jon, Author at Outsource Force

The Uses of Robots.txt

Posted on October 21, 2012 by jon

Website owners and webmasters would be ecstatic if their website is frequently visited by search engines and contents are indexed by search engine spiders. This is what SEO is all about – getting a high rank with search engines. However, there are parts of a website which you wouldn’t want spiders to include in their indexing activities

The best way to inform search engines to keep their spiders ‘off-limits’ to specific areas of the website is by using a robots.txt file.

Robots.txt is a text file and not html, put on your site to tell search engine robots which pages you would like them not to crawl or index. This is not to be confused as a way of preventing search engines from crawling your site. It is more of a notification for search engines not to enter certain areas of the websites for specific reasons. The file is placed in the main directory of a website where spiders can easily read it.

A better understanding of the different uses of this robots.txt file may be necessary in order to appreciate its importance for the website and the search engines.

Saving Your Bandwidth. Checking your website’s statistics will show you that there are many requests for the robots.txt file by the different search engine spiders. Search engines try to recover the robots.txt file the website is indexed to check on any special instructions for the spiders. Without the special instructions, it will cause the search engine spider to use up more of the site’s bandwidth resulting from the repeated retrieval of say, a large 404 error file, which should not be accessed by the spiders in the first place. By using the robots.txt file, the site’s bandwidth is reserved for more important pages required by the searchers. You can also use this file to ban spiders from indexing graphic files.

Keeping the Sensitive Information Hidden. This is one of the more important reasons for using the robots.txt file. As there are websites holding a database of confidential information, obtained through the interactive features of the site such as client’s registration form, special instructions are given to spiders not to crawl and index the pages containing the confidential information. If there is no special instruction for the spiders, these delicate information including credit card details can become accessible and available to anyone searching the web. The robots.txt file will be used to hide the database from the search engines.

Avoiding Canonicalization Problems. This also refers to duplicate content problems which occur on a website where multiple pages have the same content. An example would be a product page that has a “print” version and another page for browsing. Spiders will find it difficult to identify the canonical version. Using robots.txt, the secondary or “print” version need not be crawled by the spiders.

Avoiding Wastage of Server Resources. Most websites have scripts or computer programs built within the site. Examples would be contact forms or search engine within the site, etc. Such scripts or programs are intended for human use and not for spiders so it would be better to block the spiders from the directories containing the scripts. This will reduce the load on the web server every time scripts are called in by the search engine spiders.

Robots.txt is very useful in hiding web contents that are not for public viewing especially for electronic commerce websites. This serves as security for private data wherein only website administrators should be given access to. Also, robots.txt aid spiders in crawling pages which were intended to be duplicated to not be crawled as duplicate content which could decrease website ranking.

In creating a website, especially if you will be hiring an outsourced web design company; having clear understanding on robots.txt inclusion must be set before running the website live to avoid spider or robot confusion on data that will be shown to internet users. It must be clear that certain pages must not be shown in public for client protection and it must also be of tight security to avoid spammers having an easy access to confidential data.

How Can Content Marketing Improve Your SEO Ranking

Posted on October 15, 2012 by jon

Without any doubt, web users are content hungry. They are always looking for information, be it new or old. It is therefore important that the internet marketing companies charged to handle the online marketing activities of their client’s website deliver compelling content, relevant and well-crafted for the full consumption of the web readers. Contents can engage customers and make them revisit the sites as many times as they need to. Outsource online marketing experts are aware of this, that’s why they continuously update their sites with the latest and accurate informational content relevant to the needs of the readers.

Webmasters capitalize on content in their optimization strategies to improve the site’s SEO ranking. With the growing demand for compelling and quality content, optimization experts are directing their efforts in creating and marketing the content in demand. Content marketing improves SEO rankings and traffic, in addition to the quantifiable response derived from these marketing campaigns.

How then can content marketing improve your SEO ranking?

1. Write Guest Blog Posts for Authoritative Sites. By doing this, you are establishing your authority in the industry. By writing contents for other sites, you can be considered as a thought leader in the industry. People who have read your posts will see you as an authority in the industry with valuable information to share. Your site tends to gain in this by having the customers of that site you wrote for visit your site through the links you have integrated into the guest post. If your guest post is compelling enough, your new visitors can link back to your site for some pertinent information or detail.

