If you ask five people to bake a cake, you’ll get five unique cakes each with different ingredients. Ask ten people to craft you a chair and you’ll get ten distinct pieces each with its own style.

Because the search engines change their ranking algorithms (the equations they use to analyze a website’s reputation and rankability) so often, and they each use such widely varying criteria, there are literally hundreds of ways to promote your site to the first page of search results.

However, there are certain universal guidelines regarding what central principles and elements are vital to your search marketing strategy. There are also very clear rules against certain practices that attempt to cheat or trick the search engines.

Fundamental Principles for Successful SEO

1. Content
Content will always be your key ticket to top rankings. Without it, any rankings achieved will be short-lived. For content to help your ranking, however, you need a lot of it and it has to be updated regularly. Most importantly, each page of content must target a specific keyword term.

However, if your site possesses content that is auto-generated or is poorly written, i.e. a human visitor would not find it useful and informative, the search engines will figure it out and demote your site, possibly even blacklisting you and preventing you from showing up in their results at all.

We develop well-written, keyword targeted content for your site that is updated consistently and monitored for rankability. Your business will enjoy the added benefit of an ever-growing resource library of information that your site visitors will enjoy and which will also help with your sales conversions.

2. Links
More specifically, one-way links from authoritative sites in your niche market. You can find out how authoritative a site is by looking at its Page Rank.

Page Rank, or PR, is a ranking system Google devised to show how much weight or authority a particular site has. No one can say the exact methodology Google uses to assign Page Rank, however all SEO experts agree that it largely has to do with the amount of incoming links a site has, how long it’s been around, and visitor activity on the site (yes Google even knows how long someone remains on your site after they click through from the search results!).

What this means for you is that you want as many high PR sites linking into your site as possible (without you linking back to them). This is because Google gives these sites a lot of respect and values their “recommendations” signaled by who they choose to link to.

If all this sounds a bit complicated, think of it this way:

Google and the major search engines analyze your website the way scholars judge academic papers. The more journals and other reputable papers cite your research and quote you, the more authoritative and “expert” you become.

We negotiate inbound links on your behalf, concentrating on links from sites related to your market whose reputation thematically relates to the reputation you’re trying to build. We also make sure these links deep-link into your website, meaning that they link to various pages in your website, rather than just to your homepage (also a sign that you’re highly authoritative).

3. Visitor Behavior
Google knows everything. Other Search Engines like Yahoo! and MSN aren’t so far behind. If a visitor clicks from their search engine into your site, and leaves immediately, Google knows that they didn’t find what they were looking for. If too many people do this, Google will drop you from their rankings because they assume you’re not relevant for that particular term. This is why site design, compelling content, and conversion analysis are important.
We offer Website Conversion Optimization in addition to SEO to help you address this particular issue.

4. Human Idiosyncrasies
Google wants to know that a human is running the show. Automated SEO software, or any techniques that add hundreds of pages to your site within a week, or which create content automatically, are a dead giveaway that you’re doing something Google doesn’t like.

This won’t just get you knocked off the top 10 rankings – Google and other search engines will ban your site from ever showing up in their results – even when someone searches your exact domain name. This is why any illegal or unethical techniques will kill your business.

We hand craft every single page of information on your website and upload those pages consistently over several months.

Universally Illegal SEO Practices: Avoid at ALL Costs

Search engines may be vague about what you can do to get top rankings. However, they are not vague about those practices that will get you banned from their rankings. For instance, Google provides Webmaster Guidelines that detail what you are NOT to do when promoting your website.

When you are looking for an SEO professional, be aware of these illegal techniques and the different “pet names” given them by dubious fly-by-night companies. We’ve provided several of them here for your easy reference. You can also download these tips in an easy-to-read PDF format.

It is a must have for Flash Developers, it lets you choose between different versions of flash so you can be sure your code is compatible with all existing versions of Flash.

2. Firebug

Firebug allows you to edit CSS and HTML and any browser side code from within the browser. It’s a great tool to figure out why your webpages are loading slowly, what javascript code is slowing things down, and editing pages within the browser environment.

3. Live HTTP Headers

Live HTTP headers shows you the dialog that happens between the web server and your browser. Figure out why things aren’t redirecting, why search engines aren’t properly indexing your content, and what website is pushing you cookies in realtime.

4. FireShot

Ever want to send screenshots to clients? Or take an image off a page and use it in a mockup? Fireshot lets you take screenshots of entire pages, selected areas, or the current window and export it to an imaging program. Great for quick mockups, client meetings and portfolio pages.

