Archive SEO UpdatesCorona Virus and Google TrendsMarch 11, 2020The coronavirus outbreak from Wuhan, China has created massive threat across thee globe as many industires worldwide feel the impact.Update as of 11th March 2020On December 31 last year, China alerted WHO to several cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan, a port city of 11 million people in the central Hubei province. The virus was unknown.Several of those infected worked at the city’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was shut down on January 1.As health experts worked to identify the virus amid growing alarm, the number of infections exceeded 40.Google Trends shows a spike, after the January 20, China reported a third death and more than 200 infections, with cases also reported outside Hubei province including in the capital Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.And the drop is after the February 11, the WHO announced that the new coronavirus would be called “COVID-19“.Again the sudden spike after, February 22, South Korea saw its largest spike in a single day with 229 new cases of the virus.Italy reported its first two deaths, while Iran confirmed a fifth death among 10 new infections. A sixth death was later confirmed, though it was not clear whether this case was included in the country’s 28 confirmed cases.In mainland China, the number of new infections fell significantly with 397 cases reported....Google January 2020 Core UpdateJanuary 15, 202014th January 2020 was just an ordinary day for most of us as we went about with our regular work, but not so for Google.On the 13th Google tweeted about releasing a broad core algorithm update called January 2020 Core Update.Google explained their Algorithm updates in the best possible way as referenced below.“One way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, you refresh the list. It’s going to naturally change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before.”Google Webmaster Central BlogAn Algorithm changes tracking tool Cognitive SEO also was able to track the fluctuations on keywords ranking changes.Our Client’s keywords ranking change after the 2020 core Algorithm updateWe were able to notice massive improvements on our clients keyword rankings after the algorithm update. We have always deployed the best practice when it comes to providing SEO services to our valuable clients.Some chatter about the Algorithm update from the SEO communityTwo hours After the update went live, we began dropping for dozens of keywords one after the other. The effects from our end/datacenters were visible quite fast. We are also losing rich snippets stars for every phrase, after years of having them being visible in the SERPs. We are religiously dropping for everything across the board, including for fresh and expert written content. But I guess if a site has issues that would drag it down, it’s a site wide effect during an update. We’re definitely experiencing that right now. I guess we didn’t do enough work to improve our site and user experience. If I’m being honest and objective with respect to our site, in theory, I can see why it’s dropping. Unpleasant but it’s the reality. Need to work harder.For us, it’s been horrible since the second week of November. I don’t ever recall Google’s traffic being this bad. The quantity is there, but the quality went right down the toilet. Let’s hope what is apparently rolling out now will dramatically improve traffic quality. Here’s what I’m looking at for this month:Users: +9.8%Revenue: -40.6%Conversion Rate: -38.2%Almost a 10% increase in traffic and conversions fall off the cliff? Really?Keep in mind this is on top of what turned out to be a terrible November and December. Google’s traffic has gotten really, really bad. And just when you think the quality of traffic coming from Google can’t get any worse, it does!Have you been affected by the recent algorithm update? Has your website seen significant changes in the keywords rankings, drop in organic traffic, not many inquiries etc. Get in touch me and I’m happy to analyse your website along with you in identifying and fixing the issue....Advantages of an effective ecommerce web development service in Sri LankaNovember 7, 2019With the increasing popularity of online stores the demand for E-commerce web development services are increasing as well. Since the invention of online shops people are switching from visiting shops or department stores to purchasing goods and services online. At the time of introducing online shopping no one expected a huge growth in online shops.However E-Commerce web development services in Sri Lanka has made online business popular and has reduced the number of customers physically visiting stores to do business. You can now be at the comfort of your home and purchase your favorite product online. An effective E-Commerce web development service will provide you with the following advantages.We as a Sri Lankan E-Commerce web development services provider will assist you with a well organised design that will have a deep impact over visitors compared to other E-Commerce websites such as Daraz, Ikman.lk etc. At the early stages of E-Commerce websites, they used to attract a lot of visitors but with the growth of E-Commerce it is becoming hard to attract enough visitors to the sites. This is mainly due to all online shops being filled with the same type of design and information which led the online customers into confusion. There was no distinguished difference between the sites.Our Sri Lankan E-Commerce web development service can provide you with a bespoke design with search engine optimized (SEO) content that will make your E-Commerce site stand out from your competitors. An effective E-commerce web design will include necessary information about products in a detailed description. It will also have a customized design that will leave a deep impact on the visitor. As in any web application you will have to be concerned about the security of your E-Commerce website.Our web development service will ensure that your customer’s online transactions are direct through a secure payment gateway and will ensure that the monetary data of the customer cannot be hacked by a third party.Our E-Commerce web developers will design your E-commerce website in a way that, it would be easy to navigate and attract visitors repeatedly. It will help you to increase traffic to your website. Since it would carry the required information about your products it will also provide proper navigation in your site for the visitor. These features will enable you to attract and increase traffic to your E-Commerce website.Increased traffic will definitely increase more revenue. If your E-Commerce website is designed to manipulate your customers in purchasing more and more products online it will definitely bring in more revenue to your business. This will enable to achieve your ultimate goal in day to day business. Therefore make sure that you hire a Sri Lankan E-Commerce web development service to achieve the same....Earnings at risk – Google AdsenseApril 2, 2018Did you get a red alert on your Google Adsense account which says “Earnings at risk – One or more of your ads.txt files doesn’t contain your AdSense publisher ID. Fix this now to avoid severe impact to your revenue.” As most of us in Sri Lanka also use AdSense on various interesting blogs and website’s it’s import to make sure the revenue is not impacted.You’re having a “Publisher ID missing from ads.txt files” issue which is an easy fix. All you need is to declare who is authorized to sell your inventory with ads.txt Here’s how to fix it Create your own ads.txt file for AdSense Here’s how to create an ads.txt file to publicly declare that Google is authorized to sell your ad inventory:Create a text (.txt) file. Include the following line: google.com, pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 Important: Make sure you replace pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with your own publisher ID. Host your ads.txt on your root domain (for example, https://farhanonline.com/ads.txt).Here, “root domain” is defined as one level down from the public suffix list. For example, “srilanka.com” would be considered a root domain as “.com” is on the public suffix list but “seo.srilanka.com” would not be considered a root domain....SEO in 2018 Trends & ChallengesDecember 30, 2017SEO in 2018… Are you prepared for the new challenges in SEO? Below are a some of the crucial factors that you should be mindful when it comes to optimizing your website in 2018. Search Snippets Are you supposing a #1 organic and natural ranking is the best way to get just as much traffic as you possibly can? Think again. Significantly, SERP features (local packages, Knowledge panels, highlighted snippets and so forth) are stealing searchers’ attention and clicks from organic and natural listings. Keywords Optimization We have to know how to find the keywords and phrases that searchers are in reality using to resolve or even to get answers to the queries they are having. Those should be issues that your company, your website is in fact attempting to solve, that your website’s content including blog posts, articles can help them to resolve. What you should have is a main keyword and ideally a couple of related supplementary keywords that show the searcher’s purpose. So the intention behind of most of these queries and phrases ought to be the same so the same content can provide it. After you do that, we will have a main and a secondary group of keywords that we can target with our keywords optimization efforts. Link Building Link building is not likely to fade away in 2018, but it’ll be more important than ever before to make a strategy that looks for out quality links. There is no need to shoot for new links if indeed they don’t add value and help you build an power in your concentrate on niche.This won’t always imply that the best backlinks result from typically the most popular sites, but it’s still essential to seek coverage from sites that are highly relevant to your industry. Recommendation traffic can still donate to your site’s organic and natural search rankings, although it is also useful to get started on thinking of link constructing as a long-term process. An effective SEO strategy in 2018 will move towards relevance building, helping a brand name develop powerful connections and links which will be beneficial in the longer term. Meta Titles and Descriptions Indeed, Google still uses the meta depiction every now and again. I know it appears like now and then they don’t. In any case, truth be told, there’s a high percent of the time when the actual meta data from the page is utilized. There’s a considerably higher rate where the title is used. The URL, while Google some of the time truncates those, utilized as a part of the snippets and different components. How Google shows your page on the SERPs decides if individuals want to click on your page or somebody else’s. It’s very important to have descriptive and clean meta titles & descriptions that create that urge to a user to click. User Experience User experience for SEO will become even more vital in 2018. Google has made it very clear that the main focus is on the user and this could create many websites deliver a desired user experience for all website visitors. Mobile-first index Google is rolled out another mobile-first index. This implies Google will make and rank its search results based on the mobile version of content, even for listings that are shown to desktop users....Benefits of having a mobile websiteDecember 10, 2017Long gone are the days when people used to sit in front of their computers to find whatever they needed on the internet. Now, searches for shops, restaurants and hotels happen while users are on the move. A mobile website is the best way to make sure that you don’t miss out on this particularly lucrative audience. Here are 4 of the top reasons to consider when creating a mobile version of your website.1. Mobile searches are continuing to increase People are using mobile phones more and more for their searches. Most of the time, these searches are for the nearest restaurants or stores. Unless your website offers a mobile version, you will miss a large number of local searches with a greater chance of making sales. Even if you are not targeting a local audience, mobile searches are still valuable sources of traffic. According to recent studies, mobile audiences are expected to increase in the future. 2. Mobile websites are more appealing than apps Apps are great, most people love them. However, when someone is in a rush to make a purchase or to find information about a product, the last thing they want to do is physically download an app. Needless to say, apps are more expensive as they have to be built for different platforms. In comparison, mobile websites are affordable and easily accessible to your audience. 3. Not all websites look their best on mobile phone screens Unless you have a mobile version of your site, the font may be too small; users will have to scroll a lot to find what they need and also the pages would load slower. With a mobile website, the information is presented in a concise manner, thus eliminating the need to zoom or scroll. Since mobile websites are becoming more popular, there is a very high possibility of losing users due to your website not being optimized for mobile phones. 4. Websites that are mobile optimized have a better chance at higher ranks Search engines are striving to provide websites that are relevant to what their users are seeking. In addition, they try hard to push the sites that offer easy navigation. As for mobile websites, the increased traffic from mobile users is a great way to give your website a ranking boost....How to stay on budget while creating a great websiteApril 5, 2017A great website is much more than something that looks pretty. In reality, a website has to be pleasing to the eyes while being functional and also capable of generating valuable leads. This is why website owners have to pay special attention into how their website budget is utilized. Ideally, a tight budget should not be a problem to create a website with all the right features. 1. Choose a simple design Complicated designs are expensive for many reasons. If you intend to create a graphic rich site with videos and animations, it’s most likely that your budget will be considerably stretched. In addition, busy designs with too much graphics are not always friendly towards slower internet connections. Therefore, it’s best to settle on simple designs that aren’t overcrowded with too many graphics. They are cheaper to design while being friendly to generating traffic. 2. Choose the right platform With a massive choice for website platforms, you can make your pick without much hassle. However, the difficult part is to pick a platform that you are comfortable with using. Not every one of us is a web developer and it’s important to settle on a platform that allows you to make changes without having to write code. Platforms such as WordPress is well known to allow website owners to update blogs, images and content on other pages without having to rely on a developer. 3. Optimise your site before completion What most website owners neglect at the website design stage is search engine optimisation. Unless a website is properly optimised from the start, it could be rather costly to make changes later on. Most SEO services providers will request you to add more content to a website, add Alt tags to images as well as to add keyword rich titles and descriptions. This is why you need to do bit of research and to add SEO friendly elements at the designing stage. You don’t necessarily have to skimp on any important elements on your website to stick to the budget. Instead, you can simply omit the unnecessary elements to create a fully functional website with all the right features and facilities. Choosing an affordable website design company who will also offer a great website with on page SEO setup will help you get established faster and cheaper....$45 worth advertising freeDecember 9, 2016Are you a business in Sri Lanka looking for leads and business opportunities? Here’s an ideal opportunity to unleash your potential, Google Adwords is a perfect platform to reach out to your potential clients. Using Google Adwords you can show your Ads to users who use Google to look for products or services related to yours. Having a very well optimized Ad and landing page can convert those users into paying customers.Yes, We offer $45 worth advertising free when you sign up with us for Google Adwords campaign. So why wait, contact us now. *This is a limited offer ...Tips to build an eCommerce websiteDecember 6, 2016Building an eCommerce website Building an eCommerce website is considerably different in comparison to other websites. You have to think about the ‘store’ aspect of the website among other things. However, there is a lot that you can learn from the latest trends for websites as well as the practices employed by websites that are successful online shops. Below are some crucial tips to build a great eCommerce website: 1. Choose a simple design The design of the site is crucial to its success. Choose colors that reflect your brand and a design that is simple yet functional. Ecommerce website design is all about functionality. Choosing the right colors and placement of content, advertisements and links all have to be done with your users’ convenience in mind. The idea is to not overwhelm a potential customer with graphics and animations while letting them find what they need fast.2. Make searching easier As an example eBay offers you the opportunity to refine your search by adding filters to find what you need among thousands of options. While a small business may not need something so elaborate, you may need to take the necessary measures to allow people to find products they need with ease and convenience. 