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‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

  1. How to Skyrocket to the Top of Google Local Search Results

    January 31, 2013 by admin

    Local SEOSEO for Google and Bing local places search results is more important than ever for local SMEs/small businesses. About a third of search engine queries typed into Google and Bing now have local intent. Eye-tracking studies also show people to spend more time looking and clicking on local search results, probably because local results have visually stimulating red icons and an accompanying map in Google (this is also why microdata is becoming so useful and will probably soon become even more so for SEO).

    So how do you get your website to rank well in local search results? The answer, in the simplest terms possible, is to be thorough and consistent. By thorough, I mean saturating all the possible channels where you can get your website and business listed.  That means don’t stop once your business is listed in Justdial in India or Yelp in the U.S.; continue onto the local yellow pages site and every single other high ranking directory you can find for your local area.

    Consistency means making sure that your address, business name, URL and phone number are exactly the same across all channels. This includes local place listings, social media listings, paid search listings, and everywhere else. Inconsistencies confuse Google and can lead to duplicate listings, which split your search traffic and hurt your rankings. Make sure you not only claim all listings and enhance them, but also delete any duplicates that may have cropped up. You can use a tool like Yext to check for consistency.

    Oftentimes your customers are looking for a local attraction near your business that can help push traffic to your business. Find a way to link the local attraction to your business’s local listing, and when potential consumers search for the attraction, they’ll find you too.

    Encourage customers to give reviews online. This can dramatically increase conversion rates, as most customers check online reviews before making a purchasing decision. Strategies to do this include implementing QR codes for smart phone users, linking to review sites on your website, and creating a user generated content (UCG) section on your website.

    Traditional SEO tactics like onsite optimization of alt, meta, header, and title tags also help local search rankings as well, so don’t neglect the fundamentals.

    So that’s your primer on how to skyrocket to the top of Google and Bing local search results. It’s not comprehensive, but it does cover all the fundamentals. Don’t feel like taking the time to do all this yourself? Then take a look at Cosmos’s online marketing and SEO services packages, all of which include local search optimization.

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  2. Do I Need SEO for My Local Business?

    January 30, 2013 by admin

    There are a million websites on the Internet and the number continues to increase with every passing minute. The importance of well-integrated website design has grown radically. We see a huge number of websites competing with each other, thus, making optimization an immensely valuable tool. Search engine optimization refers to an increase in the amount of traffic to a particular website. This is done with the help of search engines so that the website appears in the top 10 results. The technique is to use natural, organic, or algorithmic search results. Read on to know why has SEO become a must for local businesses, and how it can be achieved.

    SEO services in Dubai

    Use your location in the keywords: When you make use of the location it becomes a lot easier for people to find your place and the work that you offer. For example, if you are in Dubai and you sell mobile covers, your highlighted keyword would be “Dubai mobile covers” as it will include your work profile as well as your location.

    Use meta-tags: Meta-tags are a great tool to attract traffic on your website. They help to improve your standings in search engines that use them. You should make use of them when you want to gather more page views. Therefore, they provide vital information to customers about what exactly is the website all about.

    Quality content is a must: If you are absolutely serious about optimizing your website, you should ensure that the website has quality content. For high traffic ranking, the content should be useful and should talk about the very intention and function of the website. Creating high quality and important content is a primal rule to add to the hits on the website.

    website design and SEO company in Dubai

    Draw on social media: Social media can help drive much more traffic to a website than search engines. Thus, make use of Facebook, Twitter, and several other social networking sites to boost your sales and promote your business for free. What’s more, you can reach the exact audience you’re looking out for without putting in too much effort. In fact, the local groups on various social sites are a great boon as the members are primarily from the same local region you are targeting.

    Include original content together with keyword optimization and it is sure to attract quality traffic to your website. All the best!

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    Category Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Optimization | Tags: ,,,,,, | No Comments

  3. The Interrelation Between SEO Practices and Content Marketing Initiatives

    March 22, 2012 by admin

    The high regard for quality content has been proved many times over. This year too has been no different, with the 2012 Marketing Sherpa Search Engine Marketing Report concluding that content creation is still the best among the SEO tactics out there. However, it is also the one that is most resource intensive. An effective SEO marketing strategy can only be powered by freshly developed content. The content development should ensure that it focuses attention upon the right keywords that can then lead to link acquisitions and should be social network friendly. It incorporates a vision that has both, long term as well as short term objectives in its cross-hairs and pays attention to every minute detail.

    Given that most managers are truly hard-pressed for time, it is not uncommon for the focus to waver. But no matter, how rushed one may be, some key elements must be incorporated at all times into any effort. Failure to do this is not only doing the content developer a grave injustice, it is also likely to undermine efforts in the chase for SEO glory and success! These elements include SEO basics such as optimizing the titles and meta-tag descriptions more search engine friendly to the interlinking of related pieces of content and seamless integration of social sharing tools that encourage and facilitate its spread.

    Given that each finger on the hand is sized differently, so are the SEO Marketing strategies of firms. Most firms aim to put their best foot forward but success doesn’t favor them all. Those that reap rich rewards from their SEO Marketing efforts tend to do things differently and it is often their practices that are the deciding factor between them and the competition.

