8 Things That Motivate Web-Audience Response

It's always a good idea to stick to the basics. When businesses stray too far from the fundamentals, problems arise, but sticking to the basics doesn't mean boring people into a state of unconsciousness. If Web-visitors' eyes glaze-over upon entering your site, you've lost them before you've begun.

Web success is based on creative implementation of the basics, and that's where your Web-marketing presentation should begin.

1. Web-Audience Response Demands Communication

The Web has a lot in common with television but there are fundamental differences; it is important for Web-entrepreneurs to understand these differences and similarities, and learn from them.
Television and the Web are both communication environments, but television, like magazines and newspapers, are primarily advertising platforms. Of course there are plenty of websites around that follow the advertising financial model, but for the average business website, depending on third party advertising not only dilutes their marketing message and brand, but it also makes for a confusing and cluttered visual presentation.

Just because your website presents information, doesn't mean it's communicating it to your intended audience in any meaningful way. The manner in which you communicate your message is as important as the message itself. The medium is increasingly becoming the message, and even in situations where it isn't, it definitely shapes the message.

2. Web-Audience Response Demands Content

You have repeatedly heard the comment, 'content is king,' but we think, 'communication is king' because without communication your content is meaningless. But here's the dilemma, your information is basically advertising, after all you're in business, and business is about selling something - a product, a service, an idea, or your know-how. So the real underlying purpose of your website is to make that advertising message worth listening to, and to do that, you need to turn it into content.

To turn advertising into content you have to accept that sales take time. You have to be patient. You can't hurry a sale, you first have to build confidence; stop rushing the close and start thinking of selling as a courtship. You would never ask someone to get married on a first date, so why would you expect to get an order from a potential Web-client on their first visit.

3. Web-Audience Response Demands Courtship

No one is going to make a substantial financial commitment without reaching some level of comfort with who you are and what you do, and that requires some repeated contact: a courtship, or negotiation if you prefer.

Therein lies the similarity and difference between websites and television: the success of a television program is based on habituation. If you get people to tune-in every week on the same night, at the same time to see their favorite program, you will be able to keep delivering your marketing message through the commercials that pay for the content. In the same regard, if you can make your website interesting enough through the compelling presentation of content, you will get visitors to return again and again, each time gaining confidence and respect for what you do and what you sell.
The difference is people accept television commercials as the price they pay for free TV programming, but the same cannot be said for the Web. People want free information on the Web without the irritation and bother of ads; so the challenge for website owners is to turn their marketing message into compelling programming that creates habituation which is just another form of negotiation, or courtship of potential clients.

4. Web-Audience Response Demands Consistency

You hear the word strategy bandied about with little relevance to its precise meaning. In marketing terms, strategy is a big idea, a sustainable concept that you can build a business around.

Successful companies rarely change their strategies, a concept that should not be confused with tactics, which are the various methods used to implement strategy in order to secure the ultimate objectives.

Business has to be resilient and open-minded enough to adapt to an ever-changing business environment by constantly updating tactics, but strategy needs to be a constant, a touchstone or benchmark for implementing action. Staying on course requires confidence in the strategy with a vigilant eye on the big picture.

Websites that are nothing more than brochures or catalogs of product that anyone can purchase at the local mall or box store is a tactic that delivers little relevance to today's Web-savvy consumer. And the same can be said for the blatantly obvious direct marketíng sites based on old magazine subscription techniques. The new multimedia communication-based Web requires new presentation tactics in order to successfully implement marketing strategy.

5. Web-Audience Response Demands Expectation

Successful marketing is not just about persuading people that what you have is what they need, it's about creating a series of deliverable expectations.

If you expect a product to be easy to use because that's what the marketing communication states, then that product better be easy to use. Effective marketing presentations not only prompt action but just as importantly they create a set of realistic, deliverable expectations.
Ask yourself, why do people mistrust politicians, car salesmen, and telemarketers? We all know the answer: many will say, and promise, just about anything to get your vote or order, and the result is a disgruntled, cynical voter or customer. Read my lips, no false expectations!

6. Web-Audience Response Demands Trust

When customers' expectations are met, you begin to create trust, and trust is one of the hardest things to achieve on a website that lacks any kind of human connection to the audience.

