photo credit: Neil Boothman

Today I came across one of the most creative and informative presentations on SEOmoz regarding Search Engine Optimization for startups. The presentation was made for the YCombinator SEO for Startups event.

Here are a few tips from the post/event:

1. Employ SEO in the concept phase (not after the site is built) – It is quite hard to do but take advantage of being a startup. You’re building your website from scratch, so be sure to apply SEO from the beginning.

2. Build accessibility first – Make something search engines can find. Unique content that users and search engines find valuable

3. SEO is a strategy, not a tactic – Don’t do the usual SEO stuff by following certain guidelines and tactics. Explore, experiment and form a proper SEO strategy for your startup

4. Remember: SEO is not a one-time event – It is constantly evolving, not only because Google keeps changing its algorithms but more because hundreds of competitors keep adding content and updating their site.

5. Analytics = Religion – Researching, tracking and reporting, all is possible through analytics. It’s the soul of any SEO initiative

6. Have other sources of traffic to your website (not only Google) – Pass links in e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, press releases etc. If 90 % of your traffic is coming from Google then that is certainly very dangerous.

For more tips, visit SEOmoz

I promise that no hairbrained scheme to manipulate the search rankings by registering thousands of sites or scraping the web for open places to link or contacting 6,000 “friends” for a link exchange are either A) new or B) going to work.

photo credit: manfrys

‘SEO’ (Search Engine Optimization) is a term widely used to mean “the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (organic) search results” (Wikipedia).

As a startup, you have your website ready with excellent content but how will you get it across to the ultimate users? Your website is in a space where there is a lot of search traffic, but how will you make it to the top of search engine rankings and generate traffic (ultimately leads)? There is a lot of confusion by founders of startups around SEO and how it works for a startup.

What we believe – SEO is extremely important for small businesses because normal users (those who don’t live and breath technology) only type a few of their favorite websites directly into the URL bar and for everything else go to search engines, most likely Google. In the 90s, people talked a lot about “home pages” and “site flow” – which matters if you are getting most of your traffic from people typing in your URL directly. However, for most startups, this isn’t the case (at least for the first few years of existence). Instead, the flow you should be thinking about it users going to Google, typing in a key phrase and landing on one of your internal pages.

Search engines are ‘matchmakers’ between users “demanding” information and websites “supplying” it. SEO helps tracing the gaps in the supply of information and providing traffic to your startup website.

The following article and slideshow provide great tips for Startups on SEO:

http://www.slideshare.net/willobrien/try-will-o-brien-startup-corner-seo-and-social-media
http://socalcto.blogspot.com/2009/11/seo-for-startups.html
As a startup founder, don’t overvalue better results with SEO than is deserved. There is a great value in SEO for startups. The beauty of SEO is as a long-term strategy for building inexpensive traffic.

 In the same conversation about SEO for startups, the founder either tells me:
•    There's a ton of search in my space
•    I'm not sure how much search there is in my space

Google is floating a new CPA (cost per action) model for Adwords advertisers who target US cities and states. If you are one such advertiser, just open up an account with Google Merchant Center and include as much information as possible for your products like accurate descriptions, images and price.

Merchants who have large product inventories now do not need to create ads. Just do your basic keyword research and determine the ones for which you want to show your ad. You pay only for the results and as the ads are charged on a CPA (cost per action) basis rather than CPC (cost per click). Thus, risks are lesser and a lot of time will be saved too as the advertisers can just update the merchant center with relevant information (and possibly keywords).

Currently, product listing ads are available only to a handful of advertisers but should open shortly for all advertisers across USA and may be other countries too. Read more…

Google wants the Best and not the one pretending to be the best. Obviously, this is being said in context to the relevance and popularity of the websites that get ranked for searcher’s keyterms. Obviously, as a business owner, you are looking forward to getting among the top 10 ranking for the keywords of your choice.

Link building is an ongoing struggle between the two sides with different motivations. On one hand there is a business owner or an SEO who wants to raise the rankings for a keyword and on the other hand there is an army of able search engineers who work constantly on negating and neutralizing any efforts that the search marketers might be using to influence the popularity part of the ranking algorithm.

With links becoming the deciding factor on “who ranks where” on the SERPS, companies are willing to shell out huge bucks just for getting the top 10 rankings. All points such as buying mindshare, building a brand, purchasing advertising are being done with the primary green reason. Green here refers to the Toolbar PR score and not to the environment friendliness of these links.

Read more…

I swear I am not talking about search engine optimization of a food joint or a restaurant. Nor am I interested in SEO for cows. The title is just an adaptation of the proverb – “sacred cows make good burgers”, which means that commonly held beliefs when broken, yield good results.

