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Conversion rate optimization is what can make a big difference to levels of revenue from your websites. Revenue generates from not only visitors but also their actions commercially known as conversions. You might have numerous arrows in your quiver. If the arrows do not hit the bull’s eye, they are of no use. Likewise, the design and content of a website are the bets to trap visitors and make them take action on the website. If visits to the website do not convert into conversions, the visual and textual display of the website’s landing page needs a professional touch in look and feel.

The following are the USPs of a website’s landing page for conversions and revenue generation:

• Design
• Layout
• Visuals
• Copy or content
• Usability
• Calls to action

Conversion rate optimization is the optimization of these factors that persuade visitors to spring into action on websites. CRO is the latest trick for search engine optimizers, content writers and internet marketers to troubleshoot the problems in websites’ main pages targeted for conversions. Creativity, professionalism and business perspective are what make a success of conversion rate optimization projects. SEO helps fetch traffic and CRO helps build conversions.

What does Conversion rate optimization involve?

• Analysing landing page design
• Analysing landing page content
• Implementing required changes

Webpage Design

A website’s design is a most important factor influencing the action of visitors on the website. The way websites are designed dominates the look of the websites. Design is the very first thing that grabs eyeballs when a website loads and opens. Webpage design also consists of instructions for the visitors on what they need to do on the page. Color schemes, patterns, buttons, layout, etc. are different visit-to-action converting elements of webpage design. It must be professional, if you want it to be perfect. It must be convincing, if you want it to be converting. Professional design helps a website achieve its conversion goals. CRO experts come up with creative design ideas that really do wonders.

Webpage Title

Writing conversion-rate-influencing headlines or titles for webpages requires a synthesis of creativity and professionalism. The headline of a website’s landing page that is meant for building conversions should be as powerful as a magnet to pique the visitors’ interest. After a page loads, it is the headline of the page where a visitor’s attention goes right to. A page headline should be given a second thought before it is finalized. Then come the copy or content of a website’s landing page.

Webpage Content

If headlines work to catch visitors’ attention, content works to hold it on. Creativity and professionalism should go hand in hand in the content or copy of websites’ landing pages. If the design elements of webpage are instructions for visitors, the page content is an elaboration on the instructions. It must be highly motivating and influencing, clear and comprehensible. CRO experts analyze the content, identify the dull areas and improve them to make the conversion rate soar. Therefore, CRO experts work in close association with content writers.

Thus, conversion rate optimization of a website’s landing page makes sure to set visitors on a smooth ride from headline at the top to call-to-action at the bottom. The magic of CRO is not letting visitors think of what you offer but making them try the offer itself at the first go.

PDFs for providing information, offering education material and being used for some other purposes are in vogue. A PDF file is like other online materials such as newsletters, press releases and blog posts. The potential of PDFs as a spectacular displayer of e-content, graphical or textual or both on websites is being extensively utilised for promotional purposes. An optimized PDF posted on a website can make its way to search engine result pages.

SEO tips for optimizing PDFs

Optimized PDFs mean search-engine friendly PDFs. This SEO based promotional trick has hit the jackpot for many search engine optimizers and website owners. If search engines are gold mines, the optimization of online materials ranging from webpage to blog, press release, newsletter and PDF is the process to dig into the mines. SEO for a webpage or a blog post is the same as that for PDFs.

The first important do is making sure the names of PDF files are useful for search in search engines. The file names should contain the search keywords or phrases that searchers are supposed to use for looking for the files across the Web. On strength of popular or much used search phrases or words in the names, the PDF files are sure to be visible in SERPs. For instance, Eparadiseindiaseo.pdf is much search engine friendlier than 1357.pdf.

The title tag of a PDF file is no less important than a webpage’s title tag. Therefore, PDF files’ title tags need the same SEO treatment as that for other online content formats. Keep the character limit for title tags of PDF files equal to that for a webpage’s title tag. Adobe Acrobat comes with a description field.

