How SEO can help generate profit for small businesses?

SEO is a powerful technique to build small business brands. Small business owners and entrepreneurs must learn these low-cost, high-impact strategies like SEO and social marketing to generate profits through their online businesses.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary -Part 4

· Naked Links – A posted and visible link in the text of a web page that directs to a web site.

· Negative Keywords – Filtered-out keywords to prevent ad serves on them in order to avoid irrelevant click-through charges on, for example, products that you do not sell, or to refine and narrow the targeting of your Ad Group’s keywords. Microsoft adCenter calls them "excluded keywords." Formatting negative keywords varies by search engine; but they are usually designated with a minus sign.

· No Frames Tag - A tag used to describe the content of a frame to a user or engine which had trouble displaying / reading frames. Frequently misused and often referred to as “Poor mans cloaking”.

· No Script Tag - The noscript element is used to define an alternate content (text) if a script is NOT executed. This tag is used for browsers that recognizes the script tag, but does not support the script in it.

· NoFollow - NoFollow is an attribute webmasters can place on links that tell search engines not to count the link as a vote or not to send any trust to that site. Search engines will follow the link, yet it will not influence search results. NoFollows can be added to any link with this code: “rel="nofollow"."

· Navigation The overall structure and layout of a website, which helps users find their way around. Knowing your position, where you want to go and how it relates to the rest of the website. For search engines to be able to follow the navigation scheme it is best not to encode it in any script other than regular HTML.

· Organic Listings Search engines list results based on varying factors they deem relevant based on the user’s search keywords. Organic search engine listings, also known as “natural” listings, are those listings that appear on the results page solely based on relevancy factors. Organic listings are juxtaposed with paid listings, which are ranked on the results page based on how much the advertiser paid the search engine to post them.

· Organic SEO Organic Search Engine Optimization is the SEM term for unpaid high ranking results on search engines. Organic SEO, also known as “natural” SEO, is juxtaposed with Pay Per Click advertising campaigns. The Organic SEO method involves complete optimization of the company’s Website and long term investment in building up towards top search engine results that will last a long time.

· Outbound Link Outbound links appear on a Web page and direct users and search engine crawlers to another Web page. They can link between different Websites or between pages on the same site. Outbound links are key elements in Search Engine Marketing campaigns, as the smart use of them helps promote a Web page’s ranking.

· Overture, a Yahoo! Search Marketing product, was formerly known as GoTo.com. It is the largest of all Pay Per Click search engines. Overture enables Website owners to purchase online marketing and advertising space on a PPC basis, keyword oriented and sponsored. Yahoo! search engine results also include paid listings of search results that are based on the bidding of the advertiser for certain keywords. Such pay for placement services are successful Search Engine Marketing tools that can serve a Website, though at a cost. Thorough, Internet-wide research by Overture assures ever more relevant keyword relevancy, help promote Websites and generate profit for itself.

· Off-page factors - Issues such as inbound links and the popularity of sites with links pointing into your site that you have little control over, but that still play a role in your rankings.

· On-page factors - A reference to the elements on your site and their role in your rankings, for example, keyword density, title tag relevance etc.

· OOP - Over Optimization Penalty. Where a search engine algorithm detects that changes you are making to a page or the way the page is constructed is to influence rankings over being useful to a site visitor.

· P2P - Pay To Play. Any search engine marketing strategy that requires payment to the search engine company.

· Page jacking - the copying of a page by unauthorized parties in order to filter off traffic to another site. Learn more about detecting and dealing with page jacking.

· PFI - Pay For Inclusion. Payment paid to a search engine company for inclusion in results

· PPCSE - A Pay Per Click Search Engine. Learn more about pay per click.

· PR/ PageRank™ - A ranking used by Google that is meant to act as indication of the quality of a site and its authority status.

· PR0/PageRank Zero - Another term relating to Google PageRank. It can indicate that a page has been spidered but appearing in general results as yet, or could also possibly indicate a penalty.

· Pay-per-Call:The ability to track offline sales through unique toll-free phone numbers. Currently available on FindWhat and CitySearch properties, this service is ideal for offline-based businesses like plumbers, contractors and other service industries.

· Pay-per-Click (PPC):Stands for pay-per-click. See “Cost Per Click” and “Paid Placement.”

· Paid Listings: Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.

· Paid placement Paid placement is a SEM strategy by which placement on the search results page is allotted in return for a fee. Paid placement is temporary and usually marked as sponsored listings.

