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99 Websites for 999

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:01:38 +0000

For a limited time you can order a professional CMS website for $999 including hosting for 12 months

Professional design to your company colours
Up to 9 static pages of content
An advanced contact form page that stores results to a database
A quick question contact form

PLUS

A blog to keep your market up to date
FREE hosting for the first year

Is time up for Twitter maybe but probably not.

patrick@weseo.com.au (Patrick Ryall) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:43:34 +0000

From the pen of the Australian newspaper comes an interesting article on Twitter, in their opinion time is up for Twitter.

Unfortunately we cannot name the incredible insight of the author as the authors name has been withheld; maybe for worry of being flamed on twitter or other lacking new mediums that this writer obviously has issues with.

He or she pulls parallels from reality TV such as Big Brother and the Biggest Loser, and although I must concur of the lack of intelligence or even any engaging story line or plot. Grouping the parallel in the same breath as twitter shows a complete lack of understanding and how people interact. One wonders does the author have a facebook page or is that like twitter on it's death bed and gurgling the final breaths before laying down.

How to optimise an e commerce website

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

If you are running an e-commerce site than you just have to read this article.

There are several ways we can drive traffic to our e-commerce website, we could use PPC, or set-up affiliate programs we could even look at traditional marketing channels to drive traffic. Although all this methods are good, we really want our site to attract organic search traffic.

In our favour an online store can have literally hundreds of pages, all these pages can be simply optimised to be organic traffic generating powerhouses. It can take a little time to optimise and entire e-commerce shop but the rewards are well worth the time invested.

One of the biggest flaws we encounter with online stores is the lack of content or worse the lack of genuine content. Many site owners use the default product descriptions that either come with the XML product feed or are supplied by the manufacturer. Using the standard product descriptions can be a kiss of death for your budding e-commerce store.

Some of our suggestions here touch on site development, if you have not developed your e-commerce store yet than this article is golden to you.

If your online store is already up and live and you are smacking your head with why are we not making any money and seeing 80 visitors a day, then take this advice and tweak your site where needed.
Now we are not going to touch on usability that is for a separate article this is pure e-commerce SEO related.

Brand:

Think about the brand of your site, what does it say about your ecommerce site, is it memorable does it sound like the sort of shop you would like to shop at? Brand is important there is allot in a name.

Is your domain memorable, is it easy to type in, can it help your credibility. – There is a lot in a name!

Product descriptions:

If possible these should be broken down into the short product description and the long product description. The short description should be informative and targeted well at the product in question. The first 150 characters are imperative and should make the user want to click on the product they have been searching for.

Do not use descriptions that came from the manufacturer or product feed, take the time to write your own it is well worth the trouble.

The short description:

This should be used as the META description for that products page. Now in a perfect e-commerce shop this is taken care of by a little programming. In this application the short description is injected into the pages META description tag, this is the reason the first 150 characters are so important as in most cases this is what the searcher is going to see in Google.

Once the user has been exposed to your sites listing in Google or other search directories, you want them to click the listing

The long description:

Put thought into the long description, make it informative and use keywords relating to that product and product category. Use call to actions, if you have free shipping of orders over X amount use this as added leverage to close the sale. If your site is localised be sure to include that as well.

The long description should be informative, target relevant product and market keywords and above all be unique.

Product title:

This is critical unlike the META description tag which is more about CTR (click through rate) the META title tag is SEO ranking important. This should also be injected into the META title tag. The title tag should be informative keyword rich without being keyword stuffed.

Title tag should be keyword rich and informative for the product in question.

On page optimisation the H tags:

As with the META title tag is so important, so is the correct use of heading tags. The product title should also be on the product detail page either in a H1 tag or a H2 tag.

Use H1 or H2 tags for every product title, correct usage of heading tags is vital to good SEO.

Image ALT tags:

Make sure your site is using image ALT tags and include an informative image description within that tag. Do not repeat that same information that is in the products short description, use synonyms make each ALT tag unique and targeted at the product in question. Make sure each image is a live link, that way the search engines will take notice of the ALT tag content.

