Tuesday 27 November 2012

SEO TIPS for growing business



Do you owe a small business? If answer is yes, then I will say, yours is not small business but a growing business. As, small business have lots of scope to grow their business.
If you run a growing business and you don’t have big budget for online marketing and hence getting nervous. But, do you know that there are various key activities that can be undertaken to help your company’s website get found on Google.
Doing online marketing or search engine optimization is highly competitive. We have listed tips that will enable you to effectively prepare your website for the world of search.

1) BE REALISTIC WITH THE KEYWORDS YOU TARGET:
If you have just newly launched your website then it’s difficult to compete your website against older website.  Just don’t expect your website to get found on generalized keyword. Will explain you with an example:
Mr.XYZ starts a new Hotel with lodging, boarding and restaurant in Vashi. After making new website for his new business, he expects his website to get found on keyword “hotel”.  It is next to impossible for his website to found on such general keyword. He has to be realistic. He has to start with Hotels in Vashi with lodging and boarding, then he can further proceed to just hotels in Vashi, further then hotels in navi Mumbai and so on.
So, be realistic with the keywords that you are targeting. With well executed keyword research you will be able to establish and identify which keywords are easier to rank for, but at the same time will still drive relevant traffic to your site.

2) MAKE SURE THAT SEARCH ENGINES AND YOUR VISITORS KNOW YOU:
Making website is just not enough. While website is getting develop, you need to take care that website is developed as per SEO guidelines and as per w3c standards. This will help your site to get optimized early. Also, submit a sitemap and make sure that you optimize your pages for the products and services that you wish rank for. Once this has been achieved and more importantly, makes sure that any one visiting your website knows what it is you do, and what you want them to do – whether it be call your number or fill in a contact form – the last thing you want is people arriving at your site but then quickly leaving unhappy because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. Examining your search traffic and bounce rates in your analytics are a good place to discover any potential problems with the user experience.

3) BUILD USEFUL AND GOOD QUALITY CONTENT:
Good and quality content does not mean copying content from some good website or copying from some two or three good websites. Copied content will not go long way. Prepare content on your own. Understand your customers mind. Know what they want to know when they visit your website and accordingly prepare the content that will answer to their questions. 

4) START A BLOG TODAY:
Blogs are the abbreviation of web logs. Earlier blogs were called 'loners online diary', which is mostly used by journalists, students and writers. But, blogs are now a talk of the town because of its use in different communities including business community. Blogs are easily accessible and can be listed in search pages. Apart from the branding and customer engagement benefits, blogging can also help your website make friends with the search engines from a technical point of view.

5) BUILD SOME GOOD LINKS TO YOUR WEBSITE:
Ensuring that your website has good amount of high quality inbound links will help your website to rank in the search engines. Link building is a time consuming and often tricky process but there are basic strategies that everyone can build links with regardless of the industry you are in. Creating a blog, interlinking your site’s web pages and submitting your site to relevant and authoritative business directories are just the tip of the iceberg.

6) GET FOUND LOCALLY:
Recent local search market studies show that 89% of consumers who use Internet search engines to find a local services or product follow up with a phone call or in-store visit. And 65% of those end up making their purchase offline. As a small localized services business owner, that means you can no longer afford to take your chances with traditional off line advertising mediums such as direct mailers or yellow pages ads , etc that may or may not be working. 

Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings. Typical local search queries include not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also “where” information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude. Examples of local searches include “Hong Kong hotels”, “Manhattan restaurants”, and “Dublin Hertz”.

7) BE SOCIALBLE:
Social media is a great tool for keeping your customers updated with regards to your company news, and due to its accessible nature it can be a fantastic way to provide customer service. Social media can also be a great tool for acquiring links if you leverage the great content you are creating so make sure that your pages are blog posts are easily share-able on all of the major social networks.


Monday 22 October 2012

What type of website do you need?

Friends, Hi Again.

Just yesterday, I met one of my client who was very upset with his previous web designing company. Having known the reason behind the same, I understood anybody in his place would have become upset and take a decision of never to make a website again.

