So how far have SEO evolved through the years? If you have been in SEO for quite some time now, perhaps you’re all familiar with those days when the only measuring tool to assess SEO efforts is by a ranking report. Can you still recall picking up your top 50 keywords and put these into a rank checker? What about running a monthly report and establishing whether the 50 keywords ranked high or fell flat in the search rankings?

SEO Shows No Sign of Impeding Its Evolution

Now, what are the significant marks that SEO has truly evolved? Read on.

• Reports are incorporated on link building efforts.
• Started paying attention to conversion rates. Needs to identify what percentage of organic search visitors were filling out lead forms and/or purchasing products from your site.
• Integrating call-tracking and looking at conversion path for one goal – incorporate multi-channel conversion tracking.
• Incorporating boost in natural or organic search traffic from web analytics report.
• Categorizing branded vs. non-branded keyword traffic.

On to the Next Step—SEO Brand Building

The direction when we are heading next seems infinite and yes, promising! Well, if you witnessed the traditional marketing, you’ll get what I mean. Marketing efforts are no longer limited to television, radio and print advertising. It is indeed amusing to ponder where we are heading next. Today, SEO incorporates innovative ways to create and promote content such as video (YouTube views), blog content that goes viral, Infographics and PR relations.

Talking About Brand Building

In terms of brand building, Google makes it more interesting to build a brand in today’s digital marketplace.

Long before, brand building followed a simple formula: Reach (the number of different people who are exposed to the message at least once) X Frequency (the number of times they are exposed to the message) is equivalent to Gross Rating Points (pertains to your marketing campaign’s effectiveness and value.) You know, this formula may be considered obsolete by most marketers. However, it seems that SEO has evolved to the point where it brings us back to this basic formula of reach and frequency once again.

That’s right! Even Google AdWords has promoted reach and frequency metric for CPM-based ad products/ services. So if Google is discussing about it, well most likely, reach and frequency metric has impact in Google’s algorithm. Perhaps we should take this metric as an additional metric to evaluate our SEO efforts, and not just a mere replacement. What do you think?

If you are a beginner in SEO and have nearly no idea how it works, then this article is for you. Now, if you think you are picking up SEO bad habits since your conversion page becomes ineffective, this could be a nice refresher course too. First off, a landing page can make or break your SEO strategy because it is a decisive step in the conversion funnel.

Let’s discuss some top tips on designing an effective landing page.

1. Convert Prospects Into Paying Customers

It is imperative to have a specific call to action. Keep in mind that your goal here is to get new customers, thus driving prospects to your landing page is just an intervening step to realize this end goal.

• Design your landing pages to get a prospective customer to take action. You must present a tasty offer to close a sale.
• Make the landing page special by setting the offer copy and related call to action with the rest of the page.
• Catch your prospective customer’s attention by using lines above and below, contrast and/or a box around the content you want them to focus on.
• Lastly, spell out exactly what can the visitor get from filling out the form or clicking on the link. Make a relevant and interesting offer.

2. Keep On-Page Content and Call to Action with Your Off-Page Proposal Aligned

Visitors may have gotten to your landing page from various sources, take for example your pay-per-click ad, a comparison-shopping engine or probably an article or blog post written by a third-party. With this in mind, take note that visitors may already set an expectation in mind before they would even land on your page. Do you legwork to identify your visitors’ intent and expectations.

3. Minimize distractions! Reduce Text and Simply Your Design.

Avoid using different font colors, font styles and sizes on your page. If possible, refrain from using interactive rich-media content, even images. You may use any of it only when it can significantly convey pertinent information and can directly shore up your conversion goal.

Did you know that plain landing pages are often the most effective conversion drivers? Many studies have shown that landing pages with less content often get higher conversion rates. Make your landing page readable by using simple headlines and brief bullet lists. Avoid long self-promoting marketing talk because oftentimes people won’t read it anyway. Instead, provide a link to supporting pages for the in depth information.

4. Use Images with Caution

Using images is a great idea to provide some visual candy but make sure the image is not too large and not too complex. In other words, keep it neat and simple. Use a caption.

