<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>NetSource Tips &#187; search engine marketing</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/tag/sem/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.netsourceblog.com</link>
	<description>Tips and news from the NetSource team to promote success by helping you leverage technology to grow your business</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:32:19 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4</generator>
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
			<item>
		<title>Improve Your Website in 5 Steps: XML Sitemap</title>
		<link>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/improve-your-website-in-5-steps-xml-sitemap/</link>
		<comments>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/improve-your-website-in-5-steps-xml-sitemap/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:39:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jamie Eve</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles by Our Developers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tips, Guides & How-Tos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[improving a website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[series: 5 easy steps]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.netsourceblog.com/?p=1552</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In this installment of our &#8220;Improve Your Website&#8221; series, I&#8217;d like to focus on one of the invisible elements of your website that can have an impact on your site&#8217;s success. I&#8217;m talking of course about the creation of an XML Sitemap, which is one of several SEO best-practices employed by web developers in the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>In this installment of our &#8220;Improve Your Website&#8221; series, I&#8217;d like to focus on one of the invisible elements of your website that can have an impact on your site&#8217;s success. I&#8217;m talking of course about the creation of an XML Sitemap, which is one of several SEO best-practices employed by web developers in the know to help your site get fully indexed by the search engines, ultimately helping your ranking and traffic numbers.  First I&#8217;ll give you a brief overview of what the heck they are, and then we&#8217;ll talk about some of the benefits and how to add one to your own site.<span id="more-1552"></span></p>
<h2>What Is an XML Sitemap?</h2>
<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at the official Wikipedia definition first:</p>
<blockquote><p>The <strong>Sitemaps</strong> protocol allows a webmaster to inform search  engines about <a title="Uniform Resource Locator" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator">URLs</a> on a website that are  available for crawling. A Sitemap is an <a title="XML" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML">XML</a> file that  lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional  information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it  changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site.  This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.  Sitemaps are a URL inclusion protocol and complement <a title="Robots.txt" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt">robots.txt</a>, a URL exclusion protocol.</p>
<p>The webmaster can generate a Sitemap containing all accessible URLs  on the site and submit it to search engines. Since Google, MSN, Yahoo!,  and Ask use the same protocol now, having a Sitemap would let the  biggest search engines have the updated pages information.</p></blockquote>
<p>As you can see, an XML Sitemap is geared solely toward search engines. Your site visitors will never see your XML Sitemap; it is invisible to your traditional customers and is viewed only by search engine spiders or bots. It greatly improves the ability of the major search engines to index your site, basically hand-delivering pages to get indexed.</p>
<h2>What Are the Main Benefits?</h2>
<p>If you have an older site that was built before creating XML Sitemaps was standard operating procedure for web developers, you might be saying, &#8220;<em>My site is already indexed, why do I need a Sitemap?&#8221; </em> Indeed, search engines can and will index your web site without the benefit of an XML Sitemap. However, having an XML Sitemap is like hand-delivering your pages to a search engine tied up with a bow.  It includes additional information that search engines typically &#8220;guess&#8221; at, like page importance and how often each page gets updated.  Plus, the fact that you are taking the time to generate an up-to-date XML Sitemap signals to search engines that you are serious about your website and getting accurately indexed, which in turn motivates them to rank you higher than someone who doesn&#8217;t adhere to best practices.</p>
<p>Most of all though, keep in mind that search engines don&#8217;t index your site once and that&#8217;s it.  They will return periodically to re-index your site and contents. They look for new content and meta data, interior and in-bound links, and more. Then re-rank you against competitive sites.  If your site has changed, they&#8217;ll return quicker to re-index you next time, to make sure their search results are as accurate as possible.  However, there&#8217;s no set formula or schedule, and if you have recently re-designed your site or made a major content update after a long period of no activity, submitting an XML Sitemap to the search engines is like a prompt for new indexing that typically takes less 1-3 business days. If you don&#8217;t submit an XML Sitemap for indexing, your guess is as good as anyone&#8217;s on when the search engines will re-index your content.</p>
<h2>So How Do I Add an XML Sitemap?</h2>
<p>This is something you can do yourself with a little tech savvy and time.  Or you can engage one of our designers to take care of the task for you. Typically, the whole process will take a web designer around 30 minutes, but it may take you longer the first time around since it potentially requires setting up three new accounts.</p>
