Ethical search engine optimization

As an SME looking to gather more awareness for your business, advertising and branding is important. The advantages of internet advertising is extremely high. When people are searching for a service to benefit their lives, the 1st thing they would do is to use a search engine and look for the service closest to them. Its common to be earning 40,000% profit just by using online advertising for an offline business. Before we go into that, lets take a look at other forms of advertising.

1) Word of mouth

Free and Viral, when people start spreading the news of your service, you get free publicity.

2) News Editors

Contributing articles to your local news editor on topics which are hot. Editors are constantly looking for good articles or news for their readers. So if you can offer a product of service, something of value to the masses that is current and will garner readership, they will do a story on you.

3) Participating in groups and marketing your service to that particular group

Google Groups, Theme based forums such as golf. So if you’re a golf coach, head for the golf forums.

4) Traditional TV and Radio advertising

This is mainly for the bigger companies dealing in mass consumer products. Insurance, Food, Health products, Cosmetics.

5) Buying Ads in Magazines with tight themes

Examples include Fashion magazines, Body building magazines, car magazines.

6) Newspaper advertisements

Classified Ads are a common place to advertise. Other areas to advertise in are the money section where there are reports about how to make money through investing, insurance, money management etc. Many investors turned trainers like to advertise in these areas to a tight targeted audience.

7) Internet Advertising

Very simple and affordable for SMEs. 1st you’ll need to have a website that’s able to gather leads and even better be able to process sales. Just hire a web designer at elance.com. A good website would be able to convert customers or simply let them know how to find you. Instant traffic can then be generated simply by placing Ads on Search Engines such as Google. Many times for my own business, I like to generate instant traffic for quick returns, then followed by long term traffic generation strategies. Why? Simple, with Adwords, I can understand which keywords are converting and further SEO my site for these Buyer keywords.

Some specialists actually advertise their services using Adwords. I remember clicking on an ad which i know cost only $0.10 because it was extremely targeted and focused. The clinic charged me $400 for service. Best of all, the advertiser does not pay any advertising cost, until someone clicks on the Ad. which is why Search engine advertising is so profitable. Its costs pennies as compared to Magazine, Newspaper, TV advertising and yet the ROI is so incredibly high.

The advantages of internet advertising will greatly benefit your bottom line.

Spending budget in SEM is worth so long as it attracts more unique visitors through search engines. Internet advertising in India is fast moving from flashy boxes and sponsored links to the new buzzword: search-engine marketing. In 2005, total online ad expenditures in India exceeded Rs4 billion ($88 million), of which Rs2.36 billion was SEM, out of which Rs720 million was spent by companies in India, and the rest from enterprises abroad.

According to an industry study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Industry wide, the biggest SEM spenders are retail companies, followed by technology, travel and the automotive and banking industries, with non-governmental organizations and property markets also advertising.

Why Can’t We Ignore Spending on SEM?

Those who are into online business wanting to increase the web traffic through search engines should keep their eyes opened to study the trends. Otherwise, they’ll be lagging behind.

Furthermore, the old rules of web1.0 SEO hold less importance in the new web 2.0 world. In a fast changing behavior of search engines, the role of SEM consultant/SEO firm should be to keep a good track of the current trends and accordingly suggest the changes required to be implemented to drive more traffic.

Let’s have a look at the following table – I have drawn according to my level of understanding.

Web 1.0 SEO vs Web 2.0 SEO

Page views vs Accessibility

Reciprocal Links vs Bookmarking/del.cio.ous/dig/BLs

Keyword rich contents vs User generated contents/Interactivity

Meta tags vs description and Title/Optional

SE submission vs Optional

Directory submission vs Automatic crawling by spider

HTML optimization vs AJAX optimization

Reliability on Search engine PR vs P2P network

Personal sites vs Wikis/blogs

Double Click vs PPC

Digg is news search engines while delicious is a social book marking site and del.ciou.ous are news sites while techcrati is a search blog search engine

Technocrati

Blog search engines – rivals (Google, Yahoo! Msn!)