5. Promote recognition by showing Brand Validation

Of course, people always feel more comfortable and secure if they sense an affinity for your product. Use logos of trusted and prominent client brands and/or include badges of media sources that covered your company. Show positive testimonials from your existing clients. Reduce anxiety for your prospective customers by using money-back guarantee seals, acceptable payment methods, safe shopping seals, and more.

6. Test various elements of your landing page.

Remember, the key to continuous improvement is through repetitive testing and tweaking.

In 1996, an idea was brought into mind, which is to use links to determine the importance of individual web pages, and in 1998, this was substantialized emerging into a company we now know as Google. Even up to date, Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful, which it has maintained. However, on the 10th of January, 2012, Google moved up the trend to include personalized and seemingly a social search engine as it launched a new SEO, “Google Search Plus Your World”.

Accordingly, Google opt to expand its original search from “universal” feeds, to “personalized” information, that would include photos, blogs, and profiles of people connected to or whom the user follows. Technically speaking, Google search engine is entering the world of social networking sites garnering several complaints from most critics and even social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter.

Google taking in the “bait” from Critics

It is a fact, social networking companies are at the brink of outranking the use of search engines. This might have been seen by the owners of Google, and might have threatened the company so it ought to establish its own social networking SEO. Since launching of Google Plus Your World, Google harvested a lot of criticisms. Facebook posted, and Twitter twitted, fighting Google’s way to social networking quoting this step as “doing away with Evil”. It was even marked “ridiculous” by Facebook bloggers, saying that “Google is facing a dire situation with competition, which led them to take a stupid decision.” Well, Google’s supporters have their own say, claiming that, “Google is just taking in a new step and going with the trend, and logging in with Goggle+ is optional, and users have the choice.”

Summing up the arguments, critics are vigilant on the fact that Google is losing its best feature that made it the world’s best search engine. And that is, RELEVANCE. Originally speaking, all the results that appear on top of the ranks once a query is entered on the search engine are greatly relying on the “keywords” entered. That is, the more relevant they are with the query, the higher they are ranked. With the launch of “personalized” search, users will find their way to having results that are lacking relevance since the results that will appear are highly related to facts they only related to.

Another important point of argument is CONTEXT. Accordingly, there are three types of queries; first is Navigational which seeks to locate a specific webpage. Second is Informational queries which tracks information sought, and lastly, Transactional queries, which is ought to download, purchase a marketed product. With the use of Google Search Plus Your World, the results regarding all of these 3 types of queries are lacking Substance. For instance, a user claimed that when he/she used Google + for an item, the results that topped the ranks were mostly blogs and posts from persons he/she knows of. This turned the tables for more contextual searches. Accordingly, the results with Google Search Plus aren’t improving the search query intent, instead their relevance is more connected to whom the user is connected to. For most part, the results ignore the query type and erase the fulfillment of the searcher’s intent.

Concluding the Issue

As imagined, Google Plus’ personalized search engine is continuously being tweaked and has a lot of room for improvements. But as of the moment, the current version is a way stripped down the version of search engines people have foreseen ten years ago. Nonetheless, Google’s intention and idea of going with the trend doesn’t sound that bad at all, as supported even by Facebook and Twitter users. Google might want to add considerations regarding this new SEO.

You can definitely find a lot of web tools in the internet that can help you out with your SEO campaigns. In line with this, here are the 3 most popular web tools you can use to ease your SEO tasks and ensure tons of bucks in the forthcoming!

WebsiteGrader.com

If you are looking for a great SEO tool that can help you outrank your competitors, Websitegrader.com is a great choice. The best news about websitegrader.com is that it’s free! You can use it anytime you wanted and as long as you need it.

What can it do?

• It can help you get a top spot in the Google rankings. You know how important it is to rank higher. Hence, you should start navigating this web tool now to personally experience its benefits.
• Boost your website. WebsiteGrader is designed and developed to help you build or create a more competitive website that you needed the most for your SEO campaign.

WebsiteGrader provides you with a detailed report or score which includes different aspects like SEO, social popularity, traffic and other technical factors that are relevant. Not to mention that it gives fundamental and practical advices on how you can manage to improve your business.

SEOmoz

SEOmoz provides tons of features that could definitely benefit you and your business. One of the key features that you can totally fall in love with SEOmoz has something to do with determining your ranking. Aside from this SEOmoz also provides basic tips and tactics on how you can improve your website so you can increase your conversions. This is given by SEOmoz for free. But if you want to get more out of this SEO tool, you can sign up to be SEOmoz PRO. Being SEOmoz PRO will entitle you to access all your needed tools for your SEO campaign. However, you have to pay for it.

