Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
by Tricia
I think I spent close to two hours today adding people to the blogrolls that I run and adding a few of my sites to blogrolls run by others! I also listed our sites on a few new directories that I discovered.
Busy busy! I’d say I spent most of this week working on advertising and promoting our sites. Hopefully the time I put into this pays off in the near future.
How did you spend your Saturday?
by Tricia
As a former small business owner, and now a webmaster for more than 15 websites, I’ve learned quite a bit about marketing and promoting over the years.
Back when I had my jewelry trade business few companies had websites on the internet. Now, it’s almost unheard of to not have one.
The trouble is that not all business owners – big or small – are webmasters. Even if a business owner knows enough to create website for their company or hires a web designer to create their company page they must concentrate on the day to day aspects of their business, and as a result they don’t have time to learn all the ins and outs of promoting the online aspect of their company.
As I said, over the years I’ve learned quite a bit about promoting and marketing my websites online. I think I’m fairly good at it too, but now that I have so many sites to manage it’s getting harder and harder for me continue to promote my sites. Building the sites and creating content takes up the majority of my time.
I know several website owners, bloggers and even small business owners who are in the same position as I am. There just isn’t enough time in the day to do it all, and to do it well.
I’ve seriously considered hiring a SEO company to help market and promote my sites and get them the best rankings on the search engines for their keyword phrases. A company that knows how to set up a good promotional campaign can help an online business or website gain links, increase page rank and most importantly increase the amount of traffic to the site.
Over the last couple of months I’ve been looking at SEO companies services as I’ve tried to decide whether to hire a professional service to promote my sites or to continue to do this on my own.
One of the companies that I’ve been looking at recently is HTP Company. HTP is an Internet Advertising Company that specializes in web site marketing, internet advertising and marketing online.
I believe that HTP (High Technology Professionals) has been in business since 1996. They certainly offer quite a number of services and have some very informative articles on their website including a free Internet marketing, search engine optimization and Internet advertising tutorial for those that want to learn more about SEO.
Services offered by HTP include publishing, business consulting, search engine positioning, web development, web site design, marketing strategy, sales implementation and internet advertising. In other words they do it all.
One form of internet advertising that they specialize in is helping their clients buy text links, banner ads, text ads and in the creation of pay per click campaigns. All of which are of course aimed at increasing a websites SERP (search engine results page ranking), promoting the site or business and increasing traffic and sales. HTP Company can also place ads for your site on over 121,000 different websites.
As I look through their site I’ve become more and more impressed by the amount of services offered and the wealth of information on each and every page. Some SEO company websites just list their services and don’t really explain what each service really is or why these types of services or techniques are important to anyone who owns a website. You can actually learn quite a bit just by reading through the site if you are so inclined.
I’m also impressed by the partial client list on their About page. They have quite a few Fortune 500 corporations listed as clients. HTP Company has to be good at what they do to have secured such high profile companies as clients.
Can you see why I’ve been considering hiring HTP Company to help me promote my sites? Visit the HTP Company website yourself and see if they can help you promote your business or web site.
Before I stop gushing about this SEO company I should tell you that they also have a business directory where they list professional web sites and businesses. You can write to them to request that they view your site and add your link to their directory.
by Tricia
I read a lot of forums, blogs and websites and one thing that strikes me time and time again is how little most people know about natural search engine optimization. The real shocker for me is that it’s not always those who are new to being a website owner that seem to not know what SEO is, but people who have been blogging or maintaining sites for years.
I believe that search engine optimization begins with the purchase of your domain name. If you are writing a site about bikes it’s important to have the word bike in your domain name. The search engines will like that and might give your site a higher standing on search engine results. After all the whole point of optimizing our sites for search engines is so that people doing searches can find us easily.
If your your site comes up on page 10 of a Google search results page it’s unlikely that you’ll have many visitors. However if you consistently pick appropriate keywords for your sites articles, article titles, page titles, site titles and even domain names you’ll have a good chance that your site will be found on the first page of search engine results.
My sites tend to do well in search engine rankings because I try to use keywords in my articles that describe the topic I’m writing about and I also try to use a descriptive title for my posts.
I shake my head when I visit a blog and see a great article about a specific topic yet the title is some off the wall line like “Yaba daba do what a day!”.
If you really aren’t sure how to optimize your site for search engines you might want to hire a search engine optimization company to help you. They can take a look at your site and do a consultation. Perhaps they’ll give you a price quote that contains a list of what they’d do to optimize your site.
Many search engine optimization services such as the one I’ve linked to above, submitawebsite.com, have information about SEO techniques that you can begin to use on your own to better your standings on search engines.
As I said earlier a SEO company will also offer a number of SEO services that you might want to use to promote your site just as text link ads, optimizing your site for search engine placement, pay per click services and management and many other services that could help your site reach number one on in the search engine results.
If you don’t have time to optimize your site for search engines on your own do look into the services of a SEO company. It’s worth it if you want to boost your traffic.
by Tricia
Lately almost every blogger I know has been interested in improving their website’s visibility in search engines. This often involves attempting to get their website to come up on the front page listings (top 10) of major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN (Live).
I can imagine how important search engine optimization is for small and large sized businesses and corporations. If we, the smaller website owners, think about search engine optimisation all the time, they must live and breathe it.
If you’re a business owner or work for a company that’s interested in improving their search engine ranking, you’ll be pleased to know that Melbourne IT provides search engine optimisation solutions to Australian and global businesses.
The company has a few different packages that they’ve created to optimise your website for search engine rankings.
SEO Kickstart and SEO Kickstart Expert provide entry level diagnostic reports and are an ideal way to get you started toward improved search engine rankings. An analysis of your website is done to identify different areas of optimisation, and compares your home page against your competitors for the top 10 keyword phrases in your target market.
Melbourne IT also offers a Customized Search Engine Optimization solution. This is suited to your business needs and requirements. You will be provided with your own online marketing consultant who will guide you through the entire optimization process. You are also provided with a detailed website competitor report and full website audit and enhancement document.
Visit Melbourne IT for more information about their Search Engine Optimization solutions.