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Web Genius Blog
New Web Genius Jumpstart Site Launched: www.rir.co.nz
New website launched recently for Rail & Industrial Resources: Supplying high quality tools, equipment and machinery for a range of rail, industrial and general applications throughout New Zealand and Australasia.
www.rir.co.nz
Posted by Richard Calkin on 25th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: New website launched
Article marketing is a very popular link building method...
Each link that another website has to your site can be regarded as a vote, but not all votes are equal. Links from pages that Google already regards as important are worth more.
Read the following excerpt from my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ and discover how article marketing can help increase incoming links to your website…
Article marketing is a very popular link building method. The idea is that you write an article and then distribute different versions of it to the various article directories such as: ezinearticles.com, articlebase.com, goarticles.com and amazines.com.
Because Google doesn’t like duplicate content clogging up its index, it’s important that the versions of the articles you distribute to each article directory are unique. You can do this by “spinning” the content of your article. This involves coding the content of the article in such a way to include multiple versions of paragraphs and sentences within the same article. You then distribute the article to sites that can interpret this code and choose a unique combination of content, meaning the article is different at every site you submit to.
Make sure you rewrite the content carefully and check that every possible version produced by your spun content reads well. Whatever you do, do not use automated content spinning software. This invariably results in articles that read like they’ve been written by a non-native English speaking three year old and they will not do your web marketing any long term good.
The bottom of your article features a “resource box” which includes your writer profile as well as links back to your website, and it is these links that can help your web page move up through the Google rankings. Some references for article marketing: www.uniquearticlewizard.com, www.myarticleexpress.com, www.instantarticlewizard.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_marketing.
To read more, you can purchase my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ by clicking here.
Posted by Richard Calkin on 25th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: The NZ Small Business Superhero's Internet Web Marketing Handbook
Link building is an on-going process and you should continually look to add more links to your site...
If there is one factor that is paramount in determining search engine rankings, it is the quality and quantity of other websites that link to your pages.
Link building is an ongoing process and you should continually look to add more links to your site.
Read the following excerpt from my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ and discover how link building can increase your website rankings…
Here are some of the ways you can build links to your website:
1. Suppliers and friends - Suppliers and other “friendly” sites within your industry are often the most obvious initial targets for obtaining links. Send out an email, or better still get on the phone and ask these businesses to set up a link on their website to yours. You could even suggest that you provide an informative article for their website visitors on your area of business which would include several links back to your site.
2. Develop content that other sites will want to link to - This is easier said than done, but if you can create website content that others will find compelling and interesting enough to refer their own visitors to, then this can attract a number of high quality incoming links. Some examples: you could include a useful online calculator specific to your industry; a free downloadable report with valuable information; a blog that features regular posts of entertaining and informative content; or just an article or two that others would find interesting, entertaining or controversial.
3. Distribute your content - One of the most popular ways of building links is to create and then distribute content around the internet which includes a link or links back to your site. As well as creating back links, this strategy also gets your name out there in front of potential customers who can find your website directly from this content. This can be a very effective strategy as long as the content you are distributing is of a high quality. This tactic has been somewhat overdone and has resulted in a lot of rubbish content being sent out in pursuit of valuable back links. Google has even gone to the extent of de-valuing links from content that it believes has been distributed simply to garner links, rather than to provide genuinely informative or entertaining content.
To read more, you can purchase my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ by clicking here.
Posted by Richard Calkin on 25th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: The NZ Small Business Superhero's Internet Web Marketing Handbook
“Having a website was crucial to the start of our new business…”
Jade Rental Properties - Web Genius client since 2007
When Cindy Foote, owner of Jade Rental Properties, first opened the business back in 2007, she realised that having a website was extremely important to building up a client base.
“As a relatively new company, we knew that having a website was crucial to the start of our new business. Without a high ranking website, our business would not perform as well as it had the potential to.”
“We’ve had a Web Genius website since the business opened in 2007, and would recommend it to others. We are happy with the results that the website is providing – otherwise we would have moved a long time ago!”
