I receive a lot of SEO questions from business owners who want to spruce up their aging websites, but are dead afraid of losing their existing search engine traffic. And for good reason. Going live with a redesigned website without considering the SEO implications is like being ensnared in a nasty trap that you cannot escape from. It’s hard to make monéy while stuck in a trap!

With that in mind, here are a 3 SEO traps to avoid before, during and after you develop your website:

SEO Trap #1: Your Content Management System

If you are switching to a different content management system, (CMS) it often means that the URLs from your current site will have to change to something that fits with the new system. It’s likely that the new URL naming convention will not match your old one.

The Escape: If this is the case with your new back end, then 301-permanent redirect all of the old URLs to their new counterparts if you can. If this is a practical impossibility, then review your analytics to find the landing page URLs within your website that receive direct search engine visitors, and redirect those. Also redirect any URLs that have links pointing to them from other sites. While it’s best practice to redirect all URLs, those that don’t receive any direct search engine traffic and don’t have any external links are less important.

SEO Trap #2: Your Site Architecture

Your new website is likely to be sporting a brand new navigational scheme as well as an overall change of its site architecture (how each page links to each other). This is a key element in determining whether pages from your website will show up in the search results. For instance, if you take a page from your website that is currently featured in the main navigation (meaning that every page of the site links to it) and you feature it less prominently within your new website, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t show up in the search results for its targeted keyword phrases as it used to.
The Escape: You can tell the search engines which pages are the most important ones on your site by how you link to them. Be sure that the pages you are optimizing are linked from your main navigation so that they will receive the internal link popularity they deserve. They’ll stand a much better chance at bringing you targeted visitors than those that are deeply buried.

SEO Trap #3: Your Content

If you hadn’t previously optimized the content of your old site, I highly suggest doing so with your new site. This means that you research the keywords that people use at the search engines to find products or services like yours, and then use them strategically within each page of the website. Doing so will likely boost the targeted visitors to your site fairly quickly after going live.

On the other hand, if your existing site was fairly well optimized and already bringing targeted visitors, you’ll need to be careful about the content that you change. While you shouldn’t be afraid to make your content better, it may not be a good idea to completely rewrite old content that was working for you. You’d be surprised how many marketers decide to change their website messaging without even realizing that it was previously optimized to bring in targeted visitors.

Still, your website redesign is a good time to work on increasing your website conversions. All the targeted visitors in the world are of no use to you if they don’t take any of the actions you’d like them to take. Rewriting some of your content to convert more visitors into buyers is a good thing as long as it doesn’t decrease the number of those visitors. Again – this is where you’ll need to review your analytics reports to determine which pages were your best performers.

The Escape: If you find that your existing page content was bringing in search engine traffic and conversions, think 10 times before changing it! If you’re certain that your new content is much better and more in tune with your company’s message, then try testing it against the old copy through a tool such as Google’s Website Optimizer. You may be right, but you won’t ever know for sure unless you test it.

The Booby Trap!

Don’t forget that title tags are an important part of your content as well. Sadly, one of the most common mistakes during a redesign is to inadvertently lose all the previous title tags.

The Escape: Don’t go live with your new site without proper (unique, relevant and keyword-rich) title tags in place on every page. You will absolutely take a huge traffic hit if you do. Make sure that your new CMS allows you to customize the title tags of every page as needed. If it doesn’t, then find a new CMS that does. I can’t stress this enough because title tags are so important to SEO. It’s fine to dynamically generate them based on specific rules, but some pages may need their titles to be customized for best results.

These 3 traps are just a few of many you may face as you redesign your website. Don’t be one of the many who wait to go live with their site and THEN call an SEO consultant for help. Bake your SEO into the new site from the start to avoid any loss of search engine visitors, while ideally increasing them. There’s no reason why your visitor count should take a hit with a new design — but only if you are prepared to avoid the traps!

Have you ever embarked on some SEO work and got that sinking feeling that you might be doing something wrong? You’re not alone. Our expert Mark Nunney gives us the dirty dozen top mistakes he sees being made in SEO, as well as tips on how to negotiate the pitfalls.

1. Missing the big picture

Most SEO advice is given for a single page, word or technique. But if a site is to be responsible for a profitable small business then in most situations it will need hundreds of pages targeting hundreds of thousands of keywords using a wide range of techniques.

