If you do wish your website to work that way then you must establish if you need optimization, or if your site is good enough in that arena already. The best place to begin your research is with your competitors and their placing, in comparison to you, on the internet search engine results listing.

Choose your typical internet search engine, think about your industry and come up with a few quite specific words or phrases that describe loosely what products or services you offer. Then type these into the search engine one at a time and make a note of which of your competitors are usually listed on that first page of results. Also examine each page in turn until you locate your own website details ( if this does not appear after the first 10 pages of results you can stop searching!).

At this position you will be able to assess if your position is a lot lower that the competitors or not. If not, and you are listed up there on page 1 of the results then either you have a quite specific offering, practically no competitors or your site is already optimized to the precise level. Do double check at this point that you have not chosen a very specific keyword or phrase for your trial as this will twist results dramatically and give you a guarantee good Search Engine Placement!

If you have found your website way down the listings, or indeed you have not located your site at all in the first 10 pages then some online promotion in the form of search engine optimization may be worth doing.

There are professional firms out there who will help you to improve your positioning in the search results and this is critical for a decent amount of business. All the firms currently sitting on page one of the search results will attract the attention of at least 85% of the searching clients and provided that they do actually offer what their potential customer wants they will almost definitely get the business. The customer will certainly not be ploughing through page after page of search results when his product is right there on page one.

The Search Engine Optimization Company can ensure that your positioning improves over the course of a month or two and the benefits should then make themselves obvious.

In the case of Bing, scoring a touchdown in its much proclaimed war against King Google, its interface went live immediately. Directly accessible through its very own page rather than on the search engine home page, Bing’s interface also provides a list of tweets which match the keywords specified, in some situations underneath the webpage the tweets actually refer to. They also have a very prominent Twitter trends cloud to show you what people think is hot and what’s not.

Google, meanwhile, merely stated on its company blog that it would be including Twitter returns with search engine results in due course and the posting may well have been just a hasty reaction to the emerging news from Microsoft.

For Internet marketers, these announcements may help to make more sense of the Twitter phenomenon and open up opportunities for those who are fleet of foot and can imagine opportunities and scenarios. By being aware of hot topics and how they could affect your operation or by creating twists that could be applied to generate some publicity, you could instantly post some optimized tweets and appear on the first page of Bing’s Twitter engine results.

Twitter has its own search feature of course but it is not widely used. Unlike their own feature the results displayed on the Bing page display the extended URLs and domain names of referenced pages and not the bit links we are used to seeing within Twitter-dom.

It will be interesting to experiment with these new features and to really unravel the repercussions of what are sure to be significant developments in the world of online business and marketing. We need more than 140 characters to understand the full implications!

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a cutting edge Executive Virtual Assistant Service which assists organisations and enterprising individuals with every detail of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Do you want to peruse some further information on these incredible online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!

More care should be taken than just a search for such companies and then looking at the price of their services, as there may be companies who are not as ethical as others. They may make excessive claims, such as to guarantee to get the client to Search Engine Placement at No.1. Given the competition for top ranking, especially for some clients in a huge marketing area, just getting anywhere on the first page is a great success.

The client needs to be sure that the search engine optimisation company is decent, which could be done by asking them for a list of their customers and then contacting the clients to get their ideas. This would also give some idea of how long they have been operating and how successful they are, however in the real world there could well be a new company that is attempting to break into the SEO market and is very ethical in its practices.

One way of checking how good a SEO company is would be to do a web search to establish where their web site comes in the organic results segment, i.e. the results below those that are sponsored. If it isn’t on page 1 then are they going to do a decent job on the client’s web site?

How long a client web site has been on page 1 will tell you if the Search Engine Optimization Company is using ethical or White Hat techniques to optimise the site content. If the client reports that they were on page 1 but now are way down the results or not showing at all, then this means that the Search Engine Optimization Company has been using unethical or Black Hat processes. These are recognised by the search engines and can lead to the web site being removed from the search index, which means that it will not be shown in search results at all.