Will summarise you,
My client decided to make a website in month of June'12. He is having a business of shipping and logistic. What he needed was just 6 pages website with links like, about us, our services, our clients, contact us etc. The previous company billed him worth Rs.30000/- and gave him the CMS (Content Managemen System) for services and clients page. Till date his website is not built, and it remains incomplete inspite of client giving all the details requested by that company. When I asked him, why he opted for CMS based, he said, he don't know what is CMS, nor he knows what is admin panel, he just know one thing that he will have the website with CMS which is as per new web designing style or trend.

Friends, all website owners or all entrepreneurs who currently don't have a website but will soon have a website, I want all of you to know few things which will help you to understand the designer's language and also help you to be firm on your stand if you are right.

1. Static Website / Static page:
    Web designing company often uses this word. So you need to know what is static page or website. First understand the word static, static means in general terms is "immovable", but in website designing, this term is used for content part. Static page is a page in which content is "not changeable" by the website owner. In case website owner feels the need to change the content then he has to depend on the designer or developer of the website. 

Static website means the content of all the pages in the website is "not changeable".

 Is it advisable to have static pages on the website?

Ofcourse, there are few pages on our website which don't change every now and then. Like, contact us page, we change our address very rarely. Its not something which you have to edit or update on daily or monthly basis. 
For, every page on your website, just give 2 mins and decide, is the content on this page going to change very frequently? And if you get the answer as "NO" then make that particular page a static page.

2. Dynamic website / Dynamic page:
    The word dynamic in terms of web designing in "changeable". The content of this dynamic page can be changed by the website owner himself without depending on the designer or developer. Whenever website owner needs to change the content, he can do it all by himself from the password protected back office given to him.
When should we have a dynamic page?

Sometimes, the content of the one or two pages changes very frequently. Take an example of small Jewellery shop owner's website. What will he have in his website is Home, About us,  Products, Contact us
Out of four links, 3 can remain static (home, about us and contact us) while one link (Products) needs to be dynamic. Because, whenever we show the products on the website, it should be actually available in the shop. If customer founds the difference between the products on the website and actual products in the shop, we are tend to lose our customer. So, we need to immediately update on the website that "No stock available" or "Stock available". Also, if we got some new jewellery in shop then also, it should be updated on the website.

So, any page for which the content will change frequently should be made as a dynamic page.

3. CMS Website (Content Management System):
CMS is content management system. CMS based website means website in which all the pages content can be changed from back office. Not only content, the link, the images, the interface, color of text, background color etc can be managed using CMS.

 A content management website (alternatively, content managed website or CM website) is a website which has the additional capability allowing users to manage the website content easily, without interfering with other aspects of the site.

A Content Management System is a software tool used by both technical and non-technical staff to manage the creation of structured web pages for a web based experience such as an Internet Website, Intranet or Extranet solution.

4. Links:
Though this word seems to be simple, I have seen, many people confused between number of links and number of pages. Friends, please understand what is a single page on website for you is the link for the designer. 

5. Domain, URL and Hosting:
This is another very important terminology used by any web designing company. Its not something complicated for anybody to not understand. I will try explaining you this in very simple language.

Domain is the name of the website. For example: yahoo, rediff, webtelindia, indiatimes are the names of the website.
URL is the address of the website that needs to be entered in address bar of browser. For yahoo the url is www.yahoo.in, for rediff the url is www.rediff.com or for webtelindia the url is www.webtelindia.com.

So, decide what name you want for your website, once you decide your name, decide what url you would prefer for example url's can be: www.yourwebsitename.com, www.yourwebsitename.org, www.yourwebsitename.in, www.yourwebsitename.net etc.

Hosting

While web pages are designed and developed on a single computer, they must be transferred to a server, or host, so that they are available to the rest of the world over the Internet. 
A host is simply a computer (or server) that has a constant, high speed connection to the Internet 24/7/365.  In other words, "A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center."


Hope, all the above concepts explained here are easy to understand. In case you still have any doubts, just drop a mail to me, I will be pleased to reply you. You can mail your queries to info@webtelindia.com

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Real facts behind web designing


Real facts behind web designing

I am having 8 and half years of wide experience in Website. I started as web designer, then web quality checker, web seo, web project manager too. What I learn out of my experience is, before you actually start designing the website, you need to ask some silly questions and you should have it answered before you put pen to paper, search for images or even accept the job.

