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More people are starting to browse the web with mobile devices as it is now a “on the move” business tool. Usually when people are not in their offices, they are not near a computer and so they cannot reach you online. This is false! By having a mobile website you are opening your doors to users accessing the web from a mobile device such as a cell phone.

Most companies have a regular website but not a mobile website. A mobile website (light version of a normal website) is optimized to be viewable on the mobile web and a cell phone. Very few businesses today have a website that can be easily viewed on a mobile phone.

Mobile websites are different than normal websites found on the web. Cell phones have small screens and usually limited abilities and cannot process large websites full of graphics because most websites are developed and designed for the web, not the mobile web. Cell phones requires simpler websites, smaller in size and with few graphics.

A dedicated optimized mobile website is needed if you want your “website” to be displayed on cell phones. Mobile websites are much smaller and usually have fewer pages. The message on your “mobile” pages should also be more focused what your mobile audience wants to know.

The mobile web is much lighter than the normal web. Desktop computers connects to the web through a stable high speed connection. Cell phones by their nature have to connect on the move. Connections are transferred from cell tower to cell tower and are affected by carrier coverage. This makes it quite limited in bandwidth.

Even though to view your website depends on network coverage, by having one you are enabling yourself to be found easily.

Reasons for having a dedicated mobile website.

* If your company depends on local customers.
* If your company depends on advertising.
* If your prospects want to get information on the go.

The mobile web is still young but it is growing fast. To be the leader in your market and niche, it is highly recommended to get a dedicated mobile website.

I have been using the mobile web for a couple of years now and I have optimized this blog to be “mobile” ready. Browse to our blog from your cell phone and you will see. This helps me answering my visitors comments when I’m not in front of my computer. A mobile blog that I can access anywhere!

This week we are taking a look at GolfAsian.com, an agency that plans golf vacations in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. With a well-organized website and great customer service, they are poised to become a leader in the golf vacation industry - with a few website tweaks and online marketing strategies.



GA-homepage.jpg
SEO: using primary and secondary key phrases
Mark has made some strong efforts toward optimizing the Golf Asian website. Each page has a unique title tag and meta description, two key areas that draw visitors in from the search engines. He is also making use of some key phrases in the on-page titles and in the anchor text of links within the content. However, many of the phrases targeted throughout the site include specific golf locations and cities such as Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, and Hua Hin. Unfortunately, these specific locations are not getting many--if any--searches.

SEO will serve GolfAsian.com best by targeting visitors who are looking for a golf vacation, but aren't sure where they want to go. I would recommend using broader terms throughout the website that aren't location specific.

keywords.jpgBased on some keyword research, some phrases that are worth targeting as primary keywords are:

* Golf vacation
* Golf vacations
* Golf holiday
* Golf holidays
* Golf vacation package
* All inclusive golf vacations
* Golf trip
* Golf trips
* Thailand golf

Only use the specific locations as secondary keywords on the pages that are about those cities, courses, packages, etc, and always in combination with the primary keywords. This way, you are focusing on more general search traffic while still ranking for the handful of people searching for a specific destination.

*Tool Tip: Not sure how to check if people are searching for your keywords? Sign up for a service like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker. Sometimes these services offer a free trial; so plan ahead and cram your keyword research into a few days.

Link building: beat the competition with a backlink
Currently, GolfAsian.com has around 4,000 inbound links, but they are all coming from just a handful of websites. While lots of links are good, they aren't going to help you if they are all coming from the same source. Links from a variety other quality websites are critical for ranking well in the search engines, as well as driving traffic to the website.

Instituting a link building campaign will help improve rankings for more competitive primary keywords, as well as fill up the results for secondary, less competitive phrases.

