The fact is offline media like magazines and newspaper are slowly dying and becoming less effective for marketing. With SEO we can distribute content and information about your website and products to literally 1000’s of websites where it has the potential to reach millions of people. If you need to stop the SEO service, the affects will last on much longer than advertisement that is only in circulation for 1 week or 1 month (newspaper / magazine).

With SEO it is much easier to track the ROI than doing guess work with print advertising. Marketing Bangkok provides monthly SEO services with guaranteed results! Our monthly campaigns are usually cheaper than most print advertising, and the difference is ridiculous! You have to see for yourself.

Because SEO is a new industry, that’s shrouded in bit of secrecy, you may not understand how to check what your SEO company is doing. Are they getting results for you? Are you getting a good return on your investment? Some ways to catch bad SEO companies out is by checking out whether or not they’ve made any changes at all to your website.Have they performed even the most basic onsite search engine optimization?

There are many companies and individuals in Thailand, and Bangkok in particular who claim to know how to do SEO and to get good results. But realistically these people do not have the slightest idea of what they are doing. In the past I have even come across companies who do SEO for multiple businesses in the same industry, conflict of interest much? Yes I think so. I have even done consultations with companies where their current SEO Company hadn’t performed any onsite search engine optimization.

If you are looking for a reputable search engine optimization company in Bangkok, an affordable established Bangkok based SEO Company is Marketing Bangkok. We have documented case studies of previous successes and even provide a money back guarantee.

Many site owners make the mistake of building a website without laying out a clear plan for their online business. This is a sure set-up for failure. There are 1000s of abandoned sites on the web due to lack of careful planning. Before designing your website you should ask yourself some questions to avoid making mistakes down the road.

10 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Designing a Website

1. What Are Your Business Goals?

It’s easy to say, “I want to make monéy,” however, this is not a great motivator. Think of a deeper motivation that you feel passionate about e.g. “I want to have the financíal freedom to spend more time with my kids as they are growing up.” 1 Way Text Links Per $1.40 We provide a unique link building service. It’s absolutely different from what most SEO companies do It can dramatically increase your site rankings, traffic, and sales. We give 12 Months Permanent Link Guarantee. The cost is only $1.40 per link. Check our low prices.

2. What’s the Purpose of Your Website?

This is the question most visitors will ask when accessing your website. Your home page must clearly explain the purpose and benefits of the products and/or services you are offering.

3. What Type of Products or Services Will You Sell?

Research the marketability of your products or services by doing keyword research. Use the Google Keyword Tool to find out how many searches your main keywords receive every month. If there are no searches, it means there is not much demand and therefore not worth marketing. If it is a very competitive market (millions of searches per month), it may be difficult to stand out from your competitors and create a profitable online business.

4. How Many Products Will You Sell From Your Website?
This will determine how many pages your website will have. If you’re only selling one product or service, you may only need 4 web pages e.g. Home, Product (or Services), About, Contact. If you’re selling 100s of items, you will need a database driven site to store and manage all of them.

5. How Many Variables Does Your Product Have?

Variables may include size, color, type, sku#, shipping, tax? Make sure your shopping cart allows you to include these variables.

6. How Will You Accept Online Payments?

To accept bank card payments online, you will need a shopping cart, merchant account, payment gateway and SSL certificate for secure transactions. This means you will have monthly fees and processing fees every time a customer purchases something from your website.

A less expensive option for accepting payments online is the Paypal shopping cart. You don’t need to purchase a separate merchant account, shopping cart, payment gateway and secure certificate. For a small processing fee it takes care of all this in one place.

7. Do You Have a Web Hosting Plan?

Your website needs to be hosted on a server for it to be available online. Select a hosting plan that has sufficient space for all your files and bandwidth to receive 1000s of visitors each month. Make sure you have the flexibility to upgrade your plan should you need more space and bandwidth.

8. Will You Need to Maintain the Website Yourself? Asking this question before the design will determine what software your designer will use to build your website. If it only consists of a few web pages which don’t need regular updating, then use software such as Dreamweaver to build it. It creates clean code and you will have only a few files.

If your website has 100s of pages, consider a content management system such as WordPress, Joomla or Zen Cart. They all enable 100s of items to be stored in a database. The website can be managed (add, edit, or delete items or pages) by logging into an administration area.

9. Do You Have a Marketing Plan?

To create a profitable online business you must create a plan to promote it. Some methods may include, search engine marketing, pay-per-click, article marketing, press releases, social media, video marketing, etc. Website campaigning needs to be done frequently and consistently to be effective.

