Recently we noticed that Google has redesigned it’s search result pages. They have had those search options available already for a few months, but have not been in front of the user. With this new design, users don’t have any choice but to notice the options that are available. It’s not too different from Bing or Yahoo in that respect. The only difference is that a lot more people search with Google on a regular basis, in fact, for the last few months Google reportedly has been dominating the search market even more than usual.

Now since Google has rolled out it’s much awaited new SERP we have to think how it’s going to affect searchers behavior and businesses, which are always in lookout for better search rankings.

More Engagement from Searchers:

With more options available users will start going to the different options Google provides them, taking them to different sets of results. Now that the options are in the limelight, users are more likely to use them. Yahoo and Bing have already seen this change with their filtering options.

Being Social Even More Important for Businesses:

The options in the left panel pull from “everything” – classic Google results, blogs from Google blog search, books from Google books, images from Google image search, news from Google news, maps from Google maps, shopping from Google product search, videos from Google video, and Updates from Google’s real-time search.

Google’s real-time search is of particular note, because before users generally saw this option only on select news queries unless they sought after them. Real-time search for any query is now much more accessible, which makes real-time search a bigger deal for search marketing.

Social interactions are becoming more important. The new SERPs also place much more stress on social search results. The same goes for location. You’ll notice “nearby” is one of the options. Discussions is another option. Google appears to pull from a variety of sources for this one; this means that engaging in conversation throughout the web has some value to Google’s results. There are definitely a lot of results from forums in these results. Q&A and blogs articles are also seen as results for this option.

Ranking Diversification in Google is the Key:

What it comes down to is that ranking in Google’s various search engines has become even more important for getting traffic from Google. I expect traffic for sites listed in these to improve as a result of Google’s new SERP. Remember that Google has been testing this for a substantial amount of time. If Yahoo was seeing increased engagement, imagine what Google will bring in.

Though they have already experimented a great deal with this layout, yet looking at some less relevant search results I expect we’ll see a lot more tweaking as time goes on.

ไง ครับใกล้สงกรานต์แล้วมีแผนไปเที่ยวไหนกันบ้างครับ จะไปเที่ยวไหนก็ติดตามข่าวสารกันด้วยนะครับ อย่างบริเวณย่านถนนข้าวสารนี่ก็ได้ข่าวว่าปีนี้งด ส่วนผมก็ว่าจะเที่ยวอยู่ในกรุงเทพฯ นี่แหละครับ หาหนังสนุกๆ ดู ยังไงก็ขอให้เที่ยวกันให้สนุกนะครับ วันนี้ว่าจะมาพูดถึงเรื่อง HTML5 ซักหน่อย เพราะถือว่าเป็นเรื่องใหม่ ซึ่ง Web Developer อย่างเราก็คงจะต้องติดตามกันล่ะครับ แล้วก็อาจจะรวมถึงพวกที่ทำ SEO ด้วยเพราะว่าถ้าหาก HTML5 ถูกใช้อย่างแพร่หลายและกลายเป็นมาตรฐานในการทำ Web ในอนาคต ย่อมจะมีผลกระทบต่อการจัดอันดับของ Search Engine ต่างๆ อย่างแน่นอน

พูดกันง่ายๆ HTML5 ก็คือ Version ล่าสุดของภาษา HTML ซึ่งเป็นภาษาที่แต่ก่อนเราใช้ในการเขียน Web นั่นเอง แม้ว่าในสมัยนี้จะมีภาษาอื่นๆ ให้เราใช้ในการเขียน Web อย่างเช่น ที่เราเห็นกันเยอะๆ ก็ php กับ asp / aspx แต่ HTML ก็ยังใช้กันเยอะอยู่ในปัจจุบันนี้ โดยส่วนตัวแล้วผมยังไม่เคยได้ลองใช้ HTML5 ในการทำ Web นะครับ แต่เท่าที่อ่านดู สิ่งที่พิเศษที่ผมอยากจะพูดเกี่ยวกับ HTML5 ก็น่าจะเป็นเรื่อง Tag ใหม่ๆ ที่เพิ่มเข้ามาใน Version นี้นะครับ ซึ่ง Tag ใหม่ๆ เหล่านี้แหละจะมีผลต่อการทำ SEO และ การจัดอันดับของ Website ต่างๆ ของ Search Engine