I can't tell you how many websites I've visited that make no effort to humanize their presentations, and consequently their businesses. When you go to a contact page and all that's there is a form to fill-in, with no contact name or phone number, it says to people, 'I really can't be bothered talking to you.' Hiding behind email tells people not to trust you, and if they don't trust you, they are not going to do business with you.

Business is about connecting to people, whether they are consumers, purchasing agents, or suppliers. If your website doesn't have some kind of human element like a video Web-host, audio message, or even a contact name and phone number, how can you expect to connect and build confidence, and trust in your intent to satisfy their needs?

7. Web-Audience Response Demands Personality

By building trust with your Web-audience you are also building your brand and defining your corporate personality. Here again we have a bit of a dichotomy since personality is a human-based characteristic, so how then can we create a personality and instill human characteristics into an inanimate entity like a business?

Corporate personality does not derive from a logo, packaging, or your website's aesthetic qualities. Corporate personality is the sum total of the collective experiences your audience has with your company. In the brick and mortar world, corporate personality is a result of dealing with people, sales people, receptionists, and telemarketers; in short personality is derived from interaction with real human beings.

Clever, well written website copy can help create personality as long as it is written in a distinctive human voice, but we know that 70% of all website text is never read; people skip to bulleted points and captions. But the same material delivered by a real person either through Web-audio or video, not only delivers the marketing message in the most memorable and compelling fashion, but it also defines the business personality and humanizes the website.

Two caveats: avatars are not people, and unless you can afford to hire the creators of the Simpsons to develop your animation, you best forget it; as well, using yourself or a non-professional as a spokesperson or Web-host is a dangerous practice, and speaks more to ego than it does to effective business development.

8. Web-Audience Response Demands Motivation

Lastly your website must communicate content that excites and motivates people to do business with you. The ability to motivate people isn't about what you're selling; it's about how you present it.

Motivational speakers, whether in the business, entertainment, personal coaching, or sports arenas, all deliver a similar message; but the ones that truly stimulate people to act, are the ones that know how to present their ideas in the most exciting and compelling manner. If you want to motivate your Web-audience to respond, your presentation has to be delivered by a real human being: a professional with charm, charisma, and a distinctive character.

About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit MRPwebmedia.com

Do-It-Yourself SEO - A Beginner's Checklist

There have always been do-it-yourselfers succeeding at web promotíon and search engine optimization. In fact, many of the established businesses offering web services today came from humble beginnings, perhaps nothing more than a college student with a laptop, an internet connection, and too much free time. The Web evolves as the result of the innovation and experimentation of individuals. The sharing of knowledge. The do-it-yourself attitude.

As text link brokers and mass link networking decrease in value and use of social media increases, it becomes more important for companies to have an internal approach and awareness of search engine marketing. Don't get me wrong; outsourcing to SEO firms is still a smart option. That said, making the most out of Web 2.0 usually requires some level of cooperation between SEO firm and site owner. You don't need to be an expert to know the basics of good SEO practices, and that added knowledge will be agreat advantage whether you're working along side an SEO team, or promoting your site in your spare time.
So if you're on a "need to know" basis with SEO, the following points should illustrate what an overall plan should include:

1. Create Search Engine-Friendly Content

Unique web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is crucial. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like 'buttons', thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don't try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can't be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Now that you've created good content, is it actually being crawled? Copy and paste a page's URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you've just created the page, it may take a few days to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.

2. Choose Your Keywords Wisely

One of the first steps of SEO, this one needs to be done properly the first time or all your future efforts and promotion could end up being wasted. Start by writing down general terms that describe your products, services or web content. Use keyword research services to investigate word and phrase variations. Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool are good starting points. The goal is to find those niche phrases that your target market uses to find sites just like yours and optimize your site for them. If the phrases do not get enough use by searchers, your profíts from ranking for them will be low. At the same time, stay away from general terms that are tougher to rank for (ie. like "art", "computers", "business", etc.) as a great portion of the traffic will be irrelevant and you'll break the bank attaining such competitive phrases.

