Search Engine Optimisation is a science that takes many years to learn and master, additionally the technology involved is continually developing and changing. Therefore, it isn’t something that everyone can do however, there are certainly a few things you can do to help get your website ranked higher in Search Engines.
With online presence becoming increasingly competitive it is vitally important to get your website highly ranked. The top ten tips below from Adam Price, MD of SEO Sitebuilder.com outline the key factors you should examine closely to ensure an effective online presence.
1. Content is King!
It is in the search engines best interests to highly rank websites that people will actually like and gain benefit from. Therefore you need to ensure that your website provides valid information for the visitors. Generally a 5 page website would not be classed as an information resource and the search engines will be looking for more, so make sure you provide enough content to make it worth while for people to visit.
2. Keep on topic!
If you are selling garden furniture on your website keep on this theme – the easiest way to remember it is – ‘1 website – 1 theme, 1 page – 1 topic’ Don’t try to promote all your different businesses on one website. This will dilute the power of your keyphrases and content.
3. Don’t try to fool them!
The search engines are becoming extremely intelligent and are fully aware of all the rogue techniques that can be used to try and fool them. You need to avoid using hidden text as if the search engines spot any trickery you will be marked down and sometimes even blacklisted.
4. Choose an SEO partner wisely!
I’m afraid to say but there are many ‘cowboys’ in this industry that will try to convince you that they know what they are doing when really they don’t have a clue. The best way check SEO companies is to ask to see results… what have they done for other companies? Can they prove what they say they can do? Here’s a tip, make sure they tell you what domain you should find BEFORE they show you any results!
5. Search Engine friendly design
Stay away from using ‘Flash’ navigation, in fact avoid creating your entire site in flash. This is because flash makes its impossible for the spiders that the search engines send out to find out what your site is about. Many web development companies are still using tables to layout a website. This is an old technique now and is not search engine friendly.
You should have your website developed using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Try and avoid Javascript Navigation. Although these can be used to produce attractive fly out menus with lovely rollovers and colours which look very nice on your website, the trouble is that the spiders can’t understand the content within Javascript. As this is where all your page links are, you need to avoid Javascript in order to be found.
6. Back Links
Getting other people to link to your website is fantastic but bear in mind, they have to be relevant. The Search Engines will be able to recognise if the links are irrelevant and can take a view that you maybe using some form of link farm service which is frowned upon.
7. Duplicate Content
Make sure that you do not have the same content on any of your pages within your website or even the same as another website. This is frowned upon by the search engines and can even result in your website being moved to what’s call the supplemental listings, which essentially is a secondary database.
8. Site Maps
Site Maps are a fantastic way for spiders to be able to collect as much information about your website as possible. Provide a Google site map as this will be directly related to Google’s own specification.
9. Alt Tags & Title Tags
These are a fantastic way to get more valid information about your website in to the search engines. Alt Tags are the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over an image. The Title Tag will be the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over any text links on the page.
10. Bullet Points!
Use bullet points to emphasise selected pieces of text. However don’t use them without providing supporting information otherwise this could be seen as key word stuffing.
You can use the SEO tips above to try and improve your rankings but you must bear in mind the way your website has been developed. Just imagine you are building a house, if you don’t get the foundations right at the beginning it doesn’t matter what you put in to it, it could still be unsafe and not built correctly.
Source:http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/promotion/7_6/top-ten-seo-tips.shtml
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Search engine competition to get aggressive
Martin Byrne has a simple Internet test for Canadian banks: The search engine guru suggests typing "savings accounts, Canada" into a search engine and see what comes up.
If you're expecting to see Canada's major financial institutions appear on the first page, you'll be disappointed.
TD Canada Trust is the only one of the majors that appears in the top 10. Aggressive cyberbank ING Direct is at the top of the search listings -- winner of that particular search-engine optimization contest. And HSBCdirect.ca occupies the top paid listing, giving it winning points for paid placement.
Winning the online search game is a growing competition, and one that is expected to result in more than $1 billion being spent on search-engine marketing (SEM) in Canada by 2010.