<p><strong>Do-it-yourself Instructions:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Use a free program to generate your XML Sitemap (like, <a href="http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/" target="_blank">http://www.xml-sitemaps.com</a>), then save the file. If your website has more than 500 pages (which can happen on sites with inventory or other dynamic content), you&#8217;ll probably need to buy a program.</li>
<li>Upload the new file to your website using FTP access. If you do not already have a username and password, contact your web host&#8217;s technical support. The file should be copied to the root directory.</li>
<li>To submit your XML Sitemap to Google, you&#8217;ll need a Google Account.  (You can create a free account if you don&#8217;t already have one.) Using Google&#8217;s Webmaster Tools, you&#8217;ll first need to verify that you are the owner of the site by adding a second file generated by Google to the root directory of your site. Once they verify that you&#8217;ve uploaded that verification file, then you can submit the URL of your XML Sitemap for indexing. For more info see: <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/">http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/</a></li>
<li>To submit the file to Yahoo!, you&#8217;ll need to follow a similar procedure. For more info and to get started with Yahoo! see: <a href="https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites" target="_blank">https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites</a></li>
<li>To submit to Bing, you&#8217;ll have to prove you are owner of the site once again.  You can get started here: <a href="http://www.bing.com/webmaster" target="_blank">http://www.bing.com/webmaster</a></li>
</ol>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/improve-your-website-in-5-steps-xml-sitemap/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>10 Rules To Follow When Optimizing Your Website</title>
		<link>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/10-rules-to-follow-when-optimizing-your-website/</link>
		<comments>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/10-rules-to-follow-when-optimizing-your-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:58:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ed Cehi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Online and Search Engine Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tips, Guides & How-Tos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[improving a website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keywords]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.netsourceblog.com/?p=939</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In this installment of my “Top Ten” tips to better Search Engine Optimization, I’ll be reviewing “10 Things to Avoid When Optimizing Your Website”.
SEO isn’t easy! Let’s just call it what it is, Hard and Time Consuming. A major mistake that a lot of people make, in an attempt to make things easier, is looking for [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>In this installment of my “Top Ten” tips to better Search Engine Optimization, I’ll be reviewing “10 Things to Avoid When Optimizing Your Website”.</p>
<p>SEO isn’t easy! Let’s just call it what it is, <em>Hard</em> and <em>Time Consuming</em>. A major mistake that a lot of people make, in an attempt to make things easier, is looking for short cuts to optimize their website. Many of these shortcuts provide short-lived result, but can harm your rankings in the long run (or even get you black-listed from search engines!). This is where I like to refer to a couple of old sayings to help remind people to stay focused:</p>
<p>-          “If it’s worth doing… It’s worth doing right!”</p>
<p>-          … and, “If it’s too good to be true… then it probably is!”</p>
<p>Keep your eyes on the prize folks! Don’t let other people take advantage of you and your business. Avoid bad neighborhoods, link exchanges and farms, don’t keyword stuff and… well… just keep reading, and Good Luck!</p>
<p><span id="more-939"></span></p>
<p><strong><em>1. </em></strong><strong><em>Avoid Bad Neighborhoods</em></strong></p>
<p>Basically, a bad neighborhood is a website that uses any unethical techniques to help increase their ranking in search engines in general. So don’t link to websites that utilize any of the tactics that I’ll be listing in this article, and don’t let them link to you.</p>
<p><em>Caveat lector: While you have control over who you link to, it is often difficult to get your site removed from a link farm if it has simply added your site on its own. If you find that your website has been added to a directory of questionable character, check to see if there is a &#8220;Remove Link&#8221; button, or try sending an email to the site owner. Beyond these options, your choices become much more expensive and time-consuming.</em></p>
<p><strong><em>2. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Use Link Exchanges or Farms</em></strong></p>
<p>You may receive an e-mail from another company asking if you will provide a link to their website in “<em>exchange”</em> for them providing a link to yours. Nine times out of ten this is a <em>“Link Exchange,”</em> and it provides no purpose except to try and increase the other site’s Page Rank and Link Popularity. Unless the other site has relevancy to yours, this is deceiving and malicious in intent.</p>
<p>Link Farms have the same purpose only on a greater scale. Links farms target companies with relevant content (real estate <strong><em>agent</em></strong> websites are a big user of this technique), and ask them to include a list of a number of other “out of state” companies that are generally in the same field. In return all of those companies will return a link to you giving you multiple links (farm links) from a number of different websites with relevant content. There was a time when this could work, but that was long ago (in a time far, far, away). This technique is viewed as deceiving and with malicious intent.</p>
<p><strong><em>3. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Keyword Stuff</em></strong></p>
