5 Easy Tips: How to do SEO for your Website?

It is not surprising to know that more than 90% Internet users take the help of a search engine to locate a resource on the web. We directly login to very few websites without referring to search engine results page (SERP). This trend shows us how important it is to get your website on the SERP to attract more visitors. If your website is not picked up by Google, Yahoo or Bing you definitely have a lot to worry about. Building a website is no longer enough but what is required is to be visible enough for people to visit your website. After all only when your site has more visitors, it will convert into revenue and good ROI. 

Thus it goes without saying that search engine optimization (SEO) is very important. It is not difficult to make a website search engine friendly. Keen interest in the online medium, understanding how search engines index websites and foresight on how best to make your website SEO friendly will help you in many ways. Additionally if you remember the following 5 tips you can be assured that your website will become SEO friendly in no time:

1. Keyword Optimization: A thorough search of the relevant keywords that can apply to your website is a must to see success with SEO. Take out time and follow the trend over a period of time and see what keywords people use to look for different kind of information. You can use the Google AdWords tool for this purpose and you will see how useful the search engine giant is for you.

2. On-Page SEO: The way you build your website is again important to be successful with SEO. Once the website is designed see that your page title, headline, images and text have used relevant keywords. If these places have the targeted keywords, Google and other search engines will surely pick up your site.

3. Social Media Friendly: Today most of the Internet users religiously login to social networking sites. These are the places where you have maximum chance of increasing your visibility. Making an account in sites such as Twitter, Facebook etc. helps with SEO too. Spread the word about your business with social bookmarking and see how it changes your business for the better.

4. Relevant Content: Search engines not only favor keywords but also relevant content. Using the keywords appropriately and blending it with the article is essential. Grammatical correct articles with no spelling mistakes will increase your visibility in SERP. Additionally you can also create back-links from articles posted in article directories and that will surely attract more visitors. 

5.Do Not Expect Results Overnight: Do not be over-ambitious with SEO. Let your rankings improve slowly over a period of time. This will give consistency to your performance. When you slowly climb the rankings, you will be able to check for errors and correct them as you go. However, make sure you regularly update the website so that the search engines keep indexing you.

---

Know More about SEO:

Some Notable Tips To Create SEO Friendly Content

Five Best Keyword Research Tools for Better Ranking in Search Engines

Read More

Ecommerce Website: Most Important Tasks to Do

Ecommerce website development is something most businesses look for these days. Ecommerce solutions give them the opportunity target customers beyond their geographical proximity and sell products directly to the end user without having to pay anything to the intermediaries such as distributors and retailers. To make the most out of your ecommerce development you need to adopt the right strategies to stay ahead in the race. Here are a few important things that you should do once you launch your online store. 

1. Create XML Sitemap and Robots.txt – It is very important to attract search engine crawlers to your website and XML sitemap does it for you. You can upload your sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer. Apart from this you should also set up a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from indexing unwanted pages such as privacy policy, FAQ etc. on the results pages.

2. Set Up Google Analytics – If you know who visits your online store, from where, using what keywords and what are the most popular pages in your website this data can enhance your marketing campaign. Google Analytics is a free analytic tool which gives you valuable stats on your website. You can also set up goals and try and achieve this within and set time frame.

3. Use 301 Redirects – It is quite common for you to have multiple URLs for the same page such as http://www.mystore.com, www.mystore.com or http://www.mystore.com/index.htm. Now you should consolidate all this traffic into a single page and this can be achieved using a 301 redirect. This small tweak can help you rank considerably higher on the search engines.

4. Set Up Product Feeds – Feeds can be difficult to setup but is a worthwhile effort as this can drive in tons of traffic to your ecommerce store and add to your sales and revenue. You can create feeds and submit it to sources such as Google, MSN Shopping, Price.com etc. and this will boost the SEO score of your website.

5. Cash In On Social Media – Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are awesome marketing platforms and allow you to market your online store virally. You should set up a well-designed Facebook Page and create a Twitter account for your store and post regular updates on them. Apart from this other social media networks which you should target include YouTube, Flickr, MySpace and Scribd among others.

6. Create A Blog – You are aware of the fact that fresh and unique content helps your website stay on top of the search engines. You may not be adding new products to your store regularly. In such a case a blog gives you the perfect platform to keep your website updated. You can write product reviews, talk about the launch of new products etc. Blog also gives you a perfect opportunity to connect with your customers.

7. Customize Product Listings – It is a common practice to copy and paste the products description sent out by the manufacturers. But when dozens of other stores do the same it doesn’t add value on the search engines. Thus it is advisable that you write unique content for all products listed in your website and if you can’t manage for all do this at least for the bestselling products.

8. Localize – If the online store is merely meant to support your brick and mortar store you should localize your online store to figure in the local search results. You can do this easily using Google Places, Yelp, Yellowpages, CitySearch, Bing Local and Yahoo Local etc. This will give you the edge for highly targeted and localized searches.

More About Ecommerce:
What Features an Ecommerce Website Should Have? 
Is Open Source Ecommerce the Right Choice for Online Store Development?

Read More

E-commerce Website Development: A Necessity of Today's World

Internet has changed the rules of business and no business owner can afford to ignore it. Earlier business websites were mere information tool but with the advent of ecommerce website development they have transformed into a selling tool. Business of all sizes and varied needs look at ecommerce development as an effective way to sell their products and services as it helps them increase profit. It won’t be wrong to state that ecommerce solutions have become a must for any business in today’s world.

