SEO stands for search engine optimization. Search engines attempt to satisfy you (the searchers) by providing the most relevant results based on your keyword search. If you can easily find what you’re looking for from the search engine results, consider yourself a satisfied customer and you’ll likely return to that search engine in the future.

Results found on the left-hand side of the search engines are called organic or natural results. Achieving high rankings in these results is the aim of SEO.

In some aspects, SEO is similar to PPC with respect to keywords. Before you do anything, you should choose relevant keywords that you want to rank for. Keep in mind that it is going to be much harder to rank for generic keywords than it is for specific keywords. If you service a specific area, I’d suggest including a geographic indicator like a city, state, or region within your keyword.

Although there are many things you can do to optimize your website, SEO can basically be broken down to on-site and off-site optimization. This can literally be interpreted as optimizing your website structure and content (on-site) and optimizing the volume and manner of backlinks to your website on other sites (off-site).

Don’t be fooled by those SEO specialists or firms that guarantee you a #1 ranking or claim to do it in a short period of time. Many of these individuals use “black hat SEO” tactics. While it’s true that they may achieve a high ranking for you quickly, your ranking will just as quickly fall and your site will be penalized or even black listed from the search engines. In order for you to achieve a high ranking with longevity, it will take time.

Depending on how much work is done to optimize your site, the quality of work, and your keyword selection, it could take anywhere from 3 to 6 months just to see noticeable increase in ranking. To put it lightly, if you’re competing for common keyword terms, you should get comfortable and expect it to take more than a year before you reach your desired position.

If you’re able to achieve a high ranking for your desired keyword terms, you can expect to see more traffic than any of your PPC rankings. As mentioned in part I of this series, the majority of clicks from any keyword search go to these organic results.

I’m a big advocate of SEO. While the initial time and money—should you hire an SEO agency—can be a difficult investment, it can reap incredible results.

One might say that social media can be considered as any form of online interaction or expression. Think of it simply as online buzz. Social media has exploded online and it appears that, as the newest member of the online marketing family (PPC, SEO, online directories, social media) it has the potential to ultimately become the leader.

The reason why social media can be such an effective form of online advertising is because it can spread quickly, be done with little cost, and most importantly it carries credibility with it via word of mouth.

Here is a small sample of the reigning social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Sphinn, Reddit.

These days there are many businesses using social media as a primary source of marketing. With the recent surge of Twitter, great deals and promotions can be found in abundance from big businesses. If you’re capable of putting together the right kind of promotion, you can get quite a following.

Just last week on Twitter, Air New Zealand started giving away 1 free flight to New Zealand every day for the next 30 days. I started following KiWeets last Thursday when there were about 80+ followers. Now they have over 2,200!

Don’t forget that blogs are a big part of social media. Even if you don’t have many subscribers to your blog, sometimes it only takes one good post to put you on the map.

For me, it’s a no brainer to use social media to market your site because most of it is free and ready to use. Consider social media as a way to get personal with your target audience. The more time and attention you devote to them, the more loyal they’ll become to you and consequently promote your site.

Conclusion

In summary, online marketing can be an amazing tool because no matter what your site may be about, you can easily locate and serve a unique niche. Now get out there and find them, they’re looking for you.

There’s an old adage that says “If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Although the answer is debatable, I pose a similar question pertaining to today’s internet world: If you create a website and no one knows about it, does it exist?

This brings up the omnipresent dilemma of marketing your website online in the hopes of drawing visitors. Regardless of what you have to offer on your website, your visitors are the lifeblood of your website.

So, how do you get visitors to your site? There are traditional marketing mediums to draw attention to your site, i.e., TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, but I suggest online marketing. There is one big difference between traditional marketing and online marketing: Traditional marketing requires you to search for your audience, while most online marketing has your audience searching for YOU.

The main means of online marketing are online directories, pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO) and social media. I’ll go through each of these in detail to explain exactly what they are and how they can bring more visitors to your site.

An Online Directory is similar to a traditional phone book providing you with listings of local businesses. Just type in your desired product or service and your location. Results will render the name, address, phone number and sometimes short description of a business or website.

There are many online directories today. Some of these include Superpages.com, Yellowpages.com and Dexknows.com. Many online directories will offer a free listing option as well as an upgraded paid option.

Rather than submitting your information to online directories one at a time, you can consider using an online directory distributor like Inlocal.com or UniversalBusinessListing.com who will get your website listed in a network of online directories as well as search engine local maps.

If you don’t have a website but would like to have a dedicated page to list your business information online, then a free business profile like this one from InLocal.com is a perfect solution.

