Selecting the correct keywords is the essence of any SEO Project. There are many tools available to help you find the most relevant keywords for your website

The Search-based Keyword Tool generates keyword and landing page ideas highly relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you identify additional advertising opportunities that aren’t currently being used in your AdWords ad campaigns.

The main difference between the Search-based Keyword Tool and the Keyword Tool currently used in AdWords is that the former generates keyword ideas based on your website content, and identifies those currently not being used in your AdWords account. Also, the Search-based Keyword Tool provides more detailed data for each keyword, such as category information, suggested bid that may place the ad in the top three spots of a search results page, and ad/search share.

You may observe that some of the parameters such as monthly search volume may vary slightly between the two tools due to different methods of calculations used.

Many people have a frame of mind that since SEO is a slow process you ‘set it and forget it’. But if you have a good site that generates maximum organic search engine traffic then it is the time for you to take the advantage during these tough economic times.

Add More Relevant Content:

Apart from tweaking content you should also add more content to your website. There might be some services or products that you haven’t promoted strongly but now are in strong demand. There may be some offerings you previously only mentioned in a passing sentence or two that now deserve an organic landing page or perhaps several optimized landing pages.

Manage Your Landing Pages:

Research shows that you have less than 10 seconds before a visitor may leave your website. That means that for you to convert your visitor your landing page (the page where your visitor arrives) should be precise, clean and convincing enough for him to stay and explore your site longer. Usability consultancy services offered by experts can help you improve user experience on on your site, consquently leading to better conversions.

Build Quality Links

Quality links drive traffic and enhance the identified credibility of your site in terms of search engines’ perceptions. Hence building quality links is one of the most important factor to popularize your website.

2009 is rapidly approaching and the vital question in front of search engine marketers, SEO consultants, and Internet marketing companies alike are “what’s new” with Google’s algorithms. As SEO is a highly dynamic game but the need for the use of best practices and adaptability are never truer than when trying to stay at the top of Google for desired keywords.  So what‘s next in 2009?

Here is some information about Ballgame of Google SEO 2009 and several tips on how to cope up with ever changing world of Google SEO 2009.

The first thing that needs to be understood is that the way that search engines, such as Google, behave is going to be changing drastically in 2009.The upcoming strategy is that Google is making the search process more geared towards the individual user.  Basic idea for new algorithm is to personalize search results more to each user based on location and past search history. This makes sense for the user but makes it increasingly tricky for SEO consultants to maintain rankings for their clients.

All of the basic best practices will still be important with the new algorithm and should not be overlooked.

Google will also be looking at the IP address and cookies to determine where in the world you are, to geo target you, as well as what country’s websites you frequent most often. This will likely cause more advanced Internet browsers to constantly delete their cookies so that they may obtain a broader search base.

The best thing to do is always focus on the user experience and value of the content.  The only sure ways to keep your website as king is to regularly add new content. It’s still very important to have unique and fresh content on site to keep your website ranking stiff on Google. However, there is a lot of speculation that video and even audio content may be the next big thing for Google. So keep adding good content and consider the use of video and audio where appropriate.

Keywords research and analysis is undoubtedly the foundation of an SEO campaign. Every single strategy and all the modifications we would perform as an effort towards search engine optimization is a derivative and is dependent on the keywords you narrow down upon.

As SEO professionals, we rely heavily on Keyword Research tools and Web Analytics tools in order to discover core keyword phrases, which are commonly used across all of the commercial web search engines. Though we look at a number of factors and user search statistics during this analysis such as the competition, search volumes; there is an entire facet of reason we tend to ignore. This is – the connection between User Search Trends and Usability.

In a purer sense of the term usability means a users reaction to any website. Yes, a positive experience would include ease of use, appeal of the interface etc. but by far Relevancy is the most important factor to consider.

Keyword research tools reveal search behaviors based on which we would rebuild a site’s information architecture. We can also tailor ads and landing pages for Pay per Click marketing to searchers who typically use a single, targeted search engine. But does our web analytics data validate our keyword research? Is the particular keyword phrase appropriate for that type of website? Are we reaching our correct target audience?

As an astute SEO Company we realize that our work is not an exact science, but a combination of keyword research tools, statistical knowledge and intuitive judgment. We should understand when it is appropriate to implement keywords into a site’s information architecture with the perspective of the user as well. We do monitor the effectiveness of keyword-driven traffic via web analytics data. But without the correct user perspective of the target audience Keyword research data and Web analytics search data can be easily misinterpreted.

“Stickiness” is a metric that which can be measured by the number of page views per visitor via search engine traffic and the average time on site. Stickiness of the keyword along with the current global search trends (on a time relative graph) are effective parameters to be used in periodic iterations of Keyword Analyses.