There is a catch in doing guest posting nowadays. Google is smart enough to know that you are guest posting your blogs just to acquire backlinks from authority sites. To eliminate the chances of getting hit by updates, be sure that you don’t just do guest blogging for the sake of acquiring quality backlinks. Before anything else, it is your target audience who will be reading your posts. Always put your audience first in writing any content be it on your own website or blog site or when guest posting. Stop thinking of spiders and other ranking factors but your audience.

2. Build Links to your Site with Original, High Quality Content. The best way to get organic and quality links is by producing interesting and highly relevant content that drives people to link and share your content. A content has no use if it is not being shared by people. This boils down to having great content so people will find it useful and informational. In doing so, not so much effort will be done by you in marketing your content for it is the people who read your post will be the ones marketing your content for you. Such links created by you and the people who shared your content will be detected by search engine spiders and will be considered when they rank your site.

3. Measure then Optimize Again. As in any SEO technique, proper monitoring, measurement of the optimization techniques are in order, to determine the effectiveness of the campaign. If you have written a guest post, be sure that you answer back whenever a comment was posted. Be polite to the website owner where you guest posted a blog entry. From there on, you can measure user engagement. You can also get insights from the comments you get from your readers. Most of the time, comments are instant feedback on how well you did in a specific post which you could use in establishing a more powerful marketing technique.

Google seemed to have successfully convinced many webmasters and website owners about the important role content marketing plays on SEO ranking. With its recent algorithm updates, Google gave more weight on content than all the other SEO elements in relation to page ranking. Spiders are crawling pages with great content and use that as a basis for page ranking. With these changes, focus and attention are directed to creating and distributing quality and compelling content.

With more relevant and updated content published and distributed across the online communities, the more likely it is for your site to be found by users or readers who need the information that you have on your site or on social media sites. The more users visit your site for the information desired, the higher the chance of getting high ranks with search engines.

The SEO Value of Internal Linking

Posted on October 08, 2012 by jon

Link building is an integral component of search engine optimization – attaining high ranking in search engines results page. But there is one aspect of linking which is most often ignored, overlooked, or neglected – and that is the power of internal links. Perhaps, not many search marketers are aware of the SEO value derived from internal links placed on important pages on the website. The SEO value may even be equal to the value derived from inbound links.

Internal linking is building links between the pages of a website. This allows the webmaster or the SEO expert to make use of strategic channeling of link juice to target landing pages. It also pulls the deep pages higher up in the site structure, improving user usability. Internal links also allow search engines crawlers to find the content easily. Internal linking may also be used to promote previous articles that a user or reader may find helpful in searching for relevant answers.

Developing and implementing an internal linking strategy should be done during the initial design or redesign of a website. This is because effective internal linking can prove to be costly if implemented on a live website. The following are some internal link building techniques:

Distribute the Flow of Link Juice. This is done by tapping the most linked-to pages or most authoritative pages of a site. Drop links on those pages to the pages specifically targeted for organic traffic (SEO landing pages). Distributing the link juice from these pages is what is aimed with this technique.
All Target SEO Landing Pages should be Linked. This is a good way to scale your link building efforts. Every time an inbound link is made to one SEO landing page, that link subsequently flows to your other SEO landing pages. This means one link is multiplied. The easiest way to interlink SEO landing pages is by adding a list of “Related Links” in a sidebar or at the end of the page.
Links on the Home Page. This is the most linked to page on a website. Hence, it is a good target for tapping and distributing the link juice. Search engines will place high value on home pages which are linked to internally, as they signify a strong trust and authority indication to the search engine crawlers.
Links on Unconventional Places. Aside from the home page and SEO landing pages, good link equity would be from pages where you find “company leaders”, “privacy policy”, “terms of service”, “contact us”, “frequently asked question”, etc. These pages are high in information architecture and they are often link-free. This means there is not much competition in terms of other internal links found on these pages.
Use Breadcrumbs. While breadcrumbs are great navigational tool for users, they are also useful for internal linking purposes. With breadcrumbs, you can also use anchor text to send a relevant signal to search engine crawlers.
Use Blogs. It is important not to overlook the blogs when doing the internal linking. Blog contents are excellent source of link equity. You can use related post plugins, top post widgets in the sidebar, categories, breadcrumbs and better pagination.

