Paid and Organic Search Work Hand in Hand
It’s very common for fans of organic traffic to argue with fans of paid traffic. The two schools of thought are almost diametrically opposed. But are they really so different? Recent research has shown that not only are they not on different sides of the spectrum, but they actually vastly complement one another.
Using both paid and organic search in conjunction results in more than just the sum of its parts. In other words, you’ll get more results from using both together than you would if you just added up the results from both separately.
Taking Two Spots Builds Credibility
People are used to equating brands with having multiple spots. If someone sees that you hold the top spot in both the organic listing and in the paid listings, they automatically assume that your site is more credible. After all, your rank at the top – Twice.
If you search for major brands like Macys, Match.com or Amazon, you’ll find that they almost always appear in both the organic listings and in the search results. People have seen this often enough that they link seeing this dual appearance to having a quality brand.
Writing for Search Engines vs. Writing for People
There are several different ways you can write content. One common distinction is the difference between writing for search engines and writing for human readers. Another common distinction is the difference between timely articles that will likely die out quickly and core forever-content that will apply years down the line.
Knowing who you’re writing for changes both your strategy and writing significantly.
Writing for Search Engines vs. Writing for People 
When you’re writing for search engines, there are a few things you tend to pay attention to. First of all, you want to make sure your exact keyword phrase is in your title tag. You want to make sure you mention the keyword a few times in the article, preferably near the beginning and end and at least once in a subhead.
You might also want to try and tie in a sub-keyword or a related keyword. You can get these related search terms by typing your main keyword into Google and scrolling down to the “related searches” area.
On the other hand, if you’re writing for human beings your goal is to create the absolute best content you possibly can. You won’t create a title with a keyword in it unless it sounded natural. Likewise, you wouldn’t insert keywords into the text unless it sounded natural.
The mentality behind creating a site with a search engine focus versus a content quality focus goes deeper than just keywords. It changes the way you manage your website and it changes how people perceive your site.
In reality, in order for a site to succeed, you need both search engine knowhow as well as a commitment to quality. A lack of either one can cause your site to fail. However, more of a focus on quality is often better in the long run for a website. Sites that try to game the search engines without high quality content will eventually get penalized.
6 Best Practices for Modern SEO
It’s no secret that SEO is changing. Search engines like Google are always on the lookout for better ways to rank websites. Sometimes no major changes are made for years, while at other times change after change is pushed out in rapid succession.
Today we’re in a rapid change period of SEO. First came the Panda update, then Panda 2.0, then an increased emphasis on social media. Using old-fashioned SEO tactics just won’t cut it in today’s competitive and fast changing SEO environment.
Here are six best practices for ranking in the search engines in today’s quick paced SEO world.
Practice #1: Social Cues Matter
Google and especially Bing are paying close attention to social cues. How many people pass along your websites? How many people tweet about you on Twitter? How people have “liked” your page?
Social cues play a significant part in search engine rankings now and experts believe it’ll only get more powerful over time. If you don’t already have a solid social media campaign in place, now is the time to start.
Practice #2: Natural Content vs. Keyword Optimization
Gone are the days when you could easily select a specific keyword to rank for and target it specifically. 
Today, search engines will penalize you if you over-optimize for specific keywords. If you have too many links coming to your site with the same anchor text, if your one keyword is all over your title tags, meta tags and body content, you’re more likely to get penalized than ranked.
Instead of trying to create content around specific keywords, a much better strategy is to craft natural content that’s meant to be read by real human beings.
Practice #3: Unique, Quality Content is Still Key
As search engines get smarter, specific tactics that allow you to gain rankings artificially will fall to the wayside. Many such sites have already been pushed aside in the last few years, and more will soon follow suit.
The only real way to guarantee rankings in the long run is to give the search engines what they want: High quality, unique content that people will love. Read more
10 Weird Things that Influence Customers Online
Sometimes what causes customers to change their behaviours are the strangest things in the world. At times customer psychology might make total sense, but at other times they can seem like a completely different species.
These are ten strange and bizarre things that can influence customers online. These are things you probably wouldn’t think to test for, but they make a difference.
1. The Phone Number They Never Call
A lot of webmasters have found that if they put a phone number on their website, it increases their web conversions.
What’s funny is that very few people ever actually call the number. Just the fact that there is a real person on the other end is enough for them to feel more confident about buying.
2. Putting a Period in the Headline
Sometimes being grammatically correct doesn’t pay. In numerous split tests marketers have found that placing periods in headlines and subheads almost always reduces conversions. Commas sometimes also have the same effect.