All of these pages, keywords and techniques need to work together so you need a plan to coordinate that, including:

Keyword research looking for potential keywords with Wordtracker Keywords Toolß and existing traffic with Wordtacker Strategizer)

Strategy (your prioritized groups of target keywords)

Site structure (matching your target keywords) and navigation to distribute link power around your site

On page SEO

Link building with Wordtracker’s new Link Builder tool and online PR.

To work at any scale beyond a micro-niche business, you must change your perspective from single (or exact match) keywords to keyword niches – groups of keywords sharing the same seed …

… so right now I’m helping a site selling slippers and I might focus a lot of SEO and link building on the single keyword slippers but I’m really interested in tens of thousands of keywords containing slippers, including leather slippers, men’s slippers, ladies slippers, etc.

I designed Wordtracker Strategizer to work with this shift in perspective from single keywords to keyword niches.
2. Not having a keyword or SEO strategy

What are you trying to achieve? Most importantly your SEO strategy should serve the company, marketing and brand strategies. A keyword strategy is a prioritized list of the company’s target markets’ niches, as defined by the keywords used in those niches – the words and phrases used in search engines.
3. Putting too much trust in an SEO company

You need to get whoever you have approached to prove what they’ve done, even when you have a personal reference for that company. You should take a step back and ask yourself, “what is being delivered?” Make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

Often they (businesses) will see a company with a nice website and they may be inclined to trust them because of that. Here are a few simple questions to ask any agency you might be talking to:

Do you always give complete ownership of site analytics accounts to your clients? If not, why not? (The answer is they want to ‘lock you in’.)

How do you build links other than paid, directories, press releases, article sites and using your own websites?

Can you list all the link building techniques you have planned for me, give the weighting you’ll give to each and why?

Give examples of how your strategy and tactics might change with circumstances.

If their given link building techniques include the likes of comment spamming and buying links ask: I understand they can work now, but what happens when Google stops them working?

(Following up on the question above) Remember the Florida update? If the person you’re speaking to doesn’t remember ‘Florida’, ask to speak to an SEO who does.
4. Having a company structure or systems that are unable to accommodate change

Change is always difficult. But combine it with something completely new and you’ve got a problem. The new thing is SEO and online marketing – neither is particularly well understood or even trusted, and in some cases companies have never heard of it.

Change is never going to happen unless those with authority and responsibility absolutely insist it does. This slows down many large companies and allows the small, who do embrace SEO, to do well. Here’s a nice example – do a search for hotels in London, Paris or New York. You would think you would see all the big names at the top, but you’ll see plenty of companies you’ve never heard of.

5. Not coordinating SEO with your editorial, sales and marketing departments

New content without SEO to maximize the number of target visitors seeing that content is a waste.

SEO without marketing to convert those visitors is a waste.

Your content, SEO and marketing should work together as part of a process.
6. Not monitoring response or acting on results

You have to monitor response eg, the numbers buying your product or signing up to your newsletter.

You may find that the market niche you hoped would work ends up being lame. If so, move on.

Monitor traffic, rankings and response for relevant searches. If you are getting good or bad results you need to act appropriately. That might be moving on to the next target niche, or investing more resources into the same ones.
7. Poor content management systems

It’s a cliche to say you need the right tools to do the job. One of SEO and online marketing’s tools is a content management system (CMS) that gives you complete control over most of the content, on most of the pages, including site navigation, menus and all marketing. Not having that is like entering a car race on a scooter.
8. Letting developers control website content

Partly as a result of companies having no existing knowledge and systems to accommodate online marketing and SEO, those who build the website have by default often become in charge of its content.

But letting developers take control of online content is like letting the mechanic drive the racing car. Or buying a car from a Ford garage and letting the mechanics decide where you can drive.

Take control of your website.

The developer’s job is to deliver the functions you want and keep the site working. What goes on the site and where and when is the responsibility of editorial and marketing, including SEO.
9. Not doing SEO now

Here’s a simple point; every day you wait to start SEO means it will be more expensive to get the same results when you do start. If you can get to the top of Google for a collection of keywords this will give you momentum and help you stay at the top, and it becomes cheaper.

