First lets see what targeted traffic is. in the beginning of the internet, When search engines were just about inexistant, there were nothing called targeted traffic. Actually the only way to get to a website was to type in its name. If you knew a website, you could visit it. If you did not, you would rather be stuck and get nowhere unless you get lucky. The Search engines changed the game a bit in the beginning. They delivered a list of websites which had a set of keywords in a tag on the web page. This worked well and plenty of sites got real good traffic. But then there were a lot of people who just wanted to trick visitors. People searching for Medicine found Viagra and some even found a porn website. This was not all that pleasant and then evolved the next stage. Search engines improvised. They started looking for the keyword in the content of the website rather than in a specific place. They literally scanned through the entire web page. This really cost a lot of bandwidth, Time and resources. But then the results were more accurate. Currently google does not rely on the keyword tag or so they say. I am bound to beleive them too as some of the sites which i have dont rank well if they have no content but only the keyword meta tag. Of course, that so far was just the background. Now talking about Targeted traffic, Its the traffic delivered to your website from search engines for keyword or key phrases which relate to your page content. That said, Its from people searching for exactly what you have to deliver, and thats exactly what they are targeting. Now targeted traffic could come from Free Search engine results and also Paid search engine results (PPC, CPM etc) but the end result should always be that it came from people searching for the content You have ready to deliver on your website / web page.

Now that said, whats Traffic rank? Traffic rank is a comparison of all the sites (various sites which rank for the same keyword) for the same keyword. an easier way to explain that would be to take an example. Lets say you have a keyword “Body Building Kit”. Of course thats not a keyword which gives you a lot of traffic in real life or may be it really pulls in a load depending on seasons. But lets say that your site is ranked 3rd on google for the keyword. The site on the first lets say “Site A” has 300 Visitors from that keyword while “Site B” on second place has 500 Visitors from that very keyword while you have 400 Visitors on the 3rd place. now if you actully look at the traffic rank for the keyword “Body building kit” the ranking would go for Site B to be first and then your site followed by Site A.

The point is that, traffic rank is Amount of traffic delivered to your website for a particular keyword . It doesnt matter if you are on #1 on google. What matters is the amount of traffic you can pull in. The overall traffic rank on the other hand is a complete different thing. Its the TOTAL number of visitors to your site for Any Keyword (which means that you are not ranked by the keyword but just the total number of visitors.

Excellent content? How do you define that? Content comes in 2 varieties.

1. Purely technical
2. Story books

Now i dont have to tell you what kind of people like what kind of content. You may have guessed it already. Someone who wants to buy a product and has set his mind on it will go in for more details of the product. Now if you wanted to buy a Sony Camera some DSLR thing which just came out in the market the other week with the sleek look and that Great case free (which you saw with one of your office colleagues who was showing it off all the time during his son’s Birthday party), then i am sure you would go in to Sony’s website and check out for the model number. If you already have the model number you will search for it on google (thats what most people use i hear). but at the end you have already decided what you want to buy and you will buy JUST THAT!!. What you are looking for on the website is not how good the camera is and what it can acheive, but its technical details. Whats the Zoom rate? Whats the Mega Pixel or the storage space. whats the Battery life? And most imporantly whats the Price. Now thats technical details.

When writing technical details there are clear cut ways. Put them in points and forget it. Its important that its not cluttered. its important that the customer  / Prospective customer gets what they want without hunting for it. Now that said, You have a chance of getting a sale here.

Now for the second type… The story. these are for those who are just looking for some information. Not the darn technical details. They don’t care about it much. They may be looking for some great snaps with that camera. May be some good tips on what can be done with this camera. Even people looking for reviews. They are looking for a story. They want to Buy the product but are really not sure about it. May be they will buy it now. May be they will buy another model altogether. May be its going to be for next Christmas. For now they are just window shoppers. But trust me, some Window shoppers will just buy if there is a bait!!! Say SALE for today.. its my mommas birthday you know and am giving a CAMERA CASE FREE WITH THAT SONY! ahm… and of course a 10% off…

The point is Excellent content cannot be strictly defined. It depends from every other person. It depends on what you are looking for. But you could simply make things great with a few changes to the structure. Think about a story with the technical details on it in Points. Make it interesting and put in a complete list of ROCKET SCIENCE in a Story book. Thats Talent! and thats what most of you would call EXCELLENT CONTENT!!