3. Easy navigation Make navigation as easy as possible within your website. Consider offering a breadcrumb navigation process to allow customers to make changes on their previous steps as they proceed to check out. The last thing a shopper would want is a slow and messy checkout process. With a streamlined navigation process, it will be much easier for them to make their purchases and encourage them to revisit your website more. 4. Be transparent with your charges Another thing a shopper would dislike is to find hidden charges from shopping at your website. It is best to show whatever charges involved with each purchase so that customers are well aware of the amount they are spending before they authorize it.Hidden charges will only cause you to lose the customer forever along with any referrals. 5. Choose the right payment options People have different preferences over online payment options. Unless your website is equipped to handle at least a few of the most popular choices, your customers are more likely to get discouraged from making a purchase. In addition, make sure that the gateways are chosen for their reputation as well as popularity. The last thing you would want is a checkout process ending with an ill-reputed payment gateway which could lead to abandoned shopping carts and a bad reputation....7 Tips for Writing Your Home PageSeptember 25, 2016More people will see your website than will ever see your office. Since the first page most of your visitors will see is your home page, it’s also the most important page. Your home page has only 3 to 5 seconds to capture people attention before they will bounce to another site. Your page must have the right amount of text with the right graphics to grab the visitor’s attention. They are searching for products or service websites because they have a need or a want. Help them find the information quickly and easily to determine if you can provide them a solution.Here are some tips for ensuring your home page is effective: 1. Keep it concise. People don’t read websites. They quickly scan to determine if the information they want might be available. Provide the most important information first without a lot of facts and details. Make your content concise and focused. Provide links to inner pages for in-depth coverage. 2. Use keywords. Use the right keywords that people use to search for related products or service. Content is still king for search engines determining what sites to rank on the first page of Google. Using the right keywords and providing fresh content is vital. 3. Write copy from the reader’s viewpoint. Visitors don’t care about you. They care about themselves. You are important because you can help them solve their problem. Count how many times you start a paragraph with “I” or “we.” If it is more than one it’s too many. 4. Easy to Use. Your visitors should be able to instantly determine where to click on your site to locate the information they want. Hyperlinks should be easy to find. Use good descriptive phrases for labeling buttons. 5. Personalize. Online videos and logos that show awards, memberships etc. allow people to know how you can help. 6. Use headlines and bulletins. Long paragraphs of text turn readers off. Provide informative headlines to guide visitors and the search engines to the most important keywords. Bullets break up long-winded paragraphs and guide the reader. Bullets allow people to quickly scan information to find the information they need. Hypertext links can be added to allow visitors to find more in depth information. 7. Proofread your copy. Errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation detract from your professionalism. Proofread your work, and ask others to do it too. An extra set of eyes may catch mistakes you miss....Developing Long Lasting SEO Takes TimeJune 7, 2016Good things come to those who wait Patience is a virtue in search engine optimization. Placing paid sponsored ads in the Pay per Click (PPC) area via Google AdWords can achieve almost immediate results but SEO does not produce immediate results. You won’t get your return on investment a week after SEO starts. However the long term benefits of SEO often out weight the almost instantaneous results of PPC. This is one reason that the two often work well together in a campaign. Optimizing your site for your targeted key phrases won’t get you to Page 1 overnight. You won’t find all your keywords rankings in the top 10 on Google in 19 days (despite some claims you read), nor will you get significant traffic improvement after an hour of SEO consultations. SEO is like boiling water: you don’t get a hard boil the moment you turn on the burner… you have to wait for it.The process of optimizing a site can take months or even over a year, depending on how competitive your area of practice and your geographic target. SEO is an ongoing process with growing measures of return. The return in SEO is good, but you’ve got to be willing to invest the time to let it happen. Developing a Proper Base Takes Time Hours of research, developing the proper site architecture, and making the site user friendly must all be completed prior to the actual optimization of specific pages. Keyword research, research on your specific product or service and your specific targeted geography, competition research, and more, must be completed before any optimization can begin. Every website has different construction, design, layout, history, and speaks differently. No two sites are the same; therefore no research is the same. Some elements of the research can be applied, but you can’t just take what works for someone else and apply it to your site. You don’t get ahead by cloning a competitor; you get ahead by outsmarting a competitor. There Are No Magic Bullets in SEO Many businesses have quality websites. To get the search engines to rank you higher than other businesses competing in your same product or services, it is important to do all the little things right. There is no one thing you can do that will send you to the top of the rankings. You must do a series of small things right over time. Overall website construction including “Site maps”, help both search engines and visitors quickly and easily get to the information that is important on your site. Up against a similar site, these things can help you keep visitors engaged with your content and prevent them from jumping off to a competitor. It’s often the small things that can make the biggest difference. Providing unique content offers value to visitors, videos give people an understanding of you, your personality and FAQ that address real issues are some of the examples that separate you from the rest. Even the design and navigation of the site play a major role. The easier it is for visitors to find their way around your site the easier it is for the search engines to crawl and index all your web pages....Google Trusted German photographer Felix Steck in Sri LankaJune 4, 2016We are extremely delighted to welcome expert German photographer Felix Steck in Sri Lanka. Felix Steck is to start covering hotels and resorts with his expertise and experience in photography. While it is still a new trend with Google street view, the see inside feature of Google is very much likely to catch up soon in Sri Lanka. There are few novice companies in Sri Lanka, who claim to be authorized partners of Google in Sri Lanka and have gone to the extent of even publishing on digital and print media. For the best of my knowledge, currently only few Google Trusted photographers are from Sri Lanka as per Google’s listing for Trusted Photographers. They are the pioneers in Google Street view and have been involved in Google related businesses such as Google local business since 2012. Many hotels and resorts in Sri Lanka are taking the advantage of Google see inside. I hope Felix Steck and professionals of Sri Lanka if worked together could be a great strength and add more value to the local businesses in Sri Lanka....Sancharaka Udawa 2016 (Sri Lanka’s Only Tourism Fair)May 26, 2016It is yet another edition of the Sancharaka Udawa 2016 (Sri Lanka’s Only Tourism Fair) on May 27 to 29 2016 at the Sirimavo Bandaranaike Memorial Exhibition Centre (BMICH) from 10am to 8pm each day. It’s an ideal event to witness some of the best of Travel and Tourism showcased by leading tour operators and hotels and resorts in Sri Lanka. The exhibition will be held in collaboration with the 50 years celebration of Sri Lanka Tourism. There will be many stalls related Travel and Tourism in Sri Lanka....Why Good SEO is so ImportantMay 1, 2016I thought that for my first post for the month of May, I would write about why SEO – Search Engine Optimization is so important for all websites. My goal is to make things as simple as possible for new site owners to understand. Image Credit to searchengineland.com When people do a search, they’re usually looking for specific information. Less than 10% will look beyond page 1 of the search results returned so your goal should always be page 1 and then continue to build towards a top 5 ranking which is above the fold (seen without scrolling down). Whatever niche or market you are in there is going to be competition so don’t limit your efforts to just a keyword, also target 3-4 word key phrases. A common request by many Sri Lankan website owners, who has asked me to rank for a single keywords like jewellery, mobile phone or apartments. Key phrases are much easier to rank high for than one or two word keywords. So, if you wish to run any form of online business, your primary role is to get recognized by the major search engines. SEO is really the only way to do that. Something else to consider is that Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask account for over 95 percent of all global internet searches. Google is by far the largest and accounts for roughly 70-80% of all searches. Good SEO is not only about ranking high and getting traffic, it’s about ranking high, getting traffic and having exactly what the user is looking for. SEO is an ongoing process and it starts the second you decide to register a domain. Domains that are keyword rich will be much easier to rank for. Don’t try and take shortcuts. Take your time and do things the right way and you will be rewarded in due time. 99% of SEO services out there aren’t worth using. Read and research and do it yourself. It will take time, but you’ll know it was done right. SEO is NOT about cramming your website with every possible keyword. If anything it will get your website penalized with Google. Make sure your website is clear, easy to read and easy to navigate. I see many new webmasters using white text on dark backgrounds and while that may work for some sites, they do not for most. Think about this, when was the last time you saw a newspaper or magazine with white text on a dark background? Never! Use a free tracking tool like Google Analytics to see how your site is performing for your main keywords and phrases. You’ll also be able to see any errors that Google may be having while crawling your site. Don’t ever stop working on building your site’s popularity. Take at least one day of the week and devote it to adding fresh content. If your homepage doesn’t change much, you can still add content with a news feed or by submitting articles to article submission sites. As your site grows, so will your Page Authority and your rankings will go up in the SERP’s. Looking at various website’s of reputed companies, hotels and businesses in Sri Lanka, a BIG question I have is “Why don’t you do Good SEO?“...Who is the most active on Social Media?April 23, 2016The answer: mothers with young children Photo credit to www.thepitagroup.com A recent report from a leading Marketing Services, a global provider of integrated consumer insights, found that mothers with children under the age of five were more active on social media, were more likely to shop using a mobile device and were more open to engaging with brands online. In fact, moms with young kids are more than twice as likely as the general population to visit social networking sites three or more times per day. They are also the most participatory, being twice as likely as the general population to post or comment on social networking websites. This demographic even surpasses other groups of moms, and it was found that as the children grow older, moms are less likely to be social active. If you or your company was ever wondering how to market to this group of social savvy women, social media may be the answer. A possible explanation for this increase in social activity is that “mothers with young kids, especially those with infants, spend a lot of time at home with the kids and need an outlet that allows them to stay connecting with family and friends,”. “In that sense, social media – especially sites like Facebook where users can share photos, statuses and private messages – is ready-made for this segment.” Some more findings about mothers with young children are: They are mobile power users: Moms with young kids are more than twice as likely as the general population to visit websites on their smart phone. They respond well to advertising: Especially when shopping for their children, moms with young kids respond very positively to advertising. In fact, they rank highest among all moms for the statement “Advertising helps me to choose products to buy for my children.” They use mobile phones to look for coupons: Moms with young kids are 62 per cent more likely than the general population to use their mobile phones to look for local coupons while shopping....Google Street view in Sri LankaMarch 23, 2016The long awaited Google Street view for Sri Lanka is finally here. Google maps have been a very effective and useful tool for most Sri Lankan’s, like other developed countries we have been using the maps for various reasons from giving someone directions, finding the easiest route to a destination or checking the traffic of a particular road (Google recently added this feature which is available on android and ios).As Google continues to make life easier, the Google see inside feature on SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) is an ideal platform for business to showcase their property whether its a hotel, resort or showroom. The Google see inside enables you to virtually go inside a property such as a hotel or resort and have a 360 degree view of the property and navigate around. Now that we even have the Google Street view, the 360 virtual tour via the See inside link is very useful for hotels & resorts where potential guests get to see the rooms and views they would be getting when they visit. Invite customers in with indoor Street View of your business on Google Search and Google Maps.The pioneers of introducing 360 virtual tours and Google see inside in Sri Lanka have been on the forefront by assisting many businesses to enhance their visibility on Google Maps. Despite few small companies comprising only a couple of people which pretend to be Google in Sri Lanka....Picking a SEO friendly Domain NameDecember 6, 2015They say all the good domain names have been taken and for the most part that is true. I see a lot of new webmasters searching for days to find a good domain name to register, what they don’t realize is that there may be a much faster and better way to get a good domain. The first thing you should do is make a list of the main keywords your domain should have. It will make ranking high for niche much easier in the long run. There are millions of domains available in domain markets and the benefits of an aged domain are countless. I wanted a domain name that had some SEO value and I didn’t want to spend much money on it. The first place I looked was GoDaddy and found it with a Buy it Now of only $.99. So I got what I wanted without spending much money. You won’t always get the domain name you want that cheaply but there are some good ones out there for a good price. The most I’ve spend for a domain was a few dollars. It was no secret that Google was taking the age of a domain into account in it’s algorithm. It’s also no secret that newly registered sites usually end up in the Google sandbox for a year or more. So definitely try and find an aged domain that has a clean history. It’s important to make sure the domain you’re going to purchase is clean and did not have a bad reputation before. Another thing to consider is the .tld of the domain. Any webmaster would pay a fortune for a .gov or .edu domain but sadly those are not available. Your first choice should be a .com and if that’s not available try and find a .org or .net. You should avoid anything else. I have a few .info domains that just don’t seem to do well no matter what. Step 1 for your new website is to do a search for a good domain name in the domain market. If you would like assistance or suggestions in picking a SEO Friendly domain name, please contact me....Infotel 2015 Sri Lanka’s Premier ICT ExhibitionNovember 17, 2015Infotel 2015 It’s time you get your devices and systems up and running as INFOTEL 2015 unfolds this November.Organized by the Federation of Information Technology Industry Sri Lanka (FITIS), South Asia’s Premier and Sri Lanka’s largest ICT exposition “INFOTEL” will be hosting its 14th edition from 20th – 22nd November 2015 at BMICH, Colombo. INFOTEL 2015 will be targeting to connect citizens not just through education and information, but also by providing to its end consumers a whole new world of intelligent devices and systems. You can join the #INFOTEL2015 conversation on Twitter here. #infotel2015 Tweets...Creating a SEO friendly websiteOctober 2, 2015The basic step in internet marketing is setting up your website. In order to properly execute the numerous strategies associated with web marketing, which include a roster of SEO and SEM techniques, you need to have a place in the vast World Wide Web. You must understand, though, that it is crucial to make a good website that will effectively reel in your target audience and establish yourself in the tough online marketing arena. Know your audience First and foremost, you should tailor the contents of your website by defining your target audience. You cannot risk being too general when it comes to internet marketing. Even if you have a non-niche business, you still have customer needs that will likely fall under your category. You must understand the nature of