ผมจะขอยกตัวอย่าง Tag ใหม่ๆ บาง Tag ที่เพิ่มเข้ามาใน HTML5 หน่อยนะครับ
- <article> ซึ่งเป็น Tag ที่จะบอกว่า Content ที่อยู่ใน Tag นี้เป็นเนื้อความของบทความ
- <nav> บอกว่า Content ในส่วนนี้เป็นส่วนของ Navigation อย่าง เช่น Menu
- <header> และ <footer> บ่องบอกว่า Content ใน Tag นี้เป็นส่วน หัว และ ส่วน ล่าง ของหน้า Web
- <audio> และ <video> บอกเกี่ยวกับ Content ที่เป็น ในส่วนของ เสียง และ Video

ครับจาก Tag ใหม่ๆ เหล่านี้จะเห็นได้ว่า Tag เหล่านี้ถูกเพิ่มขึ้นมาเพื่อให้ Search Engine นั้นสามารถรู้จัก เนื้อหาในหน้า Web ได้ดียิ่งขึ้นจากแต่ก่อน อาจจะรู้จักแค่ว่า ส่วนที่เป็น Code, Link และ เนื้อหา แต่ใน HTML5 นั้น Search Engine จะสามารถจำแนกได้อีกว่าเนื้อหาในหน้า Web นั้น มีลักษณะเป็นอย่างไร เช่น เป็นส่วนของ Navigation, เป็นส่วนของ article, เป็นส่วนของ File เสียงและ Video ฯลฯ ซึ่งสิ่งนี้ก็จะทำให้ Search Engine จัดการกับความเกี่ยวข้องของ หน้า Web กับ Keyword ต่างๆ ได้ดียิ่งขึ้นนะครับ

Due to its global target audience, the Internet provides a unique revenue generation platform with search engines. Below, we will talk about the most effective search engine marketing.

Some search engines account for the major avenues where people come whereas others are practically not visited by many people.

Cutting to the run after, your search engine marketing must concentrate on Google, Yahoo and Bing. These three search engines control the huge majority of traffic on the Internet. Not merely do lots of people use these engines to find things, the major three provide search results to several other search engines also. For example, Google supplies ads and search results for AOL. Dogpile compiles the several search results from the major three in its listings. Alta Vista uses Yahoo search results. This situation is so expansive that the major three search engines control 90 to 95 percent of all search traffic on the internet. This indicates you must focus on them and exclude others.

The most effective search engine marketing comes in two forms – pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. Let’s take a more detailed look at the big two.

Pay-per-click advertising (ppc) is platform where you pay for placement on a search engine. The three major ppc platforms are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter. Google Adwords places ads on Google and AOL search results and many of its partners sites. Yahoo Search Marketing places ads on the Yahoo and Adcenter on Bing search engines.

The advantage of PPC advertising is you acquire immediate traffic for your site. You can use the traffic to test out the content on the site and whether visitors convert into paying buyers. The drawback is you are paying for traffic, which means you should pay close attention to your return on investment. On the whole, PPC advertising should be used at the start of a search engine marketing campaign while you wait for optimized pages to get organic rankings.

Search engine optimization (seo) is certainly the most effective search engine marketing. As soon as you get top rankings for a keyword, you receive much more traffic than you might from pay per click and it is all free! This does wonders for your profitability. Your advertising cost for the site will be zero. Which will greatly improve your profit margins.

The drawback to seo is it takes a great deal of time and work. You can expect to wait up to a year for top Google ranks, however Yahoo and Bing rankings appear much sooner. During this waiting period, PPC advertising is a must at the start of a search engine marketing campaign.

Search engine marketing is a pretty simple game. The most effective search engine marketing platforms are PPC and seo. Stick to these two and you should see good final results.

Understanding keywords is a must for implementing SEO techniques. In fact, SEO techniques are simply a necessity for a website to reach out to desired customers. However there are definite specific technicalities associated with the SEO process and understanding them is vital to having an effective SEO campaign for your site.

For most website owners today, using long tail keywords has become successful simply because they bring an excellent conversion rate. To give an example, if you are a dentist running a local business in a specific geographical area, you can promote it well through the internet. Now, if your content has keyword like ‘dentist’, it doesn’t really specify much. On the other hand, if you have keyword such as the ‘dentist in Bangkok, you are talking more specific. When a potential client is searching the internet, using the second keyword, he or she is more likely to be a suitable potential client in search of a good dentist in Bangkok. On the contrary, the user who has entered only the first phrase is likely to be searching for specific information about dentists.

