Category Archives: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

27 Jan

SEO the Secret Weapon in the E-Commerce Wars

The Opportunity

It has been well documented that consumers use search engines to research and buy products online. They read reviews and descriptions, analyze ratings, and research pricing as they compare products and vendors. A successful e-commerce site must offer a positive customer experience and build trust. However, in the nitty-gritty world of online retail sales, probably the most important success factors are the accessibility of the product and price.

It follows then that high rankings in the search engines are essential to the success of an e-commerce site, because high rankings make the products more accessible to the online shoppers.… Read the rest

27 Jan

Moving With the Times on the Internet

Imagine taking a trip to the mall. You enter it and start shopping. The first store you approach is a computer store. The one next door is also a computer store. You find this unusual. You walk around. The entire mall is filled with 100?s of stores, all of them computer stores, and all of them selling identical products with identical store fronts. You start thinking about this. How can they compete against each other? How do they survive?

In the search engine optimization field we come across this type of situation all the time except for us it concerns web sites as opposed to actual physical stores.… Read the rest

27 Jan

Additional Marketing Strategies to Compliment your SEO Campaign

Many of our clients focus to a large extent on getting their sites ranked in the search engines using search engine optimization (SEO). They then come to me and ask what other types of marketing they can use to increase the effectiveness of their SEO campaign?

The first thing that I point out is that a SEO campaign should just be part of an overall business marketing plan. And this marketing plan should relate closely to the business plan. There are many things that can be done market your website. Here are a few examples of marketing ideas you may find useful.… Read the rest

18 Jan

Search Engine Friendly 301 Redirect in CFM Coldfusion

If you are finding that the www.sitename.com and sitename.com version of your site are both being indexed by the search engines you could hit an issue with the search engines seeing duplicate content – after all most sites have both site names resolving to the same underlying file structure. This can also be an issue for people with parked domains – if you’ve brought multiple domains with the common misspellings of your company name (for example), if the search engines index the parked domain you could have a duplicate content issue. Another issue is having links pointing to the various site names dilutes their value, but pointing them all at just one domain name you’ve got a better chance of higher rankings.… Read the rest

10 Jan

Dump of PHP Predefined Variables

Not dumped below are $_SESSION, $_ENV, $_FILES, $GLOBAL, $_SESSION.

For more information on the variables use see here.

$_SERVER

DOCUMENT_ROOT /my/docroot
HTTP_ACCEPT image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-application, application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument, application/xaml+xml, application/x-ms-xbap, application/msword, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/x-silverlight, */*
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE en-us
HTTP_CONNECTION Keep-Alive
HTTP_COOKIE __utma=56526719.905094558.1204581256.1209075425.1209143129.11; __utmz=56526719.1208363160.4.3.utmccn=(organic)|utmcsr=search|utmctr=elixirsystems.com|utmcmd=organic; __utmb=56526719; __utmc=56526719; seen_flash=1
HTTP_HOST www.elixirsystems.com
HTTP_REFERER http://www.elixirsystems.com/seo_tips/
HTTP_UA_CPU x86
HTTP_USER_AGENT Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SU 3.011; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2)
HTTP_VIA 1.1 EBSS-WS1
PATH /sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
REMOTE_ADDR 70.96.173.130
REMOTE_PORT 32011
SCRIPT_FILENAME /my/docroot/seo_tips/PHP_Predefined_Variables.php
SERVER_ADDR 216.126.64.170
SERVER_ADMIN webmaster@elixirsystems.com
SERVER_NAME www.elixirsystems.com
SERVER_PORT 80
SERVER_SIGNATURE
Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.elixirsystems.com Port 80
SERVER_SOFTWARE Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) PHP/5.2.0 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635.SR1.2
… Read the rest
10 Jan

Search Engine Friendly 301 Redirect in PHP

If you are finding that the www.sitename.com and sitename.com version of your site are both being indexed by the search engines you could hit an issue with the search engines seeing duplicate content – after all most sites have both site names resolving to the same underlying file structure. This can also be an issue for people with parked domains – if you’ve brought multiple domains with the common misspellings of your company name (for example), if the search engines index the parked domain you could have a duplicate content issue. Another issue is having links pointing to the various site names dilutes their value, but pointing them all at just one domain name you’ve got a better chance of higher rankings.… Read the rest

04 Jan

Search Engine Friendly 301 Redirect in ASP

If you are finding that the www.sitename.com and sitename.com version of your site are both being indexed by the search engines you could hit an issue with the search engines seeing duplicate content – after all most sites have both site names resolving to the same underlying file structure. This can also be an issue for people with parked domains – if you’ve brought multiple domains with the common misspellings of your company name (for example), if the search engines index the parked domain you could have a duplicate content issue. Another issue is having links pointing to the various site names dilutes their value, but pointing them all at just one domain name you’ve got a better chance of higher rankings.… Read the rest

07 Dec

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Authority Websites

Traditional search engine optimization will continue to be part of your efforts excepting for our methodology will change. You will continue to work on link exchanges, keywords, descriptions, titles, headlines, image alt descriptions, comments, and content. Now you will focus your keywords to be very specific and watch you density. Your descriptions will not be as long, but concentrate on more concise descriptions. You will want to watch your HTML coding to make the process easier for the search engine spiders. Try using fewer tables and consider Cascading Style Sheets. The link exchanges will have to be more specific to your industry and with websites that are authoritative in nature.… Read the rest

07 Dec

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) vs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO

* SEO is the process of making changes to the HTML code of your web pages to be content rich in your specific niche and key phrase. This would include such tasks like modifications to your keywords, description, title tags, comment tags, alt descriptions, and title descriptions of anchors and the actual text of your web page.

* SEM on the other had is the process of integrating a variety of methods to insure the SEO work is successful. These methods will include research for your business, competitor analysis, link exchanges, articles, news, newsletters, audience analysis, and ultimately the method employed to generate traffic to your website.… Read the rest

02 Dec

Internet Marketing Beginners, Here’s The Big Secret!

Like many people struggling to make a better life for themselves,
and their families, you stumbled across the Internet as a
possible way to do this. You read about all of the big success
stories, and began planning how you would join their ranks.

After several YEARS of working long and hard at building your
websites, generating traffic, and even creating a few of your
own products, you discover that you’re working harder for
yourself than any boss would ever expect. You also calculate
that you’re earning LESS per hour than you’d earn working in
a fast food restaurant.

After many more hours of intense study, the light bulb finally comes on.… Read the rest