Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing technique that involves optimizing websites and web pages to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for targeted keywords. SEO has become a crucial part of digital marketing, as it helps businesses to increase their online visibility, drive more traffic to their websites, and generate leads and sales.
Sri Lanka has been experiencing significant growth in the digital marketing industry over the past few years. Many businesses in Sri Lanka have recognized the importance of SEO in improving their online presence, and as a result, there has been a high demand for SEO services in Sri Lanka. In this article, we will discuss the importance of SEO in Sri Lanka, the benefits of SEO services, and the role of SEO experts and specialists in Sri Lanka.
Consult an experienced and expert Sri Lankan SEO Specialist to audit your website & analyze for common SEO issues for FREE (Yes, at no cost).
Importance of SEO in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has a rapidly growing economy, and many businesses are looking to expand their customer base and reach new markets. With the increasing use of the internet and the widespread availability of smartphones, consumers are now searching for products and services online. Therefore, having a strong online presence has become critical for businesses to succeed in Sri Lanka.
SEO plays a crucial role in helping businesses to increase their online visibility and attract more customers. By optimizing their websites for search engines, businesses can rank higher in SERPs and be more easily found by potential customers. This can lead to increased website traffic, more leads and sales, and improved brand awareness and credibility.
Moreover, SEO can help businesses to target specific audiences by optimizing their websites for relevant keywords. For example, a business selling luxury watches in Colombo can optimize its website for keywords such as “luxury watches in Colombo” or “high-end watches in Sri Lanka.” By doing so, the business can attract more targeted traffic to its website and increase its chances of converting visitors into customers.
Benefits of SEO services in Sri Lanka
SEO services can provide many benefits to businesses in Sri Lanka. Some of the key benefits of SEO services are:
- Increased online visibility: SEO can help businesses to rank higher in SERPs, making them more visible to potential customers who are searching for products or services related to their business.
- More website traffic: By increasing their online visibility, businesses can attract more website traffic, which can lead to more leads, sales, and revenue.
- Improved user experience: SEO involves optimizing websites for both search engines and users, which can lead to a better user experience for visitors to the website.
- Competitive advantage: Businesses that invest in SEO can gain a competitive advantage over their competitors who are not investing in SEO.
- Cost-effective: SEO can be a cost-effective marketing strategy, as it can provide long-term benefits without requiring a significant investment in advertising or other forms of marketing.
Get your SEO audit report now.
SEO Expert in Sri Lanka
An SEO expert is a professional who specializes in optimizing websites for search engines. SEO experts have a deep understanding of how search engines work and can help businesses to improve their online visibility, attract more traffic to their websites, and generate leads and sales.
In Sri Lanka, there are many SEO experts who can provide high-quality SEO services to businesses. These experts have a strong understanding of the local market and can help businesses to target specific audiences and achieve their marketing goals.
However there are only a few experts with more than a decade of SEO experience and exposure.
SEO experts in Sri Lanka can provide a wide range of services, including:
- Keyword research: SEO experts can help businesses to identify relevant keywords that can be targeted to improve their online visibility.
- On-page optimization: SEO experts can optimize the content and structure of a website to make it more search engine-friendly and improve its rankings in SERPs.
- Off-page optimization: SEO experts can help businesses to build high-quality backlinks to their website, which can improve their rankings and increase their online visibility.
If you need SEO services in Sri Lanka Call or WhatsApp me or fill up the simple contact me form and submit.
Latest updates on SEO
February 10, 2011SEO Sri LankaAs 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. [...]
July 10, 2011SEO Sri Lanka / SEO TipsNow, 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. [...]
November 7, 2019Online Marketing / search engine optimization / SEO / Web Design / Web Development / Web TrafficWith 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. [...]
December 4, 2010Search Engine OptimisationThis 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 [...]
September 29, 2011Online Marketing / regularIf 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. [...]
July 23, 2014Google Analytics / SEO / Web TrafficIt 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.
[...]
December 9, 2016Adwords / Online Marketing / PPCAre 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
[...]
April 4, 2014GoogleGoogle’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. [...]
March 16, 2014Search Engine Optimisation / SEOIt 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. [...]
December 6, 2015Domain / Google / Rankings / SEO / SEO TipsThey 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. [...]