SEO

How Search Engines Work

by Christi on April 25, 2012

There is a lot that goes on with search engines such as Google when you do a search and it delivers your results. Matt Cutts, from Google, published a new video on April 23rd, answering this question:

Hi Matt,

could you please explain how Google’s ranking and website evaluation process works starting with the crawling and analysis of a site, crawling timelines, frequencies, priorities, indexing and filtering processes within the databases etc.

As he explains, he could spend hours answering this question. However, he explains the basics of how search used to work and how search works now.

As marketers, we have to take the time to understand how SEO works and how to reach our target markets organically through search engines. Need more help? Download our SEO 101 eBook for step by step instructions.




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Google to Penalize Over Optimized Content

by Christi on March 26, 2012

According to a report by Search Engine Land, the head of Google’s search spam team, Matt Cutts, was asked this question on a recent SXSW panel discussion:

“With so many SEO companies showing up claiming to do SEO, a lot of markets are getting saturated with optimized content…What are you doing to prevent, for example, if you’re looking for something, and the first page is just optimized content, and it’s not what you’re actually looking for? Are you pretty much out of luck if you’re not optimizing your site but it has relevant content? If I’m a mom or pop and I’m trying to optimize a site by myself, I’m going to get beat by people paying thousands of dollars.”

Matt explains that the new over optimization penalty will be introduced into the search results in the upcoming month or next few weeks. The purpose is to “level the playing field,” Cutts said. To give sites that have great content a better shot at ranking above sites that have content that is not as great, but do a better job with SEO.

In an article by our HubSpot Partners, they predict that “If your content is driven by topics, you shouldn’t expect to be penalized when the new algorithm update rolls out, even if you do take the time to search engine optimize that content with keywords and relevant links. If your writing is driven by keywords, however, we predict it’s more likely you’ll suffer some search ranking slips.”

Does that mean that SEO does not matter? Matt Cutts also goes on to add, ”SEO can often be very helpful. It can make a site more crawlable; it can make a site more accessible; it can think about the words users are going to type whenever they come to a search engine to make sure those words are on a page. The same things you do to optimize your return on investment and make sure things spread virally or socially are often the same things that work from a search engine perspective…but there are some people who take it too far. If you’re white hat or doing very little SEO, you’re not going to be affected by this change.”

Also on the panel was Bing’s Duane Forrester, who added, “If you’re not engaged socially, you’re missing the boat because the conversation is happening socially about you and about your content. Those are really important signals for us. Whether you’re involved or not is your choice, but those signals still exist whether you’re in the conversation or not.”

We also know that search engines like fresh content as they have told us in the past. So what does this mean for you and your business?

You must keep delivering fresh, interesting content to the people who are looking for your products and services. Obviously, if you want to rank for a keyword or phrase, those words will have to be included on your site. It seems that people who try to “game” the system make it more difficult for small businesses. Search engine companies like Google and Bing have told us over and over how to use keywords effectively to optimize our content. I’m not sure how they decide what is “over optimized.” The problem, in my opinion, is that search engines are in fact “engines” and they have to decide what to deliver based on something tangible.

The easiest way for a small business to deliver fresh and relevant content is through a blog. Blogging can be time consuming, as can social media, but for today’s small businesses, it appears that they are a must.

What do you think of Google’s announcement?




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Website Design vs. Graphic Design

by Joe B on March 22, 2012

Lately I’ve seen a lot of websites that look good on the surface, but are horrible when you look at their underpinnings (on page SEO). When I ask about this, I am told that the website designer doesn’t do SEO. Really?!

From a graphic design point of view these websites may be stunning. But from a website design standpoint, they are ineffective at best. Graphic design is not website design. Website design incorporates graphic design and much more. It is possible to build a website a hundred different ways and still achieve the same finished look. However, hidden in the code and content can be a website’s inability to be marketed, managed or monitored properly because a designer/developer used poor or dated techniques.

Some of the items that need to be considered when designing a website are:

1. Canonicalization (does www forward to non-www or vice versa [301 redirect])

2. Map 2-3 keywords per page.

3. What is the density of the target keyword on each landing page?

4. Image & Hyperlink Optimization

5. Header Tag Optimization

6. H1 Analysis – Is the target keyword in the H1 for each page?

7. Title Tag Optimization – Is the title keyword optimized?

8. Nofollow – Are non-target words nofollowed on site.

9. W3c Validation

A website is like a house. You can cover up the poor underlying structure with an aesthetically pleasing surface, but you still have a poor structure. Would you buy a house where you knew the underlying structure was in disrepair even though it looked good on the surface?

