visible to Google.

The subject is far more complex, but following these basic tips should at least help your website attain a better score on the GoogleRank scale and bring more traffic to your pages. However, please note it takes consistent and constant activity to become and remain the most popular kid at school….

Please email me for information regarding our 12 month SEO packages. They offer exceptional value!

Author: Xenia Slosarcikova, Online Marketeer, The Marketing Farm Limited

A website’s success is dependent on the quality and levels of visiting traffic. However, too many businesses fail to have an ongoing online promotional strategy in place, and far too many have been stung by the false promises of so called ‘SEO specialists’ who promise big and achieve little. In this context, we have launched low cost and fully inclusive Search Engine Optimization packages to provide the necessary monthly maintenance, adjustments and assessments to increase online traffic to client sites.

We offer a choice of 12 month packages to ensure a website is successful across all major search engine and social networking sites. All our retained SEO accounts are reviewed by our full marketing team and supplementary recommendations provided free of charge. For smaller businesses that are mostly focused on a local geographical area we will create customised local SEO plans targeting a particular area (town, city, state, country) depending upon objectives. Please contact us for further information and explanations.

Package 1 On Page Optimization

This is executed within the website itself.

• Website Content Analysis

• HTML Code Optimization
• Competitors Analysis - assessing the website’s strengths and weaknesses through deep competition analysis
• Meta Tag Optimization – to identify keyword tags, key phrases and description tags necessary for placing websited at the best position with monthly and seasonal rotations
• Alt Tag Optimization – image word rotation
• Page Title Placements – monthly rotations
• Broken And External Link Report – to make sure website doesn’t have any “dead links” or “broken links”
• Keywords And Key Phrases Research
• Image Optimization And Anchor Tag Optimization
• Robot File Maintenance
• Google Sitemap Maintenance
• Statistical Traffic Reporting And Analysis

Package 2: On Page And Off Page Promotion

These additional services are executed outside of the website.

• Social Networking and Bookmarking – creating and maintaining accounts on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Subscribe To Communities
• Business Directory Submission – subscribe to available business directories to help keep businesses at the top search positions
• Article Creation And Submission
• Blog Commenting –posting links to and from blogs, sharing links
• Forum Posting
• RSS Feed Directories – creating  RSS feeds (blog entries, news headlines, audio, video)
• CSS Submission
• Blog Creation – starting and maintaining blogs

Advertising

The Media Farm can also advise on concepts, media planning, design and production for:

• Banner and skyscraper advertising

• Contextual advertising

• Behaviourial targeting

• Semantic advertising

• Floating, expanding and wallpaper advertisements

• Pop-ups and pop-unders

• Video advertisements

• Map advertisements (Google maps)

• Mobile advertisements (SMS texting)