It is important to have certain factors in place to be considered a search engine friendly website. By implementing these factors you increase your chances of being listed near the top of search engine results for specific keywords. The more likely you appear towards the top of search engine results the more traffic is directed to your website. By making your website search engine friendly you also help improve brand name awareness and increase your page rank. These are SEO factors which will help steadily build your Internet marketing campaign. Internet marketing is the most affordable and effective way to promote your business.

Take the time to read search engine guidelines. Worthy search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo have search engine guidelines available for people to learn how to make their websites search engine friendly. They contain tips and highlights of what they consider to be good and bad practices for promoting websites through their search engines. Any major search engine should have webmaster guidelines so you can understand how to optimize your website accordingly. This is the best part of search engine optimization because there are no hidden tricks. It is information plainly written for you to grasp the do’s and don’ts of search engine optimization.

source: http://www.blaugh.com

Don’t be so gullible as to trust just anyone’s Internet marketing strategies and techniques. There are a lot of blogs and websites out there by people who claim to be Internet marketing gurus and experts who have no experience or any clue about what actually is required to run an SEO campaign. They are the ones that will try and convince you that by making some quick changes you will get immediate results on your website. Sometimes they even use black hat SEO strategies which are banned practice of search engines. By blindly following someone’s strategy you could end up doing damage to your website instead of boosting its productivity. Some worthy SEO specialists to learn from include Jill Whalen, Matt Cutts and Barry Schwartz.

Try and promote unique and interesting content on your website that makes you stand out from your competition. That will give you an edge above the rest. Make sure you have an RSS feed for your website. This enables visitors to receive updates whenever you upload new content on your website. An RSS feed guarantees the traffic to keep flowing continuously to your website. Keep changing content and keywords to see what is the most effective for your website.

Most importantly, if you have no prior experience with setting up a website and running it to produce more business, hire an offshore SEO company to help you. Offshore SEO companies have the experience of handling small and large business websites. They know exactly the proper on page and off page SEO changes to implement to get the desired results. They have a range of SEO packages and social media optimization services you can choose from. They will design an SEO campaign specifically based upon the needs of your business website. It is definitely a smart idea to obtain guidance from an experienced professional to achieve the desired results.

RSS is an acronym for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS is basically a feed which you can make available to users that automatically lists the updated content from your website or blog. If you have a fan following or regular readers of your website, it allows them to keep informed and up to date about the latest information you have on your website or blog. It saves readers the time of browsing through all their favorite websites to check for new information and allows them to view their favorite site headlines which have been updated with new information listed. RSS is the convenience you are providing to your readers to easily access your information. By allowing your readers to view your website updates through an RSS feed, you are also effectively optimizing your website and building relevant traffic. This is also referred to as RSS optimization.

RSS Optimization has replaced E-mail marketing strategies which updated readers with e-mails when any new content was put up on a website. E-mail notifications turned out to be pretty inconvenient because no one had time to read their e-mails. E-mail marketing was not proved to be an effective Internet marketing strategy as it just took up space in people’s inboxes and kept getting marked as spam. RSS feeds have allowed people to reach out to the public and create opportunity and a reason for people to keep visiting the websites they find interesting.

Not only are RSS feeds convenient for readers but they allow companies to track and analyze the kind of traffic they are receiving. RSS feeds can offer businesses essential information such as the amount of people subscribing to their feed, how many times people are coming to visit their website, and what interested them to come and visit. Having an RSS feed will allow your website to substantially improve its Google page rank which will further increase its credibility. RSS feeds allow users to view updates based upon their preferences and interests. By analyzing the trends of your website from these feeds, you will be able to develop the next steps to your next Internet marketing strategy.

If you have a company blog, RSS feeds are perfect for informing users about a new post or topic being discussed on your blog. RSS feeds also update content such as breaking news, podcasts and videos. It effectively distributes content not only to the reader who’s subscribed to your feed but displays it to others who visit their blog or website. Did I mention RSS feeds also provide your website with great back links? Because RSS feeds are based on headlines, make sure your headlines include important keywords that will be useful for the ranking of your website. Feeds enable you to work on your brand awareness as it allows you to incorporate logos and images. Make sure to distribute your feed to all important RSS search engines and directories so people can access your information.