· Position
The position is the rank of the advertiser on the search engine results page. Some search engines place the highest bidder at the top position, while others use algorithms that are more complex. The assumption is that the higher the rank the more clicks the advertisement generates.

· Podcasts – “A podcast is a media file that is distributed over the internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers. Like 'radio,' it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The latter may also be termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.” Source: Wikipedia

· PPC Advertising – Acronym for Pay-Per-Click Advertising, a model of online advertising in which advertisers pay only for each click on their ads that directs searchers to a specified landing page on the advertiser’s web site. PPC ads may get thousands of impressions (views or serves of the ad); but, unlike more traditional ad models billed on a CPM (Cost-Per-Thousand-Impressions) basis, PPC advertisers only pay when their ad is clicked on. Charges per ad click-through are based on advertiser bids in hybrid ad space auctions and are influenced by competitor bids, competition for keywords and search engines’ proprietary quality measures of advertiser ad and landing page content.

· PPC Management – The monitoring and maintenance of a Pay-Per-Click campaign or campaigns. This includes changing bid prices, expanding and refining keyword lists, editing ad copy, testing campaign components for cost effectiveness and successful conversions, and reviewing performance reports for reports to management and clients, as well as results to feed into future PPC campaign operations.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary -Part 3

• Heading tag -A Web page may have as many as five or six levels of HTML coded heading tags, which are displayed in various font sizes from large to small. The h1 tag, also referred to as the header tag, for example, displays a text as a level 1 heading, much like a title on the page. Heading tags may be designed in a style that suits the Web page best and serve SEO and SEM functions as well. Dot Traffic can improve heading tags on your Website.

• Hilltop- Algorithm which ranks results largely based on unaffiliated expert citations.

• HITS - Link based algorithm which ranks relevancy scores based on citations from topical authorities.

• Inbound link: An inbound link is an hyperlink to a particular Web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that Web page. Inbound links are an important element that most search engine algorithms use to measure the popularity of a Web page.

• Invisible web: A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that isn't indexed by search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.

• Index:The collection of information (contained in a large database) a search engine has that searchers can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the web pages they have found from crawling the web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all web sites that have been categorized.

• Index file -The index file must be in a format that is identifiable by the search engine, for better and more effective visits by the search engine spider. The text information stored in the index file must be clear and accurate, but above all it must be legible to the search engine, which may be limited in the formats it can identify. Dot Traffic can help you identify what format the index file must be formatted, which will make fast retrieval possible.

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI):Defines and/or measures progress towards company goals.

• Keyword: A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results. Many Web sites offer advertising targeted by keywords, so an ad will only show when a specific keyword is entered.

• KDA - Keyword Density Analyzer or Analysis. The ratio of keywords or keyphrases in relation to other text on a page.

• Keyword Phrase – Two or more keywords relating to a specific topic. For example, “Mind numbingly boring glossary” would be a keyword phrase to describe this document.

• Keyword Stemming – To return to the root or stem of a word and build additional words by adding a prefix or suffix, or using pluralization. The word can expand in either direction and even add words, increasing the number of variable options.

• Keyword Stuffing – Generally refers to the act of adding an inordinate number of keyword terms into the HTML or tags of a web page.

• Keyword Tag - Refers to the META keywords tag within a web page. This tag is meant to hold approximately 8 – 10 keywords or keyword phrases, separated by commas. These phrases should be either misspellings of the main page topic, or terms that directly reflect the content on the page on which they appear. Keyword tags are sometimes used for internal search results as well as viewed by search engines.

• Keyword Targeting – Displaying Pay Per Click search ads on publisher sites across the Web (see also Contextual Networks) that contain the keywords in a context advertiser’s Ad Group.

• Link popularity - A gauge of a site's popularity based on the number of inbound links. Link popularity is a factor in search engine ranking and has greater strength (in theory) where inbound links are from other quality sites.

• Link bait: Editorial content, often sensational in nature, posted on a Web page and submitted to social media sites in hopes of building inbound links from other sites. Or, as Matt Cutts of Google says, "something interesting enough to catch people's attention."

• Link Farm - A page that consists of little else but links to other sites and usually the sites listed have links back to the farm page. The goal of a link farm is to artificially boost rankings through link popularity and is consequently at risk of penalty or ban.

• Link building: The process of getting quality Web sites to link to your Web site, in order to improve search engine rankings. Link building techniques can include buying links, reciprocal linking, or entering barter arrangements.