<p>Keyword Stuffing is self explanatory, but for those of you that are new to SEO… let me explain further. Keywords are words that you will expect people to find your site with when searching with a search engine. For example, if you have a website that is selling “chocolate truffles” you don’t want “chocolate truffles” to appear in every other sentence. That is Keyword Stuffing… don’t do it!</p>
<p><strong><em>4. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Use Cloaking Techniques and Doorway Pages</em></strong></p>
<p>Cloaking and Doorway Pages are similar, but I’ll attempt to explain, in a nutshell, what they do:</p>
<p><em><strong>-  Doorway Pages…</strong></em> are “<em>keyword stuffed</em>” pages that are set to redirect to another page. This other page is the real page that is meant to be seen, but is poorly optimized. What happens is that the search engines end up indexing the keyword stuffed page. Before you go thinking this is a great idea let me explain that search engines are “hip” to this and have been for years now, although they may sometimes not catch it right away they eventually will and when that time comes around you can expect to be banned from their index. (Note that Doorway Pages are NOT Landing Pages.)</p>
<p><em><strong>-  Cloaking…</strong></em> is when your website detects who is visiting your website (search engine bot or real person) by the IP address. If your site detects the IP to be a search engine bot then it redirects it to a keyword stuffed page. Otherwise it will take the real person to the real home page of the website. Again… once you get caught you can count on being dropped from that search engines index.</p>
<p><strong><em>5. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Use the Same “Title” and “META” tags throughout your Website</em></strong></p>
<p>When you are developing your website hierarchy it should be obvious that each page will tackle a different topic. Therefore it should go without saying that your Title and META tags should be unique from the others across the site as well. Unfortunately this is a big oversight that a lot of people make, because they don’t want to be bothered with the tedious task of keyword research for every page, and then developing more copy for the META description tag as well as the perfect Title Tag and META keywords tag. Well I’m here to tell you folks… it’s worth the time. But don’t make the mistake of using this as a place for keyword stuffing… keep the stuffing for the turkey and use these places to lay down your targeted keywords to help search engines better index your website&#8217;s pages.</p>
<p><strong><em>6. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Use Hidden Text</em></strong></p>
<p>Ummm… Don’t use hidden text. What’s hidden text? Hidden text is when you put text somewhere on your website that is the same (or similar) color as the background color it’s sitting on top of. For example you place white text over a white background. Why not you say? Well think about it… you won’t be able to read it because it’s white on white. So you can’t read it, but guess what… the search engines can. So what some people do is use this technique to keyword stuff thinking that because visitors can’t see it then it must be ok. Right? Wrong! Once again the search engines are well aware of this Black Hat Technique and it’s only a matter of time until they find out if you are doing it.</p>
<p><strong><em>7. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Use Frames</em></strong></p>
<p>Yeah… Don’t use Frames! For those of you still living in the 90’s, don’t you think it’s time to update that website? There are many reasons not to use Frames, but I only need one. Search Engines have trouble indexing pages with Frames… That’s enough for me… Don’t use Frames!</p>
<p><strong><em>8. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Forget to Optimize Your Images</em></strong></p>
<p>Make sure to optimize all of your images for your website. One of the factors that search engines take into consideration is the overall download speed of you website. One of the main contributing factors to this is the size of your photos. There was a time in web design that anything over 30k was considered suicide, but nowadays with faster internet connections it’s considered great to be under 200k (80 – 150K is optimal).</p>
<p><strong><em>9. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Forget to Check the Download Speed of Your Finished Site</em></strong></p>
<p>Hey! Check your download speed to make sure you are within the limits that you pre-determined for yourself. There are many free tools available on the web to test this, just Google “website speed test” and pick one. This isn&#8217;t simply courtesy for your potential website visitors (which is a good enough reason to me), but search engines also penalize web pages with excessively large file sizes and slow download speeds.</p>
<p><strong><em>10. </em></strong><strong><em>Don’t Believe Everything You Read About SEO…Except for this of course!</em></strong></p>
<p>No, really. Everything I have listed here are things that need to be avoided at all costs if you want your website to rank high in the SERPs. But don’t just take my word for it. Do some research and find out for yourself. What you’ll find is that there is a lot of information out there that people will claim helps you, but until you try them it’s hard to know if they&#8217;re right or wrong, <em>“Black Hat”</em> or <em>“White Hat”</em>. That’s where NetSource Technologies comes in to play.</p>
<p>NetSource has spent years developing “White Hat” procedures that will help your websites reach specifically targeted audiences on the internet. Audiences who are relevant to your products and services will always bring your website a higher ROI. So if you find that Search Engine Optimization is a little too much for you to grasp, let our experts at NetSource Technologies Inc., take care of it for you and sit back and watch your ROI increase.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/10-rules-to-follow-when-optimizing-your-website/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>SEO Best Practices &#8211; Avoid the Google Blacklist</title>