Online directories are an easy and inexpensive way to drive some added visitors to your site without having to do any future maintenance once your listings are up. If you want to go one step further, I suggest using an online directory distributor for even more exposure and affordable cost.

PPC stands for pay-per-click. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing allow websites to advertise through the “Sponsored Links/Results”. These Sponsored Results are called pay-per-click ads. These short ads show up on the right-hand side of the search engines and sometimes above the organic or natural results. PPC ads include a title, two-lined description, and display URL. You only pay for the clicks your ad receives, not when it’s simply viewed.

Basically you choose keyword terms that are relevant to your site and then bid on them. You can show up in the search engine results page (SERPs) for most any keyword term that you create. These keyword terms can be as long or short as you wish. Keep in mind that shorter and common keywords will most likely have more competition and higher bids.

As a general rule, the higher your bids, the more traffic you can expect to receive. Some keywords will only require you to bid around a dollar or two to get on the first page. Other popular keywords will have bids reaching the “teens” in dollars for first page placement. Search engines also include a quality score to determine ranking and relevancy.

To help you get the best results for the cheapest price, you must first take into consideration your ideal visitor. If your website promotes your local business, it would be best to include a geographic location within your keyword. This will help lower the amount of competition and bid price.

Let’s use an example; if you live in Portland and your business is renting mountain bikes, it would be best to choose keywords like “Portland mountain bike rental,” or “rent mountain bikes in Portland.” Bidding for these keyword terms will be cheaper than terms like “bike rental” or “mountain bikes” and they will also provide your website with more targeted traffic.

Depending on which search engine you use, PPC ads receive anywhere from 15 to 20% of all search engine clicks. This leaves the rest of the clicks going to the organic results. I’ll explain more about these organic results in part II of this post.

Although PPC can bring in a good amount of traffic, it can also be a time-consuming and pricey marketing option. Unless you’ve got the time and patience, you might want to consider using a PPC agency to handle your paid search. Depending on how much your monthly spend is, a typical agency will charge you around 12 to 20% of that spend for their service.

If you’re interested in trying PPC and you’re looking for new hosting, you can get a $50 Google Adwords credit here: Google $50 credit.

Look for part II of this post next week to learn how SEO and social media can be used to increase your site traffic.

Back in the late 90’s, when Netscape and AOL ruled the Internet, there was a new phenomenon called “Chat Rooms.” Remember? Chat rooms allowed online visitors to connect with each other on a virtual level that had never been known before. I know what you’re thinking, “Chat rooms are SO last decade. Welcome to Web 2.0!”

Better take a look in the mirror Mr. Web 2.0. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, are basically glorified chat rooms. Once again, what began as an unknown form of online interaction has become the biggest phenomenon in the Internet today.

Hard to believe? Let’s take a look at all the similarities between social media and chat rooms:

• Open discussion for everyone, everywhere
• Links shared and followed
• Random usernames and profiles
• Discussion groups and fan clubs of all types
• Facial expressions and emoticons still in use : )

Ironically, the Internet has come full circle with chat rooms of the late 90’s becoming the social media sites of today. If you find yourself asking, “So, have we reached the end of the Internet? Does this mean we’re back to square one?” The answer is “No.”

Although the same communication principle between chat rooms and social media sites applies, it’s obvious that sites like Twitter and Facebook offer more features and have easier ways to connect with one another to share information.

So if you loved chat rooms but just haven’t gotten around to adding yourself on Facebook, or creating a Twitter profile, I invite you to embrace the madness. Chatting with good friends and even complete strangers has never been so easy or fun.

What other similarities or differences do you see between social media sites and chat rooms?

If you’ve figured out how to use social media for business success or if you are getting a lot of traffic through other means you have felt the burden of making sure your site is up 24/7. This can be an arduous task if you don’t have good hosting services.

How do You Find the Right Fit?

With several variations on many hosting packages, finding the best plan for your needs can be difficult. Choosing the best hosting plan is similar to the way some women may choose a pair of jeans.

Their search begins by checking out other women and the way their jeans fit. Then they start combing through ads looking for deals, variations and the right cut. They search from store to store trying on every pair that looks remotely fitting. After enduring the clothing rack gauntlet the ceremonial event of finding the perfect fit arrives. It does not matter how much the perfect jeans cost or how long it takes to get them, if that style makes them look and feel good, they will buy.

The steps to finding the right fit for your hosting account are quite similar, but not totally the same; unless there is some way you think your Web hosting could make you look fat

6 Steps

The following steps will help speed up your process to find exactly what you need whether it’s an upgrade, a whole new account, or confirmation that you choose wisely.

