Ultimate SEO Checklist for New Websites

When setting up a new website it is easy to get excited about the design and content of the website, while forgetting the most vital aspect – SEO.

While your website might look great, searchers are never going to find it if you don’t implement even some of the SEO basics.

To help you out I have compiled a list of SEO tasks you must do before a new or updated website goes live. By doing all of these, search engines will be able to index the new changes quicker, and more efficiently.

1. Descriptive URL’s
Once you have determined what you need on your website, every single page must have a clean and descriptive URL with hyphen’s separating each word. This allows people and search engines alike to see what the content is going to be on that page just by looking at the URL.

Here is an example of a well structured URL:
http://www.ineedhits.com/pay-per-click/pay-per-click-services.aspx

2. Title tags, meta description tags and heading tags
The key to creating good title tags is to ensure each is unique and includes the keywords you think people would use when doing a search via Google when trying to find your site.

For example, if you’re a dentist in Arlington, DC then the title tag of your home page would be something like this:

Professional Dentist in Arlington, DC – Your Company

Each page on your site has unique content so each title tag for these pages should be unique because it is one of the strongest signals Google uses to determine what your page should rank for.

The meta description for each page can be around 150 characters and it should serve as a mini advertisement for your company and the services/products you provide.

Each page should have its own heading title describing what that page is about.

3. Use text alternatives to Flash content.
If your site uses Flash to present content that you really want or need search engine crawlers to index, provide text alternatives that they can index. If you use Flash for your entire web site without providing text alternatives, don’t expect search engine crawlers to index your site.

4. Install Google analytics
Having Google Analytics installed on your site is a must because it allows you to track how visitors get to your site, and then what they do when they are there.

5. Sitemaps – XML and static
An XML sitemap helps to show Google all the pages on your website that need to be crawled and indexed. XML sitemap generator is an easy tool to help you quickly create your sitemap and upload it to your website. Don’t forget to submit this sitemap to Google through Google Webmaster Tools.

While not necessarily helpful for your SEO, a sitemap within your website is imperative for helping visitors easily navigate around your website. The best place to promote your sitemap is in the footer at the bottom of each page of your site, as shown in the example below of the footer on the ineedhits website.

6. Avoid Accessibility mistakes
Users and search engines both need to be able to reach all of the pages, all the content that you’ve created on your website in easy ways. Here are two simple things you need to do to help:

• If you have an existing website that is being updated, then it is extremely important to redirect the old pages to the new ones by using 301 redirects.
• Should visitors come across a error on your site, then they will be shown a 404 error page. This page should be customized to include your branding and a list of your top pages and links to useful content on your website. This will help the visitor find what they are looking for more easily.

7. Allow access to all Robots
Before the website goes live, you must allow robots to crawl your website through a robots.txt file. If you don’t then the search engines won’t be able to find and index your new website.

8. Secure your online brand
While your website will be your main SEO focus, you should also look at other online sources to boost your SEO efforts. By registering your businesses brand on social networks (Facebook, Twitter etc) this will help your website’s ranking in the search engines. It also has the benefit of online reputation management in that social sites will rank well for your brand name, allowing you to keep the search results for “your business name” under your control.

9. Internal and external linking
Internal linking will not only help your visitor navigate through your site more easily but it helps with your SEO as you can use keywords as anchor text to link to relevant pages. Link anchor text is a very important ranking factor on all the search engines so link to relevant sections of your website whenever possible.

Links from external sources is a highly regarded factor when determining your websites ranking in the search engines. But here’s a tip: don’t buy links from low quality sources, because Google doesn’t like this and they will penalize you for it.

A great place to start when looking for external link sources are business contacts and your customers. Look at all your email contacts, your LinkedIn contacts, the people that you know personally and professionally and ask them if they would mind putting a link to your site on their website.

10. Compatibility
Ensure your website loads and views correctly across all Internet browsers and in both Windows and Mac operating systems before launch.

11. Get into Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is a great resource as it provides information about how Google is crawling your site and whether there are any broken links or missing pages.

Hopefully, this checklist will help you get your site in a well established position in the search engines. Best of luck with your new website.