And it is a fast-moving competition. What tops the list one minute might be deposed by a contender the next.
It has spawned a whole new category of marketing, with British Columbia enjoying high status in the new and growing generation of SEM specialists.
Byrne, the national director of Yahoo Search Marketing Canada, was in Vancouver recently as part of a Yahoo team hosting and taking part in events focusing on this lucrative and growing segment. It's a field in which Canadian businesses are lagging behind their U.S. counterparts.
"Compared to all the other major developed economies [Yahoo is] in, Canada has been the slowest to adopt search marketing," said Byrne.
SEM promotes websites by pushing them up to the top of the search engine results, through a variety of means that can include search engine optimization (SEO) -- which is getting search engines to choose your site as the most relevant and freshest for any particular search request -- to paid placement.
There are a number of popular search engines, led of course by Google, which, according to Hitwise.com, accounted for 66.44 per cent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending Feb. 23. Google was followed by Yahoo! Search at 20.59 per cent, MSN Search at 6.95 per cent, and Ask.com at 4.16 per cent.
In 2007, $410 million was spent in Canada on search-engine marketing, and that number is expected to climb to more than $1 billion by 2010. U.S. companies spend a much higher proportion of their online budgets on search marketing. North American-wide advertisers spent $9.4 billion US in 2006, representing a 750-per-cent increase over 2002.
It's an important pipeline to potential buyers and customers. According to Yahoo research, 43 per cent of consumers rate the Internet as the best source for price comparisons, and 37 per cent turn to it most often in their consumer research. The Internet ties with word-of-mouth as being seen as the most reliable source of information for 24 per cent of users.
Among Canadians online:
- 78 per cent use search engines to research purchases;
- 27 per cent of those Web surfers end up making online purchases;
- 45 per cent of those searching online for product information end up buying offline;
- in 2007, Canadian consumers spent $10.5 billion in online purchases, and that number is projected to climb to nearly double for 2008.
The message for businesses, says Byrne, is that regardless of whether they cater to customers offline or on, search engines play an important role in promoting their products or services.
"We help them understand the role search engines play in their business, whether they are actively managing it or not," he said. "The reality is there are 85 million search queries a day in Canada, and we take people through the amount of influence search engines have on people's consumer decisions, on their buying decisions.
"What we are finding is that search engines have more influence in terms of offline consumer decision-making than they do in terms of online purchasing decisions."
Byrne said British Columbia's entrepreneurial spirit is pushing the province to the forefront of the sector, with businesses here developing expertise that has gained international attention.
source:http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=3fc37cab-4dae-4544-b18d-91128b1b5a88&p=2
If you're expecting to see Canada's major financial institutions appear on the first page, you'll be disappointed.
TD Canada Trust is the only one of the majors that appears in the top 10. Aggressive cyberbank ING Direct is at the top of the search listings -- winner of that particular search-engine optimization contest. And HSBCdirect.ca occupies the top paid listing, giving it winning points for paid placement.
Winning the online search game is a growing competition, and one that is expected to result in more than $1 billion being spent on search-engine marketing (SEM) in Canada by 2010.
And it is a fast-moving competition. What tops the list one minute might be deposed by a contender the next.
It has spawned a whole new category of marketing, with British Columbia enjoying high status in the new and growing generation of SEM specialists.
Byrne, the national director of Yahoo Search Marketing Canada, was in Vancouver recently as part of a Yahoo team hosting and taking part in events focusing on this lucrative and growing segment. It's a field in which Canadian businesses are lagging behind their U.S. counterparts.
"Compared to all the other major developed economies [Yahoo is] in, Canada has been the slowest to adopt search marketing," said Byrne.
SEM promotes websites by pushing them up to the top of the search engine results, through a variety of means that can include search engine optimization (SEO) -- which is getting search engines to choose your site as the most relevant and freshest for any particular search request -- to paid placement.