There are numerous blog posts each day on hundreds of SEO blogs that discuss what to do and what matters when in comes to ranking in the top 10 results in Google. But a lot of misconceptions float in the minds of small business owners, especially in India and other Asian countries, which have heard about the concept of SEO or Search Engine Optimization and have heard about meta tags!

Let me try to clear some of the misconceptions that are important if you are serious about making a mark online

• Meta tags – The dodo was a flightless bird and the meta tags are flightless SEO entities when it comes to using them in 2009. They are NOT important from search engines perspective. The only advantage that you get by a properly placed meta description tag is that search engines use them as a snippet of text when your page is displayed in search rankings. If the keywords that the user has typed in her query are found in your meta description, they are highlighted and if the meta description is formatted well, it helps build a well sounding logic which increases the chances of your results getting clicked on the SERP (search engine result page).
Read more…

BING Logo

Out comes a new search interface/algorithm set/a real new search engine from Microsoft. Slated in as the “next big thing in search” may be just after Wolfram Alpha, searchers are getting a new option to search on. Will it be exciting? Will it satisfy users’ queries in a better manner? Let’s have a look whether Bing is a bang or just its alternate meaning – a heap of pile.

In a hasty move, Microsoft launched its official search engine christened as BING. Although the company announced that the new search engine will be made available by June 3, the full-fledged unexpected release of the beta version of the search portal has left industry analysts amazed. The question on everyone’s mind is – why Microsoft launched Bing two days prior to the officially announced release date? But there aren’t any answers.

Whatever the reasons are, the fact is that Bing is here to make a bang and challenge the supremacy of the search giant i.e. Google. Moreover, in the near future it is going to replace Live which is at present the main search engine of Microsoft. Additionally, those who are contemplating Bing to be a Google killer kindly reset their expectations. Microsoft too has stated that it’s a fresh (re)start for them in the search domain and the improvements will continue to be rolled out. It looks like they are in no mood to dethrone Google, at least not right now. As far as the name is concerned, Bing is definitely a better name than “Live Search” as we all know that whatever results search engines display are not live but an assortment of their huge database. Read more…

Google Searchology has become kind of an annual event which is used to showcase the search related products and enhancements the Internet giant has to offer. In the preceding two years, Google used it for showcasing Personalized search and Universal search enhancements. On May 12, 2009, the search giant organized the event to introduce three new features for its search:

1. Refined search options
2. Google Squared
3. Rich Snippet

The guest speakers were:

1. Udi Manber, VP, Engineering (Core Search)
2. Patrick Riley, Software Engineer
3. Scott Huffman, Engineering Director
4. Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products and User Experience
5. Nandu Jankiram, Associate Product Manager
6. Alex Komoroske, Associate Product Manager
7. Kavi Goel, Product Manager
8. John Taylor, Software Engineer

Read more…

What is an SEO astrologer, is she an SEO or an astrologer, or is she someone from Mars? Well, none of them. Infact, the title is more of related to closely we can understand user behavior to come up with some conclusions, even if they are about a 100% unpredictable domain; the “psyche of a voter”. Let me tell you what I am trying to do here. I am using a couple of web based tools to predict the web searchers interest, strictly in India and try to find out whether it’s the BJP/the congress or the ubiquitous “others” who win this race to power center. Read more…

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “Brands are the solution, not the problem”.

Have you ever thought of SEO and branding as inter-related terms? This is important because Google has changed its algorithm for ranking the websites and has now come up with a novel concept, wherein the ranking will be directly proportional to the brand name. Better the brand name, higher will be the ranking.

However, some marketers are of the opinion that they are related, as in online arena, branding of a website could be compared against its visibility over internet. If a website has a good branding label that simply means that the website has been posted on thousands of other websites and people are talking about that website over social media platforms and their blogs. So, at the end what website gets are more back links and more visitors! Read more…

Remember the Vodafone Dog or the old Hutch? Or the bold Subway hoarding on a United States Expressway, having SEX written prominently over it and below,” Now that we have got your attention, come and eat at Subway.” Advertisements are basically to build brands and reinforce the product in the minds of the consumer through different media like radio/TV/Print/New Media etc.The whole chain of events leads to the consumption of the brand product in the market or simply the sales of the company move up.In our previous blog we already discussed how you can build brands online - Building Brands Online.
17 years after Sir Timothy Berners Lee developed the internet, it is on the brink of second revolution that is going to have far reaching consequences in every business domain, be it hospitality,services,transportation, or for that matter anything you can think about.Yes! It’s internet advertising.Organizations are using this new platform to effectively build brands and for sales promotion purposes at all levels.Earlier if it was TV that was in the lead role to promote a product, of late the balance has been shifting towards internet.In this section we will delve into the intricacies of Internet Advertising and how it can generate more sales for you.
Lets begin with the basics first. Internet advertising is simply branding your project using the strength of the World Wide Web.It is somewhat different from TV or Print advertising

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