SEO is very important for the success of your website, but there are times when SEO will do no good. One such situation is the time when you need immediate result. SEO cannot give that because this thing takes time. What are the other situations when you need to use PPC campaign?
- You need to use PPC campaign to pull in traffic when you need immediate result because SEO takes months before it starts showing some result.
- You can also use PPC campaign to show your search presence when getting SEO listing seems difficult. For example, if the first page result against a keyword contains links from universities, Wikipedia, Amazon, etc., then you will have to use PPC to get on the first page of SERP.
- If you are running a time-sensitive campaign, or have a product which can only be sold in one particular season or month than you will need to use PPC campaign to promote your product or service.
- If you have a new site, it will take time before search engines start showing results from your site. In such situations, you will need to use PPC campaign to reach your target audience.
- If you are using Flash, AJAX, JavaScript, or any other opaque content then you will need to use PPC to make your presence felt for the chosen keyword. Search engine spiders have hard time indexing such content.
- You can also use PPC to test your website design, keyword, landing page, etc. PPC can be a good website testing tool.
Contrary to what other thinks or preaches, PPC is not bad word. When preparing a marketing campaign do not overlook this tool. PPC may be expensive, but it is a very useful tool if used judiciously.
Tags: Ajax, Amazon, Bad Word, Contrary, Hard Time, Keyword Search Engine, Marketing Campaign, Ppc, Presence, Search Engine Spiders, Search Engines, SEO, Serp, Target Audience, Testing Tool, traffic, Universities, Using Flash, Wikipedia
In this article, we will see what technical guidelines have been set by Google for the webmasters to follow in order to help Google properly index and rank their web pages. For the first time reader, I must add here that, in What to Do to Rank in Google mini-series, I am trying to help SEO aspirants in making sense of technical guidelines set by Google. If you are new to the series, click the link that appeared in the previous sentence to go to the beginning of the mini-series.
Technical guidelines
- Use Lynx, the text-based web browser to see how your website looks in it. This will help you understand how the search spiders will see your website. Consider redoing your website if JavaScript, Flash or AJAX content, DHTML, frames, session IDs, etc., are stopping your website from appearing as you wanted it to for the search engines.
- Give the search spiders a freedom to crawl. Do not use session IDs or codes to track the spiders’ path on your website. These techniques will do nothing except confusing the spiders. They are not capable of differentiating one URL from another URLS, which in this case is the tracking URL. This can hamper the indexing process.
- Make your web server support If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature, if enables, tells Google about changes made to the website since it was last crawled. If there be no changes, there will be no crawling. This will save bandwidth and overhead cost.
- Place a proper robot.txt file in your server to guide the crawlers through your site. This will tell which all page to index and which to leave. Use robot.txt analysis tool to see if robot.txt has been configured properly. The tool is available in Google Webmaster Tools.
- Use robot.txt to instruct the spiders about the pages that you do not wish to be indexed. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/faq.html to know more about robot.txt.
- If you are using CMS (Content Management System) then make sure that the pages created by the CMS can be crawled.
- Test your web page in various browsers to see how it looks in it. This will save you from unexpected surprises. Check at least in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome.
Tags: Ajax, Analysis Tool, Bandwidth, Cms Content, Content Management System, Crawlers, Freedom, google, Google Webmaster Tools, Lynx, Mini Series, Overhead Cost, Robot Txt, Search Engines, Search Spiders, Session Ids, Time Reader, urls, Web Pages, Web Server Support
Till now, we have been discussing separately different concepts and tools that you can use to optimize your website. I hope you are comfortable with the concepts we discussed so far. When all of these concepts come together, we call them on-page optimization. In this and the following article, I will be sharing some valuable tips that will help you optimize your webpage for maximum result. I will recommend you to keep this and the next article handy.
Domain Name: Having your main keyword in the URL will help your website rank better. Hence, start with looking for the most-valuable keyword for the niche you want to operate into, before buying a domain name. (Read SEO SIMPLIFIED: An Overview).
Static URL: Static URLs are considered search engine friendly. Keep the URLS short and static because major search engines do not like dynamic URL as it confuses their spiders. If you have a lengthy or dynamic URL in your website, convert it to short and static URL.
Example of Dynamic URL: http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GGGL_en___IN326&hs=jKW&q=static+URL&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=
Example of Static URL: http://blog.gossimer.com/seo-simplified-an-overview/
Which one reads better?
XML Sitemap: XML Sitemap helps search engines in determining the kind of content your website has. It helps web crawler to index even those pages which are generally not accessible, like pages with rich media content, AJAX, JavaScript, etc. (For more details Read Sitemap Primer).
Keyword Density: Before making the webpage live, ascertain that the overall keyword density of the webpage lies between 2-7 percent. You should also avoid stuffing any one paragraph with keywords. The keyword density of each paragraph of the article/content as well as the overall keyword density of the article/content in question should lie between 2-7 percent. (Read Keywords in Content for more detail).
Title Tag: Put the main keyword in the title tag, and make the title tag interesting to read. The title tag should be very creative and should have crowd-pulling capability.
Meta Description Tag: You should write the description of your webpage here. Use the 160 characters available to you to describe the nature of your webpage. A good meta description tag increase the chances of click-through.
Meta Keyword Tag: List all the keywords used in the webpage here. Do not optimize any page for more than 3 keywords.
Image Optimization: Images and flash contents of the websites are inaccessible to the search engine. As the crawler cannot read or see the content of an image or flash file. You can use alt tag to make the image and/or Flash content of the webpage accessible to search engine spiders. (Read Keywords in Content Part –II for more detail).
Links: Avoid using any JavaScript, image or Flash link in your website. Always use text links, and use your primary keyword as anchor text for all the links.
Tags: Ajax, Aq, Article Content, Btng, Buying A Domain Name, Different Concepts, google, Jkw, Keyword Density, Major Search Engines, Maximum Result, Oq, Page Optimization, Rlz, Seo Optimization, Title Tag, Url Example, Web Crawler, Website Rank, Www Google