It cannot be denied that exact keywords such as these are extremely important when it comes to a successful SEO design. At the same time, as the search engine optimization is tailored for potential clientele living in a specific area, an SEO professional should be doing their due persistence and research to disclose the behavioral aspects of the users in that distinctive area. This research will give the SEO professional ideas for the keywords that would be specifically attractive to the targeted people. This type of analysis is the first thing that a Search Engine Optimization expert needs to consider while designing the layout of a SEO campaign.

However, one thing is for sure. The online marketing sector is certainly making much buzz at the moment. In fact, this is one of the most productive ways to cater to the specific needs of the clients and search engine optimization has increased the outlook of this new marketing style. Still, if you want to dig out the most of SEO, there are definite things that you have to keep in mind. First of all, you have to have a lucid idea about the target audience of your website. This is absolutely necessary to find out the right keywords for your website. Another thing to digest is that SEO is not a free service. Run you numbers and establish a budget on what you are willing or able to spend to conceive an effective, successful SEO campaign.

On the previous entry, I summarized two of the most important on page optimization techniques for effective SEO, which include title optimization and meta tags optimization. This article will discuss further on other useful techniques comprising important HTML tags, keyword optimization and synonyms, link optimization, and image optimization.

Important HTML Tags

It is necessary to highlight certain parts of your website that you want your readers to look at. There are several tags in html which allows you to do so. For instance – the header tags [h1] [h2] [h3], Bold [strong], Italic [em], etc. The text inside your header tags (e.g. [h1]) is given very high importance by the search engine. Usually you can use them to define the page/post titles or the important sections of your website.

Header Elements:

Header 1: Header 1 should be used to define the most important section of your page. Usually Header 1 is used for Site’s title or header text.

Header 2 & 3: Header 2 and 3 can be used for Page/Post titles or important sections of your pages. Separating your content with headers is a good practice as it makes your site more readable and easy to navigate.

Text Styles:

Bold: You can bold certain words which are of high importance. Sometimes it’s good to bold your keywords where appropriate. However overdoing this may get you penalized.

Italic: You can use the [em] tag to emphasize certain words which will appear in italic.

Quote: This is very useful when you are quoting from someone.

Keyword Optimization & Synonyms

Your site’s content needs to be optimized in such a way that it can suit both search engines and your readers. Stuffing your site with too many keywords can make your site unreadable. So you will need to have some sort of balance between your keywords and your content.

Important elements of Keyword Optimization:

Research: Do a proper research before you decide on your keywords. There are plenty of free tools that can help you to do keyword research.

Keyword Density: Try to have a moderate keyword density so that it can help the search engine to determine that your page is indeed related & relevant to the keyword that you are targeting.

Synonyms & Related Keywords: Use synonyms instead of having a high keyword density. This helps to make the content sound natural while helping in SEO.

Long Tail Keywords: It’s often good to target some long tail keywords as they are comparatively easier to rank for. During your keyword research you should be able to gather some good long tail keywords that you can optimize your site for. But you can also come up with your own long tail keywords; for example try adding some common words like – ‘best’, ‘free’, ‘cheap’, ‘top’ etc. along with your actual keyword and you might eventually get some good long tail keywords.

Link Optimization

It is important to optimize your internal and external outbound links for search engines as well as to give your visitors a better navigation.

Important elements of Link Optimization:

- Try to use good Anchor Text when you are linking to other people. Include the appropriate keyword in the anchor text which gives the outbound link a ‘proper meaning’ and value.

- A good and clean internal link structure with a proper use of anchor text will definitely help. For instance, “Credit Card Application” is a better anchor text compared to “click here”.

- If you are using a CMS, then try using permalinks. This way your keywords/post title will be on the link itself and thus it will valued more by the search engines.

Image Optimization

If your site has a lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning.

Some Important Image Optimization Elements:

Alt text: ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.

File name: always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.

Image Title: always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src="http://imagelocation.jpg" alt="Image description" title="Title of the Image"]

Image Linking: Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.

Getting your website a good ranking in a search engine is not easy as search engines are getting smarter and more intelligent every day. Therefore, it takes more than just a good content to top your competitors.

