Internet Marketing Tips

Below are some common terms and definitions tossed around the SEO world that play important roles in optimizing a campaign:

• Back link or Inbound link – a link on one website pointing to another website/webpage
• B2B – business to business
• B2C – business to consumer
• Cloaking – showing a different webpage to a search engine robot than what a human visitor sees (mainly used in black hat SEO by spammers and is usually grounds for banning)
• CPA – cost per acquisition
• CPC – cost per click
• CSS – cascading style sheets
• CTA – content targeted advertising
• CTR – click through rate (# clicks divided by # of times the ad was shown)
• Doorway or Gateway page – a page that is usually created to draw robots to a domain in hopes of achieving a higher ranking (against the Terms of Service for most search engines)
• Dynamic – website’s content is consistently being updated (not a static website)
• LSI – latent semantic indexing (how words on a given webpage are related to one another)
• Organic search – search results that are not paid advertisements (mainly accomplished through SEO efforts of optimizing keywords)
• PPC – pay per click
• PR – Google page rank
• SERP – search engine result page
• Stop words – words that are disregarded by search engines when indexing webpages and processing search queries (a, an, the, ect…)
• TLD – top level domain (the top three domain extensions are .com, .org. and .net)

PPC (Pay Per Click) is an advertising/marketing model where advertisers only pay the particular search engine, website or other advertising home when a user clicks on an ad in order to visit their site. Advertisers will predict what certain keywords their target market will utilize when searching for their particular product and/or service. Google Adwords is a perfect example of this, where advertisers pay a predetermined price for every click generated to their site through a sponsored link.

The main steps in constructed a PPC campaign are as follows:

1. Assess your financial stability, level of risk that you are willing to take and the allotted budget you wish to put forth to the campaign
2. Choose relevant keywords. Spend plenty of time considering these, being that if you choose to run a SEO campaign keywords are imperative to the campaign’s success. It is best to start off testing keywords using a minimal investment, in order to find out what keywords searchers type in order to be directed to your advertisement.
3. Consider what titles and promotional text will be included in your advertisement.
4. Research the search engine where your ad will be placed. Ask them if they: report fraudulent clicks, have any partners or affiliates and information about advertising on their sites and if you can geographically opt-out of any area or country to which you could not service.
5. Begin an account with your chosen PPC search engine. There are flexible payment options according to what you are willing to put into the campaign. The majority of PPC search engines will place your ad higher if you are willing to shell out more money.
6. Let the bidding wars begin. Now, you are faced with other companies that may be competing for your keyword, dependant upon its popularity.

There is also:

Pay Per Call – publishers can charge advertisers on a per-call sales lead

Pay Per Delivery – ad placers are only charged for each email that is successfully delivered

Pay Per Action – the publisher is only charged based on some particular action, such as a sales lead, conversion, goal, ect…

Being that the Internet is still relatively a new medium, new terms embedded in this channel of information are constantly being debated. SEO and SEM are no exception. To most, SEM is the broad form of marketing that you can perform in order to better promote your website and SEO is one of the avenues of SEM that you can follow to accomplish this. My personal view of the two is as follows:

An SEM campaign may include, but may not be limited to the following:

• Search engine optimization
• Pay-for-placement
• Reputation development
• Return on investment management
• Video marketing

An SEO campaign may include, but may not be limited to the following:

• Internal & external link analysis
• Landing page optimization
• Meta tag edits
• Sitmap.xml
• Robots.txt
• URL submission
• Keyword analysis
• Indexing analysis
• Duplicate content analysis

SEM mainly includes the promotion of your website and online advertising. SEO allows your website to be more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to the user while also improving your ranking on search engines. Regardless of how you view these two forms of marketing, they both need to be utilized and managed effectively in order to increasingly generate traffic to your website.

AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript And XML is a browser technology that includes a group of interrelated web development techniques. These techniques’ main purpose is to generate speedier, richer and user-friendlier interactive web applications. AJAX’s main distinctive function is that web applications can communicate and retrieve data directly from the server in the background without hindering the display of the page that is being viewed by reloading it. This is accomplished by utilizing a JavaScript XMLHttpRequest object or through remote scripting.

AJAX uses asynchronous data transfer or HTTP requests that allow the server and browser to communicate and exchange small portions of data rather than entire pages. This allows for a faster and richer user experience. A good example of AJAX is how you can click on the number of stars on YouTube in order to rate a specific video.

According to Wikipedia, the main advantages and disadvantages of AJAX are as follows:

Advantages

• In many cases, the pages on a website consist of much content that is common between them. Using traditional methods, that content would have to be reloaded on every request. However, using Ajax, a web application can request only the content that needs to be updated, thus drastically reducing bandwidth usage.
• Because only sections of pages need to be reloaded, Ajax allows for much more responsive web applications giving users the feeling that changes are happening instantaneously.
• The use of Ajax can reduce connections to the server, since scripts and style sheets only have to be requested once.

