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Do you think that SEO is into the same track too - like SEO 2.0?

Yes - advanced SEO had always been there - the SEO 2.0.

So, what does SEO 2.0 look like - goldfish in the wild or a zebra in an aquarium?

In traditional SEO, the main focus had been to improve search engine ranking for targeted keywords and getting as many visitors as possible. That’s it - traditional SEO stopped working there. And in traditional SEO, the main focus had been linking in and linking out and fixing keywords in the Meta Description and H1s.

But in SEO 2.0, the whole scenario is changing.

Now, the main focus is on visitors and their needs and overall experience in a website. It is about creating an environment and a platform for social communication. Webmasters are confident about one thing, if they can satisfy the visitors, search engines (read Google) would be bound to send them more traffic.  And thus, advanced SEOs are not writing title tag for search engines; they are just defining the page and writing the content to satisfy the visitors. Now SEO is visitor-centric.

And another most important aspect of SEO 2.0 is that people do not fully depend on search engines to get traffic. The concentration has shifted to traffic long tail. And the traffic long tail generated from social networks is getting more importance. However, there had been lots of debates on the issue whether those visitors are convertible into business or not. And it solely depends on the environment you provide in your website. Some people are successfully using them to increase sales and some people are just wasting their bandwidth.

Going local to be a global player! That’s the best part of SEO 2.0 where the webmasters focus on local visitors.

Being human from machine: “Who are you” is as important as the product you offer - communicate - convince - sell. Web is no more just an information source. Yu got to give it a human touch.

Some SEOs do that.

What else? Write a comment and get a link…

Popularity: 9% [?]

Popularity: 9% [?]

A lot of webmasters (in fact most of them) pay maximum attention to home page’s (/index.something) decoration and optimization. Perhaps they feel home page is the door through which visitors will get into his or her online shop?

But, does it really happen? Are you sure that the home page is the only door to your shop?

If your answer is yes, either you are running a one page website or you have never checked your analytics report.

Every page of your website, where a substantial amount of people land, should be considered your home page. And you must concentrate on these pages as much as you do on your index page.

But how do you define the term - “substantial amount of people”?

If you think that it is sheer amount of people that is generated in that page, you would be mistaking - you must also think about the quality of the traffic and even traffic source. At the same time, you should also consider the time period.

So here are the things:

1. Amount of traffic: Obviously this is very important - you would hardly like to spend time after a web page that seldom generates one or two visitors for different keywords or links.
2. Quality of Traffic: It is very tough to determine the quality of traffic. However, you may get some idea about them by understanding their intention behind getting into your website. For example, if Net Business Blog publishes a list of 100 most beautiful Cats in the World and it starts getting loads of traffic from different sources; do you really think they would qualify as the target visitors of this blog?
3. Traffic Sources: if “100 most beautiful Cats in the World” makes it to the front page of Digg, it would definitely generate loads of visitors. But if you get the same or even less amount of traffic from organic ranking, it is much better than Digg. Any doubt about that?
4. Time Period: If “100 most beautiful Cats in the World” makes it to the Digg’s front page, it would generate loads of traffic; but it would last for a few days only. Now compare this with steady or increasing traffic sent via search engine for a significant amount of time. Which one is worthy enough to consolidate!
5. What else? (write a comment and I will include them in the list)

Spend some more time with your analytics data and identify the biggest doors to your site. Once you have identified those pages, find out the best way to navigate them to close a sale. Your bounce rate would surely go down.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Popularity: 7% [?]

Forums are best examples of Crowdsourcing. And a successful forum can do miracle in respect to sales generation or product development. And a good forum is so powerful that you can even ignore search engines to send you traffic.

Though this is the final output that you expect from a successful forum, there are some interesting features worth mentioning.

The most interesting feature of a forum based community is that, you do not need to worry about content generation at all. When the ball starts rolling general people (the participants) will write about your domain (forum topics) and they will keep the site running with fresh content.