your business in order to define your target audience. There are also several factors you need to keep in mind, which include gender, age, income, location and others. If you’re looking to create a SEO friendly website make sure you follow the above tips or consult an expert in the field....Is your website helping you capture new business?May 11, 2015Within one second of landing on your website first impressions are made. You have the next 3-5 seconds to capture the interest of visitors to convince them to stay long enough to determine if you might be the firm that can help solve their problem and/or improve their life. When was the last time your website had a check up? Be sure your homepage communicates who you are, what you do and whom you serve. Your headlines, your tagline, the text and keywords you use should combine visually with the photos and videos to convey this message. Critical information needs to be “above the fold,” meaning a visitor does not have to scroll to see it. Graphics and contact form that start above the fold does encourage people to scroll to see the rest. The top right corner is a top-viewed location of a homepage that can be used to attract eyeballs and prompt action. Do you want people to call you? If so, this is the ideal place for your phone number. Does your website help build trust? People want to do business with people they trust. Stanford conducted the Web Credibility Guidelines study to see what generates trust online. They found that seeing real people behind the organization and highlighting their expertise and credentials are big factors. Visitors will contact you when they know, like, and trust you. Help connect with website visitors know and trust you by taking extra care with the “about us” page and the hotel or business profiles. Provide more than just your experience and years in business. This is your opportunity to tell people what you want them to know about your business be it a hotel or travel services. Sharing the company’s history and showing that there are great people on your team takes some of the mystery out of booking a hotel room or submitting an inquiry. Is it easy to find information on your website? You want to make it easy for visitors that come to your site to find the information they want and to view pages you want them to see. Is the navigation on your site clear? Is it easy for people to find the pages that help them understand the significance of what you do? Tabs should use terms the general public use and understand not legal terms. Long paragraphs are not user friendly. Use bullets that link to a page or section that discusses that term or area of practice. Bold, highlighted and underline text helps the visitors and the search engines determine what is most important on the page. Make it easy for people to land on the page of interest and make sure people see the information you want them to see. Implement steps today to improve your website with SEO. Regardless of your efforts to optimize your site and make sure it is seen, if people don’t like your website they will not contact you....Mobile friendly Google Algorithm updateApril 1, 2015As most you may know by now and expect the next major Algorithm update to roll out by Google by around the 21st April week.Let’s take a closer look at what Google’s trying to accomplish by rolling out this update. This is Google’s much awaited step towards providing primarily mobile friendly sites in mobile search. The update will impact mobile search results globally in all languages, and Google says it will have a “significant” impact. To make sure your site is mobile friendly or not on Google’s mobile search results, run your site through the mobile-friendly testing tool. If you get through, you have nothing to worry about. There are many websites in Sri Lanka that are not Mobile friendly and needs immediate action in order to keep up to speed with Google....Old School SEOFebruary 6, 2015So, last week I was approached by a prospect (now new client) that had been working with another SEO company to improve their website’s rankings. The strategy they were employing was to purchase multiple keyword loaded domain names and deploy them as landing pages in the hopes of attracting traffic to those pages based on the keywords contained in the URLs. Thus far, the client has never seen any benefit from this whatsoever.Now… this was a strategy employed some years ago with fairly high success (at least in terms of attracting eyeballs). However, as I explained to my new client, this strategy is very, very old school. Here’s why… Begin first of all by thinking about what Google is trying to accomplish through its search rankings. The answer is simple: it wants to provide the best, most satisfying results to the searcher so that the searcher will continue to use Google as their search engine of choice, thereby ensuring its continued dominance of the Internet. Obvious… Now, ask yourself how Google makes the determination of what searchers are going to like in terms of search results. The answer to this should also be somewhat obvious: really good websites! So, when Google is looking at and figuring out where to rank websites it is essentially analyzing them on the basis of usefulness to the searcher based on the keyword(s) they just searched for. So, what do you think makes a website valuable to you? Well, obviously a site that reflects the keywords you just searched for in terms of the words on the page, the topic the content is about. But, beyond that, what else? How about videos also tagged with those keywords. Or a blog also full of that sort of content. What about podcasts? Or if it’s a retail site, a well designed and secure shopping cart system, with a secure payment system. What about good, simple navigation? And fast loading pages. Getting the idea? Right. Google is becoming very sophisticated in its ability to analyze websites. And it is using these sophisticated algorithms to not just look at the text on a page, but also how valuable the site is to a user based on a wide variety of criteria. So, with this in mind, why does anyone think that Google would place high value on a single landing page that’s keyword loaded simply to try to attract search engines? Is there any value there? I think we all know the answer to that. So… want to be in Google’s good books? Think like Google and start making great websites that people will love....Top 5 SEO MistakesSeptember 25, 2014If effective SEO is a concern of yours (and it should be!) there are many things to avoid when building a website, many of which will have a very serious impact on whether someone can ever find your site using a search engine. Some of these are simple fixes, and some not so simple. Boy… where do I start! There are so many… hmmmm… Here goes, and be advised that these are not in definitive order.1. Not having sufficient on page content. This is amazingly common. The causes could be a variety of things. Pages built in Flash, text buried in graphics or design that doesn’t allow for the use of many words. But, the effect is the same. Google needs to find the words on the page in order to assign relevance to your website when compiling the search results. While lack of content can potentially be offset through other means, for the most part, you have to show Google and your customers what you are all about. And that means words. 2. Not developing a website with SEO in mind. Jeez, I wish I had a buck for every website owner that came to me for SEO services for their brand new, swanky website after it had already been built with a host of problems. Potential problems are many and varied, from having insufficient text (as in the above), excessive and clunky coding which hampers indexing, excessive java script, or poorly designed pages with high bounce rates, etc. I even saw a site once that was built in such a way that you couldn’t implement H Tags! The truth is, many programmers/developers just don’t know the requirements of the search engines.3. Inappropriate use of keywords. Keyword selection is really where you separate the wheat from the chaff. It is crucial more now than ever before that you select the keywords that accurately describe you and have the potential to lead to a high conversion rate. Essentially this is because of two overall factors: I. the SEO landscape is starting to get pretty crowded out there. Unless you have a super powerful website, it is very difficult to compete for a wide range of keywords. You are better off focusing your energy on those that will give you the best shot at highly targeted traffic. II. Google is now looking at how effective your site is at retaining search traffic. If you start attracting unfocused visitors who immediately bounce away, Google will start to drop you down the SERPs. Google likes happy searchers… 😉 4. Not devoting enough (or any) attention to linking. As has been the case for a long time now, Google looks at how interconnected you are with a community of similar websites. It uses this to guage how “legitimate” and valuable your site is… figuring that if many similar websites are linking with you, you must be good. Though this has been the case for a long time, it is shocking how many websites devote little attention to this. And, given Google’s recent changes, this is even more important than ever. 5. Lastly, only doing part of the job. Google looks at a huge array of factors when positioning a website in its SERPs. optimisation means looking at as many of these factors as possible, and making the changes required. I’ve seen countless “SEOed” sites that only went part of the way. Good content, but no links… good Page Titles, but no supporting content… matching Titles and content, but crappy keyword selection… and the list goes on. These days, if you only do half a job you may as well kiss your investment goodbye. So… like I said, these SEO mistakes aren’t in any particular order, but addressing them is crucial to success. Oh yeah… and one more thing: do yourself a favour and consult an expert 😉...Huge increase in direct visitsJuly 23, 2014It happened on the 09th of July, suddenly direct visits to one of our websites started spike up to 650 from 25 visits the previous day. This was a very unusual increase in terms of web traffic. Immediately we contacted the client to see if they have had a TV ad or any other offline promotion go live. It turned out to be that they had no offline marketing effort during the last few days. After a few days the direct traffic started to increase gradually to seven hundred, then eight hundred, then nine hundred and ultimately hit one thousand. Meanwhile the bounce rate of the website started sky rocketing.Bounce Rate: 99.65% Avg. Session Duration: 0:02 Pages/session: 1.01 Almosts all new users We began to investigate the issue and found few others were also impacted by the same issue. http://moz.com/community/q/huge-spike-in-direct-traffic-from-ie7 http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/huge-increase-in-direct-traffic-to-our-site-in-the-last-four-days-with-a-high-bounce-rate.329389/We started to investigate further about the huge increase of direct visits to the website and we saw most of the visits came mainly from the United States & spread across many other countries. Majority of the visits came through IE7 & IE8 browsers. What was done so far, Filtered the traffic from the browser IE7 & IE8 (where most of this fake traffic generated through), from the main reporting view to keep the reports clean. Then I created a new view called (IE Traffic) to monitor the large volume of direct traffic. Will monitor the Direct visits until a solution is found. ...Get on boardJune 22, 2014One of the problems with SEO is that few people really understand it, and some may even not appreciate its value. When dealing with complicated projects with sensitive budgets and many hands in the pie, getting everyone on board with the project may be… uh… “challenging”. Photo Courtesy of benefitspro.com The problem with convincing clients and management to use SEO is twofold. First of all you have to convince them that SEO actually works. They have the right to be skeptical when so many people have used complicated SEO jargon to sell their services without providing the results clients expect. Once you convince them that SEO can work, you have to convince them that you are the person who can make it work for them. How do you do it? To put it simply do the opposite of the jargon talkers who have burned your clients in the past. Avoid the clever buzzwords and explain briefly why your process works and then show that it works. Instead of talking the talk, make your numbers speak for themselves. To do this you have to be clear: Explain what SEO is, because a surprising number of people are unaware Explain what specific services you can offer Show them the increase in website traffic and conversions and Google ranking to show how your work has benefited others and then be specific about how it can be benefit them. Once they see how their crawlability can go up with specialized links, controlled relevant content, they will see how SEO can serve as the foundation of their successful online business. The first part is easy. Everyone uses search engines to surf the net. If you can’t find a website when you search on Google, there isn’t much point to having the website at all. By explaining how SEO increases your search engine ranking, you can easily explain how that can change the utility of a website. Marketing changes depend on the medium you use. After all you wouldn’t put a colorful illustration in a book for the blind. In the same sense a gigantic billboard would be useless if it was placed in a location where it was obscured by high rise buildings and impossible to see. SEO is like that, only instead of being obscured by features of the landscape, your client’s website can be hidden by ignorance of how the online landscape works. There is a great pile of information on search engines. The question is how can you make your website stick out of the pile? The most important part of any message is that people read it and SEO is the process of securing the proper location for your customers to see your products. Now explain what makes your company different. Don’t give away your secrets, but let your clients know what you can do for them, and be specific. This same principle applies to dealing with management and the members of your team. Show Google analytics of websites you have worked with, tracking their site views and online sales. Once your team realizes how valuable SEO can be, they can make it an intrinsic part of their own process. Because in this day and age, SEO shouldn’t be something you add on, it’s a requirement. Buzzwords are the stock and trade of charlatans, a successful SEO business offers results, not catchphrases....SEO Snake Oil SalesJune 15, 2014If you work in SEO you are familiar with the jerks that have given you a bad name. Con-men with laptops have already given many of your clients SEO complexes that you now have to work through. Photo Courtesy of Moz.com Companies that market online are going to be targets for these slimy sales men. For every real SEO webslinger you are likely to find a baker’s dozen selling snake oil, promising they can make the crippled walk and the blind see. Unfortunately it is impossible to punch every single one of them in the face. This being so, my goal in this blog is to give a couple of hints as to how to tell the difference between a qualified technician and a quality conman. One of the easiest indicators that someone selling SEO is in fact selling snake oil is how you get approached. An SEO cold call is often a good indication that something’s up. Be more worried if they promise instant results. They might just tell you that they can get you a spot on Google’s first page right away. Often this means they set up a pay per click program. Pay Per Click is a sponsored listing. You get on the first page because you pay to be there. Once the money dries up your ranking disappears as well. Also beware if your so-called SEO expert talks about a secret method that only they know and then refuse to divulge details. Guess what….people know how they get the caramel into Caramilk bars. In the world of the web there are no secrets, there are just people who do their research and keep up to date on the newest techniques. If they won’t tell you what they do, it probably isn’t worth hearing in the first place. Another good indication that things are not on the up and up is when you are guaranteed results. The only way anyone can guarantee anything in this business is if they are investing in useless keywords or they are making promises they do not intend to keep. Another easy way to find the slimy salesman is if they focus exclusively on your Google ranking. This is a tricky one because the actual SEO experts will also talk about rankings, because getting on that first page of results is in fact quite important, but how you get there influences how long you stay there. Another good indication that you’re dealing with a grifter is if they sell themselves as practicing only offsite or onsite optimisation. You need both. If they approach you and tell you they can make you rich and only talk about content optimisation, keyword research and visibility analysis, take a second look. You should be equally suspicious if they tell you that their process is entirely based on links. Once more, repeat after me… SEO involves both offsite and onsite optimisation or it won’t provide long lasting results....SEO Rankings by TomorrowJune 8, 2014Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most tricky and difficult businesses around when it comes to satisfying the client. Most SEO companies do not give much information nor educate their clients of how their website is being optimised. This is one of the most crucial factor and will determine whether the client is going to continue or just pull out.Most SEOs and Agency’s face this situation mainly because most clients are not interested to listen about the optimisation work done on their website (How many times have you heard a client say I do not know those technical stuff you do), so