There are a number of popular search engines, led of course by Google, which, according to Hitwise.com, accounted for 66.44 per cent of all U.S. searches for the four weeks ending Feb. 23. Google was followed by Yahoo! Search at 20.59 per cent, MSN Search at 6.95 per cent, and Ask.com at 4.16 per cent.
In 2007, $410 million was spent in Canada on search-engine marketing, and that number is expected to climb to more than $1 billion by 2010. U.S. companies spend a much higher proportion of their online budgets on search marketing. North American-wide advertisers spent $9.4 billion US in 2006, representing a 750-per-cent increase over 2002.
It's an important pipeline to potential buyers and customers. According to Yahoo research, 43 per cent of consumers rate the Internet as the best source for price comparisons, and 37 per cent turn to it most often in their consumer research. The Internet ties with word-of-mouth as being seen as the most reliable source of information for 24 per cent of users.
Among Canadians online:
- 78 per cent use search engines to research purchases;
- 27 per cent of those Web surfers end up making online purchases;
- 45 per cent of those searching online for product information end up buying offline;
- in 2007, Canadian consumers spent $10.5 billion in online purchases, and that number is projected to climb to nearly double for 2008.
The message for businesses, says Byrne, is that regardless of whether they cater to customers offline or on, search engines play an important role in promoting their products or services.
"We help them understand the role search engines play in their business, whether they are actively managing it or not," he said. "The reality is there are 85 million search queries a day in Canada, and we take people through the amount of influence search engines have on people's consumer decisions, on their buying decisions.
"What we are finding is that search engines have more influence in terms of offline consumer decision-making than they do in terms of online purchasing decisions."
Byrne said British Columbia's entrepreneurial spirit is pushing the province to the forefront of the sector, with businesses here developing expertise that has gained international attention.
source:http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=3fc37cab-4dae-4544-b18d-91128b1b5a88&p=2
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Link Building is a continuous process
In Search Engine Optimization, off page factors have become related to rankings and its importance is increasing day by day. Link popularity is now the back bone for any solid website which can now make or break websites in the search engines. On the basis of this the link building process carries special importance in web promotion tactics of NDDW.
Link popularity is determined by the number and quality of links pointing to your website. Still one of the crucial aspects of SEO has been link popularity because search engines do not want artificially created or useless links. So it is not that easy to build link popularity in genuine manner according to the present scenario. Link farms and huge link exchange programs have now the thing of the past. Those who will try such strategies will easily find themselves booted out of search engines. Infact search engines likes links from authoritative sites or links from the site that share the same theme and focus as your website. NDDW performs the link building operations in a genuine and authorized way keeping in view the search engine algorithms and guidelines.
The benefits nowadays from getting an authoritative site to link to you are getting additional visibility apart from the link popularity. Web masters are generally contacted for link building and this brings reciprocal links. But much better methods of generating one way links from high traffic websites have also come into existence. These are submission of websites into internet directories, write interesting articles and distributing all over internet, but it becomes beneficial only when they have link to your website.
At NDDW all these different methods of creating link popularity are implemented to smooth enhance the operations of link process for a website. So here the link building may be slow but it is a smooth and ongoing process.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70357&Itemid=82
Link popularity is determined by the number and quality of links pointing to your website. Still one of the crucial aspects of SEO has been link popularity because search engines do not want artificially created or useless links. So it is not that easy to build link popularity in genuine manner according to the present scenario. Link farms and huge link exchange programs have now the thing of the past. Those who will try such strategies will easily find themselves booted out of search engines. Infact search engines likes links from authoritative sites or links from the site that share the same theme and focus as your website. NDDW performs the link building operations in a genuine and authorized way keeping in view the search engine algorithms and guidelines.
The benefits nowadays from getting an authoritative site to link to you are getting additional visibility apart from the link popularity. Web masters are generally contacted for link building and this brings reciprocal links. But much better methods of generating one way links from high traffic websites have also come into existence. These are submission of websites into internet directories, write interesting articles and distributing all over internet, but it becomes beneficial only when they have link to your website.