3. Get Others to Link to Your Site

In theory there are countless ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. In practice, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of ranking well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a mom & pop shop or less reputable page.
If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you're already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won't be of much use in competitive fields. Buying links, if you haven't heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

* issuing company press releases with a link back to your site

* submittíng to reputable business directories such as Yahoo! and Business.com

* be active on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas

* if you have clients with web sites, ask if they would mind adding your link in a "partners" section

* participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature

* write and submit original articles to web publications in your field with a link in your bio

* get involved in social media and bookmarking

4. Join the Social Media Revolution

The collaboration between Internet users and the development of online communities is at an all-time high. Social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Furl, Reddit, and Technorati provide users a way to store their favorite pages and media online, and share it with others. These services also provide a way to promote your content or create a buzz over a product or service. Creating a Myspace page or Squidoo "lens" is also a way to network and share information.
However, if your goal is to generate sales, then you must provide something without the promotional hype. The reality of social media is that popularity is based almost entirely on public interest. If your information or media isn't unique or of interest to anyone, you cannot force success using social media communities.

The key to using social media and bookmarking sites to your advantage is to not be shy. Getting your entries and content to the popular pages on these sites requires some hard work. Network with other users, bookmark and share useful content, create eye-catching titles for your entries, and tell your friends and co-workers about the content you have on these sites. However, don't force your employees to vote your entries up - this is social media fraud. If you have great content and simply share it with as many people as you can, it will see success naturally.

These four points are a general guideline to follow for SEO. Search engine optimization experts and firms are a good outsourcing option in competitive markets, while the DIY attitude can yield great results for web site owners with smaller marketing budgets. If you're in the latter group, hopefully this helps get you started.

About The Author
John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the Founder of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based search marketing firm

Why You Don't Want Michelangelo Working on Your Website

Everyone wants to live surrounded by beauty. Beauty soothes the soul, and lifts the spirit. It inspires us and keeps us healthy. We all want beauty.

Can you have beauty in your website? Sure you can, and it's important to have your website be pleasing to the folks you want to help. Unfortunately, this desire to have beauty and to please folks means that you can spend a great deal of time creating a 'unique and beautiful' web design that people actually avoid. How can you spend so much time on beauty, sacrifice so much money with a designer, and still end up with a mess?
Do you do Frescoes?

No one would complain about the beauty of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Michelangelo spent four years, from July, 1508 through October, 1512, painting over 5,000 square feet of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.

Unfortunately, Michelangelo was a sculptor, and loved working in marble. Prior to the Sistine Chapel, he had only painted briefly as a student of Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence - which means that he got off to a slow start as he learned how to paint frescoes.

Luckily for him, Michelangelo was already an accomplished artist. He wasn't exactly doing the Sistine Chapel as a free promotional effort. Pope Julius II commissioned him for those four years, and didn't seem to mind that it took Michelangelo a while to get in a groove.

History reports that one of the Pope's motivations was to outdo Pope Alexander VI. So, the whole idea was to create an amazingly glorious ceiling that would stun everyone who saw it.

Are you trying to stun your visitors? Remember the purpose of your website: to create a relationship with the right people, connect with their hearts and needs, and to help them take the next step in relationship to what you provide. If you aren't being commissioned to paint the ceiling of your website by a fabulously wealthy Pope, and if you aren't trying to stun your visitors with beauty, I suggest you relax, just a little bit, any attachment you might have to beauty and uniqueness around your website.

Your visitor is waiting for dinner.

Imagine showing up at a fríend's house to eat. You've worked all day, you're hungry and you've been looking forward to dinner. Yet, once you arrive, they keep you waiting for three hours while they pull out family home movies, or their wedding album.
It's not that you wouldn't eventually like to see those things. But first, can we have dinner, please?

The Two Functions of Your Design

Absolutely prepare and present the food with love and beauty. But just remember that your visitor is looking for food, not frescoes. It's been shown that when a visitor comes to a website, design plays two primary functions:

(1) to show that the website is solid and professional-looking enough that the business can be trusted, and

(2) to make sure that the visitor can find what he/she needs really easily without having to guess or hunt.

As long as you are meeting those two needs, your design is going to work.

So, where is it safe to bring forth beauty and inspiration on your site, and where will it keep you stuck to the ceiling for four years?

Keys to Website Design

* Things to avoid.