A description of a PDF file’s content is akin to a webpage’s Meta description in terms of importance. It will get displayed under the title tag in SERPs. The description should be informative to the core and concise. It must be telling the visitors why they should click on the link and what they will get. On Acrobat there are additional fields like ‘Additional Metadata’ to be filled in with to-the-point information. These help PDF files get ranked in some search engines.

Keyword-rich alt tags make webpages with images search engine friendly. The same SEO trick can be employed for images in PDF files. The keyword-driven alt tags for the images that a PDF file contains will make the search engine bots index the website where the PDF file is posted. It is all about onsite SEO for PDFs. What are off-site dos for the same?

Links are the most important among the off-site details of a webpage. Likewise, PDF files can be linked back to websites. It is good for both readers and search engine crawlers. If the visitors host your PDF file on their websites or share the file on social networking sites, the file itself acts as a backlink and drives traffic to the website of yours.

Do you agree or disagree with me? Let me know. Waiting for your response or reply…

Google included, long back, the loading speed of websites among the website ranking factors. It is significant because Google distributes ranking to websites according to their loading speed. Site speed is among the usability metrics that help rank webpages. Good loading speed of websites assures of huge customer satisfaction and increases the number of conversions. Websites that load very fast are search engine friendly.

How important is the loading time of a website? It is a vital question from SEO viewpoint. An improvement in the site’s loading speed is sure to enhance the user’s experience. It influences the SEO of sites as well. Pages that take time to load lose their search engine relevancy. Poor loading time a website affects the volume of queries for the site. Slow loading of sites is the despair of many users whereas Google has introduced instant search service to help the users save time.

Reduced the number of HTTP requests – If the number of HTTP requests is as small as possible, webpages will load as fast as possible. Websites that wait for many HTTP requests take a considerable time to load. It is better, if the number of scripts, images and style sheets is reduced.

Combine all CSS – Combine all of the CSS in an external file. Link to the file from the head section of each webpage without loading it in HTML. The external page gets cached and loads faster. Like CSS, JavaScript needs to be handled.

Use CSS sprites – Using CSS sprites to combine all images in the background into only one image helps make webpages load faster. It minimizes the volume of HTTP requests.

Optimize images for the web – If you use Photoshop, you can simply click ‘save for web’ to optimize the formats of images for the web. Images with optimized format make a small file size. Websites with smaller file sizes are fast in loading.

Use Gzip to compress the page content – Many sites use Gzip to compress the pages and their contents in order to reduce the size of files by up to 70%. Browsers uncompress the pages and display their content for the users.

Minimize 301 redirects – If possible, it is better not to use 301 redirects. 301 redirects direct browsers to new URLs. Browsers wait for the comeback of HTTP requests and take time to load those pages.

Using server side caching and a content delivery network is another good way to make webpages load faster.

Among the things that a novice search engine optimizer must know before stepping ahead to do onsite SEO are scripting languages used by dynamic websites. Scripting languages are as varied as PHP, JSP, C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET. If a website is dynamic, it uses a particular scripting language. If the website is out and out static, it uses HTML. Usually, commercial or business websites are dynamic and use scripting technologies. In this context, ASP.NET is no scripting language. It is a part of .NET framework. Here are three different methods of checking the scripting language of websites:

The template file extension test is the fastest method of checking which scripting language is used by a website. Simply log on to the website and notice the URL carefully. If .php is the file extension in the URL of the site, then it is clear that PHP is the scripting language used by the site. If the file extension is .aspx, the site uses ASP.NET technology. Go to a website’s home page and notice the source code of the site in the browser. It is the quickest way. Look for such strings as ‘aspx’, ‘jsp’ and ‘php’ in the URL.

Make your way to Google for using the site command to check a website’s indexed pages. You can view the file extension of the website on the result page, if the site’s dynamic pages use any. This way to identify a website’s scripting language is not reliable because the search result pages do not always show the latest changes in the website. If the scripting language of a site is changed from ASP.NET to PHP, most of the site’s indexed pages may be shown using ASP.NET in the search results even after the change.