    For a better understanding on the SEO Marketing practices of successful firms, we are going to examine closely the best practices of a few people out there that seem to be doing things right:

    Infographic have well and truly taken the digital world by storm. They are great at rapid, at-a-glance visual representations of information, data or knowledge in an easy to understand, graphical medium. A few weeks ago, Neolane, the digital marketing software experts took an infographic (http://blog.neolane.com/socialmedia/spam-true-infographic/) take on the classic conundrum that examines the impact of the ever-increasing onslaught of spam, piggybacking on quite a few online marketing initiatives. Some of the key aspects of this laudable effort were the hyper-attention paid to certain SEO elements. Like the optimization of titles, meta-tag descriptions and the main copy itself. Another thing that they were spot-on about was in positioning all the social sharing buttons prominently at both, the beginning as well as the bottom of the post. The entire page too was given the social-friendly treatment. It incorporated some of the newer and buzz-creating platforms like Pinterest & Stumble Upon. Such a move, instantly amplified the chances of visitors being drawn into the infographic, thereby adding on to its popularity. The infographic also contains search optimized links that take readers to the home page and the other properties of Neolane. This is a brilliant move, as it completes the circle of inter-connectivity, wherein a user is encouraged to explore further.

    Active interaction and transmission on social-rich media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. seems to be working for Christian Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri (www.christianhospital.org). Events, workshops, special interest initiatives, Christian Hospital spreads the word on them all. They have even begun to harness the power of the social platforms to establish a dialogue over care concerns by patients. The key factor behind the social push is the sharing quotient of the information and its relevance to its audience. Their efforts seem to be paying off, with public acknowledgements emerging, thanking them for their quality information sharing.

    Video Bloggers and Enterprise Experts, Wikibon are no strangers to top-drawer tech events. Producers of live coverage and telecasts of premier events such as EMCWorld, Strata Conference, Hadoop, etc, they have a highly interactive team of contributors sharing videos, blog posts and other research assets. Some of the key characteristics of their content marketing strategy include the incorporation of cross-links to the various audio-visual media in each of their blog posts. Embedding and sharing functionality is baked into each of the videos being shared. Besides this, all their diverse postings are aggregated on a single page to promote blogging outreach and sharing improvements.

    It is hoped that the above examples help forge a better understanding on the interrelation between Search Engine Optimization practices and the Content Marketing initiatives of businesses. They are more to serve as guidelines rather than as the complete truth. The fact of the matter remains that the proof of the pudding is in eating it. This is why the best way to do so would be by seeking ways that help achieve those organization specific goals.

    In the end, Nothing speaks better than the Results themselves!

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    Category Search Engine Optimization | Tags: ,,,,,, | 36 Comments

  4. Search Engine Optimization – A necessity for any Website

    February 27, 2012 by admin

    Today, almost every business out there has a website or wants to own one. This is simply because people have begun to trust the internet more than word-of-mouth. Moreover, a business can get better exposure online than to simply advertise in the newspaper which is more of a local form of advertising.

    Having a website for your business is good; but again, the internet is full of them. Your competitor probably got one up before you. Yes! An online presence is important; something which gives your website and brand a social profile along with the brand awareness it needs. Today, creating an online presence is something which every brand needs and strives to achieve. One of the ways to do that is for your website to show up in search engine results. Almost every user out there begins searching for a product or a brand online, by typing in a related query and if your website has been scanned through and analyzed by search engine crawlers, only then will it show up in their search result listings.

    This is where SEO or search engine optimization hops in. Search engine optimization (SEO) is skill and a technique. It helps search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and many more to list your website on their search results. The better the search engine optimization done for your website, the better will it rank and every website out there wants to be number one. Simply put, SEO gives your website a profile, telling the web ‘what you do’ and putting you in a category for the world to find.

    Search engine optimization is not one single technique; it is the culmination of using the right content (words) on your website. Yes! If you do not know this yet, every website out there is scanned through by search engine crawlers. Crawlers are small programs that have only one task and mission which is to find, segregate and categorize websites on the internet. They do a great job considering the entire World Wide Web consists of over 20 billion pages. As complex as the task sounds, crawlers only take a look at the text matter on every page, which is why it is necessary that your website contains the right text and content.

    Website optimization is a tiring task that consists of finding the right keywords and placing them in the right spots on your webpage so that crawlers find them and categorize your website in the vastness of the internet. The problem here is most people do not realize that the content they have on their website may not be relevant to the product that they are selling. For e.g. an online trading website may go on about tips and tricks of trading online, without even mentioning the most important word that users are searching with such as ‘Forex’.

    Search engine optimization helps businesses with finding the right words that promote their business and compare those with what the world is typing in to search for them. The best keywords are chosen and are imprinted on the website in various places which include the content, meta-tags, page titles, headings, including back-link buttons and titles for images. Basically, everything that is text must contain the right keywords in the right quantity. Quantity is all about balance here as search engines would simply consider too many keywords in one place as an advertisement and simply skip your page.

    Getting the right balance of relevant keywords and more importantly meaningful content is the only way a business or individual website can be recognized and pushed up the online search listings. Which is why it necessary that one gets them right when a website is created and avoid any unnecessary loss of rankings; after all the trouble has been taken to invest in one.

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    Category Search Engine Optimization | Tags: ,,,,, | 7 Comments