Posted by Richard Calkin on 25th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: Success stories
“The website has helped to ‘brand’ my business in this highly competitive industry…”
Aurora Psychic - Web Genius client since 2011
Although the website has only been up and running for a few short months, owner and operator of Aurora Psychic Readings has noticed a significant increase on the amount of enquiries her business is getting.
“Even though it’s early days yet, I have noticed a great increase on the amount of enquiries I am getting.”
“Getting a website has helped to ‘brand’ my business in this highly competitive industry, and provides potential clients with a reference point where they can view my testimonials and information and decided whether or not to use my services.”
“The website actually works! It has truly increased my profile, and I’m 100% sure than in a year from now, 95% of my enquiries will come directly from the website.”
“For those looking to increase their brand recognition and amount of enquiries, go to Web Genius! My experience with them was fantastic – they are extremely supportive, creative and efficient.”
Posted by Richard Calkin on 17th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: Success stories
If there is one factor that is paramount in determining search engine rankings, it is the quality and quantity of incoming links...
There are a number of contributing factors to having a successful website, however, if there is one factor that is paramount in determining search engine rankings, it is the quality and quantity of other websites that link to your pages.
Read the following excerpt from my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ and discover how Google is the key for attracting visitors to your website…
Each link that another website has to your site can be regarded as a vote, but not all votes are equal. Links from pages that Google already regards as important are worth more.
As outlined, this links-as-votes system was a key driver in Google’s emergence as the leader in the search engine market, and as one of the most influential and successful businesses on the planet in the past decade.
Want to know who’s linking to your website? A quick and simple way to find out which other websites currently link to you is to use the “link:” command at Yahoo.com in conjunction with the site’s domain name in a Yahoo search. Try this exercise for your own site, and also try it for the websites already created by any web designer you are considering using. If the sites they have built for their clients have only a few incoming links, it is likely the site they build for you will not perform well in the search engines.
But what determines a quality link? Firstly, no incoming link can do you any harm, but some will do you more good than others. Some characteristics of a valuable link are:
1. From a page with a theme that’s related to that of the page being linked to.
2. From a page that itself has a high quality and quantity of incoming links.
3. From a trusted domain - the longer it has been in the search engine index the better.
4. Non-commercial top level domains like .gov, .edu, .ac, .govt etc, tend also to be very valuable.
5. From a page with few other links on it (ie the value of the link to you is diluted by any other links on the page).
6. Non-reciprocal. If a site links to you and you have no link back to them, then Google will regard this more favourably.
7. A link that uses the keyword phrase that the page being linked to is targeting. For example if your page is optimised for: “Blue widgets, Eastville” then this is what the clickable link text should say. The search engine regards this external verification of the topic of a page very highly.
8. Doesn’t use the “no follow” attribute. While most links pass on a “vote” to the destination web page, a piece of code can be inserted into the link to prevent this. This is called the no follow attribute. Many blogs and popular sites, like Wikipedia, use the no follow attribute to prevent them being inundated with people posting rubbish content simply to get a link back to their site.
There are a number of easy ways that you can increase the amount of incoming links to your website.
To read more, you can purchase my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ by clicking here.
Posted by Richard Calkin on 6th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: The NZ Small Business Superhero's Internet Web Marketing Handbook
Keyword research to determine the best phrases to use is crucial in search engine optimisation...
Google ultimately wants what searchers want – result pages which list the best quality, and most relevant, web pages related to the word or phrase the searcher has keyed into the search box.
Because of this, a critical aspect of optimising your site for high Google rankings is to ensure that your web pages include the keyword phrases your target audience is using.
Read the following excerpt from my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ and discover how Google is the key for attracting visitors to your website…
Keyword research to determine the best phrases to use is therefore a crucial step in search engine optimisation. Get this part wrong and your efforts are doomed. It’s that simple. The purpose of the keyword research and selection process is to find all the different variations of keyword phrases that your prospects are likely to use at the search engines.