Choosing the right Content management solution is the key to a successful website. A dynamic website should know where its leading its users to. Getting a good CMS in place does not mean that you could really be on the top of the Google game. For that matter, Most Content management systems cannot rank well as compared to a static websites, but there are a few who can excel any Static website. Wordpress , if programmed to be a content management system, is one of the best software to be in place for a website. Perfect SEO ability, Lots of plugins and of course a great user interface which enables the client to easily manage their content.

Choose your content management system wisely. If you have a shopping cart in place you may want to consider one which has a few set things in place. The same goes for any content management system

Key features you should check out when you are implementing a CMS with SEO in mind includes

1. URL Redirection : You dont want a long url with ?, & and a lot of other wierd charecters. You would want a cleaner URL. Compare http://www.yoursite.com/products.php?id=199734&prod_name=tortillas in Moon as to http://www.yoursite.com/tortiallas_in_moon.html. The second URL makes more sense and is more easier for search engines to see the keyword in the URL itself

2. Ability to manage  Title tags, Description and Keywords among other things. : This is Key. The most important thing search engines like to see is the Title and the Description tags. Your CMS will have to keep these SEO features in mind.

3. Ability to Ping : Well not most softwares will let the web know that there has been a change on your site. A small new page or a modification of an address. Pinging is letting the web know that your website has changed. There has been an activity. Of course this is not important, but think of it, a website which can ping gets picked up by google and other search engines in hours, while the ones which are not pinged will take its own sweet time (sometimes months) to be noticed by search engines….

There are more to come in and i will add them as we go … for now… in simple sweet words, Wordpress is a great CMS software which is FREE and is completely customizable for SEO. If you had to go for a CMS, Go for Wordpress.

In one look, you would be saving hours if not days in SEO research with this small software. The most important thing in SEO is Analyzing your competition, Apart from knowing your keywords and your site itself well. The software comes with a detailed manual on how to use it. The seo Elite software is easy to use, Works on most windows platforms and does a decent job on finding how your competitors are leading on a particular keyword. Its research i should say is considerably good. Keywords on Title tags, The number of times its on the page, Bold, Italics of keywords, Page rank and a detailed report of all of these things on one page, well its a savior.

This software is for people who spend hours on SEO research , Keyword analysis and ranking in google. If you are one of those people who does a research once in a month or a year, you dont need this software. You could do it manually. If you spend half your day on Keyword research, Get seo Elite. Not that this is the best software ever, but it saves time and does the job well. Most importantly its quite affordable. Other softwares which fall under the same category and probably does the same job better would be the WEBCEO. Of course Web CEO is unbeatable and gives a trial version too. Unfortunately its a bit too expensive as compared to seoElite.

You can purchase SEO Elite from the SEO Elite website at http://www.seoelite.com

Most customers who want an SEO service have a website which is poorly optimized for a keyword and some even have Flash or other components which dont really seem friendly for SEO. the first phase of SEO itself is to get your website SEO ready. Second phase is to analyze if is even possible to rank for that keyword. Most often people look for the broader terms, like Real estate, Web design, Hotels in UK,  Swiss chocolate, Fans, Plugs, Keyboard, Television, HDTV and a lot more. Though some sites do stand a chance to get ranked for a few of these keywords, Most keywords listed may stand in a category where it will take Months , if not years to get a decent ranking on google. Is it worth the trouble? Will you pay for MONTHS of work ? is it affordable for the YOU as a customer?  The Keyword research and analyzis involves a lot of these factors in play and if its really worth it, we go on with the next phase which is Link Building. Link building most often involves getting links from various sources all over the web. This may be link exchange to Buying links and sometimes writing a 100 or 1000 articles. It may look like a simple task most of the time but its surely is daunting and time consuming.

