Website Design

A member of WPW, JuniorOnline, posted a link earlier today to an article about SMO (Social Media Optimization). I wonder how many people are aware of the money that can be made with SMO as compared to SEO?

SMO is not about getting a number one ranking on the search engines but more about building a site worth talking about. The end goal is not only getting traffic from forums, blogs, Digg and other Social Media places but building a name for yourself as well.

Our site has some pretty good ranking in the search engines but we make more money from building websites for members of forums like WPW then we do anywhere else.

I’m going to try and explain whats worked for me.

1. I love helping people and have probably built over 100 websites for free, my intention was not to get anything in return but many of these people have posted links to my site as well as sent me family and friends as clients.

If I was making a how to list #1 would be always have your heart in the right place. Post on forums to help people and not to promote your own business.

2. I’ve learned more on forums then anywhere else. Everyone knows more about something then you do. Try and learn something from everyone you meet.

3. Always try and improve your website. You should not be making self promotional post on forums, you’ve got one shot to make the sell and that’s through your website. Always try and improve your design, text, logo and images as well as the way your site operates.

One of the hardest things for me to learn was how to take criticism on my own website. Now I’m glad to have the opportunity to fix something I may not have seen before.

If your going to make money on forums your website needs to be the best, there is a lot of competition on forums.

4. Debates are good but never let them get personal. I had a lot of problems learning how to debate a topic with-out letting it get personal.

5. Bad information, I think a lot of people post bad information just to get people posting on a topic they started. I would never do this, it not only makes you look bad but also causes people to become confused about the topic being talked about.

At the end of the day you end up with links pointing to your site from forums, blogs and other websites talking about something you’ve said or done.

This helps your website rank in the search engines not because of link exchanges or submitting your site to directories but because you were out helping someone.

When your website does rank it’s the best it can be, you’ve been improving it everyday to help sell your product or service, while your competition has been submitting there site to directories and doing link exchanges.

You’ve also been making money from day one instead of worrying about the search engines and were you rank.

People need to forget about the search engines and start learning how to make money online.

The attack was originally aimed at 70 Republican candidates but was scaled back to only 50 because they could not find articles bad enough to link to.

The idea was to find trustworthy sources that had written articles showing the candidates in a bad light then linking to those articles to cause them to appear at the top of the results for the candidates.

Chris Bowers is the one heading up this Google Bombing and feels that other candidates should do this on their own in the future.

Read more here

Playing around on the forum today I saw one of those post that you see every time some one brings up the letters PPC.It goes something like SEO is better.

I’ve seen these post over and over anytime the letters PPC come up but I have to wonder is it really better and has anyone tested it?

I believe that both SEO and PPC are important in building a marketing campaign.

But which is the most successful?

I’ve not done any testing myself but would like to take a look at some of the arguments put up by the SEO guys.

1. You don’t have to worry about click fraud with SEO.

This is only partly true. If you spend the time to find keywords no one else is bidding on then you don’t have to worry about click fraud.

Your also able to prevent your keywords from going across publishers sites, which a lot of the people that are bidding on higher keywords do and is the reason so many people that are building AdSesne sites targeting the higher paying keywords don’t see the higher paying clicks.

Done right click fraud should not even be a concern.

I’d recommend finding someone that deals with PPC campaigns and let them handle yours for you.

I wonder how many times people have spent months trying to rank for a certain keyword to find it was to difficult and go in a different direction?

Whats worst, a month worth of hard work lost or a 10 cent click that want convert?

2. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for FREE?

Not sure how many people have spent the time trying to rank a site on the search engines but SEO is not free.

If you hire someone it can be very expensive and if you do it yourself it can be very time consuming.

3. No bid wars.

If your not going after competitive keywords then you don’t really have to worry about this in PPC either.

4. You’re helping to improve search engine relevancy.

This one is true and I rather like it, so I left it in. Of course your job is about making money online so how relevant the search engines are should not be a concern of yours.
5. People trust organic results more and they look there first!

People do tend to look more at organic results and they tend to look there first but the serious people move on to the PPC ads.

Meaning you cut out a lot of the people that are just looking around with no intentions of making a purchase.

Saving on bandwidth and money.

6. Organic results won’t dim or disappear when a budget runs low.

True but then PPC want dim or disappear on the next update.

Also keep in mind that done right you should be making money with each campaign allowing you to continue month after month with an increase in budget and not a decrease, making this idea a little untrue.

I’m sure Ive missed a couple in there but those are the ones mostly used.

Now lets look at why I think PPC is better.

1. Your able to build your pages for your customers and not for the search engines.
2. Your able to use flash or anything else you want to use.
3. Your able to test different pages to see how they convert traffic into customers.
4. The next update is not going to hurt you.
5. Your able to change keywords any time you want.
6. You have total control over what page your visitor will enter your site.
7. You pay for the visitor and not the ranking

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that organic ranking is a very important part of any marketing campaign, I just don’t believe that it’s better than PPC.

Phil Craven over at www.webworkshop.net had some thoughts on Google.

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When you think about it, Google has had a huge negative impact on the Web.