Image alt tags are often forgotten but their value to the overall optimisation of the site is great.

Internal linking:

Do not use footer links these are not valued highly by the search directories, instead use categories. Categories show good site structure and also usability to the user is heightened. In essence a site with good usability is often search engine friendly. Do not make static links to products unless you are going to keep discontinued product lines in the site. Again this is where using categories is far superior.

Use categories to power internal linking and do not use footer links.

The URL:

Where possible always use a rewrite URL it is better for the user and easier for most search engines to crawl. Furthermore it is far easier from a branding perspective for writing down and giving to people or on tactical media.

Do use rewrite clean URL's whenever possible

Related products:

Cross promote products on every product detail page, if the page is about a golf clubs, offer you may be interested in: Golf balls, golf bags and other associated products. Using related products modules enhances usability and internal linking structure.

Do use related products and recently listed products on all product detail pages.

Customer feedback:

There is no single tool for sales as powerful as comments from what is perceived as impartial comment. Make sure there is a simple process for a user to review a product they have purchased from your store. Market back out to your database and ask ‘were you happy with your product purchase’ ‘would you mind adding a review’ If you don’t ask you never know and it never hurts to ask.

Customer feedback can help you overcome problems or highlight usability issues you had never considered. Customer reviews are powerful sales tools.

Product reviews:

Most people will search for information before making the purchase decision. Include reviews of your products and make them worthwhile not just ‘this is the best widget you could ever own’ be honest give examples and the rewards can be great.

Product reviews are an important resource to a consumer looking to buy, the more value you can add to your ecommerce store the more sales you will attract.

Site search:

You would be surprised how many people will use a site search capability to find what they are looking for. Make sure your sites search engine is powerful and simple to use.

Search is simple and often displays exactly what the user was looking for without having to drill down through miles of products.

Link building:

We cannot emphasise the importance enough of link building, talk to your product suppliers and ask for a link. Engage in useful product reviews and gain natural links. What ever your strategy is just build links, quality links from quality sources.

Links are a vote for your business he more votes the better, but you want good votes. A bad link can hurt many good links so think quality not quantity.

Engage your market:

We often talk about engaging your market, encourage user feedback and user reviews. Poll your market and get ideas where you can improve your site or services. Offer discounts to frequent buyers and hold competitions, value add your services and be engaging.

If you follow our advice here you are certain to develop a good valuable e-commerce website.

With a little effort and common sense it is not difficult to build an organic powered e-commerce site and if you are looking for the perfect platform that can support all these ideas, you should consider Magento.

Running online shops in conjunction with traditional retail or even instead of traditional retail can be very lucrative and with the very stable options available without the need to custom code sites. With most people being very comfortable these days with purchasing online it could be argued there is never a better time to get into internet retail than now.

Top 5 open source platforms

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Open source some have heard of it some have not, in reality an open source platform can be a better idea than engaging a web development firm to build you a site from scratch.

Most open source platforms have been developed over quite a few years, and as such are quite solid and give little problem to the company looking to have a website created.

Below we have outlined 5 major platforms that cover uses from e-commerce, general website development, blogging and social media applications. Social media is a difficult category and we welcome discussion on platforms for that category, and the rest of course.

Because most of the work has already been done, it is also far more cost effective than starting a website from scratch. Open source in many cases offers a far higher level of functionality than a custom developed site.

For example it is in most cases easy to have a few design themes for your site and enable them for different seasons, such as a Christmas theme, Easter or a his and hers theme.

If we look at scalability; open source in many cases can grow as your website needs, with modules to increase functionality added on as they are needed.

Today we look at the top 5 open source platforms.

Magento

Application - E-commerce - Name - Magento - Example site | Golf Bone Yard | Download Magento | Download feature list (pdf)

Magento is a relatively new player in the open source e-commerce market and in our humble opinion on of the best open source platforms for building an on-line shop front.

Magento is feature rich, design is simple through the construction of templates, is search engine friendly even auto generates a site map.

PHP compatibility is the only area that you may need to look at before downloading.