what do they expect? Rankings, More visits, better Bounce rate etc. This has become the situation where business owners try to get a guarantee from the SEO or the agency, that their website should rank first page on Google for a set of keywords. Clients should be educated and informed of what will be done and what can be expected. How many of you had been in a scenario where you just commenced SEO work, then the client said “I want to be ranked by tomorrow”....Universal Analytics is hereApril 28, 2014If you were wondering what is Google Universal Analytics or how to upgrade. It is a set of technological innovations that improve the way data is collected and processed in Google Analytics. It is a process you can use to upgrade all of your classic Google Analytics properties into Universal Analytics properties without losing any data or changing your account settings. If you don’t see the option to upgrade yet on your Google Analytics, then the Universal Analytics upgrade is not available to you yet, as Google are rolling out the upgrade tool to accounts over the next couple of weeks. When the transfer upgrade is available, you will see it under the admin section of your account.Why Universal Analytics? Universal Analytics gives you access to improved data processing, new collection methods, and more analysis tools. When you complete the entire upgrade process. Here’s the 2-step transfer process Step 1: Transfer PropertyTransfer your properties to Universal Analytics from the Google Analytics Admin page. You may also customize session and campaign timeout periods. Only users with Edit permissions may initiate the property transfer from the Google Analytics Admin page. The transfer takes minutes to initiate, but you should allow 24 – 48 hours for it to complete. When the transfer is completed, the property is ready to receive data from Universal Analytics tracking code. Move on to Step 2 after the transfer is complete.Step 2: Update Tracking Code (optional)Replace existing tracking code with new Universal Analytics tracking code. A developer (or person with technical knowledge) should complete this step in your development environment (web pages, SDKs, etc.). The time it takes to update your tracking code will vary depending on your current implementation and your tracking needs. When this step is completed, you will have access to the full benefits of Universal Analytics, including new reports and features. After completing this step, your full upgrade to Universal Analytics is complete.Once you complete both the steps you should see a green “Transfer Complete” message.Find out more about the Universal Analytics complete guide here....Special Google Birthday DoodleApril 4, 2014Google’s birthday doodle is one of the best features which gives you that feeling of being special on your birthday when Google displays a little birthday wish on Google search. Now if your birthday is coming up here’s how you can have that personalized doodle on your birthday....Terms used in Search Engine OptimisationMarch 16, 2014It is highly advisable, for any business organisation with a web site, to opt for Search Engine Optimisation, also referred to as SEO, in order to get the web site or web page as high up as achievable on search result pages. This also forms an important part of any company’s growth strategy. SEO possibly will aim at different types of searches, which include an image search, local search, video search and more. However, prior to opting for Search Engine Optimisation, it is important for one to understand and be aware of the terms or terminology used in the field of SEO. Following are some of the terms used therein: 1) Algorithm: The theory used by search engines to assess the ranking of different websites. 2) Anchor Text: This means hyper linking of keywords or keyword phrases which have to be highlighted in search engines. In simple language, text that can be clicked in a hyperlink is anchor text. 3) Back links: These are links that begin from one website and point out to another website. These can also be termed as inbound links, which mean incoming links to one’s website. The more the back links, the higher the ranking of that particular website. 4) Click Through Rate (CTR): Usually referred to as CTR or Impression, this term means the number of times an individual responds to a commercial by clicking on it. It’s a method of assessing the success of an online ad campaign. 5) Cloaking: Cloaking is whereby; a different web page is displayed to a search engine crawler than what a visitor actually views. 6) Crawler/Spider: Also, known as a bot, it is a program that scans the web automatically and travels to different websites and reads their pages, for several reasons such as to create entries for indexing web pages, spamming etc. 7) Keyword / keyword phrase: It is a particular word / combination of words respectively, which is used for search in search engines. The purpose of SEO is to optimize websites for particular keywords that are relevant to the intended audience of the site. 8) Meta Tags: Also, known as Description Tags, this provides a small description for a web page, an also explains its different features. It may also include keyword listing. This description is usually shown together with a link to a particular page on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). 9) Page Rank (PR): This is a highly essential aspect associated with Search Engine Optimisation. It is Google’s approach of measuring the comparative value of a particular web page in comparison to all the other web pages on the internet. 10) Pay Per Click (PPC): Commonly abbreviated as PPC, this term means the payment made by a particular website to search engines for every visitor it sends to that website. There are a large number of terms associated with SEO, and the aforesaid are a just a few basic of the many terms. Experience has proven that search engine traffic is crucial to an organisation’s success. A higher number of visitors to a website or web page can give it unparalleled publicity, income, as well as exposure. It can be rightly said that, investing time and money in SEO, can result in an excellent rate of return....Social media marketing to reach out to clientsMarch 14, 2014Social media marketing is a new way of reaching out to old customers, building business relationships and winning new business. The approach has come in handy for home-based small businesses and start-ups whose owners have no office equipment other than a notebook. Inadequate experience and weak financial muscle to hire marketers among business start-ups has added to the rising popularity of social media marketing. Business websites and social media including facebook, twitter and blogs are some of the channels that young entrepreneurs are embracing in marketing their products. Social media marketing is the process of marketing through social media sites like twitter, facebook and youtube. Social media marketing is dissipating as many ceo’s and senior management have started to embrace the power of the social networks. Google+ launched and reaches a user base of over 50 million by the end of 2011. Social media marketing is a great way to drive repeat business and attract new customers. Social media marketing is the practice of using social media networks and user-generated content platforms to promote a business, product or service. Social media marketing typically involves participating in conversations with a key audience instead of blatantly throwing out a sales pitch to a large number of people. Social media marketing also includes creating and promoting content that is meant to be shared by users. The viral and personal nature of social media makes it an effective channel for product advertising, reputation management or corporate branding. Social media marketing is becoming more and more challenging, based on the complexities involved with the tools, platforms, content, resources, and management involved. Social media marketing is the biggest thing to happen to the world of business communications since televisions arrived in every home. The increasing popularity of social networking sites has provided an effective way for businesses to communicate directly with existing and potential customers all around the world, and companies both big and small are taking Facebook is now officially the most often visited website in the world. With this in mind there is no way that this phenomenon, and other sites like it, can be ignored by businesses. By not having a business presence in these areas it means that you could be missing out on lots of highly-targeted, potential customers....Improving Hits To Your WebsiteMarch 9, 2014The number of people who use the Internet on a daily basis is well over a billion and this figure keeps rising everyday which is probably why you have never quite understood why your website goes for days on end without as much as a single person visiting. Using the system of probabilities, with that many users on the Internet and each browsing multiple pages every single day then your website should be able to garner at least a decent number of visitors in at least a week but the truth is, that is just not how things work on the net. Majority of Internet users have very similar web browsing habits and chief among this is the use of search engines. To help you understand just how great an impact search engines have heard, recall that Google was once worth close to nothing but is now worth Billions.This means that for you to have any success in getting any attention in the direction of your website, you have to know how to work the system of search engines. First of all you have to understand that it is not enough to get your website listed on the search engines database. When a user searches a particular keyword, chances are that he will get anything between a thousand and millions of results but why would they care to check the website that is a thousand pages away when the first two results have all that he needs. This means that to get any hits on your website, you have to find a way of ensuring your website is somewhere on the first page and this is where SEO comes in. SEO stands for one of two things; it could either mean search engine optimisation which is the process by which the accessibility of a website on a search engine is improved through search results. SEO could also stand for search engine optimizers which is the name of given to those who do the job of optimisation. SEO takes into consideration the kind of things people search for and the specific keywords that they use. Using this, they can redesign or remodel their websites HTML and content to make it more relevant to the keywords. If you have never tried out SEO then you also need to take a lot of caution in how you use this skill. Filling your websites content with all the right keywords will get you quite a lot of visibility on search engines but only for as long as the search engines will let you operate since these methods of SEO along with use of link farms and article spinning are usually classified into what is now known as black hat SEO which basically work by spamming the search engines index much like the way someone may spam millions of email addresses knowing he is likely to get a few hits purely by luck. The easiest, safest and most convenient way of going about SEO is to acquire the services of a search engine optimizer as they already know what to do and how to do it....DOS and DON’TS of Search Engine OptimisationMarch 3, 2014Search Engine Optimisation is a process by which you improve a website’s visibility and ranking on a search engine which simply means that whenever a user searches for a particular type or group of keywords that are associated with your site, the chances of your website being on the first few pages that the user will access are higher. This especially good if you are running a business through a website as sales are highly dependent on the number of visitors your website gets and the number of visitors your website gets is highly dependent on the position of your website in the search engine’s index. Search engines basically try to display the result that is most relevant first so one could say that search engine Optimisation is the process by which your website is made more relevant to the keywords that are frequently searched by users. The process of Search engine Optimisation is quite simple if you what you are doing. You could either do this alone or hire somebody else to do it. Most people pick the latter choice as there are certain skills involved which not everyone has such as writing of articles but should you choose to go about this on your own, the first thing you should know is that when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it is commonly known, there are the right ways of doing it and there are the wrong ways. The right ways include:Content and HTML editing: This is where the content or HTML of the website is edited to make it more relevant to the search of certain keywords. Use of Backlinks: These are links leading to a website from other sites. The presence of these in many sites is an indication of importance and relevance of your site thus the search engine will consider it worthy of a higher ranking in the search engine.The wrong ways of Search engine optimisation are those that use means that are considered dishonest in a bid to attain higher ranking in search engines. These methods are also known as spamdexing which is a reference to the fact that these Search engine optimisation methods actually work by spamming the index of the search engines. This spamming makes the seem more prevalent on the web or even relevant which might not always be the case. Some of the bad methods of search engine optimisation include: 1. Deception: These come in different forms and may include text that is usually given the same color as the background or at times positioned off-screen but in a position that will affect the search engine’s index. 2. Cloaking: This is a method where a website gives a different page according to whether it is a human user or the search engine that is requesting the page. 3. Keyword stuffing: There is nothing wrong with applying certain keywords in the website’s content but using keywords in excess and in a manner that adds little or no value to the content is considered another form of spamdexing. Remember, applying search engine optimisation in the right ways could get you a lot of valuable net traffic but doing it in the wrong way will get you thrown of the search engine’s index faster than you can imagine....Acquiring Natural Website Traffic Through VideosFebruary 21, 2014When you take a video of stuff that grabbed your attention or something that you would like to preserve a memory of, what do you do? You’ll save them or you publish them online. You are able to take advantage of these uploaded videos to benefit your web page with the improved amount of site visitors it can potentially provide.How will you do it, you ask? It is actually rather simple. In several websites where you’ll be able to post your video, you can put texts in a description of the video. When you place information inside a description, do not forget to position a link or a signature in the end with the description field so that when people read it, they’ll see a web link that they may check out. There is practically always an individual who will have a curiosity to find out what is inside of that hyperlink. On video web pages, there are commenting fields. You have the ability to switch on the opportunity for feedback or you are able to disable the function. If you’re a clever SEO marketer or perhaps a writer, you will allow the responses so you are able to have a interaction with the targeted traffic in a comment yourself. In the comment field, do not forget to include a backlink to your web page. Again, this will help to increase visitors to your web site. On the video you have created, you may also put in simple or overt texts to invite readers to follow the link on the description box. This will likely catch the interest of viewers of your video clip. The main element is publicity. If you do not put in links, you will not get that much targeted traffic. Bear in mind that there are numerous ways to generate targeted visitors to your web site. Be creative with your ways on how to increase exposure. Discover the right locations to perform your marketing and SEO services. The most beneficial thing about the world wide web is that the possibilities are endless! Keep in mind that there are various methods to build targeted visitors to your web site. Be resourceful with your methods on how to enhance exposure. Discover the proper locations to do your marketing and SEO services. The best thing about the online world is that the probabilities are unlimited!...Improve your Conversion Rate with new online marketing techniquesOctober 22, 2013You may be excited about the idea of starting to market your business online. In fact, you may have a lot of things running through your head right now. You may be thinking of various things including your web page’s color, design and so on. You simply cannot contain your excitement. But sometimes you may not realize the most essential things about marketing your business online; thus not targeting the right audience in the world of online marketing of your business and the next thing you know you’ll wake up one day flat broke with nothing to show for your efforts. It is easy sometimes to worry about getting traffic onto your website without considering conversion rate from existing traffic. For getting optimum results from your search engine marketing campaigns it is very important to optimise site for higher conversions. For most online traders, a 2-4% conversion rate is considered about the industry average. But for some, a 25% conversion rate is perfectly reasonable because of the type of service or product being offered. Here are some ways to improve the conversion rate getting good results from search engine marketing efforts. Conversion rate is the number of purchases of a product/service, subscriptions or sign ups from visitors. Some website owners