Disadvantages

• Dynamically created pages do not register themselves with the browser’s history engine, so clicking the browser’s “back” button would not return the user to an earlier state of the Ajax-enabled page, but would instead return them to the last page visited before it. Workarounds include the use of invisible IFrames to trigger changes in the browser’s history.
• Dynamic Web page updates also make it difficult for a user to bookmark a particular state of the application. Solutions to this problem exist, many of which use the URL fragment identifier (the portion of a URL after the ‘#’) to keep track of, and allow users to return to, the application in a given state.
• Because most web crawlers do not execute JavaScript code, web applications should provide an alternative means of accessing the content that would normally be retrieved with Ajax, to allow search engines to index it.
• Any user whose browser does not support Ajax or JavaScript, or simply has JavaScript disabled, will not be able to use its functionality. Similarly, devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, and screen readers may not have support for JavaScript or the XMLHttpRequest object. Also, screen readers that are able to use Ajax may not properly read the dynamically generated content.
• The same origin policy prevents Ajax from being used across domains, although the W3C has a draft that would enable this functionality.

Lean AJAX today with this tutorial!

MySQL – a database that contains tables with rows, columns and cells. This database’s main function is for storage of information. The key features/functions of this system are as follows:

· Is a RDBMS (Relational Database Management System)

· Supports and stores many types of data

· Allows database replication

· Contains multiple storage engines

· Is most often used in unison with PHP

· Is written in C and C++

· Is utilized by the Google search engine

· Works on many different system platforms

· Allows the building of indexes

· Is an open source software

· Can run on UNIX, Windows and Mac OS

Give MySQL a try today!

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is an extensible, artificial language that uses text annotations for its structure base. An extensible language is one which allows its users to define their own elements, being that it contains no predefined tags. This language was created to transport and store data, not display data functions as with HTML. In short, XML is a metalanguage being that is a language to describe other languages. XML has dual functions of encoding documents and serializing data.

According to XML.silmaril.ie, the main functions of XML are:

• Information identification
• Information storage
• Information structure
• Publishing
• Messaging and data transfer
• Web services

Basically, XML describes content within a tag without the intention of displaying what you decide to name that particular tag. An example of an XML tag would be the following: <movie>your favorite movie</movie>. In its simplest form, XML is a self descriptive tag. According to Wikipedia.org, here are the advantages and disadvantages of XML:

Advantages of XML

• It is text-based.
• It supports Unicode, allowing almost any information in any written human language to be communicated.
• It can represent common computer science data structures: records, lists and trees.
• Its self-documenting format describes structure and field names as well as specific values.
• The strict syntax and parsing requirements make the necessary parsing algorithms extremely simple, efficient, and consistent.
• XML is heavily used as a format for document storage and processing, both online and offline.
• It is based on international standards.
• It can be updated incrementally.
• It allows validation using schema languages such as XSD and Schematron, which makes effective unit-testing, firewalls, acceptance testing, contractual specification and software construction easier.
• The hierarchical structure is suitable for most (but not all) types of documents.
• It is platform-independent, thus relatively immune to changes in technology.
• Forward and backward compatibility are relatively easy to maintain despite changes in DTD or Schema.
• Its predecessor, SGML, has been in use since 1986, so there is extensive experience and software available.

Disadvantages of XML

• XML syntax is redundant or large relative to binary representations of similar data, especially with tabular data.
• The redundancy may affect application efficiency through higher storage, transmission and processing costs.
• XML syntax is verbose, especially for human readers, relative to other alternative “text-based” data transmission formats.
• The hierarchical model for representation is limited in comparison to an object oriented graph.
• Expressing overlapping (non-hierarchical) node relationships requires extra effort.
• XML namespaces are problematic to use and namespace support can be difficult to correctly implement in an XML parser.
• XML is commonly depicted as “self-documenting” but this depiction ignores critical ambiguities.
• The distinction between content and attributes in XML seems unnatural to some and makes designing XML data structures harder.

Get started utilizing XML with this free tutorial.

PHP (Hypertext Processor, originally Personal Home Page) is a computer scripting language that is mainly used for server-side scripting on dynamic and interactive web pages. This web development language is a free service that can be directly embedded into HTML code.

Unlike Javascript, a server will process a PHP code and send the output of this code to a visitor’s browser. By not revealing the code itself, a server will not allow the chance for your script to be stolen, which is a major benefit with PHP.

Being that it is a cross-platform language, PHP can run on multiple operating systems and web servers. PHP has grown in popularity due to its looseness and ease to learn. According to wisegeek.com, arrays and variables in PHP are able to hold any type of object, variables need not be declared, and the syntax is remarkably simple.

In short, here are the main reasons to use PHP:

> It runs on all the major operating systems on nearly all servers

> It is free

> It can be embedded directly into HTML code

> Relatively easy to learn

> It does not reveal the actual code when sending to a visitor’s browser

> It is an open source product (allows for a dedicated production team and user community)

> It allows you to separate HTML code from scripted elements

To get a start on PHP basics, take this free online tutorial.