Avoid putting a pattern behind your text, or using a text color that isn't very dark. In fact, I recommend that you stick with black text on a white background. Millions of novels of great variety, beauty and talent are written, all printed black text on a white background.

As a general rule, avoid animation and oversized photos and illustrations - anything that distracts from the food you want your visitor to eat.
Avoid unique design layouts. Many websites look the same structurally - and so do human beings. You don't have to look at the back of someone's knees to find their eyes. People know how to connect with each other more easily in part because of structural similarities.

Your visitor has been trained to expect certain conventions in web design, so they can find what they are looking for. Don't play a guessing game with them by creating some outlandishly creative and confusing design.

* Things to do.

Keep your text front and center. Keep your navigation either across the top, or down one side, with clear labels. Don't use more than two columns - one for the navigation or side text, and one for the main content of the page. Have a clear banner across the top with a simple message about your business.

* Things of beauty and inspiration

Make your banner beautiful and inspiring, without being cluttered. Use colors you love.

Use creative bullets rather than just the usual round variety.

Use color highlights around navigation buttons, and in the frame around your page.

* Above all, don't agonize over it.

If you don't have a website yet, or your website isn't effective and you are upgrading it, bring in what creativity you have, but don't agonize over the beauty aspects. Your visitors are waiting to be fed! Once you start having a lot of visitors coming to your website, and your business is humming, you can take the time and space to bring out the fine china for them.

My very best to you and your business.

About The Author
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com

How to Market on Social Networks - Effectively

Online social networks, like the World Wide Web itself, are a microcosm of a vibrant human community. If you participate on services like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace for some time, you'll notice the same types of people as you might on a trip to the shopping mall or a weekend at the beach.

There is but one difference. While 'offline' you see people, on the Web you see their personality.

Understanding this is core to your effective use of social networks for marketing.
While others will rush into these digital fora blatantly spewing advertising messages willy-nilly, you'll be able to tap into their minds more intelligently. Because by following some simple principles, you'll create an online persona that people WANT to engage with and listen to.

Over 2 years of intensely being involved in various social media marketing channels, I have learned some lessons you may find useful too.

Less Is More

When you're getting started, it is natural to explore many different services. This 'flit and fleet, dip and dabble' approach is often necessary, because each of them vary in significant ways from the other.

But once you find the right one(s) with the ideal mix of audience, features and convenience to suit your personality, stick with it instead of trying desperately to sample all the available alternatives (there are over 1,000 of them as we go to press, so that's practically impossible).

By honing in on your preferred social networks, you can better carry out the important other steps of engaging your audience and participating actively in your online community.

Engage Your Audience

Be yourself. Let your personality shine through. It is your unique advantage over everyone else in the online social media marketing space.

Carried away by the potential to drive more traffic or make more sales, eager marketers often explode on the social networking scene like a bombshell. They launch into what is the online equivalent of a full-throated sales pitch right in the middle of a Sunday morning sermon in church!
Won't that shock the others? Of course. And then, they'll ignore you.

Engagement is not instant, automatic or easy. It is however powerfully effective. Over 9 months, I have 1,000 'followers' on Twitter. We share a relationship - even if it is at arm's length.

Build Your Following

The conventional approach of herding audiences into closed spaces so that you can market to them are long gone. Social media marketing is not as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. These fish are swimming in a vast ocean. You need to reel them in - by using powerful bait... intelligently!

The formula that works consistently is simple. Be interesting. If what you share on social networks is useful, valuable, funny, entertaining, new, insightful or soul-stirring, people will find you - and stay with you.

And because control is in their hands, you have little choice in the matter anyway. Social networks are all about 'attraction marketing'. You attract them into your circle - and keep them there.

Be Real

That does not mean you need to reveal every intimate detail of your life, like what you ate for breakfast or what you watched on TV this morning. Or even where you live, work or play.

It does mean that you should have a persona - and be true to it. All the time.

I'm a heart surgeon. I also have a little daughter, love reading, travel to interesting places and blog actively. All of these aspects of my life make their way into my posts on social networks.
Almost incidentally, I also slip in the stuff that makes my social networking effective - like my Internet infopreneur business and my non-profit Foundation that raises funds to help children from poor families receive expensive, life-saving heart surgery.