Serious search engine success allows for serious business success – put these things together and you’ve basically got a gold rush. If you don’t do the work now it’s going to cost you a fortune to do it in the future. There is a simple reason for this and it’s inbound links.
10. Neglecting the importance of site structure and navigation

Most reasonable sites for reasonably sized businesses are going to need hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pages.

If you have hundreds of pages you need an optimized site structure and an accompanying site navigation. Even on a small site it’s possible to get this wrong and waste all your work.

You might have wonderfully optimized pages and links but if you don’t have your navigation right, or your structure isn’t right then your success will be limited.

What should you do? It’s hard to give a quick answer, but you should organize your site content into categories of related content. Let’s say you had a site selling chocolate – you would have all your Belgian truffles in one place and chocolate cake recipes somewhere else, almost working as different sites with their own home page (category home pages.)

On larger sites, related categories can be grouped together into channels.

Make sure your home page links directly to your site’s most important category pages. See Are your Superman Pages trapped in a basement full of kryptonite?
11. Neglecting your home page

Your home page is by far your most powerful page because most of your site’s inbound links will come to there. Use that power with copy to both target your toughest keyword niches and help other niches with links to their category home pages.

You can test what works, trying keywords of varying degrees of difficulty and ambition.
12. Over-relying on your home page

This is just as problematic. There are only so many different keywords you can effectively target with one page. When success is achieved for a keyword niche with your home page – move that success to other pages using internal and external links.

Google wasn’t satisfied with just having Instant Search, now it has introduced something called Instant Previews. Searchers and web users can now browse a large instant “preview” of a site’s content by placing the cursor over the small magnifying glass displayed beside each listing. These previews are large and Google sometimes highlights a major paragraph or quote from each displayed site.

Searchers can get a general look at the layout and design of a site, onpage graphics and bold headlines can usually be seen from the preview. However, small print and the general content of the page can’t be read, so searchers will have to click through to your site if they want to read your information. Assuming of course, they don’t find what they’re looking for in the headlines or bold print.

Whether searchers will use this new feature remains to be seen, but these instant previews could have some ramifications on who gets the “click through” to their site. One would also reason that getting the top spot in the rankings have diminished somewhat, if searchers can quickly preview all of the top 10 listings and then make their decision. So they might not click the top listing, but decide one lower down is worth clicking. This could make any listing on the first page more worth having, not just the top one.

This doesn’t really affect any of your SEO strategies and you should be optimizing for the search engines as usual. After all, getting those top rankings for your targeted keywords in the major search engines is what brings in the quality traffic to your site. In this regard, it’s business as usual.

However, Google’s Instant Previews does change the whole nature of SERPs or rather Google’s search results in that webmasters and marketers have another hurdle to get past before they get that final click. Searchers might click your top number one ranking preview and decide your page is not up to standard or it’s not what they’re looking for, and can quickly try out the other listings instead.

From Google’s perspective these previews could improve the “overall” quality of their results because searchers will come away happy, especially if they have not wasted their time clicking on a link, only to find it’s not what they’re looking for. Now they can easily find the right results more quickly and efficiently.

For the webmaster or online marketer, these new Instant Previews can be seen as another chance to get that all important click. They must make sure their page design is up to scratch and featuring a catchy headline which draws visitors to their page or site. Also, highlighting a well worded summary could help attract more of these visitors. So too, would placing your main keyword phrase in bold print so that it can be read from the preview.

Needless to say, webmasters/marketers must always keep their targeted keywords front and center. Highlighting them on your page in the main title is already a given, but now you should make sure they can be read from the preview. This could possibly give you an edge with it comes to getting that click from Google.

On a more general note, these previews also add to the time searchers will spend on Google’s results pages. Google has been steadily focusing on this factor in recent months. Why? One good reason – the longer a searcher stays on your page the more likely they are to click your paid ads. Stands to reason, if the searcher can’t find what they’re looking for in the so-called “free organic listings” (actually, truth be told, for very lucrative keyword phrases these are not free, nor organic) they will look to the paid Adwords listings.

If you check out the average time spent on Google, according to Alexa, in 2009 it was around 7 minutes and now in 2010 that average has jumped to around 14 minutes. And that’s before both Google Instant Search and Google Instant Previews are fully rolled out and implemented. One would expect that number to go much higher. While this is nowhere near Facebook’s average time of 31 minutes, Google has still doubled the time it had only a year ago. No wonder, Google can afford to give their employees that 10% raise, they have probably earned it.