A redirect consists of a status code that starts with a 3 that informs a browser to transfer a visitor from one domain to another. The main SEO purpose of a redirect is to provide one copy of each page to search engines. The redirect can prove successful if that when you type in your previous URL you are automatically redirected to your new URL. You can verify this by looking at your browser’s address bar.

One of the most popular forms of a redirect is a 301 redirect where you tell search engines that your site has permanently moved to another location. You can refer to one of my previous blogs to get more information regarding the uses and functions of 301 redirects. According to Wikipedia, the other core HTTP status codes for redirects are as follows:

302 Found: This is the most popular redirect code, but also an example of industrial practice contradicting the standard. HTTP/1.0 specification (RFC 1945) required the client to perform a temporary redirect (the original describing phrase was “Moved Temporarily”), but popular browsers implemented it as a 303 See Other. Therefore, HTTP/1.1 added status codes 303 and 307 to disambiguate between the two behaviours. However, the majority of Web applications and frameworks still use the 302 status code as if it were the 303.

303 See Other (since HTTP/1.1): The response to the request can be found under another URI using a GET method.

304 Not Modified: Indicates the resource has not been modified since last requested. Typically, the HTTP client provides a header like the If-Modified-Since header to provide a time against which to compare. Utilizing this saves bandwidth and reprocessing on both the server and client.

305 Use Proxy (since HTTP/1.1): Many HTTP clients (such as Mozilla and Internet Explorer) don’t correctly handle responses with this status code, primarily for security reasons.

306 Switch Proxy: No longer used.

307 Temporary Redirect (since HTTP/1.1): In this occasion, the request should be repeated with another URI, but future requests can still use the original URI. In contrast to 303, the request method should not be changed when reissuing the original request. For instance, a POST request must be repeated using another POST request.

This is a sample of a HTTP response that uses the 301 “moved permanently” redirect:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location: http://www.example.org/

Content-Type: text/html

Content-Length: 174

<html><head>

<title>Moved</title>

</head><body>

<h1>Moved</h1>

<p>This page has moved to <a href=“http://www.example.org/”>http://www.example.org/</a>.</p>

</body></html>

A redirect is also very useful to ensure that you are not placing duplicate content on your website. Although URL’s may appear to go to the same site (www.boomyeah.net, http://www.boomyeah.net & www.boomyeah.net/index.php), the major search engine robots view these as different pages with the same content. This could create duplicate content penalties against you. Therefore, you need to ensure that your URLs are consistently identical.

White hat, in computing terms, is the acceptable form of ethical hacking into computer systems in order to protect a company’s IT systems. The professional that are hired to perform this type of work are often called sneakers. Once a sneaker hacks into a computer system, he/she will give a company recommendations on how to fortify their network.

A white hat also includes the legitimate manipulation of search results through the practice of lawful SEO. A white hat will abide by all a search engine’s regulations while trying to optimize their website. White hats tend to produce lasting results and are received by search engines as acceptable form of SEO.

Conversely, a black hat is a hacker that creates viruses by breaking into a computer in order to create a virus, obtain private information or manipulate certain actions. As for SEO, a black hat will attempt to manipulate search results by utilizing spamdexing tactics that may include keyword stuffing or the creation of link farms. They may also be formulated in an attempt to manipulate search engine results to be redirected to their specific target pages. Black hats will usually anticipate that their site may be eventually banned once a search engine discovers their illicit tactics.

HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language is essential to understanding exactly how a webpage or website was created. In order to get a basic conception of this, you can observe the coding of a webpage by executing the following steps in your web browser: View > Page Source or Ctrl + U. This should provide you with a basic comprehension of how HTML is written.

HTML should be utilized using Notepad for Windows users and SimpleText for Mac users. The latest in web standards suggests using lowercase, however HTML is not case sensitive. To find a free template on which to build your site around, click here. Below are a few basic html tags that you can easily implement that can immediately construct a website for your company without you putting forth the money to hire a web developer.

*<b> - bolds certain text

*<ahref ______> - will insert a link

*<title> - names your page

*<br> - inserts a line break

*<image alt=“______”> - creates alternative text if your image is having difficulty loading

*<align=______> - either left, right, center aligns or justifies

*<html> - begins your webpage

*<img src_____> - tells where to find a picture

*<body____> - starts the main content of your page

*<h1> to <h6> - applies headings, with <h1> being the largest

*<hr> - implements a horizontal rule

However, if you have enough financial resources to hire a contractor to design your website for you, it will be money well spent. You have to realize that you do not want to turn searchers away by having a dismal appearance to your website.

Also, be sure to remember that you will always need to close any tag that you implement with </>. For example, if you wanted to bold just the word HTML on your website you will implement the following code: <b>HTML</b>.

The foundation for most webpages is as follows:

<html><head><title>Titles your page</title> </head>

<body>This is where you would usually begin typing the content for your page.</body> </html>

You can implement text, links, media and sounds all in one encompassing website that could propel your company to the next level. In today’s modern world, a company that does not posses a website losses a very, very, very significant edge over their competition. Even having a very basic website and obtaining a web presence could mean the difference between success and failure.

Take a free online HTML tutorial!