It is more than a year now since I concluded that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was, or was soon going to become, a waste of time. I had already, 6 months before then, said farewell to spending an hour a day working on getting reciprocal links.

What led, at the time, to what many would have said were very rash moves? After all, reciprocal linking was still being expounded, by all and sundry, as an essential way to get a good ranking, and the software tools were being actively marketed still. Search engine positioning software was still being heavily marketed and is still today; keyword density was a buzz term being branded around as if it were an essential science to be practised by all good SEO conscious webmasters.

What I did was to go back to marketing basics. I had received my marketing training back in the 1980′s and had practical marketing experience with my own business from the mid 1990′s. I was not born into internet marketing alone, so could still see outside the blinkers and the hype.

A very basic but important aspect of marketing is to know your market place. When it comes to search engine rankings, then clearly a major part of that market was the major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN, with Google being the clear leader then, and a year later today.

I started to think 18 months ago that as far as reciprocal linking went, it was becoming a spammers’ zone. Surely, I argued with myself, Google did not really want to rank a web site highly just because the web master had the tools and the time to chase around getting reciprocal links? It just did not make sense. And the same was true of buying links. Why should a web site rank highly because they have splashed out on buying links?

What Google, and the others, really wanted was to rank the best web sites for a particular search term, and it seemed only a matter of time before they sniffed out and extinguished the abuses such as blatantly artificial link building, Blog spam, scraping and extreme SEO’ing.

A year ago, I started two new web sites without any real thought of SEO. As a writer, I was happy to try to provide what search engines wanted: original content on what people were searching for. While I did provide title and description tags, everything else was just written on a go with the flow basis. The keyword phrase for any page would come out in the natural flow. I could just write to my heart’s content without using any tools checking keyword density.

The first of those new web sites 13 months ago was in the self improvement niche, which is highly competitive. I was expecting to be “Sandboxed” by Google because of that, and so it proved. But I just kept plugging away, sticking to my no-SEO principle. Of course, none of us outside Google knows for sure if there is such a thing as a sandbox, but there is undoubtedly a waiting time before a new site is thrown fully into the ranking melting pot.

In the self improvement case, the last Google update saw my site emerge from the sandbox after about 12 months. So, at last, I was able see whether my no SEO approach was to yield any positive results. Thankfully, a few high rankings were immediately apparent, including a few #1 positions. On one of those terms, Yahoo followed a few weeks later to the #1 position, while the site was #2 (now 1) at MSN.

Now, this is early days for that particular site, and there is much to do to get more high rankings. However, I am confident that SEO is infinitely more simple than some experts, especially those selling ranking tools, tend to have you believe.

Since I started that particular site, I have only made one major change, and that is convert all my web sites to CSS. Providing a content rich site that is easy to crawl for search engine robots is the most important aspect of the new, simplified SEO. In fact, following Google’s advice to webmasters is about all you need to do, and that is free.

Of course, those with software products to peddle will argue that I could do even better with their software. But if Google decides to blacklist that software as a manipulating tool, then all my hard work could be undone. So I will leave the others to chase shadows with ranking software, and just enjoy writing content. After all, that is what basic marketing told me to do.

I have been on the Internet for a long time. At least I have been doing marketing a long time in relation to the Internet as a commercial entity.

Around the end of 1995 I speculated in domain names, learning about keywords and phrases and how they help the search engines find the content you are providing at your website.

I continued to learn about keywords and as search engine optimization became a necessity I was ready to use what I had learned about keywords and phrases, domain names, search engines and content.

There were quite a few people, say a couple of hundred who really knew how to use keywords to optimize websites.

However, then it was to help search engines do a better job of indexing all of the content on the web. Now it seems the roles are reversed and the search engines are in charge. At least many seem to think so.

Now there are also a lot of people, thousands, who claim to know all of the search engine secrets and some claim they can get you top listings if you just sign up with them, buy their Ebooks, buy their videos, or buy their software.

I always have a hard time with the math. If these guys can guarantee you a top 10 listing for your keywords, then 11 companies sign up for their service that are also targeting your keywords or phrases, then how do they get all 11 customers a top 10 listing?

There are a lot of things we have known about the importance of for years such as anchor text, titles for links, surrounding links with keywords in the body text to make the links more relative, alt tags, metatags, keyword count, and more.