White Hat processes offer a long lasting place near the top of the organic results and only severe competition from other clients in the same market place should affect that position, apart from short term Black Hat optimised sites of course.

In short the best way of locating a decent Search Engine Optimization Company is by referral and asking people who are customers or such organisations.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) should at all times be conducted in an ethical way so that the Search Engine Placement of the client website will be on the initial page of a list of organic search engine results. These results will in general come after a list of sponsored sites that are pertinent to the search keyword(s) typed in.

The procedure by which a search engine, e.g. Google, sorts out which web sites are relevant to the keyword(s) submitted for search, is by having previously indexed the pages and stored the results in a database. Thus by looking through the index for the keyword(s) a fast response is assured, usually in less than a second.
The search engines use a program to do the indexing, known as a robot or spider, and these robots have been built and refined to identify unethical practices that they find on web pages, which they might well then exclude from the database. In some cases the web site may be excluded in it’s entirety.

The robot grades the web pages by several methods: The number of times a keyword is found on a page, and the number of times independent sites link to the page.

For clients operating Online Marketing services, it is important that their web sites have longevity as they may well sustain many other clients.

Keywords:
Unethical Practice:
Keyword Stuffing is an unethical exercise of repeating a keyword many times in a web page, in general by using text that is the same colour as the backdrop so that it won’t be viewed by a visitor but will be seen by the robot.
This can also be used for keywords in Meta tags in the html head of the web page code.
Ethical Practice:
Ethical exercises focus on what the user experience will be, so the page text should be significant to the page title and the page title should mirror the link that was used to reach it, as well as the actual content. Content should be cautiously written in good English with no spelling or grammatical errors, and should emphasise the product or service that the page is about. Keywords should be part of the typical flow of text and repeated only as often as sensible reading allows. For keywords in Meta tags a exclusive list of keywords should be used.

Links to the page:
Unethical Practice:
An unethical developer may create what are known as Doorway Pages, where the text is probably just keyword stuffing and a link to the promoted web site.
Ethical Practice:
The ethical method is to create significant pages that can be read by a user and have links to the client site.

If looking for a SEO Company, ascertain which methods they use before committing yourself to their services.

Once it is, sales will not usually increase at once, unless you have a commodity based product. However over the coming weeks visitors numbers to your site will increase seriously. Searchers become farmiliar with seeing you on that first page, book marking you for future reference and sending your link on to colleagues or friends. It is then that the sales or enquiries should start to grow, and it could be anything from one to six months after the success of your search engine placement depending on what type of purchase you are asking clients to make.

With any luck discussions about how quickly the benefits of the online marketing drive would be seen were part of the service received from the Search Engine Optimisation Company. If this was not the case or if these timescales look as if increasing even after getting page one ranking it could be time to evaluate the way you website is working. Re-visit the keywords identified to make sure that you are targeting the precise customers and re-check competitor sites to see if you have been left behind in any area. Online Marketing is a continuous process, if the page one listing is not delivering extra business in to you in the predicted time frame it may be that the service has been below standard; your industry has transformed in the time taken for the campaign to achieve it’s goal; or just that the design of the website is not helpful to bringing that custom in.

It may be the error of the Search Engine Optimisation Company or it may be down to other circumstances either way the best course of action in this situation is to get back in touch with your contact and ask for a detailed explanation.

Some organizations that rely on localized trade from a small area, and sell products or services that are available on every main street like for example a news agents, may feel that they need a website when in reality the only trade they will ever attract is from the local community, who will not be attracted nor their numbers increased, by a website. In reality they probably would not even be aware that the website was there.

Other goods or services plainly cannot be bought from the internet either because they should be seen and felt, or discussed face to face, and so a full blow internet site for these sorts of companies would not be worth the money either.

What could be of some use to these sorts of business is rather a listing or listings on sites such as Yellow Pages providing information on local services, or simply a one page site that indicates the kinds of products on offer and directs the customer to visit the shop or office.