5.2.0 and above
Required extensions:
- PDO_MySQL
- simplexml
- mcrypt
- hash
- GD
- DOM
- iconv
- SOAP (if Webservices API is to be used)

Unlike many open source platforms, Magento has a plethora of documentation and tutorials designed to make your life easier when building the online store. Doing it yourself or contract a web development company, it is all made easier with their documentation.

Application - General website - Name - Drupal - Example site | We Seo | Download Drupal | Drupal documentation

Drupal can be looked at more of a website framework than a true CMS, although does have CMS (content management system) capabilities and functionality it is quite raw out of the box. Drupal is quite a solid open source platform but if you are a novice it may scare you or might find it a little difficult to completely set up.

Drupal has an extensive community of support and a host of 3rd party plug ins ready to go. Drupal is mature and stable, and simple to very complicated and high functionality sites can be built upon the framework. Drupal is search engine friendly although does have some duplicate content issues, that are easy to address.

PHP compatibility

Recommended: PHP 5.2 or higher
Required: PHP version 4.3.5 or higher

Joomla

Application - General website - Name - Joomla - Example site | Bikin Website | Download Joomla |Joomla documentation

Joomla a fork of the Mambo platform could be looked at as a easier to use CMS than the Drupal platform, unlike Drupal, Joomla is more end user friendly and less intimidating for the first time user. Joomla has a slick interface for performing content changes and administration of the site.

Again Joomla has an extensive community and many commercial quality modules read to go for the platform. Joomla uses template technology and there are simply a host of templates available for the platform. Finding a Joomla developer is not hard either with many companies developing on the platform. Australian Joomla development company....

Wordpress

Application - Blog / Small website - Name - Wordpress - Example site | Pro Blogger | Download Wordpress | Wordpress documentation

Wordpress is probably more known as a blog platform but it can also make a pretty slick website as well. Wordpress has simply a huge following and more template designs than you could throw the proverbial stick at. We use wordpress for our client blog sites, and is easy for the novice to use.

Wordpress has many plugins available for it covering more functionality than we could ever list here, is wordpress the best blogging platform on the planet? That is a big question with so many open source platforms available it is a hard call, it certainly does have an almost cult following but is it the best? Maybe why don't you give us your thoughts on that.

Pligg

Application - Social media- Name - Pligg - Example site | Blog Engage | Download Pligg |

Finding a platform to fit the social media category is not an easy task, in the running was Dolphin, PHPizabi, Elgg, Mugshot and AroundMe all have strengths but many do not conform to the open source criteria. So in the end we decided that Pligg was the best option for someone looking for a platform to handle social media applications.

Even Drupal could be put into this category for use as a social media platform, social media could cover applications such as My Space, Facebook, Digg, social bookmarking utilities. For social bookmarking we have to throw GetBoo into the equation as well. For the social media category is is difficult for a one platform suits all, so we would encourage you look at the different platforms and what you want to achieve with your social site.

We welcome any and all comments and suggestions for this post, with actual real world applications and experience we could build a better resource for our readers.

If you disagree with out top 5 please say so and why you might think that way, if you think there should be other platforms considered we would also welcome such input.

As a community we can help the greater community with open source.

PPC spend makes no sense

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:50:20 +0000

It may come as no surprise that business tends to spend the majority of it's online marketing spend on PPC advertising, we constantly bring the market place aware that organic listing out performs PPC.

We now have even more data to back this up, and we will conclude once again that spending large on PPC is ultimately a complete waste of marketing dollars.

PPC should be considered a secondary marketing medium, not a primary. We constantly remind the business community that natural sales techniques, and organic marketing mediums will always perform better, this is just psychology of the human mind and cannot be changed.

Let us now turn to more data to back up our reasoning.
Figures below relate to the USA market but still hold completely true for UK and AU

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.
- Source: C-Net News, June 30, 2008

SEO spend: $1.3 billion (11%)
- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008

Research from SEMPO's data reveals it is 11% for SEO and 87% for PPC, SEM techniques account for another 1.4% further under 1% for paid inclusion.