• Listings:The information that appears on a search engine's results page in response to a search. See “Results Page.”

• Local Search:Search engine results constrained by region/location, based on the searcher's location or intent. With the addition of Web 2.0 capabilities, local search results may include business ratings, reviews, maps and driving directions. For more information, visit our Local Search blog post.

• Meta tags: Information placed in the HTML header of a Web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers, but can be used in varying degrees by search engines to index a page. Common meta tags used in search engine marketing are title, description, and keyword tags.

• Mirror - A copy of a site with some content differences to target particular keywords. Not a recommended strategy as it can trigger a penalty or ban.

• Meta Search Engine:A search engine that gets listings from two or more other search engines, rather than through its own efforts.

• Meta Description Tag:Allows page authors to say how they would like their pages described when listed by search engines. Not all search engines use the tag.

•Meta Keywords Tag:Allows page authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process. Not all search engines use the tag.

• Meta Robots Tag: Allows page authors to keep their web pages from being indexed by search engines, especially helpful for those who cannot create robots.txt files. The Robots Exclusion page provides official details.

• Meta Feeds – Ad networks that pull advertiser listings from other providers. They may or may not have their own distribution and advertiser networks.

• META Refresh redirect - A client-side redirect.

• Metrics - A system of measures that helps to quantify particular characteristics. In SEO the following are some important metrics to measure: overall traffic, search engine traffic, conversions, top traffic-driving keywords, top conversion-driving keywords, keyword rankings, etc

• Mod_rewrite - URL Rewrite processes, also known as “mod rewrites,” are employed when a webmaster decides to reorganize a current web site, either for the benefit of better user experience with a new directory structure or to clean up URLs which are difficult for search engines to index.

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary -Part 2

· DMCA - Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A set of USA laws designed to defend the rights of authors and creators of digital content from copyright infringements.

· DMOZ - Directory MOZilla is a human reviewed directory, the contents of which appear on many sites, including Google. A listing in DMOZ is said to assist boosting rankings in in Google's general search results.

· Doorway Page - a page used for driving traffic to another page and usually focusing on specific keywords. Generally, doorway pages are designed for search engines only, human visitors never see them - consequently, they are frowned upon. Doorway pages should not be confused with landing pages, a legitimate strategy.

· DKI – Acronym for Dynamic Keyword Insertion, the insertion of the EXACT keywords a searcher included in his or her search request in the returned ad title or description. As an advertiser, you have bid on a table or cluster of these keyword variations, and DKI makes your ad listings more relevant to each searcher.

· Duplicate content - usually used in reference to a penalty applied by a search engine for the same content appearing on different pages/sites. In theory, the site/page that was added to the search engine last should be the one that is penalized.

· Deep linking
Search Engine Marketing campaigns that are designed to direct users to a specific page within the Website, not only to the main or home page, use deep links. Search engine robots reach these URLs just as they would any other Web page, and special technology must be used to direct the user to the main URL specifically.

· DNS stands for Domain Name Service, Domain Name System or Domain Name Server, all of which are the same name-based service that replaces IP Address numbers with letters. This makes it much easier to remember a Web site address than had it been in numbers. SEO specialist Dot Traffic can help you pick the ideal domain name for your business’s Website.

· Description Tag - Refers to the information contained in the description META tag. This tag is meant to hold the brief description of the web page it is included on. The information contained in this tag is generally the description displayed immediately after the main link on many search engine result pages.

· Directory Search – Also known as a search directory. Refers to a directory of web sites contained in an engine that are categorized into topics. The main difference between a search directory and a search engine is in how the listings are obtained. A search directory relies on user input in order to categorize and include a web site. Additionally, a directory usually only includes higher-level pages of a domain.

· Domain – Refers to a specific web site address.

· Del.icio.us- Popular social bookmarking website.

· Digg - Social news site where users vote on which stories get the most exposure and become the most popular.

· Ethical SEO
SEO techniques are either effective or not, with ethics generally playing a minor role. However, accusations of unethical manipulations of search engine algorithms abound, whereas they rather should be acknowledged for their creativity. Unethical practices can relate to business aspects, such as not disclosing risks involved with certain practices to clients and not delivering the service promised, something that may happen in any discipline. Aggressive SEO is not necessarily unethical.

· External Link
Like inbound links, external links play a role in Search Engine Optimization. Search engines, like users, follow the external links that direct them to other domains. If these destinations are found to be of low quality or altogether irrelevant, they will only harm the website’s ranking and popularity. High quality and relevancy external links count more than sheer mass.

