When a site puts together a landing page for a user, it is often with a specific goal in mind. Most of the time this goal is to drive higher-quality traffic to its website through a search engine. A targeted landing page, unlike a generic home page, is designed to be relevant to what a user has just seen on the search engine results page (SERP), making good on the listing’s offer.

The SEO E-Commerce Experience

When you go shopping at a department store, you may have a specific item in mind to buy — let’s say shoes, for example. You enter through the front door and notice every little thing on your way to the shoe department. The decorations, the sale in electronics or the in-store Starbucks may catch your attention. These distractions might be strong enough to make you forget exactly what you came for, or they could be ignored until you reach your final destination in the shoe section.

The “home” landing page associated with organic listings isn’t that different. Most SEO-focused landing pages have to cater to the search engine bots as well as browsing humans not looking for a particular item. Because of this, the marketing focus of these pages is indirect at best.

The organic listings created by the search engine’s algorithms are not easily controlled by retailers. Most search engines look at a site’s home page first and rank it as the most important page based on the relevancy of search queries. This encourages the webmaster to code the site in the broadest terms, in order to gather the widest audience. Overall, this makes organic landing pages more general – not driven by conversion rates. The main goal of these pages is site ranking and visibility – great for marketing to new visitors or casual browsers but not so good for a customer looking for a specific item or service.

The SEM E-Commerce Experience

Now imagine you visit the same department store, again looking for new shoes. But this time you are instantly teleported to the shoe department without having to even pass through the front door. There are no distractions and you reach the shoe department still in buying mode. This is the targeted, SEM landing page.

Because the SERPs are predetermined by your keywords, the SEM experience is more direct and ultimately more profitable for retailers, especially in cases where users have very specific requests.

Using paid listings gives the retailer full control of what users see after the click. This destination might be the shoe department or even the exact model shoe the user wants to buy. A user coming from a results page is action-oriented and it serves the retailer well to take advantage of their mindset. After all, the closer I am to the shoe I want the more likely I am to buy it.

Impressions and Clicks in Action

A good example of how SEO and SEM-optimized landing pages differ can be found in landing pages of Zappos.com. When the term “shoes” is searched in Google, the organic results lead here:

Because the Title tag of this page has been designed to function well at an SEO level, its keyword-rich text reads: “Our shoe store features
dress shoes, casual shoes, and athletic shoes for men and women!” Here, the multiple mentions of the keyword “shoes” direct the engine to return this page to the user, as opposed to the “order” or “section” page that, in many cases is what the user was trying to find.

When clicking on the paid link to Zappos.com, we are taken to a sub-page within the site that is more targeted to the “shoes” query.

The Title tag on this paid links-optimized page is quite different. It reads “Shoes — Free Shipping & Return Shipping,” information highly relevant to a commercial query for “shoes” and constitutes an offer that may well enhance conversions on this page. Because this page has been optimized for humans, not search engines, there is no need to flood the page with keywords and Meta tag data — users are coming here to buy.

Creating two sets of landing pages, one for SEO and the other for paid links is essential if you want to make the most of search engine traffic. Just because SEO-oriented landing pages must be more general and less action-oriented doesn’t mean that they can’t accomplish your branding objectives. Paid links-optimized pages, on the other hand, give you granular control allowing you to guide users directly to products they want, when they want them. If you want a complete experience on the Web for consumers, you’ll need to create both sets.

About the Author: Aaron Kupferberg is Art Director and Interaction Designer for Didit and develops website audits based on user-oriented goals. Since 1996, Didit has been providing analytics, technology, and results in leading-edge search, targeted online advertising and auctioned media for over 150 clients. Send comments to Aaron.Kupferberg@didit.com

Your targeted keywords need to vary a lot in anchor. Limited number of “click here” should help you to have good link building. When it comes to English websites, it is commonly accepted that more weightage (not the page rank) is got from links of related pages. Try not to have the back links all over the footage of the site or at one particular location. Try spreading it over the page, like top of page, or within the text, navigation, etc.

Never try to place hundreds of link for a new site on the very first day. Gradually increase the number of links. This normally relates to the number of links a site gets. Hence if a site has an average of 20 links per day, then do not try to increase it to 200 links suddenly. Chances of being banned from Google are high. Focus on quality not to the quantity links. Having most of your back links from the adult sites or casino sites or pharmacy sites is not recommended and such sites are known for spam.

