Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Blog » SEO Tips

How well do you know your target audience?

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:52:58 +0000

What is the first step in creating a business website? Is it the designing of the layout? Creation of content? Insertion of images and videos? No. To do these all steps the first thing you need to decide is who you are doing all these for. In other words, you have to find out who your target audience is. Suppose you are planning on an online bookshop, you would know that your target audience is a reading group. So, is it enough that you make a website with only some images of many books and their prices? Not at all. Your audience would want to know a thing or two about the books, their authors, their reviews, previous customers’ comments, etc. In short, you need to give them a lot more information than just a few images.

Recognizing your target audience is crucial to your business much more than you realize. Doing a little bit of research to know this is going to be absolutely worth your time. Here are a few details that you need to know about your prospective visitors aka customers:

Which locality are they from?
What is their age range?
What language do they speak?
What information would your site visitors want to know?
What would be their online behaviour?
What kind of products are they looking for?

Once you decide and research on the target audience you could design your website with all these details in mind. Make sure you have an inviting layout that would encourage the visitors to take a tour further in the site. The content has to appeal to a broad audience and at the same time cater to the specific purpose the website was built for. Once the website is created you could give it a “mom’s test” as formulated by Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide.

Mom’s test is where you get someone, probably your mom, who represents the user community to browse and purchase a product from a website. Get her in front of the monitor and ask her to purchase a product or fill up an enquiry form. There needn’t be any instructions other than the main goal. Now check out what are her steps to reach there.

Which is the search engine she uses to browse?
Which are keywords she uses to find what she wants?
What does she do when she enters a website?
Which page does she go to when she enters the site?
Does she find it difficult to find the product she wants?
Does she come back to the search page quickly?
Does she go through the product specifications or descriptions carefully?
Does she check out other related products?
How easily does she find the conversion button?
Are the payment and delivery conditions clear to her while purchasing?

If you find her struggling with any of these steps you know you have to rework on your site to make it friendlier for the users. Most often, your users are going to be just like that. They would know just to use the Internet and click the button that they can see easily. This makes it necessary for you to keep all the important buttons right under the visibility span of the visitors.

Next time you feel that you are not getting enough of conversions in spite of doing everything possible to make the website inviting and visible, check whether you are providing exactly what your target audience is looking for. Or, make sure your analysis of your target audience is accurate. Once you do that you could see the increase in the number of conversions and thus an amazing growth in your business.

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Creating effective tweets is not a myth

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:27:10 +0000

When Twitter was launched in 2006 it was meant to be used for a small group of people. However, within a couple of years it became such a rage that it is sometimes described as the “sms of the Internet”. It got so much popularity worldwide that now it enjoys 100 million users. It didn’t take much time since its launch to find its scope for marketing. Now several big and small businesses use Twitter to do their marketing – huge, established businesses to retain their customers and small businesses to find new customers.

It’s a miracle how a small tweet that has to be confined to 140 characters can bring so much revenue. But the truth is there are companies and businesses that find their customers through Twitter. And with some knack and common sense you can also find the customers that you are searching for through Twitter. Here are some factors that you can remember while tweeting to get more followers and eventually more customers:

Have a professional profile that is impressive as well

When you are tweeting for business the impression you give has to be the best. This profile is what represents your business online. Keep a profile that is informative, impressive and professional. Add your company website in the profile so that users who check your profile get to know your products or services. Adding your company logo also gives you an identity of your own in Twitter.

Have clarity in what you say

Because you are forced to say what you want in 140 characters, you might give your messages in short forms, abbreviations or just some random mix of words with hidden meanings. This is not going to help when others check your tweets. Your followers are not going to spend time decoding what you have said. Hence, be clear and precise.

Provide information

There is no point tweeting just anything so that you could stay in the loop. Provide information for that is what your followers want and that is why they are following you. Tell them about your latest products or events. Tell them what their next action should be. Tell them why they should buy from you. These details are what followers are looking from you.

Be brief

Brevity is of course the only option you have in Twitter as your characters are limited. In fact, it is even better if you can bring it down to 120 as in case someone wants to reply, their message wouldn’t be cut short with your name coming in front of the reply. Also, make sure you shorten your links using shortening tools that you can find plenty on the Internet.

Keywords

When users search for you they use keywords that are related to business. Hence, make sure you use the important business keywords in your tweets that let users find you fast.

Provide user friendly links

It is common practice to add a link in your tweet when you have something descriptive to tweet. Make sure this link is not directed to a blank page or a non-existing page. It should load fast. Similarly, the content in the page that the link leads to should be easy and interesting to read.

Give importance to your followers

If you go on tweeting only about what you do or what you are planning to do, followers would lose interest very soon. Make sure you are talking about them too. Add “you” in all your tweets. Tell them why they should listen to you and what is their benefit if they do so. Provide space for them to reply with their queries by shortening your tweet to 120 characters or lesser.