And that is not all.

In any business development process, the most important aspect is “understanding the need of the target market”.  As forums are the best place to discuss on general and developing problems of common people, seasoned marketers can easily identify the trend and the need.

Apart from that, people keep the board updated with the latest problems which is almost impossible to determine by a small team that actually run a website.

And there should be no doubt about wisdom of crowd - just think about Wikipedia or any wiki based platform and you have the answer. Just think about it - why wordpress is the best blogging solution? And also think why Blogger (even after being a product by Google - famous for developing the best and most successful web applications) or other blogging applications are legging much behind wordpress!

However, there are some primary conditions that you must maintain to develop a successful forum.

The most important condition is to develop a non-profit identity. This is the easiest and the most important way to develop a successful forum based community. When I say non-profit identity I do not mean that you should not sell any product - on the contrary you should let them take the decision. And that’s not all - you should keep everything clear to the visitors, members and contributors. You must take the audience into confidence.

Another proven way is to show them some financial output to be there - a lot of SEO and web development forums are successful because of freelance job board. There people provide quality content to develop their identity. You must know the attitude of your visitors - what they expect from you. A lot of successful forums offer redeemable points for each worthy post. And this is a win-win situation for both of them.

However, one last open question for you to think - Web Master World or Digital Point is already there - why should someone join your Forum on SEO or Web Development!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 8% [?]

For a long time, SEO experts are having big fights with web designers. And one of the most common situations is when the designer wants to develop Flash based website and the SEO experts want to have more content in the page to play with search engines.

Perhaps, now, when Google is able to crawl flash based content (thanks to Adobe), the fight should end in one front (though you have lots of issues yet to be solved with your designer) at least. As a SEO, all you need to do is to tell your designer to follow the list provided by Google on Flash design.

Anyways, web designers get ready to create more flash based designs and developers get ready to add more interactivity within the flash content.

There is a reason why I pointed interactivity in the last paragraph. If you read the tips (or FAQ) provided by Google, you would find that, they will be crawling only the texts in a flash file (it is still weak in reading images). As they put it - “We’ve developed an algorithm that explores Flash files in the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons, entering input, and so on“.

What does it mean?

It is time to be more and more interactive with the target visitors.

HTML or Java has their own limitations. Java is better than HTML to make a site interactive but Java cannot provide you the edge over search engines as the normal HTML.

In the same way, videos or slideshows have there own limitations - you would still need to use texts to optimize a video clip or podcast or slideshow for search engines.

With this latest update in Google’s algorithm, you can somehow overcome all these problems. You can interact more freely with your target audience and guide them as you wish throughout the process. At the same time you can remain a search engine friendly website.

And guess what, Flash designers and visualizers would be in great demand for next couple of years until Google starts reading images.

However, I would like to point out one thing - do not make your Flash file to heavy and do not use Flash unless it is very important. Plain text is still the best option for the information seekers and web is full of them.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Popularity: 6% [?]

What is your name? Bill Gates?

Cool; would you like to book a domain like www.bill.gates/ and would you like to publish your retirement plans at www.bill.gates/retire-plans.html?

If you are Bill Gates, you can have it; but you will have to wait until the second quarter of 2009 and you must prove that you are Bill Gates and you have a well established brand name to book that domain.

And it is not a joke. We are moving into a new era - ICANN has approved a recommendation from the global stakeholders to introduce new TLDs to the Internet’s addressing system. And this is what they call the “Biggest Expansion in gTLDs Approved for Implementation“.

This decision is not finalized in one day. It has undergone major discussions and planning for last six years.

However, you cannot have any TLD you wish. You must have an established brand that you would need to put forward as an application to the ICANN (responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers like domain names). Your application and brand equity will be properly evaluated by ICANN before allowing you the domain name. Perhaps, they would try to ensure that, none but McDonald’s get the domain name http://www.mc.donalds/. It is not just about first come - first serve. And to add to this, anyone can place objection during the evaluation process (BTW, ICANN will not be the only decision maker when someone places an objection).