Nor should Google be criticized for doing all of this, they are a business and their goal is to bring in more revenue. Besides, these previews will no doubt improve the effectiveness of Google’s SERPs. Searchers can more quickly find what they’re searching for on Google and come away happy. A satisfied customer is the ultimate goal of any business, why should Google be judged any differently.

However, for the webmaster and online marketer, keeping Instant Previews in mind when creating webpages is a must. Here are some suggestions you can follow:

1. Improve Your Graphics – These can really grab the searcher’s attention in the preview so it’s vital to have eye-popping graphics right next to your important information.

2. Create Great Headlines – Good headlines quickly capture the searcher’s attention and draws him/her to your page; just make them bold enough to be seen in Google’s previews.

3. Write An Informative Summary – Place your important information in a short summary which also captures the viewer’s attention. Entice these viewers to visit your site or page.

4. Take A Multi-Layered Approach – Just don’t aim all your marketing towards free organic search, but try video listings, news listings, image listings… to get other ways onto Google’s first page.

5. Finally, PPC Advertising – This is probably not what you want to hear, but paid listings through Google Adwords is another option. Besides, for extremely lucrative keywords, as more and more major companies throw major funds into SEO and Keyword Link Buying, organic search is not really free or even available to everybody anymore. For the small-time webmaster or marketer, paid listings in Google may be your only option and that option is quickly becoming too costly for many.

Of course, how Instant Search and Instant Previews play out in the near future is still open to wide speculation. Will searchers even use those added features in their daily searches? Or will users opt–out and go back to a more gentle, less hurried Google? One thing that all of us can be sure of, Google will be constantly rolling out new features and innovations just to make all our lives a little more interesting.

If you go the SEO route you will have to write web content which will rank high in all the search engines. Plus, if you’re into web marketing, that very same content will have to convert into sales or leads in order for you to make a profit. It’s what I like to call my “Double Barrel Web Tactics” and I have been using these simple tactics to earn a full-time income from the net for over 5 or 6 years.

Not that that’s any kind of feat to brag about since countless individuals are doing the same thing and probably doing a much better job at it. But I have picked up a few tricks over the years which have helped me along the way. One of the most important is writing top ranking web pages which convert into sales.

Create SEO Empowered Webpages

First, in order to get those pages to the top of the search engines, especially Google, I follow some simple SEO rules. They can be summed up as such:

– Concentrate all your content around one central keyword phrase for each web page.

– Include this keyword phrase in the Title, Meta Tags, Headline and in the URL.

– Place this keyword phrase and variations of it throughout the page.

– Have a column of related keyword links on each page.

– Have very simple site construction with all links no more than 3 clicks away from the homepage.

– Build valuable one-way links to this page from keyword related sites around the web.

– Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube… to promote each page.

Choose Your Keyword Battles Carefully

Furthermore, you must use keyword phrases which are competitive for your site. Picking long-tail keywords which have less traffic but still bring in sales, is one way of doing this. Targeting really competitive keywords is rather pointless unless you have endless funds and resources to build links and/or purchase PPC traffic. The average webmaster is better off choosing keyword phrases where he/she knows they can contend and can rank high in the search engines.

One good site which will tell how much competition your chosen keywords will have is Google’s https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. It will also give you some estimate of the amount of traffic each keyword phrase receives each month. All valuable information to help you pick your keyword battles.

Writing Webpages Which Convert

For me this is the most difficult part of earning an online income – writing web copy which converts into a sale or a lead. Keep in mind, you don’t always have to sell something, many companies will pay you 10s of dollars just to supply them with a lead or potential paying customer. I sometimes find this is much easier to do than making an actual sale.

My marketing online tactics are very basic – I give my visitor a strong incentive or reason to purchase from my site. I find using simple discounts, coupons and free trials to be one of the most effective ways to make a sale or capture a lead for the companies and products I am promoting. Giving those online shoppers or customers 10%, 20%, 50% or more OFF will usually convert well. So too is offering bonuses, discounts, and coupons if they purchase from your links. For leads, offering a Free 30 Day Trial works the best.

