Content Vs. Design
Jul 18 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in HTML, CSS, Design, Marketing, SEO
I will offer some opinions here, and you can take them or leave them. However, due to my experience (and actual tests run), I hope you will take what I have to say to heart! :-)
What is it that gets visitors to your Web site to stay there, browsing, looking and buying? Is it the design? Is it the layout? No, it’s the CONTENT. The written content keeps your visitors on your site and viewing your pages.
What causes your visitors to purchase from you? The content. They read, they read some more, they find good points that creates enough interest for them to purchase.
Let’s imagine you go to a Web site and the design is wonderful. Fancy, creative graphics. It really wows you. But the content is boring, or hard to understand, or it simply doesn’t capture your interest. Will you be encouraged to buy from them?
Another important question: Will you come back? It’s extremely doubtful. Maybe you’ll go back to get that wow effect from the design again, but not because of the content. Right?
On the other hand, if you go to a site that provides excellent content (like articles or informational text) you will likely bookmark that page. You will probably share that site with others.
Maybe this page with fantastic content has just a basic design, or an ugly default WordPress template. But you still bookmark and share it. You are likely to return for a visit. And this is because there is content that is more than interesting to read and that holds your attention.
Finding a template for a Web page should be a fast and painless process. Google doesn’t care about your design, they only care about the written content and the human behavior based on that content.
My opinion is that folks spend too much time on the design of their site, modifying the template, etc… way too much time. They miss the boat in this regard. What they should concentrate on is having great content that captures interest and encourages people to return.
High quality content goes a long way to getting your visitors to come and stay. You will attract many more visitors through the search engines. You will SELL your product because of that.
Obviously, the above wouldn’t necessarily apply to those selling templates or promoting design services… ;-)
And I can’t say I am completely innocent when it’s come to getting carried away sometimes with the design. But I am ridding myself of that compulsion step by step!
—Marcus Hochstadt
13 CommentsPermalink Tags: design, SEO
Increase Ranking With Contextual Linking
Jun 30 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in SEO
Do you have a “link page” on your Web site? Well, think about changing. A better and more effective way to have quality links on your page is by using contextual linking.
What is contextual linking, you might ask? Well, the answer is simple… it’s adding links that are embedded in your existing content-rich pages.
Forget those pages where you’ve just added a whole bunch of links to various companies. Even dividing them into industries doesn’t help (unless your Web site happens to be a directory). There’s no CONTENT on these pages to make the search engines happy. And who is going to voluntarily visit your link page? Probably nobody; conduct a survey and you shall see… ;-)
A simple text link will normally consist of a few anchor words, with a link to that other Web site. They aren’t within actual content on the page. But a context link will exist within lots of text that is relevant.
The number of links within that text should not be overwhelming to the visitor. And it’s important to know that these contextual links are particularly high quality. Search engines will rate them as such because of the content of your pages, as well as rating the quality of the content of the pages that your link links to.
You can ask others to add your link into their pages by already having their link on your page, but you will find that if you are not indexed in the major search engines, they will refuse to reciprocate. Why? Because no one is going to find that link. Ensure you are indexed. How to find out?
Type in your Web site address into Google. Does your site come up? If so, you’re indexed.
Also, be sure that the site you are asking to contain your link comes up as being indexed. Place their Web site URL into Google as well. If they aren’t indexed, forget about them for now.
Having contextual links has become a viable way to drive traffic to your site. You’ll find targeted traffic will arrive, eager to see what you have available.
Remember: Relevant text is important. You don’t want to be selling services as an auto mechanic and have links to laser printer sales companies. But if you have links to businesses that sell auto parts or cars or tires… well, you see what I mean.
Here’s an example of how it could work. Let’s say you have a Web site where you’re writing about your travel experiences. Here’s a part of your possible content and a contextual link…
The last time I traveled to Europe I booked my ticket to Germany at TicketsFor99.com.
That “ticket to Germany at TicketsFor99.com” is an in-context text link, a link within and relevant to the content.
Doing contextual linking will set you up to get more quality traffic and thus more sales. Do it!
—Marcus Hochstadt
17 CommentsPermalink Tags: link building, SEO
SEO vs. Design
Jun 6 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in SEO
There’s a constant debate between designers and search engine optimizers… and maybe you can guess what it is! It’s the war between including fancy designs with images versus focusing on providing relevant text.
Web designers usually want to avoid lots of text that distracts from their aesthetic page and from their design standing out to visitors. They can get carried away with very fancy graphics and all sorts of things.
On the other side of the coin, SEOers know that just appearance isn’t the only characteristic of a good site, and they, therefore, try to achieve plenty of content that will work the magic of converting visitors into paying customers.
