Search engines are into providing their users with the most relevant and up-to-date information to match the search term that was used.  They are sophisticated pieces of technology which allow users to quickly find relevant websites by searching for a word or a phrase. Search engine results are useless to users if the information doesn’t relate to the search term, or if the results are old. People expect the most up-to-date and fresh information that is useful to them.

Updating your website everyday and adding some materials will help you get noticed by the search engines. So, if you are going to sell any type of product or service online, you have to optimize your website for the search engines, in order to boost traffic and sales. It is because over 90% of your business will likely come directly from search engine results. And for that reason, it is absolutely important to optimize your site for search engines for you to have the greatest deals in the entire world.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which webmasters or online business owners utilize strategic copy to augment their website’s status. It is certain that the internet has grown so fast over the years and the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market. Therefore, better understanding the fundamental elements of Search Engine Optimization is vital for an online business’ success.

Making use of effective search engine optimization techniques will improve the page rank of your website. There are many tricks that can be used to increase page rank; the most effective method is to provide high quality content consistently. This seems like a simple concept but there are many websites that fails to provide content that visitors find interesting. Sites which provide content that are interesting, well-written and regularly updated create highly engaged visitors who are more likely to return to the website in the coming days. So, if you can set your website apart from those boring, lifeless sites then do it. You’ll surely have a step closer to achieving high page rank through search engine optimization.

The next significant factor for an effective search engine optimization is to include keywords and phrases within your content. To make sure that you are properly targeting your market, you have to make sure that the keywords and phrases you have on your site are the keywords and phrase that your site is actually optimized for. The more keywords you use in your content, the more likely it is that online visitors will find your site when they do some research with those words. If you are unfailing with these techniques, then your overall search engine optimization will increase, boosting your page rank.

You should also have to develop a linking strategy as a part of your search engine optimization. Not only does this provide free advertising for your site, but it makes the impression that your site is imperative because of its affiliated links. For each link that you have pointing back to you, that is another chance for your potential customer to find you. The more inbound links that you have pointing to your site, the higher you will be ranked in the search engines.

Always keep in mind that search engine optimization methods are important in developing your site’s status. With that thing in mind, make sure that you write high-quality, keyword rich content and link your site to and from a deliberate family of other sites. These things will help improve your site’s popularity and increased business through your online business.

*Results as on 29th June 2010. May vary from time to time.

So, go ahead and check whether your name appears in the first page of Google.

The screenshot is not so clear but if see carefully still can see the wording of “6 minutes ago”. :)

Tip #1  Make sure you’re actually tagging your keywords.

Do you spend a lot of time optimizing your content and then neglect to tag them on your webpage?  Tags are where search engines look and if there are no tags they’ll pass right by your web pages.  Here’s a quick brief on tags.

There are a number of tag types including,

* Title tags. Title tags are quite possibly the most important place to situate your keywords.  Here’s what they look like – <title>Primary keyword phrase here. </title>

Your title tag is where you place your primary keyword or keyword phrase.  The sentence will describe your business in less than 90 characters.

* Header Tags. Header tags are next in order of importance to search engines.  They’re ranked in order of importance and look like this – <h1>Primary and/or Secondary keywords here</h1>

The “1” designates this header as the most important header on the page.

* Meta Tags. Meta tags provide the small descriptive text found underneath the title tag on the search engine results page.  Like title tags these should be kept brief, informative and up to date.

* Alt Tags. Alt tags are used to provide a text description of a graphic.  Each graphic on your site should have a description and an alt tag.

Tip #2 Add content to your site daily

Content is essential for traffic and a top search engine ranking.  Content is what search engine spiders look for and index – without it there’s nothing to index or rank.  Give visitors and search engines a reason to visit and index your site. Make a commitment to provide daily, optimized content and your traffic will soar.

Tip #3 Procure valuable and relevant incoming links

The more websites which link to your webpages the more valuable search engines perceive you to be, though not all links are created equal.  Search engines give more leverage to links from sites which are popular and credible and from sites which are relevant to your website topic.

There are different types of links.

- A direct link looks like a basic website address, for example, www.yourwebsite.com

- A text link occurs when the webpage address is embedded in the text.  Readers simply click on the link and are redirected to a new website page.