But don’t ever forget, visitors who use your site also want information about the products or services they’re buying. Giving them clear unbiased information will go a long way in capturing a lead or sale. Providing customer reviews and feedback is another way to boost your conversions. So too are customer testimonials and video reviews.

Another tactic I use is picking keywords which have a high probability of commercial intent and which are more likely to bring in revenue. Just finding those customers and visitors who are in the right mind-set to buy is the key. Targeting certain keywords such as best deals, discounts, coupons… and targeting certain niche markets such as wedding gifts, corporate gifts, holiday gifts… have done very well for me. People are actually searching for a special gift and are ready to purchase.

One handy tool for determining the online commercial intention of your keywords is Microsoft’s Adcenter Labs. It will give you a good starting point for choosing which keywords and niche markets you should target with your web pages.

Marketing online is not some mysterious formula, it is merely a double barrel process of keeping all your SEO ranking factors in order and targeting customers when they’re ready to purchase. You build up your rankings with quality one-way links while offering the resulting traffic valuable information and a good solid reason to purchase from your web site or page. Using special deals, discounts, and coupons will go a long way in boosting your conversion rates. So too, will targeting certain keywords which have great online commercial intention or potential, such as the gift niche markets. Try this simple Dual marketing tactic and watch both your traffic and sales grow.

You may be at a point where your site has lots of usable and compelling content. Unfortunately this isn’t always enough to gain new readers and revenue. It could be time to build a link strategy to boost your brand authority and site ranking. The way to begin is by making partnerships, starting conversations and trading links so more webmasters (and their readers) know who you are.

Why? The majority of computers and much of the media are now social, so it’s time for you to break out of your bubble.

Getting your site optimized can be time consuming and often you won’t see the results of the labor for a few weeks, if not months. A site that ranks well is the outcome of shrewd planning and lots of effort with few shortcuts. You have to make good decisions early in the process to gain a good amount of momentum. Basic SEO strategy is a lengthy process, and you can find out smart ways to begin here.

Similarly, incorporating social media into the public face of your business is a long process that will take time to reach its potential. Success in social media relies on cooperation and engagement with your clients and customers (and sometimes even your competitors). Where do you begin?

Basic Inbound Links: Inbound links are widely regarded as a necessity for high ranking in the search engine listings. Search engines view links to web sites as a vote in favor of their importance. If popular sites like your site, then search engines like your site. It resembles how high school cliques are formed. What this means is the more authoritative a site, the more powerful their link seems to search engines. If the link goes to your site, then search engines think your site also holds part of that authority. The authority of a site is gauged by its page rank (PR). This is a standard 1 to 10 scale Google assigns to pages based on hundreds of qualifications, 10 being the highest rank with most authority.

Part of best practices in building page rank and authority is submitting to directoríes and sites that point back to your site. But don’t waste much time sending tons of random links out to directories with very low PR. Your time is better spent sending a few well-optimized links to popular sites that share context with content on your site. For example, if your business sells consumer electronics, then you want links from authoritative sites that review electronics brands you sell.

Other important aspects of in-bound links are:

* Don’t do too much too fast. The rate of growth for incoming links should not ever be more than 20% per month. If too many inbound links pop up at once, search engines get nervous and your authority may suffer.

* The links should contain phrase-rich descriptors (page descriptions, alt tags for photo links, and/or your business name). The link structures should vary from site to site – they don’t have to be wildly different, just dissimilar.

* Avoid lots of effort (but not all) directed at link building on sites that feature a “no follow” rule for back links. This eliminates most SEO value to your link. You can see which sites do this by investigating the source code, and no-follow commands are usually within a javascript applet.

* Social Media can be a powerful tool in building both traffic and PR for your website if you adhere to a few rules. More about that later.

What are the Main Inbound Link Types?

Directional Links: These are standard links back to your site from a variety of web sites and directories that include a combination of title, short description, and/or a business logo.

Content Links: These are links to your site found within the body of content authored by you. The content is usually several paragraphs of text and infographics such as a press release, a blog post, research and white papers, or other information-based articles.

Social Media Links: Using social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others are a great way to see who is saying something about you, but also a good way to tell others what you’re doing. You can also provide your services as an industry resource or expert who gives advice to those who need it. The overall requirement is simple, but time-consuming: participate in conversations, don’t just sell.