A period gets people to stop reading rather than continue reading. Even if it’s grammatically correct, you might want to consider dropping to period.
3. Credibility Buttons
You know those “As Seen on TV” or “Seen on Oprah & MSN” logos? Those do a lot for increasing conversions. 
What’s funny however is that consumers often don’t actually check who’s on the logo. A credibility button that says “As seen on Bing & Google” works almost as well as “As Seen on CNN.” And just about any site on the planet is seen on Bing & Google.
4. Big & Unusual Buy Buttons
When Amazon was first getting started, they tested all kinds of different buttons to see what got the best result. They found that the “Add to Cart” button they use to be most effective.
Today however, everyone is used to the standard buttons. What marketers are finding more and more is that big and unusual buttons tend to do quite well.
5. The Refund Timing
Did you know that the number of refunds you get tends to go down as the refund window goes up? 
If someone only has 30 days to return something, they’re more likely to keep close tabs on when the refund date is. If the refund date is 3 months however, they’re more likely to keep even looser tabs.
Some companies that offer one year refund windows have found that this window actually drastically cuts down refunds. Read more
Top 10 Reasons Why Your Link Requests Are Failing
Link requests can be an incredibly powerful tool that can shoot your rankings from nothing to the top 5 in no time at all. Unfortunately, people often make mistakes throughout the process that keep their link requests from working. Your link request must avoid many pitfalls to have a chance of success, yet few of us fully understand or plan ahead to avoid them.
If your link requests aren’t working, here are ten potential reasons why.
1. Your Subject Line Doesn’t Catch Attention
If you want someone to read your email, you first need to get them to open it. That’s what the subject line is there for.
Your subject line should be gripping and powerful and it should immediately demonstrate what’s in it for them.
2. Contacting Non-Relevant Sites
Another common reason for failure is contacting sites that aren’t really relevant to your website.
Yes, getting backlinks is important. However, Google only really cares about relevant backlinks. Furthermore, if you’re contacting sites that aren’t relevant to your industry, they probably aren’t going to respond.
3. Not Being Link Worthy
A link to your website is essentially a vote for the quality of your website. If you want other 
people to link to you, you first need to have a website that deserves to be linked to.
Make sure you have a well designed website with tons of content before you start asking people to link to you. If you only have a five page website, it’s unlikely someone will want to send their visitors to your site.
4. Not Personalizing Your Requests
Sending link requests is a numbers game. Chances are you’re going to have to send several hundred requests in a successful campaign. However, in order for these requests to work, they need to be personalized.
Each person who gets a contact from you should feel as if you’re talking to them. You should address something unique about their site, product or customer base when you email them. It shouldn’t seem like you’re bulk mailing.
5. Not Following Up
Often time’s people will actually want to give you a link, decide to do so and then forget. 
Remember, it takes effort to give someone a link. They need to open up Dreamweaver, find where the link goes, put in the a href tag, upload the file and make sure it works. (Or the equivalent in WordPress or any other CMS.)
Since it takes effort, people often put it off. Sending just one or two reminder emails could be all it takes to convert these people into a link. Read more
The 3 Most Critical Aspects to Consider When Choosing a Web Hosting Provider
Choosing a good webhosting provider involves balancing a variety of different features with their respective costs. A startup business with very little traffic will need very different web hosting solutions than an established business running complicated software with hundreds of thousands of visitors. Here are some of the most important things you should consider when you’re choosing a web hosting service.
Service
Service is a
n extremely important component of web hosting. If your website goes down and you don’t have an in-house tech, the technical support department of your web hosting company becomes the people you rely on. The technical support department of your web host should be both responsive and knowledgeable. There are a couple ways to tell whether or not your web host fits these criteria.
First you can Google the web host for stories or reviews about their service. While this might not work for smaller hosts, larger hosts will have a deluge of user experiences online for all to read.
Testing responsiveness is easy: Just call their tech support department and see how long it takes to get someone to pick up. Ideally you should get someone within 3 rings. If it takes 30 minutes to get someone on the line, then you probably shouldn’t place your order.
If you really want to put their responsiveness to the test, try calling both during peak hours and in strange hours (E.g. 4am) to see if their 24 hour service truly is 24 hours.
Included Packages
You should check what comes included with your web host. Today’s web hosts usually offer unlimited domains and unlimited email addresses. However, beyond these two basics there are a lot of variations.
First thing to look for is cPanel. cPanel is what gives you an easy to user interface for managing your website. Many web hosts include cPanel for free, though some charge for it.