- If the link is to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page, it is called a “deep link.”

You can encourage linking to your website by:

* Adding content to your site.
* Submitting to article directories.
* Publishing press releases.
* Blogging and participating in social networking forums, chat rooms and social networking sites.

Tip #4 Be Social!

Now more than ever before, internet marketing is about building a community.  Whether you offer a forum on your website or you participate in social networking sites, social networking is a valuable traffic generating tactic.  Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for generating links and traffic to your site – create a profile and then post comments, links to your site and ideas which generate conversation.

Get involved – many chat rooms and forums are industry specific, find those which cater to your industry, and begin participating.  Speak to and connect with a highly targeted audience.

Tip #5 Advertise for more exposure and traffic

Advertising, when handled strategically, can be used to promote your content and products or services.  PPC advertising is often the tool of choice because you control the advertising budget on a daily basis and have the tools to test and track your advertising efforts.  Once you’ve honed your PPC ads the return on investment can be phenomenal in terms of traffic and purchases.

For maximum results, create a traffic and SEO strategy.  Outline your plan and your goals and then take the necessary action.  Take advantage of these five traffic and search engine tips to boost your business.

Creating your own website is not a difficult task if you find the correct Website Builder to help you. I never think or dream to create my own website until I met the software – XSitePro. Therefore whenever my friends ask me where they can get their own website with a fair quote, I always share with them that they can create their own website and have full control with the website design and setting.

This is a review and sharing by Monique Yoyo. She is using XSitePro for her website – LadyCollection.net. Let’s see what she said about this Website Builder.

Managing Page
XSitePro has a very simple and clear managing page. I can master it very quickly even though I was a beginner 2 months ago.

Web site template (provide option)
XSitePro provides 5 types of web site template. There are blank web site template, sales letter template, graphical template, plain template and stylish template. This is for the advantage of beginner like me. The template is good enough no matter you use what kind of website you are going to create. For me at the age of 20, I like to have a colourful web site especially when I decided to own a website related to fashion so I choose the stylish template at the beginning.

Web site template (manual)
Day by day, the template I have chosen before can’t satisfy me. I tend to adjust the width and length of the header panel, info bar, left panel, main panel header, main panel, main panel footer, right panel, page footer and page margin. I was quite happy when I notice that what I need to do is just enter my ideal information on the page layout setting. I don’t even need to understand those html codes that always make the website beginner anxious.

Web site information
In order to create my ideal web site, I have take note some important points that must be included in the web site. For me as an absent minded person, I can easily forget and throw the paper notes. Fortunately, this software allows me to enter the details (eg. title, keywords, description and some other important notes) on the specific page. This page is just for my reference and will not be published. I can refer to it and make some changes to it later.

Web page
One of the benefits creating website page by using XSitePro is we can preview the webpage before publishing. Hence, I can make some amendments in order to publish my ideal website.

Advance Source (html code)
Before using XSitePro, I hosted my blog at free hosting site. I manage the blog for quite a long time. There are quite a number of templates and page layouts for me to choose. Those of the template are beautiful and good enough for me (I just blogging as my diary that time). When I come to create a website that fit my ideal layout, I met with trouble in the blog hosting website. The biggest problem is I couldn’t change their default setting. For example, the setting of the padding and spacing width between the picture and words. In XSitePro, the setting is changeable. For advance website creator, this is one of the benefits.

Advance Page analysis
Other than my own idea on create my website, I also refer some advice that appear on the page analysis in XSitePro. Each of the web page will have individual page analysis. This kind of advice is profitable for me. I absorb the suggestion mainly on readability, accessibility and search engine optimization summary. As no-income student, I am unable to pay for tutor to help improving my website. So the page analysis function appears as my website tutor.

Advance
Breadcrumb, link page, search engine sitemap, resource manager, import page, pop up wizard, navigation menu, robot, redirected page, mobile site wizard, siloing, multi page creation, web site clean-up
I haven’t use this advance functions yet but as a 2-month-old website beginner, I will keep on improving my website by utilizing all the facilities.

Conclusion
So far, I find XSitePro is good enough for a beginner and advance website creator. To create own website, a good website designer software is indispensable. I strongly recommend XSitePro.