So, those who are planning to earn some more money from domain trading, should be a little bit disappointed (domain trading is a big business and you can still do well from regular TLDs like .com or .net) to loose such a big opportunity.

How much would it cost?

This would cost you a lot more than premium domain names. According to Dr Twomey, it may cost you something around a six figure amount ($$$,$$$) to book such a domain name. And this is not a big deal for established brands.

By 2009, we will have more than just 21 TLDs to fight for. But don’t you think it would make a common man’s web browsing more critical? At present, we have a naming convention and people are used to it. Won’t it be more confusing as far as recollection is concerned? And what if the same name exists for two brands in two countries - which would get the domain name?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 8% [?]

As SEO Consultants, we almost always need to work on websites that are already running for quite sometime. I often call myself website doctors when I need to tell someone (who does not know much about web) about my job or job responsibilities.

Anyways, the trend is very simple; people start a website thinking that it would get them business. Or, after running a website for sometime, they come to know that SEO can improve their business. But by the time we get those websites, it is already late. Often we need to recommend complete remodeling of the website. And at this point, most of the clients are never too happy to implement any major change.

When should one start thinking about SEO?

SEO runs hand in hand with the business model - the goal you want to achieve after a certain point of time and after certain amount of investment (both time and money). And if your website is your only business outlet, there should not be any doubt about thinking SEO from the very beginning.

What should be the common website development flowchart when you have identified the goal or objective you want to attain?

Understanding the target market and competition > Brainstorming and identifying proper keywords > selecting a good domain name > Developing the website > Evaluating end user experience > Redeveloping the website (to be continued…) > Closing Goal

And in the “developing the website” section - some on page factors (content, design navigation, optimization etc.) and almost all the off page factors (link building, organic and inorganic promotion, tracking competitors etc.) get in and it continues throughout the lifecycle. But the whole process becomes tougher when the client has made some big mistakes in the initial stages of development. And more importantly, the problems become more acute when clients do not want to share the complete history of the website development process. It creates lots of puzzling situations for us.

But what if you consult a good SEO consultant when you have developed an idea to start your business online? He or she may guide you step by step. If this is a problem and you do not invest on consultation, please do some extensive research on SEO to get some idea about how to start a business online. At least, you would come to know what you need to do to stay in the first track of web business.

I often say one thing - a good idea is not good enough unless properly executed. Same rule applies to your business too.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Popularity: 9% [?]

Finding the perfect web template is undeniably hard. And just when you think you found the right template for your site, you discover that exclusive ownership starts at several hundred dollars or more. This is way beyond the budget most web owners. It is a good thing then that Yes Templates keeps the needs and budget of their customers in mind in their pricing strategy. In fact, exclusive ownership rights to high quality templates starts at only $75.

It is easy to find the best web template for you because their product offerings are neatly categorized per topic. Some of the categories I browsed include agriculture, baby, beauty, business, car, computer, dating, education, family, fashion, finance, gifts, and music. There are many other selections you can look into. Everything looks good as far as I can see. And with their extensive range of choice, it is almost certain that you will find something you like.

All Yes Templates products are created by a skilled “in-house” team of designers so you can be sure that you have the most unique and eye catching design on the internet. Custom solutions are also available at an affordable price. So whether you are looking for the perfect website template, logo, CMS design, or corporate identity design, you are sure to find it at Yes Template. The company also offers up to three revisions for free on design elements; they are certainly serious about ensuring customer satisfaction.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 8% [?]

Every web owner wants their site visitors to contact them when they have any questions or clarifications about the website. The easiest way is to put your e-mail address on your website. When visitors click on this address, the user’s e-mail program (usually Outlook) will instantly pop up to send an email. Anyone can conveniently send you an email through this. However, there are two disadvantages namely:

·         Spam – your email address will inevitably be seen by spambots which will result to a deluge of spam that you will inevitably have to deal with.