only focus on the amount of traffic to the site when in fact there are some problems with their site that if solved would have a positive effect on their conversion rate without major expenses. Think of an instance where, instead of focusing on building traffic, you could double your sales from the traffic of your existing customers. Increasing conversion rate from 2% to 4% will double your profits. Improving the conversion rate on a website from its existing traffic is the best way to increase sales and profits in the quickest possible way. To be successful in this Digital Marketing era, you must take adequate efforts and time learning what can lead you to success. Get as much as new online marketing information you can and take time to study them before you use of them for your website’s and company’s growth. The more knowledge and experience you can possess, the quicker you will reach your goals. Often the best online marketing techniques will come to you suddenly, but evolves out of all the information you might know. Do not let your business be deserted by others, make it stand out by utilizing proper online marketing strategies. Loads of new information is available throughout the web; just type in on Google and you will find what you are looking for. Farhan is a leading SEO Consultant from Sri Lanka focuses mainly on Conversion Rate Optimization by working closely with his clients. As an Online Marketing Expert he provides a range of Digital Marketing solutions in Sri Lanka....Tips to Improve your SEO Link Building StrategyOctober 2, 2013Link building is one of the most efficient SEO strategies for both increasing the number of visitors to a website and improving the rankings of a website in organic search results. Competitor analysis Once you have identified your main competitors based on the niche you are operating in and on using the same keywords, you can easily find out which are the websites linking to them. Chances are the sites linking to your competitors will also be interested in linking to you, provided you are just as good as competition or even better. Competitor analysis is a very important factor in SEO. However, some links might come from directories and sponsored links. In this case you can simply submit your own website to those directories or invest part of your budget in sponsored links. Creating top quality content Remember “Content is King” The uniqueness and quality of your content is essential in building an effective link building strategy. Most powerful way to get others to link to your website is by creating high quality content. Social Media Platforms for LinkBuilding Social media sites are powerful not only for promotion, but also for your link building strategy. They are great for both click-through traffic and helping your search engine rankings. Search engines have been offering reasonable amount of importance to social media sites and links coming from them. For example, if you set up a Twitter profile and begin “tweeting” the Googlebot is more likely to crawl it sooner. It is therefore, a great way to get your sites indexed in the search engines such as Google, or let the search engines know when you add fresh content to your blog or website. Blogs & Feed directories for Link Building A very efficient way to get more links back to your website is to submit your site to all relevant RSS feed and blog directories. Directory submissions Submitting your site to related web directories is an easy way of getting links back. The links aren’t usually very good quality, but it’s a good place to start. Ensure the directory is relevant and related to your website. Article Writing & Submission Getting backlinks from article sites is one strategy that needs to be included for successful link building. One example of article site that is highly used at the moment is ezinearticles.com. You can submit your own articles with links either inside your article or at the bottom of the article in what’s called an “Author Bio”. Apart from getting a link back from the particular article site you are posting on, you may end up getting many backlinks if your article is picked up by other websites from there. That is because according to the rules of the article sites the website owners can take your article from the article site and publish it on their own site, so long as they retain the Author’s links. Forums & Community links Interacting in public forums and communities can be a great way to get links back to your site. Forums and blogs are hosting a large number of visitors, most of them trying to post their link while engaging in conversations or leaving comments. Not all forums are willing to except link, but as long as you are not spamming, most of them will. However, a large number of forums and blogs have a “nofollow” tag on their links, which effectively blocks the search engine spiders from counting the link as a vote. Donations to charity Since charity websites are a good place to get links from and usually have a good PR (PageRank) are generally good to have link from. In exchange for a donation most charity websites will probably be happy to offer you a link from one of their main pages. We can help you with the above SEO Link Building Strategies with our expertise in SEO. Let us know if you’d like to have a SEO Quote absolutely free of charge....Google get’s SEO QuoteSeptember 3, 2013In recent times we have seen regular algorithm updates by Google, in order to serve the users with the best possible results for their search query. The continuous and unconfirmed updates have made webmasters and SEO’s jobs very hard. However, it is not likely that Google is going to make it any easier to rank higher on their search engine, meanwhile Google’s Matt Cutts and the web spam team are taking spammers very seriously. We all know and most of us do get emails (especially SEO quotes) from various individuals and SEO companies promising higher rankings on Google, even Matt Cutts of Google received such an email, which states: I was on your website www.google.com and wanted to shoot you a quick note. I think I can make a few changes (aesthetically and/or SEO – wise) to make your site convert more visitors into leads and to get it placed higher in the organic search results, for a few of the select terms. This is NOT like one of those foreign emails you probably get in your inbox every day. Just to be upfront I have 3 agents that work with me for development /SEO. I would just need to know which (if not both) services you’re open to checking out information about, either web design or SEO. Would you be open to seeing more brief info / quote for what I would like to accomplish? Regards, XXXXXX XXXXX And another email: I would like to extend our knowledge to your audience in the form of a uest post . This post will be written by a college educated writer fluent in English. To recap we will provide 100% original guest post with statical data and studies from professional writers. Matt’s rule of thumb: if someone sends you an email with an SEO offer out of the blue, be skeptical....Planning an SEO projectJuly 4, 2013Search Engine Optimization (SEO) projects need good planning to obtain the best results and needs to be considered during, and incorporated into, all stages of a website development or redevelopment of the project. For example, the site architecture (including the selection of a content management system or CMS), the marketing plan (including branding concepts), and much more are impacted. How SEO projects start • Putting together an SEO plan • Performing a technical SEO audit of a site • Setting a baseline for measuring results and progress These are the things you want to do at the very beginning of your SEO efforts for any website....Google Site linksApril 22, 2013Ever wondered how Sitelinks work on Google. First let me say that it’s not certain how Google assigns the number of links to each website. The text that is used for the Sitelinks can be the text that are used for the link (or anchor text) on the homepage or the title of the linked page.Google seems to prefer links near the top of a web page. Sitelinks usually only appear for more general search phrases. Sitelinks do show up most often on brand related searches.Which links does Google choose for the Sitelinks?You’ll notice that they always seem to be first level links on any website. In other words, any links not included on your homepage won’t be used as Sitelink criteria.Unpopular Keywords that are not searched too often don’t get Sitelinks. Older Web sites seem to be awarded Sitelinks more than newer sites. It also seems that your website has to get a certain volume of clicks for the searched keyword.See more SEO tips....SEO ToolsApril 2, 2013There are many web based and downloadable tools which are used by SEO’s and online marketing experts. SEO tools are used for various purposes, you may want to do a competitor analysis, check your rankings on search engines or find who are linking to your website. Using the right tool for the right job is most important. There are Free and Paid software and online tools. Some tools are very popular and used world wide for specific tasks. If you want to perform a keyword research Google Adwords is one of the best and free tool. Likewise you may find other tools such as open site explore, ahrefs, sheerseo & majestic seo which allows to create a free account with (limited) access. Sheer SEO is a all in one seo tool which has a very nice dashboard and easy to use options. I have been using this tool for over 4 years and would recommend them for anyone from a starter to an expert in the online marketing world....WordPress Security TipMarch 22, 2013WordPress will by default name the administrator user account as admin. If you haven’t made any changes while installing WordPress, that is probably what you will use to log in.The issue with this is evident: if someone wanted to gain access to your blog, all they would need to do is to keep using the “admin” user name with a number of passwords combinations. This is called brute force attack, and with automated tools it works quite often. Whenever installing WordPress from scratch, therefore, remember to use some other name instead of admin for the administrator user account. If you already have WordPress installed, the fix is very simple. Just create a new user and set it as administrator. Then log in with that new user and delete the “admin” user. Don’t worry if you have many posts written by the user, WordPress will ask whether you want to delete them or re-assign them to a new user (choose the latter obviously). As for choosing the new user name, make sure that it is not similar to the name you display publicly on your blog. If you sign your posts as John Doe, for instance, naming the administrator user as “john” or “johndoe” wouldn’t help. You need something that others won’t be able to guess easily. Need assistance regarding SEO for WordPress Do not hesitate to get in touch with me....Essential SEO tips to succeed onlineJanuary 12, 2013Nowadays, many web surfers use search engines to find about websites that cater to their need. They also have a tendency to have a search engine as their home page for easy access. This is one of the many reasons as to why you need to have search engine optimisation for your website. Search Engine Optimisation or SEO will not be a strange term if you are engaged in online marketing. It helps your website to gain a better ranking on the search engines. In SEO there are two types; internal SEO and External SEO. Whilst building your website your developer and web designer would focus on internal SEO. However if your site is not hitting the external SEO then you would not be having a successful online business. In order for you to reach external SEO there are five essential tips that you would need to use; backlinks, avoiding link spamming, linking profiles, .gov links and forums. The next few paragraphs would explain you how these tips can boost your external SEO. Back links Back links are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks and inward links. You may have good backlinks and at times bad backlinks. Search Engines prefer to have good backlinks as it helps your website to get a good ranking in the search engines. Avoid link spamming Though link spamming gives a boost to your website initially it can put your site in to the Google Sandbox, which will not push your site on top of the search engines. Therefore when you backlink you should avoid automatic backlink generators to you website. Linking profiles Adding the links for your main homepage on social networking profiles (Googleplus), pages (Facebook) and various blogs could optimise results in search engines. This too should be done sensibly to avoid spamming. .gov links .gov and .edu are links that google would give the highest preference when ranking your website. Therefore if you can get your website linked with one of these sites your ranking would be doubled. As the value of a .gov or .edu link equals to 10 or even 20 normal links from blogs and forums. Forums Being a part of a forum can provide you the opportunity to post quality content and add links to your target website. However you should be mindful not to spam the forum as they are strict with the information that is shared on their forums. Should your content grab the attention of the readers, it would also bring in clients through the links that you have posted, and will boost the ranking of your website. SEO is essential for you to gain top online visibility, popularity and page rank and the tips given above would definitely assist you in achieving it. You might also need to put up SEO contents created on specific keywords, phrasings to reach the top rankings and should be done prior to creating your web page. If your website is still not on the first pages of the search engine results, it is high time you start off with your SEO activities....Google algorithm updates 2012December 15, 2012I’m writing this post while having my morning coffee and breakfast waiting for me on the table. As we SEOs know through out this year Google had been changing and updating their search algorithm frequently with a few major updates effecting many businesses worldwide. Last Thursday, as usual when going through the Google Analytics I was able to notice something different, it was the rankings of one of my websites was back. Thanks to Barry Schwartz for the update about the change and Mozcast Update....SEO tips year 2013December 9, 2012Hello Everyone, The days we used to simply add our target keywords to the websites title and meta tags and expect search engines to rank us on top for those search terms are long gone. There are much more and the best part is that every new technique that are deployed by SEO specialists in order to rank well for keywords, sooner or later gets discovered by Google. People think SEO is dead but the day SEO will is the day Search Engines no longer exist. 2013 is just around the corner and with a lot going on in the past few months in the SEO industry, updates including panda, penguin & EMD to name a few. Some of the important aspects to focus on include: 1. Forget about Search Engines and focus on potential visitors to your website. 2. Onsite optimisation with users in mind keep it relative and relevant – Do not stuff keywords or copy content. 3. Do not submit link to FFA (Free For All) directories and try to have links only from reputable and related sources. 4. Try to use keyword variations and not exact keywords when linking back. 5. Build a reputable brand first before targeting high competitive keywords. 6. Keep a close eye on CTR (Click Through Rate) on Google Analytics to identify your best performing pages and keep improving. 7. Build a reputable Author bio on Google+ profile 8. Create Google+ business for your business/brand (It is as important as having a website for a business) 9. Get involved in Googleplus communities Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team would agree with me as Google take steps to improve the quality of search, to give users a better search experience, it is our responsibility, not to spam as responsible SEOs. Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year!...How to visit Google.com instead of Google.lkDecember 7, 2012Just a quick tip for those of you who struggle to visit Google.com and get redirected to Google.lk or Google.(your country TLD). As I’d seen some people in Sri Lanka including a few friends find it weird as they type in Google.com in their browser address bar and they land in Google.lk . This mainly happens because Google redirects you to your local search to find more relevant and closer results to your query. If you want to override this and use Google.com for your search you have 2 options. 