While some SEO believe that internal links do not count as much as external links, they are still very important in search engine algorithms. Especially now that algorithm changes are frequently made, search engine spiders would find more value in a website if they can see relevancy in pages or posts. Robots can interpret it to be highly informational, thus, giving it high value and trust rating.

In the past months, internal linking has been a vital search engine optimization technique since internal linking is a tactic that have been long forgotten by many online marketing companies. Since there have been updates that may penalize a website for its unethical practices i.e., use of black hat and gray hat techniques, internal linking is one of the many ways of preventing penalty for it shows strong relevancy and friendly user navigation inside the website.

The SEO Benefits of Social Media

Posted on October 02, 2012 by jon

While there are millions of internet users turning to search engines for every piece of information they need, an equal number of users visit various social media networks as part of their daily routine – whether for personal use or for business. Social media platforms are indeed a great tool to distribute information which can eventually create brand recognition for some businesses.

More recently, social media signals has been influencing search engine optimization campaigns. The importance of social media for online businesses cannot be ignored. This is why many website owners have focused their efforts in this undertaking – making their presence grow strong in social circles. With benefits listed below, why wouldn’t they?

Zero Initial Cost. For those who are on tight budget, social media marketing may be set-up for free initially. You can set up accounts with the major social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ at absolutely no cost. The only investment you have to put in is time and creativity to build the right impression.

Blogs. One of the easiest and best ways to start your social media campaign is through blogging. You can either set up a blog on your website or create a stand-alone blog. Blogs allow you to create content with targeted keywords for your site. People are given opportunity to interact through comments, opinions and feedbacks. And considering the enormous number of people viewing blogs each month, blog sites can really be a powerful SEO tool.

Faster Results than Traditional Website. With a compelling content posted in social media networks, it is possible to go viral – thousands of visitors will visit your blog and because it is social media, friends of friends, or followers of followers can easily access the posted content.

Recognized by SERPs. All blogs or contents, and profiles posted on social media networks are opportunities for search engines to notice and detect your site.

Video Presentations vs 500-word article. Expectedly, more people will watch a 3-minute video over reading a full page content of an article. This gives a higher probability for the company’s message to reach out to more viewers. The possibility of going viral with an interesting video clip is also present.

Higher Ranking. On social media platforms, a content shared by others equate to a backlink. The more quality backlinks your page has, the higher the PageRank ranking will be. This could establish your site to be an authority site. And if you have the quantity and quality of backlinks, the higher the chances of PageRank ranking.

Users Become Focus Groups. From the social media sites, you can learn the current trends or the main discussion points being tossed around. This information will give you an idea of what keywords you can integrate in your own posts and other SEO activities. Discussions on social media sites can help you identify the topics that will keep them engaged and interacting.

Customer Engagement and Involvement. A lot of people find satisfaction when they are given the opportunity to express their opinion in public about certain products and services. This kind of engagement can help SEO companies and business owners to customize their strategies according to the desires of their customers. Surveys, contests, feedback and opinion or comment section in blogs are some of the effective ways in engaging the customers to provide you with valuable information.

Overall, marketing using social media sites is an essential part of website optimization for it is proven to bring quite a chunk of website traffic. Success will not be achieved by merely focusing on social media marketing. It should take into account all valuable elements of SEO to run a smooth campaign and for it to be successful.

The New Magical Number in SEO – 7

Posted on September 23, 2012 by jon

For most online marketing outsourcing companies, every movement, update or changes in SEO, SEM algorithms are critical as these would have some impact on their online marketing and optimization efforts. Regular monitoring of search engine results page on specific targeted keywords is equally important and critical as this would be an indicator of whether or not the marketing and optimization efforts are paying off in terms of page rankings. And those who are closely monitoring the SERPs must have noticed a significant and obvious change.

