How Your Sitemap Can Boost Your Ranking

All a search engine spider knows of your site is the individual page it's currently crawling and indexing. To get it to crawl your other pages, you need to give it a trail to follow — and that's exactly what a sitemap can do.

It's a fantastic way to increase your chances of getting your entire site indexed as soon as possible, regardless of what page a spider lands on first!

The search engines require an XML sitemap (XML is a programming language). Find out how to build one here: www.xml-sitemaps.com. This is the easiest way to build one because you can simply enter the URL of your site and your XML sitemap will be created for you — for free!

(This XML sitemap is different from the one you put up for your human visitors. A simple index with links to your pages will help visitors easily navigate your site.)

A good "people" sitemap helps visitors navigate your site — and an XML sitemap does the same for the search engine spiders.

Search Engine Marketing is Not SEO! What is SEM?

While many people include the practice of natural search engine optimization with paid search under the umbrella term ‘search engine marketing’, experts divide the two. Search engine marketing, according to well-accepted definitions, is the practice of paying for inclusion in search engine results pages via pay per click advertising, sponsored results, or contextual advertising. What is search engine marketing, and what are the main issues surrounding it?

The best recognized form of search engine marketing (SEM) is pay per click advertisements. These appear in the right hand sidebar of Google, Yahoo and MSN search results pages, and sometimes above the natural results. They are usually differentiated from the ‘natural’ results for the search, and have a heading of ‘Sponsored Results’ or something equivalent.

The process of engaging in SEM is much simpler than SEO. You will determine the keywords that you want to appear in the results for, write advertisements that adhere to each search engine’s character limits, and input a bid for the keyword that will determine how high up you appear in the results. The company that bids the highest amount for a particular keyword or keyphrase will appear at the top, the second highest bidder will appear second, etc. Conventional wisdom states that there is little benefit in appearing outside the top three places.

PPC ads are generally seen as good value by companies, as you only pay for the advertising when someone is interested enough to click through to your ad. Of course, there are initial campaign set up costs involved also, as well as monitoring and testing. PPC does have costs outside of the actual click, so it is still in a company’s best interests to have a well-executed campaign.

PPC ads are not generally seen as being as trustworthy as natural results – and there is some legitimacy to this view. Relatively new players in the PPC game can get to the top of the results simply by spending more money. While Google’s algorithms for natural results favor the sites that offer real value to searchers, their program for paid search favors the businesses spending the most money in the short term. That could be you.

Search engine marketing is like many marketing activities on the net – something that appears simple, but can quickly spiral out of control with regard to time and costs if not managed properly. We recommend outsourcing at least some of your initial campaigns for best results.

Most Effective Search Engine Marketing Strategy?

As the search engines develop, so too do the potential avenues for effective marketing. So what exactly is the most effective Search Engine Marketing strategy?

Traditionally, the two ways in which you could improve your website’s visibility on search engines was through SEO and Pay per Click (PPC) advertising. Whilst they may remain at the forefront of most strategies, SEO and PPC are by no means the only way to get your name where it matters.

As the search engine results pages (SERPs) have diversified, including new facets and restructuring their layout, marketing methods have been quick to follow suit. With Twitter updates, local search results and news items infiltrating the SERPs, the realms of possibilities are more diverse and in greater supply than ever before.

Most Effective Search Engine Marketing Solutions

Let’s start with the forerunners though. There’s a good reason why SEO and PPC have endured for so long, whilst losing none of their popularity amongst Search Engine Marketers – they work.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The basic premise of Search Engine Optimisation is to improve a website’s ranking within the search engines. This is achieved by following a basic code of understanding – there is no finite blueprint – with work completed internally and externally of a site’s parameters.

Fundamentally SEO revolves around two basic elements, content (on site) and links (off-site and on). Within the confines of your website a search engine crawler (which indexes pages and ultimately ranks them too) can only understand text. It assigns more weight to some areas than others, with factors including headings, page copy and Meta. Unique copy throughout your site will avoid any possible duplication issues and will provide the crawler with sufficient information to rank it for your keywords – which should be used in moderation throughout.

Off site, you want to get as many links coming in as possible. Variety is the spice of life and search engine algorithms are in no mood to argue with that. They want links from relevant, authority websites where possible and will assign your site with added strength as a consequence. So the more you can attract, without paying, the better you should perform. Using optimised anchor text where possible, including within the internal linking structure, will help to give search engines even more understanding of what to rank a page for.

SEO works, but it is a competitive industry. There are millions of sites competing for keywords worldwide, so to really succeed you need to be at your best. Top rankings are by no means guaranteed, but with SEO you could be surrendering the one free, constant source of targeted traffic .

Pay per Click Advertising (PPC)

If you’d rather pay for those targeted clicks, maybe PPC is more up your street. Pay per Click advertising is almost as simple as the name suggests; you create adverts, choose which page on your site to link them to and then set them live. Of course there is a lot of work that needs to be done to get them to the top and ensure that you’re targeting the best possible traffic.

In terms of Search Engine Marketing, PPC is a very important facet as the adverts appear in some of the most prominent positions on the SERPs – the top and right hand side of the page. Therefore getting your adverts to the top of these lists can be a simpler way of getting yourself noticed for the keywords you’re targeting. Through effective ad copy, catchy titles and focused keywords (and negative keywords) a PPC campaign can easily pay dividends for your Search Engine Marketing strategy.

Source: Search Engine Marketing Strategies: Which are Most Effective?

Search Engine Optimization And Why You Must Use It

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest.

Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites.

For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization.

You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is SEO and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need SEO to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic.

If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is SEO? SEO is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines.

Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization.

These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative.

There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found.

Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site.

There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.