		<link>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/seo-best-practices-avoid-the-google-blacklist/</link>
		<comments>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/seo-best-practices-avoid-the-google-blacklist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:00:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jamie Eve</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Online and Search Engine Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[white hat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.netsourceblog.com/?p=879</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Google is running a business.  Their business depends on returning the most relevant and useful search results to web surfers, so that they&#8217;ll continue to use the Google Search Engine, click on Google ads, and generate revenues.  Because quality search results are so important, Google takes people who try to cheat the system very seriously, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>Google is running a business.  Their business depends on returning the most relevant and useful search results to web surfers, so that they&#8217;ll continue to use the Google Search Engine, click on Google ads, and generate revenues.  Because quality search results are so important, Google takes people who try to cheat the system very seriously, and they have very well-documented rules that they use to identify search engine &#8220;spammers.&#8221;</p>
<p>Break any of these rules, and your rankings will suffer, or even worse, your site can be black-listed&#8230; removed entirely from Google.  You may benefit from a brief boost in search engine rankings, but Google always catches up. Trust me; you do not want to fight Google in order to get your website re-listed.<span id="more-879"></span></p>
<p><strong>Rule 1 &#8211; No Duplicate Content or Mirror Sites</strong></p>
<p>We all know that copying someone else&#8217;s text and images is wrong, and we&#8217;d never do it.  But Google also penalizes you when you copy your own content.  Say for instance you have a corporate website that has been around for 10 years, but now you want to build a focused mini-site for a featured product or service.  There is a temptation to post the same information that already appears on your existing site &#8211; product information, company info, etc.  However, Google views this as duplicate content.  And since the existing site is older, your new site will be ignored as a copy and won&#8217;t be indexed.</p>
<p><em>How to avoid this issue:</em></p>
<ul>
<li>Re-word and re-organize text.  A good rule of thumb is to be at least 60% unique.</li>
<li>Add exclusive content to the newer website, so that a significant portion of the site is unique.</li>
<li>Consider creating images for content that is not relevant to the search engines on the new site &#8211; like charts, technical specs, testimonials, etc.</li>
<li>Be sure meta tags and title tags are also unique.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Rule 2 &#8211; No Keyword Stuffing</strong></p>
<p>Google knows all of the &#8220;tricks&#8221; that black hat, or disreputable, SEO practitioners try to use in order to rank for keywords and key phrases.  One of the most common techniques that people are familiar with is keyword stuffing, or adding the keyword or phrase you want to rank for over and over and over to your pages.  There are many keyword stuffing techniques (see below), and Google&#8217;s algorithms will identify and disregard these techniques.  At best, you wasted time (and money, if you paid someone else to do it for you) and your rankings will not improve in the long-run; at worst, Google might identify you as a spammer and remove your site entirely from search results.  <strong>Warning:</strong><em> keyword stuffing may seem to work in the short-term, but Google always catches up with you&#8230;</em></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Gibberish Text</strong> &#8211; Have you ever visited a website that has introductory text on the Home Page that makes no sense? Instead you find yourself wading through paragraphs of keyword-stuffed text, typically with lots of links. Not only does this kind of text turn off your website visitors and reduce the usability of your site, Google will notice that your keyword density is unreasonably high.</li>
<li><strong>Invisible, Low-Contrast or Very Small Text</strong> &#8211; Instead of filling your pages with gibberish text that might look bad to your visitors, you may be tempted to stuff some keywords onto the bottom of your pages in very small print, or written in the same or a very close color to the background of the page.  Google is on to this trick, and can easily identify it.  In fact, you need to be careful that your well-intentioned web designs don&#8217;t have any elements, like captions or legitimate small-print, that might flag Google accidentally.</li>
<li><strong>Alt-Tag Stuffing</strong> &#8211; Another shady method is to overload your images&#8217; alt and title tags (the text that shows up when you hover over an image on a web page) with your keywords. Not only is this an easy method for Google to identify, but most search engines virtually ignore alt and title tags these days because of over-abuse of this technique.  The same holds true for some other HTML tags that can only be viewed by browsers.  Most experts agree that meta keywords and meta descriptions are not factored into Google&#8217;s rankings anymore.</li>
<li><strong>Invisible Links</strong> &#8211; One final method that some &#8220;experts&#8221; like to use, is to create invisible links in a page&#8217;s HTML code to keyword relevant pages.  They do this in the hopes of building what&#8217;s called &#8220;link juice,&#8221; or link relevance. The theory is that search engine spiders will read these links and factor them into your page&#8217;s ranking, while website visitors won&#8217;t be able to see them.  Google doesn&#8217;t take kindly to this kind of cheating though, and will penalize your page&#8217;s rank accordingly.</li>
</ul>