Once you set up your RSS feed, the important thing is to keep updating your website with fresh content. Fresh content will enable the RSS Marketing strategy to work effectively bringing more traffic and followers to your website.

I think there are a lot of companies and businesses out there who want to put their foot in the door, when it comes to doing business. In the past, most businesses from the UK and US held a conservative approach when it came to working with offshore SEO companies. It was the “work only through reference or recommendation approach.” Slowly they are now realizing the benefits to doing business across the globe and not limiting their resources to just local vendors. However, they are still shy as to how to begin such a venture. There are so many services you can request at a considerably low cost such as search engine optimization, social media optimization, website design, press release optimization, etc. Companies are also understanding the fact that SEO is a continuous ongoing effort and becomes a cost effective expense when getting the work completed from offshore SEO companies. Businesses in the US and UK are able to hire offshore SEO companies over 3 to 6 months with the amount they spend on local SEO companies monthly.

So how can you tell whether an Offshore SEO company will be a good business partner to work with? If you think you have found a company, make sure to ask them direct questions. Asking them direct questions will give them a chance to give you straight forward responses and see how well they answer. Ask them about their qualifications and their experience first. If they are beating around the bush, they may not be as qualified or professional as you thought. Their replies should make you feel comfortable about working with them. You should also be firm about letting them know that you would like only white hat SEO strategies being used to help build consistent traffic for your website. There are companies that practice white hat and black hat SEO marketing tactics. Be sure that you are working with a company that only follows white hat SEO methods. Don’t be afraid to ask why the standards of their own website are not up to par. If you are curious to know, ask them. Many offshore consultancy websites have to constantly reinvent themselves to keep up with the ever changing Internet marketing world. This causes their website to go through constant changing, rebuilding and upgrading. Their website may be in the midst of reconstruction so don’t jump to conclusions if their website does not meet your standards.

Ask for references to back up their experience. If they can show you before and after results on past projects they’ve worked on, you will get an idea of what to expect from them, in terms of results. The cost of SEO packages can vary from a couple hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Think about what you want out of their services in terms of keyword rankings. Sign a contract with them and make sure there is some sort of guarantee. If there is no guarantee they can offer you then there is no point of working with them. There are offshore SEO companies that also accept payment only after the desired results are achieved. Make sure you outline and understand the agreed upon terms before you sign on a project with an offshore SEO company. Question them about their competitors. They should be open about it and be able to convince you of their service worthiness over their competitor’s.

There are businesses that are finicky about giving offshore companies access to making changes on their website. But it is sometimes necessary to make key changes to your website in order for search engines to be able to crawl it easily. When search engines are able to crawl the pages of your website more effectively, you have a better chance of ranking well. Changes to the title tags, URLs, description, and H1 tags are necessary to make your website more search engine friendly. If you are not comfortable with providing back end access of your website to a third party, they should be able to provide you the files so you can upload the changes on your website yourself. You have to do your part and cooperate the best you can to help them help you. The company you work with should provide you with a ranking report at the end of the work completed, to show you the before and after results. If you signed on for a long term project, I would suggest that you have them send you a monthly ranking report so you can see the progress of the work being done for you. A month by month ranking analysis will also reveal to you which SEO strategies are working for you and what areas need to be improved upon. Even if you do have a long term contract, it won’t hurt to touch base with them once a week to get an update about the work progress.

Once the work is completed and you are happy with the results, don’t be afraid to ask about other services they offer. Many Offshore SEO companies offer a variety of other Internet marketing services such as website design, social media optimization, press release optimization, article marketing, etc. Enquiring about services does not bind you to buying them. It will give you an opportunity to find out more and think about what the next Internet marketing strategy should be for your website.

It’s now about 20 years since the start of the popular internet. I’m using the word “popular” because technically, it first started during the Sputnik 1 project, waaay back in 1958, for use by the Soviet Union. It was only in the early 90’s that it was released for commercial interests. It’s mid 2009, and the world’s still just warming up to the internet. The growth in the number of people using it for different purposes(email, chat, P2P, browsing, VoIP, gaming, VPN and so much more) is truly astounding. Here are a few statistics for 2008 from a survey, aptly titled- The Exploding Internet, based on the usage of the internet.