Are there any points I missed in the checklist? If so, feel free to share them below.

Click Here To Read Original Post on INeedHits.com

Bing Pushes Yahoo! Down to 3rd in Market Share

Something which caught us by surprise recently were new statistics from advertising network, Chitika. They reveal that Bing has taken second place in search market share from Yahoo and claim it has been this way for a couple of months now.

Although most of the other leading analytics companies (including StatCounter) still show Yahoo leading Bing, Chitika’s statistics show that Bing is ahead of Yahoo! by 4.5%.

The stats show that Google remains unquestionably in the number one position by driving 80.97% of search-related traffic to sites in Chitika network. Meanwhile, Bing jumped into the number 2 spot with 10.6% marketing share and pushing Yahoo! down to third position with 6.14%. AOL and Aim make the remaining positions in the top five with 1.22% and 1.12% of the search market, respectively.

Here are the official statistics from Chitika:

Our question is: why is Chitika showing different results?
The fundamental difference between Chitika’s numbers and other rating services, such as comScore & Hitwise, is in the type and source of data they collect.

Chitika collates its data from the search traffic coming into its own advertising network. On the other hand, comScore and other rating services, measure search traffic data from the search engines themselves. The traffic being measured is both paid and unpaid. So if some sites in the Chitika network are doing major advertising on Bing and not Yahoo that could potentially skew the results, however it is hard to believe that it’s a major contributing factor for the shuffle in Bing’s position.

One thing that will be interesting to watch is the impact on Yahoo! & Bing’s market share when their partnership is fully implemented. We will all have to keep an eye out for those stats!

Click Here To Read Original Post on INeedHits.com

Link Building: Dos and Donts

Link building has become a hot topic of late in the search marketing arena. While it has been around for years, sometimes it can be done very poorly or overlooked altogether in an SEM strategy don’t let this happen for your website.

I recently came across a great article which outlined the dos and donts of link building. So I thought I would share some of the tips so you can get started:

Do:

• Keep your focus on relevant links only. Build links with high authority websites that are related to your site theme. These relevant links will help you to build authority in your niche. Also, visitors to such sites are more likely to click on your links giving you increased traffic.

• Publish articles, press releases and blogs on article and free blog sites. Make sure your content is unique and original with your links embedded in it using important keywords as anchor text. These incoming links embedded in the content are valued highly by the search engines.

• Competitor analysis. Check all the websites linking with your competitors and try building similar links to your site also.

Don’t:

• Show that you are desperate to get backlinks to your website. Write a professional email to other webmaster and ask them to go through your site and consider giving a link to it.

• Post your website link directly on discussion forums and chat rooms; this kind of self publicity might get your account banned. Simply put your website’s link in your signature in the forum instead.

I hope these tips help you get started on your link building efforts.

Click Here To Read Original Post on INeedHits.com

4 Tips to Make Visitors Stay on Your Site

By now you all know that SEM is about getting people to visit your website. But how do you get visitors to take a second or third click on your website and explore it further.

I have outlined a few tips to help you in this area. This includes:

• Ensure your keywords match your website content

There is nothing worse than clicking on a website from the SERP’s and finding that the website has nothing to do with what you are looking for. Make sure your website content is relevant to what your searchers are looking for; otherwise you will see them disappear very quickly.

• Does your page load fast enough?

We’ve spoken of the importance of this previously and considering it is now also one of Google’s factors to determine ranking, it might be time to look at it closely. If your webpage takes longer than 10 seconds to load, then it’s highly likely your visitors will become impatient and leave. Remember: there are millions of sites on the internet that they could visit over yours. Rather than wait for your site; they will simply try the next listing in the SERP.

• Location, location, location

It’s no use getting visitors to your site, then expecting them to trawl through your site to find what they are looking for. Put the most popular links and call to action buttons on your site in the ‘best real estate’ of your pages (close to the top and towards the left of the screen).

• Turn off the music and video

I must admit this is my biggest turnoff when visiting a website (and it makes me leave ASAP). Music and videos (or the little customer service representative in the bottom corner of the screen) can be very annoying if set to auto play. If you have an auto play feature set on your website, then I would suggest checking how many visitors leave within the first three seconds of your music or video playing. I think you will be surprised by the results.