1. Click the button on your bottom right which says Google.com Or 2. Simply type www.google.com/ncr which will take you directly to Google.com Appreciate your comments on which one you’d prefer more to use....Disavow Link Tool Is It Worth The WaitNovember 6, 2012Recently SEO’s & website owners were devastated by the major updates by Google, targeting low quality links, poor content and excessive ads which threw some of the site rankings out of the window. Then Google comes up with Disavow links tool to help remove bad links, used to notify Google about links to your site that you have tried removing by writing to webmasters but failed. Now, your site has been hit by Penguin and you’ve lost your top traffic generating keywords ranking on Google. we’ve seen lots of SEO’s triying different things to recover, changing the site structure, redesign, onsite tweaks. Then, Google comes up with Disavow Link tool, most people started to submit their bad backlinks and are waiting with the hope that they will gain all their golden keywords back. Lets assume a site that have about 1000 spammy links.Use ahrfs or open site explore to get all the links to your site Contact the webmaster’s or site owners of the linking site After giving a considerable amount of time re check if the links have been removed Go to Disavow Links Tool and submit your request ( As per Google it will take several weeks for the proccess) Submit reconsideration request (There is no guarentee that the site will be reconsidered)Is the time & resources taken to go through all these process worth or would you just get a new domain and start building using safe SEO methods....Looking for online jobs?October 22, 2012The world has changed so much that making money online has hit most parts of Sri Lanka by now. Working from home and online jobs are on the rise. A news paper magazine which had a tiny little advertisement for internet marketing jobs a couple of years back has now more than 5 or 6 full pages of “data entry jobs” and “online money making” ads. Some of the ads are very attractive in terms of how much you could earn. The question is can you really make so much of money online? The answer is “YES” and “NO” Yes, because nothing is impossible and the people who make millions on the internet today are people like you and me. On the other hand not really everyone can go right to the top. Lets look at what exactly is expected by people who get attracted by these news paper ads about internet jobs. Categories 1. Finding new ways of making money 2. Looking for Extra income 3. Easy money 4. Unemployed Don’t ever take what these ads say for granted as it is too good to be true. Most of these companies who charge between Rs.5,000/= to 10,000/= for a couple of hours and teach you how to create a blog and register with affiliates such as Google Adsense, is not worth the money and can be done with a little self research. If you are looking to make easy money on the internet, you don’t belong here. This is only suitable for people who are serious about looking for some extra income. You can get in touch with Farhan Fawzer via the contact us form....Google 7 results on first pageOctober 3, 2012Google has taken another step by reducing the number of results shown on the first page for certain key terms, the original 10 results have been reduced to 7 with the top result showing multiple internal links. A very smart move by Google when it comes to quality and would certainly increase the CTR (Click Through Rate) of the top ranking domain. The websites ranking on top have a better chance of getting more visitors than the ones ranking on the bottom, with the competition reduced to 7 results, without the 8,9 & 10th positions showing up. This shows that Google is getting more & more confident when it comes to ranking a website on the top positions. Looks like BIG G is going hard at the poor quality websites. Genuine SEO’s will find this a very good opportunity in increase their CTR and reduce the bounce rate. If you too lost visitors due to this move by Google, please get in touch with the SEO Specialist and we’d like to hear from you....SEO Process for New ProjectsSeptember 25, 2012If you are about to start a new SEO project make sure you look into the below key areas. Facts from Client – Ask client to describe if a user were to find their products/ services online through search engine what are the words or phrases would be used. Research – With the facts from clients we will do a thorough research about keywords, competitors etc. Keywords – Gather the list of keywords from research and finalise the best keywords for the given niche. Structure & Design – Based on the keywords the site structure & design will be planned. Content – Content will be written based on the finalised keywords. Development – Website will be developed based on the structure and design. Onsite SEO – The site will be checked for onsite factors and signed off for QA. Offsite SEO – Site will be submitted to directories, search engines & social media sites. Monitoring Progress – We will continue to monitor the websites performance on Search Engines....Importance of SEOSeptember 11, 2012One of the fastest grown trends in today’s business is online marketing, if your business is not online, your competitor will take that advantage to outrun you (this is already happening to most traditional businesses). Online presence has become so vital that no matter what business you are into you need to be able to provide some information about your products/ services online. Is your business online yet? even if it is and your website doesn’t come up for keywords (products or services that relates to your business), you are losing out on huge business deals. Potential clients are searching, comparing and even buying products & services online. Billions of searches on Google, Yahoo & Bing are performed everyday by people around the world. If you are a business owner or a competitor we have the ideal solution for you. We can help you increase your online visibility via search engines using various ethical SEO techniques, build your brand & popularity through social media, which would result in increase increase in sales, more business and popular brand name. If you read this post right to the bottom, I’d like to request you to do two things or at least one. 1. Contact me and lets see how I can help you (no obligations whatsoever). 2. Like SEO Sri Lanka on Facebook and you will be part of my success....Robots Text FileJuly 25, 2012Robots txt is one of the most important elements that you should always check when it comes to onsite SEO. I recently came across a website which had its homepage (the most important page of any website) blocked by mistake. This is somewhat similar to inviting someone to a party and closing the main door when they arrive. So check your websites right now if your site is blocked for search engine spiders. Go to your browser and type http://www.example.com/robots.txt (replace example with your domain) See if you have a file which says: User-agent: * Disallow: / If it looks like the above then you are in trouble. User-agent: * means it applies to all robots Disallow:/ instructs the robot not to visit any of the pages on the site. However all robots do not go according to robots text some ignore but Google usually follows robots text strictly. It is safe to use the below which will allow all robots to visit your website. User-agent: * Disallow: You can use robots text to exclude pages such as logins etc from getting indexed or robots visiting them. Find out all about how to use robots text visit www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html...Has your website traffic been affected by recent Google changes?July 2, 2012Google continues to make changes in how they determine the rankings of websites. There has been at least five major update in the last three months alone. You can expect this to continue as Google aims to improve the quality of the results shown. In 2011, Google stirred a lot of debate with their Panda update. They released several versions including Panda 3.5 in April 2012. The Panda updates focused on duplicate content and poor quality content. Later that same month Google released Penguin targeting webspam, keyword stuffing and techniques that don’t benefit users. Whether you can identify the exact update or not your rankings may have been affected. Why have my ranking dropped? Recently I have been contacted by firms with websites and optimization with competitive vendors. They want my expert advice on why their rankings have dropped and their traffic is down. The most common problem is that their content has not been updated regularly and it has become stale. Your vendor should make sure regular updates are made. Most attorneys are too busy or are not interested in making the changes themselves. That’s why they outsource this service. The vendor should be proactive and not wait for the firm to raise this issue. The second most common problem is the lack of quality linking. The website with few links or those linking to poor content sites will either not rank or have dropped with the recent updates. Google is better than ever at discovering “black hat” technique and they will penalize for any technique that is against their published guidelines. Action Steps Update your content Content is still king for SEO success. The search engines are becoming increasingly good at spotting poor quality content. It’s critical to update and improve your content. Consider adding a Blog to provide fresh information on a regular basis. Properly written Blogs are the fastest way to improve your rankings. Know where your links coming from Links have always played an important role in rankings. But number of links is not as important as the quality of links. Evaluating the quality of your links and make sure you get a wide variety links from quality (not spammy) sites....Panda Vs Penguin updateJune 6, 2012As per Wikipedia, Google estimates, Penguin affects approximately 3.1% of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in languages like German, Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of them in “highly-spammed” languages. On May 25th, 2012, Google unveiled the latest Penguin update, called Penguin 1.1, this Penguin update, according to Matt Cutts, is supposed to impact less than one-tenth of a percent of English searches. It is interesting to see the search volume that came from different regions, cities & languages. Surprisingly Ghana is by far most searched “Panda Update” and Sri Lanka is at number 2. Which could also mean these countries were most involved in Search Engine Optimization or at least about Google keyword rankings....What is SEOMay 23, 2012It was interesting to see the big question “What is SEO” being searched on Google by a lot of Sri Lankans approximately around 58 people in Sri Lanka searched the exact term and over 8,000 use other variations of the same term on an average month at the time of writing this post. However, those of you still wonder What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation that is optimizing your website or webpage for search engines. SEO is also part of online marketing where a website can be optimized to rank on top of the search results for a given keyword on Search Engines which gives a better chance of a searcher visiting the website and making a purchase or making an inquiry. This is different from paid ads or sponsored ads which is a paid service. There are few very good companies including one of the best SEO company in Sri Lanka which provide SEO services and most of them are outsourced by other holding companies over seas. If you are interested in SEO, there are number of FREE SEO tools and SEO tutorials that can be found online. However before you use any SEO software I’d recommend you first understand the basics of SEO to avoid complications and mistakes. If you liked this information please Like us and Share SEO Sri Lanka on Facebook....Google removes (+) search operatorOctober 26, 2011Hello Everyone, It has been a while since the last post and I had been very very busy on a brand new SEO project on a tourism website of my own. I also have been working on getting my own SEO website and blog which you might see live by mid November. There had been plenty of things happening around as far as SEO’s are concerned and specially the changes Google had been making, including the PR checkers not working as a result of an update to the link (which is resolved now lasted a couple of days). The panda update which sent some sites down the drain by taking off up to 35 to 40% of the site visits. Launch of a new tab called Search Engine Optimization on Google Analytics and the list goes on. If you had been following my Blog from the beginning and read one of my posts about Search Operators, effectively used the Search Operators, this might be useful news for you. Google had silently removed the + operator from search results, so this will not have any influence when used on a search term. However, the (-) operator and the rest are still working. Have yourself a try copy the bold tour +packages and paste on the Google search bar and hit enter....Some tips to follow if you are new to online marketingSeptember 29, 2011If you have been managing Offline Marketing and are trying to implement Online Marketing it would be a big challenge. You will have to get your offline marketing team to learn about Online Marketing techniques and PR challenges in the Online Marketing area. They would also have to adjust themselves to project manage and create a new set of campaigns and commercial features. However if you follow the listed tips it will help you to overcome this situation. It is commonly believed that if you invest a small budget in online marketing you could get results in immediate success. This is a very unrealistic expectation. By setting more realistic goals and deadline you can manage the expectations. If you are heading the Online Marketing team then you will have to make sure that your team is informed about these goals and deadlines. If not the success that you gain in a later stage can be misread as an average result. It would be a challenge to secure a decent budget, if you are spending on resources which do not understand the online marketing concepts. If you think that you do not hold enough funds to finish the project then there is no pint starting it. Generally online marketing strategies such as organic Search Engine Optimisation takes time to bring in expected results. Therefore when setting up goals and deadlines ensure that the cost has been estimated in advance of starting the project. Otherwise you will lose control of the project if you implement the project with an unspecified budget. Implementing an Online Marketing campaign and improving ongoing campaigns will have a very different set of challenges. These phases should be treated separately and can be accomplished by setting deadlines to each method separately be it Pay Per Click advertising, Search Engine Optimisation or a regular E-mail marketing campaign. This will help you to keep focus on your initial goals and control a smooth operation of the early stages of you Online Marketing campaigns. If not you would tend to blame the failures on the novelty of the work and would lower your expectations. It is important that you understand the risks involved should any of the campaigns be affected. Having a risk management strategy can help you recover from this. Have a guideline set so that anyone would know how to respond to negative customer comments. You might also fend for assistance of a professional and it is important that you find the right Online Marketing agency to assist you. They will be able to provide you the best strategies to drive your online campaigns. Being honest with the results of your online campaigns and communicating it to every department within your organization is important. This will help them to understand how they should improve their contribution towards the success of online marketing. In return it will help you to successfully carry out your online marketing campaigns. You may convey these results through a monthly newsletter or a presentation and could allow your colleagues to share their thoughts on how to improve the marketing strategies. Farhan Fawzer is an SEO Consultant offering Search Engine Optimisation services and Online Marketing consultation....Sri Lankan Holiday DestinationsAugust 6, 2011Sri Lanka is a very beautiful island situated in the Indian ocean and south of India. It is known for the beautiful beaches and friendly people. So being a Sri Lankan myself I thought of adding a bit of information about some of our most beautiful Holiday Destinations. Also you can always find this from the source at http://www.tourslk.com/travel-destinations.html Negombo A famous fishing village North of Colombo, with a Dutch built canal. The canal itself is a hive of activity with fishermen traveling up and down in their gaily painted boats. On the shore of the canal you will find many homes and churches and many species of birds, including spectacular Kingfishers. Kandy Situated at an elevation of 488 meters, Kandy is rich in tradition and is the spiritual home of Sri Lanka. Perhaps best known for it’s Dalada Maligawa, the temple that houses the tooth relic of Buddha, Kandy is also a popular stop during July / August. During this time the city takes on a carnival atmosphere for the annual perahera, when the tooth relic is paraded around the city in a procession that includes, among others, approximately more than 100 elephants, traditional dancers and drummers. Galle One of the most interesting cities in Sri Lanka. It use to be our major national port until the late 19th century. Galle is famous for its well preserved 17th century Dutch built Fort, The journey to Galle is along the palm fringed southern coastal belt passing Hikkaduwa with it’s incredibly beautiful Coral Gardens and exotic tropical fish as well as Ambalangoda, famous for it’s Mask makers and another interesting place to visit is the Turtle Hatchery. If you are serious about taking a tour to this beautiful island you may contact Sri Lanka Holiday Tours for a custom tour package with the best Hotels in Sri Lanka....55 SEO Must-Do’sJuly 10, 2011Now, this comes from back in 2011. 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 backlinks 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 PageRank. 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 https://farhanonline.com is your preference, then http://farhanonline.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 https://farhanonline.com and internal links go to https://farhanonline.