10. How Will You Monitor Your Website Statistics?

Check if your web hosting plan includes site statistics (e.g. AW Stats). If not, create a Google Analytics account and insert the code on your web pages. It will track how many daily, weekly, monthly, yearly visitors you receive, where they are coming from and what keywords are being used to find your site in the search engines.

If you answer these 10 questions first, you’ll avoid the pitfalls of designing and building a website and add to your potential of creating a profitable online business.

By www.isitebuild.com

Not only do we have  a new website, but we have a new office! We expect to move in some time next week, and are just waiting on a few small renovations and our internet line to be hooked up. Our new office is located within 20 meters of the MRT station Suthisan. Stay turned for pictures of our company office!

If you have a brick and mortar store, and rely on walk-in traffic for your survival, you may be wondering what the Internet can do for your business. Believe it or not, a lot – and you don’t even need a website.

In the “old days”, the bulk of businesses relied on the Yellow Pages to get the phone ringing. The majority of marketing dollars were spent getting listed in this ten pound paperweight. With the popularity of the Net, less people let “their fingers do the walking” when they need something, and more are letting their mouse do the talking.

Online search has gone mainstream when it comes to searching for local businesses. Google states that 73% of searches are done for local content. Another study by BIA/Kelsey and Constat report that 97% of consumers use online resources when doing research for products/services in their local area. See www.kelseygroup.com/press/pr100310.asp.

Google has always understood the power of local search, and years ago launched its Local Business Center where any business can get a listing for free. Recently, they’ve done a major overhaul and have re-launched with a new name of “Google Places”, showcasing a host of new features. The name change was done to tie in with Google’s Place Pages which were launched over a year ago and include over 50 million places worldwide.

If you want customers to be able to find you, and haven’t listed your offline store here yet, you need to get with the program. You are missing out on the chance to reach millions of Google users, including Google Map users, Google’s 800 Voice Directory Search and even Google Earth. And all of this exposure won’t cost you a dime. It’s totally free.

Now that I have your attention, let’s go over the steps for inclusion. As with all things Google, you’ll need to sign into Google Places with your Google Account. Up to 100 single locations can be added but, if you have more than ten to list you’ll need to use their “Bulk Upload Tool”.

There is a verification process that must be done to prove you’re the owner of the business being listed. The choice is yours, it’s by phone or mail. Once this is done, your listing goes live.

Now in case you’re thinking all that’s included in a listing is an address and phone number, hold onto your hat. Here are some of the listing options.

1. Show the geographic area you service.
2. Photos: Upload yours, up to ten images per listing, in JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP. A professional photo shoot can also be requested for your business.
3. Place Page Posts: You can post real time updates here, up to 160 characters, announcing special sales, events, and new products. One post appears at a time.
4. Custom QR Codes: For use with smart phones to take users to your mobile website.
5. Advertise: They do have a “Tags Program” in select cities for $25.00 a month where your business will be highlighted on Google.com and Google Maps.
6. List your operating hours. Biz description and even reviews.
7. Post Videos: Up to five videos can be posted, but you’ll need to publish them to YouTube first, then include the URL’s on your Place Page.
8. Payment Types Taken
9. Coupons: Create online coupons to give people incentive to visit your site. There’s a separate “coupon tab” that appears on your listing page.
10. Privacy: If you work at homë and have no storefront you can choose to make your address private in your listing.

At this point you should be realizing how important being listed in Google Places is to your business. If you’d like to see what your listing looks like to a searcher, log into Google Places and click on “see your listing on Google Maps”.

Now remember, search results are based on relevance and “geographic distance”, so you can’t buy your way to the top of the list as with pay-per-click advertising. As previously mentioned, the “tags program”, if available in your area, can be utilized for having your business show up highlighted for $25.00 a month.

If you’re interested in paying for your links to show up on the Google Maps search results page, if related to the search terms and location searched, that can be done using Google’s Adwords program with what’s called “Local Targeted Ads”.

By the way, Google also includes a “Reporting Dashboard” that will tell you how people find you, and what keywords they used to search. It’s powerful stuff that can also be used in your local search engine optimization work.

Do yourself a favor – if you’re not listed with “Google Places”, now is a good time. It’s targeted, free traffic. Now where else can you say that when it comes to marketing on the Internet. People are looking for your business online and with Google Places you can make it easier for them to find you. Website or not – it simply doesn’t matter – but getting people in the door does, and Google is there to help.

By Merle’s merlesworld.blogspot.com

Nevermind, you say, I can pay to be at the top of Google. Yes you can pay a lot to be a sponsored or pay per click website. Google makes a fortune from just that. However Google itself admits that its surveys show 72% of searchers ignore the paid listings and click on the natural listings, the listings that earn their position by being relevant.