Reasons Necessitating Ecommerce Development

1. Flexibility and Convenience – Starting and managing an online store is much easier and flexible compared to a brick and mortar store. You can easily tweak your online store such as showcasing certain products upfront, offering discounts etc. A sizable group of people prefer to shop online thanks to its convenience and thus not having an online store would lead to losing them.

2. Infinite Market – Traditional brick and mortar business restricted you within a certain geography which could be a city, town or even a small locality. The only way to reach out to people was but opening more stores. With ecommerce website development you can cater to a global customer base even without having a proper physical store. This wide market opens up new opportunities for you in the market.

3. 24x7 Business – This surely has to be one of the biggest reasons why every business should look for ecommerce development. Your store would be online 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Customers shop in these stores from homes and offices as per their convenience. This means that you will be able to do business even as you sleep!

4. Scalability – Business throws up new opportunities at regular intervals and you need to grab them with both hands. Online stores make it easy for you to be in sync with your environment. You can easily start shipping to a new location or add new range of products to your store. This isn’t possible in the traditional business model of selling products sitting in a physical store.

5. Unlimited Shelf Space – It is a known fact that even the biggest of retail stores cannot sell unlimited number of products due to constrain of space.  Having a large store or warehouse adds to your costs which isn’t possible for every business. With an online store you have unlimited shelf space as you aren’t required to show the physical product to the customer.

6. Higher Profits – Ecommerce solutions can help you increase your sales and profit by many folds as you will be able to sell more products and services. For product manufacturers it is even more profitable to start with an online store as they can sell their products directly to the consumers without having go through the chain of distributors and retailers and share a percentage of the revenue with each of them.

7. Reduces Operational Expense – Last but not the least ecommerce solutions help in reducing the operational expanse of any business. You can operate with a small but well-trained team. You also don’t need large floor space and warehouses to sell your products and services which reduce the cost of operations substantially.

You can clearly see how an ecommerce store can add to the brand value and profitability of your business. Hire the services of a professional ecommerce website development company which can offer you customized ecommerce solutions. They should use the latest tools and technology in developing stores and also offering SEO and marketing services. Ignoring ecommerce would literally translate to writing an obituary for your business.

More About Ecommerce Website Development:
Is Open Source Ecommerce the Right Choice for Online Store Development?
Reasons to Create an Online Presence of your Business with Ecommerce

Read More

Optimize your Website's Loading Time with 10 Amazing Tools

Whether you are planning to launch a new website or you already have an existing one, Search engine optimization is vital to obtain quality traffic. SEO is quite helpful to make your web pages’ content more relevant, more striking, and more readable by search engines and their crawls. In the process of website optimization, it is very important to check the website’s loading speed. No matter how attractive and unique your site is, or how interesting your content is, nobody has the time to wait even for seconds to check your site is loading or not.

Today, some really useful tools are available for checking your website's loading time. These tools inform how long it takes to load a webpage on a web browser. Apart from informing the loading time, some of these tools also offer the comparison facility to test your website’s performance with your competitors. These tools let you know the objects which are stopping your website to load perfectly on proper time. Below are 10 amazing tools which are very helpful to optimize your website's loading time.

1. Pingdom Tools – Full page test: This tool loads a full HTML page along with all objects like CSS, images, RSS, Java Scripts, flash and frames/ iframes. Pingdom provides an easy to use site speed test that imitates the way a page is loaded in a web browser. The loading time of all objects reflect visually with time bars.

2. Uptrends: Just like Pingdom, Uptrends is also a complete page test tool which allows you to test the load time as well as speed of a full HTML page of your website including all website’s objects like CSS, images, frames/ iframes, Flash objects, RSS feeds and Java Script files.

3. OctaGate SiteTimer: However, SiteTimer is very similar to Pingdom tools but it is a brilliant option for those website developers who need to obtain a bird’s eye analysis of their work. SiteTimer stores information on how long each object takes to download, and how much data they contain. This information is then presented in a grid form.

4. Internet Supervision: It is a free internet web server monitoring tool that monitors the performance, availability, and the content of your website across the globe. It checks how your website is getting loaded in several geographical areas. This is a perfect option for those who are interested to know how long it takes to load their website from different locations in the world.

5. Website Optimization: This tool performs your website speed test and also improves the performance of your website.

6. Link Vendor: This tool provides duration of a given website. This value can be used to demonstrate the website’s loading time and then inform whether it is better to optimize the website or amend an ISP (Internet Service Protocol).

7. Site-Perf: Again a tool that looks quite similar to Pingdom but it moves a step forward by allowing you to choose the test server location and Max threads as per host value. With this wonderful tool, you acquire an accurate, rational, and useful estimation of your site’s loading speed.

8. Webslug: This tool measures load time and compare your site’s performance with competitor’s site. It measures the loading time fully from when the request was made. The best advantage of using Webslug is that it doesn’t require any download or any program to be installed. All you need to do is to just enter your website’s address and it’s all completed in your browser.

9. iWebTool: This is a simple but very useful tool. It tests your website’s loading time and compare this time with other competitors’ websites. This tool is considered to be a great tool for benchmarking. You to enter up to 10 websites and the results reflect websites’ size, the total loading time and the average speed per KB.

10. WebWait: It is a website timer that allows you to benchmark your website or test the speed of your web connection. It provides very accurate timing because WebWait drags the entire website into your browser, so it considers Ajax/ Javascript processing and image loading which is usually avoided by other tools.

Read More