For the purposes of this seo challenge we are going to target the keyword “web design manchester”. Now this is by no means an easy keyword but it should definitley be doable. Performing the inanchor intitle search command reveals that the the keyword has approx competition of 40,000. This means that there are approx 40,000 indexed pages with the keyword “web design manchester” in the title tag. It also means that there are over 40,000 pages that have the keyword ” web design manchester” as anchor text from an external backlink. Don’t worry if this confuses you , just understand that the inanchor search command helps to give a understanding of backlink building competition.

So far so good, however remember that is not all. Once we have ascertained the strength of the keyword it is now necessary to look at the strength of the websites occupying the top 10 position. In order to do this i recommeded installing a plugin called “seo quake”. This helps us to get a snapshot of the strength of a website for a particular keyword. Have a look at the following screenshot -

We can see that the website occupying the number 1 position has a over 30,000 inbound links. This is essentially strong citation/votes from other sites and it may be very difficult to remove from the first position. Having scrolling down we can see that some of the other sites don’t have anything near the following number of inbound links. With enough time and hard work, we could attract these number of links and look at beating the postion of these sites.

Now this is not going to be an easy task however it is certainly achievable, granted it might well longer than the 60 days we have planned for the challenge but it will be very interesting to monitor.

The strategy which i will use to get this site ranked will be explored in great detail. For now just understand that it will be a combination of creating quality content, firsly to help build up a picture of relevance to the search engines and secondly to encourage people to link to us naturally. While we keep adding quality content to the site we will also work on building up our number of incoming links. This will help to build our sites authority in the eyes of the search engines and will reward us with higher rankings. The combination of quality content and inbound links has proven time and time again to be a winning combination. We will reveal every single step that we take and show you precisely how we do it.

So follow us as we show you how to rank a website for the competitive keyword

“Web design manchester”

Enjoy following us.

What is ROI?

Return on investment refers to the result from money being outlaid for a (generally) business endeavour. In internet marketing, ROI refers the success or otherwise of a marketing campaign and it is used as a measure of whether the cost of the campaign can be justified by the profits or returns from the campaign. This is most often used when people are analysing the success or otherwise of a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaign. When you pay for each click through from your ads, you don’t want to be spending a lot of money on something that will have little profitable return.

Should you be measuring ROI?

The simple answer is yes. If you spend money on advertising and it costs you more money that it brings in, then you need to understand why. The money you are outlaying should be working hard to maximise your business profits, which means you need to look carefully at what steps you could take to ensure that this happens. Your PPC campaign for example, may need to be analysed to look at whether it generates better results at different times of the day, days of the week or in different geographic regions. This analysis of your internet marketing ROI will provide you with the kind of data that you need to refine the advertisements you have on offer.

Options for measuring ROI online

The use of analytics is the key way in which ROI is measured to improve online marketing efforts. Analytics can help you to measure a number of different factors that are important to ensure that you achieve the results you require to make your business a success. If you carry out a PPC advertising campaign, then you may wish to use the analytics on that campaign to run different versions of your ads and assess which are more successful. That will help you to determine which combinations of keywords in your ads generate the highest amount of traffic and also the highest level of converting traffic. If you are running a campaign then you need to be producing results from the ads that you are placing online. PPC by its very nature costs you money each time someone clicks on your ad. If the internet marketing ROI is not going well and your ads are bringing in little revenue, then you want to be on top of this right away.

Taking action to improve internet marketing ROI

If your ROI is not looking as great as you would like it to be, there are a range of things you could do to improve this. Among the most important are the following -

Select more specific keywords – If the keywords you are using are bringing in a lot of visitors with a general interest about the products or services you are selling, then you need to improve the quality of the traffic you are getting. By choosing more specific words and sending out a more targeted message in your ad campaign, you’ll have more success attracting and selling to your target audience

Reduce the cost of the adverts you are running – If you can fine tune your ads to target the audience you are after, this will help reduce the cost of the ads as you will be offsetting them with sales, however you can do more. The words you use for your PPC (especially with AdWords) have a value attached to them. If you could create campaigns with less expensive words that generate strong results, then you will improve the number of sales you get in proportion to the click through rate on your PPC ads, which means a better ROI for your campaign.