A few tips for getting more links to your website:

1. Search for authority sites. A "quality" link is one that comes from a site that has lots of other quality sites linking to it. A good way to find websites to court for links is to check the backlinks of your competitors. See who is linking to the high-ranking competition and ask them to link to you too.
2. Get listed in directories.It's important to be listed in general directories like Yahoo and DMOZ, but also target industry specific directories such as those for golf, travel, and vacations.
3. Go slowly. Getting two many links too quickly is a red flag for search engines.
4. Use anchor text. When a good site links to you, you want them to do it using phrases you are targeting such as "golf vacation packages." Use your best judgment based on your interaction with the site manager on whether you can request specific anchor text, or just be happy with anything from a good site.


backlinks.jpg*Tool Tip: to check the links coming into your site, go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. Type in your domain, including the "www" if that's your primary URL. Click "Explore URL." It will automatically show you the pages of your site that have been indexed; just above the results, click on "Inlinks" so see your incoming links. You can change the settings to exclude links from your own domain and to include links to any page of your website.

Layout: featuring everything equals featuring nothing
In general, there is too much happening on the Golf Asian website. By trying to feature so many different things, nothing ends up getting featured. The key areas that need to jump out from every page are:

* Website name
* Tagline
* Navigation
* Call to action

The content needs to be obvious and easy to scan. Break up long paragraphs by using section headers and bulleted/numbered lists.

Choose a few items to feature in the sidebars and rotate them, instead of trying to feature everything at once.

Cut the homepage content in half, and then cut it in half again. The homepage needs to function more like the back cover of a book, giving visitors a taste of what they will find inside the website. Give a 2-3 sentence overview of what the site is about (using keywords) and then drive visitors to the deeper content.

The GolfAsian.com website is filled with great information that is well organized and relatively easy to navigate. Cleaning up the layout, using more general key phrases, and instituting link building are key changes that will drive more relevant traffic to the site.

Do you know how to do SEO for your videos? Do you have a video or two on your site but are unsure how to do search engine optimization for them?

You are not alone. For a long time it was difficult to say what would help a video rank well in search engines such as Google, but it has become a lot easier than it used to be.

Here are the top 10 SEO tips for videos:

1- If you plan to upload a video to both your site and video distribution sites like YouTube, be sure to post it to your site first. That way you can get links through the embed codes where possible.

2- Make sure that your site has more content than you give the video distribution sites. For example, your site could include a “part 2” to the video or a textual transcription that can’t be had anywhere else. This can entice people to link to your site rather than the video distribution site.

3- Use your targeted keywords in the video’s file name, title, and in the tags where it is appropriate.

4- Build links to the video both internally and externally. Video, like any other content on the Web, will be judged by the same link standards.

5- Create a video sitemap for any videos on your site to make it easier for search engines to find all the video content.

6- Optimize the URL of the page where the video is located by naming the page with the keywords. Only have one video per URL.

7- Tweeting, bookmarking, and mentioning the video on social media sites are great ways to gather links.

8- Cross link your video to other relevant videos that you have done. This will help all of your videos rank better and be more useful for your visitor, which always leads to more views.

9- Create useful content that your visitors will want to link to. This will help to build natural links and encourage comments which also influence search engine rankings.

10- Use a video distribution service such as TubeMogul or Traffic Geyser to spread the video quickly across the Internet. These services can save you a lot of time.

These tips are primarily SEO related. There are a lot of topics about video that need to be discussed to get the most out of a multimedia campaign, but we shall talk about them in another post. Watch for them to come in the future. In the meantime, start recording!

Bonus tip: YouTube will soon let you connect with your friends easier. They are going to suggest people you know by recommending those you have sent videos to via email. Also, if you have connected your Gmail account with your YouTube account, they will suggest people from your contacts that also have a YouTube account.

The idea is to promote subscriptions between friends. One of the key factors in making all of this work is to be sure that your account settings are correct. If you’re not sure, simply go to the privacy settings within your YouTube account. There is a box there that states, “Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address.” Make sure that the box is checked so you can be found and maybe even increase your subscriptions.

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