Now if we look at the image below we will begin to see again why it makes no sense at all to be spending so much on PPC advertising.The image displays concentration of interest on a given SERP page (search engine results page), we can instantly see human psychology at work once again and further backs up our statements that you must embrace the psychology of how we react to adversing not try and fight it.

The above heat map is supplied by Eyetools, follow this link to read the report

Now we can see immediately that the majority of people are looking at the organic listings part of the search results, there really is not allot of interest going on in the PPC part of the page (right) this also further illustrates our thoughts that the first 5 listings are the most important real estate on the SERP page.

Organic Ranking Visibility

(shown in a percentage of participants looking at a listing in this location)

Rank 1 – 100%
Rank 2 – 100%
Rank 3 – 100%
Rank 4 – 85%
Rank 5 – 60%
Rank 6 – 50%
Rank 7 – 50%
Rank 8 – 30%
Rank 9 – 30%
Rank 10 – 20%

Side sponsored ad visibility

(shown in percentage of participants looking at an ad in this location)

1 – 50%
2 – 40%
3 – 30%
4 – 20%
5 – 10%
6 – 10%
7 – 10%
8 – 10%

In essence we can surmise that eyes are firmly fixed on the organic results, interesting isn't it. Now many of you are going to be saying so what! people still click on the ads more than the organic listings. WRONG...... Again let us turn to data to backup the cold hard fact, SEO will make you more money then PPC.

Thanks to the great people over at ComScore we can further illustrate PPC is a great way to spend money that could be better used on SEO. Read the article associated with this graph by following the linked text.

Now this really is the proof in the pudding, we can see yet again paid clicks have dropped now accounting for 22% of search traffic so this means that SEO accounts for 75% of all search traffic, taking notice yet? You should be.

We know PPC is an effective marketing medium and should be used in the marketing mix, but a critical eye should be placed on the spend, versus what is being spent on SEO. Using both marketing mediums correctly will ultimately lead to greater market share, it could be easily said though that SEO should attract the greatest share of the marketing budget.

Fact SEO is a better marketing solution than PPC

If you want to take advantage of SEO call We Seo today on 1300 78 50 60 or fill out our consultation form.

SEO & Video showing up in blended search

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:42:25 +0000

Using video is a brilliant way to gain added market exposure, in addition building your universal search also known as blended search listings.

Apart from books, maps and news articles, video also shows in universal search results. Video is a great way to add extra interactivity to your website, video can be used for in-store promotions, TV commercials, training videos just to name a few. Best of all We Seo can produce your video out of existing images or video you may already have at a price that may just pleasantly surprise you.

We also offer a complete production option from filming, photography to final production, we also offer a professional voice over service for radio ads and any media that requires a voice over.

Addressing universal search is very important in the overall SEO campaign, in most cases the results from blended search is above the natural organic listings. When your company is visible in universal search, and the organic results your company is making a big impression on the market, or you could say 'really leaving your mark'

We Seo have the team to propel your brand into the mind of the consumer, our professional SEO campaigns address all aspects of organic results and universal search results.

Don't leave that video footage in the filing cabinet any longer contact We Seo and have it produced into a attention getting client finding viral video advertisement.

We Seo - your marketing partner call today on 1300 78 50 60 or fill out our consultation form.

Contact We Seo today we can have your company engaging your market in no time.

Google SEO tools

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:25:47 +0000

Google not only a great search engine, they also help you in many ways with optimising your site.

Google SEO tools, yes they do have ways to help you in obtaining better rankings, in more ways than you might know about.

Google SEO tool No1# -

Google Insights for Search, This really handy tool will let you peak under the bonnet as it were, into what people are searching for and what the demographics are for the search term.

You can see in the image the peaks along the time line each one of those highest peaks in January and the lowest points are August. Up here in sunny Queensland after all the floods going on you may also see a distinct rise in the search for termite control or pest control.

This is the worst time of year for termite problems, and after all the Brisbane floods it makes the situation even worse with more timber laying around for the hungry little termites to live on. Our weather bureau has even seen clouds of termites on their radar screens.