Raven SEO Tools

Raven SEO Tools could be your great partner for your SEO campaign. This tool helps you with your regular SEO tasks that include link management and building your keyword lists. Raven SEO Tools also helps you check your rankings and provide sufficient information that can help you improve your website. Rank checking is definitely important especially if you want to ensure that you stay on the top spot all the time.

These 3 web tool sets can help you big time especially if you know how to properly utilize its features. However, these are only tools, you still play the most important role in boosting your business!

Let’s face it; many are not happy with their organic or natural search engine rankings. And these are the same people who are obsessing about gaining high ranks in the search engines.

The logic is simple, if you are dead serious about attaining high ranks in the search engines that you desire – invest more time, energy and resources to get what you want.

Maybe at this point, you are already decided to invest for some good SEO. That means you have to understand that the most important thing in SEO is to find out what keywords are your target market looking for. Because, in SEO the CLIENT is your PRIORITY.

After you have identified the keywords and information your target market seeks for, the next step is to create valuable content for your client.

• Create high quality, catchy, interesting and very useful content.
• Create more high quality, catchy, interesting and very useful content.
• While at it, create more high quality, catchy, interesting and very useful content.

The point is simple. It doesn’t take skyrocket science to explain that all you need is quality articles. Good writing and nothing more but good writing that is relevant to your clients. Finding the right keywords and writing some relevant content about is SEO – soon rankings will naturally happen. But, of course it takes time and effort – lots of it! Your goal is simple; you want the visitors to steer away from that back button. And with the passion to create engaging content that persuades each visitor to click that contact button you can achieve what you want.

Sadly, not everyone is willing to spend much on that department. Patience and perseverance is a gift not everyone is blessed with. They opt for these shortcuts that give them no favourable results:

1. Changing keywords, descriptions and titles hoping that it will lead them to the high ranks in search engines – A change in the keywords, descriptions and titles alone does not guarantee positive results. Descriptions and titles should always be page specific.
2. More blogs means higher ranks! Quality content works, nonsensical regurgitated ones does not. Blogging per se does not improve ones ranks. Quality overrides quantity in SEO.
3. Linking to everyone – Google is smart enough to identify that you are linking to unrelated websites that gives no value.

The truth is, you, without the professional help of SEO specialists can SEO your WordPress website. So that, the target market that you’ve been eyeing can find you. Just write about what they want.

Most of the time online business enthusiasts focus solely on SEO when they try to increase web traffic. Sure, proper SEO is a significant element in having successful website traffic. However, most of them do not realize that there is a myriad of free other sources to drive targeted website traffic.

When aiming for increase visibility and traffic there are few things that need to be considered. The following are some:

• Get Listed – The first step in reaching your dreams of reaching high website traffic is to be listed on the top search engines and portals. Another equally important thing is to track and monitor listings; basically, this is to ensure that you will be aware for any drops or changes in your ranking. That means you will be able to react and take actions accordingly. This step may take a couple of months especially for new sites.
• Smart Linking – Request for smart linking otherwise know as reciprocal links with complimentary sites. But, be careful not to fall for link farms of linking schemes because these sites are potentially harmful for your site. Most of the top engines utilise an algorithm that aims to give a certain site a popularity boost. Also, they have a way to detect linking programs that control search engine rankings effectively. It is therefore smart to include a correctly implemented linking campaign in your marketing strategies.
• Advertisement – Advertising is still the single most effective way to reach your target market. Therefore, if you are in the hunt for a local market, advertising your web address in the local newspapers is a smart move. On the other hand, if you are seeking for a wider range of market, advertising in subject specific magazines or industry publication is the marketing choice for you. Offline advertising is an effective way of reaching to your market, who may not yet realize that they need you. Nowadays, SEO alone is no longer enough to increase Internet exposure.
• Relevant Content – Daily relevant, rich and valuable content blog postings in your site, which is potentially relevant to readers, can be a viral marketing methodology. In terms of building website awareness, viral marketing is proven to be exceptionally successful.
• Investment – Getting found and establishing a name online does not happen overnight. In fact, this process becomes more complicated every single day. Time, effort and money is the key to your success. There are literally millions of online pages online in the Internet and you really have to consistently, continually work at having even the slightest exposure – for perpetuity moving ahead from your competitors.