At NDDW all these different methods of creating link popularity are implemented to smooth enhance the operations of link process for a website. So here the link building may be slow but it is a smooth and ongoing process.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70357&Itemid=82
Study Rates PPC Search Providers
AXcess News has completed a study of pay-per-click advertising agencies which was conducted to find out just how well they perform.
The reporting period ran a span of eight weeks in which a host of PPC search providers were rated for Support; Reporting; Accuracy in deliverable clicks; and Quality of visitors.
Tech beat reporter Dave Porter said, "We found alarming differences across those per-per-click (PPC) advertising agencies."
In a tech feature story released Sunday evening, titled, "When Pay-Per-Click Goes Per-Clunk" Porter noted that "In all fairness, there were many differences between the PPC providers reporting capabilities and so we took that into consideration in rating them."
During the course of the Study, Google Analytics' Urchin software was used in combination with tracking codes to monitor each PPC search provider for accuracy of deliverable clicks.
In Dave's story, each PPC search provider was rated using a simple grading system of "A" for excellent to "F" for failure. The report itself is being made available free of charge to anyone who requests a copy. A link can be found in that news article.
The study was not funded by any third-party and no marketing scheme to promote advertising is involved. AXcess News is a broad news publisher online and one of the largest independent pure web news publishers in North America with a network stretching across 92 major market cities in the United States, 16 in Canada through affiliate Source Press and an additional 16 in the United Kingdom through European affiliate EU News Network Ltd. whose combined headlines reach in excess of three million readers per day.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76738&Itemid=9
The reporting period ran a span of eight weeks in which a host of PPC search providers were rated for Support; Reporting; Accuracy in deliverable clicks; and Quality of visitors.
Tech beat reporter Dave Porter said, "We found alarming differences across those per-per-click (PPC) advertising agencies."
In a tech feature story released Sunday evening, titled, "When Pay-Per-Click Goes Per-Clunk" Porter noted that "In all fairness, there were many differences between the PPC providers reporting capabilities and so we took that into consideration in rating them."
During the course of the Study, Google Analytics' Urchin software was used in combination with tracking codes to monitor each PPC search provider for accuracy of deliverable clicks.
In Dave's story, each PPC search provider was rated using a simple grading system of "A" for excellent to "F" for failure. The report itself is being made available free of charge to anyone who requests a copy. A link can be found in that news article.
The study was not funded by any third-party and no marketing scheme to promote advertising is involved. AXcess News is a broad news publisher online and one of the largest independent pure web news publishers in North America with a network stretching across 92 major market cities in the United States, 16 in Canada through affiliate Source Press and an additional 16 in the United Kingdom through European affiliate EU News Network Ltd. whose combined headlines reach in excess of three million readers per day.
source:http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76738&Itemid=9
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Relating social media to other online strategies
Online success depends on something very important – it requires a multi-tactic approach. I like to consider online strategies as a solution made up of three important web marketing pillars that each work together to achieve strategic objectives, namely a corporate or brand website, ROI-driven web marketing and influence-focused social media.
Before I explain, let's identify some typical strategic objectives:
* Generate traffic and and links
* Improve search engine rankings for targeted key phrases
* Build awareness amongst your target market
* Increase your subscriber base or generate a lead
* Build trust amongst your customers
* Sell a product
* Help users move through the sales cycle
* Build influence in the market place
* Support your crisis management communications strategy
* Learn new things about customers
* Identify relevant online networks
Different strategies address different objectives
As we can tell, most of these objectives are relevant to most businesses; however, it's important to understand that different online strategies address different objectives. As an example, social media may be great to build influence or learn new things about customers but would need the support of search engine optimization (SEO) to sell a product or generate a lead. It's not to say that social media cold not address these objectives; having the two working in a combined fashion just makes it all the more successful.
So back to the three important web marketing pillars…
The foundation to any online strategy should be a corporate website. It's what some would call the starting point for customers who are interested in your company – for instance, where they get their news about your company and your product and service offerings. Pay a lot of attention to this because, if anything else, this is the most important online real estate you will own. It's what pulls everything together and what supports all your other strategies.