If you plan on running WordPress, PHPBB or other such common plugins you should also look for a one-click install system, such as Fantastico.
Finally, if you plan on writing your own code or running custom programs make sure the version of PHP, MySQL and/or Apache works with the software you plan on installing.
Your Processing Needs
The kind of hosting package you need to purchase depends in large part on how much processing power you need. Yes, it’s true that most hosting providers give you “unlimited bandwidth” even on a small shared hosting package. However, what’s not unlimited is the processing power you take up on the servers.
The primary limit of servers isn’t bandwidth but processing power. If you’re running an analytics system, custom software, dynamic websites and a variety of other programs that need to process every time a visitor lands on your site and you’re getting tens of thousands of visitors – Then you’re going to seriously tax the system.
With shared hosting, you’re usually sharing your processing power amongst 50 to 400 websites. With a Virtual Private Server (VPS) you’re usually sharing with between 5 to 25 people. With a dedicated server, you’re the only one with access to that computer’s processing power.
Keep in mind that if you’re on a shared server, you’re vulnerable to someone else using too much power causing your site to run slow. For example, if someone else’s site suddenly gets 20,000 people to their site in a day, maxing out the server’s capabilities, your own programs will run very slowly because you don’t have those resources anymore.
At the end of the day you need to make a decision about your own server processing needs, your need for stability and the price you’re willing to pay. Shared hosting is the cheapest option, followed by VPS then a dedicated server. Each gives you more power, but costs more money.
Making Your Decision
Start by choosing whether you want a shared host, a VPS or a dedicated server. Keep in mind that you can always move up. Then look at the potential hosts and see which one(s) have the features you want. Make sure they have the capability to install any software that you might want to use in the future. Then test their technical support by placing a test call to see their response time.
Finally, compare the different levels of pricing between the hosts you’re considering. At this point you can make a fully informed decision as to which host to go with.
As for our recommendations, we’re hosted with LiquidWeb using a dedicated server provided by them and we’d highly recommend them for their super prompt service. If you’re looking for a shared host, apart from LiquidWeb, we’ve also used HostGator who’ve been very good and they have some packages available in the lower price range for people looking to test things out.
Bounce Rate and Exit Rate – What is the Difference and Why They’re Important
Two of the most important metrics in internet marketing are bounce rate and exit rate. Many people find it a bit confusing to know the difference between the two. If you are one of them then this article is for you as it is intended to take the mystery out of your website’s bounce rate and exit rate.
Bounce rate refers to the percentage o
f visitors who view only one page of your website before leaving. In other words, the visitor ‘bounces’ on and off your particular page. Exit rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who leave your site from a given page based on how many visits that the particular page has received. This visitor who leaves or exits could have been on many pages of your website but simply exited on the specific page. An example would be a visitor who has found your site after conducting an organic search, clicks a page inside your site and then leaves from that page.
In contrast, if this visitor simply landed on your site from the organic search and did not visit any internal pages, it would be considered a bounce. Generally speaking, an ideal bounce rate to shoot for is between 20% and 25% provided you are targeting relevant, core keywords. If your bounce rate increases past 35%, you should look at the usability factors of your website. Of course, some search queries do generate high bounce rates such as in the cases of specific informational queries like ‘what flavors are available in Sam’s Coffee?’
A high bounce rate
on a home page is usually an indicator that something is wrong so if you find that most of your visits are only to your homepage and nothing more, you will need to optimize your site by improving its functionality, user-friendliness and/or by providing nicely written content visitors will find very helpful and very informative.
Berry Berry Angry – The Top 13 News Headlines Lashing Blackberry
Dear Blackberry, do you know what the #iPhone said to the #Blackberry? ..#iWork! (Retweet)
Irregular and scattered outages of BB messaging and email service have caused havoc across the globe. These problems don’t seem to be having an end date and have entered US and Canada as well while for Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa it’s the 3rdcontinuous day of hardships and problems.
BBM services which allows users to connect with each other doesn’t seem to work either and to add fuel to the fire, Apple released its iOS5 version yesterday, which offers features almost similar to the BBM services. With sagging sales and competition from Apple, only a miracle can save BB now to restore faith and trust amongst its users. Also lack of information from the top management is another reason for negative word of mouth against BB.
Here the Top 13 headlines lashing at BlackBerry, from across the globe:
Compensation calls as BlackBerry breakdown spreads to US
Angry BlackBerry users have called for compensation as the internet outage that has crippled their smartphones continued through Wednesday and spread to North America and Asia.