It used to be that search engines like Google would normally bring out ten websites on each page of their SERPs for every search query made. Depending on the website’s page ranking and optimization value, ten websites are to appear on every page of the SERPs. And as most SEO and outsource internet marketing companies would do, they will target their site to be included, say in the first or top page of the results page. Even if their site lands on 8th or 9th or even 10th position, the site will still be at the first or top page.

Recently, however, Google has been observed to be moving away from the customary 10 listings per results page down to displaying only seven listings. It has also been observed that one site dominates the results.

Dr. Peter Meyers of SEOmoz pointed out that “about 20% of the search engine results pages or SERPs at Google now show only 7 listings.” With this, one is inclined to think that Google is trying the new display format to whether “sitelinks” appear with listings.

Apparently, when a search query is made, and the search query word matches the domain, the domain’s results show sitelinks, then only 7 listings will appear on the SERP. While sitelinks often appear for brand names, they are apparently appearing now on the SERPs because Google had instructed their spiders to include sitelinks in their search.

Here’s a sample of the said new number of results:

With this observation, online marketing outsourcing companies are concerned about site domination, which in the mid-2010, Google officially declared “that in some cases, there are sites which might be able to dominate all the results” – which leads most people in the SEO business to think that Google is making another expansion on site domination.

However, when the search done uses general keywords, it still shows its normal 10 site listings. Here, search engine optimization companies who have been doing all white hat technique and was not hit by Google’s Panda nor Penguin updates continues to give a tough battle in ranking number one.

This goes to show that the current number seven as Google’s new SERP depends on the type of query a user does. It does not follow that the said search engine will only display seven results to every query done and that the number of results is still search specific.

Here is a sample of results for a generally used keyword:

In an official statement, Google declared, “We’re continuing to work out the best ways to show multiple results from a single site when it’s clear users are interested in that site. Separately, we’re also experimenting with varying the number of results per page, as we do periodically. Overall our goal is to provide the most relevant results for a given query as quickly as possible, whether it’s a wide variety of sources or navigation deep into a particular source. There’s always room for improvement, so we’re going to keep working on getting the mix right.”

Even though an online marketing company goes on with white hat practices, the future of search does not guarantee top ranking if the trend continues. Digital marketing will drastically change if this new rule will be implemented. So, as early as now, the need to be on top is crucial as this helps a website’s branding. To be able to be included in the future of search, the job needs to be polished now before it is too late.

Recommended SEO Tools

Posted on September 16, 2012 by jon

Just like in any business, competition abounds. SEO is no exception. Your website should be optimized properly in order to be more popular and more relevant than the existing and would be competitors, in order to succeed.

Websites that make use of search engine optimization strategies and techniques should know that the following elements are critical in the SEO campaign – keyword research, site usability and structure, link building, and relevant and updated content, etc.

Unfortunately, one of the most overlooked and ignored SEO strategy is monitoring and tracking your progress. Implementing the best SEO practices without knowing how your efforts are helping the business, i.e., monitoring the progress just makes no sense. With all the updates being done by major search engines, one has to be on top of his game in terms of utilizing the best SEO tools to check if you are successful in your optimization efforts.

Google SEO Tools. Apparently, Google has the widest array of tools that can be used to check your success or failure. AdWords Keyword Tool is probably one of the most popular keyword tool on the internet. Google’s keyword tool is great with only one downside – you cannot use it to analyze competition. Other keyword tools are YouTube keyword tool, Google Insights, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Google Page Speed Online, and Google’s Real Time Insights Finder – Marketing Tool.
Tynt SEO. Copied excerpts of your content and attributes a link to the original source is an acceptable practice and poses no problem for the content source. The problem is when your contents don’t get the proper attribution. This tool basically inserts a certain code on every single page of your site. This code allows automatic generation of attribution link when text or images from your page get copied by external users. The attribution link will lead back to where the content was extracted from. With this tool, you are able to build links back to your site. This tool also generates some cool SEO reports like number of users that copied your content.
Microsoft SEO ToolKit. This SEO ToolKit allows you to review your website, see the results and make the necessary changes the tool recommends. It provides detailed analysis and search engine friendly recommendations to help improve the relevance of your website in search results right away. The toolkit checks for broken links, missing tags, missing alt tags, larger scripts, and other SEO violations.
GTMetrics. This is quickly becoming a favorite tool used to analyze and test page speed online. This tool can check Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow score of any web site. The information generated from such analysis is very useful since page loading time is one of the factors used by Google to determine rankings. GTmetrix will provide detailed explanations of what is not working on your site and ways you can implement to improve it.
SEO Doctor. This is a FireFox Addon – a great “flyby” and simple tool, made for both beginners and seasoned SEOs. Main features of this tool include identifying potential problems and assigning a score for your pages based on currently accepted SEO practices; showing link structure and help monitor page rank flow for your site pages; and detecting and warning about non-indexable pages on your site.

