SEO Service Stop Articles

Welcome to the another set of website design tips, and I am writing this post in the middle of Holy Week 2008 so I couldn’t help but put some “religious-ity” ; if that’s even a word, in it.

Website Building Commandment 1 - Thou Shall Not Use Too Many Graphics
Break this law and you will get what is known as the click of death. Your readers do not have all eternity to wait for your web page to load, and if it doesn’t in 5 seconds or less they will simply close the browser window. Using too many graphics or images that are not scaled to the rights sizes or saved in appropriate formats will prolong page loading.

Website Building Commandment 2 - Thou Shall Make Proper Color Choices
We live in a world of color and they are so important that experts say that colors even affect human behavior. Here is another bit of human behavior you wouldn’t want on your site; you don’t want to annoy your website visitors with colors and color combinations that cause eye strain, or confuse them. The click of death is again dealt you by visitors who have problems reading the content on your site. There are colors appropriate for backgrounds and there are those for text, choose wisely. If you can test designs among test subjects like friends or regular internet users/surfers, do so and find out which one they found less straining.

Website Building Commandment 3 - Thou Shall Not Use Too Many Moving Graphics
Every website has a specific goal, and each page laid out to achieve a part of that goal. If you want your visitor to concentrate on what your message, and eventually perform the conversion you want them to do, use moving images sparingly.

Website Building Commandment 4 - Thou Shall Be Prudent In Using Flash or Video
There is such a big hype about how video and multimedia components on websites improve message delivery and conversion. However, if you can try not to use a large flash file on a welcome page that would prolong loading and cause a visitor to leave. Each element of a website serves a specific purpose and if your site can live without a flash intro then don’t use it. Otherwise if flash is necessary,there should be visible “Skip Intro” button for users who do not have time to wait.

When using flash video or mpeg’s on a page, try to deliver the best quality image at the lowest possible file size.

Website Building Commandment 5 - Thy Page Must Load Properly On All Browsers
This has something to do with browser compatibility. Always perform a check on your site by viewing it in the main browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera. Sometimes a page will look fine on one browser but broken on another. Don’t wait for your visitors to discover this themselves.

Website Building Commandment 6 - Thy Page Must Not Have Dead Links
Dead or broken links are links to pages that no longer exist and when that happens you usually get a “page not found” error.

Website Building Commandment 7 - Thou Must Provide Easy Navigation
Simply put, your visitor should find what they need on your site in two clicks; and you have to be able to reach any page on your site also in two clicks. If your site is huge, a site map can help. Every visitor should be able to breeze through your site stress free, and it should be your commitment to make it easy for them.

Website Building Commandment 8 - Thou Must Provide Complete Information
Your site should always have complete details about who your are, the service your provide, how to reach you, privacy or policies, etc. In the same way you should provide as much product information about what it is you are selling, if you do. Under construction pages are a mortal sin.

Website Building Commandment 9 - Thou Must Update Your Site Regularly
I can give you two good reasons why you need to do this; for your visitors and for the search engines. Your visitors will eventually stop coming back to your site if they see the same old stuff. There are many ways to keep your site fresh, in fact it helps to have constantly updated information that visitors will find informative and useful. New content gives search engines something new to index, they thrive on original and unique content. Give them what they want, and they will reward you through good listings and search engine traffic.

Website Building Commandment 10 - Thou Shall Obey This Rule Above All Else
Every element that goes into a web page or website must serve a purpose!

Again your website has a goal, whether it be to advertise a product or service and then get a business lead or sale; or to simply get a loyal bunch of blog readers. Every item on a web page should contribute to achieving that goal.

Every time you consider using an image, a color scheme, an animated graphic, flash video, or anything that will go into the page, ask yourself what purpose it serves, if the page will be alright even without that item, and if that item will in a way lead a visitor towards your conversion goal.

The Philippines is one of the world’s top destinations for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), one of which is SEO outsourcing in the Philippines. Second to India, it is recognized as a world player in the BPO industry, and the Philippine government forecasts that the Philippines could capture 50% of the total world English-speaking market by 2008.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most popular and effective strategies used by internet marketers around the world to increase the quality and quantity of website visitors, with the ultimate goal of developing business leads and generating profits for these websites. In the last few years, there has been a marked increase in companies offering SEO services in the Philippines, catering to both local and international clients.