Google Rankings is what everybody in the SEO and online marketing biz is most concerned about. In fact everyone is concerned about their Google Rankings. Google Rankings shows a list of web pages or websites according to the most viewed sites. In other words it is a system made for ranking websites which was developed and made by Google itself. The highest ranking you get with Google Rankings the highest possibility you earn big from your website.

How to Improve your Google Rankings

In reality, you cannot actually determine the exact and accurate formula Google use for Google Rankings. However, you can always do something to improve your rank. One of the most effective ways is the Search Engine Optimization or often called SEO.

In line with this, here are some tips on how you can outrank your competitors:

1. Always name your pages – It is very vital that you keep your pages named as Google only displays search outputs using the website’s page titles. And if your web page would appear untitled, you cannot expect people to click on it or visit it from there. Most people would look at it as spam.
2. Know the value of link building – Since Google always looks for hyperlinks, it is essential that you keep on linking your websites to different organizations and other web pages. This can definitely improve your ranking.
3. Choose the right keywords – Another great tip as well is to choose the right keywords to use. In addition, you must not focus on using a single word. Instead, use keyword phrases. You can consider other people’s perspective and try to ask some people around you on what could be the best keyword phrases you should use.
4. Maintain the right keyword density – If you want your website to be exposed as much as it can be, you should not forget about the keyword density. Remember, good SEOs know the right amount of keyword density to use.

Things That May Affect your Google Rankings

There are many things that can affect your Google Rankings. If you are new to SEO marketing, you might be ignoring them without knowing that they play an important role to keeping you on the top rank of search engine rankings like that in Google. Some of the most common factors that may affect Google Rankings include keywords in URL, Domain name, Header, Title Tag, Meta tag, Keyword density, links, etc. Another great factor is the freshness of your contents. If you want to stay on top of Google Rankings you should not forget to keep your contents fresh and duly updating is certainly a must.

The only thing that should matter when concerning about Google rankings is how you can improve or keep your rankings high at all times!

You can certainly find a lot of web programs and tools over the internet which specializes on helping you with finding the best and most lucrative keywords you can use. This web tools are called keyword analysis tools. One of the most popular among these tools is called Google Adwords: Keyword Tools which work to create or build keyword list by considering the search volume and the number of site visitors. This keyword analysis tool works best with Google Adwords Traffic Estimator which works primarily in assessing how much visitors you can get or the web page can get when you use the keywords or keywords phrases that the Keyword Tool suggests you to use.

Most web tools in the internet are being offered to SEOs for a very expensive price. So the best benefit you can get from Google Adwords is you can use it without spending a dime! You can certainly use it for free. Google Adwords Traffic Estimator Tool lets you calculate approximately the relevant keywords value. By value it means the amount of traffic you can out of it. The calculation will be based from a single paid advertisement via Google Adwords.

Pros and Cons

Like any other web tools you know that exist today, Google Adwords: Traffic Estimator also has its upsides and downsides. It is always important that upon seeing its pros and cons and you decided to use it for your business improvement, you can ensure that its advantages can definitely offset its setbacks.

One of the most obvious advantages of Google Adwords Traffic Estimator is its free. What could you lose upon using it if you won’t have to spend a penny using it? If it influences your decision, then that’s another story. Next benefit you can get from it is that you’ll be able to calculate the number of visitors you’ll have if you use a particular keyword or keyword phrase. In addition, you’ll be able to set a limit for your daily expense on clicks (CPC).

On the other hand, the only apprehension you can have in using Google Adwords Traffic Estimator is the fact that the results you can get out of it are all estimations. You can never be sure that the data you get is accurate enough to rely on it. But the good news still is that you get to have an idea so you can be guided.

How to Use It

To improve your current online marketing organization, you need to include Google Adwords Traffic Estimator Tool to your list of helpful tools to use. You will need to log in to it. Next step is to enter the relevant keywords or phrases you may get from your keyword tool. Do not forget to choose your desired market location and language on the “Advanced Options and Filters” section.