Social Sharing Links: These are referenced from media objects (e.g. videos, images, etc) that serve to indicate the author of the object. This strategy can include posting of “how to” videos on your related topics as well as creating a variety of directional links from bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon or De.licio.us.

The way people search is changing. That much is clear. Some of that is their own doing, and some of it is the doing of search engines. People are increasingly going to apps or social media for retrieving different types of information. Google recently released Google Instant and expects to change user behavior with it.

Last week, we discussed what impact Google Instant might have on SEO. The topic has been widely discussed around the web. The conclusion some of us reached is that SEO will not die, but will continue to change, but one still can’t help but wonder how to divide efforts among SEO and other forms of online marketing. Neil Jones at ISEdb.com writes:

Getting top spot is now even more important. If you can dig out some heat maps of Google search results from a couple of years ago, you will see people were clicking all over the page, If you look at recent heat maps they have managed to corral people into predominantly clicking on the top 3 results.

It has always been important to get high rankings but now it is looking like; if you’re not number 1 you’re not getting the click. The combination of Google Instant and the sponsored search results pushes the organic SERPS right down the page, in a lot of the searches I have done, the only result that is left above the fold is the number one listing, Real estate on the first page was tough enough to come. Now it could be clicks that are going to get harder to come that are unless you’re number one.

A typical Ecommerce website contains a few hundred pages. An Ecommerce giant like Amazon contains thousands of products and millions of web pages. Optimizing a website like Amazon is not tough; it just requires a strong SEO strategy.

Optimizing an Ecommerce site is slightly different from optimizing a static website. You need to plan and construct your optimization strategy well in advance. This will help save you a lot of time and effort in the future.

16 Ecommerce SEO Tips to Keep Your Website Ahead in Rankings and Traffic

1. Maintain a Uniform and Clean Website Structure: The home page of your website should reflect the product categories; while all the inner pages should follow a common webpage structure.

2. Use a Unique Title Tag: Every product page should have a unique title. An Ecommerce site can contain any number of web pages. You can ask the programmer to code the title from the page content and product name. This makes your SEO more dynamic.

3. Select an Appropriate Keyword: The keywords must be unique for every webpage. They must reflect the important phrases within the webpage content. For an Ecommerce site, you can ask the programmer to select keywords from the content and product name.

4. Create a Relevant Description Per Web Page: The description of a web page is the snippet which appears in the SERPS. Every visitor reads the snippet and then clicks on the search result. It is very important to include a description relevant to the webpage content.

5. Include Breadcrumbs for All Inner Pages: A breadcrumb is like a secondary navigation structure. It helps the visitor to navigate back to the main product category page. A breadcrumb also helps in the internal linking of the website. Overall, including a breadcrumb makes the website SEO friendly.

6. Use a Heading Tag: Searchbots assign a lot of importance to the heading tag. The heading tag is SEO friendly and can be used to format the title of the web page content.

7. Avoid Usage of Flash: Avoid using flash on every web page of your Ecommerce website. This will expand the site loading time. If the use of flash is inevitable, include textual content in the flash. Search engines are capable of reading the text in the flash file.

8. Optimize Images: Add the Alt tag to all the images of your website. Search engines cannot read images. The Alt tag is a means of ensuring that the search engines read the alternate text for images.

9. Optimize Anchor Text: Anchor text appears between the anchor opening and closing tag. It is good practice to use keywords as the anchor text.

10. Create an SEO Friendly URL Structure: The default URL structure of a dynamic website contains parameters. Search engines are not capable of understanding these parameters. A good URL structure must contain words separated by hyphens.

11. Generate a XML Sitemap: A XML sitemap contains all the URLs present in the website and makes it easy for searchbots to find and index all web pages. If the number of web pages on a site is large, you can create a number of XML sitemaps and then submit these sitemaps to Google via Webmaster Tools. E.g. sitemap1.xml, sitemap2.xml.

12. Limit the Number of Outbound Links: Always link to a safe and secure website. If you are not sure about the quality of the website you are linking out to, use the no follow attribute.

13. Submít to Search Directories: Forward your website URL to good quality search directories. Most of the search directories take a few weeks to link back to a site. Fill in the details of the submission form carefully, so that the administrator accepts the submission.