Most of the SEO tools mentioned here are free. Some are web-based, some can be downloaded, and some are browser add-ons. With the help of these search engine optimization tools, you could always check on your standing and which strategies are working for your campaign. Knowing which tactics are working will lessen your non-working efforts and will eventually free you from doing what might harm your campaign.

Internet marketing is a game of survival and at the same time, a game without definite formula. To stay on top of your game, you need to keep your eyes and ears open and be able to react quickly with the changes made every now and then. In the Philippines, a lot of good SEO outsourcing company does well in the online marketing field and utilizes every SEO tools to keep up with steep competition.

How to Identify if Your SEO is an Expert on the Field

Posted on September 10, 2012 by jon

Like most business entrepreneurs, small business owners are cognizant of the importance of keeping high online visibility through a website. Web designers are hired to develop and create a visually appealing website. An expert in search engine optimization is engaged to provide for the optimization needs of the website in order to achieve high ranking on the search engines results page and high website visibility for the searchers or users.

The high demand for SEO nowadays has presented the market with deceitful SEO, low-quality service providers, and unfortunately, outright SEO scammers. This has caused many business owners to hesitate in hiring an SEO for fear of ending up with a scammer.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to check or test your SEO on his or her expertise on the field.

Check if the optimization expert can answer your questions confidently. You may need to do some advance research on SEO techniques and strategies to be able to determine if the SEO’s answers match the standard and acceptable optimization practices. Throw in some questions like any other business owner would and pay attention on how the SEO will respond to pointed questions. You should be looking for someone who can answer the questions with honesty and confidence. The SEO expert should be able to explain details logically and reasonably.

Expert SEO utilizes a strategic approach leveraging a site’s unique offerings regardless what they are. SEO that gives you a quotation by the page is using a short-sighted approach that is not likely to benefit your business. The SEO expert is just after making money from the pages created and not from the goals achieved.

SEO is basically organic. An expert in the field would be able to achieve positive results without having to ask the business owner to implement fast-results non-organic methodologies like paid advertising, etc. Site optimization requires creativity, innovation and openness to new organic strategies. Packaged SEO can impose restrictions on the overall optimization campaign which will definitely not benefit your business.

Watch out for SEO that uses techniques that put your website at risk with search engines policies. This includes link buying or cloaking to deceive users and search engines, stealing content from other websites, etc. These are also known as black hat SEO – using techniques aimed at tricking the search engines into finding the site as relevant when it is in reality, not.

SEO is a continuing process and no expert will make a definitive claim on getting results within a specified time frame especially for organic site optimization. Don’t fall into false guarantees in terms of achieving the results.

Your expert SEO should be able to create multiple quality content for the website. Without this, the website may not stand a chance of being ever found by searchers. Constant updating of the information on the site is required and the expert SEO should know this in the same way that he would know that searchers or users are constantly looking for new and latest information in whatever it is they are looking for.

Ultimately, an expert SEO should exercise complete compliance with search engine guidelines in order to keep the integrity, reputation and authority of your website in the industry. Stay away from SEO who would suggest short-cut tactics to achieve the desired results. In the long run, it will do your business more harm than good.

It is best to be vigilant and be meticulous in hiring an internet marketing company who can provide you with the best search engine optimization service which surpasses the industry standard for your business to be at its optimal performance.

The Power of Anchor Text in SEO

Posted on September 02, 2012 by jon

Anchor text is a visible hyperlinked text that people usually see on a website or a web page. Clicking this blue colored hyperlink will take the visitor to another page available on the website or another relevant page. These are also underlined texts that regularly appear on any website that is used to indicate the page that it links to.