Ensure that your ads match up with the pages they lead to – If you find that you get a strong response but you lose people quickly when they arrive at your site, then you may want to look at improving the page that visitors to your site arrive at. When the page where people arrive is not strong, then you will quickly lose their interest before you really have a chance to sell your products and services.

Through the use of careful strategies that take into consideration the internet marketing ROI of your ad campaign and the way it ties in to your website, you can boost your profits successfully. Should you be having any problems, then seeking help or finding ways to improve your campaign will be the first step to increasing your success online and ensuring that you have a solid return on investment.

To your massive success

Guy

P.S. Please link to us if you enjoyed this post on internet marketing roi

What are search engine rankings?

Each website that is visited by a search engine bot is assessed on a range of factors that make up the bots logarithm. These things are then used to assess the purpose of the site, what it is about and how much authority it holds on the subject or topic that it covers. Once this process is done, the site is then indexed by the search engines and it can be part of the list of sites that is recalled and presented when a user carries out a search. Different words and phrases are the catalyst for sites to be listed when someone searches a set of words or phrases. If you have done a search and seen the enormous numbers of sites that can be listed, then you will understand that there are only a small number of these that are at the top of the list. That is what search engine rankings are, the position of a site in that list of results on the search engine.

Are rankings important?

Most experts in internet marketing would agree that these search engine rankings are important. If you have a high ranking, then you will receive a much larger amount of traffic. If your site doesn’t rank highly, then chances are that you’ll receive very little of this free traffic. When you have a high ranking, you have a steady flow of free traffic that will reach you site, helping you to make more sales and increase your business profitability. If your site falls low in the rankings, you’ll miss out on this and it will mean that you need to pay out more money on other forms of traffic generation, such as PPC.

How rankings are measured

Search engine rankings are calculated based upon logarithms that are used by the search engines to index a site based upon the content of the site, its relevance and its ‘authority’. This means that the ranking of the site is done by establishing the content of the site and by looking at which sites link to that site. If you have a site that is well written and holds ‘pointers’ to the site contents, then you should find that it is fairly straightforward for the search engine to register your site and index it appropriately. These pointers can be things such as keywords or keyword phrases and their placement on the site, such as in headers and in site text. The other thing that is used to calculate the page topic and ranking are the sites that link to that site. If you have a link from a government site or an educational site, then this will help to boost your site ranking, as your site will be seen as a more authoritative site.

Tips for improving your search engine rankings

If you believe that your site is not doing as well in the search engine rankings as it could do, then you may want to consider taking some of the following steps -

1.Establish links with respected sites if this is possible (this must be done in an appropriate manner)
2.Make sure that you site content has keywords placed naturally and regularly throughout the text – just remember not to go overboard and stuff the phrases in
3.Check that your relevant keywords are in page titles and page descriptions where possible
4.Include description tags for any images included on your website
5.Look at establishing incoming and internal links that utilise your keyword phrases

Once you understand the importance of search engine rankings and you’ve established the steps you need to take to improve those rankings, then you are on track to improving your rank. With this improved rank, you’ll benefit from receiving more traffic and hence more potential customers to increase your business success and profitability.

To your massive success

Guy

P.S. Please link to us if you enjoyed this post on search engine rankings

About Search Engine Optimisation

In the simplest of terms, SEO is about increasing the page ranking of a site through the fine tuning on and off site aspects that influence site position in search engines. This is done by targeting keywords that reflect the site’s subject matter and purpose. These keywords are carefully researched, so that the words that your target audience use to conduct searches are the words that your site ranks highly for. The higher a page ranks for the chosen keywords, the more people it is visible to and hence the more targeted those increased number of visitors will be. SEO internet marketing is about reaching your targeted audience via the search engines, so you have an audience that is more easily converted to buying, leading to an increase in sales and profits.