14. Submít to Article Directories and Social Bookmarking Sites: Article submission is the quickest way of obtaining high quality backlinks. You need to select the do follow bookmarking sites and submit the URL to them. Growth in traffic is a plus point of submitting to social bookmarking sites.

15. Integrate a Secure Payment Gateway: A secure payment gateway is the heart of an Ecommerce website. Get a trust seal from Verisign, TrustE, etc. Visitors will be more likely to trust your site and to make an online payment.

16. Track User Behavior with a Good Analytics Tool: You can track and analyze visitor behavior with a good analytics tool. You need to select an analytics tool based on your requirements. If your Ecommerce website operates on a large scale, you can opt for a paid analytics tool. Otherwise you can use a variety of free tools to obtain the best results.

It is very easy to rank well and get quality traffic with these tips. The trick is to maintain the balance of the site being SEO and user friendly.

What steps do you take to optimize your Ecommerce website?

Web directories have been around since the beginning of the World Wide Web in the early 1990′s and are still recognized as an important channel for advertising businesses online. People often get web directories and search engines mixed up. The difference between a search engine like Google and web directories is that Google uses a web crawler to automatically index websites to show up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), while a web directory organizes links under various categories and sub-categories.

Get Indexed Quicker in the Search Engines

When search engines crawl directory websites any new entries within those directories also get crawled and indexed. Directories that are deemed authoritative by search engines like Google are crawled regularly, finding new website links to index which are then ranked to appear in the search results. If you are launching a new website, you should seriously consider submitting to website directoríes to speed up the process of getting indexed into Google.

Raise Your Positions in Google

As many website owners should know the more quality links to your website that you obtain, the more favorably Google will rank your website. Website Directories are a great source for one-way or reciprocal links. Well maintained directories will place your link in an appropriate category or sub-category, meaning that the directory’s human moderators agree that your website is about what your website claims to be about and is useful to human beings.

Drive Traffic to Your Website

Having a listing on a popular, high traffic website directory can also bring you website traffic. You can usually judge whether a web directory receives much traffic from looking at its Alexa rank. This can be found simply by going to www.alexa.com and entering the directory’s domain name into the search field. The lower the “Alexa rank” the more visits the website gets. You can also get a “Country Rank” that indicates how much traffic it gets per country. If the Alexa rank is 100,000 or less, you can be confident that you will get some traffic from it.

How to Pick Good Directories from Bad Directories

Good website directories allow you to enter your preferred link title that best describes what your website is about. The link title, or anchor text, is an important factor in determining where your site appears for certain search terms in Google’s search results.

Good website directories are human edited, meaning that links are not approved automatically. This means that a directory moderator will review your website before making the listing live and won’t approve your website if it does not meet the directory’s quality guidelines.

Many website directories that were previously actively moderated and regularly updated are now pretty much dormant. One way to determine this is to see if the directory shows link statistics on the number of links approved and the number of links awaiting review. If the number of links awaiting approval is vastly larger than the total number of published links, it’s probably a waste of time submitting a listing.

Good website directories pass Google Page Rank through links to your website within their directory listings, but there are directories out there that prevent this from happening. They do this by using a tag in their links called a “nofollow attribute.” If the link to your website contains this tag, it is rendered almost useless to you.

Good directory websites do not accept links to rubbish websites (link farms and websites with nothing but affiliate or advertising links) or to sites that are otherwise not useful to real humans. A directory worth its SEO salt should also not allow links that redirect to another site.

Good directory websites require manual submission. Avoid automated directory submission software because there is a good chance that any directories that accept automated software driven submission are not going benefit your website.

Google, Paid Links and Directories

There is a lot of confusion about Google’s policy of penalizing websites for buying links. This is aided by the fact that Google does not really have a clear policy on paid links. Should you avoid paying for links from website directories?

From what employees of Google have indicated, human-edited website directories are generally okay with Google because there is editorial review. The directory is not considered to be selling the link, just the review and the listing service.

Manual Directory Submission Services

Manually submitting a website to online directoríes is a time consuming, seemingly pointless task. It’s important to be discerning about the directories that you submit to in order to make sure that it will help your website rather than waste your time. There are numerous manual directory submission services available these days that can do all the manual submission for you. A problem with a lot of these is that you need to be able to see the results. Also, it can take days, weeks, or even months for many submissions to go live and the quality of the directories submitted to can vary.