Another easy online method is to use the web sniffer tool that is http://web-sniffer.net/. Open the URL in the browser. Enter a website’s name in the bar labeled ‘HTTP(S)-URL’ and then click on ‘Submit’. The application will turn up with a box of information under the heading ‘HTTP Response Header’. The ‘X-Powered-By’ in the box will reveal the scripting language used by the site.

Once you have identified the server and scripting language of a website, sketch out an onsite SEO plan for the website accordingly. Check the previous blog post to know how to identify a website’s server.

Onsite optimization and offpage optimization are like soul and life of a SEO campaign for improving the organic ranking of websites in search engines. The former comes first, then the latter. Onsite optimization is an out and out technical do. Implementation of onsite optimization techniques requires in-depth knowledge of web servers as well as scripting technologies. A search engine optimizer should have this knowledge at his command to execute any onsite SEO project successfully. He needs to know whether a website uses Microsoft IIS or Apache. Which scripting technologies, ASP or PHP or Java does the site use? The art of tweaking the site is a most important know for novices in the SEO field.

If you are at home working on Apache web server with PHP and if you don’t have the knowledge of working on Microsoft Windows server with ASP.NET, you had better not accept onsite SEO projects for Windows server based websites. Doing onsite optimization for a website of which scripting technology is beyond your grasp is rather risky. You may damage the internal architecture of the website. You will be held responsible for it. This blog entry is an explanation on how to check the web server and scripting technology of a website.

Two Methods of Checking the Servers of Websites

Among the servers on the Internet, Apache and Microsoft IIS are mostly used. According to the survey by Netcraft in April 2010, 53.93% is the market share earned by the former while Microsoft IIS’ market share is 24.97%. You need to know how to identify the web server of a website. If you are knowledgeable of Apache, you will find it impossible to do URL rewrites or redirects using .htaccess with Microsoft IIS. If you are a Windows server expert, make sure checking if the server of the website which you are going to do onsite SEO for is based on Apache or Microsoft.

One of the quickest methods of checking if a website uses Microsoft IIS or Apache is to test the Apache error .htaccess. This technique is worth trying though it does not always provide the requisite information. Here is how this method works:

• First step – Go to a web browser in order to determine the type of web server used by www.eparadise-india.com.
• Second step – Type the URL of the site’s home page + .htaccess in the address bar of the browser. For example, http://www.eparadise-india.com/.htaccess
• Third step – Examine the results, with a press on the enter key. If the website is Apache-based, it will show a 403 forbidden error as the result, simply because the .htaccess is not publicly accessible. The result will also include information on the exact server of the website.

If you are not satisfied with the results of the first method, try the online application http://web-sniffer.net/ to indentify a website’s server. Here is how to use this online:

• First step – Type the URL http://web-sniffer.net/ in the browser
• Second step – Enter the complete homepage URL of the site http://www.eparadise-india.com/ in the ‘HTTP(S)-URL’
• Third step – Select ‘HTTP/1.1.’ under the HTTP version
• Fourth step – Select ‘GET’ to set the user agent as ‘Web-Sniffer’
• Fifth step – Click on ‘Submit’

The results including the website’s server information will appear under the ‘HTTP Response Header’. This online application provides reliable information. Follow the next blog entry on how to identify the scripting technology and language of a dynamic website.

Do you know, the brand name of your business can serve as the best advertisement for your products if the brand image of the business is maintained? The reputation of a brand or business is as much important in the virtual world as in the real world to make the owner earn mega bucks. The sky is the limit of the web world which is the deepest mine to dig out for tons of business leads. There are some parameters like quality, service and reputation which, if not maintained, can limit the pace of a business even in the online market. So, online reputation management is the magic wand for existing businesses and upcoming enterprises as well.

Brand image or reputation is not built in a day just as Rome was not built in a day. With the popularity of social media sites on an incredible height, there is no check on the online behavior of users. Negative online comments or reviews can mar the brand image of a company and adversely impact its profitability. It is a bitter truth that like any other thing, negative comments and reviews too creep into the search results on the name of the company. However, if online reputation is maintained on a regular basis, the business of the company can brave all odds. Online reputation management makes the Internet platform a stronghold for businesses protecting their brand image.