The second important online pillar is what I call “traditional digital media”. Examples of this includes affiliate marketing, response-driven advertising, pay per click, search engine optimisation and WebPR, to name some. When used properly, these strategies offer a very targeted, ROI-driven manner of reaching out to consumers and drawling them closer to a predetermined goal.
The third – yes, third – pillar is social media. I put this one last because well-executed social media needs the support of some of the above in order to be more effective than its isolated application. Unlike the other two pillars, the social media arm of the online strategy is about leveraging relationships and networks for the purposes of engaging in open dialogue with and amongst target markets, to create influence within the market and to discover new business-relevant information and trends.
Source:http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/21944.html
Before I explain, let's identify some typical strategic objectives:
* Generate traffic and and links
* Improve search engine rankings for targeted key phrases
* Build awareness amongst your target market
* Increase your subscriber base or generate a lead
* Build trust amongst your customers
* Sell a product
* Help users move through the sales cycle
* Build influence in the market place
* Support your crisis management communications strategy
* Learn new things about customers
* Identify relevant online networks
Different strategies address different objectives
As we can tell, most of these objectives are relevant to most businesses; however, it's important to understand that different online strategies address different objectives. As an example, social media may be great to build influence or learn new things about customers but would need the support of search engine optimization (SEO) to sell a product or generate a lead. It's not to say that social media cold not address these objectives; having the two working in a combined fashion just makes it all the more successful.
So back to the three important web marketing pillars…
The foundation to any online strategy should be a corporate website. It's what some would call the starting point for customers who are interested in your company – for instance, where they get their news about your company and your product and service offerings. Pay a lot of attention to this because, if anything else, this is the most important online real estate you will own. It's what pulls everything together and what supports all your other strategies.
The second important online pillar is what I call “traditional digital media”. Examples of this includes affiliate marketing, response-driven advertising, pay per click, search engine optimisation and WebPR, to name some. When used properly, these strategies offer a very targeted, ROI-driven manner of reaching out to consumers and drawling them closer to a predetermined goal.
The third – yes, third – pillar is social media. I put this one last because well-executed social media needs the support of some of the above in order to be more effective than its isolated application. Unlike the other two pillars, the social media arm of the online strategy is about leveraging relationships and networks for the purposes of engaging in open dialogue with and amongst target markets, to create influence within the market and to discover new business-relevant information and trends.
Source:http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/21944.html
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Running Successful PPC Campaigns: Attracting The Right Click
Creating and refining successful PPC campaigns requires the ability to think and act like the average web surfer. It requires taking time to understand your ideal customer as well as the wrong visitor (the guy who just cost you a $2.00 click). It's worth the effort to figure out how to attract the former and dissuade the latter.
Outlined here are 7 tips to attract the right kind of clicks to your pay-per-click campaign, clicks that make you happy to spend those marketing dollars.
1. Study the website as if you were a visitor
* Click through each page
* Click on each link
* Look at pages in several different browsers
* View the source code for keyword ideas
2. Think through how searchers will search for your products (ID cards, photo id cards, nametags, ID badges) and separate out these intuitive keywords into their own ad groups
* ID card systems
* ID badge systems
3. Understand your policies
* Does "Same Day Ship" relate to lanyards as well as nameplates?
* How does the low price guarantee work?
4. Check Google Images for search terms that generate traffic, but that don't make sense such as "Cobra Lanyards" & "Dress Lanyards" or even the ubiquitous "Honda Lanyards"
* Understanding the search term (and whether you sell it) allows you to take appropriate action
5. Walk through all conversions to the point of the Thank You/confirmation page
* Is there "friction"? (anything that causes the user to become frustrated, fatigued or confused about the buying process)
* Are there broken pages?
* Is there too much on the landing page that might distract a potential buyer and make him/her bounce off the page?