Google tends to keep a track of all the IPs, checks your links coming from differnet C Class Ips or Not. So see to that all the links to your site comes from different websites. Always have a good combination of links from new and old sites. Reciprocal links are a good option for back links (Yahoo and MSN), but too many of them can be a problem too. 3way linking is a good option. Do not make the mistake of underestimating the back links to your internal pages. Since SEO is done for your internal pages, have the back links done for these pages too. Use varied anchor for these internal pages too both as inbound and outbound links.

Directories need to do some extra work on the links that you already have. Such directories need to be opted. Only a few selected directories like ODP and Yahoo are trustworthy. Other directories that might look good can even cause much problem to your links. So you need to be careful while submitting to directories. The time limit of back links seems to play a crucial role, and this is taken into serious consideration by the Google Sand box filter. So focus on links to be rented on long-term basis as far as possible.

Google tends to devalue the back links that come from links that could have words like Advertisements and sponsors. So be alert while you look for back links from similar links. Google is seen to use the advanced relation algorithm and the co-citation system in its algorithm. Hence we need to be careful when we choose our back links. Do not have your links from the pages that are with bad neighborhood and also the sites that they themselves link to such type of sites.

There are numerous factors that Google takes into consideration – like the IP Address, domain name, written language of the site, etc. Apart from these it is also very necessary to show the search results in the Google country specific searches. So be very cautious in deciding the language of the site when you design it for Google.

Go through the above points very carefully and recheck your website and if any found in your website, rectify them. If you continue with those mistake, they could harm your website at any minute.

Strategies that get you links:
A method where content is considered very important and also gets its links naturally is called link baiting. Any link that you have due to your content is considered in this type

Link submission directories:
There are many link builders and SEOs who focus on link building and directory submission. We have different types of directories: pay-for-inclusion, reciprocal required, free and niche directories. And we do have specialists working on each of these directories. There is a huge list of free seo friendly directories available for submissions. And about the reciprocal directories, we have both the brokers and non-brokers

Submission of Articles:
Try writing articles having links and have them in the resource page of your site. You can also pay someone to have the articles written for you and use some specialist to submit them in to the directories

2way and 3way links:
The old and a good way to get links – I link to your site and you link to my site. This will be helpful if you have around 50 plus sites, which can help you to give and take most relevant links. And remember the rule: its always that you contact people and they do not contact you first.

Get links from your own websites:
This is the best way to get links in case your website had lots of relevant pages

Alert with Link Vault:
By this method you get mostly footer links and low quality links, try avoiding link vault in your site with red flag

Subscribing to high page rank sites:
It is also possible for you to rent pages with high page ranks ( 5-9) for various prices But remember to rent only relevant sites. Renting too many sites of high PR is not preferred

Avoid Search Engine Spamming:

Search Engines are used to provide the most accurate results for your search queries. Still people have been trying to play with search engines. Search engines are regularly upgraded to provide better results and hence forth they cannot be misjudged if they give poor results due to bad search queries by the visitor. Still search engines are being developed to withstand all these tricks and provide the best of the results to the users.

Spamming of search engines includes all possible ways to cheat the search engines, and it is to be noted that these methods put tour website at a very high risk.These practices that give us false results and the websites that fool us are penalised and they tend to lose their ranks or are blacklisted and are removed from the indexes of the search engines and can also go into serious legal issues.

Points that are considered while identifying a website using spamming techniques or not :

· When a website consists of hidden links or hidden texts or invisible texts
· Pages that are not meant for people who visit, but are generated by machines for search engine activities.
· Pages that are not belonging to your main website, but instead are created for search engine purpose only.
· Websites that consists a huge amount of keywords in the content, but the page is of no value.
· When the visior(human) and the search engines are not viewing the similar content – cloaking
· Link spamming – linking with content that is of poor quality / less content
· Excess usage of cross-linking, keywords in the page
· Presence of site submission softwares that execute automatic URL submissions
· When you submit your page/site to a seach engine/directory more than once in a month
· Title tags, keyword meta tags that have words that are not seen anywhere in the page content
· Using same meta tag in multiple place (like when you use more than one title tag)
· Website pages are duplicated – same content, different file names

Decide – Spamming techniques or ethical search engine optimisation technique

Search Engines now in usage handle spamming very effectively and if any spamming is found, the website can even be unindexed. Incase if you are using any of these spamming techniques and these bring in a lot of traffic to your site, then be sure that this spamming technique is sure to be identified by the search engine or chances of any user also sending report about your tactics is high. This can very easily bring down your page rank and even be blacklisted and banned.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality back links using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with Page Rank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.