As webmasters and e-commerce site owners realize the importance of search engine optimization as a key internet marketing strategy, the demand for SEO services grows. But the the costs of SEO services however  remain a bit expensive, too expensive in fact for small to medium enterprises and online entrepreneurs who depend on websites for international marketing exposure and cannot go head to head with larger corporations who have wider internet marketing budgets.  This is one reason why many SEO jobs are outsourced to SEO firms in India, and some tasks related to SEO outsourced to the Philippines.

With current trends showing a low dollar, and with SEO rates in India increasing that may lead to a slowdown in outsourcing to India, experts say that many of these SEO jobs might be go back to local US contractors, or will go to other affordable SEO services and other SEO outsourcing destinations such as the Philippines.

The Philippines has always been a preferred country to outsource to, given its lower costs, up to date internet and communication infrastructure, and skilled SEO professionals who are proficient in the English language. English is the primary language of instruction in Philippine schools and universities.

Today SEO service providers in the Philippines are wishing to get a larger piece of the world SEO outsourcing pie, and the Philippine government hopeful that SEO outsourcing in the Philippines can be another significant revenue source to further establish its claim to the BPO title.

But how these all will turn out, only time and coming trends will tell.

The traditional marketing mix or the 4 P’s of marketing are the variables business owners or marketing managers control in order to satisfy customers. Business or marketing decisions and their corresponding tasks are also categorized under these 4 P’s. The four P’s are product, pricing, promotion and place or placement with the latter referring to a product’s distribution channels or points of sale. Simply, this is where the customer meets product and makes the purchase.

If you open a store one of the important things to consider is good location, preferably some place convenient and with high traffic; hopefully to get more eyeballs and incidental walk-in traffic. In this case, what will get the eyeballs and attract a passerby is your window display or storefront. Once inside, your potential customer browses through the items for sale, picks them up and inspects, considers the prices, chooses a product and takes it to the cash register to pay.

If you want to sell items online, you would need a website that duplicates the same processes and in the end allows the customer to come to a decision about a purchase that concludes in a purchase. You would then need your website enabled for e-commerce, and here are the key features your site would need.

Here are some website design tips if you are planning to build an e-commerce website or an online store.

Product Information Pages
Provide plenty of content pertinent to a product being sold. This includes product description like sizes, dimensions, colors and even comparisons with other similar products. It must allow the customer to choose a product, get a clear pricing and shipping costs on the product, complete the transaction and get an order number, and/or invoice confirmation via email. Allow your customer to choose a shipping method. Think of every possible question a customer may ask about the product, and include it in the product information page.

Always indicate if an item is in stock or not, or delivered against order. Ideally, you should have an email contact for inquiries or live help if the customer has a question. You must respond immediately! If you want to provide your own live chat and help desk services on your website, there are several specialized softwares are available for purchase.

Product pages with a SOLD notice or pages that are marked under construction annoy shoppers, so avoid these.

Create Clear Customer Service Links
Make sure that customer service links are clearly marked, visible and easy to spot so your customer does not have to dig around to find information, or search the entire page for a payment button, for example. A site with this trait allows ease in navigation and stress free online shopping.

Be Clear About Who You Are
Provide an “About Us” section or a section about your policies. If you have privacy statements and customer satisfaction policies, your customer will feel better about shopping in your store.

Publish Customer Feedback And Testimonials
Putting customer quotes and feedback especially if positive are a way of letting your prospective customer know that others are happy with your service, and help them decide on buying from you.

FAQ Pages Are A Must
To ensure that the customer is clear about the service you provide, provide an FAQ page with information about your return-back policies, guarantees, shipping prices and insurance charges if any.

Update Content Constantly
By adding new content frequently or additional product information, your returning customers will not be bored by seeing the same products they saw months ago. If your site has a date tag or current references, be sure to change these references frequently so you don’t give the perception that nobody is attending or reading your site, your site should look fresh and constantly updated.

If you need more website design tips, please feel free to send us an email using our Contact Form at  http://www.seoservicestop.com/Contact-Us.html or click this link for a Website Design Quote.

One of the most important objectives for a website owner is to increase website traffic, constantly. If and when you stop, some other overzealous webmaster will take your traffic and send them to their website. Here are 15 tips to increase website traffic. These can very well be the 15 commandments to abide by if you want to increase website traffic.
Here are guiding principles to observe in order to increase website traffic and improve your site’s search engine rankings. These are a combination of On Page SEO tasks and link building methods.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 1 - Create a site with valuable content, products or services.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 2 - Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 3 - Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 4 - Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 5 - Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services. They should be able to find anything on your site, in just 2 clicks.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 6 - Submit your web pages and not just the home page to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 7 - Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 8 - Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 9 - Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 10 - Make your customers’ visit easy, and help them navigate through your site effortlessly. Give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc, or plenty of reasons to make them come back.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 11 - Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 12 - When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 13 - When not sure, hire professionals. It may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 14 - Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

Increase Website Traffic Tip 15 - Know and understand how the internet works.