But now almost every day I see a website or article promoting a “new search engine secret” and it has a name I have never heard of. Then when I investigate and read up on it I find that they have renamed anchor text something else, keyword-count something else, etc.

Just like Hollywood these days seem to only be remaking movies we have already seen and giving them new names, it seems there are a lot of people out there now renaming SEO methods that are as old as the Internet with new names and selling them as new secrets.

They sell you these “new secrets” on video, in an Ebook, in a Seminar, or produce software that “optimizes” your website for you.

Most of the SEO Gurus of today never actually optimized a website for themselves or anyone else with any good results. They simply advertised to other people that they know how to make them rich in 90 days with little or no work at all and can promise you top 10 search engine rank in all the major search engines.

There are some of us who actually do the work and will keep on doing so and remaining ethical about the business. Its just hard to sit by and see so many people bilked out of their money with promises that no one can keep.

I have clients send me stuff all the time.

“Hey look at this new SEO technique I got in my email!”

“Look at this website I found that can get us top listings in 30 days!”

I go and read up on it for my client and find the same old stuff repackaged once again. Things I am already doing for the client is now a video or an Ebook and they cannot understand why I would recommend not spending money on it.

If you are going into business on the web and you read this article, just learn one thing from it.

There are NO shortcuts to success. Get rich quick schemes are just schemes. There is no magic formula or secret to getting top listings in the major search engines.

If there is a secret, it is that it actually requires hard work to be successful on the web just like it takes hard work to become successful with any business on or offline.

Buying an Ebook or a video or some software is not going to make you rich or get you top listings in the search engines. Anyone who tells you that work is not required to make money on the web is lying to you.

Learn how to do this for yourself or hire a professional who does not promise you the sky, but also hire one that can prove the results they have gotten for clients and for their own websites.

Testimonials are worth absolutely nothing.

“Chris McElroy is amazing! He got me a top 10 listing for my website in less than thirty days! The videos are easy to follow and in just days I was an SEO expert. I recommend everyone buy his Ebooks too!” –-John Doe, New York—

Now don’t you just want to run right out and buy my video? Too bad I don’t have one to sell.

Nope, no Ebooks either.

No Software to make you rich.

But I can do the search engine optimization and promotion for your website and prove the results with weekly increases in link popularity and search engine indexing.

Given the razor-sharp competition in the internet marketing today, it takes the help of an intelligent SEO company India to beat the competition and sustain one’s India website rankings. Search engine optimization specialists can tell you how to improve your ranking in popular search engines which is crucial to boosting the volume of traffic to your website. An SEO marketing company would tell you that it is not enough if you rank higher only in a specific search engine. A comprehensive search engine optimization strategy comprises of techniques that ensure higher ranking in all popular search engines enhancing your chance to augment the volume of your online traffic.

So how to find the right SEO partnership to join the hands with for a holistic search engine optimization? If you are aiming at finding the right SEO services India from an experienced SEO company India to increase website rankings then there are a number of factors which you have to take into consideration.

We have a team of SEO experts India who understand the search engine dynamics inside out. Our SEO India Company consists of talented search engine optimization specialists who are immensely experienced to handle SEO campaigns for the most competitive keywords and key phrases in any specialized business domain. Being a leading SEO company India, we believe that succeeding in any SEO marketing campaign requires impeccable and in-depth keyword analysis which is the cornerstone of the entire SEO process and one of the most crucial factors in boosting your website rankings. Our search engine optimization specialists analyze keywords and keyword phrases using cutting-edge keyword analysis tools to arrive at the keywords and key phrases that are not only less competitive but also highly searchable on the web.

As a top-notch SEO services India provider we are renowned for offering SEO content writing services that will potentially boost your page rank. Our content writers bring their creativity and experience together to write keyword rich content with an amazingly assertive, appealing and marketing punch making the page a must-read for your classified audience. We know that content is the soul of any webpage and play a crucial role in getting you good search engine ranking in all popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Before you go for a full-fledged SEO campaign, don’t underestimate the importance of the right SEO partnership. The right kind of Seo Company India can make or break the very purpose of your SEO campaign. If not handled properly or if you choose the wrong SEO partnership, then you will stand to lose money as well as your precious time. On the top of it, you will end up subjecting your website to mal-optimization which again will add to your injury.