The organizations which do benefit from a wideranging website are the ones with a precise set of products or goods that can easily be detailed on the pages of a website and which will be required by customers on the net and consequently bought. If these organizations can get their site and it’s Search Engine Placement correct then they will hit the jackpot.

It is easy though for these businesses to waste their marketing allowance on the website alone and it seems more tragic as the opportunities are really there. The website may be very well designed and built but if website optimization has not taken place then no new customers will find it, and a large chunk of investment has gone down the drain.

If though a KW3 actually optimizes the site so that it reaches the first page of searches then all the spend will be worthwhile as new customers should come flooding in.

So the internet can be a great place to sell your goods but you must ensure that you first of all have the right product; secondly that you design and build the website in the right way; and finally that you use Online Marketing to ensure that the site can be found on page one of the top search engine rankings. Otherwise large amounts of marketing budget simply disappear down a large black hole.

The cost of a graphic designer for the visuals and then a web designer for the structure can often cost into the thousands of pounds depending on the intricacy of the website. Then there is added to that the cost to the company of personnel taking time to collate the site with the two experts, and then to fill it with all the information about the products or services available. At the end of this process most organizations hope that all bases have been covered, staff can finally get back to their day job and the sales or enquiries should start pouring in.

Alas. The likelihood of you having a product so rare that it has very limited internet competitors is small, the competitor websites are recognized and know to the search engines. They have usually been optimized themselves as the businesses have arrived at the same position as you at some earlier point in time and have taken on board valuable lessons. It therefore really would be a waste of time, money and effort to go to the trouble of getting this far and then simply failing to complete the task.

Your internet site will still probably be practically invisible to new customers looking on the net as it will be listed so far down the Search Engine Placement rankings that no searching customer will ever reach your page. The websites that get hold of 95% of seaching customers are the ones that appear on the first page of the search engine ranking list and these sites achieve it because they have gone on to the final part of the process of Website Optimization.

By using a SEO Company to provide Search Engine Marketing services they should make sure that your well thought out, planned and relatively pricey website is actually accessed by people other than your existing customers. Try to choose a company who will charge you only on delivery of page 1 ranking results as these are the only ones that are useful to your site. Some organizations can claim seemingly impressive improvements to your Search Engine Placement, possibly from a ranking of page 25 originally to a vastly improved page 15 ranking. This unfortunately is still practically useless, think about the last time you trawled through to page 5, especially if you located what you were looking for on page one!

Once you have compiled your comprehensive list of appropriate keywords for your niche, you should prepare articles accordingly. Invest the necessary time to write truly informative pieces which include your keywords, and then ensure that they’re distributed to an array of top notch article directories and blogs across the Internet. Anchor text-based hyperlinks within the article resource boxes should point back to the landing pages, as specified, on your website.

You should keep in mind that you’ll need to concentrate on your website development, in addition to your article content and distribution, as this is just as important in the grand scheme of things. Your website must be adequately optimised to enable you to get the most out of any article marketing campaign, and to ensure this you should concentrate on several areas:

1. Don’t ever forget that the main reason why people visit your webpage is because they’re looking for information. You should not spend too much time on fancy presentation, complex graphics and flash animation, if it detracts from the overall message.

2. The navigation of your website should be clear and easy to understand. Ideally, your visitors should be able to move from one point or page to exactly where they want to be without any confusion, and for the most part, there should be a fairly logical progression with regard to the presentation of your information.

3. In a Perfect World, it’s best to create a separate page for each and every keyword that you’re focussing on in your article marketing campaigns. In this way, the search engines will match the keyword contained in your article’s anchor link with the keyword optimised on each page.

4. Always make sure that the content of the page is as closely related to the content of the article as possible. Remember, that the reader of the article is being encouraged to visit this webpage by the content of the article itself. He or she should be able to continue this process of discovery, which may be leading them further into your sales funnel!

5. To make sure that the search engines recognise the landing page you have specified as relevant, you should make sure that you:

* Put the exact keywords in the title of your page, as well as in the description.