If you don’t have time for manually submitting your website to the directories and the benefits that your website can receive from such efforts, talk to an SEO expert. They can either perform this service as part of an overall SEO strategy, or identify a quality web directory submission service provider to use.

Gooogle announced today that it has made a change to its algorithm that is supposed to make it easier to find multiple pages from a single site.

“For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site,” says Google software engineer Samarth Keshava. “Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results.”

“We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year,” adds Keshava. “We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.”

This change may prove to be helpful for a lot of searches, but they could still do more in this area if you ask me. For exmaple, they could rank tag pages (commonly used on news sites and blogs) as top results for appropriate searches.

Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future.

To a certain extent, they are.

Social media, and social networking in particular, create a back-and-forth conversation with your target audience, so you can virally market your website through the “buzz” that can be created. When something interesting, cool, or unique is being talked about in “all the right places,” it can certainly provide a boost in website traffic.

We search marketers tend to hang out in numerous online and offline communities where it’s easy to promote our own products and services, yet I can’t help wondering if our view of Web marketing is skewed because of this.

Are potential B2B clients and even B2C customers spending time at Digg? Do they attend SEM conferences in order to hire a company, or are they just trying to learn to do it themselves? And what about other industries? Is there a Sphinn equivalent for developers of product lifecycle management software? Are there groups of people online comparing the various brands of auto parts? Are there really people seeking out articles on these topics?

Perhaps.

And if so, we’d be remiss not to promote our clients’ websites in those spaces. But is this search marketing? Or is it simply marketing? Arguably, it becomes search marketing when it increases link popularity, but surely that should be the secondary goal of this type of marketing campaign. True link popularity comes from having something worth linking to, not something you’ve asked your insulated circle of cronies to link to.
Certainly, the boost in direct traffic that a site can gain when it is being discussed in all the right places online is not to be taken lightly – and that alone is reason enough to try to be found in all the right places. Yet how much of that traffic actually converts into anything good, and how much does it help your organic search rankings?

More important – how does it incréase your bottom line?

For instance, I’ve written a few articles that receíved upward of 1,000 visitors a day from StumbleUpon alone. The spike in traffic was nice, and the slight addition in newsletter subscribers was certainly welcome, but for the most part, those StumbleUpon visitors spent just a few minutes on our site, and only a small percentage signed up for our free newsletter. None of them were interested in using our services. They read the article and then stumbled their way to the next site of potential interest.

Isn’t participation in social media really just preaching to the choir?

You reach your peers, not the people who will purchase your product or service. Sure, it’s a nice ego stroke to have others in your industry tell you how cool you are, and there’s something to be said for building credibility within your community. I’m certainly not knocking that, and have built my own credibility via various online communities in which I’ve participated over the past decade.

But how does it sell your products and services?

Do you gain customers and sales from your social media marketing and/or your participation in social networks? Does it increase your rankings for the keyword phrases your actual target audience is typing into the search engines? If your business model depends on traffic for traffic’s sake, or on how many ad impressions your site generates, then there’s an obvious value. But if you sell a product or a service – then not so much.

My fear with all the hype about social media marketing is that people new to search marketing will believe it’s what SEO demands and what SEO is all about.

It isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Social media marketing is a great addition to any traditional SEO work that you do, but it’s not a substitute. It’s more akin to hiring a PR firm once you’ve launched your already-SEO’d website. On-page SEO is definitely not as sexy as social media marketing, but it is still the most important investment in your website that you can make. Period.

So, go to all your social media conferences, and Digg your way to increased traffic. But first learn exactly who your target audience is, what they’re searching for in the search engines, and how your website can solve their problems. Then make sure your website does exactly that. All the social media buzz and traffic won’t amount to anything if your target audience isn’t already part of the online conversation.

Be sure to have your house in order before you give social media marketing a try.

And don’t be surprised if it doesn’t actually provide you with the ROI you hoped it would. In most cases it will depend on who your target audience is, where they hang out, the types of services or products you provide, and whether your website truly provides people with what they’re looking for.

Getting back to SEO basics – that is, creating a crawler-friendly website that is built around the keyword phrases people use at the search engines to find what you offer – is the first and most important thing you can do for your website and your business. Yeah, it’s not as fun and exciting as social media marketing, but skip this step at yóur own peril!