As of August 2006, Technorati indexes over 55 million weblogs
Technorati uses and contributes to open source software.

In gist, there are a few steps, such as, social networking, dig & delciou.ous, tagging, links from user generated contents, etc need to be taken. Moreover, we need to adopt search engine marketing mix to drive traffic not only through global search engines (google, msn, yahoo), but also through specialty search engines like it.com.

Social bookmarking sites have become one of the most ideal spots to find additional traffic for your own site, especially if you provide a lot of interesting and noteworthy content. Submitting to such sites can do a lot to gain more exposure from quite a number of online users who constantly are on the lookout for fresh and interesting content. Here are some tips that may help you more effectively make use of social bookmarking sites as a means to get additional visitors to your own site.

When submitting to a social bookmarking site. Bear in mind that timing may also be critical. Getting into the front page of social bookmarking sites may not be the same as getting into the front page on most search engines. Most of such sites may only give you a span of 24 hours to get to the front page and stay there. In this case, you need to know when you should be submitting in order to get the most benefit of traffic.

The best time to submit your site is after waking hours, when people are already up and about and going online. Since 24 hours may be a slim time span, getting your site in time when most people are already online would allow you to get more traffic than when posting it on dead hours when most people are asleep. The same thing may be applicable when posting on the weekends. Weekdays may be more preferable but you also have to consider the increased number competition for the top page that you may have to contend with when posting on weekdays.

Another good way to get traffic on social bookmarking sites is by submitting to the right category. The more specific the category you submit to, the better. It is better to check out if your site can be submitted to a specific category on several social bookmarking sites instead of being content on submitting them on the General or Miscellaneous categories. Such categories can easily be filled up by other submissions and may decrease your chances of getting noticed.

When posting on social bookmarking sites, it is also important to build up a top profile. Building one would be like building a reputation for your website. If you already have a fairly old site that other users have previously visited and found a number of interesting articles and content, you have better chances of getting noticed easily the second time around than with a new site. Posting links going to other sites that also offer similarly interesting articles would also help a lot as you try to build up a top profile.

Another important means of getting noticed is by cooperating with other social bookmarkers. The network that you create on such sites can easily help you get noticed easily the moment you post new content. Also bear in mind that user votes can also help in getting your submission to the top page. The more votes on your submission, the more likely that other visitors might also be checking you out and therefore increase your chances in getting to the top page of a social bookmarking site.

Off Page Optimization

These are techniques for SEO that are done off the pages of a website. Without off page optimization, the on page optimization would not be enough to maximize a website’s performance in the search engines and improve search engine ranking. Off Page Optimization often refers to Link Building. Link Building the practice to obtain links that came from the outside or external factors to your own website.