Understanding the demographics of search helps the business owner target their marketing, for instance a pest control company would not be smart to spend big on termite control advertising during August. Gogle insight is just that it gives a great insight to search.

Google SEO tool No2# -

Google Adwords keyword tool - Originally designed for helping you chose words for your PPC campaign this tool is very good for helping in the process of keyword selection for your SEO campaign. Now again if we type 'pest control' into the keyword selector tool we are presented with a list of suggestions. We can see that 'pest control' has the most search volume and advertiser competition volume so we would call this a primary keyword phrase.

Because this is a primary term it will be one of the harder terms to rank for as with high search volume and competitor competition so it could be prudent to put this on the SEO long term goal and look for a less traffic and lower competition phrase. Looking a little further down the list we can see 'house pest control' although the adwords competition has dropped on the phrase how will it go for us in the SEO market? We can see that Google gives us nearly 17 million results for 'pest control' and for 'house pest control' we are presented with around 6.6 million results.

So we can comfortably say 'house pest control' is still quite a high competition phrase and still could be considered a primary phrase maybe a secondary. We can keep looking down the list and find 'pest control spray' still with a healthy search volume less competitive in adwords how does it go in Google search? 2.7 million results now we are well into easier to rank for terms now and this we will look at using on the short term goal list for our SEO campaign.

We can keep using this technique to build our basket of keyword choices, what we are wanting to do is set-up long term SEO goals, medium term goals and short term goals. This technique allows for a steady growth in our SEO campaign, if we just try and optimise for the high traffic high competition 'primary' keyword phrases we are going to be looking at a long road to increased traffic.

Google SEO tool No3# -

Google analytics is our data friend letting us see all kinds of useful information, where people have come from, how long they stayed and where did they go. No SEO campaign is complete without a good source of analytical data and it is in our opinion Google analytics is one of the best.

Simple enough for the new user and detailed enough for the long time web master Google analytics is a must for any business wanting to increase their search engine directory exposure.

Google SEO tool No4#

Google webmaster central, this handy resource is on the must be set-up list this is where you add your XML site map to allow the Google bot an easier more direct way to find your content pages. Furthermore Google web master central is full of interesting data, how many inbound and outbound links our website pages have. Crawl statistics, index statistics and top search queries are among the useful data held here.

Google SEO 101 starter guide

Google help us achieve good results in a varied list of ways recently they have released a 101 of SEO to aid in you building the right content and site the first time. This guide will hold you in good stead for self SEO work, download it in PDF format.

Google search engine optimisation starter guide

Keyword research is the fundamental foundation of a successful website, get it wrong and you will be left with little traffic flow or traffic not suited to your market. You need a good mix of keywords in all three categories, 'primary' 'secondary' and 'the long tail of search' understanding how to use the research is paramount to success.

It is fine and dandy to want to rank for the most competitive terms but the reality is depending on your market, this could take a considerable amount of time. Furthermore a substantial investment will often be needed to attain the top positions for the most competitive terms.

By using the technique of the three categories you allow an increase in traffic and conversion relating to more sales, this allows you to still work on the high competition phrases. With the added traffic and conversion ranking for the primary terms becomes a more obtainable goal, with profits to fund the campaign.

Seven ways to improve internal linking structure

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:22:11 +0000

Crawling to success

Enabling easy crawling of your website by the search engine bots or spiders requires good internal linking architecture, this also helps usability of the site overall and can direct users to find content of particular interest to them.

It is imperative to have good site usability and overall site architecture to obtain good ranking in the SERP's.

How search engines find web pages on your website

Search engine directories use little software programs called spiders or bots to seek out the content that in turn is added to the search engine directories. These little software creatures are pretty simple in their workings and can only follow text links in majority of cases. It is essential to make the job of the indexing spider as easy as possible, site maps both HTML and XML should be used to give them a helping hand as it were.