We adopt white-hat SEO techniques for better India website rankings. With us, you stand to gain standardized, customized and cost-effective SEO packages that meet all your needs. Here is a lowdown on what we offer in our SEO services India.
1. We offer a campaign specific module for each of our clients. We allow them the privilege of specifying their own keywords (unless they want us to carryout a comprehensive keyword analysis), their targeted demography and the list of competitors. Our search engine optimization specialists then examine and optimize them which is then sent to our customers for their approval. The final list is drafted after the clients’ approval.
2. Our search engine optimizations specialists do a lot for boosting the website ranking of our clients. They follow a strategic on-page optimization process by enhancing the keyword density, keyword positioning, URL structure guidelines, meta-tags content, relevance of visible text and so forth.
3. Link popularity is the most crucial factor of search engine optimization which boosts the popularity of your website. We have a dedicated team of link builders who do the job for strategic link building to improve the popularity of our clients’ websites.
4. We carry out the optimization services with an LSI based SEO approach. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is the technique that gives you a crucial edge over your competitors for attracting high volume of traffic as well as potential clients. This ensures better results for your clients and higher profits for you.

Why am I SEO Stoopid?

I’m SEO Stoopid because I didn’t properly take notice of what my stats could have told me.

If I would have done, I would have noticed something sooner and factoring that something into my response would very probably have saved me a goodly number of lost posters and art print sales.

My site is primarily about SEO. I’ve been doing it since 1996 or thereabouts and have clients of many years standing. Halfway through last year, I started adding posters pages to it. It’s restful and unoressured compared with a lot of SEO, plus I wanted to see how fast I could get unrelated pages indexed and where and with whom, plus unexpectedly I found that I enjoyed doing it, lots of reasons.

When the first two phases of Jagger hit, I was cool. It washed over my seo clients the way I expected it to (it had no effects at all), and it washed over my (by now only mostly) SEO site the way I expected it to (it had no effect at all there either).

Then came the third wave. Oh dear!

My site’s serps (not my clients’ – they’re all fine) went into a decline that they still haven’t come out of. I was getting damp postcards from my serps telling me what depth they were reaching. They told me in one message they’d dived deeper than any known footballers. Imagine! If they ever come back up they’ll need time in a decompression chamber before they can surface again.

I decided that since I was tanking anyway no-one would be finding my poster pages from the engines and so now was the time to hive my poster pages off to their own site, something I’d been meaning to do for some time as a site is unlikely to do well for two such diverse subjects. I got myself a new domain for them too, in anticipation of the day when I have more time and can settle them down on their own dedicated space – the demand I had for them shows that they deserve it and I’ll be attending to this in the new Year.

I put them in a little backwater personal hosting space I have with my Broadband ISP. I have a custom 404 on my main site and I adjusted it to make it plain to folk that I’d moved the posters to a new domain as they were swamping my SEO efforts.

Now I always kept a good eye on my stats but I’d failed to note that results from Google, these days, aren’t just from Google any more. They’re from Google Images too – and despite the fact that I’d tanked in Google.co etc for text seaarches, unknown to me as my old stats package didn’t make the distinction, my posters were still very very well ranked in Google Images. I only found this out by studying my Google Analytic stats, a service I’d only recently signed up to in anticipation of clients expecting me to keep them abreast of Search Engine and SEO events.

I checked out “Michael Sowa Prints”. I was in the 80′s in Google.com but to my amazement I was at positions 1 and 3 in Google Images. I checked out “Salvador Dali Prints” and “Escher-prints”. Same kind of deal, I was well off the main map and out in the boonies in the text-driven Googles but top 5 in Google Images. Go see, they’ll probably still be there even now.

So, what was I to do? All those potentially hard-to-get serps were going to waste as when people didn’t see the result they expected when they clicked through, just my 404 page (polite though it was) they just went somewhere else.

Hurriedly put all my pages back up again is what I did, and on my SEO site too, thinking to catch what business I can from what’s left of the Christmas rush. I’ve left all of the links to the new site in place as they’ll get people hopping back and forth from each site to the other, hopefully without realising. All the posters and art prints, the wall tapestries too, will have to be moved over eventually and on a permanent basis. You can have a site about SEO or a site that uses SEO to sell posters, you can not, not for any length of time, have just the one site that does both.