• Forum Posting Maybe you are thinking why joining forums will increase your website traffic and rankings. There are 3 things why you participate in forums:
  • Link building purposes - some forums offer signature wherein you can put links
  • Traffic - if people find your post interesting they will most likely visit your website in your signature
  • Information - you can learn a lot in forums from how to optimize your website with your target niche to your personal questions about your target niche.
• Web Directory SubmissionWeb directory is like your regular phone directory but the difference is it is in the internet. It specializes in linking to other websites and categorizing links that comes from site owners. They are being reviewed by human editors to eliminate the redundancy caused by automatic software submissions. This is a good way to promote your website especially if you submit your inclusion to those directories with high PR or page rank. Page Rank, given by Google, which is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weight to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents. See Wikipedia for more details of page rank.Kinds of Directory:
  • General Directories If you plan to target a world wide market then you should submit your inclusion to these kinds of directories. These directories are so general in nature, which means that they include many different categories and subcategories such as shopping, school, art, business and etc.
  • Topic Specific or Niche Directories If you plan to target a specific market then you should submit your inclusion to these kinds of directories. These are targeted to specific areas of interest such as sports, business, medical issues, per geo location area, and etc.
• Classified Ads SubmissionClassified ads or online advertising gives you the opportunity to increase visibility of your business services to the world. It gives exposure and it will attract more visitors to your website that leads to a high traffic and business sales. There are many free classifieds websites that offers free ad posting but in a limited time. Always remember to put yourself into an audience position and think of things that will attract their attention. It would be better if you will use captivating and promising phrases for your Ad caption and also remember to avoid spamming or posting multiple ads in the same site, area. This will trigger into a permanent ban and it will be bad for your website.
• Article SubmissionAn article is an ideal way of documenting a real life “problem” and then providing a solution to the problem in the form of case study. In this way people who will be reading your article will be able to see what relevancy a service or product might be to them. Always remember that people like to buy from someone who knows what they are doing. You can submit your own written articles to article directories to get free traffic on your website and always remember to put your hyperlinked to your resource box so that visits can visit also your website. What I mean by hyperlink is this: “<-a-href=”yourwebsite”>Your Keyword here<-/a->”. (delete the “-”)
• Press Release SubmissionPress Releases are official statements that were issued by companies and organizations to print, television and radio media. These press releases maybe purely factual and address a specific issue or concern, or they maybe more promotional in nature. Press releases are often made in-house by authorized employees otherwise it can be produced by outside firms that contracted by the company or organization. Press releases are news items that are designed to inform people but not to sell something. These are stories to highlighting all the unique features and benefits of your business or product. It only informs customers exactly how your products or service will benefit your target market’s lives in a news story format.
• BlogsBlogs or weblogs are journal or newsletter that are frequently updated and intended for public consumption. Articles that are related to the target keywords can be put inside the blogs. This is like you mini site wherein you can post anything about your website like news, new updates, etc. For SEO specialist like me, I consider blogs as my training ground because as you see it is free and if you fail to rank it no one will get angry. If you are new to SEO, you should try to have one and optimize it.
• Group AdvertisingOnline groups like Yahoo, MSN, Google Groups is another way of advertising. It helps in building a community and spreading words about your product and services.
• Link ExchangeIt is a process of exchanging links with a quality site that is related to the products or services that you are selling. Good link neighborhood will most likely increase the number of targeted visitors while Poor Link neighborhood such as link farms can actually harm your website rankings. By the way, link farm are sites that link to another website for the sole purpose of increasing link popularity. These bad neighborhood consist unrelated sites like porn site, gambling sites, and sites that practice link stuffing.
• Affiliate MarketingAffiliate marketing is a system of advertising in which there are two websites (merchants and publisher) which agrees to have a percentage to any sales generated. It is another way to have a more targeted market.
• Social MediaSocial Media is also one of the famous off page optimization nowadays. It refers to the activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and construction of words, pictures, video and audio. One good example of it is YouTube. It will increase stickiness of your visitors to your website.
• Social Bookmarking Social Bookmarking is where people can save and categorize their own personal collection of bookmarks and share it with their friends. The more friends or people in your network the higher chances to increase traffic in your website. One good example of this is Digg.com.
• Social NetworkingSocial Networking is where people develop networks of friends and associates. Social Networks like friendster, MySpace, Facebook are good examples of it. Yes, you might be wondering how can these social networking sites helps you attract people. You can post advertisements in the bulletin or ask your friends to view your site. Be sure that your advertisement is worth reading so that they will be interested in visiting your website.
• Community PostingOne good example of community is Yahoo Answer. You might be wondering how this can be a good source of traffic. Marketing people often indulge themselves into community posting to promote their products. For example, there are questions that are related to your product or service that you are offering that you think you know the answer. You might as well answer it and inform that person that you have a great product or service that might be useful.

Now that you know the basic Off Page Optimization, for starters you can start building your own blog and try to practice your newly acquired SEO knowledge and this will serve as a refresher for those who already knew these techniques.