Give To Get

Many people are selfish and self-centered. And these people are on social networks online. While you may hope and wish it were different, in reality, they do it for what's in it for them!

To smartly leverage social media marketing, you must take advantage of this knowledge - and give enough value to satisfy your audience, and turn them into raving, loyal fans.

Only then do you ask for something in exchange - a visit, a click, a sale.

When you do this consistently, you'll notice a reciprocal benefit that grows and swells until you are swamped by a return far in excess of anything you ever gave.

Now, It's Up To You

Will you make your social networking and marketing effective using these simple insights?

They are deceptively simple. But when you try following these principles, you'll discover how effective and powerful they really are.

Another test of their impact is to try and ignore them. You'll see how badly social networks can burn you. But then, you're not going to try, are you? No way... You're smart!

About The Author
Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian is a social infopreneur and uses his Internet marketing to fund heart surgery for under-privileged children in India. He blogs at Money.Power.Wisdom

Social Media Newsrooms: The Ultimate Web 2.0 Tool for Your Business

Imagine having just one place to send the media, prospective clients, book reviewers, or anyone who wants to know all about you, your business, or your books; a place where they can:

• View all your major media coverage.

• See all of your past and present press releases.

• Look up all of your past and future events.

• Read and link to all of your book reviews.

• Download multimedia material like photos, company logos, podcasts, vidcasts, etc.

• View bios on each key person in the company, along with links to their social or business networking profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Second Life, etc.
Generate Leads - Close More Deals!

• Check out your own purpose-built del.icio.us page linking to other sites relevant to your business.

• Subscribe through RSS feeds to any portion of information on the site.

• Share any content of the site with their friends or colleagues, via email or by posting to social bookmarking indexes like del.icio.us or Digg with one click.

• Send you an instant message using AIM, Yahoo Messaging, MSN, Skype, etc.

• Link directly to your latest blog posts.

• Search the site or the entire Web using either Google or Technorati.

• Link to other blogs or Web sites that are relevant to your message.

• See all Technorati tags related to your content.

• Comment directly on your media coverage, press releases, and events.

That place is a Social Media Newsroom (SMNR). Similar to a traditional online newsroom, it lists media coverage, news releases, events, media contact information, and so forth, but also includes social media and Web 2.0 elements that allow visitors to share and interact with its content.

The SMNR fulfills this traditional purpose while taking advantage of the tremendous indexing opportunities social bookmarking and RSS feed services like Technorati, del.icio.us, Digg, and Feedburner provide. Imagine that every entry made in your newsroom (all of your media coverage, press releases, bios, photos, vidcasts, podcasts, events, etc.) was not only indexed in Google and all of the other search engines, but also in popular bookmarking and RSS feed services - accessible by millions of bloggers and Web surfers. This is the true power of the SMNR for entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and small presses - exposure.
This fantastic exposure is a byproduct of the original reason the SMNR was created, but it has grown beyond a mere electronic repository. It has become the blueprint for the new media - a media that understands multimedia and wants a one-stop shop for every bit of material they will need for their coverage. This new media wants something that is fully downloadable and print ready, easily shared with their colleagues, with links and searches that will lead them directly to more relevant information. Most important, though, they want a place that welcomes their comments and invites interactivity.

If you already have a Web site with most of these features, you might wonder why you need a newsroom. First, a newsroom tells the members of the media and prospective clients that you are making a serious effort to make their jobs easier. A social media newsroom is akin to a press release, in that standardization is essential to allow for easy navigation and content extraction by the media.

Second, as mentioned earlier, a social media newsroom (if built using a platform such as WordPress) means that each entry in your newsroom, from a press release to a simple image, can be automatically indexed in search engines, RSS feed indexes, and social bookmarking services, since each entry is itself a separate page of sorts. This means someone can find your site by running into your company logo image, by searching for a blog on the subject of your business expertise, by looking up relevant sites tagged in Technorati or del.icio.us, or by searching for RSS feeds. Think of it this way: You can have one lottery ticket in the pot or one hundred - you figure the odds.
But, a social media newsroom should not replace your existing Web site. You still want a place for blogging and to have a more traditional place to present other information. You will also do all of your "selling" on your Web site. Your SMNR is not a sales tool! Your newsroom is meant to be a neutral place to present all of your media materials - just like a mega-press release.

