If there is one force that puts the cyberspace, then that would be information. It has become a hot commodity in today’s fast moving world. In answering the demand of information, the worldwide web is designed to get an easy access of information to millions of audience around the world.

Information, nowadays, is not only utilized in satisfying one’s craving for data, it has also become a good utility in marketing products. Perhaps the most effective way to capitalize its usage is through search engine optimization.

When searching for an item in the internet, users would usually go to search engine sites. These sites work by looking through out its database of web pages and returning links for search result. If you wonder how they can possibly obtain copies of numerous links and stored in their own data store room, here is how they do it:

1.Google and other search engine websites have crawlers with them to get some keywords of the website.

2.These keywords are stored in their database.

3.When a user will search a certain topic, the engine will try to sort on websites containing the keywords.

4.Search results will give the internet users the link of the website that contains the keywords.

By using keywords, your websites will be possibly visited by a number of web users around the world. The advantage about attracting traffic to your website is that more advertisement will surely find its exposure on the heavily visited site. Here, the business of search engine optimization or SEO will take place.

The most important thing a website should have is its content. It is the bread and butter of the site. Its contents can make audiences around the world get interested in what one has to offer.

It must be taken into consideration that SEO is the vehicle of the audience to the site and the site’s vehicle to the audience are the ways in which SEO will catch the website.

Here are some few steps to make an SEO friendly website:

1.Prepare for the Meta Tags

One has to be familiar with the basics of HTML to know what tag is. Meta tags are HTML tags which can be found in the source code of an HTML file or simply put it the website source code. Meta tag contains necessary information of the website which cannot be found in the interface page of the website. These are hidden tags that can only be determined by the SEO crawlers.

In this way, one has to prepare the meta tags by putting on it the information about the website, and at the same time getting to know the keywords. Knowing the keywords is like putting a webmaster in the shoes of the searchers. In this way, one can identify what keyword one has to type in the search engine.

2.Creating Website Portals with Lots of Keywords

Website portals are the entry point of every surfer to a certain website. One has to stuff the necessary keywords in the portal so that SEO’s crawler can readily attract on it.

However, extra care must also be done to avoid being blacklisted by the SEO’s. SEO crawlers, especially the most sophisticated one, can detect if there is spamming or too much keyword on the portal. Keywords should not only be substantiated with content, it must also be used wisely along the content. Otherwise, the website will totally be unknown because it is in the blacklist.

3.Consider Submitting Directories to a Search Engine Site

One way of connecting to search engines is not to wait for the crawlers to crawl on the website. Establishing direct contact to the Search Engine site can be done by submitting directories. However, the website must be prepared before submission of directories. It must get rid of dead links or other spamming agent which can be very harmful in search engine ranking of a website.

Directory submission is usually being reviewed manually by the people manning the search engine. In this way, search engines can determine if the website is indeed substantially stuffed.

4.Maintain the URL

One way of maintaining the traffic is to keep the URL. URL is very important for websites especially if one is only dependent on SEO crawlers. Having a dead URL is not only damaging to the website’s ranking, it will also lose the interest of web surfers.

Avoiding any forms of symbols and other non alphanumeric is one way of building a good URL. Symbols and non-alphanumeric characters are usually ignored by the SEO crawlers. In this way, the website will not be overlooked.

Knowing how an SEO works is an advantage for a webmaster. In this way, he is not only increasing the traffic of web surfers, he is also catching some advertisement on his website.

E Commerce Web Design software goes a long way in enhancing ecommerce usability. The maximum usability can be reaped from ecommerce web design by judicious and optimum use of the various web designs components.

E Commerce Web Design enhances ecommerce usability. The online sales are possible only if the sites are easily accessible to the users. Successful web sales depend to a great extent on the ecommerce web design. The way in which different pages like home, category, product details and shopping cart are designed must be of consequence to ecommerce usability.

Home page is a guiding page that welcomes the users. It is essential to detail and elaborate the product categories, important information, purchasing and delivery option and also the company profile. The category pages are required to direct the visitors to the product they are searching for.

Various classification schemes and subtle arrangement of the products is an essential component of the ecommerce web design. The users should be provided with the opportunity to compare the products before deciding on the product they desire. It is essential to include various data like prices, brand names and the like in the category pages of the ecommerce web design.

The pages in which the product details are given should be simple and easily comprehensible. The product details should be given in a clear language, devoid of any jargons or technical usages. Photographs of the products should be included to supplement the written details. Prices of the various products should be clearly displayed.

It is best practice to display the various product options in an effective manner. Once the user has made his decision about the product he should be directed to the shopping cart. The registration and the check out procedures must be listed in a simple language. Thus a concentrated effort on all aspects of web page designing is important in enhancing ecommerce web design usability.

Landing page is typically used to describe the page where visitors are brought on clicking an Internet advertisement. This page has to be well thought out and executed to achieve the marketing goals. The key objective of landing page is to produce a conversion whether it is a sale, a sign up, or just a lead. In other words, a landing page is also a sales page, where the call for action occurs. When the landing page is not designed well the conversion rate is reduced significantly.

Common Mistakes of Landing Pages to be avoided

The following are some of the common mistakes of PPC landing pages that should be avoided.

1. Your page may be too clustered - It distracts the visitors in their search and can even divert your conversion. If the content, images or the popups of your landing page are clustered, there will be a negative affect on the conversion rate.
2. Multiple calls to action - There shouldn’t be more than one or two calls to action, else it creates confusion in the minds of the visitors.
3. Irrelevant text or description – Keep the content short, simple and on the topic. Any additional unrelated text on your landing page can dilute the message. Generate an effective call to execute on the landing page. Conversion should be made simple and easy, as there is little time with the visitor for the conversion.
4. Incorrect information damages credibility – If the facts on the landing page are incorrect, there is a possibility of loosing credibility with your customers. Ensure the information provided on the landing page is correct.
5. Don’t annoy the visitors – You shouldn’t irritate the visitors with the popups or banners that typically irritate the customers. Agitated customers don’t convert well. Acquire their attention by providing solutions for their needs that the page can serve them.