Will share few of with you all here:

  1.       What is the purpose of having the website?
I know this question is really silly, the common answer is in today’s era, having online presence is must so we want to have our website. The fact is everybody know that they need a website, but they are fully unaware about why they need, how website will help them, website maintenance should be undertaken. And the output of all this is, they end up having a website but with unwanted things highlighted, with wrong content and with no website marketing. Ultimately, they end up having something that really does not suits their needs.

  2.       Is the content for your website is ready?
I have came across many clients who is not only unwilling to answer this question but also not willing to provide the content. We are told to copy the content from other site or we are told to make the content on our own.

I have seen that 10 pages website is done in 3 days and I have also experience the same 10 pages website taking 3 months and the reason is CONTENT not provided by client.

Content is required on the website is all about, who are you? How are you different from others? Why customer should choose you over your competitor?  What are your achievements? Who are your clients?

It’s not that designer cannot answer this question, but the fact is designer should never attempt to answer this questions because only business owner knows there business well. Copy writer can be hired to write a fresh content.
  
  3.       What links your site will have or what functionality the site will contain?
This question is very important for any designing company. The answer to this question will decide whether the development of website will require the team of only designer or the developer too will be required. The answer to this question should be very much specific in terms of length and breadth.

  4.       Where do you need your website visitors to go?
This is the breath taking question. Because this will decide, what user interaction will happen, how will be the design of website, how many clicks will be there?

  5.       Do you want website maintenance package?
Yes, having website is not sufficient. Maintenance is equally important. Website that changes the content often attracts the search engines. However, most of the static website owner feels that website maintenance is an additional unwanted expense. Because web maintenance costs more than website designing.

But the fact is; only if the website is maintained and is up to mark then we are not only going to attract search engines but also to attract returning visitors.

Decide, what is important, having website without visitors or having good maintained website with good traffic so that you get more enquiries and in turn get more business.

  6.       What type of design you are looking for?
And the answer we get is design should be very unique and attractive. But it should be understood by all that the definition of attractive differs from person to person. What is attractive to me may not be attractive for you. If some insights are given to the designer, then for designer it becomes easy to come up with good design as per client’s requirement and in turn saves the time of both client and designers.

If you are not sure how to define in words about your imagination for website design, then provide some three four sample url in which you have seen some point which you have imagined in your website and explain that to designer.




The intention behind this article is to let everyone know how actual web designing is done and what seems to be small is very important for a web designer or web designing company.


Monday 8 October 2012

Online Business Versus Traditional Business


Online Business Vs. Traditional Business
To grow globally is the dream of every businessman. A person who starts business on his own effort should need strong determination and positive efforts to make his business successful. Even a well established business needs right efforts to make his business /product/ services successful.

For success of any business marketing policy plays an important role. To increase your business growth, you need strong marketing team with knowledge of thorough marketing strategy.
No matter how great your business idea is or how promising your products or services are, without marketing, all of those are simply meaningless.
What’s so great about having a perfect product when nobody knows about it?
With the increasing role of online marketing, you need to be able to devise specific strategies tailored for online market, while working on the best practices in the off line world. With that being said, it is very important that you understand the differences between online marketing and traditional marketing, and how you can benefit from both.
So what is the difference between traditional marketing and internet marketing? Let me break this down to you in as simple as I can so you can understand what we are talking about in here.
Traditional Marketing is defined as being able to meet customers on a daily basis in order to make profit. This includes the “old school” approach of advertising, selling and meeting with the needs of consumers. In order for this type of marketing to be known, you take control of advertising through newspapers, yellow pages, billboards, flyers and anything that people can take notice of everyday. It could be a flash of neon lights, a big tarpaulin ad, radio advertisements and even tv commercials. So over all, it’s the “non-techy” type of marketing.

Traditional marketing is very costly. It needs long time and budget to get success. Till the date it is consider as proven marketing technique for promoting product or company. In traditional marketing the various media are used for marketing products such as Television, Radio, Print [newspaper, magazines etc.], Outdoor and many other media. Traditional Marketing is very effective, time-tested and proven way to make business or product popular.

