One of the absolute most important aspects of website design and online business marketing is improving your SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.  The whole point of SEO is to get your dropshipping website listed at the top of the search engine response pages for keywords relevant to your business.  If you are operating a chocolate-dipped fruit store, you want your business to be the first one that shows up when I Google “chocolate fruit”, “chocolate-dipped fruit” and even more obscure keywords like “gourmet gifts” or “wedding shower treats”.  Efficient SEO will bring in a ton of business, often more than you could pay for through Pay-Per-Click advertising, banner ads, flyers, etc. – that’s why it’s so important.

I’ve talked a lot about basic SEO techniques in previous posts, but you should be aware that search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms to make the search experience better for users.  This means that you need to stay up to date with what the search engines are looking for.

One aspect of SEO that has become increasingly important is video.

Posting how-to and instructional videos is a great way to improve your SEO and get your business noticed, particularly for new or smaller businesses that have a hard time competing in traditional SEO.

3 things to remember when adding video to your website and your marketing efforts:

1. Video files need to be properly titled with keywords so they’re searchable.

Search engines often can’t read anything other than text (for instance they can’t read your logo if it’s an image instead of text).  Titling your video and posting a short summary or description is helpful both to search engines and to people visiting your site.

2. Your video needs to be valuable.

Your video needs to provide valuable information, blow people’s minds, or at the very least make your visitors laugh their socks off.  If your video has no value, nobody will want to watch it, link to it, or recommend it to friends.  Informative is probably the easiest note to hit, so film a video on how to perform an amazing card trick, how create the perfect rosettes for a birthday cake, or a review on the latest ergonomic bicycle helmet.  Obviously the video should be related to your product line, so the aforementioned videos would be on websites selling magic tricks, cake decorating supplies, and cycling gear.

3. Promote your video and your website on other venues

Post your video on YouTube and other popular sites.  By including a link to your website, you can bring in traffic.

SEO, internet marketing, website design / help

What is a meta-tag?

Meta-tags are descriptions in your HTML code that communicate with search engines and are often visible to people who find your dropshipping website on a search engine response page (SERP).

When is your meta-tag used?

Search engines like Google and Yahoo often default to the meta description information, or use part of your meta-tag and part of the text they find on the page with relevant keywords when choosing information to display on the SERP.

If your meta-tag is used on a SERP, a human being will read that information when deciding whether to visit your dropshipping website or not.

Why are meta-tags important?

Creating a compelling meta description for each page of your website gives you the most control over what people read about your site in the SERPs.  (Remember to include the same keywords as your meta-tags in your actual web page content, because that makes it far more likely that search engines will display your tag.)  Also, meta-tags occasionally impact your SEO.

What should your meta-tag say?

Your meta-tag should accurately and attractively describe your web page, using relevant keywords (though not too many or you’ll be tagged for keyword-stuffing).  It can only be 63 characters long, including spaces, so you’ll probably have to stick to around 6-12 words.  Use keywords first, adding things like your company name at the end of the description.  Your meta-tag doesn’t have to be a perfectly grammatical full sentence as long as it is clear and comprehensible for a human reader.

Check back next week for a description of how to actually insert meta-tags into your website.

SEO, website design / help

When promoting my online business, what should I spend more time and money on: Pay-Per-Click advertising, or SEO?  As you can probably guess, I’m going to tell you that both are important, but there are times when you should focus on one more than the other.

First, a definition of Pay-Per-Click and SEO:

Pay-Per-Click Advertising:

Pay-Per-Click advertising is an online advertising method where business owners pay every time their ad is clicked (usually on a search engine results page).  The amount you pay for each click depends on how much you bid (you decide ahead of time how much you will pay for each visitor).  The search engine page your ad appears on depends on the keywords you selected.  You can agree to pay a set amount, say $400, and once you’ve received enough visitors to exhaust that payment your ad automatically disappears.  This means you won’t be surprised by thousands of visitors and thousands of dollars in charges.

SEO:

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to your web site from search engines.  This is considered “natural”, “un-paid”, or “organic” traffic, as opposed to SEM (Search Engine Marketing) where you pay for inclusion on the search engine results pages.  (Pay-Per-Click advertising is SEM).   Generally, the higher your ranking on the search results list, the more visitors your website will receive, which is why it’s important to improve your search engine ranking at all times.  SEO can be improved in myriad ways, but some of the main elements include valuable, regularly updated content on your website, plenty of relevant keywords, inbound links to your site, and submission to search engines and directories.

When should I focus on Pay-Per-Click advertising?

• Pay-Per-Click is important at the launch of your website when you need to get traffic flowing quickly.
• Pay-Per-Click is great for limited-time  or seasonal promotions.
• Pay-Per-Click is important when testing ads and promotions because you can measure results easily.
• Pay-Per-Click advertising can give you a boost during slow periods.

When should I focus on SEO?

• SEO is something you need to be doing consistently all the time.

SEO is a long-term process and you won’t necessarily see results immediately.  It can be less expensive than Pay-Per-Click because many aspects of it are free (though time-consuming), so SEO is something that you can plug away at when your advertising budget is depleted.  Initially you may not see as many results from SEO as you will from Pay-Per-Click advertsising, but over time as your search engine ranking rises, it can be a consistent and low-cost way to bring in traffic.

SEO, internet marketing

Google is tweaking its search engine so “real time” results are more frequently included.  Real time results are heavily weighted toward fresh content.  This means that your ranking on the SERPs (Search Engine Response Pages) could be much more volatile – you could be number 1 one minute, and number 6 a few minutes later.  How can you boost your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by taking advantage of real time searching?

First: Fresh Content All The Time

Fresh content is important with all search engines, but particularly with Google who uses an algorithm called QDF (Query Deserves Freshness).  This means that freshness is an important factor in ranking.  The newer the content the better, and the more new content the better.  If you are not adding fresh content to your dropshipping website daily, you are probably not maximizing your SEO.  This content can be as simple as a Tip of the Day or a blog post.  Make sure your content contains plenty of relevant keywords, especially in the title.  Also, try to write about topics that are current, exciting, and interesting.  Keep abreast of news and developments relevant to your product/field of interest.  This will help your search engine ranking, please your customers, and encourage people to comment on your articles and pass them along to friends.

Second: Social Media Marketing

If you haven’t been promoting your online business on Twitter, Facebook, Ning, etc., now is the time to start.  Real time searching  rewards up-to-the-minute sources like Twitter.  Social Media platforms are also a great way to get your content passed along from person to person (viral marketing).  The more catchy, interesting, and useful your information is, the more likely people are to share it.  Of course your article will contain links to your website, so promotion of your article is promotion of your site.

Ultimately real time searching rewards your hard work today instead of favoring the online businesses who have been around the longest.  Thus, real time searching is a friend to fledgling online entrepeneurs.  It allows you to compete in SEO even though you’re just a newbie, as long as you’re willing to put the time in to create quality content and build a strong social media presence.

SEO, internet marketing, website design / help