Unfortunately, some SEO and webmaster often disregard the importance of anchor text in a rock-solid SEO link building strategy. In today’s search engine realms, anchor text could be the best element to help achieve high rankings in search engine result pages. Despite the constant updates being done by major search engines in order to achieve a better way of ranking genuinely quality sites, anchor text remains to be an implementable SEO technique that can bring your site to the high ranking page of search engines.

If there’s one thing about SEO that remained unchanged, it is the power of anchor text. Putting a link on your site to another site is seen by Google as a ‘vote”. This is a proven SEO technique that Google has used since the beginning. By using anchor text, visitors are led to a page where they can expect to see information relevant to the text used as anchor text. This pattern of usage has been taken into consideration in search engine algorithms to improve the relevance of the “target” or the “landing page” URL for the keywords appearing within the anchor text. To understand the power of anchor text, check the following:

Enhancing the Relevance of the Target Page. It should be noted that the keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page pertinent to the keywords used. The relevance of the page containing the anchor text is enhanced to some degree while the real winner is actually the target page URL. Use optimized anchor text with relevant keywords to build the relevance of each page of your site.

Anchor Text and Search Engine Algorithms. Including important and relevant keywords in the anchor text can spell out the big difference in the final ranking of site pages. All search engines give significant consideration to the anchor text on the site’s pages. Google, in fact has created a special operator: allinanchor:keyword, which detects and picks up text only from within the anchor text of indexed pages. This is probably Google’s way of saying that its algorithm is configured to index anchor text as separate searchable data, thereby, making it evident, that Google considers it as one important pointer to page relevance. Anchor text linking to external or internal pages should have important keywords.

Anchor Text Position. This gives a significant impact in achieving good ranking. Positioning your anchor text is like positioning your targeted keyword; it should be very visible to the reader and the robots. Placing your anchor text at the beginning of your article makes it easier for robots to read what your page is all about. Placing your anchor text at the middle means you are showing relevant articles for your post. Placing your anchor text at the end of an article is sort of a reminder for the reader that they could also see other products or services you offer.

Repetitive use of exact keyword as anchor text. Since Penguin has been around for some time now, it is highly advised that anchor text must vary. Repetitive use of exact anchor text in an article can be very detrimental to your campaign. Google can actually detect that you are manipulating the search engines if you overdo this. Careful keyword research and analysis will help you with the variety of anchor text you you can use.

Successful SEO techniques and strategies should, therefore always include the proper use of anchor text of inbound links. A significant amount of weight is given by Google and other search engines to this particular technique making it a decisive factor in targeting high or top ranking with search engines on extremely competitive search terms. Your online marketing outsourcing company knows the significance of this.

Use of Rel Canonical, No Index, and No Follow

Posted on August 29, 2012 by jon

Rel Canonical

Named in many ways – ‘rel=canonical’, ‘rel canonical tag’, ‘rel canonical’, ‘canonical url tag’, ‘link canonical tag’, or ‘canonical tag’, they all refer to one and the same thing, i.e., the page level meta tag placed in the header of a webpage; rel canonical is the first or one of the first things in the HEAD section. It gives your website protection from duplicate content. Rel canonical tells search engines which URL represents the page being displayed. There are four reasons why your site should use rel canonical:

Defense against mirror sites. Mirror sites or scraper sites are always an issue for any website. Some are intentionally done maliciously by a 3rd party; there are some which were accidentally done during site development. Mirror sites are a trap for search engines and users to wind up in the wrong place, wasting their time and resources.
Focus the search engines. The rel canonical will direct the search engines accurately on the pages which are of genuine value and not waste time in indexing duplicate content. Spiders will be able to crawl valuable contents and index them properly.
Secure Page Level Authority. 301 redirect is the most effective way of preserving the page level authority in the same manner that rel canonical instructs the search engines on the proper placement of link equity.
Prevent Indexation Issue. By implementing a rel canonical link tag, having an indexation issue is prevented.