Online reputation management not only strengthens the base of established companies on Internet but also supports the fledgling business setups to grow up and spread online. The chief end of online reputation management is create an aura about a brand or a business to make the customers retain their trust on the brand, despite negative online reviews. In such an environment, businesses keep rolling in money and spread their wings wider. The larger online area a business covers, the higher is the level of profit. Benefits of online reputation management are too many to count on fingers. It is a continuous process to keep the wheels of a business running even on a rough path as a rolling stone gathers no moss.

Here is a list of potential benefits of Online Reputation Management -

• It holds a positive picture of brands to consumers
• It gives consumers insights into the quality of products
• It makes consumes feel engaged with their favorite brands
• It helps businesses cement their base online
• It bridges the gap between products and consumers
• It improves consumers’ perception about the products
• It helps companies reach out to target consumers
• It makes brands a known name on social media sites
• It promotes brands on the basis of their target keywords
• It helps companies win the trust of their consumers
• It improves search results on brands and products
• It makes positive reviews on brands and products go viral
• It makes the social media profiles of companies go viral

With the rising curiosity of youngsters from different niches to be noticed online, blogging has evolved to be a professional activity. Being out and out a 24×7 blogger, you need to update your blog site with newsy information from various segments of the World Wide Web. To help you maintain professionalism in the domain of round-the-clock blogging, the service of a blog editor is a must have. If you allow guest bloggers to contribute content to your blog site, you need a blog editor to keep up the quality and standards of the site. Moreover, the blog posts should be fine-tuned prior to making their way online. Many of my fans have asked me to define the characteristics of pro blog editor. This blog of mine is a response to their request.

Being Organized

Being organized is the first of all characteristics of a great blog editor. If a blogging editor is unorganized, he will end up doing nothing so remarkable to redefine the look and feel of your blog site. He needs to evaluate the relevance, quality and worthiness of blog posts that pile on in a heap on his desk. He needs to maintain the on-page order of blog posts according to their categories and tags.

Having Eye to Details

A keen eye to details is among the typical attributes of a blog editing pro. Attention to the minutiae of blog editing and management is an index to the professionalism of a blog editor. There may be a series of blog posts on a specific topic, but no repetition of a particular post without significant variations. The first-time guest bloggers may not be in the know of posting, post formatting and content approval process. The blog editor is required to deal with these bloggers to ensure they are abiding by the rules and following the guidelines of the site.

Having Excellent Communication Skills

Having good communication skills is a plus point in the profile of a successful blog editor. He needs to connect with and coordinate among the guest bloggers. Many blog sites are equipped with such online communication tools as Campfire and TeamBox to facilitate communication and exchange of ideas among the authors. The blog editor should communicate the objectives and guidelines of the blog site to the guest bloggers. He needs to make sure if the guidelines are followed and the objectives are accomplished.

Being Straightforward in Approach

May come times when there is no contribution from a few bloggers. Maybe they are sick or on leave. In this case, the responsibility to fill in the column with a post in order to keep up the regular flow of content on the site lies to the blog editor. He should not mess words while telling the bloggers in face about the shortcomings of their content.

Having Fundamental SEO Skills

Professional blogging entails the implementation of SEO strategies. Therefore, a blog editor is expected to master some essential SEO skills. He is not necessarily required to be a SEO pundit. He needs to check if the posts from guest bloggers are keyword focused. If needed, he should take pains to optimize the posts with search engine friendly key phrases while revising the posts. Examining the solidity of internal linking structure and the strength of keyword-based anchor texts in larger blogs is one of the SEO dos for the editor.

Having Social Media Presence

A blog editor is an online content editor. He should have a considerable contact base on social media platforms. Friends and followers from his social network will drive traffic and may contribute guest posts to the blog site. He can generate traffic for the blog from his own social profiles. It is a plus point of having a blog editor with presence in the online world.