In conclusion the most important aspect of an SEO campaign, the Keyword Research and Analysis, should be carried out with a good balance of the science (the data) and art (the intuition) that is SEO.

Content is detailed information about the products and services you are offering. Generally, useful and interesting content attracts more people to visit our website again and again.

Content is one of important factor from an SEO perspective. A website should have enough keyword-rich content on the homepage describing all the services that you offer. This aspect helps a lot in any search engine rankings. All of the other factors are superfluous if you don’t have good content. Content is the food that the search engine spiders like to gobble up with a voracious appetite. The other items are just the side dishes. You need good content to get decent rankings, but you need the side dishes to become a serious competitor in your market.

Guidelines for content optimization:

• Focus each page around 1 – 2 different keyword phrases by using those phrases throughout the content. Aim for a keyword density of 7 – 10% to emphasize the main keywords to the search engines, and avoid the appearance of “spamming” the engines with excessive repetition of terms.

• Main subject of the site should be described within the first 25-30 words using keyword-rich phrases and sentences because the search engine spiders will weigh the content, within the main body of the page, heavily when indexing the site

• Quality of the content must be good.

• Place most important terms near the top of the page.

• Most relevant area on the page: top-left corner of the page.

• Least relevant area on the page: bottom-right corner.

• Do not use invisible text or links

• Focus on one or two subjects for every web page.

Google, like most of the search engines is constantly making variations to its search engine results page(SERP’S) . It has started showing video results, image search results, shopping results, books and local listings. All these variations have resulted in a drop of traffic for the sites that are listed highly in the organic search engine. So, is Google slowly killing organic searches and giving more preference to its services? Well that’s a question which i cant confidently answer in the affirmative or negative.

However, one variation in the SERPS that has really caught my attention is the aggregation of results for a local query. For e.g. when you search for “search engine optimization india” the first three results are for “search engine optimization india”, however the next three are results for “search engine optimization” and then the normal results continue . These results are clearly demarcated, thus there is no scope for any confusion or manipulation. Have attached the snapshots.

Google.com

Google.co.in

More importantly, these results are shown on google.com and google.in. Thus these results are visible to people across the globe.

Implications:

What this really means that if you rank in the top three for a generic keyword, and if some one appends country name then your site will be displayed. So you necessarily don’t need to spend time and effort to achieve rankings for the particular countries. You just need to focus on the shark and the smaller fish will be targeted automatically. However, if your site does not cater to a global audience then you might end up getting a lot of visitors which eventually don’t convert. Through Analytics one can know for which country keyword is your site getting most visits and if you don’t have a presence in that country then you have a clear idea where your next base should be set up.

This variation however is not reflected for any other search results. So I assume Google is still testing this out and accumulating data before making it a part of all search results. Will keep everyone updated if there any more tweaks to the SERPS.

Recession has hit several sectors including the top PPC spenders like Finance, insurance and travel.

We have been running a PPC campaign in the banking and financial space since over a year now, and this is the first time that we’re seeing a substantial fall in cost per click even when the avg. positions have moved up.

Cost Per Click versus Avg Position - Google Adwords

The average cost per click in the first week of December has been $1.77 for an avg. position of 7.2. Compare this with February 2008, when a cost per click of $1.82 got us a position of 8.6.

There are several other SEM campaigns where we have seen a similar trend allowing us to safely conclude that some semblance of sanity is now returning to the way people have been bidding on their adwords campaigns.

In order for your website to rank well, your internal linking structure is vital to your success. Internal linking plays an important role in website building. It exploits the most important keywords that you have found through Keyword Research. These keywords in your key pages will increase the visibility of those pages for search engines.

This will help you to gain rankings in major search engine as well as help visitors to navigate within your site, which will in turn result in a happier visitor and hopefully more sales.
Search engines can spider all of your pages with the help of internal linking. It also helps by including keywords in the anchor text of the links.

Keep in mind that if you don’t have sound internal linking, your content pages will have a tough time to get indexed in search engines. A well Structured Internally linked site thus has a lot of importance in Search Engine Optimization.
Let me know your views on it.

I was going through the adwords blog a few days ago.  It said that the loading time of a landing page will affect the quality score of a site.
Load time is the amount of time taken for a user to see the landing page after clicking on an ad.

The reasons stated for doing this are:

1.    Users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business.

2.    Users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.
Google says that this change should be made in the next couple of weeks. Load Time evaluations will be added to the Keyword Analysis Page after which there will be a one month notice period to review your site and make necessary adjustments.

After the notice period, the minimum bids for the sites will be adjusted. ie. Keywords with landing pages that load very slowly may get lower Quality Scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bids.