6. Study your competition
* Understand what they sell
* Understand your image(s) of difference
* Write ad copy that echoes how the competition is advertising as well as ad copy that is uniquely yours
* Run testing to see which ad copy converts the best
7. Screen potential clickers with the use of qualifying adjectives
* "Premium"
* "Quality"
* "100 minimum"
This process assumes the presence of search marketing analytics. Utilizing good search marketing analytics in an intelligent fashion can give you control over the money spent on pay per click ads. If you don't have visibility into your campaigns then get in and strap yourself down, it could be a bumpy road!
source:http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2008/02/running_success.html
Outlined here are 7 tips to attract the right kind of clicks to your pay-per-click campaign, clicks that make you happy to spend those marketing dollars.
1. Study the website as if you were a visitor
* Click through each page
* Click on each link
* Look at pages in several different browsers
* View the source code for keyword ideas
2. Think through how searchers will search for your products (ID cards, photo id cards, nametags, ID badges) and separate out these intuitive keywords into their own ad groups
* ID card systems
* ID badge systems
3. Understand your policies
* Does "Same Day Ship" relate to lanyards as well as nameplates?
* How does the low price guarantee work?
4. Check Google Images for search terms that generate traffic, but that don't make sense such as "Cobra Lanyards" & "Dress Lanyards" or even the ubiquitous "Honda Lanyards"
* Understanding the search term (and whether you sell it) allows you to take appropriate action
5. Walk through all conversions to the point of the Thank You/confirmation page
* Is there "friction"? (anything that causes the user to become frustrated, fatigued or confused about the buying process)
* Are there broken pages?
* Is there too much on the landing page that might distract a potential buyer and make him/her bounce off the page?
6. Study your competition
* Understand what they sell
* Understand your image(s) of difference
* Write ad copy that echoes how the competition is advertising as well as ad copy that is uniquely yours
* Run testing to see which ad copy converts the best
7. Screen potential clickers with the use of qualifying adjectives
* "Premium"
* "Quality"
* "100 minimum"
This process assumes the presence of search marketing analytics. Utilizing good search marketing analytics in an intelligent fashion can give you control over the money spent on pay per click ads. If you don't have visibility into your campaigns then get in and strap yourself down, it could be a bumpy road!
source:http://www.straightupsearch.com/archives/2008/02/running_success.html
Monday, February 4, 2008
10 Search Engines You Don't Know About
Go beyond Google and get vertical. These specialized search sites will help you find the business information you need -- fast
We've got some big news for you. Brace yourself. There are search options beyond Google -- and we're not talking about Yahoo! and MSN. Vertical search is on the rise, and whether you're looking for business products, services or information, or a new place to advertise, vertical search sites can benefit your company. Market research firm Outsell predicts that the vertical search market will reach $1 billion by 2009. While Google gets around 65 percent of search traffic today, it doesn't mean it's always the best place for your search.
"When we speak about an alternative search engine, we're speaking about something that's extremely industry-specific, very niche," says Jason Prescott, the owner of vertical search engine TopTenWholesale.com. "It's pin-pointing, accurate and only going to be for that topic you're searching for, [rather than] having to scour through the billions of search results you'll get on a mainstream, tier-one search engine."
The same logic applies when determining where to spend your search engine marketing dollars. If you sell a general consumer product, Google may be your best bet. But if you're looking for highly targeted business purchasers, it may be wise to go vertical. "[You get] a much more relevant user, a much higher conversion and a much better return on your investment," says Prescott. "User traffic might be a little less, but the visitor is highly more qualified."
Here are 10 vertical search engines we've identified as useful to any business owner. Be sure to research your own industry, however, for more specific verticals that can hone your searches or boost your advertising ROI for business customers.
* TopTenWholesale.com: One of the biggest hurdles for new retailers is finding wholesale merchandise to sell. Prescott aims to place all those product sellers in one place so that when you search for shoes, you receive wholesale results, not Zappos.com. The site also offers news, a blog, directory listings, forums and classifieds, fulfilling Prescott's goal to create not just a wholesale search site, but a wholesale portal.