· Everflux - Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux.

· Fresh Content
Internet users and search engines acknowledge quality web content that is dynamic. Such fresh content will draw them to the website the first time and then again for repeat visits. More than simply re-editing existing text, it requires creating new content. Visitors and search engine crawlers will more likely frequent an updated website.

· Feed
The term web feed refers to automated subscription based content notifications via RSS or XML feeds. Users are notified of new content they are interested in without having to regularly search for it. Feeds serve web content management purposes and are popular with websites, blogs and podcasts.

· Frames - HTML technique that allows two or more pages to display in one browser window. Many search engines had trouble indexing web sites that used frames, generally only seeing the contents of a single frame. See also “No Frames.”

· Fuzzy Search - Search which will find matching terms when terms are misspelled

· Geo-targeting: Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won't be shown based on the searcher's location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

· Google bot: Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Google bots begin with "Googlebot"; for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index.

· Grey bar - A Google toolbar score that can indicate a ban in place on the page currently being viewed; i.e. the page does not appear in Google search results.

· Grey hat - Optimization strategies that are in a unknown area of reputability/validity.

· GoogleDex is the score given to a term based on the number of pages that Google has indexed and posted as results for that term.

· Google Dance Today, Google updates its index on a regular, ongoing, constant basis to which it refers for its searches. This was not the case in the past, when such updates took place only once a month. Back then, the updates were named Google Dances. The Google Dance also refers to an annual party thrown at Google's corporate headquarters for industry marketers.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary -Part 1

• Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is a process of revenue sharing that allows merchants to duplicate sales efforts by enlisting other web sites as a type of outside sales force. Successful affiliate marketing programs result in the merchant attracting additional buyers, and the affiliate earning the equivalent of a referral fee, based on click-through referrals to the merchant site.

• Advertising network: A service where ads are bought centrally through one company, and displayed on multiple Web sites that contract with that company for a share of revenue generated by ads served on their site.

• ALT Image tag - Search engines aren't able to read images as such, so the alt tag or text attribute describes what the image represents.

• Algorithm: A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank listings in response to a query. Search engines guard their algorithms closely, as they are the unique formulas used to determine relevancy. Algorithms are sometimes referred to as the ”secret sauce.”

• anchor text: The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about.

• Automatic Optimization – Search engines identify which ad for an individual advertiser demonstrates the highest CTR (click-through rate) as time progresses, and then optimizes the ad serve, showing that ad more often than other ads in the same Ad Group/Ad Order.

• Alexa ranking - Alexa is a search engine that provides extra information such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance, based on comparisons drawn against other sites.

• Black hat - A person engaged in or tactic used to increase search engine rankings using methods frowned upon by search engine companies.

Bot - usually used in reference to a search engine robot or spider; software applications that retrieve web page information to feed into a database.

• Backlinks Also called incoming links, inward links and inlinks, backlinks are incoming links to a Website or page. They measure the Website or page rank and also affect SEO considerations and calculations. By looking up backlinks on the search engine, Website owners can keep track of the number of pages that link back to them. Backward links See Backlinks

• Black Box Algorithms – Black box is technical jargon for a when system is viewed primarily in terms of input and output characteristics. A black box algorithm is one where the user cannot see the inner workings of the algorithm. All search engine algorithms are hidden.

• Blog a derivation from Web logs, are user-generated Websites for personal use, much like journal entries. Blogs evolve around a certain subject, be it a personal blog where the "blogger" writes in first person, or a political blog, commentary on local news and so on. It is often used as a Search Engine Marketing method, promoting a certain Website by generating links and driving traffic to it, for example.

• Bot -Internet bots, short for robots, also known as spiders and crawlers, are automated tasks that the search engine uses to scan the Internet. They perform mostly large-scale, repetitive tasks, consisting of downloading HTML non-graphic content. See also Spider.

• Bid-In Search Engine Marketing, a bid is the amount a Website owner is willing to pay for the placement among the sponsored links on the search results page. The ranking is based on the bid as well as on keyword ranking as determined by the search engine.

• Broken Link-
Links are clickable text that refers a user to a Webpage, a document or any image by clicking on them. Broken links fail to do so, sending the user to an error page.

• Click through rate (CTR): The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which users click on an ad. This is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of ad impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet marketers to measure the performance of an ad campaign.