Flash driven menus, Java scripting menus, search boxes cannot be read by most of these visiting little creatures and as such will give them no idea what content is in your site or where it is located. These little spiders are also a bit on the slack side and will not often delve to deep into your site. If your site is a massive site, with a page rank of 8 and receives thousands of visitors a day they may just spend much more time on your site. Alas though the majority of websites are not like this so we must leave the food bowl where they can easily access it.

Seven internal linking ideas that will improve your search engine rankings and overall usability of your website

Most search engine spiders do not type into your search boxes and they do not use pull down menus. The following tips will help you to make sure that search engine spiders will index your web pages correctly:

1. Use simple text links to link to your web pages

Most search engines cannot index fancy Flash or JavaScript menus. Some even have difficulty with image links. If possible, use simple text links to link to your web pages. You can make text links prettier by styling them with CSS.

2. Your most important pages should not be more than one click away from the index page

Web pages that can be accessed with a few clicks from your home page are considered more important than web pages that are buried deep inside your website. It's easier to get high rankings for these easy to access pages.

3. Use descriptive link texts

The text that you use to link to your web pages helps search engines to better understand your content.

If you sell acne products on your website, do not use links such as <a href="http://www.weseo.com.au/greatcontent.html">Click here</a> but descriptive link texts such as <a href="http://www.weseo.com.au/greatcontent.html">Proven Acne Treatment</a>.

That makes it easier for search engines to put the page into a context and it will be more likely that the page gets high rankings for the keyword "Proven Acne Treatment".

4. Related content

More for user usability but very important overall, a related content module is a good way to engage visitors to delve deeper into your content. If not using a CMS platform than a simple nice CSS box containing related content to what the user is reading can do the trick. You can see a list of today's popular content top right of this post.

5. In content links

Using in content links can be a great way for users to find extra content relating to what they are reading, you will often see in our own posts hyper linked content to further engage the reader. This tactic also gives the spiders extra information about the content within your site. With more information the search directories can better categorise your site and serve more targeted results to the people searching for your goods and services. Here is an example of in content linking, have you visited our SEO frequently asked questions yet? Did you also know you can ask an SEO question if you cannot find what you were looking for.

6. Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a simple web page that contains link to all important pages of your website. You could add a link to your sitemap in the footer of every web page. By doing this, search engines can find all important pages with two clicks. It is even better to create a XML site map and submit it to Google, Yahoo and NineMSN these sites maps are specifically for the use of search engine directories. If you have one of our CMS websites this is all done automatically for you, and updates the site maps every time content changes

7. Check the validity of your HTML code

Errors in the HTML code of your web pages can prevent search engines from indexing your web pages correctly. For example, an HTML error might indicate the end of a web page before the actual content begins. That would mean that search engines would skip the content and any links of that page. Follow the linked text to access the official W3C HTML validator.

Internal site structure plays an important role in how a site is indexed and indeed how it ranks in the SERP's the more information you can give a visiting spider the better. Usability helps rank as well, the lower the bounce rate and longer spent on site all add up in the ranking factors, this all ultimately goes towards your sites over all rank.

It is a careful balance of looking after the search engines and looking after the visitors, of course if you are a client of We Seo we look after all of this for you. Maybe you should give us a call on 1300 78 50 60.

Joomla Search engine friendly URL's

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:07:39 +0000

Simply the best plugin for Joomla to handle clean search engine friendly URL's

SH404SEF is a plugin for the popular Joomla platform, it turns ugly hard to read URL's into clean easy to read search engine friendly URL's.

Again we have another reason to use open source platforms, Joomla even though it does come with a core option for clean url's it does not work across components that can be added to the platform. SH404SEF is a highly configurable simple to install module that offers an amazing array of options for the site developer.

Once you have installed the plugin all that is needed is the configuring of the .htaccess file, an example configuration comes with the plugin and in 99.9% of all cases this will work for you. The plugin also comes with an option not to use the ModRewrite option if your server configuration does not allow .htaccess files or you simply are unable to create such a file.

The plugin comes with easy to use admin section where all the options can be set, over all it has been though out in a logical fashion and this is conveyed by the ease of configuration.