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....Tips to build a mobile websiteJune 21, 2011With the growing numbers in mobile phone and smart phone users, it is a must that you have a mobile website so that your customers could easily reach you. Not anymore is it a trend but it is becoming a necessity to have a mobile website apart from you main website. Nowadays most of the companies have realized the importance of having a mobile site and are seeking web developers to create sites for them. As a web designing and developing company it will be very useful for you to know on what involves on building a mobile website. The following tips will give you a basic knowledge on what features that you need to include on a mobile website. Considering the amount of space is important that you include the most important information on top of the page. This will make it easier to convey the message to the mobile user. Most importantly include your company logo in a customized size. Navigation should be focused on up and down and left to right navigation should be minimal. The best way to avoid left to right navigation is by adding your content in a single column layout. It is advisable not to use tables. But if you have to use them make sure it is no more than two columns and avoid merging rows and columns. The content that you include on the website should be easy to read and navigate. Select brief descriptions if you need to include any. Make sure you select the proper font size so that the user does not need to zoom the page to read the content. When building a mobile website you will not require special coding so you can use XML or XHTML to code the site. Basic coding such as HTML and CSS can be used as well. Make sure you carefully select target keyword to optimise as you cannot input much content. Make sure to include the keywords on title tags, description meta tags, heading tags and file names. When using images and graphics make sure that you use as little of them as possible. If not the mobile site would take ages to load. You can include .jpeg .gif or .png formats when adding images as they are light in weight. Make sure to compress the images so that it would not zoom out. When selecting a style for a mobile website make sure the maximum page size to be 20Kb and if possible try to make it less than 10Kb, so that the user is not charged too much when browsing the mobile site. Any website needs links to be placed, but for mobile websites it would be hard since there is no back button. Therefore make sure all pages are linked to other pages. You can also place a link that would generate a call. So that the user can get in touch with you and get further details about the products and services....Tips to build an Online Marketing Strategy that worksMay 31, 2011Mastering the basic ideas for your marketing strategy would give you the necessary foundation to implement the rest of the marketing strategies. But it is important to see whether these strategies would really work. Here are some ideas that would help you build a foundation to start off your online business. Even if your target is to generate more leads to your online business or getting more sales, this foundation will be of great importance. To begin with you will first need to create a professional website. By creating a website your online visitor could study about your company, what you are selling, your goals and why they should be purchasing your products. If your website does not look professional, it will give a negative image to your visitor. This does not mean that you need to include flashy and colourful graphics to your website. But you need to make sure that it is user friendly and delivers the message to the targeted audience. The design of your website will not matter in this instance. All it matters is how you layout the content, merchandise and information on your website. Therefore a professional site can appear to be very simple as well. The next thing you have to remember is that once your site goes live it is viewed by many people. It is important that you do not display anything that is unprofessional. Every time you do a change to the site make sure that you make no spelling mistakes and there is no broken links. Little things like this can bring a bad reputation to your site, so it is better to avoid them. Even if you have not noticed them your visitor would have a bad impression about your site. As an example if you posting a blog about Online Marketing then you will have to include any links that would relate to the topic. To help you in the long run you can also add Social Media Marketing as one of your online marketing strategies. It is all about marketing your business products using social networking sites as Facebook and Twitter. The more friends or followers you have the bigger the audience would get. Using Facebook for your digital marketing can help you a lot as it has a diverse community of all ages and people from different geographies that have different interests. Twitter can help you to build a list of potential customers and at the same time keep your current customers informed about new product at a click of a button. Social Media Marketing will not only benefit you by driving more traffic but also build brand awareness. These tips will help you build solid marketing strategies to generate sustainable success in your online business. If you need assistance in building a professional website reach a web designer and also get the assistance of a Online Marketing team to implement these strategies....Is tourism in Sri Lanka booming?April 19, 2011After the end of the 30 odd years long war in Sri Lanka, it was expected to have huge boost in the tourism sector. Now its been a couple of years after the war and most high security zones are free for the public. Are we having enough of tourists coming down to Sri Lanka or is it that the country has just gotten from bad to worse. I have seen plenty of websites and promotions going around targeting tourists around the world. I came across a pretty nice website Sri Lanka Holiday tours which offers customized tour packages to Sri Lanka. What really impressed me is how well Search Engine Optimized the site is, even though it is a basic HTML website. The canonical issue is solved with a nice 301 redirect, so even you type in the URL www.tourslk.com without the www it will redirect. Also at the end /index.html is also similarly done so the links pointing to /index.html is same as without it. This helps to increase your websites PageRank. Happy SEO...Tips to create an effective Online NewsletterApril 11, 2011An online newsletter can be cost effective and designed using colourful elements. They require a minimum production time and are easy to publicise and circulate over the internet. At present Online Newsletters have the strength to attract potential customer, as well as keep your employees and existing customers updated on your company’s growth at the same time. In order to effectively use this tool you would need to follow few guide lines when creating/designing an E-Newsletter. Design a multi-column layout: A mono column newsletter can get a bit boring to read, adding multi columns can give you the opportunity to add various information in small boxes to attract the readers. It will also give an attractive look to your online newsletter. Use graphics appropriately: In order to add colour to your online newsletter you might need to add appropriate images or illustrations. However, if you add too many graphics it would get cluttered and would like a scrap book rather than a newsletter. Using adequate imagery would bring out the attractiveness for your newsletter. Make sure to check your newsletter in different browsers before circulating it: It is important that you do this before sending it out to your customers as the layout might not be compatible for all web browsers, which will result in some content not appearing properly on some browsers. Submit links of every newsletter issue to popular search engines for indexing: By submitting links to search engines your potential customers can easily get to know your company and its happenings. At the same time it will boost the ranking of your website in search engines. Remember to send an e-mail alert to all your subscribers when each issue is available online: It is noted that a major drawback of an online newsletter is that the readers forget to check out the new issues. You can always send a reminding e-mail requesting to check the new issue of your online newsletter. Archive your previous issues of newsletters and add a search feature to your web site: This should help your readers find out on any missed information and would also be a good resource for people who are interested in researching about your company. It can also give your business partners a chance to check on your company growth and their contribution towards it. Analyse statics about your online newsletter using a web analytics tool: This web tool would assist you to monitor on how many people have received and read your online newsletter. It will also give you a statistic on how many people clicked on any of the links placed by you on the newsletter. This can also provide you a god source for your online surveys....Japanese earthquake and Google trendsApril 10, 2011Google trends gives you a quick insight of how certain searches have been made on Google over the past. This is a very important tool if you’re targeting a particular country or city for a product or service. You can find out how much that particular product or service have been searched via Google. As an example I’d like to share with you the recent earthquake which struck Japan. Follow the link bellow and check out how the line has shot up when you enter words “earthquake Japan” into Google trends. This proves that Google trends results are very much accurate and can be counted on. http://www.google.com/trends?q=earthquake+japan&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0 Happy blogging and comeback soon for more tips an updates...Tips to get total value from a Web Design AgencyMarch 21, 2011Your Web Designer would have designed a website that have impressed you and will also carry the same impression to your visitors. Therefore it is important to have a website with an eye catching appearance. To achieve this you will have to be cautious when selecting a Web Design agency. You will also have to consider numerous aspects on web designing. If you are looking to get value for the money spent on your web design, these tips would assist you in selecting the right Web Design Agency. The selected web design agency should be equipped with the necessary web development skills to create and up keep your website. One of the most important facets of the web design agency would be Search Engine Optimisation skills. Many web design agencies have the ability to create impressive website, but they do not implement Search Engine Optimisations to bring your website to top ranks on search engines. Web Design Agency uses on-page Search Engine Optimisation processes when creating your website. Other important elements of your website would be the site map, using keywords at appropriate intervals and a web page that would load faster. This will assist your web page to gain top ranking on search engines. The selected web design agency would also assist you in signing up for small directories to start your search engine marketing advertising procedures. At the same time they will offer your advice on how to market your website using SEO after the contract period ends. It will advantageous if the selected web design agency has many clients and have experience in creating and developing websites for a long period of time. You have the ability to take a look at these sites that were created for the previous clients. If the web design agency has designed a website for a client in your industry they will be more experienced in creating a website for you. You can also check whether they are willing to exchange banners or other advertising offers between your site and the client’s site. You may check whether the web design agency has readymade templates for you to choose from. These readymade templates will be of great assistance for you to choose the ideal layout for your website. Once you have chosen a template the Web Design Agency would customise the template to suit your specifications and design requirements. Apart from web design and development check whether the agency offers content improvement facilities and other website administration packages. This will make your life easy and you will be able to get a complete web design and development package from the Web Design agency. After all you will only have to deal with one agency when you need any amendments to your website. Your website should be also designed in a way that a person with less technical knowledge is also able to update the site. So you will be able to update company news and the blog without the help of the web design agency....Tips to run an effective Email marketing campaignFebruary 28, 2011Email marketing is one of the cost effective and time saving methods to market your products and services. As much as the ease you experience with it there are some steps you would have to consider before starting off a campaign. These guidelines will help you achieve your target and bring you more business as expected. One of the most common issues that any Email campaign can face would be the respective Email being marked as spam. Recent studies have proved that people now do not consider spam as unsolicited email but it is simply the email they do not want to read. To avoid this you have to follow a simple step where you give the option for your consumers to subscribe for your marketing emails on your website. Do not forget to mention that their contact details would not be shared with anyone. This will help you build a target audience for your campaign. You should also use a transparent email ID when sending out emails. Rather than using admin@yourcompanyname.com you can use nameofaproduct@yourcompanyname.com where as it will not be marked as spam. Then the subject line you will have to type in something that would interest your clients, like special discounts or newest products. Stop using abbreviations, slang and hyperbole. You may check your spam emails and get an idea on how you could improve the appearance and language of your marketing email. Images should be used moderately but should not include high resolution images which would take a long time to load and remember to label the images you have added. Sometimes users disable images from being displayed. By labelling your images your client would get to know on what they are missing and they would check on your email. A call-to-action should also be included in your email campaigns which would give the client a chance to get involved. Your marketing email should carry a message that would ask the viewer to reply to the email, visit your website etc. By personalising your marketing email you can make it look very important and appear to know the customer personally. Many online marketing campaigns ignore this but adding an appropriate greeting and ending the email with a signature can add a lot of value and trustworthiness to your correspondence. You should also remember to include your contact details in every marketing email, giving your client an option to contact you by various methods. Include a message that requests your client to add you as a contact in their contact list to keep them updated and not to miss out on upcoming offers. This is another method that you can save your marketing email being marked as spam. Do not include attachments as most of the time your email would not have the expected open rate. Many people do not open email with attachments to safe guard their computers from potential viruses. Remember to include an option to unsubscribe as well....Google Search OperatorsFebruary 14, 2011Many of you who use Google as your preferred search engine might find the following operators useful, efficient and most of all “time-saving”. You do not need special training to search for the contact number of a leading local bank or the website of a supermarket in town on Google. It’s as simple as just typing in the name of the bank or supermarket and hitting the search button, which will return your required information instantly. What if you are looking for a particular product of which the name is only half known or not so popular? On such instances it is not so easy as just typing those words (only if you remember). It may take you hours to find the exact piece of information you are after. Time is precious and you cannot afford to spend hours searching for something which you require immediately. This is when using search operators comes handy, it is efficient and will save you time, effort and resources. If you find this information useful please email or share this with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon or Reddit. You can also use the print option to get a printout for yourself.This SearchFinds Pages Containing…biking Sri Lankathe words biking and Sri Lankarecycle steel OR ironinformation on recycling steel or recycling iron“I have a dream“the exact phrase I have a dreamsalsa –dancethe word salsa but NOT the word danceLouis +I Franceinformation about Louis the First (I), weeding out other kings of Francecastle ~glossaryglossaries about castles, as well as dictonaries, lists of terms, terminology, etc.fortune-tellingall forms of the term, whether spelled as a single word, a phrase, or hyphenateddefine:imbrogliodefinitions of the word imbroglio from the WebGoogle also serves as a CalculatorCalculatorOperatorsMeaningType Into Search Box (& Results)+ – * /basic arithmetic12 + 34 – 56 * 7 / 8% ofpercentage of45% of 39^ or **raise to a power2^5 or 2**5old units in new unitsconvert units300 Euros in USD, 130 lbs in kg, or 31 in hexcity1 city2Book flights.sfo bos (Book flights from San Francisco (SFO) to Boston (BOS).)site:Search only one website or domain.Halloween site:www.census.gov (Search for information on Halloween gathered by the US Census Bureau.)