Keyword research

When you want to rank highly in the search engines, the very first thing to do is to research the keywords that your potential customers are using to find products or services online. This is important because if you rank highly for phrases that nobody is searching for, then you are essentially wasting your time. If you select keywords or a keyword phrase that is regularly used in searches that your target audience uses, then lots more of those people will find your site via the search engine results. This is what drives masses of motivated buyers and a relevant audience to your site, which is exactly what SEO internet marketing is about.

Implementing keywords for onsite SEO

There are lots of different aspects that you should consider when you are implementing keywords. On site SEO internet marketing is focussed on the placement of the keywords on the site. The keywords should be included in page titles if possible, keywords should appear in context in one header, they should be part of the domain name if appropriate and keywords should appear naturally throughout the text on the website. When the search engine bots visit your site, they analyse the content on the site using a logarithm which establishes what the site is about, then indexes the site so that users find it when they do a search online. If you carry out SEO correctly, then your site will be indexed more appropriately. That means that your target audience will find your site more easily as you rank more highly for the best choice of keywords.

Offsite SEO, anchor text and back links

SEO internet marketing requires that you rank highly in the search engines and are correctly indexed for the most appropriate keywords. Offsite SEO is one factors that influences how the search engine bots find your site and what their ‘introduction’ to that site is. Backlinks and anchor text are two important terms in offsite SEO internet marketing. Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. When you have numerous links coming from other sites, there is more opportunity for your site to be found by the bots. If the links come from other high ranking sites or authority sites (such as .gov or .edu sites), then this will help you to rank more highly. Anchor text is the text in which the link to your site is embedded. This anchor text can play a part in how the site initially is viewed by the search engine. If you sell pet food supplements and your target keywords are ‘best pet food supplements’, then having your backlink originating in anchor text that is the same as your keywords will help to boost your rank for those keywords.

Once you understand the basics of SEO internet marketing, then you can begin to learn more about how to implement these things into your website. With successful SEO strategies and the knowhow to implement those strategies, you will be on track to ranking highly in the search engines and being highly visible to a carefully targeted audience of potential customers.

I have decided to look at keyword rich domains first because it is my opinion that they are an extremely important factor the search engines algorithm takes into account when deciding where to rank a website. Although I cannot say for the exact importance of them, I estimate (and many other SEO professionals agree) that the search engines may give them as much ‘onpage’ SEO value as 40 – 50%. While it can’t prove this, simple exercises time and time again demonstrate the value of keyword rich domain names for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). I would suggest to anybody who is launching a website to seriously consider choosing a keyword rich domain name. Let’s look at keyword rich domain names in more detail.

What is a keyword?

A keyword (s) is very simply a word that a user types into the search engines. Say for example I am searching for cheap flights; I may go to Google and type in “Cheap Flights”. That would be my keyword. It doesn’t matter if it is one word such as “flights” or even more keywords such as “cheap flights to New York”. They are still known as keywords with the longer ones known i.e. 3 to 4 words known as longtail keywords (more about them in another lesson). All you need to know is that any word or phrase that you type into the search engine is known as a keyword.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is a name of a website. For example Google, Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, Technorati are domain names or the name of a website. Every single website has a domain name.

What is a keyword Rich Domain Name?

A keyword rich domain name is a domain name that has a keyword or keyword combination in it. For example www.weightloss.com would be a keyword rich domain name, with the keyword Weight Loss. Another example might be www.printing.com, this has the keyword Printing in it or www.howtoloseweight.com obviously has the keywords How To Lose Weight in it.

Why are keyword rich domains names an important seo ranking factor?

As mentioned if it is my opinion that the search engines place a serious amount of importance on keyword rich domain names. If you do a quick search for a variety of keywords on any of the search engines you will very quickly notice that a high proportion of the top ten results have keyword rich domain names. Therefore it is quite easy to conclude that the search engines give keyword rich domain names a lot of SEO value. Now of course there are other ranking factors (which we will be exploring as part of the seo ranking factors series) but I ask the question, why if keyword rich domain names weren’t important are so many of them in the SERP*’s. To prove my point let’s have a look at the top 10 results of totally unrelated keywords searches on Google.

* SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page

Keyword: ‘Weight Loss’
(SERP)

1. webmd.com
2. weightwatcher.com
3. weightloss.about.com
4. en/Wikipedia.org/wiki/Weight_Loss
5. freedieting.com
6. jennycraig.com
7. mayoclinic.com
8. nutrisystem.com
9. lookcut.com
10. weightloss.com

Keyword: ‘Dog Training’
(SERP)

1. dog-obedience-training-review.com
2. uwsp.edu/psych/dog/dog.htm
3. cesarmillaninc.com
4. dogproblems.com
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_training
6. dogtraininghq.com
7. dogtrainingways.com
8. dneprimport.com
9. petco.com/petco_Page_PC_dogtrainingclasses
10. sitmeanssit.com

Keyword:‘How To Publish A Book’
(SERP)

1. soyouwanna.com/site/…/publishbook/publishbook.html
2. books.eserver.org/nonfiction/how-to-publish.html
3. writeandpublishyourbook.com
4. bookpros.com/bp2006/…/how_to_publish_my_book.php
5. howtopublishabook.org
6. onerbooks.com/paper.htm
7. ehow.com/how_107987_self-publish-book.html
8. lulu.com/
9. howtopublishabookblog.com
10. masternewmedia.org/how-to-publish-a-book-under-a-creative-commons-license/

Keyword: ‘Cheap Phone Calls’
(SERP)

1. cheapestinternationalcalls.com
2. cheapphonecalls.org
3. moneysavingexpert.com/phones/home-phone-calls
4. planet-numbers.co.uk/cheap_international_phone_calls.jsp
5. skype.com
6. telediscount.co.uk/accessnumbers.php
7. call18866.co.uk/
8. call2ua.com
9. sitenumberone.org.uk/cheap_phone_calls.html
10. wwcallback.com

Conclusion? The fact that keyword rich domain names constantly appear in the top 10 search engine results leads me to believe that the search engine give them value when deciding where to rank a website.

Tips when choosing a keyword rich domain names

When choosing a keyword rich domain name, you may find that many of the good ones are already taken, although you may be surprised at some of the ones that haven’t. Here are some tips to help you find a good keyword rich domain name.

1. Add something extra to the keyword to find an available domain name.

For example you might be in the weight loss niche and find that Weightloss.com has been taken (of course many generic keywords have already been taken). You can always try searching for Weightlosshq.com or weighlossmagic.com. You will find that the search engines have the ability to ‘parse’ the keywords out of the domain names, so you will still get ranking value from them.

2. Consider Using Hyphenated Keyword Rich Domain Names.

There may be some debate whether to use hyphens in domain or not. For branding purposes they are not ideal but for SEO value they can help. So if you find that all the non hyphenated keyword rich domain names are taken, search for some hyphenated ones. For example bestdogtraining.com might be taken whereas best-dog-training.com might not be. The search engines will still be able to pick out the keywords and pass SEO value to you.

3. Try searching on Deleted Domains.

You’ll be amazed at some the of the domains that people let expire or drop and may of them have keywords in them. Head over to www.deletedomains.com or www.justdropped.com and see if there any keyword rich domain names that have been let you that you snap up cheaply.

4. Try to use keywords at the beginning of the domain name.

If you can’t get the exact keyword rich domain name that you want, then try choosing a domain name that has the keywords at the beginning and put another word at the end. For example Seobook.com, has the keyword ‘SEO’ at the start and then finishes with ‘Book’. It can help when trying to find keyword rich domain names that may have already been taken.

That just about concludes the lesson on keyword rich domains. I deliberately chose to use this as the first ‘onpage’ SEO ranking factor simply because I believe that keyword rich domain names carry serious SEO value. So when you decided to do the SEO planning for your next website seriously consider trying to use a keyword rich domain name.

To your massive success,

Guy