29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.

30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.

32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.

36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:

(1) Log out of Google

(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.

43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.

45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.

46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.

47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.

48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.

51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.

52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.

54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

About Pay-Per-Click Advertisements

Pay-Per-Click (also referred to as PPC) advertisements can become expensive and the advertisers’ campaign can quickly fail if not managed correctly. However, three main points to keep in mind with a PPC program are:

1. It is an excellent marketing tool that can create immediate buzz around a product or service
2. is fairly inexpensive in comparison to traditional advertising
3. It is very flexible and can be short or long term depending on your immediate needs.

There are several key initiatives that an advertiser should execute with the initial set up of a PPC campaign and while managing the campaign:

• Ad Creative – It is absolutely necessary to have a well-written and focused advertisement creative. For example, you do not want to advertise that you are selling blue penguins for $19.99 when on you landing page the actual cost is $26.99 and the blue penguins are actually green
• Landing Page – Having a well thought out landing page before setting up your PPC campaign is essential. A landing page should have the content related to your online advertisement. If your ad reads “Cheap Blue Penguins – Wholesale prices, free shipping on all Blue Penguins before Winter Time”, and the page that the visitor lands on is selling Hot Pink Penguins. The result will be a quickly wasted click, poor campaign performance and a low conversion rate.
• Call to Action – Your call to action should be very prominent and located above the fold of the page. Too many times, we have seen a call to action that is located well below the fold where the user has to scroll down to click on the call to action button. By having the user scroll through to the bottom of the page to find the call to action makes it inconvenient and ineffective.
• Testing – Test.Test.Test. Never stop testing. Always test new ad creatives, landing page creatives, and call to actions locations. The difference between a successful Pay-Per-Click campaign and an unsuccessful campaign maybe due to lack of testing.

About Organic Traffic

Organic website traffic is visits that come from an unpaid means. Free traffic is always good traffic, but can be difficult acquiring. With Pay-Per-Click traffic, it is fairly simple to obtain traffic, setup an account, write an ad, research and add keywords to the campaign and point the ad to a landing page. Voila!, You have traffic!

How Do I Increase Organic Visitors to My Website

• Submit your site to website to Google, DMOZ and Yahoo. You want to let the search engines know that there is a new site out there to be indexed.
• Make sure that all the pages have fresh and relevant content. Search Engines love websites that add fresh and unique content. Nothing is worse than having a stagnant site with outdated content.
• Duplicate content is a “no-no” with Search Engines. Search engines will penalize you for having duplicate content from other sites or having the same information located on several web pages.
• Make sure the code is clean. If the Search Engine Spiders have a difficult time going through your site, chances are you will get spidered less.
• Getting Backlinks – The more links to your website the better. Google ranks you based on how many links you have going to your site. It similar to a popularity contest, the more Backlinks (votes) you have, the more weight Google will put on your site.
• Optimized Press Releases – One of the best ways to get long lasting exposure is by writing and submitting Optimized Press Releases. A well written, and Optimized Press Release must be newsworthy and most importantly, target a few keywords relating to your business
• Search Engine Optimization – Recently there has been tremendous buzz about the benefits gearing your website towards Search Engine Optimization. The quick run down of SEO is the continual modification of your website to increase amount of quality traffic to your website by modifying the keywords and content.

Choosing between Pay-Per-Click and Search Engine Optimization

Both methods of advertising have benefits and drawbacks. Depending where you want to spend your time and money is where you should be focusing your online marketing efforts. Most companies that have successful online marketing campaigns will focus on both PPC campaigns and an SEO campaign. PPC will yield immediate results, while Search Engine Optimization, takes some time to see the results, but will continue to bring you results for the long term.