Googling Your Name is Money in Your Pocket (business leadership coaching)

August 2nd, 2008 admin Posted in business |

By Bobby Dhanoa

It was just yesterday that an old friend of mine got in touch with me by Googling my first and last name. He found all sorts of articles, which mentioned my name, including my own website as #1.

This reminded me of a client I had who was nowhere to be seen when you Googled their name. This was a huge problem since they were 100% referral and many people searched for their company name on the Internet to find their website. It took two months for them to start showing up, but when they did, it was a HUGE money maker for them. Potential customers who had been referred were finally able to find them.

With the pursuit of optimizing a site for certain keywords, so many companies forget to optimize for their own company name.

The Proof is in the Puddin’

A recent study by Nielsen//Net ratings suggest that when web users know the name of a website, they prefer to type in a domain name in the “search box” of Google or Yahoo, rather than typing a domain name into the browser bar.

What does this tell you? Well, it says that if someone has heard of your company, they’re either going to type in your website name or your domain name into the search box and your website better be ready and waiting at the top of the search engines.

Do YOU show up when your name or company name is Googled?

Here’s How You Do it

to search engine optimize (SEO) your company name on your website, here are some tips. (This isn’t an exhaustive list of all that you can do, but it’s enough to get you started.)

** Choose one page on your website to optimize for your company name. It might be your Home page, Contact Us page or About Us page. I recommend your About Us page - it seems that it’s easier and better to talk about you on that page than any other page. Conversely, the Home page should be all about them (What’s In It for me?) - Not about you.

** Add your company name to the ALT tags where possible. ALT tags are the tags that are connected to the images of your website. Search engines don’t index images, so any text on your site that is in the form of an image won’t get indexed. The search engines read the text and the keywords in the ALT tags instead.

** Add your company name to your Meta Tags: namely, Meta titles, Meta description and Meta keywords. A recent study showed that only 34% of Web site owners knew enough to include a simple keyword Meta tag on their website. Therefore, if you add a keyword and properly optimize the rest of your page, you’ll be doing more than 66% of website owners. Of the 34% of owners who DO add Meta data, so many forget to add their company name to the titles, description and keywords! They only remember to add keywords related to their products/services. If YOU remember to do this, think how much further ahead you’ll be…

** Add your company name as a keyword to your chosen page’s body and work it into the content at least 3-4 times. Try to place it one time nearer to the top of the page body. Repeat your company name at the start and end of your paragraphs and near the end of the body. That way, search engines won’t make any mistake about the content since your company name is used repetitively and throughout the content.

** Where possible, include your company name within your hyperlinks. For example on the Home page, you could include the words “Contact XYZ Company” within the hyperlink copy instead of just “Contact Us”.

** Finally be patient. With these steps and ONLY these steps, I helped one company go from not showing up on Google at all, to #1 in Google for their company name.

With the pursuit of optimizing a site for certain keywords, so many companies forget to optimize for their own company name.

For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com

Instruction in Effective Communication
By Dave Griffiths

”The purpose of writing is to create a space in which others can think.” Edward Schlossberg, Author

“According to a variety of opinions, humanity’s Number One fear is public speaking. The Number Two is dying. Does that sound accurate? That means to the typical person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off showing up dead than delivering the eulogy.” John Steinbeck, Novelist

If you are writing and speaking in public, powerful communication begins and ends with the what — the content. The how will come easier. Once writing training and presentation skills training assist you in gaining power (and you will have confidence because you’ll be an expert) you’ll have no worries writing or speaking in public.

In order to accomplish that, aided by writing skills training, keep in mind the three pillars of effective business communication, written or spoken:

Writing is thinking. Compared to a spontaneous conversation, writing — whether a presentation at a meeting or a report for the boss or a sales proposal — presents you the time to show how smart you are.

Know your audience and your readers. How much do they know already? Are they novices? Do they want to be amused or informed or persuaded? What do you want them to take away from your speech?

Study and rewrite and, when public speaking, practice time and again. If you don’t review your work with care before sending it, or practice the style and delivery of your presentation, you risk looking sloppy and unprofessional. It’s called quality control, without which effective communication is nearly impossible.

Dave Griffiths, Writer

To learn more about my background and how I can help you achieve your goals for more effective communication — including writing skills training, writing seminars, business communication training, and presentation skills training — please go to my website at http://www.davegriffithscommunications.com.

How Search Engine Optimizing Press Releases?
By Bobby Dhanoa

It is becoming common knowledge that a website that expects to get the most out of its search engine results must search engine optimize its content in order to achieve the highest possible ranking. What is not as well known is that website content isn’t the only type of writing that can be search engine optimized to produce a favorable outcome for your website.

As a part of your marketing strategy, you will likely have included the distribution of press releases in order to let people know about the latest events and movements of your business or website. What you need to recognize is the fact that this is also one of your best opportunities to employ search engine optimization, and take advantage of another opportunity to have the search engines work in your favor.

To do this properly, there are a few things that you will need to do. The first, of course is to write the press release and make certain that all of your most important keywords are included within its text with a good density. You must then distribute your press release to the right places. There are a number of different press release services out there - both free and paid - that are willing to publish your press release and distribute it to different media representatives worldwide. Among the largest and most popular of these press release distribution websites.

By working with large distribution sites such as these, you’ll be making sure that your search engine optimizing efforts are being used to their fullest. The reason is because these sites distribute to so many other sites, and because they are always having their information and content scanned by different search engine spiders and indexers, having your press release added to the possible top results for the keywords that you have selected.

This is such an easy process that it is, in fact, considered to be even easier than writing the press release itself. After all, you need to make certain that the press release is good enough that it will be picked up and republished by other websites, online journals, blogs, and ezines, and not just remain stranded at the press release distribution website, as handy as it is with website ranking.

Remember that the purpose of your press release is not just search engine optimization. That is a secondary advantage. You still want to make sure that the news that you are reporting is spread as far as possible, and read by as many prospective clients and site visitors as you can manage.

This being said, you need to understand that though your keyword needs to be included in your press release, the rest of the content has to be of high caliber. If you are not skilled in writing, you may choose to have a professional press release writer do it for you - they are quite worth the money.

An effective press release will have a strong, informative title, information that is straight to the point without any fluff, no spelling or major grammatical errors, no informational errors, and a healthy smattering of useful keywords. By ensuring that your press release fulfills all of these requirements, you dramatically increase your odds of having your press release well distributed, well ranked among search engines, and well read among your target market.

As far as the keyword is concerned, do make sure that it is mentioned frequently enough to count, but don’t paste it into your press release so many times that it doesn’t read naturally or that it might register as SPAM by the search engines that will be ranking it. A safe density is usually within the 2 to 3 percent range. Try to use it once in your title, and very close to the beginning of the first sentence in your first paragraph. After that, once or twice in the rest of the press release should do it.

It is important that you never overlook the value of search engine optimizing any online document that you may create. Press releases are among the most effective because of their high distribution, but you should include search engine optimizing in anything that you will be posting.

It is becoming common knowledge that a website that expects to get the most out of its search engine results must search engine optimize its content in order to achieve the highest possible ranking.

For more useful tips & hints, please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com

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