1. Rely upon your online network – Talk to your friends and see what they use. With an attitude of openness for sharing information your online network will be glad to share their experiences, good or bad, about their Web hosting package. They will help you figure out what you really need and want.
2. Visit non-biased review sites – Check out what people outside your network are saying about their Web hosting. Keep in mind that some comments posted anonymously don’t reflect the company in the right light and are no more than a bored teenagers attempt to gain attention.
3. Visit company Web sites and compare packages – Most corporate Web sites will give you all the information you need to know about their hosting packages. Chat with their representatives online or call in and drill them with your list of questions.
4. Can you upgrade if you start to burst at the seams? – Does the hosting provider allow you to upgrade if your site is growing? If it’s your goal, and you do things right, your site will grow and people will come. It is important that you have options to expand when the time comes. In other words, it‘s time to face reality: we all gain a little weight when we get older. If you prepare now it will be a lot less traumatic later.
5. Do they have good technical support? – It is imperative that your hosting company have a good technical support team. Inevitably something will go wrong. Most of the time it is an easy fix and requires them to simply walk you through your mistake. Make sure they’re knowledgeable and accessible.
6. Other features to look for – There are many features tied to hosting services. In my opinion I want (1) a good Web analytics program, (2) a free Web site builder, (3) an email address @mydomain.com and (4) a strong guarantee.

Post your favorite jean and/or Web hosting experience below. Tell us what you do to find the right fit. Who knows, we may even include your story in a future post.

There are many things to take into account when setting up an online store front. Below is a list of some of the major items. You will want to thoughtfully consider and research each of these options before beginning the actual work of getting your site built and running.

Domain Name Registration
A Domain name is one of those must haves for any site. Without it you can not have a site. When you are deciding on a domain name for your site consider the following.

• How easy is it to remember?
• Is it easy to misspell?
• Does it adequately portray your store?
• Is it too long?

You can search for available domain names using this handy tool available at http://www.westhost.com/domainreg/.

Web Hosting Solution
Again, this is a must have in order to get your site online. The basic rule here is to make sure that the plan offers what you need.

• Does it include a ready to install shopping cart solution that meets your needs?
• How is the hosting company? What type of reviews do they get from existing clients?

(If you select a hosting company and plan simply based on the cheapest price more often than not you will get what you pay for when something goes wrong and you need the hosting company to assist you.)

WestHost offers three standard e-commerce oriented hosting plans (Business Value, Business Pro, and usually the current special). You can compare their features and pricing at the link below.
http://www.westhost.com/business-hosting-compare.html

Shopping Cart Solution
The best way to approach this is to start with a list of the features that you would like your shopping cart to have (coupons, product options, etc.). Once you have this list you will know what to look for in the shopping cart software. As you look for a shopping cart solution you will also want to look into what level of support you can expect from the shopping cart company, your hosting company, or your Web designer/developer in regards to the shopping cart.

Another important thing to consider is how flexible your shopping cart is. Can features be added in the future as you grow and need to offer new functionality?

SSL Certificate
If you are taking credit card payments online through your site then this is a must have. Even if you are not, it is most definitely a very strong ‘should have’. An SSL certificate is what secures the personal data of your customers as it is transferred from their computer to your server. Customers will look for your site being secure when you ask them for their personal information. They want to know that you are watching out for their best interest and security.

There are options in selecting your SSL certificate. I am not going to get into all of the details here regarding SSL certificates, but you can read up on them a bit at the links below.
http://members.westhost.com/ssl-web-hosting.html
http://www.westhost.com/e-commerce-hosting.html
http://www.westhost.com/faq/ssl/index.html

Merchant Account/Payment Gateway
The merchant account gives you the ability to take and process credit card payments. Your payment gateway is what connects your merchant account to your Web site. As you shop around for a merchant account and payment gateway you will find that each company’s fees and charges will vary. WestHost has partnered with two different payment processing services to help offer you the best service for your money. You can review these payment processing options here http://www.westhost.com/e-commerce-hosting.html.

The biggest thing when choosing your payment processing solution is to make sure that it is compatible with your chosen shopping cart. Find out what payment gateways your merchant account supports and make sure that the shopping cart you select supports the same gateway.

Shipping Options
This item, along with what tax rates you need to charge, is often overlooked until the last minute.

First of all, are your products shippable? Second, how will they be shipped and how do you want your shipping charges determined in the shopping cart. Determining the best shipping is often a balancing act between not loosing money on shipping and not charging so much that your customers go elsewhere.