Ask your website designer if s/he includes SEO with the website. If not, find another website designer.




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SEO for Small Business

by Christi on March 19, 2012

Is SEO part of your internet marketing strategy? Not including SEO in your internet strategy is like spending money on a sleek, beautiful car and then not putting fuel in it. SEO is the fuel for driving traffic to your website. When people are looking for you, you want to make sure they can find you!

As we have discussed, many times, keyword research is an important first step for SEO. But, as we have also seen, search engines really like fresh content. The best way to use the keywords that you have researched is to combine them with fresh content through blogging. Okay, I know that many of you might want to stop reading right there. I’ve seen it on the faces of business owners when I mention blogging. It is true, blogging is not one of the easiest things to do. However, it produces such great results, it is something that you really should consider. Studies show that companies that blog:

  • get 55% more visitors
  • convert 40% more of their visitors into leads
  • have 434% more indexed pages
  • get 97% more inbound links

Those are some pretty powerful numbers. If blogging is so great for helping you get found and convert visitors into leads, isn’t it something that you want consider? Blogging is like super-fuel for your internet marketing. So why aren’t you blogging?

  • “I don’t know what to write about.”
  • “I don’t write very well.”
  • “I don’t have time.”

These are just some of the reasons we hear. However, every business that we have worked with that made the effort to blog, even if it wasn’t that often, has seen good results. Don’t wait, the only way to get started is to take that first step.




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Google Announces New Search Updates

by Christi on March 2, 2012

Recently, Google announced 40 new search updates. What does this mean for you and your website? Well, it depends. Let’s take a look at some of the things that they say will make a difference to you and your business:

  • Fresher images. We’ve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.
  • Improvements to freshness. We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.
  • Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.

These three changes are directly aimed at trying to give users fresher content. Fresh news often breaks on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Google is usually behind in presenting fresh information because it has to find it and then index it.

So, how does this affect your business? Google rewards fresh content. That means, you need to be continually adding fresh, relevant content to your site. The easiest way to do this is with a blog. On your blog you can be easily and quickly add new content.

Google is also working to improve it’s local search results. They say:

  • Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

If you are a local business, make sure you have all your local listings up to date.

One of the more interesting updates has to do with how Google evaluates links:

  • Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.

Google has declined clarifying the link evaluation process, including specifying the method that they have “used for several years” that they have now turned off. Very interesting . . .

Bottom line: SEO is an ongoing process. It is never a once and done proposition. Learn more about how you can improve your SEO from our SEO 101 eBook.




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Website Redesign | 2nd Step to Success

by Joe B on February 23, 2012

Insure that your Websiteʼs Assets are In Order and Safe

You can actually do more damage than good by trying to undertake a website redesign on your own without understanding how you must protect the existing assets of your current site.

  • Website assets such as content, inbound links, keyword rankings, and conversion tools are critical to a strong web presence.
  • To preserve your web presence, you must keep track these assets to insure that they are all transferred in the redesign process.

It is important to do an asset assessment before you embark on a website redesign.

If you do not fully understand the importance and practice of proper SEO, doing a website redesign can be more damaging than helpful. If you do not feel comfortable around SEO work, it may be best to hire specialists to perform the redesign so all the hard work you have put into making a web presence does not disappear. Be sure to ask your website designer if s/he understands the importance of maintaining your current website’s assets and of using 301 redirects in a website redesign. If not, find another website designer.

Don’t guess when doing a website redesign – find out how to do it right! Download our free ebook: 7 Steps to Successful Website Redesign today!

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SEO and Keyword Strategy

by Christi on February 8, 2012

SEO New OrleansSEO (search engine optimization) is the next step in our internet marketing strategy. If you are following along as we go through the steps included in the Essential Guide to Internet Marketing, you will remember that the first step was researching keywords. Now that you have identified some good keywords, what should you do with them?

Keywords can help your site get found by search engines and that is what SEO is all about. SEO can be broken down into two categories:

On-page SEO – This refers to the way your content is presented to search engines and how your keywords are used on your site. This is something that you can improve immediately.

Off-page SEO – This refers to the authority your site has on the web. This can take some time to improve.

Even though on-page SEO accounts for less in how search engines rank your site. It is a good idea to correct this first because  it can be improved quickly and keyword placement is an essential part of on-page SEO.

Where should you place your keywords for good on-page SEO?