* ThomasNet.com: ThomasRegister has been a leader in the business information field for more than 100 years, and ThomasNet.com is the place to go if you're in the market for industrial and manufacturing goods and services. This robust site allows you to search by product/service, company name, brand name, industrial websites or CAD models. You can narrow your search by U.S. state or Canadian province. Browse by category, download 2D and 3D CAD models of mechanical parts, and even download a search plug-in for your Firefox browser.
* FindLaw.com: Both FindLaw.com and Lawyers.com serve the same primary functions: They allow users to search for attorneys by location and specialty. But FindLaw has an easier-to-use interface, making its extra information quicker to find, such as the free form examples, free full-text books and legal dictionary. Both have general search functionality, message boards and blogs, but again FindLaw.com wins us over with its small business section.
* USA.gov: The government has a labyrinthine web of sites, and if you're looking for information, it's easy to get lost. This all-things-U.S.-government portal/search engine has a tab specifically for businesses and nonprofits, and you can browse by topic. By far, the most helpful area in the business tab is Get It Done Online, an area with links to business necessities that, yes, you can take care of online.
* IT.com: Rather than offering a plain vanilla directory or just one basic search bar, IT.com provides several tech-oriented search options. This includes product and service categories (enterprise networking, open source, product development) or industry solutions (government, SMB, financial markets). The interface takes non-tech folks into consideration as well; each search choice has a roll-over with an explanation of the terminology. In the main search bar, you can choose to search for news, companies, white papers or webcasts.
* Zibb.com: Reed Business is one of the leading vertical publishers with more than 200 business titles. Zibb.com is the company's new online venture, a vertical search service for business that offers not only websites and blogs in the results, but also Reed Business content. This site has a strong UK bent to its information, but it's one to keep an eye on because of its strong news element along with the typical search results and directory listings.
* VerticalSearch.com: VerticalSearch gets super meta as a vertical search engine for vertical sites. The homepage offers pre-determined categories, but you also can choose your own keywords. Results pages offer feeds of headlines and research papers, and you can choose to pull an RSS feed from any search that you choose.
* SearchFinance.com: This site bills itself as the "search engine for financial executives," making it quite the portal for corporate finance. While search is front-and-center, there are a ton of browsing options: blogs, podcasts, events, webcasts, magazines and alerts. Search results are particularly impressive. Directory matches pop up first, but you can also scroll over the results sources for more information on a particular company and choose to remove any "commercial" sources from your results.
* Yahoo! Local: This site is the most consumer-oriented of the bunch, but a recent redesign with a focus on vertical categories makes it worth a look. Yahoo! Local has broken out of the restaurants-and-nightclubs city guide mold to offer a number of business categories like health and beauty, automotive, and real estate--useful information whether you're looking for professional service vendors in your neighborhood, a new bistro to take a client to, or a local advertising solution for your business.
* Melissa Data: This is a slight fudge on our part as this site is more of a new customer enticement for data service provider Melissa Data than true vertical search, but there are so many free search options, it may become a favorite on your bookmarks. You can search for basic demographic and market data, maps and mailing information, statistics or specific data like SIC codes. There's a daily limit to your number of "lookups," so unless you subscribe, you'll have to curb your information appetite.
Source:http://www.bmighty.com/services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205918774
We've got some big news for you. Brace yourself. There are search options beyond Google -- and we're not talking about Yahoo! and MSN. Vertical search is on the rise, and whether you're looking for business products, services or information, or a new place to advertise, vertical search sites can benefit your company. Market research firm Outsell predicts that the vertical search market will reach $1 billion by 2009. While Google gets around 65 percent of search traffic today, it doesn't mean it's always the best place for your search.
"When we speak about an alternative search engine, we're speaking about something that's extremely industry-specific, very niche," says Jason Prescott, the owner of vertical search engine TopTenWholesale.com. "It's pin-pointing, accurate and only going to be for that topic you're searching for, [rather than] having to scour through the billions of search results you'll get on a mainstream, tier-one search engine."