Internet Marketing on the other hand has different definitions. Online or internet marketing allows anyone to start an online business for little or no cost and begin to gain profits from the comforts of their home. By using internet marketing strategies, people can work from their computers at home even without the need for opening an actual store or business establishment. Internet marketing allows the person to own and start their business without bothering to market or advertise their product or services in a newspaper or magazine.
Internet Marketing or Online Marketing is the medium to promote product or service through internet. The marketing strategy for any business becomes same for traditional marketing or online marketing such as all factors of market research. Today, Internet Marketing is considered as very faster and economical medium for promoting product and business growth.

Internet Marketing strategies covers a various services like search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, SEO copy writing, web development, pay per click (PPC) advertising, banner advertising, directory submission, blog writing and many more. 

Importance of Internet Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing

Internet Marketing is very economical and fast way to promote product.
Traditional Marketing is very expensive and takes more time to promote product. 

Internet Marketing is very useful for promoting product globally [without any additional cost]. 
It is very expensive and time consuming process for traditional marketing.

In Internet Marketing, you can also work with less employs [you can take more work with less manpower]. 

In Traditional Marketing, you need more employment with more man power which in terms requires spending more money.

In online business you can sell or buy product 24 X 7, round the year without employing any person.
That is not possible in traditional marketing.

Paying Professional and Experienced Internet Marketing Company is very economical.
Paying renowned Advertising and Marketing Company is very costly.

Keep in mind that internet marketing has many advantages compared to traditional ones; it’s not that hard to choose really. That is if you are willing to really invest in this kind of field.  So if you think internet marketing is better, you be the judge. Go ahead and observe what’s going on online and you will see how much it has changed the face of marketing.

Considerations
Incorporating innovative marketing methods is an effective way to supplement your current marketing campaign. For example, you can have a print, radio or commercial spot advertising your product or service. With these advertisements, you can then plug your company's blog or social media feed. Supplementary marketing methods are great for interacting with your customers, offering special promotions and increasing your online presence.

Why Article Submission is important for SEO?


Other than on-page SEO, one major factor helps determine how you will rank against the competition in search engines. This factor, simply put, is the links you have pointing to your website. With the way search engines currently operate, each page that links to you essentially counts as a vote for your site. Because the votes that some pages give you have more weight than others do, it is important that you have a decent quantity of links with each link having some quality of its own. A great way to get a lot of high-quality links is througharticle submission.

Article submission is an important part of SEO framework. It is necessary for every article submitted to the directories that it gets incoming link to the focus website so that at the end the purpose of search engine optimization is fulfilled. Initially for the articles to get positive feedback it must contain proper keywords so that during search on any search engine like Google it does make its appearance easily. Accordingly the links can be established to the parent website and will get the maximum number traffic hits at a given point of time. Today article or content writing has emerged out as a successful and profitable business and in this respect many companies are joining the queue. This SEO work is so rapidly growing that once it starts getting traffic it needs to be worked on constantly.
Quality Content”, that’s what is needed in your articles to attract more users to your website. But the big question is how exactly does it work? In an article submission, the content related to your product is placed on various article directories. Following this, the users are then able to read that content on your site. The articles are then published and hyperlinks generated allowing search engines to use their algorithms to work out the exact position of the website in the search results. Subsequently, you can increase the chances of your article getting syndicated by going through the article submission process over and over again.

Benefits of Article Submission:

  • Building Backlink for your website
  • Getting Contextual link for your website from keyword you are targeting
  • Help in improving brand presence of your website if write properly
  • Generating traffic for your website
  • Improvement of your website ranking on Search Engine


The Importance of Article Submission for SEO can be summarized as follows:    


  • Article submission done on a consistent basis ensures a steady flow of back links to your website.  It is sure to be an important cog in the wheel of your marketing campaign.
  • Article submission helps to label your website as an authority website and helps to build your brand credibility in the market.
  • Search engines love links coming from web pages which are content-rich.  Article submission opens the door for search engine ranking.
  • Article submission lures visitors to your website which can never be achieved through traditional internet marketing tools.  Traffic gained through article submission is highly result oriented and targeted. 
  • Article submission is a powerful method of getting quality incoming links to your website.  It is an easy way to build links and costs almost nothing.
  • Article submission is one of the most effective marketing strategies.  Article submission is considered as one of the main parts in the link building process by nearly every search engine marketer worth his reputation.
  • Article submission helps to achieve lifetime links for your website.