Here is another great article by Kabir Bedi, our guest author.

Kabir Bedi is Web Consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professional web development company that offers a full range of web design services along with SEO & internet promotion service. He has over 10 years of experience in the industry and leads a group of web developers to create effective web solutions for their clients.

Is Web Design Ruining Your SEO Efforts – 5 Things NOT To Do!

Search Engine Optimization is often thought of as a set of tips & techniques that, if done right, can shoot up your website ranking in search results and get it to the top! This is only half-truth though.

The process of optimizing a website starts right from the time you think about building a website. Yeah… contrary to popular belief, SEO is not something that follows website launch. Rather it is what you need to base your design process on. And just like there are best practices to optimize your website, there are also other stuff that can potentially have a negative influence on your SEO efforts.

So just as much you need to do the right things, you also need to make sure you don’t do the wrong things:

Here are some design elements that you absolutely must NOT apply:

Drop Down Navigation or Mouse-Over Menus

This was a rage till recent past! Drop down menus not only saves real estate on a page but is a great way to arrange the navigation elements cleanly… Not to mention the sleek drop-down boxes that add to the visual appeal! However, when it comes to search engine optimization, drop down navigation drops down the value. Search engine crawlers cant fill out forms even if there’s just one pull-down. So, they cant get to those pages… least of all index the contents.

So make sure you have an alternate means of navigating those pages so that search engine crawlers can get there. You can include text links in the footer of your web pages or use image links or an image map. Also, chuck JavaScript and use AJAX or divs to get the same drop down and ensure search engine appeal at the same time.

Flash or JavaScript for Primary Navigation

Even though search engine crawlers have come off age and become smarter at indexing Flash contents, I don’t think its worth the risk. If your primary navigation needs Flash, Java or JavaScript to function, that puts a big question mark on whether search engine crawlers will parse through or not. Remember, search engine crawlers have a limited ability to deal with Flash, Java and Javascript. So any links that you put there have a good enough chances of not being seen by the search spiders.

A more reliable option is to count on semantically marked up HTML. You get what you want on your navigation pathway and search engine crawlers get what they come for.

Fully Flash Website

Graphic artists and ardent designers would swear by Flash but when it comes search engine appeal, its better to mellow down your ‘flashy’ instincts. If you want to score well in Google SERPs, then you have to create what is called search-friendly design. And as mentioned earlier, inspite of the increasing Flash-consciousness of search engine spiders, they still have a preference for plain text.

Keep the main textual elements of the page out of Flash along with all the page titles and section headings. And if at all (despite all the red signals) you have to use Flash, make sure you have an alternate text version within div tags. Also, don’t forget to use SWFObject, a standards-friendly method to embed Flash content.

Frames for Design

For one, Google clearly dissuades the use of frames as they tend to cause problems with search engines, bookmarks, emailing links etc. In fact, it can be a nightmare to scroll through a website that has frames. Since part of the page moves while others stay stationary, it gets pretty difficult to follow where to read and where to scroll. Moreover, not all browsers support frames so you can lose a considerable amount of audience. Worse of all frames create additional maintenance and server load.

So… really.. You are better off without it!

Pop Up Boxes

Pop-ups rely on JavaScript! And this is a roadblock for search engine crawlers just hate. Not only does the content within pop-ups not get indexed but they are a nuisance for website visitors. No wonder most people have installed pop-up blockers. And in case you dint know, Google toolbar and Yahoo Companion toolbar have built-in pop-up blockers.

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Here is another great article by Kabir Bedi, our guest author.

Kabir Bedi works as the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professional web development company based in India. It offers a full range of web design solutions and internet promotion services that cater to all the web based requirements of businesses.

3 SEO Mistakes That Can Spell Doom For Your E-Commerce Websites

As the world wide web becomes an increasingly intrinsic parts of our lives, more and more businesses are realizing the importance of making their products available online. And if you already have an e-commerce website, chances are you might be fighting a fiercely competitive battle with your rivals over the coveted search engines rankings.

While you might be doing all that you can, it is not uncommon to see businesses make terrible mistakes that can significantly damage their SEO efforts and result in lost sales. So, here are 3 of the most common SEO mistakes for e-commerce websites that you should definitely stay away from:

Cut-Copy-Paste

E-commerce website typically acquire product descriptions from the manufacturer and copy it word to word on their websites. While its a good thing to provide customers with detailed information, simply copying and pasting on your website can severely wreck your SEO efforts on account of duplicate content.