I’ll be blunt and straight to the point with this edition of SEO Service Stop’s search engine optimization tips; you have to use the keywords you want to optimize your page for, on the page title.

I have seen so many sites that do not use the page title and that is one big mistake you do not want to make, since this is one way for search engines to identify and appropriately rank your web page.

Whatever text is placed in the title tag (between the <title> and </title> portion) will appear in the title bar of visitor’s browsers when they view the web page.

Aside from the title tag being an important factor in how a search engine ranks your web page, the title tag is what will appear on the first line of your search engine listing on the search engine results pages (SERPs). So if a search engine user browses through some listings, he/she would notice a well written title tag with keywords that they searched for, rather than a title tag poorly written or a page that did not have a title page at all.

It is important to remember that search engines view individual pages and rank them accordingly, hence as part of your On-Page SEO efforts, you should properly use the keywords you are optimizing the web page for, on your page title. It would also be good to use the same keywords in other META data such as description and keywords, as these will help increase your chances of ranking highly on the SERPs.

One common mistake made by business owners is to place their business name in every title of every page when in fact many of your potential customers don’t bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and what you are offering. So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site.

The ideal page title is one that uses the keywords you are optimizing for, preferably at the start of the sentence, and with not more than 60 characters. It should be compelling enough to get eyeballs, and clicks when displayed on the SERPs.

Roy Sencio
SEO Service Stop

If you are webmaster, website owner or business owner who has an online presence, you must have heard of search engine optimization or SEO and wondered; “what is search engine optimization?”

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a traffic generation method used for the purpose of increasing the quantity and quality of a web site’s visitor’s, that come from search engines. The general idea is to get a website found preferably on the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for keywords or keyword phrase searches by search engine users, because the top ranked sites or web pages get the most traffic.

Search engine optimization is simply about identifying the most appropriate keyword phrases that relate to your site, and making sure that site is ranked highly on the SERPs whenever search engine users search for these keyword phrases.

There are two facets of search engine optimization: On-Page Search Engine Optimization and Off-Page Search Engine Optimization.

On-Page Search Engine Optimization
This process involves optimizing and fine tuning of a website and web page’s content, the proper use of page elements such as Meta tags and the overall improvement of a web page’s attributes. On Page SEO generally refers to actions or tasks performed on a web page or web pages in a site, and is internal in nature.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimization
This process involves link building tasks and other activities that are of an external nature and not within a site or on the site’s own pages. It is more than just simply building links; but also involves identifying ideal websites and web pages to have a link on, and observing guidelines that help contribute to getting a site found at the top of the SERPs.

Search Engine Algorithms
The most popular search engines today are Google, Live Search (MSN), Yahoo Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Each have a set or rules or criteria used to rank websites on the SERPs with a purpose of ensuring that a search engine user finds the most relevant results to the keyword phrase being searched, this is referred to as a search engine’s ranking algorithm. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, otherwise these can be manipulated by individuals who merely want to get sites into top positions. Aside from finding the most valuable search-results, search engine ranking algorithms deter spam pages from cluttering those results.

A search engine can use over a hundred factors for ranking the listings, and these factors and the weight or value they carry changes constantly.

One common problem most webmasters face is first getting their site crawled and indexed by search engine spiders. While some search engines accept submission of a website for crawling, it is actually easier to have an established authority site link to the new website in order for it to get crawled by search engine spiders. The fastest I got a new site indexed using this method was 2 days.

Search engine optimization can be a very tedious task, especially with the amount of research that goes into it, that it may be easier to hire someone to perform these tasks. This is especially crucial for corporate sites or online businesses who lose money every day if no sales are made online.

Search engine optimization companies or specialists will check out your website and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. They can also provide long term consultation and reporting to monitor your site and make recommendations and further improvements to keep your website traffic coming by ensuring that your search engine ranking high.

If you are not satisfied with your web site’s traffic, you can get a free Website Traffic Check by clicking o the link.

So what is search engine optimization other than being a way of generating traffic? I’d have to say it is a key component of any smart business owner who wants to make the most out of a website that promotes and sells the business, its products or services.

Roy Sencio
SEO Service Stop