In the present era of online activity, most internet freaks are nuts on blogging. Airing opinion, ventilating ideas and sharing thoughts is not the sole objectivity of blogging. Online identity building and money making are the other targets of pro bloggers. Many blogging pros earn a lump sum out of their blog sites. However, the monetization of blogs results from hard work that entails implementing certain monetizing strategies. The amount of money that you can spin from your blog varies with the volume of web traffic. A blog with good SERP, high visibility and tons of traffic can be easily monetized. Without traffic, no monetization strategy would work to your profit. I have made a list of mostly used blog monetization strategies.

Product Reviews

One blog monetization strategy is to review the product or service of a third party and post the review on your blog site. The review should be informative and attractive with a sharp focus on the features, functions and benefits of the product. Post such product reviews with images, demos and videos. If the review gets multiple views, either the product manufacturer or provider will pay you. In addition, someone looking for such promotional content will purchase it from you.

Affiliate Programs

Starting an affiliate program of your own is a strategy to monetize your blog. You should have a product on sale in order to kick off an affiliate program. It will let others sign up an account on your site to participate in the program and market your product. They will drive traffic to your site by marketing the product. You will pay them if they earn sales leads.

Google Adsense

The oldest of blog monetization strategies is using Google Adsense. It is what lets you display Google Ads relevant to your blog content on the blog site. You will be given a commission for each click that someone makes on the ad. The commission will vary depending on the niche that the ad belongs to.

Selling Text Links

You can sell links to other websites through the content of your blog. It is one of the effective strategies to monetize your blog and make money. If your blog receives thousands of visitors a day, business website owners dealing in product or service will purchase links on your blog site. Make sure using a nofollow attribute while posting links to other sites as anchor texts on yours. It will not pass the link juice from your blog to your clients’ sites.

Adding a Job Board

Adding a job board is a useful way of monetizing a blog with a huge traffic base. In this monetization method, you can earn from job recruiters on one hand and serve your visitors on the other. Let job recruiters post industry specific jobs on your blog site.

Creating a Membership Section

Having a membership section is a great way to make lots of money out of your blog that feature premium content. But, it takes a lot of time and effort. Categorize your visitors and evaluate their interests. Offer content after their needs and interests. Only persons who make payment for the membership can have access to the content that they need.

Consulting

You can offer consulting services through your blogs to make money. If the blog content of yours is meant to impart knowledge of a particular industry to your visitors, some of the visitors may feel need to consult you regarding the industry. Leave a note focusing on the fields which you offer consulting services in, on your blog and add a contact page to the blog as well.

A sudden nosedive in the search engine ranking of and organic traffic to a website is a troubling concern with the site owner. The strength of web traffic to a site depends on the SERP ranking of the site. Ranking and traffic, two most essential building blocks of a site’s success are directly proportional to each other. These are the pillars providing support for the search engine strength of website that sell products or offer services. There are several factors related to the design, content, navigation and internal linking structure of a website, that are responsible for fluctuations in the search engine ranking, visibility and relevance of the site.

Website Redesign

Frequent significant changes to the design of a site wreck havoc with the site’s visibility in the online search world. Updating the site’s visual look with the application of innovative webdesign techniques is good to stay ahead in the market that is red in tooth and claw. But wide disparity between the site’s design that search engine spiders have copied and the site’s design with major changes is the bane of the site’s visibility in the search engine result pages. Consult a SEO before having your site redesigned. Have the site edesigned in search engine friendly ways.

Changes in Content Management System

Alongside new website design, changes in the content management system of a site lead search engine spiders to confusion about the identity of the site. Content management systems too are on the way to evolution in function. Adapting the site to the innovation of its CMS can bring down the site’s SERP ranking. A change in the content management system means a change in the templates, URLs and navigation structure of the site’s pages. Search engine bots will have to crawl and index the site again. And, it takes time. Executing the CMS related changes in the site in a search engine friendly manner is a method to keep the site’s ranking intact.