Do not protect your tweets

For your personal account protecting your tweets is sensible. However, for your business that would be stupidity as the main reason for your presence in Twitter is spreading your word. So keep your tweets open for users to find them and follow them.

Today, absence in Twitter puts you down in the business world when your competitors move up higher due to their efficient social media marketing. So, what are you waiting for? Create an impressive profile in Twitter and watch your business grow. Happy tweeting!

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Relevance of Yahoo directory submission

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:08:19 +0000

Being ranked high and positioned in the front in Yahoo has its own advantages. Even though the popularity of Google eclipses that of Yahoo, there are quite a lot of people who actually loves Yahoo as a search engine besides using its email service. And as far as submitting in the directory of Yahoo is concerned, it can bring advantages completely worth the money that you pay for.

So what is Yahoo directory?

It is a huge human created and managed library of websites, divided into different categories and sub categories. By making an annual payment of $299 you can enlist your website in yahoo directory under the category which your website falls in.

The link that your website gains from enlisting in Yahoo directory does nothing more than adding to another back link. Still, yahoo directory is beneficial to a website in many ways. How so? Let’s check out.

Benefits of Yahoo directory

Visibility

For a new website, a position in Yahoo directory adds to its exposure. It is seen by the human visitors as well as Yahoo Slurp, especially if the slurp is finding it difficult to crawl your site. In other words, Yahoo directories enhances your web presence.

Help in organic listing

Yahoo has never admitted this, but from the existing users, the hint is that being in the directory helps a website to be included in the organic listing of Yahoo. Though the impact is not very high, it indeed creates an effect indirectly.

Quality inbound link

Yahoo directory also serves as an inbound link to your site depending on your position and the category in which you are positioned.

Yahoo directory is not as relevant as it used to be. Still, it brings the necessary visibility to a new website. And if you are careful of the category in which you place your website, you can reap the benefits you had in mind while enlisting.

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Internal linking and SEO

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:38:14 +0000

When it comes to the internal links and navigation of a website, many webmasters forget their real relevance and consider them only as a necessary factor that link pages and nothing more. There are not many numbers of discussions about the importance of internal linking when compared to external linking. However, internal linking has a huge relevance from SEO perspective.

The biggest advantage of internal linking is that it is under your control and you can use it the way you want. They tell the search engines how the content of each page in your website is relevant to the site. Here are a few of the common internal links found in a website. You can also find how each of them is relevant to the website.

Internal text links

Text, as you know, is mightier than images when it comes to SEO. Image links, Javascript links, image map links – none of these are as effective as text links.

Category/subcategory links

Any website would have categories and sub categories, though the hierarchy might change depending on the kind of website. It shows the search engines how you want to group your content.

Related groups links

This is important in the case of ecommerce or news websites that have advantage in showing the related products or related stories links. It increases the usability as well as topical relevance of the page.

Single item links

Single items in a website have their own importance. However, in the eyes of the search engines they gain their importance not when they are given randomly here and there but when they are given under a proper category, title, etc.

Sitemap links

The importance of sitemaps is almost a globally agreed point and is worthy of an altogether different post. For search engines as well as users, sitemap link is equally important.

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Link farms: Is it a good idea?

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:09:38 +0000

If you have a website that you have been trying to optimise for search engines, you’d have received hundreds of mails by now that request your URL to be added in the websites that send the mails. Sometimes they just request your link and sometimes for a reciprocal one. Most often you give your link as you are also enthusiastic about getting more and more links, and when you enter these websites you find your link among hundreds of others, virtually invisible in the clutter. In other words, you just sent your URL to a link farm.

What is a link farm?

Link farm, as the name indicates, contains hundreds of links that are not grouped or categorized and do not hold any connection to each other or to the website that they are a part of. These parent websites do not have any content of their own except these links. As it sounds, being a part of such a website can be risky as search engines consider the practice as disreputable and therefore liable to penalty.

Link farms are created for the sole reason of increasing the number of incoming links to a website. It is a kind of spamming to trick the search engines into giving the website a higher ranking than it actually deserves. And for the same reason can be penalised by search engines.

How to recognize a link farm

Here are few hints to see whether the link request you got is from a link farm.

The site has no connection whatsoever to your website in terms of topic and content.

The link is not linked to from any page which means there are no chances of a visitor reaching there.

The URL is too long with a never-ending list of directories and sub directories

It has hundreds of other links that have no relation to each other as well as your website.

In spite of your website dealing with a totally different topic, they are ready to link with you.

It is true that link farms are quite risky and can invite penalty. However, let this not stop you from inviting quality links that are real websites with content related to yours and have high page ranks. Link farms are just an illicit way to imitate real linking that is regarded highly by search engines.

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