Most shopping cart solutions will offer multiple options for determining shipping charges. They will range from a simple table based shipping (based on either total order price or weight) to live rates from the major shipping vendors. If you leave this decision until the cart is ready to go live you might find yourself in a corner with no desirable solution. You want to make sure your chosen shopping cart will support or can be modified to support (usually through the use of modules) the type of shipping setup that you need.

Tax Rates
Most states have their own rules as to who needs to charge tax to whom. You will want to become familiar with these rules so that you do not get into trouble. The other reason for taking this into consideration is to make sure that your shopping cart solution will accommodate the way you need to have your taxes set up to meet your local law requirements.

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Approaching your new e-commerce site from the right angle will help to eliminate headaches along the way. Feel free to add to the list below or give your own insights into setting up an e-commerce Web site.

Please share any tips that you have for setting up an e-commerce site.

Because of the great interest most people have in expressing their opinions about information and products, as well as being able to find other peoples’ opinions, or even just asking simple questions, setting up the ability for users to do so is a great way of attracting more traffic to your site. This can easily be done by setting up forums or a blog. Both forums and blogs give users of your site the opportunity to ask questions, post their opinions, and see what other users have to say about the products and information on your site.

Forum software, such as phpBB, and blogging software, such as WordPress and b2Evolution, is offered as part of most hosting packages to help you in getting this set up. Each application boasts different features to allow you to set up your blog or forum in the way that best suits your needs.

We encourage those of you who are looking to increase the interest your site generates to add a blog or forum to your site to help in getting more people interested and active in using your site.

What if I am a current client am I eligible for this plan? Yes, you are eligible to receive the full benefits this plan has to offer by signing up for a new account.

I already have an account and I want to upgrade to the Holiday Special, am I eligible? Yes, you can upgrade to the Holiday Special by filling out our Add-ons Form and selecting the Holiday Special. Upgrades to the special do not qualify for the free domain registration.

We hope you enjoy this special offer. WestHost wishes you a happy and safe holiday season!

With the help of some basic settings, free plugins, and useful tips you can increase your ranking in most search engines. Below, in no particular order, you will find helpful information on optimizing your WordPress blog for search engines:

• Permalinks: Every WordPress blog has the ability to display permanent links to each post in a variety of ways. By default WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers a few alternative link structures to choose from, or you can even create your own custom link structure to suit your needs.

  The WestHost blog uses the Month and name setting, which will produce links such as http://www.westhost.com/blog/2008/08/post-title-goes-here/. Having a post with a title that matches relevant post content will be a big plus for Search Engine Optimization.

  This setting can be changed in your WordPress admin control panel. Simply click on Settings from the top right and then click on Permalinks from the sub menu that appears below. Once you select what link structure will work best for you, simply click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

• All in One SEO Pack Plugin: This plugin is streamlined for some of the best practices for Wordpress SEO. While it gives you many options the defaults reflect the settings the author recommends using.

  Some features:

  • Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
  • Generates META tags automatically
  • Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
  • You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
  • You can fine-tune everything
  • Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.
  • And more!
• Google XML Sitemaps Plugin: This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like Google, ASK.com, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
• Link related posts: This one sounds simple enough, but many people forget to do this. If you are making a post that may have related info in past posts you’ve made, link to them. This isn’t just helpful to search engines, but to your site visitors as well. Many search engines will analyze what content you are linking to, and when it is a relevant post, it will help increase the credibility of your current post. For example, in this article we have discussed using WordPress plugins to help with search engine optimization, and only a few weeks ago we wrote a post on how to install WordPress plugins.

These are just a few ideas to help get started with optimizing your blog for search engines. As you can see, SEO on any Web site is a constant task, but all of these little things can really add up and pay off big when it comes to search engine rankings for your blog content.

One of the most common mistakes I see people make on their Web site is the result of lack of knowledge or experience with Internet marketing. The mistake is simply the omission of any keyword optimization on the Web site. Any brick-and-mortar business owner understands the concepts of marketing a traditional business using traditional methods, but a substantial portion of these same real-world savvy people generally have little to no experience with Internet marketing, and little idea of how to proceed once they have their Web site online.

Of course by now, most anyone who has a Web site understands the importance of being listed in search engines, but many don’t generally understand how to rank well for their service/product. There are lots of different ways to optimize your Web site by manipulating title tags, header tags, placement of elements on the Web site, navigation, and more. One of the first methods of optimization though is selecting targeted keywords to place on your Web site to “tell” search engines what your Web site is actually about.