No Follow

Webmasters can tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link” by using “Nofollow”. “Nofollow” does not count for Google’s page ranking requirements. Using ‘nofollow’ causes Google to drop the target links from the web, but the target links may still appear in Google’s index if the same target links were used by other sites which did not use the ‘nofollow’ tag. There are three reasons for using ‘nofollow’ :

Untrustworthy content. Use ‘nofollow’ for contents of pages you link to which are not trustworthy, e.g., untrusted user comments or guestbook entries, etc. This is a way to discourage spammers from messing with your site.
Paid links. Webmasters should use ‘nofollow’ on paid links in order to prevent these paid links from manipulating search engines and causing negative impact to the users.
Crawl prioritization. Use ‘nofollow’ on ‘register here’ or ‘sign in’ links to enable spiders or Googlebots to crawl other pages which you would like to see in Google index.

No Index

“Noindex” tags are used by SEO to prevent search engine spiders from indexing a specific page on a site. If there is a ‘noindex’ tag on a page, Google will drop the page from their search results even if other sites link to it. Other search engines may have a different way of interpreting ‘noindex’ tag where a link to the page can still appear in their search results even if there is a ‘noindex’ tag.

There may be instances or cases when the page with ‘noindex’ tag still appears in Google search results. This could be because Googlebots haven’t crawled the site since the ‘noindex’ tag is added on the page. To have the ‘noindex’ page removed, use the URL removal request tool of Google.

These are some of the useful elements of search engine optimization that should not be overlooked. These are part of the important factors that search engines are looking at to see if a website is really serving its purpose and if it is right for a specific search. Online marketing is a complex process that needs an in-depth understanding for strategies to work out well.

Who Should Consider Marketing Outsourcing

Posted on August 16, 2012 by jon

The business of outsourcing is not an overnight phenomenon as this has been around for many, many years. It has been traditionally done with Accounting or Information Technology. Recent years have seen an expanded array of services which many companies have been willing to subcontract to another party – customer service, human resources, and recruitment among others. With the changing consumer mindset and economic conditions, outsourcing is a relief seen by many business owners from huge overhead expenses.

Outsourcing the marketing needs of your business is an idea met with enthusiasm and positivism. It enables you to add experience, leadership, and expertise without the usual costs associated if adding full-time personnel for the purpose.

Aside from the financial savings of outsourcing your online marketing, there are other benefits that go with it:

Invaluable contribution in terms of expertise in marketing strategy, management and implementation
Provide an unbiased, fresh, outside perspective on your business and industry
Offset the impact of marketing staff reduction
Hire only for tasks needed and when they are needed
Maintain a sense of priority and focus with critical projects with the knowledge that your need will be attended to by the outsourcing company

Who Should Consider Marketing Outsourcing?

With such benefits and advantages, outsourcing may be seen as a logical choice for every company with the need to grow its business. But not all companies may adapt to the concept of outsourcing. Certain characteristics of a company’s culture are necessary to maximize and fully capitalize on the benefits of outsourcing.

Some companies choose to stay smart in today’s volatile business environment which requires access to resources that are well versed in current practices or techniques across all marketing disciplines. Others welcome innovation but may have difficulty in keeping abreast with the overflow of innovation across the digital world.

Foremost is the company’s culture of innovation. Those companies that are open and committed to innovation understand the importance of prioritizing that function above all others. At the same time, such firms are more “culturally adaptable” to take advantage of the innovative approach entailed by marketing outsourcing. These companies will accept the changes resulting from such innovations but not without completely understanding what the trade-off is.

How about companies that constantly looks for ‘best-price’ deal for marketing services? They are usually unable to appreciate the strategic capability a knowledgeable outsourced marketing team can offer the company. These companies not only missed on the benefits of outsourcing but they fail in getting the marketing concepts up and working for the business.

There are other companies that can possibly adapt to the concept of marketing outsourcing. They are:

Companies that undergo rapid expansion into new geography
Companies that experience a sudden growth surge
Companies that have a compelling need to reduce overhead and employees
Companies that are spin-offs from the parent company

From how it looks, it seems that only the innovators qualify in venturing into marketing outsourcing. Their culture of innovation certainly makes up for what is required by outsourcing companies and that is openness to new technologies, strategies, and unconventional practices.