Content: If your website is not ranking high in search engines, you're burning money! However, optimizing your website for search engines can often be confusing and time consuming. Here are some useful free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools to make it easier for you to improve your rankings. 1.Understanding your website's performance - Google Analytics Google Analytics is simply a must-have. Having a website without an analytics tool such as Google Analytics, is like flying a plane without an instrument panel. For more help go to www.the20seotools.com .There are easy-to-read charts that show you how many visitors you've had, how they found your website (e.g. from Google Adwords, organic search, referred websites), and what they did (e.g. request a free report), or did not do, once they were there. Critically, you can also find out which keywords users typed into search engines to find you. The key with analytics is to not be overwhelmed by all the data, but to ask you ?so what does this mean? and most importantly ?what action should I now take?. Installing analytics is quite easy, you just need to add a few lines of code to each page of your website. See Google's website, or have a chat with your web developer. 2.Google ?Page Rank? ? The Google Toolbar Google gives each page it visits (or ?crawls?) a score to reflect how important it sees that page. This is called ?page rank? (PR). It is a score out of 10, and the higher the better. It is only a rough guide, but it can be helpful to analyze your website, and also to judge whether to accept reciprocal links with another website. All things being equal, you'd rather have a link from a page with a ranking of 4 than a ranking of 1. Most small businesses pages are usually in the 1 to 4 range. Search for ?Google Toolbar? in Google, click the link, and follow the download instructions. Once installed, go to the Toolbar ?settings? and ?options?, and turn on the ?page rank and page info? button. Now load up your home page in the browser. Hover over the page rank button with your mouse. It should display Google's page rank (PR) score for your webpage. 3.?Last Crawl Date? ? The Google Toolbar The same toolbar button can be used to easily find out when Google last crawled your website. It will most probably be within the past few weeks. You can check each of your web pages. Load up your home page in the browser and click the black arrow on the ?page rank? button. Then click ?cached snapshot of page?. You should see a date there. If Google has never crawled the page, or the date was more than a few months ago, you probably need to develop more external links to that page. I would also recommend visiting Google Webmasters - Site Status for further help. (It's worth spending a bit of time on the Google Webmaster website as there are some very useful tools). 4. Competitor Analysis - ?SEO for FireFox? This tool will not work in Internet Explorer (IE). You will need to download the Firefox browser. SEO for FireFox? allow you to see a lot of useful SEO data about your competition. It was created by the famous (in SEO circles anyway) Aaron Wall of SEO Book. Under each search result, there will be two lines of additional SEO data (shaded blue) relating to that website. (For example, if you're a business coach, and looking to rank for ?business coach Sydney?, type that into the Google search box.) By clicking on the right field, you can find how many links your competitor has, who is linking to them, how old their domain is, and who owns that domain, among other things. For more help go to www.search-engine-premiere.com .This data can be very helpful in planning your own SEO strategy. If your competitor is ranking highly for a keyword, they must be doing something right! (You can also watch his instructional video). 5.Quick link checker using Yahoo! If you want a very simple way of finding out who is linking to your website, or a competitor's website, and you don't want to download any tools, go to Yahoo's website.
If your in and around the Calgary area, and your looking for a Marketing company there are a few that you can take look at. I havent tried any of these since Im not in the Calgary area, but these are all sites Ive heard good things about either from friends, colleagues, or reviews. If you have a really terrific site and you dont bother to market it because you dont know how to or you just dont have the time, then its a good idea to get someone else either an individual or a company to do it for you. Its really quite simple and usually pretty inexpensive, for the amount of traffic and sales it could bring you. Here are a few ways you can market yourself on the internet, all these ways are completely FREE and easy to do. You need to take the first step if you expect to get anywhere with your business. So here are your first steps:
Have a signature link either in your emails or in forums Make your navbar not only people friendly but Search Engine friendly Submit Your Web page URL to Search Engines Back links & Directories Search Engine Optimization Write articles Begin a blog Start a newsletter
Here are some Marketing business's located in the Calgary area, these are either marketing firms, agencies, or individuals wanting to help people like you out, to market your site.
SearchEngineTop10 Anduro iAppeal BroadWaveStudios
SearchEngineTop10 - This website offers a multitude of thigs you could use for your wbesite besides just marketing. For example they have Search Engine Optimiation, Submission, Backlinks, PPC campaigns, and Event Based Marketing. This is an ideal site if your looking for low to mid ranged prices, but a compoany that will really help you.
Anduro - Offers things like press releases, Link building, eNewsletters, Pay-per-Click campaigns and strategic marketing plans. Some of their clients include University of Calgary, Oceano, Karo, and BrainForest. This site also includes a free Internet Marketing Analysis of your website.
iAppeal - This site offers a whole load of services including website design, graphic design, e-commerce solutions, search engine optimization, hosting, content management, blogs, and site maintencance. Check out their portfolio so you can see some of the really great work they do. My little tip Ill give to you. If your looking for a site online whether its a marketing site or a web design site, if they have a website that doesnt look "nice" or the navigation bar, or page is either mseed up with coding, or if it looks like its unfishined. Walk away. To me, if a site boasts its abilities with websites, but they cant even configure their own site correctly, its probably a sham.
BroadWaveStudios - I have a feeling just by looking at this site that its high end type of services, with a price tag to match. But thats part of the reason I picked it as well as hearing good things about the site. Check out their Internet Marketing specs under "Services" on their website.
The least you can do with this place or any other site is either get a quote by filling out the quote form (if they have one) or call them and see what prices they offer. Some of these sites even offer to send out a brochure to your home address. So if they offer something like that go for it. At least you can see what they are all about and get a real feel for them. Good luck finding the site you want. I wish you success!
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