<p>The methods above can sometimes show up in your page accidentally or without malice.  Knowing about these potential hazards to your page rank can help you avoid any unexpected results.  The most likely to get you blacklisted and booted from the Google index is Duplicate Content, however all of them will be detrimental to your ranking in the long run.</p>
<p>The &#8220;tricks&#8221; below, however, are widely recognized as one-way tickets to the Google black-list.  They are employed by disreputable, black hat SEO &#8220;experts&#8221; who make outlandish promises of #1 rankings.  They&#8217;ll use these techniques to give you a quick and dramatic boost.  Then after you&#8217;ve already paid for their services, your website will suddenly disappear from Google.  Getting yourself re-listed will be an uphill battle and can sometimes take years.  So proceed with extreme caution if a service provider is using, or proposes to use, any of the following techniques:</p>
<p><strong>Rule 3 &#8211; No Doorway Pages</strong></p>
<p>Doorway pages are created specifically for spamming search engine indexes, or &#8220;spamdexing&#8221;.  These pages contain keyword optimized text that attracts the search engines, but when a visitor clicks on that indexed link, they are quickly redirected to a different page entirely. These pages are also referred to as bridge pages, jump pages, or portal pages.</p>
<p><strong>Rule 4 &#8211; No Link Farming</strong></p>
<p>Link Farms, or Link Farm Exchanges, attempt to take advantage of the weight search engines place on in-bound links to a website when determining a site&#8217;s rank.  Generally, the more in-bound links your site has, the more &#8220;popular&#8221; your site appears, and then the higher you rank.  Google in particular easily identifies link farms, and penalizes web sites with links on those sites, typically by banning them from the Google index.</p>
<p><strong>Rule 5 &#8211; No Blog Comment Spam</strong></p>
<p>This technique tries to exploit the same page rank weight placed on in-bound links in the above technique. However, instead of placing your site in a link farm, this technique adds links to your site on relevant blogs by commenting on posts.  In general, becoming active on relevant blogs and commenting thoughtfully is a respected and recommended technique for improving your search engine ranking.  However, using automated posts, making nonsense and/or unrelated comments, and typically abusing the blog&#8217;s community by only posting promotional comments, are all considered spamming. Google takes a dim view on them all.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/seo-best-practices-avoid-the-google-blacklist/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>10 Best Free Online SEO Tools Available Today</title>
		<link>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/10-best-free-online-seo-tools-available-today/</link>
		<comments>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/10-best-free-online-seo-tools-available-today/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:00:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ed Cehi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Online and Search Engine Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shared Online Resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keywords]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.netsourceblog.com/?p=715</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So you have decided to do your own Search Engine Optimization. Then you have most likely come to the realization that it’s nowhere near as easy as you initially anticipated. You have also found that it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to cover the gamut of SEO without the help of some sort of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>So you have decided to do your own Search Engine Optimization. Then you have most likely come to the realization that it’s nowhere near as easy as you initially anticipated. You have also found that it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to cover the gamut of SEO without the help of some sort of tool or software. So today I’m going to go over some of the free SEO tools available online, that I have found to be extremely helpful over the early years of my SEO education. Some of these tools I still use even today, so take notice… and good luck on your endeavor.<span id="more-715"></span></p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">1.    <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=sitemaps&amp;passive=true&amp;nui=1&amp;continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2F&amp;followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2F&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">Google Webmaster Tools</a></h2>
<p>Google Webmaster Tools is a great FREE SEO tool. Use it to research how Google crawls and indexes your web pages, and identify any problems that Googlebot encountered trying to access your site. Submit Sitemaps, specify your canonical settings for your URL, set your Geographical targeting preference, check top search queries, review links to your website and much more!</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">2.    <a href="https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal" target="_blank">Google Keyword Tool</a></h2>
<p>The Google Keyword Tool is a must if you are serious about SEO. Use this tool to research keywords that are important to you and then find out which keywords and keyword phrases have the highest “Search Volume”. Find “Gems in the Rough”, or keywords that you didn’t even think of, or your competition, then tap into untargeted territory and reap the traffic that your competitors overlooked.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">3.    <a href="http://www.google.com/analytics/" target="_blank">Google Analytics</a></h2>
<p>Google Analytics is a free online analytics tool. What I like most about this tool is that it gives me 2 things:</p>
<p><strong><em>A. </em></strong>Something to compare my statistics from other stats programs to…</p>
<p><strong><em>B. </em></strong>… and a firsthand look at how Google sees my website.</p>