Okay, you say, I’ll pay an SEO expert a lot of money to get me to the top. Yes, you can pay a Search Engine Optimization company, but the only guarantee is that you will pay a lot of money.

Let’s cut through all the spin. Search Engine Optimization is not a science. Websites really need to be designed for relevance to search engines using some common sense.

How Do You Define Relevance?

In a bookstore, how do you select a book about e.g. motorbike maintenance? You check:

• Titles,
• Front covers,
• Descriptions on the back covers,
• Size of each book,
• Tables of chapters,
• Samples of paragraphs, and
• Which of the books are more popular.

If the title of the book does not include the words “motorbike maintenance” there is every chance that you won’t find a lot of information about motorbike maintenance in the book. There is usually a description of the book on the back cover. If that doesn’t mention “motorbike maintenance” either, you are looking at the wrong book.

But of the books with “motorbike maintenance” in their titles, some are larger than others. Some have more chapters and pages than others. You expect that the larger ones will have more information than the smaller ones. You also question the bookstore on which of the books are selling more. That is how you decide which book has the most information and is most relevant to your search. Is that science or common sense?

How Does Google Define Relevance?

On the internet, if you search for “motorbike maintenance” Google will list ten million results in the order of relevance to your search. To sort websites in order of relevance to a search, Google has used its secret algorithm to weigh up:

• Domain names,
• Titles of the websites (meta-titles),
• Descriptions,
• Page headings and sub headings,
• Menu and navigation bar (links to inside pages),
• Quantity of information, and
• Popularity of each website based on the number of other relevant websites that link to it (same as in popularity of books).

We know those factors which are similar to those you used to find a book. We only guess the weighting Google gives to each factor.

The Factors

You want a website for your business or activity to be easily found by the audience that your website is targeting. So take into account the same factors that you use in selecting a book on that subject.

Domain Name

If your URL (web address) includes some part of the expression “motorbike maintenance”, e.g. motorbikemaintenance.com, Google will rank it ahead of those names that don’t, (if everything else is equal).

Title Tag

The website title meta-tag, that shows at very top left of the browser, is a very important item to Google, just as the book title is to you when selecting a book to buy. Amazingly, some web masters have simply put the words “Home page” into the title tag. That makes a web page very relevant to people searching the internet for a “home” but, not relevant to a search for “motorbike maintenance”.

Also include other words that people might search for, e.g. “motorcycle repairs”. If you are targeting a particular region, e.g. Australia, that word is needed in the title meta-tag to capture searchers who qualify their search for the subject in Australia only.

Description

The description meta-tag is also an aid to relevance, just as the description of a book is there to tell you what the book is about. However the words in the title meta-tag and description meta-tag should also show on the web page itself, otherwise they might be ignored.

Headings

The headings of each web page take the same importance as the chapter names in a book. Page headings are more effective if they are succinct, leaving out words like “and” “the” “of” and “a”.

Hyperlinks

The navigation bar can be text with hyperlinks to the inside pages. The text can look like buttons or tabs with the help of CSS. Google ignores images and javascript navigation bars. In the body text of the home page more points can be gained for keywords if they are hyperlinks to inside pages. Points are also there for those who place a keyword in their email address, e.g. bikes@ instead of info@.

Size of Website

The volume of information counts towards the relevance of the website to a search, just the same as the size of a book. We are amazed at people who put up a one-page website and expect Google to rank it high for relevancy in front of a 50-page website. Look at page one of Google for any search. Are any one-page websites listed there?

Popularity

Google believes that if other relevant websites link to yours, then your website must be more relevant than those that don’t have such incoming links. However the test is relevance. A link from a motorbike club is relevant for a motorbike maintenance website. A link from a gambling site is not relevant.

Are You Relevant?

To be relevant to a search for any words, your web page needs to contain those words in its title, heading, hyperlinks and body text. Links from other relevant websites add to your relevance. Search engines use the same process that you use if you search a bookstore for a book on motorbike maintenance.

This article was not written to discourage readers from paying for SEO. However, it’s hoped that readers now understand more about what’s behind SEO. It’s not magic or science, but really common sense.

By Ken McKay (c) 2010
About The Author
Ken McKay is an Australian web designer at platypus websites.

And while this announcement, which comes as no surprise to those with their finger on the Google pulse, has drawn a few favorable responses from blog commenters, the overwhelming majority of readers have expressed concerns and doubts about the soundness of Google’s approach. At the forefront of these were questions primarily regarding the exact magnitude of any negative ranking impact carried by slow page loading speeds. Alongside these came a large number of complaints about the fact that Google’s own Analytics script is a known load-time decelerator, and about the almost glacially slow rendering times of AdSense code.

