Thursday, January 21, 2010

Leveraging Business Through Seo

Leveraging Business Through Seo

Small businesses that are looking to compete in today’s cut-throat online environment are learning that SEO is the most cost-effective way to market their company and the products and services it offers.

Search engine optimization is an important marketing strategy that can bring long-term success to small businesses. Choosing a reputable and trusted firm with experience in website development and SEO services makes all the difference when venturing into the world on online marketing.

A good Internet marketing firm is necessary to reap the benefits of search engine optimization and that website owners can’t just wing it when it comes to SEO.

A quality website development firm with SEO know-how will have a team of experts who know the ins and outs of content creation, link building, and social media marketing. When shopping for an optimization firm, businesses should not be afraid to ask is the firm is familiar with the latest trends in organic SEO and the development online traffic for both new and existing businesses.

A typical search engine optimization strategy should include keyword research, keyword placement and density checks, content development, competition analysis, “meta,” “title,” “description,” and “header” tag integration, inbound link development, campaign tracking, and reporting.

If handled properly, by a knowledgeable Internet marketing firm, a search engine optimization plan will ultimately increase targeted traffic, increase a company’s market share, gain valuable leads, and increase sales through better conversation rates. A proper, long-term search engine optimization and online marketing plan can make a world of difference for small businesses that have an online presence.

Images also Play an Important Role in Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization is not limited to site content. Search engine optimization should also include images, as major search engines use them when determining which sites are relevant enough to rank at the top of their results.

Optimizing images for better search engine ranking helps to attract more traffic to a website and helps to keep visitors interested.

Essentially, a website that has quality images that have been properly optimized will not only garner valuable traffic, but it will increase the website’s authority, more so than websites that do not properly optimize their images.

The proper way to optimize website images is to use keywords as image file names, separated using dashes not underscores. For example, if a company specializes in selling Christmas decorations, an image of a product such as Christmas tree lights might be titled, “white-Christmas-lights.”

For the best results, keywords should also be added in image’s alt attributes, as well as its title tags. Also, it is always a good idea to place images in the immediate vicinity of content that is keyword-related.

In addition to helping with search engine ranking, a quality image can also make a website look beautiful and keep visitors interested in the product or service that is being offered.

On another note Google has announced that it hopes to make web pages download up to two times faster using SPDY, a new application-layer protocol that is still in its experimental phase.

Google wants to improve on website performance without any changes being required to existing or new websites. This means that websites that may have been a little slow to load in the past, will be able to reach more users and generate more business.

We at dzine it must walk a fine line because we encourage the use of graphics, flash, and streaming video among our many clients. Unfortunately, such bells and whistles can slow down a web page’s performance.

Google’s planned SPDY overhaul will undoubtedly help negate any performance issues among sites that rely on multimedia to get their message across.

Google tested its new SPDY protocol by downloading 25 of the top 100 websites, ten times each, using simulated residential Internet connections and, thus far, the results have been promising.

In order for the SPDY protocol to truly be successful, however, all of the major Internet browsers must be on board with the plan. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, will likely be on board, but Microsoft, the maker of Internet Explorer, may be a tough sell.

By: Linda Maberry

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