• Content network: A group of Web sites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. For example: Google AdSense or the Yahoo Publisher Network.

• Contextual advertising: Advertising that is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually.

• Cost per action (CPA): A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs as a result of the ad. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Many affiliate programs use the CPA model.

• Cost per thousand (CPM): An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM.

• Click Bot – A program generally used to artificially click on paid listings within the engines in order to artificially inflate click amounts.

• Cloaking - The process by which a web site can display different versions of a web page under different circumstances. It is primarily used to show an optimized or a content-rich page to the search engines and a different page to humans. Most major search engine representatives have publicly stated that they do not approve of this practice.

• Crawl - the process by which search engine spiders retrieve web page information.

• Conversion: A site visitor completes a desired action. Generally a download, signup, purchase, etc.

• Cache:A search engine may save time in accessing Web pages by accessing a cached copy of the page, temporarily saved on the computer, instead of the original data.

• Content Network – Also called Contextual Networks, content networks include Google and Yahoo! Contextual Search networks that serve paid search ads triggered by keywords related to the page content a user is viewing.

• Content Targeting – An ad serving process in Google and Yahoo! that displays keyword triggered ads related to the content or subject (context) of the web site a user is viewing. Contrast to search network serves, in which an ad is displayed when a user types a keyword into the search box of a search engine or one of its partner sites.

• Contextual Advertising – Advertising that is automatically served or placed on a web page based on the page’s content, keywords and phrases. Contrast to a SERP (search engine result page) ad display. For example, contextual ads for digital cameras would be shown on a page with an article about photography, not because the user entered “digital cameras” in a search box.

• Custom Feed – Create custom feeds for each of the shopping engines that allow you to submit XML feeds. Each of the engines has different product categories and feed requirements.

• Cascading Style Sheets is a method for adding styles to web documents. Note: Using external CSS files makes it easy to change the design of many pages by editing a single file.

BIG BRANDS TWEETING !

If you are new than let me give you an idea what Twitter is ? it's basically a 'microblogging' service which allows you to push out small bite sized updates (not more than 140 characters). You might heard lot about twitter and recently some of the known industry personality says "Twitter is wastage of Time" , Let see does all below listed Big Brands of market are wasting there time.

Once you have a look of all the Brands and there strategy to use Top Brand of Social Media - Twitter, You can answer better !

• Kingfisher Airlines, India’s market-leading airline, today became the first airline from India to embrace social media and set up a full-fledged formal presence on www.twitter.com . This initiative will make it easier for anyone to receive instant updates from Kingfisher Airlines and more importantly, opens up a new platform for the brand to actively converse with its guests.

• Dell use social media at the Best. Dell has created a number of Twitter profiles for different services.

• Starbucks tops list of best social media brands -The coffee-maker comes in ahead of Dell and eBay, which placed second and third, according to a study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group. Li's study sought to find which brands best leveraged social media to interact with their customers, and judged the brands on their levels of interaction across 10 social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and discussion forums. JetBlue offers Twitter-based customer service (notice, they even provide the customer support employee’s name currently on duty).

• ComCast offers a friendly Twitter customer support.Frank Eliason is an Comcast Official Tweeter.

• TheHomeDepot “moonlights on Twitter to help their customers.”

• Chevrolet Official Tweeter- Meet Adam Denison, the PR guy for Chevrolet Corvette,He’s on Twitter because he wanted to be a part of the online dialogue around Chevrolet saying, “People especially love to talk about their cars: good or bad.”

• Southwest Airlines entertaining discussions with their customers on twitter.Christi Day Official Tweeter and social media specialist at Southwest Airlines.

• HRBlock runs ask-and-answer sessions with their customers.

• ATTNews updates their Twitter-followers of the news published at the site.

• IBN NEWS update latest news on Twitter.

• BreakingPoint posts updates of the company and industry news and also discusses it with their Twitter-listeners.

• Ford using twitter tweets for company internal news.

• Samsung has created a Twitter account to promote there mobile phones.

• Marriott hotel chain using twitter for updates. John Wolf is the senior director of public relations and official for twitter tweets.

• Carnival Cruise uses twitter to connect with online guests.

• DIRECTV is using Twitter “primarily to listen but also engage. Twitter is unique for its real-time understanding of your challenges and fans.

So friends this is not the end of the list, lot more to be in line. Now you can understand how important is Social Media.

Nitin Chauhan | nitin@maximumhit.com | www.maximumhit.com