To be clear, design really focuses on the appearance of the pages. What sort of graphics you have on your pages, how they are laid out, and of course, the color schemes and such. That’s your design.
SEOers are looking to the optimization of your site. They focus on the quality of the text as well as the quantity. The copy also has to attract search engines. If search engines don’t find your page, you won’t have any visitors to your pages at all (unless you pay for traffic)… therefore, no one to admire the design!
You will have to get the important concept here. It’s vital that visitors receive your sales message. When you have an Internet business, you’ll have to ask yourself, “What will work the best so I get visitors, and once they arrive on my site, what will work best to have those visitors actually buy my product or service?”
Yes, like Iron Man, you can become powerful and in a causative position over the results your website gets. You have to concentrate on optimization. There isn’t such a thing as a complete balance in design and optimization. Not in this competitive world.
Simplicity in design is really the best way to go… in fact “overdoing” this simplicity. You can keep to black for your fonts and lines and use white for background. That simple. At the end of the day, it’s the content that will keep your site interesting to visitors.
When you do use images, use alt tags, title attributes, and targeted file names to optimize them for the Search Engines. But you must still realize that the old saying holds true, “Content is King!” You have to ensure that the copy on your pages contains keywords in the correct density… relevant copy too, I might add. ;-) This is where you should focus most of your attention.
If your Internet business is invisible to search engines, it’s like having a big store on a main street in town but leaving the doors locked and the windows covered. If an excellent message is lacking, people may find your site, but they will come and then go. It’s too easy for visitors to go shop somewhere else. They click the back button and they’re gone!
Online marketing is vital, and SEO is a large part of that. Without relevant, exciting and informative content, you will just sit in the dark, unvisited and unloved. Your shop will remain closed, virtually and every other way.
Paying thousands to have your site designed doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’ll be the newest and best on the Web, getting thousands of visitors weekly… or daily.
The two subjects of design and SEO don’t have to be in conflict. The visual appearance can be pleasing with simple design. It will load quickly and be easier to navigate without all the additional photos, logos, and other distracting graphics. Besides, rather than having your visitors stare at the design, make them read the actual content.
Bottom line, the content is what will keep visitors coming back, and ultimately doing business with you!
—Marcus Hochstadt
14 CommentsPermalink Tags: design, SEO
How To Choose A Good Domain Name
Feb 29 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in SEO, Traffic Generation
Ever wondered how to choose the right domain name for your Internet business?
Choosing a good domain name can make us gripe especially in terms of SEO. What I mean is when you want to have your Site Concept keyword in it as well. Depending on your site’s theme, the domain name may become very long, making it difficult to remember properly.
Let’s say you target the audience of tennis, therefore your Site Concept keyword (i.e., the keyword you focus on on your site) may be tennis. tennis.com is already taken, so you end up searching for a good alternative. And to decide upon that alternative may take a little while.
Here are the rules I follow when searching for profitable domain names in my Internet business endeavors…
- If possible, include your Site Concept keyword. It shall give you a 20% ranking nudge in terms of SEO.
- Keep the domain name as short as possible. Every character counts (more often than not!)
- OK, I agree it depends on your Site Concept keyword, because when that is “bed and breakfast” you already have three words—15 characters—plus any additional characters that make the name fairly long already. Still, keep it as short as possible or word of mouth may not work so well.
- Use a memorable, perhaps even remarkable name. Is it easy to remember? Or do people ask you several times to repeat the name?
- Is it easy to spell? The more difficult it is to spell the more names you’ll need to register (in order to “get them all”.) Speaking of which…
- How many equivalents does it “contain”? For a good live example… You do know the most popular video sharing site, don’t you? Yes, youtube.com. Now, did you ever happen to enter utube.com instead? I assume lots of people do. Go to alexa.com and take a look at utube.com’s 3-year history graph. (Link goes to alexa; once there click on the “3y” link in the history graph.) Speaks volumes, doesn’t it? So make sure you register the “misspelled versions,” too.
- Does your name stand out from the name crowd? Does it have some sort of uniqueness? Google was fairly unknown five years ago. Nowadays?
- Does the name make people click through to the site? Is it “attractive”? Are they curious to know what’s behind it?
- Is it “you”? Does the domain name describe you in some way?
- Does the name convey a clear message? Does it give them an idea of what to expect once they clicked?
- If you use 2 or more words, register both the hyphenated and the non-hyphenated version (using the non-hyphenated version for the content site.)
- The best TLDs regarded by surfers are .com, .org, or .net.
Here’s an Exercise…
With three (or more) possible names in hand, ask 20 people for their opinions in terms of memorability, uniqueness, and meaningfulness.
