Category: SEO

Back to the Future

Recently, I went to visit my family back home. It was a great trip and I enjoyed the time I spent with my family and the friends some of whom I had not seen for over 8 years. This trip had another advantage. It reminded me of where I started and how I got to the field of Internet Marketing.

The very first site I seriously worked on was an e-commerce site (with the tag line of the first online shopping mall in the region). The site belonged to a large trading company with a forward thinking leader. He had seen the importance of the Internet and launched the site. However, the site was not generating much traffic or sales.

I did an interview with people in charge. They had done some banner exchange and some off line advertising. However, they were not sure where they were getting the traffic from or what people were doing on the site. I requested to see the web logs to get a better picture. That was my fist step to the world of Web Analytics.

Surely, the technology has come a long way from the early days of log files and the Web Analytics applications now provide much more robust and user friendly reports. However, something has stayed intact and that is the need for informed decision making.

This is nothing but putting Total Quality Management (TQM) into action by turning the Deming Wheel, having the continuous improvement as the ultimate goal. This principle is true in customer service, production as well as marketing.

Search engine marketing and optimization are not exceptions to the rules. That is why for any SEM and SEO project, it is important to set the objective,

  • Plan in advance by defining the right KPIs,
  • Act to reach the objective,
  • Check the performance by measuring the KPIs, and
  • Do as needed to continuously improve.

Thanks to the efforts of WAA and UBC more and more search engine marketers and SEO/SEM tool developers are embracing the importance of Web Analytics. As a member of WAA, I would like to welcome the new passengers to the train I call Prosperity.

Nima

Similar articles at: http://www.semseoexpert.com/search-engine-optimization and Similar articles at: http://www.semseoexpert.com/search-engine-marketing

Feb 03, 2007 | 0 comments | View Post

Keyword Research for Web Marketing, SEO and PPC

With more and more people using search engines to search for the products and services they need, making sure your website appears on top of search engine results is becoming crucial. However, as you are usually limited in the number of keyword phrases that you can optimize a site for, the question is which keyword phrases to optimize a Web site for.

Effective keyword research is the process of researching and selecting keywords that are relevant to your site and used by prospects on search engines to find the products and services you offer.

Selecting the right keywords can make or break a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) project. So, it is very important for web marketers to select keywords that are not only related to their product offerings, but also are generating enough traffic to worth the SEO optimization efforts. Here is where having access to a robust keyword research tool/software that provides different variations of searches done in the real life by prospects, the number of times they are searched for and how competitive those keywords are can prove handy.

Having access to paid or free keyword research tools even though a necessity, it is not enough. Understanding how to utilize a keyword research tool in the context of a SEO project is the key to success. It is also important to integrate the keyword research results with the copy writing and designing a website for maximum impact.

Keyword research is also integral to the success of PPC (SEM) campaign as finding the right mix of keywords can contribute to the ROI and marketers’ bottom line.

As you can use a larger universe of keywords in an SEM campaign than that of SEO and you can measure the ROI for all those keywords, you can use the PPC campaign to find the best converting keywords. Then you may utilize those keywords to optimize your site organically. Even though visitors coming from different sources (organic vs. paid) might behave differently, this approach is much better than shooting in the dark.

So, in short, proper keyword research helps you discover new opportunities, tackle the misconceptions and increase conversions. However, it is important to keep in mind that keyword research should be a dynamic and ongoing process as the Web, people and trends evolve.

By Nima – Toronto SEM SEO Expert

Related Article: Google Search-based Keyword Tool
Similar articles at: http://www.semseoexpert.com/search-engine-optimization and Similar articles at: http://www.semseoexpert.com/search-engine-marketing

Dec 16, 2006 | 0 comments | View Post

Professional SEO Specialist – Toronto

After almost two months of preparation, we officially launched our Search Engine Marketing Company in January of 2006 with the objective of becoming the best and largest Canadian Search Engine Marketing firm.

It definitely was not an easy target given the fact that we had to start everything from scratch, designing our SEO & SEM methodologies and strategies, deciding on the search engine optimization pricing model, developing necessary infrastructure, and developing marketing collateral.

Our hard work seems to be paying off. Just within 7 months we reached the milestone of 50 clients who are fuelling their business with our affordable SEO & SEM services.

Since the launch of the Search division, we have hired, trained and added more SEM specialists to our team and our exponential growth mandates us to hire another professional SEO specialist.
So, if you are reading this article and you think you are up for the challenge, drop me an e-mail or post a comment.

Nima

Similar articles at: http://www.semseoexpert.com/search-engine-optimization

Aug 16, 2006 | 0 comments | View Post

Yahoo Search – Site Explorer

Yahoo Search rolled out its Site Explorer tool. It allows you to check which pages of a site are indexed by Yahoo search engine. It might seem that it does not add much value as it was already possible to do so through their advanced search features. However, there is much more into it, especially for SEO and SEM purposes. You could export the results to a tsv file, submit a URL to Yahoo for paid inclusion and connect to API services.

By tracking the tsv file, you could keep track of which pages are included in Yahoo search engine. Nevertheless, the most interesting feature, IMHO, is that if you enter a URL of yours which is not indexed, it might give you the reason why it is not cached in the index. It also provides a direct link to the URL submission to the engine.

More on Yahoo Site Explorer.

Nima Nima – Toronto SEO Expert

Similar articles at: http://www.semseoexpert.com/search-engine-optimization

Sep 30, 2005 | 0 comments | View Post

RSS Explained

Well, I started implementing RSS feeds to make it easiers for my viewers to get access to my Internet Marketing, SEO and SEM blog content. However, I thought what if some visitors are not yet familiar with RSS. How would they benefit from it? That is why I decided to post a short description on how RSS/Atom works.

What is RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way to pull in news and information from across the Web. By adding a RSS feed to your RSS aggregator, you may get the latest news/articles directly on your desktop or on your My Yahoo page. With RSS feeds coming to you, you don’t have to visit each site individually.

What is RSS Reader?
You may read RSS (or Atom) files in a program called an aggregator, which collects news and articles from various sources. Bellow is a list of some of the most famous RSS aggregators:
FeedReader
NewsGator
SharpReader

How to get the RSS feed?
Click on Site Feed, grab the URL and paste it in your aggregator. Or Alternatively click on My Yahoo or My MSN buttons, log in to your My Yahoo or My MSN and click the Add Content link and insert the URL in the form and submit it.

What is Blogroll Me?
If you write a blog and would like to add a link to my site on your blog, just click the Blogroll Me link, log in to the service and add my blog to the list of your favorite sites.

Sep 22, 2005 | 3 comments | View Post

Search Engine Marketing Inc.

I have just started reading a new book on SEO & SEM entitled Search Engine Marketing Inc. by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. It is by far one of the best books I have ever read on the subject. It is well organized and covers topics such as setting website goals, keyword research, optimizing content, building link popularity, and optimizing landing pages.

This book is especially useful for Internet Marketers in the corporate environment who are dealing with huge websites.

SEM Expert

Sep 10, 2005 | 0 comments | View Post