However, you need to be aware that some of these phrases will be too common, and therefore competitive, for you to realistically hope to get a high ranking for – at least in the short term. In other words, for many of these common phrases there will already be many well-established, trusted pages which contain these phrases in the right places in conjunction with other Google content optimisation factors.
Until you can match them in all these areas, you will struggle to break into the top 10, 20 or 30 listings capable of producing traffic. The idea is to find the keyword phrases that these sites have overlooked. Phrases that have at least some demand, but a low, or moderate, level of competition. These much more specific terms are both easier to compete for at the search engines, as well as much more likely to produce a highly targeted prospect.
Because your site will target different terms on different pages, you can target a range of phrases from competitive to not so competitive. And as we will discuss soon, you can add geographical qualifiers to your phrases so they only relate to a specific area, thereby reducing the competition.
The first step in the keyword research process is to brainstorm some of the main keyword phrases you would like to be found for. If possible, involve your staff and customers. Send out a quick email asking people to list the types of phrases they would use to find a business like yours. This is your seed list.
To read more, you can purchase my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ by clicking here.
Posted by Richard Calkin on 5th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags: The NZ Small Business Superhero's Internet Web Marketing Handbook
One of the critical formulas that helps contribute to a high ranking website is the right keywords in the right places...
Once you have the most relevant keyword phrases for your website, the next step is to put together the content so it includes as many of these terms as possible - in the places that make the most impact with Google.
Read the following excerpt from my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ and discover how Google is the key for attracting visitors to your website…
Page title: The page title is the most important place for your keywords as it has the single most impact of any on-page factor on your rankings. The page title is the text that appears in the browser tab at the top of your page, and is also the text that Google usually uses as the heading of the page’s listing whenever it appears in the search results. You need to limit your page titles to 65 characters, because this is all that Google lists in their search results. If it is any longer than this, Google just cuts it off, which is a strong indication that it is not paying much attention to any words after those first 65 characters.
H1 and H2 tags: headlines and subheads: The headings and subheadings on your pages are important to guide your reader through the text - and they are also important for letting Google know the important themes of your pages. The main headline of your page should use the <h1> HTML tag, and your subheads should use the <h2> tag. The main headline should include the page’s main keyword phrase, and the subheads should use the secondary and related phrases where relevant.
Body copy: The body copy in the paragraphs between your subheads should use your main keyword phrase when relevant, and as many of your secondary and related phrases as possible, while still focusing on the main point - persuading the reader that they should do business with your company.
Image names and alt tags: Images are essentially invisible to Google, but their attributes are not. The two main image attributes that appear in the code of your page are the file name and an alt tag, and these are good places to insert your keyword phrases. The file name is the actual name of the image file and the alt tag is the text description that is used when images are turned off in the browser.
URL: An URL is the web address of an individual web page, and the URL of the page you are on appears in the browser bar at the top of the page. As well as helping to tell Google what the page is about, getting your keywords into your URLs is important for helping your website obtain great results in the search engine.
To read more, you can purchase my book ‘The NZ Small Business Superhero’s Internet Marketing Handbook’ by clicking here.
Posted by Richard Calkin on 4th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
Tags:
The last six weeks have given our business unbelievable results!
Tudor Manor - Web Genius client since January 2010
The last six weeks have given our business unbelievable results!
"We had a website before signing up with Web Genius, and it performed terribly. We were getting very few enquiries from the website. We were paying to get next to no results!”
After signing up with Web Genius, Lisa found that she was still not ranking as highly as she’d like for particular keyword phrases which are considered quite competitive in the Google search engine – so the team at Web Genius put in extra time and effort to ensure her rankings would continue to improve.
“Once we had some additional keywording work put into our website, the amount of enquiries we received dramatically increased. The last six weeks (since the keywording work) has given our website unbelievable results! We are getting 1-2 enquiries every few days from the website”
“I have recommended Web Genius to a number of other businesses who are looking for a company who can guarantee direct business enquiries.”
Posted by Richard Calkin on 4th January, 2012 | Comments | Trackbacks | Permalink
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