<p>The best quality that Google Analytics offers you is it’s easy to understand interface. Google implements bar, pie, and line graphs so everyday people who don’t interpret statistics every day can better understand what is happening with their websites.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">4.    <a href="http://www.seoquake.com/" target="_blank">SEOQuake (Firefox Add On)</a></h2>
<p>SEOQuake offers a wealth of information at the touch of a button… or “link” I should say. This tool helps me track the progress of sites that I am monitoring. It tracks information such as Alexa Ranking, Google PR, Internal Links, External Links, DMOZ directory listings, Google, Yahoo, and Bing index listings, domain name age, Whois record, canonical listings and much more.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">5.    <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9403" target="_blank">SenSEO (Firefox Add On)</a></h2>
<p>SenSEO is a great tool to use when optimizing each individual page of you website. What most people don’t realize is that you should <em><strong>not</strong></em> try and target more than one main keyword or keyword phrase per page. This tool makes it easy for you to go page by page through your website and grades you on how you optimized each page for a single keyword or phrase. Use this info to make changes and increase your grade. Track your SERPs afterwards and make changes accordingly.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">6.    <a href="http://www.spyfu.com/" target="_blank">SpyFu (Free Version)</a></h2>
<p>SpyFu has a free trial, but if you want to get the full experience then you’ll have to pay for a subscription. The good news is that they do have monthly subscriptions, so if you’re just looking to try it out… shell out a couple dollars and test drive it for a month. As for me, I find this tool extremely helpful for getting a head start when I am starting to assemble a PPC campaign for a client and I need to know what is working for their competition. I also use it during my initial keyword research for a new website client. This tool can help save hours of time researching your competitors&#8217; websites, and helps you “hit the ground running” when you are ready to have your website visited by the public.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">7.    <a href="http://www.semrush.com/" target="_blank">SEMRush.com</a></h2>
<p>SEMRush is another great tool for competitor research, or even to review your own website. My only real qualm with it is that it’s more expensive. They do offer some lower priced plans, but they don’t offer much more than the free trial does. Because of this I say use the free trial for what it’s worth, and when your web venture starts to make a substantial profit… then spend a few dollars and invest in the “Pro (+ Adwords)” plan (this will cost you $249.95 every 6 months… <span style="font-size:8px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">this price is correct as of the date of this article 10/30/2009</span>).</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">8.    <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker" target="_blank">Rank Checker by SEOmoz.org</a></h2>
<p>If you sign up for a free SEOmoz account, “Rank Checker” will allow you to check your rankings for 5 keywords a day. It will also keep an archive of them for you. The reason that I mention this tool here is because it will show you the power of comparing your targeted terms on a daily basis without you having to log them by hand. The problem is that you are only allowed 5 terms so if you want more you’ll have to pay for it, but at the very least you’ll be able to get a good idea of the power it gives you. Great tool if you can afford it.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">9.    <a href="http://www.inspyder.com/products/SerpSpy/" target="_blank">InSpyder SERPSpy</a></h2>
<p>Same thing as Rank Checker, but it isn’t nearly as expensive. The main difference between the free and paid versions here is that you won’t be able to save your projects with the free version, and you can’t export the results. This means that every time you run a project it will be like the first time all over again, and you won’t have any previous ranking numbers to compare the new one to unless you record them by hand in Excel. I find this tool very helpful and reasonably priced if you&#8217;re ready to upgrade from the free version.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">10.    <a href="http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/" target="_blank">XML-Sitemaps.com</a></h2>
<p>Most free sitemap creators out there either limit you to the number of pages that you can include or have a confusing interface that makes it hard to execute. XML-Sitemaps.com is simple and offers up to 500 pages indexed for free. Use this tool to generate a sitemap and then submit it with Google Webmaster Tools. This ensures that Google knows about all of your pages and offers the best opportunity to have them all indexed (or at least a good number of them).</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/10-best-free-online-seo-tools-available-today/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Long and Short of It…</title>
		<link>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/the-long-and-short-of-it/</link>
		<comments>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/the-long-and-short-of-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:14:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ed Cehi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Online and Search Engine Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[improving a website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keywords]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.netsourceblog.com/?p=356</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;ve done any research into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you may have encountered the term &#8220;keywords&#8221; before.  I&#8217;d like to introduce you to an advanced concept in keywords and keyword and search engine optimization&#8230; optimizing for Long Tail Keywords. 
First, a quick overview.