1. $6.8 trillion- Value of eCommerce spending on the internet in 2008, which is roughly 15% of the world’s GDP.
2. 50%- Estimated annual growth rate of internet traffic.
3. 210 billion- Number of emails sent daily in 2008.
4. 78%- Percentage of the above figure which is SPAM, or unsolicited email!
5. 72.5%- Percentage of the American population using the internet, which translates to 220 million individuals.
6. 19%- Percentage of the Chinese population using the internet, which is 253 million people, clearly overtaking the US in terms of number of users.
7. 2012- Year in which Asian internet users will outnumber their peers in North America by 3 to 1. This includes almost 500 million Chinese users.
8. 3- Predicted position of India on the hierarchy of internet using countries by 2012.

Just an indication of what is truly the next revolution.

Source: http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2988/27062201.jpg

The dark side is a concept created by George Lucas for the famed movie series he directed, called Star Wars. The dark side refers to the evil force in the Star Wars universe which certain characters derived from their harmful emotions to attack others.  Yoda trains Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi and guides him about the light and dark sides of the force. The Jedis follow only the philosophy of the light side of the force, to maintain the peace in the Star Wars universe. In the same way, SEO has a dark side and light side. The dark force is referred to as Black Hat SEO and the light force is known as White Hat SEO.  There is a temptation for many Offshore SEO companies to use Black Hat SEO techniques for Outsource Article Marketing. But by reading this you will hopefully understand why it is not worth it.

source: http://en.easyart.com/content/

Article Submissions as I’ve discussed in the past, are a major part of off page SEO campaigns. Outsource Article Marketing helps websites increase their number of quality back links and consistently builds traffic for clients. There are a number of good article submission sites such as Ezine Articles, Article Dashboard, Knol, Isnare, Article Alley, Article Click, Article Factory and thousands more. The idea is to distribute informative content to boost the credibility of a website.

Use The Force Only For Good Reasons.

Just like Jedis use the force only for good reasons, article submissions should be used only for distributing informative content and boost the credibility of your website. In Star Wars, Jedis would use the force for training, defense and knowledge purposes. Outsource Article Marketing involves the submitting of content to Article submission websites which pertain to industry related topics to help and inform consumers. Submitting article content that is self promoting and spam filled would be against the Jedi ways of thinking.

Jedis are Compassionate.

A Jedi’s life revolves around his ability to show compassion. The light force brings about the philosophy of thinking about others before yourself. When you create article content, think about what your readers would want instead of what your website wants. Do the industry research in order to find out what has not been answered and what consumers are curious about. Writing about hot topics will help you gain a massive fan following and will give consumers a personal experience to relate to your website.

Luke Skywalker asks during one of his training sessions with Yoda, “Is the dark side stronger?” Yoda answers,”No,No,No. Quicker, easier, more seductive.”

Some dark force or Black Hat SEO marketers are tempted into taking a shortcut with article submissions by “spinning an article” over and over again and submitting it all over the Internet. Article Spinning is the process in which an article is created from an existing article by changing certain words and phrases to make it look like a completely different article. This may seem to others like unique content when actually it is the same article. There are even softwares available which help Black Hat Marketers spin articles, but little do they realize how pointless it all is. By creating a low quality article from an article spinning software your website will lose credibility when readers come across such low grade content. Most article submission sites also check to see what kind of content you are submitting, and ban your articles and even cancel your account if you are not following submission protocol.

source: http://en.easyart.com/content/

If Darth Vader was an Internet Marketer, he would be a keyword stuffer for sure. Don’t stuff your article with keywords just because you want your website to rank well for it. Keyword stuffing is a dark force practice and another reason why article submission sites ban articles. Your article content should include strategically placed keyword throughout the content and no more than 2 hyperlinked keywords, if the website allows.