When read together, many comments give one the impression that webmasters are becoming apprehensive to the point of stampeding, as is usually the case when Google does something new. Indeed, the overall consensus seems to be that load-speeds are about to become the ultimate criterion for search ranking performance, and that this will cause major ranking damage to the average website. One commenter even went so far as to announce that he/she will drop all Analytics and AdSense scripts because their slow performance will now obviously ruin his/her website’s performance.

But are these worries actually valid, or are they just the latest manifestation of unfounded Google-noia to hit the SEO sector?

Before I get around to addressing the question, I must admit that I knew this was coming some time ago. Consequently I was able to line up a few experiments on two sites from my own stable in an effort to gauge any real-term ranking impact once Google started to implement its changes.

What did I personally find?

Despite the fact that both websites are rich in graphics and content, both have not been updated regularly since late last year, and neither is what you might call a fast loader, I found absolutely no detrimental ranking effects for either site during the past couple of months. In fact, the slower of the two websites (average load-time 5.3 secs) actually experienced noticeable SERP improvements in the past week or so, which makes me wonder if there’s not more to all this than simple load-speeds. That, however, is another story.

Of course mine is only a limited sample, and a far from conclusive one. It is, however, one of many indicators one can find if one looks around. And with that in mind, let’s return to the question at hand. Are webmasters’ fears justified or ill-founded?

As usual, and as I’ve touched on already, each and every time Google does something new, it invariably precipitates a spate of trepidation and panic among the world’s webmaster and SEO crowds. Perfect cases in point include the implementation of the ‘Nofollow’ attribute, and the announcement that buying and selling links for PR was no longer ok, both of which together sparked major outcries throughout the online communities. And from what I’ve seen, the initial knee-jerk reaction that the Site-Speed announcement will certainly spell the end of the Internet as we know it is no different.

But seriously, although load-speeds are now a ranking factor, at least for English-language searches on Google.com, let’s not forget that it’s still just a single one of over two-hundred signals Google uses to assess a site’s rankings. And let’s also remember that Google is first and foremost about delivering relevant results, just as it always has been.

After all, what use is serving results from the fastest sites on the web, if those sites don’t actually contain the information the user is looking for?

In an interview less than two weeks ago, Matt Cutts himself said: “People shouldn’t stress out too much about Site-Speed, and the reason is that we’re always going to care first and foremost about quality. How good is a page for users?” Addressing Site-Speed’s function in assessing SERPs, he also said: “Don’t think it’s going to be the largest of the two-hundred factors.”

These statements are more indicators…

As part of my daily involvement in Google’s Webmaster Help Forum, I’ve had an opportunity to keep track of developments during the past five months or so since the Site-Speed topic was first raised. There, a number of highly enlightening discussions with the forum’s other Top Contributors and Google staff, along with the general speculations of a great many visitors, have provided quite a clear picture of Site-Speed’s role in the overall scheme of things. It is a role which, as is usually the case, focuses on a better user experience.

Let’s face it, it’s no great secret that the average visitor’s attention span is five seconds or less, and that long loading times do tend to make users hit the back button. And that’s exactly where Site-Speed comes in. It wasn’t ever designed to be the ultimate Google ranking factor; it merely provides a little extra fine-tuning by casting the deciding vote in cases where information of identical or similar quality is available on multiple websites and needs to be ranked with a better user experience in mind.

As a last word about load-times I would have to say that there are a large number of reasons to make sure your web pages load in a sensible amount of time. These should, however, be focused on your visitors, not orbiting around your Google-noia.

By Sasch Mayer (c) 2010

About The Author
Sasch Mayer has been a writer and web promotion consultant for well over a decade. In 2008 he was nominated as a Top Contributor at Google’s own Webmaster Central forum, where he still assists webmasters world-wide address a multitude of technical and promotional issues. Professionally, he provides a wide range of services, including professional keyword research, and help with W3C Compliance problems.

Why are these links to your site important? They can…

• bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link

• boost the number of visitors to your web site

• dramatically improve your search engine rankings

Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That’s a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

1. Directory Links

Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it’s free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo’s Directory costs $299/year.

2. Press Releases

If you’re writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.

3. Article Directories

Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!

4. Social Bookmarking

Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.

5. Blog Comments

To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that’s happening within the comments.

6. Social Media

Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you’ve got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.

7. Blog/Podcast Syndication

Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.

8. Video Syndication

YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s description or on your profile page, or both.

9. .EDU and .GOV Links

Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. Frankly, it isn’t easy to get inbound links from these sites.

10. Internal Links

Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.

Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings grow.

By Donna Gunter (c) 2010
About The Author
Small business marketing Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create authentic, profitable online businesses. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to improve your visibility and get found online by claiming your Free gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketíng Toolkit, at ==> TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com