Keywords are words that visitors use to find your website through the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><div class="mceTemp" style="padding-bottom:20px">If you&#8217;ve done any research into Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you may have encountered the term &#8220;keywords&#8221; before.  I&#8217;d like to introduce you to an advanced concept in keywords and keyword and search engine optimization&#8230; optimizing for Long Tail Keywords. <span id="more-356"></span></div>
<div class="mceTemp" style="padding-bottom:20px"><strong><em>First, a quick overview.<br />
<span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">Keywords are words that visitors use to find your website through the use of search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc…). These keywords can be divided into two different categories &#8211; “Long Tail Keywords” and “Short Tail Keywords.”</span></em></strong></div>
<ol>
<li><strong><em>Long Tail Keywords –</em></strong> a keyword phrase consisting of 3 or more terms that help you to more accurately describe a product or service that you are targeting on your website. For example, &#8220;Shania Twain Christmas album.&#8221;</li>
<li><strong><em>Short Tail Keywords – </em></strong>either one or two keywords used as a broad description for a selection of products or services that you are targeting on your website. For example, &#8220;Christmas music.&#8221;</li>
</ol>
<p>The idea of long tail and short tail keywords revolves around the actual search volume (amount of searches completed for any given term over a set amount of time) associated with that keyword or keyword phrase. The broader the keyword or keyword phrase generally means a larger search volume associated with it, and vice versa for long tail keywords. The trick is to find a number of long tail keywords that provide the most search volume and lowest competition. Together these long tails will bring you more traffic than the one or two short tails combined, and not only that, but the traffic you receive from them will produce more conversions!</p>
<h2>How to make sense of it all…</h2>
<p>What we have discussed so far is the difference between long tail and short tail keywords. Now, let’s review each from the perspective of numbers so we can make sense of all this information.</p>
<p>Below is a chart that visually demonstrates the difference in search volume between long and short tail keywords and phrases…</p>
<div id="attachment_360" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 378px">
	<img class="size-full wp-image-360" src="http://www.netsourceblog.com/wp-content/graph-Searches.gif" alt="Search Volume" width="378" height="124" />
	<p class="wp-caption-text">Search Volume</p>
</div>
<p>Notice that there are more searches made for single keywords (short tails) than there are for multiple keywords (long tails). This may make you wonder… “Why are we even talking about long tail keywords?” Let’s take another look at the chart.  Take notice of how there are only a few short tail keywords available for you to target, but there are many more long tails. The “Sweet Spot” is from 2-5 keyword phrases. If we target these multiple long tails, their cumulative searches will outnumber the single keyword that you are targeting. This isn’t the only benefit however.</p>
<p>Below I have a chart that demonstrates the difference in the “Average Position” in the search engines associated with the use of long tail and short tail keywords…</p>
<div id="attachment_357" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 378px">
	<img class="size-full wp-image-357" src="http://www.netsourceblog.com/wp-content/graph-averagePosition.gif" alt="Average Keyword Position" width="378" height="124" />
	<p class="wp-caption-text">Average Keyword Position</p>
</div>
<p>Once again you can see that it is favorable for you to target long tail keywords as it becomes increasingly easier to rank for page 1 SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). This is mainly due to the fact that there is more competition for the short tail keywords. The more competition there is for a keyword, the more difficult it becomes to rank high in the search engines.</p>
<p align="center"><strong><em>“More Competition</em></strong> = <strong><em>Greater Ranking Difficulty”</em></strong></p>
<p>Next take a look at another chart below that portrays the CTR (Click Through Rate) associated with long and short tail keywords…</p>
<div id="attachment_359" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 378px">
	<img class="size-full wp-image-359" src="http://www.netsourceblog.com/wp-content/graph-CTR.gif" alt="Keyword CTR (Click Through Rate)" width="378" height="124" />
	<p class="wp-caption-text">Keyword CTR (Click Through Rate)</p>
</div>
<p><strong><em>CTR (Click Through Rate) –</em></strong> the percentage of web traffic that “clicks through” to your site after viewing your search result in any given search engine. The CTR can be calculated by dividing the total “Clicks” your website gets by the amount of “Impressions” it receives during the same time frame. Afterwards, transpose the decimal into a percent by moving the decimal two places to the right.</p>
<p>Once again (notice a recurring theme yet?) you can see how long tails can help generate more traffic for your website. By increasing your position in the SERPs you increase your CTR. This is accomplished solely through the use of long tail keywords. What this basically means is that the more people who see your search engine listing… the more visits your website receives.</p>
<p align="center"><strong><em>“High Ranking SERPs </em></strong>=<strong><em> Increased CTR + Greater Unique Visitors”</em></strong></p>
<p>Finally, let’s look at what really matters, “Conversion Rate”. Below is a chart that shows how your conversion rate increases when visitors find your website through the use of long tail keywords.</p>
<div id="attachment_358" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 378px">