Inbound Link Loss

In SEO, content is king while links are queen. Though, search engine bots crawl the content of a website. They take an account of the site’s link popularity when it comes to ranking the site in search result pages. Changes in the CMS of a site are reasons for the site’s link loss. Being unaware of the changes in the site’s CMS, other sites will link to the old URL of your site and search engines will view it as a loss of links. Many other factors are responsible for the loss of links. A significant link loss axes down the search engine ranking of the site. Many SEO methods are there to build organic inbound links in order to drive traffic to the site and signal the search engines to rank the site’s pages.

Content Duplicity

Duplicate content with different URLs to update a site confuses the search engine spiders. Sites offering product or service information are likely to get involved in duplicate content issues. Printer friendly webpage versions and content copy from one site to the other are causes for content duplicity. Search engines do not feature multiple webpages with the same content in their result pages. The search engine relevance of a site drops down if the site is found to have duplicate content. A SEO pro can help you manage duplicate content issues of your site. There are ways to check duplicity of the content.

A SEO pro is also a SEO doctor to fix the search engine ranking and visibility problems that a site suffers from due to the changes in its design, content, CMS and link architecture. The service of SEO experts is continuous support for the search engine position and reputation of sites.

The global SEO industry is thriving on the rising number of websites and the increasing demand of their owners for the reputable ranking of their sites in search engines. Wishing to carve a niche in this industry, many individuals are getting trained in the art of search engine optimization as well as the use of SEO tools and technologies. Link building is a most important SEO activity for website promotion. So, I have attempted to turn up with a tutorial on link-building practices for the benefit of SEO novices.

A reciprocal link refers to a mutual link shared between two websites of almost similar essence. Having mutual traffic for the websites is the purpose of building reciprocal links. A website owner needs to submit is website to the reciprocal link exchange directories. It ensures him good SERP ranking in search engines.

Three way linking is a special sort of non-reciprocal linking. The go at building three way links is a SEO method to create natural links that are highly relevant in the eyes of the search engine spiders. Therefore, the value of three way links is higher than that of general reciprocal links.

Two way linking is better known as link exchange, an alternative to the above-mentioned link building processes. This SEO is practiced on the community-based forums where the registered members exchange links to their webpage content. Usually, the sites listed under the same category participate in this SEO activity.

One way linking is another link-building method used by webmasters to boost the link popularity of websites. It is in fact a hyperlink pointing to a website having no link back from the website. Also known as inbound or incoming link, it is a one-dimensional way of website linking. the search engines consider one way links more natural.

Multi way linking is a hardcore SEO technique implemented for website promotion in search engines. Multi-way links are one-way non-reciprocal links from three or more than three sites. the latest algorithm of the leading search giants pays less value to the sites having a large number of reciprocated links but more value to the sites having a high percentage of incoming one-way or non-reciprocated links.

Incestuous linking is a search engine optimization trick adopted by webmasters to promote websites. Owing to the domination of Google and its PageRank technology, the websites having high strength of inbound links from the high-ranked sites with quality content deemed more important. Social media sites are a good source of inbound links.

Overlinking refers to too many of hyperlinks in the content of a webpage. A word of a phrase consisting of a few words in a sentence is rendered as a link. A single term is linked repeatedly in the same page. To make the meaning of certain words clear, they are linked with the underlying little information.

Link doping is the practice of creating a large number of hyperlinks on a website to get reciprocal links in exchange from the website. A person practicing link doping, hyperlinks to a site that he has not visited, in order to get a place on the blogroll of the site so as to inflate the popularity of his own site. The algorithm of search engines depends on the strength of hyperlinks to a site in order to determine the site’s influence.

A FFA or free for all link page refers to a webpage that webmasters set up to push up the search engine position of websites. Using a software application, they place a link to a particular site on many FFA sites in expectation that the inbound links from the FFA sites will add to the ranking of the site in the search engine result pages. However, this way of website linking is not in good favor of the SEO experts.

In the category of link-building practices, link baiting is aimed at enhancing the quantity and quality of links to a particular website. Described as “interesting enough to catch people’s attention” by Matt Cutts, link bait is a content based feature to persuade visitors to place links to a site from their websites. It is an extremely powerful means of link marketing. Only quality content deserves to be the medium of link baiting to trap social media traffic.