SH404SEF also handles meta titles and descriptions automatically, this is brilliant for e-commerce sites and makes for a far simpler site development. If required custom page titles and descriptions can be inserted into any URL the plugin is handling.

Under the configuration option you can select to show categories or sections in the url or turn it all off and just have the base url display, the plugin offers a very high level of configuration options.

SH404SEF uses 301 redirects from the non SEF url to the nice clean search engine friendly url so no url hijacking can take place. It also has an extensive security feature to allow insight into any wrong doings going on.

SH404SEF also handles many popular modules for Joomla natively such as, Virtuemart, Community Builder, Fireboard, Docman and many more, this is all accessible under the main configuration menu. Apart from the native support there are also further plugins available to widen the scope of modules that can be used with SH404SEF.

SH404SEF supports Joomla 1.X and 1.5, if you are looking for a stable user friendly plugin to get rid of those horribe generated url's then you should really look at using SH404SEF.

Off site marketing for better ranking

patrick@weseo.com.au (Administrator) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

As search engine algorithms become more advanced and take on factors from resources such as del.icio.us, Google bookmark, Yahoo bookmark, Digg, Facebook and other social network utilities, we have to think outside the box when it comes to SEO tactics. A strong off site marketing campaign can directly help the ranking of you site, for the reasons I just listed above.

Search directories such as Google are already using 'popularity' to influence how they rank pages in the SERP's (search engine results pages), when you send out a targeted media campaign, such as a distributed flyer drop to either business or the general public, you are creating off line buzz about your goods and services. If we than take into consideration when designing our tactical media that we also want to target traffic to our website then we can also create online buzz about our goods and services.

We can achieve on line buzz with giving people a reason to visit the website, maybe a strong special campaign where people that received the flyer go to a certain page on the website to receive a discount on your goods and services. Or you could list a few articles on the flyer that just have to be read to help them choose your products or services. Maybe you are a used car yard and have written the Top 10 tricks used car yards use to make a tired car look new again.

Giving a prospective customer informed information to aid in their purchase decision, will ultimately make their mind set more comfortable with making the purchase. When we give a customer a resource they consider was valuable to them, they are more likely to share this information with others, through the use of social sharing utilities such as bookmarking them for other to see, maybe posting the article to their facebook, or even writing a blog post about the article or resource and sharing it with the world.

Search engines such as Google also take into account traffic to your site, a good off line promotion will drive traffic to your site and again this can lead to better ranking of your pages. If your campaign is well targeted and the information on your website is useful the visitor is more likely to delve deeper into your content and again, you have a higher chance of them sharing this information with the greater community.

Achieving greater market share on-line is not just about optimising your web pages, it is creating buzz about your business. This is one of the fundamental reasons We Seo is better suited to marketing your website than most SEO companies. Our parent company We Brand deals with printing and off line marketing solutions, this complementary marketing is creating great results for our clients, it makes sense that if you are targeting on-line sales you should bring the greater community aware of this, with traditional off line marketing.

The future of SEO companies are the ones that understand the bigger marketing picture.

If we look at the used car market for a minute, here in Queensland their is a car company called 'Zupps' when you look at the graph below you will see a healthy search volume for the term 'Zupps Used Cars' this data comes from Google insights for search. For a search term to show in Google insights it requires a substantial search volume, this searching for the business name 'Zupps' has come from off line buzz and people turning to Google and looking for 'Zupps Used Cars'.

What the numbers mean
The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don't represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100; each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.

Now it is true Zupps is a large player in the car market in Queensland, but this example holds true for many businesses and strengthens the case of using off line buzz to build on-line buzz.

As the onlne market strengthens more and more over time, more creative ways will be needed to drive targeted traffic to your site. SEO is fast becoming an industry that needs to look at other options rather than just web page related optimisation. Tapping into the power of social media is a must for any business.

So when you are looking for an SEO company to deliver sales on line, ask what else they can do apart from optimising your site for search, what resources do they have in real business marketing. Can they create a seamless marketing campaign to deliver both on line and off line sales.