So how do we price the whole thing now? Seo service and Pricing varies depending on 2 factors.

1. The keyword you choose.

2. the additional service which may be required

Overall, you will be charged for the time. If its a keyword which is going to take 3 months you can be assured that its going to cost you anywhere between 300$ to 500$ for that keyword. See more on Price break ups on SEO services soon.

The first page SEO ranking , something that everyone wants done but few tend to understand. Getting on the top league may look like fun but with the amount of money poured on to Getting a first page seo ranking, The fun turns out sour and sooner than later, Most customers end up pulling their hairs out for either

1.  The ranking drops in a few weeks because the competition has caught up with you OR

2. There is no traffic for the keyword which was invested on.

Either way, the customer is at loss.

Here at design2host, We will not give you just a ranking, we get one step ahead and give you targeted traffic from google with the set of keywords related to the industry. You may not rank well with the best keywords in the industry, but will surely be on par with those who are on the top league when it comes to traffic, if not exceeding their traffic. Think about it for a moment, if your competitor is getting 3000 hits per day and spends 1000’s of dollars on SEO, would it not be quite edgy if you could get the same traffic for a fraction of that price, from the same source and of course From a wider range of visitors?

The first page Google SEO ranking may be one of the best things to get done, but the key to the whole game is to get the traffic from a LOT of Lesser Competitive words than trying to beat the competition on a very dense keyword. Check out our services on FREE SEO coming soon.

The second thing you will notice is that the Broad Search has all the Sites Main domain listed, while the Specific search has Sub pages listed, which are easier to compete.More over, the page rank for all the sites on the Broad search is over 5 except for one or 2.

1. Search returns Main domain name (unlike Sub pages of the site) are harder to beat.

2. Sites with Page rank over 3 are hard to beat unless you bring in A good amount of links.

3. Too many sites competing for the keyword will sooner or later bring your site down. Keeping it on the top itself will consume more time.

When you do a SEO Competition , keep in mind that you compete with sites which you can easily beat. This means you have to get to know the Page rank of the website and its current position on the keyword. If you are doing your research well, chances are you will rank better in just a day or two. Wrong research would end up with a lot of wasted time and effort.

CLEVER SEO TECHNIQUE TO DO

1. Keyword Research. Thats the first step. Knowing whcih keywords bring in traffic and which one brings in sales could save you a lot of time , effort and pain. Its easy to start. Just get started with the google Keyword tool.

2. Keyword Placement : This is the second important thing. Once you know the keyword to get started with, Place the keywords in the right place. This includes the Title tag, Meta description, Meta keyword.

3. Keyword Density : Place the keywords across the page. Not necessarily on the top or the bottom but its best if you could have it once in the beginning and once in the end. 3-5 times on the page should be efficient , though there is no written rule about the limits. If its necessary you could go up to a 100 but IT SHOULD BE NECESSARY.

4. Linking: A page which is not linked to is a page which will never be seen. You can create a page on your website but if it is not linked to from other pages or from other site, chances are your page is never going to be seen. Start linking to the page. Book marke it from social sites. Digg it, Tweet it, Stumble it, Mixx it and Do what ever it takes to get LINKS.

5. WAIT : This is the painful part. Most people panic on this one. SEO is a slow process. But its not really that slow. Your next set of changes are more dependant on this one process. You can proceed with the above and get more links, change the title tag accordingly etc after your page is crawled and if its already not on the first 10.

NOT SO CLEVER SEO TECHNIQUE TO AVOID

1. Stuffing your Page with keywords will not help you. Hiding the Keywords could make things even worse. There are pages on the web which have White text on white background. Google or any search engine can keep a tab on it easily and you will run into trouble fast. and if you do, you will end up banned. Which is worse than not ranking at all.