*Click to enlarge

I subscribed to Google Alert for the word “mompreneur” since I started my website – MompreneurAsia.com and this is totally not the keyword for this blog – MoonLoh.com. So, from here, I can conclude that even though this is not the keyword for my blog, Google still “see” it as something relevant and as long as you follow the SEO in your post, they will reward you in some way.

This is definitely a way to drive traffic to the blogs and I believe we should always follow the basic we need to do instead of purposely do something.

The last time I saw my post appeared at Google Alert was In March, that was the post about my Sharing on Womanhood Fiesta at Suntec City, Singapore. If you miss the post, you may take a look here, with some photos attached. ;)

My Mompreneur Sharing on Womanhood Fiesta

Enjoy and hope we gain knowledge from this experience. :)

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For WordPress 2.7.1 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• You can fine-tune everything
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

Step by step installation:

1. Download the All in One SEO Pack at WordPress Plugin Directory.
2. Upzip the file and upload into /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
3. Activate the plugin through the “Plugins” menu in WordPress.
4. Go to the “Settings” menu in WordPress and fill in the details as below.

That is the main setting for your blog and for each single post, you need to fill in the details as below.

So, what does this mean? I could customize my search results with the rankings I want? I could put my own website to the rank of #1? If it can simply change the ranking, how about the effort of doing all the SEO and LSI? Many questions just appear in my mind. I then found a video that explain more about Google SearchWiki.

And also a post on Google SearchWiki Kill SEO Ranking? – It says that the changing only affect the particular computer and only if he log on to his google account.

I do a test by myself for the keyword “how to do social bookmarking”. My website rank #6 originally but after my “adjustment”, it ranks #1.

Before Using SearchWiki

After Using SearchWiki – This result only effective when I log on to my google account.

So, what do you think about Google SearchWiki? Any advantages and disadvantages of boosting the websites’ ranking and it can only be viewed by ourselves?

I’m actually quite surprise to see my website get rank at the first page and even the #1 for some keywords. Let’s share with you some keywords that rank my site in the first page of SERP.

Keyword-Important things of the media, Rank-#1

Keyword-How to do social bookmarking, Rank-#6

Keyword-”Content sharing site” seo, Rank-#1 & #2

Keyword-Google webmaster help center seo, Rank-#3

Keyword-Lsi site creator, Rank-#5

These are the results of 19.01.09 and my Page Rank=2, Alexa Ranking=684,881

If you ask me whether a website with Page Rank 0 can get rank in the first page of SERP, let me show you the following:

My Mompreneur website only launched last month and the PR=0 but still get rank in first page #1 and #2 of the Google Organic Search Results. Therefore, try to focus on your website’s SEO and LSI to attract more free traffic and don’t worry about your Page Rank.

You can read more about my posting of SEO and LSI here.

Of course I’m not mean that we should totally ignore SEO and only focus on Social Media. Search Engine Optimization is more technical but it’s always good in keywords research, keywords targeting and attract free traffics for our website/blog. For long term advantages, we really need to look into it seriously and can’t ignore it’s importance.

Social Media on the other hand is very powerful and here’s some of my reasons:

1) Get indexed within 24 hours – Your brand new website/blog will get indexed by Google within 24 hours by using social media. See my posts:

• Power of Social Bookmarking – My Babymoon Travelling Information Guides
• Just A Casual Blogging

If you only focus on SEO and the new website may need to get up to 4 weeks or longer time to get indexed by Google.

2) Networking – I like networking and enjoy the online atmosphere. We can share ideas and goals with each others and people will also get to know you more personally. It gathers like minded people together in a community and we grow by learning from others ideas.

3) It’s kind of Viral Marketing – You can get very up to date information through social media. Twitter is a mini blogging that gives very updated information and once you put your information on to social media, it is shot to websites all over the world.

4) Broadcast – All you need to do is just to do a broadcast on all your social media sites and all your networks friends get the information you are trying to deliver. It’s a very easy way to drive traffic and without any spamming.

5) Branding – The last thing I love is social media helps in the branding. Branding is important in Internet Marketing and you don’t need to be the professional in your niche but you should be the authority in your niche. Social media is a great tool for branding.