Not the way Google are ordering the universe anyway.

I’ll change over slowly in January using individual 301 redirects and this time they really will be permanent.

For now I don’t believe it’ll matter as Google, according to their own stats via Google Sitemaps, have no info about the new posters site and given everything else they have on their plate just now I don’t suppose they’ll be indexing it all and handing out a content penalty before I’ve moved everything over permanently.

But look at the sales opportunity I very nearly missed, eh?

Moral of the story is, make sure your stats package is the best that it can be. I don’t think I’ll be using my old stats package too much from now on, but I’ll keep it on as it does have some individual visitor tracking capabilities that Google’s version of Urchin currently lacks. Reading your stats regularly will save you money and time in the long run.

But do make sure they’re as detailed as possible – you may miss important information if they aren’t! Don’t be an SEO Stoopid!

The methods employed to increase your search engine
rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have
probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell
you – the time has come to face your website! A high search
engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you
have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your
business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this
issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on
the Internet find websites through search engines such as
Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages
for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted
customers to your site who will be more than likely to make
a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine
results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your
website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information
available online to figure out how to optimize your web
pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few
simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments,
and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The
first item you should examine is the title bar on your
homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page.
Look at the words that appear there when you access your
home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on
your homepage’s title bar should include the most important
keywords or phrases, one of which would include your
company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on
the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page
of your site should contain the most important keywords and
phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very
long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or
less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title
bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to
each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website
content. Search engines generally list sites that contain
quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The
text on your site must contain the most important keywords
- the words that potential customers will be typing into
search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is
not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100
carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high
ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However,
the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning
that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your
cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able
to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not
highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case,
ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in
order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this
sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is
really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags
are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality,
they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding
them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags
in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must
access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the
browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a
window revealing the underlying code that created the page.
If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of
the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta
name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that
reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This
may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any
little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a
factor that is extremely important in terms of search
engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link
popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based
on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your
links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular
search engine, the search engine will then show you what
sites are linked to your site. In the case that there
aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites
that are linked up have low search engine rankings,
consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially,
this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that
they exchange links with your site. Of course, this
requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want
to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only
boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more
quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a
successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out
and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking
some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t
boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this
all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the
higher your search engine ranking, the more quality
customers will be directed your way.

You need to make sure that you’re search engine optimizing with the right search engines in mind. This means that you need to cater to the Big Three. What search engines make up this ever-important trio? The answer is Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The following techniques will help you create both a long and short term SEO strategy for success, with the Big Three search engines in mind.

Google is the clear leader among search engines, so this should be your primary focus, however, Yahoo! and MSN do hold a substantial part of the internet using community’s attention, so they should not be ignored. It should be remembered that while Google does get the most traffic, Yahoo! and MSN can provide better results when it comes to certain specific categories of interest. This is why it is so very important that you cater to all three of the major search engines for your SEO and not just Google.

Since ranking is such a lengthy process, it is important that you continuously monitor and improve your site and its keywords with tracking in order to keep ahead of your competitors, and to ensure that your site keeps its high ranks. This requires continuous optimization through growth and updating.

When it comes to the Big Three, the SEO techniques that matter are as follows.

Google:

• Whenever you launch a website, submit it to a search engine, or update a site, a spider from one or all three of the big search engines may crawl your site. However, unless you provide that spider with significant keywords for ranking your site, you’ll never actually achieve rankings that are anywhere near where you want them to be, other than your business name itself. Therefore, make sure that when you are building or adding to your website, it has keywords within its text and in its coding to allow the spiders to index and rank in a way that is favorable to you.

• Use keywords that will ensure better rankings. To best complete your SEO, you need to understand that some keywords will provide you with better results than others. However, if these “best” keywords are already being used by quite a high number of other sites, since the market in your industry is competitive, then it is unlikely that the best keywords will ensure the best ranking. The only time that the ideal keywords will ensure the best results for you is if your service or product is extremely unique or new so that the keyword has not already been used extensively throughout the world wide web. In fact, if you are supplying a new product or service, then you will almost certainly receive great search engine ranking, since the Top Three adore fresh new content. In extremely competitive markets, it may take up to six months for you to see the results you want from your desired keywords. In such cases, a pay-per-click campaign may be required.