5. Tamper Data

This plugin allows you to modifty GET and POST parameters on any page. Use it to test form processing code, test for security issues and diagnose bugs. It’s only issue is that it won’t work in tandem with Google’s web accelerator.

6. Load Time Analyzer

See how long your web page takes to load for different speeds. Especially useful for developers whose audience may still be using dialup.

7. MeasureIt

Ever one what the exact dimensions are of a piece of web page? Need to create a

Creating Online: In addition to providing fee site design templates, Creating Online has a great selection of stock photos that you can use free of charge. Take a look and see if you can find the image that’s right for your design. Feel confident knowing that the images you use are 100% royalty free.

e-Cobo: With images in many categories and varying resolutions, e-Cobo is a great place to find images for your web design needs. New downloads are regularly updated, so see what might work with your latest design.

Stock.xchng: Visit this self-proclaimed “leading stock photography site on the web” for your stock photography needs. With over 350,000 photos from over 30,000 different photographers, stock.xchng is a great place to find free images to suit all of your design needs.

FreeStockPhotos.com: Just like the name says, this site has free stock photos, available for commercial and non-commercial use in a variety of categories.Browse through their selection and see if you can find the perfect image for your current project.

Stockvault.net: After several years on the web, stockvault.net stills has some of the best images available. Their award-winning stock photos are free and great for web designs of all types and styles. With over 11,000 photos, finding the right image should be fairly simple.

Photoshoptalent.com: In addition to containing thousands of stock photos that are both free of charge and royalty free, photoshoptalent.com also has logo and site building tutorials to help give your web designs a customized touch. Browse through what they have to offer and see if anything works for you.

Public Domain Photos: Offering 5,000 free photos and 8,000 free clip arts, Public Domain Photos can certainly help you find some good images for your site designs. Take a look through their different categories and find some free photos to use.

Free Stock Photos: If you are looking for a great place to find free photos, clip art, graphics, and other items to help spruce up your web designs for free, look into what Free Stock Photos has to offer.

Free Images: With a good selection of photos for use in your web design, UK-based Free Images can help you to find what you’re looking for. Although the categories are limited, the selection is still very good if you need images related to home, work and financial, or nature. Browse through their galleries and find something interesting.

Freerangestock.com: Join up with this membership-based stock photo site that has tons of high-resolution photos, graphics, and texture. Not only are they completely free of charge, but royalty-free as well, allowing you to complete your designs knowing that you have the right to use the images you have selected.

Before jumping into the subject of subject lines with our five steps, let’s take a moment to consider the job of the subject line. You want your recipient to open your email. You might argue that open rates are not as important nor directly representative of the conversation rate–it’s an analytical debate for the metric minded. For our needs, the open rate leads to the sale. That is, you can’t have the success metrics without the recipient opening your email. But to convert viewers, your subject line needs to be straightforward and truly representative of the content. This segues nicely into our first step.

Step 1: Keep it simple and informative

Make a simple statement. You have about 50 character spaces. Explain what’s inside your email. Tell don’t sell. And that’s it folks. If the offer is bad, rewriting it to sound good is not effective. This is where open rates and conversion rates are out of whack. But if you make a simple, direct statement about a solid bit of news or offer… Of course, simplicity is sometimes not so simple.

If you try for heavy sales messaging and the ad lingo to match, you won’t discover much success. For direct mail, banks and credit card companies have mastered the art of the plain white envelope with a single statement: “Account information enclosed.” This style connected with a recognized business name has been proven effective time and time again. The same is true for your email campaigns and the “from” and “subject” lines and how they work together.

It’s instructive to consider the emails that are the most popular with the highest open rates. These would be emails forwarded from friends, family, and colleagues; and business or transactional replies, such as a Welcome to the Online Community confirmation. If the recipient knows your company, trusts you, there’s surely more impetus to keep it simple. When the “from” and “subject” lines work together, the most popular email subject lines with the highest open rates tend to be things like: “Our upcoming events schedule,” or “We’re throwing a party.”

Step 2: Write with audience and long-term marketing goals in mind

Don’t write your subject lines with sales-heavy messages. Here’s a little about email’s direct-mail heritage. It’s a cautionary tale, interesting and informative, for writers to have a little background in the art of direct sales. Traditionally for direct mail marketers, a good copywriter was analogous to a salesperson who could type. The goal was always unflinchingly direct—improve ROI with short-term sales tactics. So direct mail copywriters became the arbiters and experts of junk mail and their writing typifies a sideshow barker—”But, wait! There’s more! What would you expect to pay for these additional steak knives?”