So, if your visitors don’t seem to be sticking around on your site, these four tips might just help you solve the problem.

Click Here To Read Original Post on INeedHits.com

SEO Success is more Than a Top Google Listing for Your Website – How to Dominate Google

Imagine you’ve got your website in the top 20 on Google for a few keywords, or even better Top 10. Don’t get too carried away, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

If you want serious results from your SEO efforts, you should aim for more than just a Top Google listing for your website.

Our clients are discovering that the best traffic results come when you dominate Google’s SERPs for the most effective keywords. And local small businesses and niche businesses are in the best position to do so.

Dominate Google’s SERPs?

Yes. They’re moving beyond just their website for their SEO strategy which is allowing them to have more than one listing for keywords and search terms – and there’s good reason for doing it:

• Eliminate the competition
• Increase the profile and authority of your brand/business
• Stack the odds in your favour and increase click-throughs

Now before you say “BUT that’s gonna take hard work and marketing budget I can’t afford”, try some of these easy ways to dominate Google’s results:

• Keyword optimize your social profiles

a. Rather than just have your social profiles featuring your business name, why not incorporate your important search term or relevant keyword in there. Not all social networks and services will allow those, but for the one’s that do, utilise the opportunity to your advantage.

• Develop a content strategy beyond your website

Creating fresh, engaging and relevant content on your website is critical for your SEO strategy. There’s no denying that. But more small businesses should look at creating content beyond their websites. And there’s a plethora of ways to do it:

• Slideshows/Presentations
• Videos
• Blogs/articles on other sites
• Images/Media
• Press releases

Just think of the various types of content that exists online and rest assured there’s probably a website that allows you to share it with the world – and yet again create a potential Google listing for your business.

• Directory and Business listings

Like your social profiles, often small businesses don’t leverage the immense opportunities offered by the various business listing and directory services available. Have you posted your business on Linkedin or in a local online community directory? Probably not – and why not. Guess what – most will let you include important keywords in your title and throughout your profile. Another way to get a listing!

There’s plenty of other ways to create Google listing opportunities for your business. And more of these opportunities you embrace, the better your chances of dominating Google and improving the traffic results from your SEO.

If you have used other techniques to increase your businesses exposure across Google’s results, why not share them with our readers via the comments below.

Click Here To Read Original Post on INeedHits.com

Google Boasts 30% Cost Reduction for Click-to-Call Advertisers

Early this year, Google introduced Click-to-call as a component of its location extensions offering in mobile ads.

Google click-to-call allows advertisers to track online-offline searching and consumer buying patterns across mobile, online and traditional advertising mediums.

If we compare click-to-call to pay-per-click, the latter is based on the idea that a customer visits the website (for which the advertiser is charged), makes an inquiry and then decides whether or not to make a purchase. On the other hand, click-to-call (for which the advertiser is charged) eliminates the first 2 steps and goes directly to the idea that the customer will call to directly inquire about the business, creating a lot better chance of a purchase.

Research from comScore and TMP Directional Marketing shows that more than 83% of customers search online and then contact a business offline, often in the form of a phone call. With click-to-call, Google can successfully eliminate the need for the customer to go offline.

Google recently outlined the success of click-to-call in a case study of San Francisco based auto insurance company, Esurance. The aim of using click-to-call was to enable all customers with a mobile phone to quickly reach an agent live. Esurance ran click-to-call ads and tracked the success of the campaign using unique 800 phone numbers in their ads and the results are quite impressive.

Esurance acquired customers at 30% less than through other marketing channels. Click-to-call mobile ads drove a 30%-35% higher response and a 5-10% lower cost per click on mobile than on online.

Tolithia Kornweibel, Esurance Director of Online Marketing backs up Google’s claim:

With Google mobile ads and click-to-call, our cost per acquisition is 20-to- 30% less when compared with other channels.

The only down side of the click-to-call is that it is still quite new. Once people begin to realize its benefits it could raise the cost as demand increases. But currently this is a hidden treasure for those who got in early.

Click Here To Read Original Post on INeedHits.com