	<img class="size-full wp-image-358" src="http://www.netsourceblog.com/wp-content/graph-conversionRate.gif" alt="Keyword Conversion Rate" width="378" height="124" />
	<p class="wp-caption-text">Keyword Conversion Rate</p>
</div>
<p>Notice how the conversion rate is highest in the 3-5 word range. This is because 3-5 word keyword phrases are more descriptive. What do we know about people who use descriptive terms? Chances are they know exactly what product or service they are looking for. This tells us that if they find your website while using descriptive keyword phrases, the chances of them converting to a buyer are greatly increased.</p>
<p>For example, let’s say that you are walking through the local hardware store. You need a hammer. While walking past the aisles you look at the signs hanging above them. You see a sign that says “Tools”. That’s pretty broad, so where in the “Tools” aisle can we find the hammer we are looking for? Looking down the aisle we see more signs… one says “Power Tools” and the other “Hand Tools”. We know that a hammer is a hand tool, but there are so many! In the “Hand Tools” area we see another sign that reads “Carpentry Hand Tools”, and a series of others that read “Carpentry Hand Tools &#8211; Hammers”, “Carpentry Hand Tools – Ball Peen Hammers”, “Carpentry Hand Tools – Claw Hammers”, “Carpentry Hand Tools – Framing Hammers”, “Carpentry Hand Tools – Demolition Hammers”, “Carpentry Hand Tools – Dead Blow Hammers”  and so on and so on (didn’t know there are so many different types of hammers, did you?). My point here is… Who do you think is more inclined to buy a hammer from you today? A person who stopped at the “Tools” aisle and couldn’t see what they were looking for or someone who saw the descriptive signs and saw what they were looking for without having to walk down the aisle and fumble around for it. Almost 100% of the time the answer is going to be the latter.</p>
<h2>Conclusion…</h2>
<p>I have witnessed companies invest their advertising dollars in many ways in hopes of increasing their SERPs and web visibility. From pretty new web designs, pay-per-click campaigns, link building campaigns and more. Truth-be-told… none of the above is the stand alone answer. In fact, there isn’t a “stand alone” answer. The answer is SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and what I have outlined and discussed in this article is only one of many factors that make up SEO. The SEO conglomerate is what, together, makes it possible to generate traffic and sales for your company through your website. Part of this group is “Search Engine Visibility”, and part of search engine visibility is targeting long <em>and</em> short tail keywords together. We do this in order to generate the optimal amount of traffic for your website, with the highest CTRs and Conversion Rates, to bring you the greatest ROI possible for your company.</p>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, SEO isn’t a one shot deal. SEO is an ongoing battle that changes every day, and in order to keep pace you need to review, record and make changes accordingly on a daily basis. It takes time and effort, but if you can’t do it yourself we can do it for you at NetSource Technologies. Call us today for a free consultation and quote (1-800-709-3240), and let us help increase your website’s ROI.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/the-long-and-short-of-it/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Ocala Gentleman&#8217;s Farm Launches New Website and SEM Campaign</title>
		<link>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/ocala-gentlemans-farm-launches-new-website-and-sem-campaign/</link>
		<comments>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/ocala-gentlemans-farm-launches-new-website-and-sem-campaign/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:03:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jamie Eve</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News, Events & Announcements]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[search engine optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website launch]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.netsourceblog.com/?p=175</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Netsource design team is proud to announce the launch of www.ocalagentlemanfarm.com, a new website featuring a horse property for sale in Ocala, Florida.
This beautiful and elegant website describes the Equine Estate and the 58 acres of land surrounding the home. A gallery of photos are showcased on the hompage and throughout the site to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>The Netsource design team is proud to announce the launch of <a href="http://www.ocalagentlemanfarm.com/" target="_blank">www.ocalagentlemanfarm.com</a>, a new website featuring a horse property for sale in Ocala, Florida.</p>
<p>This beautiful and elegant website describes the Equine Estate and the 58 acres of land surrounding the home. <span id="more-175"></span>A gallery of photos are showcased on the hompage and throughout the site to give visitors a closer look at the property. In addition to creating the website, NetSource created a Google pay-per-click campaign managed by our in house Search Engine Marketing (SEM) expert. This campaign advertises the property based on specifically targeted keywords in order to generate quality traffic to the website. The SEM campaign also involves the building of strategic in-bound links, online press releases, directory links and listings, and weekly traffic and conversion reports.</p>
<p>The Ocala Gentleman&#8217;s Farm is a 58 acre equestrian property for sale in Ocala, Florida. The Estate features 4 bedrooms, a grand curved foyer staircase, floor-to-ceiling cathedral windows, and a 3 car garage. At the end of a canopied Oak drive is a brick equine facility and horse stable.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.netsourceblog.com/index.php/ocala-gentlemans-farm-launches-new-website-and-sem-campaign/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>