Many small businesses or entrepreneurs may not have enough media coverage yet to justify a complete newsroom, but that does not mean they can't take advantage of social media optimization. These businesses and individuals should consider building their Web sites using a blogging platform like WordPress to power their sites. This provides all of the benefits of social bookmarking, RSS feeds, etc. and is a very easy way to build and maintain a feature-rich Web site. Of course, the perfect scenario would be to have both!

About The Author
Deltina Hay is the principle of the companies Dalton Publishing and Social Media Power. She has worked in programming and Web development for 25 years.

Get Top 10 Rankings on Google/Crucial Factors In SEO

There's no shortage on advice regarding what people should do to improve a web site's position in the search engine listings. It is easy to become confused when you consume all the information that is available, because some folks agree with others while some totally disagree and provide dissimilar advice.
You should be extremely suspicious of any advice given by someone that tells you to use search engine submissions, employ traffic exchanges, or use FFA sites. That is so out of date it's not funny.

What is pertinent for excellent rankings in the search engines was highlighted not too long ago via a survey done by SEOmoz of a collection of SEO professionals.

In short, below are the 4 most important search engine optimization ranking factors, in accordance with the experts' consensus views.

Keywords that Appear in the Title

Using the correct keywords when crafting the title tag of a page is of extreme importance. It does not only promote higher rankings, it also helps with the click-through from the SE listings to the destination page. It is of lesser value to be listed high in the results without receiving that many clicks. The ultimate purpose is to gain as many targeted visitors to your site as possible.

The keywords that were used by the searcher are bolded in the results of the search. When the right keyphrase of the page title is bolded, it gives the listing a higher opportuníty of being seen and receiving a click. Nevertheless, highlighted keywords are not the only thing to think about when writing the page title tag.

Lots of additional clicks can be attained from a smartly written page title tag, especially when it invites the searcher to click. It is better to attract a hundred clicks from position number five with an eye-catching title tag than fifty clicks from position number three with a badly written title tag, correct?


Anchor Text used by Inbound Links

The anchor text that is employed in the link that points to your web site from an external site counts a lot in the search engine algorithms to figure out what your site is all about. Additionally, what your site is all about defines to a large extent what keywords it will rank for in the search results.

If you can influence in any way the anchor text that other web sites employ when they link to you, then it's an extremely prudent way of investing your time.

A larger number of external sites that have links to your site employing a certain set of keywords, or alternate versions of that keyword, will prompt the SE's to more readily compute that your site is all about that specific keyphrase.

It's far more advantageous if the content of the destination page on your site contains that particular keyword and phrases similar in meaning.

The Universal Link Popularity of Your Site

Search engines figure out the relative importance of a site from the volume of hyperlinks that point to the web site. They include both quality of hyperlinks and quantity of the hyperlinks.

The more different web sites that have links to your web site, the higher the SE's will calculate the deemed importance of your site.


Link building is a never-ending process. One can't ever have a sufficient number of backlinks pointing to your site. It's true that it is possible to build links too fast and that can raise some alerts in the algorithms of the search engines. But, if it's done as an ongoing effort with a long-term outlook, every backlink deserves the resources spent in acquiring it. They all add up to an improved deemed importance of your web site.

Link Popularity in the Site's Internal Link Structure

The fact is that some of your web pages will get more external links than others. Those that do not get a lot of external links could be the actual money pages that you would wish to rank well in the SE indexes.

The internal linking structure, in addition to the anchor text employed in the internal links, is the way to disperse PageRank inside your site.

Some search engine optimization professionals say that an internal link to a page has the same value as a link from an external page. That doesn't mean the site will rank with nothing more than internal links. What it means is that you could cause a page to be ranked by having internal links pointing to it even though it does not have lots of external links, on the condition that the remainder of the web site has acquired enough trust from external links.

Conclusion

SEO might appear daunting when one views it as a whole. However, when viewed as individual focus areas, there are a select number of relatively easy areas one can concentrate on to achieve the largest benefits.

About The Author
Do you own a WordPress blog? Get expert WordPress blog search engine optimization help at www.wpseosniper.com