The reason that the search engines give such preference to websites offering things that are new and unique are as follows:

• It gives them the opportunity to provide something new

• There is less competition against something new or unique, so as long as the website has proper SEO, then great rankings are almost automatic.

MSN:

• MSN is typically much faster for crawling, indexing, and listing sites. In fact, if you have done your SEO properly, you can achieve a high MSN ranking within a month, even within the most competitive markets. Therefore, while Google may be your long term SEO goal, MSN can provide for you on the short term.

Yahoo!:

• Though Yahoo! can provide you with a steady traffic flow, actually getting listed can present quite a challenge. While some websites will be crawled as early as a month from their submission, this is a rare occasion, with the standard being closer to three or four months. Once the site is crawled, however, it doesn’t take long for it to be indexed and ranked. As long as your SEO is good, then you may achieve a good rank and see results before Google has even thought about sending a spider your way.

Though there are practically countless search engines out there, it is the Big Three that have you covered for both the short term and the long term for your SEO.

It was a year ago that I attended my first search engine strategies conference. It was also at this conference that I became a speaker.

Search Engine Strategies and PubCon are undoubtedly the two largest SEO/SEM conferences out there today so of course there’s huge attendance and lots of big industry names attending.

There’s also a guy there who you may have heard of. His name is Barry Schwartz and he’s from Search Engine Round Table. I bring his name up because he’s found one of the best ways to not only build an ever expanding content base up, but also a way to build quality relevant links. And it’s so simple one begins to wonder why others don’t do it.

Before I get into what he’s doing let me give you a little history. He started covering SES a few shows ago and would post summaries of the various seminars he attended at the SearchEngineWatch forum.

His posts were some of the most read posts during the conference. He soon also began posting longer summaries at his own site. Also very well read by those of us who couldn’t attend the show.

Now he’s become “the” reporter for the SES shows wherever they are. He even went into this one with a plan to cover as many of the sessions as possible, between himself and others known in the SEM industry. Some of the posts end up at the SEW forums but he also posts many on his own site.

Step one – there’s that ongoing content development.

You see, what the folks at SEO roundtable are doing is creating very long, but very detailed summaries of every seminar they attend. They then post these to their website daily or more often. Each post occupies it’s own static page, and most pages are well linked within the site.

Step two – relevant quality links and lots of them

Now here’s the great part. It is because of this coverage that people have come to realize that this site is the site to go to for SES coverage. Between this site and the SEW forums you can pretty much get your fill of SES in a very compact version. (Trust me for some of the sessions, a light summary is much better than sitting through 90 minutes of dry explanations of how ranking algorithms work :) ).

And because people rely on these summaries of the show that they begin to refer others to them. Either through word of mouth or, more importantly, links.

This is where the relevant quality links kick in. What is a link to an SEM site from another SEM site worth? What would you pay to have your competitors link to you with lots of one way links, many from high authority sites? Because of this article, they even have a link from here.

Plus they get links from Searchenginewatch, in both the forums and the blog entries, not to mention other high profile industry sites. What’s link from Matt Cutt’s blog with a photo worth to this site?

You see, this site is building its online reputation the way everyone needs to – by posting relevant timely information that others want to see. Then the others link to that content in a natural way.

Let me put it to you another way – of the over 3,000 links this site has, how many do you suppose are from content? More specifically, how many are due to the site’s summaries of the various SES shows they’ve attended? Links may not be directly to the topics in question. In fact many are not.

In fact, if you scan through the top 100 links or so listed in Google you see a virtual who’s who of the SEO industry. Let me point out a few of the more notable links: Links from Yahoo Search Blog, as well as the MSDN MSN search blog. Of course there’s many from Searchenginewatch, but also from other industry sites like searchviews.com, seomoz.com and searchenginejournal.com just to name a few.

So what has the site accomplished by attending all the SES shows since late 2003? Well, they’ve built lots of good content which helps relay their authority status to engines like Google.

Further, they’ve gotten lots of quality inbound links from high profile related sites that are also considered authorities. Plus they’ve also built a reputation for being the place to go to find out about SES which means increased traffic to the site. Not to mention that they’ve now probably got a well known brand.