The same logic applies when determining where to spend your search engine marketing dollars. If you sell a general consumer product, Google may be your best bet. But if you're looking for highly targeted business purchasers, it may be wise to go vertical. "[You get] a much more relevant user, a much higher conversion and a much better return on your investment," says Prescott. "User traffic might be a little less, but the visitor is highly more qualified."
Here are 10 vertical search engines we've identified as useful to any business owner. Be sure to research your own industry, however, for more specific verticals that can hone your searches or boost your advertising ROI for business customers.
* TopTenWholesale.com: One of the biggest hurdles for new retailers is finding wholesale merchandise to sell. Prescott aims to place all those product sellers in one place so that when you search for shoes, you receive wholesale results, not Zappos.com. The site also offers news, a blog, directory listings, forums and classifieds, fulfilling Prescott's goal to create not just a wholesale search site, but a wholesale portal.
* ThomasNet.com: ThomasRegister has been a leader in the business information field for more than 100 years, and ThomasNet.com is the place to go if you're in the market for industrial and manufacturing goods and services. This robust site allows you to search by product/service, company name, brand name, industrial websites or CAD models. You can narrow your search by U.S. state or Canadian province. Browse by category, download 2D and 3D CAD models of mechanical parts, and even download a search plug-in for your Firefox browser.
* FindLaw.com: Both FindLaw.com and Lawyers.com serve the same primary functions: They allow users to search for attorneys by location and specialty. But FindLaw has an easier-to-use interface, making its extra information quicker to find, such as the free form examples, free full-text books and legal dictionary. Both have general search functionality, message boards and blogs, but again FindLaw.com wins us over with its small business section.
* USA.gov: The government has a labyrinthine web of sites, and if you're looking for information, it's easy to get lost. This all-things-U.S.-government portal/search engine has a tab specifically for businesses and nonprofits, and you can browse by topic. By far, the most helpful area in the business tab is Get It Done Online, an area with links to business necessities that, yes, you can take care of online.
* IT.com: Rather than offering a plain vanilla directory or just one basic search bar, IT.com provides several tech-oriented search options. This includes product and service categories (enterprise networking, open source, product development) or industry solutions (government, SMB, financial markets). The interface takes non-tech folks into consideration as well; each search choice has a roll-over with an explanation of the terminology. In the main search bar, you can choose to search for news, companies, white papers or webcasts.
* Zibb.com: Reed Business is one of the leading vertical publishers with more than 200 business titles. Zibb.com is the company's new online venture, a vertical search service for business that offers not only websites and blogs in the results, but also Reed Business content. This site has a strong UK bent to its information, but it's one to keep an eye on because of its strong news element along with the typical search results and directory listings.
* VerticalSearch.com: VerticalSearch gets super meta as a vertical search engine for vertical sites. The homepage offers pre-determined categories, but you also can choose your own keywords. Results pages offer feeds of headlines and research papers, and you can choose to pull an RSS feed from any search that you choose.
* SearchFinance.com: This site bills itself as the "search engine for financial executives," making it quite the portal for corporate finance. While search is front-and-center, there are a ton of browsing options: blogs, podcasts, events, webcasts, magazines and alerts. Search results are particularly impressive. Directory matches pop up first, but you can also scroll over the results sources for more information on a particular company and choose to remove any "commercial" sources from your results.
* Yahoo! Local: This site is the most consumer-oriented of the bunch, but a recent redesign with a focus on vertical categories makes it worth a look. Yahoo! Local has broken out of the restaurants-and-nightclubs city guide mold to offer a number of business categories like health and beauty, automotive, and real estate--useful information whether you're looking for professional service vendors in your neighborhood, a new bistro to take a client to, or a local advertising solution for your business.
* Melissa Data: This is a slight fudge on our part as this site is more of a new customer enticement for data service provider Melissa Data than true vertical search, but there are so many free search options, it may become a favorite on your bookmarks. You can search for basic demographic and market data, maps and mailing information, statistics or specific data like SIC codes. There's a daily limit to your number of "lookups," so unless you subscribe, you'll have to curb your information appetite.
Source:http://www.bmighty.com/services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205918774
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