..Search within a range of numbers.Dave Barry pirate 2002..2006 (Search for Dave Barry articles mentioning pirates written in these years.)filetype: (or ext:)Find documents of the specified type.Form 1098-T IRS filetype:pdf (Find the US tax form 1098-T in PDF format.)link:Find linked pages, i.e., show pages that point to the URL.link:warriorlibrarian.com (Find pages that link to Warrior Librarian‘s website.)More of these type of search operators can be found at http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html...Optimizing your home pageFebruary 10, 2011As you might have heard the saying you never have a second chance to make a first impression, and that the first impression is made within 7 seconds of meeting someone. When it comes to a visiting website it’s even faster than that. So what does the home page or a landing page of your website say about your website? Does it immediately grab the attention of your readers and make them focus and concentrate on your contents? Or does it do nothing at all and drive them away to another page? Does it load quickly allowing them to see what’s in store for them? Or does it take several seconds to load, making them lose their patience once the page finally arrives? Your Landing Page Has 7 to 11 Seconds That’s all you need to impress your reader and get them to stay on your site. Even for the faster sites, 2 to 3 of those seconds are spent downloading the page. So that leaves you 4 to 8 seconds to get your message across and let them navigate through your pages. There are a many different strategies to make your landing page memorable and keep them clicking.Navigation Home Pages Navigation front pages have a lot of information in a small space. They act like a portal to the rest of the site packing in the places your readers can go. If you have a website with a lot of information, a navigation front page may be the way to go. Often readers do not come to the front page of large sites looking for specific information, they are looking for the “route” to the information they want. While you could argue that having that information right on the front page would be good, for a large site this isn’t feasible. If your readers already know the site is large, they don’t expect to find the information on the front page, so even when it’s there, they don’t see it. Information Home Pages Websites with one specific purpose, an informative front page gets that purpose right out where the reader expects it. Sites that are focused around a goal, such as selling something, or displaying designs, or publishing a family photo album are well suited for an Information Front Page. Make that goal the central part of the page. Engage the readers by showing them an overview of the goal and then drawing them in to the details and extra information that supports that goal.Home Page Should Fit Your Site and Content Your front page should suit your site and skills. A site with very few pages would not make an interesting Navigation Front Page. And a novice Flash designer may not make the best Splash Page. But, you should also think about what you are trying to convey with your site. The home page is where people are going to (often) form their first opinion. If you have a solid, cutting edge home page, but your site is about “Choosing a Nanny”, you might scare some of your readers away. Your Home Page Should Be Clear Your first page should be the clearest page on your site. If people have to guess what it’s about, chances are they will have hit the “Back” button without even trying. Your readers don’t want to have to work to get their information. We are an instant gratification world, and unclear sites become instant losers....A more personal and local search from BingFebruary 7, 2011Bing has improved and adds personalised and local search results in their search engine. Their blog recently reported about these new developments. These developments in the search engine are focusing in making your search more personal and at the same time keep it area specific.For example if you look up the word “pizza” and you live in Seattle the results would display Pizza parlours in that area. This is recognised as a local search. How this works is that the search engine recognises your IP location and provides results relevant to your area. At present the local search works only for cities in the USA.The search engine results are also based on logical assumptions. If you want to inquire about the road conditions and key in ‘traffic’ at 6pm on Friday the results should display the traffic situation and not about the movie or band.Making the results more personal, Bing will analyse your previous search types depending on whether you are exploring? Looking for a particular site? Trying to find something you had seen before and then would list those results on top of the search results.At least 76% of people are reported to have used search engines when planning trips, events or social gatherings. Bing’s new improvements are set to assist in indexing search results depending on your location and according to your personal preference. They are currently testing a series of experiments to check as to which techniques could deliver the best results based on a person’s search preferences.Bing says “The beauty of thinking differently about personalized searching is that it enables us to construct elegant solutions that require a minimal amount of personal information and, frankly, often exhibit better results than a more computationally complex predictive model alone.”...Page Rank Update From GoogleJanuary 25, 2011Have you Webmasters and SEO‘s noticed a sudden dance in your rankings and unusual activity on Google lately? There was a change in Google Search for number of competition, A keyword which had over 8 million competition on SERP (Search Engine Result Page) dropped to around 5 million while one of our sites ranking for that keyword suddenly jumped up over 120 positions to the top 3. It has been the longest awaited Page Rank update ever since last April. Many websites of Page Rank 0 has been promoted to 1. Many web masters across the globe have been waiting for this change for a long time. Our clients have been very much relieved as they had their website PR increase, If your website’s PR went up too! Congratulations, all your SEO efforts and experiments have paid off and you deserve it. Proud to be the first blog to report on Google PR (Page Rank) update in Sri Lanka. Happy SEO Farhan Fawzer...Sudden weather change in Colombo, Sri LankaJanuary 13, 2011The start of this year has been very different to the ones before in many ways. One of the differences is that the warm days of Colombo have been suddenly stolen by the cold weather. How many of you are enjoying the Nuwara-eliya like climate in Colombo? I really love the present weather, so enjoy while it lasts. I’m tired of the wrong predictions from the Met Department, so I get my temperature update from Google. Don’t need to wait for the hourly news update on the Television or Radio. Want know how to get the current temperature and forecast of world cities including Colombo instantly, just go to Google and type in “weather (name of city)” and enter. Eg. weather colombo, the present temperature and forecast of Colombo is displayed in a flash. The temperature in Colombo dropped to 18.8 Degrees C (65 Fahrenheit) on the 13th of January 2011. It is the lowest in 61 years, the last time it happened way back in 1950. Meanwhile, on the same day the temperature in Nuwara Eliya (typical little England) dropped to 7.9 Celsius and the eastern part of the island, Batticaloa, recorded 16.9 Celsius. By Farhan Fawzer SEO Sri Lanka online services...Facebook closing down in March!January 11, 2011Surprised! I had the same feeling the first time I read a blog post which mentioned the same heading. I immediately started Googling to find out what was going on and found many related blog posts and articles. This is one of the blog posts that I came across 2 days ago. PALO ALTO, CA –Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut down in March. Managing the site has become too stressful. “Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.” Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts. “After March 15th the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business.” In the mean time New York Daily News had the below to say. New York Daily News says; Facebook dismisses rumors the social networking site is shutting down after users panicked. At the time I visited the About page on Facebook, I found the below post. “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down, so we’ll keep working away like always. We aren’t going anywhere; we’re just getting started.” I tried the Facebook Blog but didn’t find any related posts at the time of writing this. My advice would be that don’t be fooled by false alarms, but always check the official pages from reliable sources. Personal blogs and articles can be misleading most of the times. Nevertheless, who knows what is going on at Facebook but we can always trust the Facebook official page. Official Facebook posts can be found at http://www.facebook.com/facebook Or Facebook blog at http://blog.facebook.com/ Happy SEO By Farhan Fawzer SEO Sri Lanka online services...Google, Bing, Facebook & Twitter UpdateDecember 7, 2010This is no breaking news for some, but for some it is a great piece of news. Finally, Google and Bing let the cat out about Facebook and Twitter when it comes to weighing against ranking a website. Those who have been excessively using Facebook and Twitter for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) would be highly pleased. The below conversation took place at an official meeting between an expert SEO, Danny Sullivan and Bing and Google. Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it? Bing: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used. Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article. WHAT THIS MEANS: You need to be on Twitter and sharing content that gets retweeted! Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are? Bing: Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan) Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life 🙂 Danny Sullivan: Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it? Bing: Yes. Google: Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section . WHAT THIS MEANS: You need to be actively building your follower base and improve your “author authority” (so your tweets and retweets of your tweets help you more and carry more weight). We now know that those link sharing activities on Twitter + Facebook are evaluated based on the person/entity sharing them through a score Google calls “Author Authority,” and Bing calls “Social Authority.” If you aren’t yet on Twitter or Facebook (with a Fan Page) please contact us to get a quote and get going – it’s only going to become more important as time goes on. If you are already on Twitter and/or Facebook but think you may need some help, let us review what you are doing and see how we can help! Email : farhanweb@aol.com By Farhan Fawzer SEO Sri Lanka online services...Redirecting Canonical pagesDecember 4, 2010This is one of the most interesting questions I ever had to ask someone, what is your website address? is it http://www.example.com or http://example.com ? The guy was confused, he asked me whats the difference they are both the same. Well they aren’t the same for certain search engines and particularly Google. The web crawlers have had always thought example.com without the www and with the www are two different sites. This can have a huge impact on your SERP (Search Engine Result Pages), as the PageRank value is shared. A 301 permanent redirect would solve this issue. Set up a redirect on the preferred version of your website, either from the www version to none www or vice versa, is the best solution and make things easy for Googlebot. Check how your pages are indexed on Google by typing “site:www.example.com” (without quotes) and obviously replacing example with your domain. If the pages of the results show only one version of your website indexed, that’s fine if not you may have to set up a redirect as mentioned above. Happy SEO By Farhan Fawzer A leading SEO Specialist from Sri Lanka...Google Instant ViewNovember 14, 2010Google just added a very useful option to its line of search results. The all new Google Instant View on the right hand corner (Magnifying glass icon) of the result page, when a user clicks the icon it will display a snap shot of the website, this will enable the user to decide if it is useful to visit the website. However if the website uses flash on the whole page, it is unlikely that the page will be displayed instead a broken snippet appears. At the time of writing this Google had announced that they are working on optimizing flash for its crawlers to retrieve data and show on Instant View. I’m beginning to make the most of this tool, as I used to forget the URL of a previously visited website. Google Instant View helps me to save the time I spend on opening the wrong website. From a SEO’s perspective, I’d not be surprised to see an increase of visits to well designed websites. As I mentioned earlier, if your website is flash based, no matter how creative your site is, it will not look good on Google Instant View. Try it yourself at www.google.lk and click the icon on the right. Happy SEO By Farhan Fawzer SEO Sri Lanka online services...Creating a Google Sitemap for your websiteNovember 5, 2010Today lets take a look at Sitemaps and how to submit them to Google. A Sitemap is an XML file that contains the URLs of all the web pages in your site. You create this file and submit it to Google so that Googlebot will read it. You can specify certain parameters in the file such as the location (URL) of your web pages, when they were last modified and how frequently the pages are updated It is important from a SEO’s point of view to tell Google where all of your web pages are, so you can improve your website visibility in their index. Submitting a Sitemap to Google may improve your rankings by getting an unlinked or deeply linked page into the index that wasn’t previously. It is worth to create an XML Sitemap for Google, if you are concerned about search rankings and SEO. There are a number of sites where you can generate a free XML Sitemap. The following steps will take you through to create and submit a Sitemap of your own.Firstly, you need to have a list of your websites URLs. Visit www.xml-sitemaps.com nothing to worry about it is 100% free. Type your websites URL and hit the submit button and your XML Sitemap will be generated. Once you have your Sitemap you must now submit the Sitemap to Google. Visit www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login and login with your Google account. Don’t have one? Don’t worry – that’s free, too. Don’t forget to update your Sitemap if you change the URLs or add new pages to your site.Hope you found this information useful Happy SEO By Farhan Fawzer SEO Sri Lanka online services...Domains and SEOOctober 28, 2010How important are domains when it comes to search engine optimization. Choosing the right domain can play a major role when it comes to optimizing your website for high competitive keywords. Best advice is to have at least one keyword as part of your domain. As part of the algorithms of search engines, domains are also given a considerable amount of weight on search engine results pages. There are over 200 algorithms used by Google to rank a particular website. Over using keywords on domains can have your website penalized for spamming. However, hyphens on domains are used to separate two words which is also fine with search engines but this might lead some returning users to end up on your competitor’s website. e.i Instead of typing www.my-website.com it is very much possible that users type www.mywebsite.com So next time when you choose a domain for your website watch out folks. Happy SEO...Exciting News From Bing and Yahoo!October 27, 2010At the time of writing this post I have been exhausted after a holiday down south over the long weekend. I was away from the www or rather 1’s and 0’s game. Coming to the topic, have you noticed a similarity in SERPs (Search engine result pages) of yahoo & bing lately, both search engines rank your website almost exactly. If you haven’t noticed yet, Bing & Yahoo are joining force and presently testing Bing results in Yahoo! Both parties are very happy with the progress. The similar results first gave me quite a shock as I was comparing the data gathered by using SheerSEO. I personally think, this is a great move, joining forces by both well established search engines. However, on the other hand Google has made its name in the game so strong, so it is not easy for Bing or Yahoo to battle it out individually. This kind of a merger was very much needed and will definitely have the strength to compete with the giant Google. Hoping to see the response from Google and the repercussions of the never ending SEO battle. You may also find more info at the official link at http://goo.gl/a9iY Happy SEO...Links to your website updatedOctober 14, 2010Have you noticed recently Google have changed and updated, now the way links to your website looks much organised and easy to understand. The SEO business has become so important that even a slight change made by Google can have a huge impact on any website. This has kept the SEO’s endlessly hunting for more and more strategies. In other words it has become more and more competitive, and gives a opportunity for all. I personally like what Google does in order to fight spammers. Penalize! is what they are know in the SEO industry. Penalizing a spammer is a great way of combat, however there are clever spammers, who disguise themselves so well that they don’t look spammers and technology cannot identify their activity. I hope you like the new look of the update, I certainly do, but I need to figure out what happened to the 900 or so links I had, as they only show around 400 now. Happy SEO...Search Engine Optimization in Sri LankaOctober 12, 2010Search Engine Optimization (SEO) What was your first impression when you first heard the term SEO? Many of us will have different stories and I have to admit that some are still not sure of what it means. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines by means of natural unpaid listing. For SEOs Search engines have become a part of our lives, as we use them day in and day out. Others use it at least a few times at work or home to find information, tutorials, recipes, definition, products, services etc… Do we know how effective our searches are or how accurate the information we find is related to the subject we search. Performing a search fast and accurate can save you quite a lot of time and resources. Next time you search for anything on Google make sure you use keywords instead of “stop words” such as AND, OR, A, AN. Google does not give any weight to them but simply ignores, when you use them in phrases....