The results may surprise you. ;-)
(It took me 2-3 months before I decided upon MyGermanCity.com. I had a bunch of shorter names, but MyGermanCity.com surpassed them all big time.)
Using Two Domain Names?
Some folks say one could register a longer name for the Search Engines and a short “non-keyword” name for use on business cards and in e-mail.
Hmm, just imagine this…
You hand out the shorter name that has no content but simply brings visitors to the longer SE friendly name with all the content. Though, these folks may only be aware of the shorter name, so they start linking to that one. What happens?
SEs assign PageRank (PR) values to that shorter name. Although it has no content, yet still, folks link to it. (SEs seems to love honest human activities like this.)
With this in mind, I would use only one domain name in both cases so I don’t miss out on any “link love gifts.”
Bottom Line?
Keep it short. Make it memorable. Make people want to click through.
The most important of all though is to do proper market and keyword research BEFORE you register a domain name for your Internet business!
—Marcus Hochstadt
17 CommentsPermalink Tags: domain name, keyword, SEO
Getting Your Pages Indexed In A Matter Of Hours
Jan 25 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in SEO, Tutorials
I regularly see folks putting up Web sites but don’t know how to get the pages indexed by the Search Engines. Some think the SEs will somehow magically find all of them somewhere someday.
I haven’t come across that magic yet.
Still, there are several methods available for getting your pages indexed in a matter of hours. Today, I’m going to talk about one of them…
Sitemap files
Although they might have heard of them somehow somewhere, there are still lots of Webmasters out there that don not implement an XML Sitemap file to their sites. It’s a pity because Search Engines LOVE them.
I’m not talking about a Sitemap for your human visitors; I’m talking about one created particularly for the SEs, in a predefined format. For more details see www.sitemaps.org.
Google initially created this concept, then worked with Yahoo!, Ask and Microsoft to make it a standard protocol that all four Search Engines can use.
Now, when you run your Internet business with content rich Web sites, there are tools available online which create a Sitemap file for you. Just go to Google and enter “sitemaps generator” or something similar and you’ll find plenty.
If you own a blog there is a WordPress Google Sitemaps plugin available that I personally use and recommend. It updates your Sitemap file automatically whenever you update an old or publish a new post or page. Very neat.
Once you’ve set everything up you are ready to submit your Sitemap file(s) to the four big SEs. Since this is a very helpful step for your Internet business, I took the time and compiled the below how-to guide for you. These are the exact same steps I follow myself in order to get my sites and pages indexed in a matter of hours.
Alright, here we go…
- Sign up to Google Webmaster Tools and/or go straight to Google Sitemaps Login.
- Submit you Site URL by adding your domain name(s) to the Webmaster Tools Dashboard.
- Optional: If you want to take advantage of Google’s comprehensive statistics and crawl reports, go ahead and “Verify your site.” (A yellow “Next Step” box shall appear near the top at this moment.)
- Next, click on the “Sitemaps” link in the NavBar on left hand side, then on “Add Sitemap.”
- In the drop-down that appears, choose “Add General Web Sitemap.”
- Enter the Sitemap’s URL into the box that says “My Sitemap URL is:” (though without the domain name and the http:// prefix since it’s already there.)
- If you have more than one Web site to manage and Sitemap file to submit, click on the “Dashboard” link on top to submit and manage your other sites.
Yahoo!
- Go to the Yahoo! Site Explorer and submit your home page (first field, where it says “Submit a Website”)
- When you’re done, go back to the Yahoo! Site Explorer and submit your Sitemap file (second field, where it says “Submit Site Feed”)
- Click on the green “Authenticate” button in the upper right to certify ownership. Whether you added a META tag or uploaded a file, remember to keep either version active for as long as you manage the site. Who knows… If you remove it, Yahoo! might simply go ahead and dismiss your site from their index. Not a good thing, is it.. ;-)
- If you have more than one site to manage and Sitemap file to submit, click on the “Site Explorer Home” link on top to submit and manage your other sites.
- Optional: Check back after a day or two to see the status of the authentification; hence whether there are any issues.
Live
- Go to the Live Search Webmaster Central. If you don’t have an MSN or Live account yet, create one and then sign in.
- Click on the “Add a Site” button.
- Enter the full URL of the site you’re about to manage, and below that enter the full URL of the respective Sitemap file.
- Choose which method you’re going to use for ownership verification. (More details are going to appear once you clicked on the “Submit” button.)