RIM scrambles to end global BlackBerry outage
BlackBerry outage blamed on ‘extremely critical’ network failure
Blackberry’s message goes missing
BlackBerry Outage Spreads to U.S., RIM Responds
BlackBerry outages spread to US, Canada
BlackBerry outages spread to North America
RIM: We’re still working on restoring BlackBerry service
For BlackBerry Maker, Crisis Mounts
BlackBerry’s Service Hiccups Spread; Five Continents Affected
Berry berry angry
Blackberry backlash: Slough headquarters in the dock over global phone meltdown
10m users hit by the three days of chaos
BlackBerry services out for third day
BlackBerry’s Response on Facebook
Not very convincing!
Here’s what some twitter users have to say:
Though RIM authorities are working against time to restore the services, this outage of BB services has come as a bolt from the blue for RIM which is already struggling with slow sales, an almost failed tablet and ultimately falling market share.
Given below is a poll of how many of you still have faith in BlackBerry, cast your vote as well!
Also a hilarious video which would go well with what’s happened:
5 Must Do’s to create a “Sticky” Website
Having strong online presence is necessary for any business in the current global scenario. However, just having a website is not enough. In our last post, we discussed the importance of “sticky content” in reducing the bounce rate and thereby improving your search engine rankings.
So while it’s already been established that having a “sticky” website is necessary, the million dollar question pending an answer is, “how do we go about creating sticky content?” Well, we feel that there are 5 absolutely essential must do’s for your site, if it has to stand any chance of being “sticky” enough to engage your users.
1. The content should be authoritative and engaging
Usually people browse the Internet seeking information. They are under the impression that who ever has created the website is an authority on the subject. You need to make sure that your content is well researched. It should provide relevant and in-depth information to the visitor. For example, if you have a website on pet health, you need to ensure that you have all the relevant details about the subject. 
If you just publish a list of pet care products with pricing, the visitor is not likely to spend much time on that page unless you could also save them the trouble of providing enough information about each product. Before working on your content, list all possible questions people may have about the subject. Ensure that your content answers all these questions. It is also important to ensure that you engage your visitors. Most of the time visitors reach the landing page, read the content and move away. It is advisable to have something on the web page which would encourage them to take further action. For example you may help them with how to go about ordering a product. You may even have a poll or a small quiz. However you need to make sure that all these are relevant to the subject.
2. Provide links to reputed sources
It is advisable to pro
vide links to trusted and reputed sources. It adds to the credibility of the website. It alsoconveys to the search engines that you intend to provide the best information to your visitors. For example, if your website is about photos of nature or animals, you may have reference link to websites like the National Geography. To put it simply, your content should convey that you are the authority on the subject. Also allow users to share the information they find on your website. This can be achieved by integrating social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook into the web page.
SEO Basics Revisited: On-page Optimization
It takes more than just good content to get your website ranked well by search engines. Your site has probably not ranked well enough till now only because your site was not very “understandable” to the search engines. Let’s say there has been a communication gap in between the two. However, it is not an irreversible state… this is a very common problem and can easily be corrected with some ‘On-page Optimization’.
Let me start with the basics and tell you what on-page optimization is. On-page Optimization is the process of modifying content and certain html 
tags of your website to make it more search engine friendly. On-page factors are under your control and can be altered by tweaking the content of your website appropriately. The importance of on-page optimization cannot be stressed enough as it is the basis for search engines to understand the theme and relevance of your website.
Don’t worry, it is not as complicated as it may sound. Let me give you a few crucial points on how to do on-page optimization for your site and be super successful!
Let’s say you have a website that sells used cars, www.cars.com. How would you go about optimizing it?
1. Start with keyword research
What is keyword research? Keyword research is the practice of finding relevant search terms and phrases that people use in conducting searches online and determining the keywords most suited to your website.
So let’s start with your site, since your website targets used car buyers, what words would they type in the search engine? Note down your keywords. It probably includes ‘Buy used cars’, ‘Used cars on sale’, ‘Price of used cars’ etc.
After compiling a list of probable keywords/phrases that your target audience might use in the search engines, you can go one step further & use some great keyword research tools available online. You can try a keyword research tool available on SEO Intelligence which compiles keyword data from various sources online & shows you the kind of keywords & phrases people are searching with & their respective search volumes. A sample screenshot can be seen below:
Using the tool, you will hopefully be able to conclude on certain terms that are not too competitive to target & yet are relevant enough to connect you with your target audience. A more detailed explanation on keyword research will be given in another post shortly.
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