On page optimization is one of the very first steps for effective SEO. A proper on page optimization can not only make you rank well in a search engine, but can also increase the overall readability of your website for your visitors.

In this article, I will summarize two of the most important on page optimization techniques which include title optimization and meta tags optimization. Other useful techniques like important HTML tags, keyword optimization and synonyms, link optimization, and image optimization will be discussed in the next entry.

• Title Optimization

A site’s title tag is by far the most important on page optimization element. A title tag should be short but descriptive enough for your visitors to identify you and your business. Title tag is the first thing that is shown and indexed by the search engines. Thus, it is naturally given a very high importance.

Your site’s title has to be appealing enough for visitors to want to find out more information. On the other hand, your title has to be appealing enough to the search engine in order to rank you above thousands of other similar websites like yours. Important things to include in your title are as following;

- Your name: This is very important for branding propose. If you feel that your customers may search you by your brand name than it’s also useful to put it somewhere in your title.

- Keywords: If you want to rank for a certain keywords it is always good to place some of them in your title tag. A Title tag represents the whole content of your website, thus you can include keywords in your title tag. However, do not stuff too many keywords in your title. Write a title which is readable to humans and also good for search engines.

- Phone number: Including your phone number in the title tag helps your visitors to take a direct action. It also makes your site look more professional and legit when it is displayed in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Searchers are likely to click on the result that has a phone number attached to it because in their unconscious mind, they will have a good impression on the authenticity of the business and the level of support. If you prefer not to include your number in the title tag, you can alternatively include it in your Meta Description which will give you almost the same benefits.

• Meta Tags Optimization

A site’s Meta description should contain a brief description of your website focusing on the areas and services that your business is specialized in. This small piece of text can be considered as a selling snippet.

If a searcher finds it appealing he is likely to click and go inside your page to find out more information. However, if your Meta Description is too generic and is weakly written then there is a chance that your site will simply be ignored. Important things to include in your Meta Description are as following;

- Your selling point: Tell your customers what they want to hear through your site’s Meta Description, and you will definitely get some advantage over others in the SERP. For instance – if you sell ‘cheap web hosting’ then including a phrase like “hosting starting from only $0.99” may result in more clicks and visitors because your description will exactly match the flavor of search performed by the user.

- Keywords: Including some of your keywords will give you an advantage in Google’s relevancy algorithm.

- Phone number: If you haven’t included your phone number in the title, you can rather include it in your Meta description. If the users have Skype installed on their system, any number on their browser will become clickable which will result in a direct Skype-out call. So basically, if your number appears in the Meta description some of your customers might just prefer to call you directly instead of going through your site.

As a widely used activity in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), link building is considered one of the essential factors to help make SEO effective. It involves the generation of links, whether through, but not limited to blog and forum posting and directory submission.

The establishment of several inbound links leading to your main website can help your pages being ranked higher in search engines, depending on the keywords you are optimized for. One-way links are much more helpful in boosting your page rank than reciprocal or multi-way links.

A website’s targeted traffic is a main consideration before starting link building activities. It determines where you want to place the links leading to your website to ensure that you will fetch users that are highly interested in your products or services. The more relevant traffic you drive in, the more chances of your profits to be increasing.

As mentioned above, the most effective link building is by establishing one-way links directing to your website. It is an inbound link pointing only to one direction. Thus, it is given the highest recognition by search engine bots in defining the relevance of your pages. One-way links can be built by sending articles related to your site to article directories and content sites, many of which can be found online.

Another method of link building is through multi-way linking, which entails the creation of several non-reciprocal links among at least three partner websites. The links only go one-way. Other ways of building links include posting videos, images, or RSS feeds on your partner sites.

A website owner can embark on a link campaign with the help of professional SEO services. Such companies offer to do your link building campaign for you at specific rates. Professional link building services usually offer to increase the relevance of your web pages through planting relevant and permanent inbound links pointing to your website.

Their activities include submission of articles to directory listings, submission to sites with high PR links, distribution of articles to article and blog sites, and social network listing. The main goal of link building is to help you reach your marketing goals by driving your targeted traffic back to your main website and allowing them to convert or take the course of action most profitable to your business. This means that your inbound links should be placed in sites related to yours, sites that preferably have high PR links.

However, you should avoid over linking, which means having too many hyperlinks. Search engine bots for main search engines such as Google and Yahoo can recognize whether or not certain links are relevant. They sense excessive links of a page and disregard them in determining your page rank.