Write your Own Copy
You need to make sure that each and every page of your website is unique and consistent to the overall theme or products. So instead of uploading manufacture-supplied product descriptions, write unique descriptions for your products. In addition, make a list of your niche keywords and include them in the body copy, headers, sub headers, titles, meta descriptions and image tags.

Encourage Customer Reviews
A great way to promote unique content on your web pages is to encourage customer reviews. This will ensure a steady stream of unique content and also enhance the user-friendliness of your website.

A Complete Overhaul

Often site owners make site-wide changes overnight in a rush to conform to the latest SEO craze or adopt the hot new design trends of the season and so on. However, this often backfires and thrashes the overall search coverage of the website.

Identify your Requirements
Before you decide to rehaul your website, think about what exactly you want to achieve. After you have defined your objectives, introduce the new changes on a small group of pages and evaluate the outcome. Monitor the progress from here on and proceed as and how required.

Not Making it a Team Job

Often website owners lean heavily on one single aspect of the website and end up ignoring the other parameters. For example, a beautiful eye catching website may be visually appealing, but if its heavy on Flash or includes some rough bits of programming, then it would be at an overall disadvantage as far as the search rankings are concerned

Involve your Entire Team
Your website is the joint responsibility of your entire team – the designers as well as the developers. So make sure you discuss your ideas freely with the entire team before introducing any changes to the website. This will you can be sure that you get a balanced output.

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Here is another great article written by our guest author, Kabir.

Local search is booming. Internet users are turning to local search to find just about everything, including where to eat. If you operate a local business, you will find this article extremely useful.

Kabir Bedi is the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a premier web designing company based in India. He leads a team of professional web developers to create web solutions for their clients. He also helps clients to establish a strong business presence on social media platforms.

4 Tips To Improve your Restaurant Business Visibility in Local Search

Local search has come to become increasingly relevant in the recent times. As people become more and more net savvy, the web has become part of our daily lives. For any problem that we have, no matter how small or how big, the first thought that comes to the mind is… ‘Lets Google it!’

Naturally so, we have started looking online for routine questions like ‘Where can we go for a Saturday night dinner?’ or ‘Where can I get Chinese food?’

This has resulted in a spurt of new opportunities for local businesses, especially restaurants and food chains. With just a bit of optimization, you can leverage the full potential of the Local Search and enhance your businesses’ visibility and drive in more people.

Here are some tips to optimize your business for local search:

1. Understand the Requirements of your Target Audience

Everyone likes to build a brand name for themselves! But that’s no reason that your business name should be you prime keywords. Remember, people would already know the names of their favorite restaurants. What they search online is for newer places they can try out… So they would be using phrases like Chinese food +New York, breakfast restaurants around Paris etc.

Thus, it is extremely important to know how consumers search and for this, you can use Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It tells you the popularity of a search phrase that people use to find your restaurant and how they do it.

2. Claim your Place in Google Maps

Google Maps is of incredible importance to local businesses. In fact, you should claim your listing in Maps of other search engines as well. This is because people, especially mobile web users often search directly on the maps page for places. And when search engines determine a matching map result, it shows it directly in the web search results.

If you claim your business listing in Google Maps, your listing pops up immediately for any related search query. Now say, someone is trying to find directions to your place, a listing on Google Maps is the best way to sail them in. And if you don’t have one… you just end up losing business!

Just go to Google’s Local Business Center and claim their listing. Make sure you put your business into the right category and provide complete information. If the maps already list your business, you can claim ownership and load it with crisp and compelling information that attracts people.

3. Make your Website Search Friendly

For any sort of search, be it local or otherwise, the first step is to have an efficient website. No matter the multifarious features made available by social media, one cannot negate the importance of having a dedicated website for a business.

Make sure your website is optimized for search engines. Include compelling content on your site that engages your audience and provides them what they are looking for. Some things that restaurants should include in their websites are a location map, menu card, special offers and discounts etc.

Also, restaurant owners are often tempted to build attractive Flash websites. However, its better to have a healthy combination of Flash and HTML so that you don’t lose out any SEO benefits at the cost of visual elegance.

4. Establish a Firm Presence on Social Media

There is no ignoring Social Media in the present world. Not only can you engage with your audiences, you can also increases your search visibility by having a strong presence on social media platforms. In addition to Facebook & Twitter, target location based platforms like FourSquare, Yelp etc.

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Here is another great article written by our guest author, Kabir.

SEO or PPC – Which route do you take? Here are some great insights from an expert.

Kabir Bedi is the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professional web designing company based in India. He leads a team of professional web developers to create web solutions for their clients.

SEO or PPC – What Is Best For Your Business?