Let me give you an example from my personal experience. Once I submit an article to various submission sites, I’ve noticed that people who are interested in content for their blog, use my article and post it on their website. I don’t find that a problem as long as they keep the hyperlinks intact and give me recognition as the author. In fact, I find it helpful for distributing my content and optimizing my website further. But then there are those who use my article to create unique content and end up slaughtering my article to bits. Some also use my content without giving author recognition, making it seem as if it was their own work.  Back in June, I had written an article about how the breaking news of MJ’s death had a major impact on most social media websites and search engines. Here’s a link to the article:

http://knol.google.com/k/angira-pandit/social-media-taken-hostage-by-michael/3i5btgxwds9eg/7

And after someone decided to use an article spinner software to butcher my article to pieces, it ended up like this:

http://michaeljacksondead.ws/?tag=fail-whale

After making the comparison between the original article and the spinned article would you even consider using Black Hat SEO techniques such as article spinning to fulfill your Outsource Article Marketing needs? The spinned article doesn’t even make sense! So yes, the Black Hat SEO techniques may seem seductive, but are they really worth it?

Jedi Are Mindful Of Their Thoughts.

Obi-Wan says to Anakin, “You’re focusing on the negative again. Be mindful of your thoughts.”Some Outsource Article Marketing strategies for off page SEO include posting comments on blog posts related to your topic or business. A White Hat SEO strategy would be if you post a comment that has a valuable opinion. After you write a worthwhile comment you can then casually display a url or hyperlink to your article for your optimization purposes. There are some who take advantage of this SEO strategy by posting a spammy comment. This means they will blatantly advertise and hyperlink without contributing to a discussion or topic. Follow the light force by providing mindful thoughts with your comments rather than promoting low grade spammy comments. So next time you decide to work on your off page SEO campaign, make sure you utilize the light force strategies for your Outsource Article Marketing needs and as Yoda always said, “May The Force Be With You.”

A press release is a brief news statement to inform the media and consumers about your company’s latest advancements. The idea is to inform people about what’s going on in your company and to build brand awareness. Outsourcing Press Releases are helpful for optimizing on popular online news websites. They are a part of off page SEO campaigns because like submitting articles, distributing press releases to a number of websites help build quality back links. This SEO strategy has been referred to as Press Release Optimization.

Outsourcing Press Releases allows you to expose your business on various news platforms and add to the credibility of your website. They are comparatively different from article copywriting as they use professional, proper terminology and refrain from including opinions. They only contain factual information and are written from a journalistic perspective as opposed to a marketing perspective. They are distributed to inform the masses as opposed to selling to the masses. Avoid using clichéd phrases. Instead point out what makes your website unique and different from other businesses. Don’t take advantage by self-glorifying your company, or your business won’t be taken seriously and your press release will not get published. Quotes from unbiased sources referring to your company are valuable to include for Press Release Optimization.

A press release should be clear about all the facts starting with the company being referred to, who in the company is organizing the event, what took place, when did it happen and the reason why. It starts with a captivating headline to lure readers to find out what’s happening with your business and website. Next is a summary so readers will know what you are writing about. Your statement ought to begin with the location, website and date of the press release. Your first sentence has to be interesting and attract the interest of readers. Search engines generally crawl the first and last paragraphs more frequently, so ensure those areas of your press release include the targeted keywords for your website. Just like any other piece of writing, this needs to be organized into paragraphs using clean grammatically correct language. At the end with a space to separate, list the name of your company. Underneath your company name include a brief introduction to your company with important contact information listed on the next line. Your contact information must include an email address, a phone number, and website address. After you finish, the very last line of your press release should have the following: “###” This marks the ending of your press release.

Outsourcing Press Releases can include hyperlinked keywords which are targeting a website. At the same time ensure, that you are not keyword stuffing or hyperlinking too many keywords. Attract interest by attaching videos, pictures, or even podcasts. Nothing can capture the attention of readers like imagery can. Pictures allow consumers and the media to relate with your brand name. It is important to link back to relevant pages rather than linking back to your main website for Press Release Optimization. There are a variety of Offshore SEO companies they provide Press Release Optimization services. These services help companies distribute press releases to the masses and effectively build traffic for their websites.