In other words, if someone doesn’t already know how to find the site, but they know the name of it, a the person will search on an engine like Google looking for the domain name. Even if it’s ranked #7 or 8 for the search term the site will get the click because the searcher is looking for that brand.

Got questions about how to get traffic from SEO?

I recently purchased a Premium WordPress theme, that I have had my eye on for awhile, the theme is
named WPRemix. As an owner of several other Premium themes, I justified the purchase from the point of view that more design options can’t be a a bad thing. Besides I had heard so much about Remix that my curiosity had finally gotten the better of me. The purchase price $75.00 for a single use
license was in line with most other themes also claiming to be “Premium” in nature.

At the home site for WPRemix the marketing hype makes some pretty bold claims, that I was eager to
put to the test. Here is the main tagline’s claim to potential customers:

“Bundled with more than 50 strategically designed & coded custom static page templates, the theme
enables everyone to publish small sites in minutes saving weeks of time, maintaining top notch
standards-compliant quality.”

50 templates, that’s right 10 Home Pages, 20 Inner site Pages, 5 Gallery type pages, 5 product pages
and 5 miscellaneous specialty pages. If you do the math, that comes to actually 45 pages. with some
fudging of the numbers, I guess you could also include a Blog Page which WordPress creates and a Contact page which a plug-in might also create bringing the template count up to 47 total, still shy 3+ templates of “more than 50″.

Though technically not pages, the theme also ships with 4 headers, 6 sidebars and an optional footer. If you counted these additional files the total template count rises to 57. This small caveat is only an observation that I made and not so critical a point considering that most other WordPress themes come with only a “Home” page and a “Blog” page. The shear number of templates that Remix includes is where it’s true strength lies. It’s not just the number of templates, but the careful selection and design that went into them.

As you study the templates closely, the subtle considerations that went into the layout and extensive CSS cross-browser compliant styling becomes apparent. With Remix it is difficult to create a new page style or design that has not already been included. This translates directly into a shorter site development time when creating new websites. The diversity and flexibility of the CSS styling is as if someone poured out a large box of “LEGO” parts on the floor in front of you from which anything imaginable could be created. Anyone that has designed more than a few websites will tell you to never re-invent the wheel. Cutting and pasting CSS snippets of code here and there is common practice when coming up with new site designs.

Because WordPress provides a WYSIWYG visual design tab under which to work, a false sense of simplicity can develop for those who know little of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). And this as it turns out is the biggest complaint regarding the Remix theme. However, it is all a matter of perspective as to how valid this complaint is. WordPress by default fosters an industry attitude that anyone who can read and type can design a website. This simply is not true, otherwise there wouldn’t be an HTML tab just to the right of the visual tab in the WordPress editor. Obviously as human beings we all tend to ask for more than we can digest once we gain enough knowledge to be dangerous. Anyone who expects to be adding rich media such as audio and video to their sites in WordPress should also be prepared to get their feet wet with at least a basic understanding of CSS and HTML. I have seen discussions on the support forum mention that the theme is better suited for experienced developers. I don’t entirely agree with this statement. If you use the theme templates as they are, without imagining all sorts of things you would like to do but don’t possess the knowledge to accomplish, a perfectly presentable professional website can be created by most end users. Still, The theme is a great time saver for those who understand CSS and a bit more daunting for those who may need to brush up on their CSS and HTML.

Of course, all of the standard bells and whistles one would expect to find are present and accounted for in the functionality of the Remix theme. RSS Feeds, Subscribe by FeedBurner email forms, sharing and bookmarking, a site search field, Testimonials and much more. There are unique specialty pages that provide for tabbed and slider presentation of information. You will be hard pressed to imagine much more than has already been thought of in Remix. One last important observation regarding this theme is, Remix is the only theme that currently offers a “Website” with a “Blog”. When you check out other themes you will notice that they will typically only have a “Landing/Home” page and a “Blog” page. I have designed sites using Remix that have actually been “De-Blogged”, as stand-alone websites. This capability alone, should give even the most discerning potential customer a reason to look at Remix a bit closer, before making any other theme purchase.