* Repeat the keywords in the body of the content on the page. It is suggested that you do this to no more than a density of 1%, i.e. 5 times within 500 words of content, so that it appears natural.

* The H1 tag is very important and the keywords should appear here too.

* Specify the keyword and related keywords (sometimes known as secondary keywords) within your meta-data keywords tag.

6. There is increasing evidence that Google is placing a lot of emphasis on synonism and latent semantic indexing. This means that they will be looking for the existence of certain words and phrases within your content, relating back to their large databases of information, so they can accurately judge whether your content is indeed relevant to your primary keywords.

As you roll out your article marketing campaign, there’s a lot to concentrate on. Make the most of each article that you compose and distribute by ensuring that every element of your campaign is optimised. To make sure that you do not miss any of these crucial steps, consider using a Virtual Assistant to make the most of your initiative.

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, an Executive Virtual Assistant who assists businesses and individuals with achieving their professional goals. Want to find out more about online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!

It seems that quite a few people consider MySpace to have been the one who started this trend, but recently, the buzz has all been directed at Facebook, and to a large number of people MySpace has become “so 2006.” At this point, Facebook is the number one social media site around. Its stunning dominance seems to originate from its dynamic platform and its clean and organised appearance; many individuals also even see it as more upscale than MySpace.

Facebook was developed by Mark Zuckerburg, Justin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, who were students and room-mates at the prestigious Harvard University. The site was initially intended for use by college students, but it quickly expanded nationwide through the school system, and eventually to everyone else. Zuckerberg’s original “Facemash” has now expanded to encompass more than 200 million users. Incredibly enough, there are even some people who put its present value at around $5 billion.

Facebook is, quite simply, networking at its very best. Not only can you use the platform to interact with family and friends, but from an online business point of view, it’s great for marketing as well.

The first thing that you should apply yourself toward as an internet marketer is to create a first-rate profile. You should give this a great deal of consideration as your profile is essential to your success in this venture. Incorporate a branding strategy, but make sure that you understand what environment you’re working in. Within social networking of any kind, commercial branding and marketing has to maintain a far more subtle approach, and it shouldn’t ever be “in your face”.

Facebook allows you to expand your network of friends infinitely. Begin by building your network up with your current friends, and then try and connect with the establish contacts of “friends of friends”. You’ll soon realise that with a sustained effort, your contact list will increase rapidly. Make sure that you never spam, and always temper your enthusiasm. Build quality relationships – not just a long list of faces.

Within Facebook you will find that there are many, many online groups and there will certainly be groups which are associated with what you do. Every type of professional service provider has a group of some kind, and you should belong to all of these in your field. You can make tons of contacts this way.

If you cannot find a Facebook group that fits your vision, you can always create your own. You will need to be very proactive here to solicit members, and you should publish articles and give a lot of good information away, essentially for free, to create some buzz. You can create a Facebook “fan” page, especially if you find that your original page has reached its limit for membership, which is currently 2000. The fan page creates an additional subtle marketing opportunity, and it’s all a part of the process of getting people into your sales funnel and ultimately to your checkout.

If you have a blog or some form of website development which you regularly update this with great information, tips, tricks, solutions, assistance and generally good stuff – then you should syndicate it so that your posts appear on your Facebook profile page. The goal is to get as much exposure as you can, which in turn of course converts to readers, visitors and potential sales.

If you’re holding any events or creating a milestone of any kind within your business, you should create an event page within Facebook. By sending an open invitation, you solicit people to go to your events page and find out what’s going on, and they can then advise their friends, creating even further exposure.

Facebook should be an integral part of your business strategy, but you must also have your “fun” face on when you’re there. Warning – Facebook is addictive (not to me of course – but to many), so don’t let it take over your marketing programs altogether!

Michelle Dale is The Managing Director of Virtual Miss Friday, a cutting edge Executive Virtual Assistant Service which assists organisations and enterprising individuals with every detail of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Do you want to peruse some further information on these incredible online business building success strategies? Contact VMF Now!