Keyword optimization is really the 101 of fine-tuning your Web site to receive traffic. Lacking relevant textual content on your Web site, you will have a very difficult time coming up in search listings on any reputable search engine. If you’re participating in paid keyword advertising, then you’ll pay more for your selected words if you have poorly optimized pages than you would if you had pages that were optimized well. Determining which keywords to target, initially, is as simple as writing down keywords relevant to the product or services you provide. For instance, if you own a bike shop and you’re looking to optimize your Web site with relevant keywords, you might consider initially basic terms like ‘bike’ or ‘bicycles’. The object after generating your list of basic keywords is simply to begin to fine-tune them into more specialized categories. For instance, you might then begin to list keywords relevant to specific types of bikes, such as ‘mountain bikes’, ‘bmx bikes’, ‘road bikes’. Variants of those terms would be beneficial as well, such as substituting ‘bicycles’ for ‘bikes’ in the phrase ‘mountain bikes’. Once you have your keywords in place that are relevant to the content on your particular Web site or landing page, you then pepper your product/service specific pages with those specific keywords to “optimize” that particular page for a keyword, or perhaps a few keywords. Be careful not to use the term so often that it might be considered excessive on that page.

Good keyword optimization is paramount for your Web site; it has substantial affect on your ability to rank in natural/organic listings with all search engines. In addition to that, keyword optimization is also factored into such things as your quality score when purchasing advertising through Google’s Adwords.

To help with this beginning process of optimizing your Web site with keywords, consider using any of the following tools. These tools help you choose keywords by listing such items as competition among the term and search volume, and also variations of the term, which oftentimes leads to keywords that are relevant to your Web site, but that you may not have thought of by yourself.

KeywordDiscovery

Wordtracker

Google Keyword Tool

GoodKeywords

First, before you can attract readers, you need to offer something they will be interested in. A good blog is a lot like a product. If you design and market your product to the target market of “everybody,” chances are you won’t be very successful. A reader’s time is very limited (like everybody else) and they will not aimlessly surf the Web in search of any blog. They will rather, conduct narrow searches for information and topics they are interested in. For example, if your blog is very broad and covers a wide range of topics such as your opinions about politics, pet nutrition, and online trading strategies, you will do better to write three separate blogs under each topic. Broadly-based blogs tend not to be very successful unless you are already a popular author or celebrity and people are simply interested in what you think. For the rest of us, the world isn’t all that interested in what we think about anything and everything.

Second, offer something unique. If you don’t know of any other blogs that cover the same topic you do, go surfing for a few hours and chances are you will find several. Become familiar with the competing blogs and make a list of issues they don’t cover or important points they miss. These blogs may also be a good source for traffic to your blog, don’t be afraid to ask for a link. The bottom line on this point is to be unique. Give readers a reason to visit and bookmark your blog.

Third, there is a new Mozilla browser out there called Flock (www.flock.com) that is specialized to social Web browsing and blogging. You can download a free copy at the address above. Flock is currently in version 1.1 and we have identified a few minor bugs in Flock here at WestHost but nothing serious enough to not use it. If you are a serious blogger or social Web surfer, the features will impress you and make keeping track of your social network and many blogs painless. It may also introduce you to many social Web features and sites you were not aware of.

Promoting your blog
1. Make sure your HTML tags (meta, title and H1) reflect your keywords. These may need to be adjusted for every post to include details of what your blog is talking about.

2. Submit your blog to the major search engines and link your blogs together. Submit your blog posts using your narrowly defined keywords, and make sure you are linking each post to other posts. If you would like to boost traffic for a specific post, go back and edit your previous posts, adding a link to the post you are trying to promote. This generally causes a rise in Google rankings.

3. Submit your site to Blog Index sites and other social network sites. Below is a list to get you started but is by no means comprehensive.

• www.myspace.com
• www.facebook.com
• www.stumbleupon.com
• www.zimbo.com
• www.twitter.com
• www.readburner.com
• www.freewebs.com/blogotion
• www.webloogle.com
• www.myblog2u.com
• feedfury.com
• www.rssmicro.com

4. Subscribe to the leading blogs and industry RSS feeds. This will keep you abreast of what is going on in the vertical market your blog addresses. Responding to hot issues quickly will generate quick traffic to your blog.

5. Submit your articles to industry leading sites and request a link to your blog if the leading site uses it. This is a great way to get known.

6. Lastly but by far the most important, post to your blog at least once a week. The Web is littered with abandoned or seemingly abandoned blogs. Let your readers know you’re still actively posting by frequently adding to your blog. This will also keep you ranked in the many blog engines.