·         Incomplete information – even if you can control the subject line and even retrieve the sender’s email address, you usually won’t get enough information such as the sender’s phone number which enables you to give help immediately.

So what is a better alternative to providing your email on the website? A lot of web owners have realized the benefits of online forms. These forms provide better security and more relevant information from the sender. You can ask the sender for answer specific fields so you can get complete information from him. Some of the latest version of these contact forms gives you the necessary protection against spambots and hackers.

·         Unseen configuration – today, online forms can conceal personal information such as your email address. It also has a configuration structure that cannot be seen from the browser interface.

·         Field Verification – this prevents hackers from tying characters that provoke errors. Field verification should be accompanied by the program from the server instead of the program from the client (for example, using JavaScript on visitor’s browser).

·         CAPTCHA – this is the graphic challenge wherein the sender needs to verify that they are human. This forces people to look into each of the online forms they fill out; it succeeds in deterring hackers in most cases.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 8% [?]

If you are reading this article, chances are, you already have an existing site. But as every webmaster knows, a single site never seems to be enough because there is always the urge to develop another. It is true that focusing on one site instead of a hundred different site is easier; it also has the potential to give you as much revenue as the hundred sites if you do it correctly. Despite this knowledge, building a new website or blog seems to be irresistible for many. So if regret the domain name you choose before, try to make the right choice now. Here are a few tips to guide you:

1. Choose a short name – most popular domain names are relatively short for good reasons. It can be established as a better brand, it is difficult to misspell, and it can fit into logos easily. There are some companies who decide to name the whole company name their domain name; this can be unwise because it will look awkward and it would not fit into Google PPC ads.

2. Choose a memorable name – people will easily remember generic names such as House.com or RealEstate.com but most of these domains are already taken. The alternative is to look for fun and unique names that will catch the visitor’s attention; for example, Yahoo.com and Amazon.com can be considered as “fun” names.

3. Choose a name that relates to your business or business name – when searchers see your domain, it would be great for your site if the searchers immediately recognize your name and they know what to expect.

4. Choose a popular domain name extension – it is recommended for you to get a .com or a .net extension because this is the most commonly used extensions that are typed by searchers.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Popularity: 12% [?]

NetBusinessBlog is getting a new logo - the old was, to put it bluntly, knocked together fast from the guys who designed the site.

It was on my list of things to change and as of now it is being designed. I am getting rid of the money images, cash etc as I feel they’re very cheesy and not what I was actually looking for when I had a vision for the new site.

Online Branding is the cornerstone of your business identity. Your logo appears on your signs, business cards, adverts and lots of other promotional material. It’s critical to your business to have a professional, impressionable and memorable logo that accurately reflects and conveys the essence of your company and business.

My Web Development company recently built an eCommerce Store. The following is our normal procedure before we even start to build the structure for an eCommerce store.

We asked our client to think about a brand which would be easy to remember when thinking about their products. They ended up with 5 or so ideas before going with 5339 which identifies the cog set-up on a standard Road Bike.

We thought this was a fantastic name because it identifies key benefits which are:

1. Easy to spell (its numeric so even easier) (very important as over 50% of the UK are dyslexic)

2. Very brandable from a merchandising point of view etc…

3. Conveys a strong, fresh, easy to remember message which will help with brand recognition for years to come.

Here was the final draft for the logo, it was essential to get this right before we started the initial build of their eCommerce Store.

We were very happy with the logo which enabled us to identify the colouring and overall architecture of their eCommerce Store.

Whatever your site ideas, always think about the branding potential it has before you even start to build it. I would rather have a brand name online and low traffic rather than some less thought out site with an obscure business name that has no potential apart from the traffic it generates. You will always have more opportunities with an established branded business.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Popularity: 14% [?]