Spam-style Email marketers followed suit, adopting tactics with FREE always capitalized and unadulterated punctuation abuse with far too many exclamation points!!!! In other words, the marketing channel became a sales channel with heavy sales messaging. The result was spam. In fact, too much capitalization and bad punctuation in the subject line can send your email directly to most spam filters.
While marketing delivery vehicles change, this fundamental question remains: Should marketing support and be subservient to sales, or vice versa? IMHO: the job of marketing is to make sales unnecessary. Nowhere does this seem truer than in an email subject line. So, my advice: don’t write your subject lines with sales-heavy messages.

Step 3: Segment and personalize your messages

Obviously knowing who the folks are on your list and knowing what they want to receive is an extraordinary bit of IQ for your marketing efforts. Ideally, you want to personalize your subject lines based on the segment. This is a powerful approach. Try including the recipient’s name and referencing things like purchasing history, previous Web visits, or products that connect to their preferences.

This is especially important when considering the type of email that your recipient signed up to receive. The email and therefore the subject line should be consistent with their subscription. Is the content of the email relevant to this member? If someone expects an email newsletter but receives a coupon offer that you’ve decided to email to your entire list, you’ll watch your open and unsubscribe rates climb together. On the other hand, if you have segmented your list properly and offer several subscription options, people who signed up for coupons should see a simple, promotional message like: 20% Off Coupon Inside. This offer connected to a “from” line that’s recognized will work well for you. For promotional emails, you can segment your list further depending on your products and services – for instance: cowboy boots and cologne are for men, or for women as a gift sales effort.

Step 4: Inject a sense of urgency

Each subject has a verb. Use a verb and call to action, especially with deadlines to impart a fast approaching date. Engage your reader with a hook. Keep in mind, the job of your subject line is just to encourage a recipient to want to open to learn more. That’s it. You don’t have to give away the entire story.

Deadlines, money, and strong verbs will help you impart that sense of urgency. “Order today for 20% off” or “Act Fast for Your Chance to Win”. As mentioned above, these promotional messages are only truly effective if the “from” line is recognized and the recipient wants to shop or consider your product or service. If you have an email newsletter, see step one: keep it simple. Just write the name of the newsletter and the issue number. Their desire to read your newsletter should provide enough urgency for successful campaigns.

Step 5. Test your subject lines

Of course, the discussion on your subject line approach and creative opinions change dramatically with testing. There’s a reason TV Guide will print as many as 24 different covers. Ideally, you should test subject lines on a segment of your list. See what works. But pay close attention to all the metrics, not just open rates. Examine what’s happening once folks open the email to truly determine the value of your subject lines and to see how the messages play for various segments from your list.

I think these five steps are a good launching pad for subject line considerations. I hope they work out for you. Drop us a comment and share your subject line success stories.

Developed in-house, our new system masks your contact information in the Domain WHOIS database. Often your contact information can be used by spammers, criminals, competitors or anyone else who wants to find out information about you.

Using Domain Privacy will show anyone looking at your domain name record generic information. For more information please click here.

Our server range includes the latest Intel Dual and Quad Core servers at amazing prices. Starting at just £59.99 per month our entry Dell server has an Intel Dual Core processor, 2 GB RAM and 2 x 160 GB Hard Disks running RAID mirroring – giving you a high speed web server for a low monthly cost.

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The Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 says it’s unlawful to exclude disabled people from the web, while companies have proved that making a website easier for a disabled person to use would improve the take up of products by as much as 300%.

In April 2009, the British Standards Institution will publish the first British Standard on web accessibility, but why is a British Standard necessary? There are in excess 10m disabled people in the UK with an annual spending power estimated to be around £80bn per annum.
Research by the Disability Rights Commission in 2004 found that a great amount of goodwill exists among web designers towards disabled people, yet less than 20% of UK websites actually meet the basic criteria for accessible design.

Implementing the guidelines laid out by the W3C into your website means:

• An increase in the amount of visitors who can use your website.
• Your website will last longer because more devices such as web browsers, mobile phones etc start to comply with the standards.
• Your website should be easier to read by search engines.
• Your website will be viewable on other Internet ready devices.
• Most importantly, if your website adheres to the WAI (website accessibility initiative) you will reach more customers

The WAI have said that “at least 10% of the population in most countries have disabilities” Why should your website not be seen by less capable web users? To make your website as ‘usable’ as possible means that you can maximise your website reach.

Click here to request a FREE evaluation of your website!

Website Builder Plus has to be seen to be believed, it creates dynamic and vibrant websites with no technical expertise needed. Your site will have that “custom” look that is usually reserved for sites that cost a fortune to create by professional design agencies.

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Website Builder Plus is avalible for all our web hosting packages at a great value of only £4.99 per month.

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