Finally, the Remix theme has a support forum which stands behind the product. I found the forum support a bit different than most other forums. It seems to be modeled more after a private technical support forum than an open discussion format where any and everything is discussed. This has never prevented me from getting answers to my questions regarding the theme. I actually observed response times of less than an hour in many instances when a question had been asked. I noticed that the moderator will tactfully redirect you to support links if you do not ask questions directly related to the theme, i.e., do not expect to get support for setting up Google Analytics at the Remix forum.

For anyone looking to shorten website design time and the most bang for the buck, you might want to check out the Remix theme. It is long on choices and options and maybe a bit longer on learning curve as well. But for those willing to learn a little CSS and HTML, the return on the investment is well worth the effort.

Visit WPRemix Website

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. When a topic is typed for search, nearly instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed about and present you with ones that match your topic. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Remember that a prospective customer will probably only look at the first 2-3 listings in the search results. So it does matter where your website appears in the search engine ranking.

Further, they all use one of the top 6-7 search engines and these search engines attract more visitors to websites than anything else. So finally it all depends on which search engines the customers use and how they rank your site.

It is the Keywords that play an important role than any expensive online or offline advertising of your website.

It is found by surveys that a when customers want to find a website for information or to buy a product or service, they find their site in one of the following ways:
• The first option is they find their site through a search engine.
• Secondly they find their site by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested.
• Occasionally, they find a site by hearing about it from a friend or reading in an article.

Thus it’s obvious the the most popular way to find a site, by search engine, represents more than 90% of online users. In other words, only 10% of the people looking for a website will use methods other than search engines.

All search engines employ a ranking algorithm and one of the main rules in a ranking algorithm is to check the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Don’t forget that algorithms also give weightage to link population (number of web pages linking to your site). When performed by a qualified, experienced search engine optimization consultant, your site for high search engine rankings really does work, unless you have a lot of money and can afford to pay the expert. With better knowledge of search engines and how they work, you can also do it on your own.

Tips to Increase Ranking and Website Traffic

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

In the context of search engine optimization, many people equate an optimized site to a site with impressive search engine rankings. Sprinkle a little fairy dust over here and waive the magic wand over there and wallah… a magnificent dish of first page rankings for the Internet’s most competitive keyword terms. [enter annoying alarm clock signaling the end of euphoric online marketing dream sequence]

The fact is, if you think you are going to achieve rankings for competitive keyword terms simply by adding a few keywords to your website, you need to pinch yourself because you’re dreaming. Perform a search for your primary keyword terms and you will see a descending list, several pages deep of websites that have been “optimized” with varying degrees of success. The key is to understand the factors that differentiate those that rank on the first page from those that don’t.

The attributes that determine search engine rankings can be classified into two basic categories; “on-page factors” and “off-page factors”. In the most basic sense, on-page factors have to do with attributes within your web site and off-page factors have to do with attributes that occur outside of your web site. In a way, on-page factors tell the engines what you think of yourself, while off-page factors tell the engines what the Internet at large thinks of you.

Let’s tackle the on-page factors first, shall we? The first step is to determine the keywords that people search for when they are looking for the products or services you have to offer. Keyword tools such as WordTracker and KeywordDiscovery let you know how many people search for a particular search term and provide suggestions for related keyword terms. Use the tool to match two to three appropriate keywords to each of the web pages within your site. Once you’ve selected your keywords, incorporate then into the various html elements of your web pages including the title tags, meta tags, header tags, ALT tags, and body content. This will ensure that the search engines categorize your pages for the keywords you are targeting.

OK, so now we’ve got all the “on page” stuff hammered out, your site should start its meteoric rise to the top of the engines, right? Well, not exactly. It depends on how competitive your keyword terms are. [enter off-page factors] Off-page factors have to do with the quantity and quality of incoming links from external web pages. The algorithms that determine search engine rankings depend heavily on external linking in assessing the authority or trustworthiness of web sites. In turn, sites that have achieved “authority status” end up ranking higher than those who have yet to achieve such status.

A quality backlink is a link from a subject relevant web page that contains the keyword you are trying to rank for in the anchor text of the link. There are many ways to obtain quality backlinks. Submit your site to Internet directories such as Yahoo or DMOZ.org, ask your business partners or other friendly websites to link to you, or consult with a professional search engine marketing firm who is credentialed in the art of link building.

WordPress plugin that is already changing the way we do SEO