Internet marketing has acquired immense potential in the recent times. The world wide web is not only the most powerful but also the most cost effective avenue to market your business. It can take your business on an international scale and gain you exposure from across the world.

However, with so many means of online marketing, how do you know what would be the best for your business?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) are two of the popular means of online marketing. Each has its advantage sand disadvantages and can be used effectively to drive in business revenue. But you need to evaluate the pros and cons of both of them and choose the one that is compatible with your business model and marketing objectives.

Here is a basic comparison between SEO and PPC campaigns:

SEO is the process of optimizing a website such that it ranks highly in organic search results so that when users search for something on Google, they see your website listed among the top slots. PPC is the paid advertising that you see at the top and right hand side of the SERPs.

Return On Investment

ROI is greater as compared to PPC campaigns because the initial and ongoing costs of SEO are almost negligible. Even if you hire a professional SEO company to do the job for your, you can expect a greater ROI. PPC being expensive affairs themselves, provide comparatively lesser ROI.

Trust & Credibility

Since organic results are natural, internet users place more trust in it than PPC campaigns. Since they deem it as more credible, they are more likely to click on these results than sponsored ads.

Performance

Organic results give your consistent performance throughout the buying decision of your consumers, right from the time of initial research to the final purchase of your products or services. SEO campaigns have a prolonged life-cycle! PPC campaigns are active and provide results only till you are paying money. When you withdraw your subscription, they stop appearing on SERPs and you stop getting any benefit whatsoever.

Ease of Rankings

Even though SEO is a challenging arena, it is easier to rank highly in less competitive markets. All you need to make sure is that your website is optimized efficiently. PPC campaigns give you the freedom to choose where and how you want your listing to appear. You can pay for the position that you want.

Time

SEO campaigns can take a long while before you start seeing any visible results. On the other hand, results of PPC campaigns can be seen almost instantly and is therefore great for publicizing short term offers.

Efforts

SEO is not a one-time thing. Rather, you need to diligently carry out various activities. It requires a series of ongoing updates to keep the content fresh and search engines happy. PPC campaigns are a one-time thing. You just need to draft an ad and submit it to Google.

SEO is better for your business if you want to make a long term online presence. However, if you just want a short, sharp burst to promote your offers, then PPC is the way to go!

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Local search is becoming increasingly important as Internet users turn to the net and search engines for more local content, businesses and community sites.

Here is another great article by our guest publisher Kabir. You may also want to check out Kabir’s previous article on Google Caffeine – What Do You Need To Know & What You Need To Do?

Kabir Bedi works as a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a reputed web design company based in India, that specializes in providing a full range of web design services, website maintenance services and search engine optimization services. He has over 10 years of experience in the web industry.

How To Optimize Your Business For Google Local Search Results?

Location has come to become a significant force in the search landscape. And since Google has recognized geographical relevancy as a key parameter for search engine rankings, location has come a key element of the search engine optimization process.

And one of the effective ways to get high rankings in Google search results is to optimize your business website for Google Local Search. When users enter a search phrase that includes a geographical descriptor like the name of a city or country, the local search listings appear at the top of the search results, along with a map.

Here is a list of step-by-step process to optimize your website for local search listing followed by some great tips to get better rankings:

Focus on Local Search Engines & Directories

In addition to universal Google search, don’t forget to pay attention to local searches engines and directories on the web. While most of these websites will let you register for free and edit your information, some would only allow you to add and edit some of the basics. Having a steady presence on these local platforms is the first step to getting local organic traffic. Here are some websites that you need to start with:

Google Maps
Yahoo! Local Listing
Bing Local Listings
MSN Live Local
SuperPages
Yellow Pages
Switchboard
Yelp

These are some of the common ones. With a little more research, you will be able to locate more directories that are specifically relevant to your business location and get you more targeted and local traffic.

Fill In Relevant Information

When you create your profile and list your business on these platforms, make sure you fill in all the information that ask for be it images, operational hours of your business or anything else. Also, don’t forget to use the maps to plot your business on websites that have that provision.

Include your Geographical Data on your Website

Another determining factor of your local search results listing is the geographical information that you provide on your website. Local traffic comprises of users who search for general keywords along with some sort of geographical term such as pin codes, area codes, street name, city, country etc. And if you want to cash in on this segment of users, make sure you have details of your physical location listed on your website. Also, consider including your target geographical keywords and key phrases within your page titles etc. The more local information you can pack into your site, better will be your chances to get displayed in Google local search results.

Get Some Reviews

Another great way to boost your ranking on local search results is to get more and more reviews from your clients and customers. More the number of reviews, greater will be the strength in the local listing when they come up.

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