The above information explains some of the mistakes on landing pages. Ensure that you have thought through these points in order to reach your conversion goal targets.

This is the first part of the article on building good landing pages. We will create a second part of this article shortly that covers other common mistakes that reduce the effectiveness of the landing pages.

Two big things have just happened in Google-land: Jagger and Google Analytics. Together, these two events may have changed the face of search forever.

Jagger

First, let’s discuss Jagger… Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they’re universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website’s ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple… With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients’ money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there’s nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they’re not considered ‘black-hat’), they don’t really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world’s smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that’s exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but that’s a topic for another article…)

From a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, Google’s Jagger Update - Dust Begins To Settle?. To summarize, Jagger:

1. Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2. Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3. Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4. More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain?
5. Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6. Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7. Overall Blog demotions?
8. New and unresolved “canonical” issues?

Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore in his Jagger article. Mr Moore runs a number of test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

“all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way… During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

The other group that came back up was one-way inbound text links, regardless of the originating web site. These links also had strong relevance to our web analytics business. In other words, they contained keywords and/or phrases related to our site and its business.”

In short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands - if not millions - of people! As a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Interestingly, article PR (article submission) came through Jagger seemingly unscathed. My SEO copywriting website, for example, went from no.4 to no.1 worldwide for “copywriter”, and I’ve employed article PR almost exclusively. Whether it was promoted or the sites around it were demoted, one thing is clear: article PR is one of the best ways to obtain a high ranking.

Google Analytics

The second monumental event to occur recently was Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free web-stats solution which not only reports all the regular site stats, but also integrates directly with Google AdWords giving webmasters and insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. According to Google, ” Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.”

Why is this such a landmark move? Because for the first time ever, Google will have access to your real web stats. And these stats will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa. Furthermore, Google’s privacy statement says: ” We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services.” Now let’s put two and two together:

1. Google is ‘giving’ every webmaster in the world free access to quality web-stats.
2. Millions of webmasters will accept this ‘gift’, if only because it integrates directly with their Google AdWords campaigns.
3. Google will then have full access to the actual web stats of millions of commercial websites.
4. Google will have the right to use these stats to develop new technologies.
5. What’s the next logical step? Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings, of course!

It should come as no surprise. It’s been on the cards - and frequently discussed - for a long time. For example, Jayde Online CEO, Mel Strocen, recently published an article on this very topic, The Future of WebSite Ranking. She quite rightly asserts that:

“Google’s “democratic” vision of the Web will never be achieved by manipulating algorithm criteria based on content. It will only be achieved by factoring in what is important to people, and people will always remain the best judge of what that is. The true challenge for search engines in the future is how to incorporate web searcher input and preferences into their ranking algorithms.”

In fact, the Jayde Online network already owns and operates a search engine, ExactSeek which incorporates user popularity statistics in its rankings.

The Future of Search & SEO

To date, ExactSeek is the only search engine which uses visitor stats as criteria for its rankings. But Google isn’t far behind. We all know that Google specializes in taking a good idea and implementing and adapting it brilliantly. This is exactly what we’ll see in this case. By combining link popularity and user popularity statistics, Google will be the only major search engine to consider both what other sites think of your website and what your visitors think of your website. And because they have the most advanced algorithms for assessing link popularity, and will soon have access to the farthest reaching, most accurate web stats to assess user popularity, its competitors will be a long time catching up.

So if that’s the future of search, what’s the future of SEO? The future of SEO is undoubtedly one where:

* one-way text links from relevant pages continue to be the most valuable links
* reciprocal linking continue to decline
* the ’shotgun’ approach to link buying declines
* mass email link requests decline
* free directory submission declines
* niche directory submission increases
* article PR (article submission) increases
* article submission sites (e.g. EzineArticles, GoArticles, and ArticleBlast) play a much bigger and more important role in helping online publishers locate quality articles (due to the increasing article volume)
* user popularity is just as important as link popularity, which means:
o the quality of article PR improves in order to increase site traffic, credibility, and loyalty
o the quality of website content improves in order to convert traffic and encourage repeat visits

Clearly, the choices for SEOs will be pretty much limited to paying for links at niche sites and/or engaging in article PR. Being an SEO copywriter, I may be a little biased, but for mine, article PR is the hands-down winner in this comparison:

* It satisfies Google’s criteria for relevance and importance. Linking site owners include your article and link because, in doing so, their site becomes more useful to visitors, and their business gains credibility and authority.
* It generates hundreds of free links quickly enough to make it worth your while, but not so quickly as to raise red flags at Google (in the form of link dampening).
* Links are permanent and you don’t have to pay to keep them there.
* You get a lot of qualified referred traffic who already trust you and your expertise. This satisfies Google’s visitor popularity criteria, while at the same time bringing you a lot of extra customers.

For more information on article PR, read How to Top Google with Article PR.

Conclusion

The lesson from Jagger is, don’t try and trick Google! They’ve got more money and more brains than virtually any company in the world. It’ll only end in tears! Don’t spend time and money trying to make your site look important and relevant. Instead, spend that time and money actually making it important and relevant! Content - the real content behind the optimization - is the answer. After all, whether it’s an article or a web page, it’s the content that keeps ‘eyes on paper’, and that’s what it’s all about.

Happy optimizing!