- Enter your contact info. (Don’t know if this is obligatory, but I entered it anyway; maybe kind of verification v.2 ;-)
- Now you get to see details for the verification method you chose a step before. Once you’ve uploaded the XML file or put the META tag to your site’s home page, click “OK”. Again, keep the file or the META tag active for as long as you own or manage that site.
- Want to add more sites? Click on the “Add a Site” button. If you don’t see that button, click on the “See all your websites” link on right hand side and it shall appear.
Ask
Unfortunately, Ask does not provide a “Webmaster Central” kind of thing (yet) so you cannot control whether they captured your Sitemap file(s) or to have other neat little tools. They provide a foolproof 10-second method though. Here we go…
1) Copy and paste the following URL into a plain text editor (ex., NotePad, TextEdit)…
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//
2) See that http%3A// at its end? Put the Sitemap file’s URL after it but without the http://
So the final URL should look like this…
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
(I used “sitemap.xml” as the example file name. Though, I recommend you use another file name, one that can not be easily guessed; ex., 3KLfu54.xml.)
3) Now paste that line into your browser’s address bar and hit enter. Ask will then confirm the success of your Sitemap submission. If not, check the correctness of the URL again. (Ex., are there any spaces before, between, or at the end; any line breaks, etc.)
–
Phew; that’s it!
You’ve now successfully submitted your Sitemap file(s) to the four big Search Engines Boys! This shall help pumping up your Internet business substantially. Again, these four cover 95% of all searches performed online.
NOTE: Submitting your Sitemap file to the SEs does not warrant high rankings, nor does it guarantee to get all pages indexed in “5 minutes.” Still, it does help getting indexed much faster and a lot more pages though. ;-)
Let me know how it goes?
—Marcus Hochstadt
11 CommentsPermalink Tags: SEO, sitemap file
To How Many Search Engines Should I Submit My Site?
Jan 24 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in SEO
This is a question that comes up often… “To how many Search Engines should I submit my site?”
There are millions of searches being performed each and every day. Getting sites indexed in order to receive free traffic from the SEs is one crucial step towards becoming free in your Internet business endeavors.
So what’s the answer? To how many?
- Yahoo!
- Live (MSN)
- Ask
These are the “Search Engine Boys” if you so will. Yes, only four. Not a silly 30,000, 3,000 or 300, only 4 (four). These four cover 95% of all searches performed online. All others are either aggregators (i.e., use one of the above SE’s technology) or are just too insignificant in importance.
As an old saying goes, better focus on the 20% that cover 80% of the market. (Here it’s rather focusing on the 5% that cover 95%.)
That means, whenever you get an offer such as “we’ll submit your site to 300+ Search Engines” — it might sound great but forget it! You do more harm than good to your site’s health.
“But where exactly do I submit my site(s) to?” you ask? I knew you would. ;-)
OK, here we go…
Yahoo!
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
Live/MSN
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Ask
None.
Oops! Why “none”? They say they will discover your site through links from other sites to yours.
Now, it may take up to several months until they indexed your site. Yup, that much. I do have a much faster method though.
Do you want to know how to get your site(s) indexed in as little as 48 hours (or less)?
Stay tuned. I’m going to post that tutorial soon. :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
7 CommentsPermalink Tags: SEO, submit site
RaSof And Blog SEO
Jan 23 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Reviews
Have you ever been looking for how to “SEO” your Internet business blog? Ever heard of RaSof? Are you wondering what the heck you have to do in order to get and retain Top 10 rankings at the Search Engines for whatever keyword phrase?
Lots of questions, I know, “but what the hell is RaSof anyway?”
It was James Brausch who generously gave me a Christmas Gift last year when I got to know RaSof. (James, I really appreciate it and am continuously benefiting from it. Again, thank you very much.)
As James says, in terms of ranking factors, a proper domain name covers 20%, off-page criteria are 40%, and the source code of your pages (i.e. “on-page criteria”) cover the remaining 40% importance.
James Brausch is still offering RaSof for a mere $100/mo (instead of $1,000).
With the knowledge I already had when launching this blog, and with the new insights I got with his Christmas gift, I now start getting more and more visitors from Google. My blog does not rank in the Top 10 for the term “internet business” yet, but I’m confident sometime this year it will. (And frankly, there are more high profile keywords available than internet business alone.)
When I first entered my blog’s URL into RaSof it displayed a score of 545. Last week it showed a whopping 1,300+. (Let’s see when Google recognizes this value… ;-)
I’m going to post more about improving your on-page criteria in the future. Meanwhile, if you want to pump up your Internet business and earn top rankings at the SEs, I encourage you to subscribe to RaSof while it’s still available for this price.
—Marcus Hochstadt
7 CommentsPermalink Tags: rasof, SEO
RECENT THOUGHTS