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This is a continuation of last week’s article on web copywriting. In the previous article of Tips for Web Copy Writing, I focused on style of writing. Here I would like to discuss more about content format.

It is very important to format your content professionally. The content should include big headings, clearly visible links, short paragraphs and plenty of subheadings. It should also be wrapped in professional templates which induce trust.

Google and other search engines see the difference between reviews and comments, hence blogs with more comments are valued more than those with no comments.

Although it is more difficult to optimize content added by others, there are many benefits:

· Additional keywords capture more long tail searches. People search using the same keywords they use to describe the product.

· People love reading feedback and trust it far more than the official word from the company.

· In some local markets, reviews are a part of ranking algorithm (not the entire criteria, but a part), so having reviews is a key.

You should also collect valuable feedback about the product/articles. Many people love to share their ideas, giving you more thoughts — and more to write about.

Be sure to list all feedback on one page, since combined words create more keyword weight for search engines, making the page even more relevant.

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When internet users click for an ad of your product or service, the first page they will see is the landing page. It is therefore important to make it your sale pitch to convince them to convert. Actually, there are plenty of tips to make your landing page effective but the most important thing is you need to “focus”. Everything on the page focuses on one topic, with one goal will help convince your visitors to convert.

Your landing page needs to grab your visitors’ attention, hold onto that attention while giving them what they want and expect, and persuade them to do what you want them to do: buy the product, sign up for the newsletter, what have you. In marketing, this is sometimes referred to as the three Cs: capture their attention, communicate the value of your offering, and close the deal. In this article I will go over each of these points and what you can do to make sure your landing pages successfully carry them through.

- Capture their attention
Format your page for the shorter attention span. Think short paragraphs, bullet points, and highly relevant content. Consider your target audience carefully, starting with the search they did. Are they looking for information about a type of product, the features for a specific product, or what?

- Communicate the value
Your landing page is where you tell the visitors what kind of value your product or service offers. As you compose your sale pitch, consider you will encounter three types of visitors; those that will convert no matter what, those that are just window shopping and will not convert, and those that are still thinking about converting. It is that last group to which you are trying to appeal. Keeping that audience in mind might change how you construct the landing page. Make it clear and focused. Keep them from being distracted and they’ll be more likely to convert.

- Close the deal
Consumers buy from those they trust. They should have a reason to trust you. The landing page is where you should be pushing your product, not your company so much. Make your call to action, and make it specific. Create a persuasive message directly above the call to action to increase conversions. Indeed, you can create several calls to action, at the top, middle, and bottom of the page. In this way, your visitor can convert whenever they are ready. And you should track these links as well as any links you have if your landing page is part of a multi-stage process, to find out when visitors convert, and where they abandon the process so you can improve it.

Your landing page should keep your visitors focused; one way to do that is to keep them engaged. Give them something to do that is exactly what you want them to do. Make sure they have good reasons to do it, and watch your conversions increase.

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Writing website content is different from writing for a print publication to some extent. Site visitors focus differently on the web; they skim rather than read. You can’t change their behavior, so if you want to get your point across, you need to change the way you write. Therefore, apart from the rules of proper grammar and spelling, making your paragraphs somewhat short and punchy is what you need to keep in mind.

- Start with the short summary; think of it as an executive summary if that helps. Then fill things in. Journalists often write this way, putting “who, what, where, when, how and why” at first.

- Do not put too many words into a paragraph or too many paragraphs on a page. You still need to have good, solid content; strive for between 250 and 500 words per page.

- Direct your readers’ attention; use bullet points and bolded text to help draw their eyes to the most important parts of your article. Headings also help; they will give your readers a preview of what will be covered in that section, so they can decide whether they want to skip it or spend some quality time on the subject.

- Avoid passive voice; do not use the passive voice in writing for the web except in headings. Using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. It can help enhance skim ability and thus SEO effectiveness.

- Make sure your writing is clear, concise, and on topic.

- Conform to your keyword strategy; use your top organic and paid keyword terms in your headers and key paragraphs. Use 2-3 words per page as an emphasis, see how the page does, change and test again.

- Make sure the content is consistent, visually appealing and in easy to click areas so that the visitor can respond quickly and easily.

Remember write your content concisely with consistency, for its intended purpose, and you will see a good return on your investment.

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