First they came in with basing the rankings on link text, which, when Google had become the #1 engine, destroyed the natural linking that existed before they came along. It forced everyone to organise links and link text. Web links were fine before they, and subsequently the other engines, ruined it. If you don’t get links, you don’t rank well. If others in your field get more link texts that you, they rank higher than you. They completely destroyed the natural linking of the Web.

Then they became the #1 engine, to the extent that, if you didn’t get traffic from Google, you didn’t get search engine traffic, and that’s still largely true. That would be fine if their results were consistent, but they’ve never been that. They screw with the results so much from time to time, that people have to look into having multiple sites, so that if Google screws one or two of them, there are others still ranking fine, and all is not lost.

Then they come up with AdSense and cause millions of garbage sites, usually with stolen content, to be created just for AdSense.

Does Google want us to organise links that wouldn’t naturally occur – no – they fight against it. Do they want us to create multiple sites for the same things, as some insurance against their screwing things up – no. Do they want millions of garbage sites – no. But they’ve pushed us into doing all of that – filling the Web with unnatural stuff – stuff that even *we* don’t even want to fill it with. Google’s impact on the Web has been mostly very negative. They’ve destroyed what the Web was, and what it was intended to be. They’ve come up with the odd nugget, such as Google Earth, but the nuggest are very minor compared to the destruction that they’ve caused. It’s hard to think of anything positive that they’ve done for the Web.

Are they to blame? No. They are just another business who are trying to make money on the Web. It’s a great shame that they are as successful as they are, because they’ve inadvertantly destroyed the Web in some ways.

Article Title: Search Engine Optimisation Pitfalls
Author: John Hill

On page factors – Is your website search engine friendly?

So you have a website but where is it on Google? Have you
fallen foul of a penalty or have you overlooked one of the many
common search engine optimisation pitfalls when designing your
site?

Understanding what works for the search engines and what
doesn’t when it comes to the content on your website can have a
crucial impact on the relevance and/or page rank of your pages
from a SEO perspective.

Here we highlight common mistakes that could affect your
ranking on Google and other search engines.

Optimising for the correct keywords – Basically ‘Get real’
about what keywords you feel your website can be ranked for. If
you have a ten page website in a highly competitive market then
ranking naturally for the major terms will be close to
impossible. Use the Overture keyword tool together with the
number of results on Google to find out what keywords are
searched for and how many other websites are targeting them. If
you are lucky then you might even find a popular keyword that
not many other websites are optimised for. Alternatively a good
tool for this job is Wordtracker from Rivergold Associates Ltd.

Code validation – If your html code is not valid then this
could make it very difficult or even impossible for a search
engine to separate your page content from your code. If the
search engine cannot see your content then your page will
obviously have no relevance.

Frames – Even though most, if not all, major search engines now
index frames and even with the use of the NOFRAMES tag you run
the risk of your pages being displayed in the search engine
results out of context. As each individual page is indexed
separately, it is likely that your website visitors will not
see your pages within your frame and will effectively be stuck
on the page they arrive at.

If you must use frames then create a ‘Home’ link on each of
your individual content pages and point the link at your
frameset index page.

JavaScript navigation – If you use JavaScript to control your
website navigation then search engine spiders may have problems
crawling your site. If you must use JavaScript then there are
two options available to you:

Use the NOSCRIPT tag to replicate the JavaScript link in
standard HTML. Replicate your JavaScript links as standard HTML
links in the footer of your page.

Flash content – Currently only Google can index Macromedia
Flash files, how much or how little content they see is open to
debate. So until search engine technology is able to handle your
.swf as standard then it would be advisable to avoid the use of
these. Again if you must use Flash then offer a standard HTML
alternative within NOEMBED tags.

Dynamic URLs – Although Google and Yahoo are able to crawl
complicated URLs it is still advisable to keep your URLs simple
and avoid the use of long query strings. Do not including
session IDs in the URL as these can either create a ‘spider
trap’ where the spider indexes the page over and over again or,
at worst, your pages will not get indexed at all. If you do need
to include parameters in the URL then limit them to two and the
number of characters per parameter to ten or less.

The best SEO solution for dynamic URLs is to use Mod-rewrite or
Multiviews on Apache.

No sitemap – A sitemap is the search engine optimisation tool
of choice to ensure every page within your website is indexed
by all search engines. You should link to your site map from,
at least, your homepage but preferably from every page on your
website. If your website contains hundreds of pages then split
the sitemap into several categorised maps and link these all
together. Try and keep the number of links per page on a
sitemap to less than 100.

Excessive links – Excessive links on a given page (Google
recommends having no more than 100) can lower its relevance
and, although it does not result in a ban, this does nothing
for your search engine optimisation strategy.

Be careful who you link to – As you have no control over who
links to your website, incoming links will not harm your rank.
However outbound links from your website to ‘bad
neighbourhoods’ like link farms will harm your ranking.

As a rule ensure as many of your outbound links as possible
link to websites that are topical to your field of business.

About The Author: John Hill – Developer, Designer and SEO
Professional with E-Gain New Media (http://www.e-gain.co.uk)
offering website design, search engine optimisation, PPC
management and online marketing consultancy.