2. Concentrating on the real broad keywords could end you up with a lot of frustration. Dont try to rank for “Car parts” if you are selling CAR parts, but try something more specific, like “Nissan Car parts” or even better, “Nissan 307 Windshield”. Being specific assures you a better placement and FAST.

3. Linking with the wrong keywords : When you are linking to a page with Nissan Car parts, dont link from a word “Car parts” of “Nissan”. Link it with the right keyword. This enables a better ranking.

PPC Has its own Benefits. Its fast. You get results in Hours if not minutes. You are on the Loosing or the Earning areas depending on how you implement it. The risk is high, The benefits is high too if implemented well.

SEO. Its slow. Competition for Keywords are very steep. Your earning potetntial is high once you reach the top 5. The risk involved is literally Nill. But at the end of the day, you could put in all your efforts to get to the top and still realize that you chose the wrong keyword.

So where is the Balance? The SOE Vs PPC Game is to be seen in a different way before you head start with either or both of them. When you start a business, you have advertising budget. If its balanced towards getting traffic from BOTH the sources, you will essentially find that your gains are instant. Your ultimate goal should of course be to eleminiate PPC Altogether at the end.

Begin your advertising campaign by PPC. Set aside enough funds for SEO to last 2-3 months. SEO is usually cheaper than PPC so you will want to have at least 20 Keywords to be on the top 10 by 3 months. These keywords should bring you a decent 20-30 Visits a day each. We are looking for 300 visitors a day from SEO on the 3rd month which is not a big number. This should essentially cover the cost of your PPC campaign from the 3rd month considering you make sales from these traffic. The first 3 montsh of your PPC campaign should focus on lower end keywords which brings in More traffic with lesser cost. Basically the less competitive ones with Higher ROI.  from the 3rd month you will put your entire PPC funds on Higher ROI Keywords which are Really competitive and requires more Cash per click.

The final word, PPC for the Highly competitve keywords which you cannot rank through SEO. But SEO for all the other keywords. Research shows that you could earn more through SEO over time than with PPC. I am yet to test it though

The Basic SEO Tactics which is required to generate traffic to your site are as follows.

1. Error Free Web pages :Try to keep your web page completely error free. The best way to gurantee it is by making it W3C compliant. Following the standards can only ensure that you are on the safer side. Most website designers should be able to do this as its not very complicated.

2. Keyword Analysis : Knowing the right keywords to generate keywords is essential in most cases. You dont have to worry about where to find keywords. There are free tools like the Google Keyword Tool which can give you a list of targeted keywords along with competition, Traffic , PPC Value and a lot more. Its mostly common sense to analyze the basic keyword. For instance, You can bet on the highest paid keywords to generate the best ROI. They convert in most cases. You will also need to concentrate on Long tail keywords.

3. Social Marketing : Social networking sites are getting popular. Your value on Search engines could be easily hiked with links from some of the social networking sites. You can start on with sites like Social poster to get a list of social networking sites.

4. Incoming links : This is essential in most cases where you keywords are competitive. These keywords should essentially be avoided for instant traffic but in case there are a few keywords which you need ranked to the top in a month or 2, Consider getting a few links with the keyword as the Anchor text. Dont be worried about where you could get links from. You dont have to purchase them. But yes it does take efforts. Start with a few Articles website like Ezinearticles.com and also consider using Squidoo and Hubpages.

5. Inpage Optmization : Though this is the first thing you ought to do, We have put this on the last. This is fully on your control. Consider getting a copy of the Beginners SEO Techniques by Brad Callen. It teaches you everything about Inpage and Off pages SEO. The techniques alone should serve your purpose of optimizing your web pages. The main SEO tactics you should consider implementing is the Titles and the Description apart from Keyword Density on your web pages.

Also remember. Content is King and will remain so as long as Search engine rules.

There are more seo Tactics to follow and i promise to write more in detail about each of the above. For now, i would appreciate more comments to know where i could write more. Comments please