  1. Page Title – Page titles are the text you see at the top of your browser when you are on a web page. A page title can be edited in your site’s HTML. Be sure to include the keywords for your page in the page title. Your page title should be less than 70 characters and your keywords should be at the first of the title. Each page on your site gives you an opportunity to target different keywords that are relevant to your business and to your site’s visitors.
  2. Meta Description – While your page’s meta description does not directly influence your search engine rankings, it is still a good opportunity to include your keywords to help you attract visitors to your site. Your meta description is a summary of what your page is about. It is not seen on your page, but is shown by search engines when your site is included in search results.
  3. Headings – The text that is included in your headings (those that are surrounded by <Hx> tags in the html code) are seen by search engines as being important. Be sure to include your keywords in your headings.
  4. Images – Images can certainly enhance your visitors’ experience on your website. Images also give you an opportunity to use your keywords. You can use your keywords in your image file names as well as the images’ alt text. Don’t use images excessively because it can slow down the amount of time it takes your page to load which can negatively impact your search results.

As important as keywords are, it is also important that you don’t “keyword stuff.” That is, don’t just fill a page with your keywords. Not only will keyword stuffing make for a bad experience for your visitors, search engines can detect keyword stuffing and it can adversely affect your rankings. Trying to “trick” search engines is not a good SEO strategy.

To get more in-depth information about how to use your keywords effectively for SEO, (both on-page and off-page), download the Essential Guide to Internet Marketing. This guide will give you the essential  steps you need to set up and implement a successful internet marketing strategy.



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Create a Keyword Strategy

by Joe B on February 7, 2012

Why Build a Keyword Strategy?

Today, most people looking to buy a product or service begin the process by using a search engine to find vendors and product information. How do they do this? By using keywords and keyword phrases. You need to make sure that your website is ranking high in the search engines for the keywords that people are using to find companies like yours.

Some things to remember:

  • You have to be on the first or second page of search results or it’s almost like not being there at all.
  • Shorter search phrases are searched for more often and usually more difficult to rank for than longer phrases. For example, more searches occur for “shoes” than for “tennis shoes” and both of those are searched more frequently than “red tennis shoes”. However, if you are selling red tennis shoes, you would probably get better qualified visits (leads) by ranking for “red tennis shoes” as opposed to either “tennis shoes” or “shoes”.

How to Create a Keyword Strategy

1. Create a list of 3-5 keywords relevant to your business.

Think like someone searching for your product.

2. Choose keywords based on difficulty and relevance.

Some very general words such as “marketing” or “business” are very competitive, making it difficult to rank well for them. If you are a small- or medium-sized business, you probably want to choose less competitive keywords, more specifically related to your business (these are commonly referred to as long tail keywords).

You should find a balance between relevance and difficulty. Choose about 5 keywords that match your business well.

Note that these keywords do not have to be perfect at first. You can try out different ones to see which work best for you.

3. Design and optimize your website around your keywords.

Now that you’ve chosen your keywords, you should incorporate them into your website. We will talk more about this tomorrow.

For more information on Keyword Strategies as well as internet marketing, download our “Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing”.




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Three Ways to Improve Your Website in 2012

by Joe B on January 4, 2012

As we start a new year, I thought I would list three ways you could increase the effectiveness of your website by increasing quality visits and conversions.

1) Improve your search engine optimization (SEO) by doing some Keyword Research

SEO is vital to your website being found for the right keywords in online searches. One of the best ways to improve your SEO is to do some Keyword Research.

When doing Keyword Research, you’ll want to research the terms that your potential customers might use to find you.

  • Be careful not to use industry jargon (i.e. technical terms used by those in your industry) unless those are the terms your customers use.
  • The terms your customers use to find you may change over time. For example, what we now call laptop computers have been called portable computers and notebook computers.
  • Your main product or service may change over time.

So update your website to include the right Keywords.

2) Improve your website’s visibility by blogging

One of the best ways to increase quality visits to your website is by blogging. The simple rule is that the more content you have on the web, the better your chances of being found in search results. And there is no better way to increase your content on the web than by blogging. Be sure to include your Keywords in your blog posts and your blog posts’ names.

3) Place Calls to Action on your website

One of the best ways to convert website visitors into leads and customers is through the use of Calls to Action. A Call to Action is simply a directive to the website visitor (e.g. Click Here to download Free eBook). Often a Call to Action will offer the website visitor more information in exchange for their email address. Once you have an email address (a lead), you can set up a nurturing campaign where you send the lead more information about your product or service. (Always have an opt out option in your emails and stop your nurturing campaign if they opt out)

Of course, there are many more ways to improve your website. These are just three to help get you started.




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The Importance of Keywords and Keyword Research in SEO

by Joe B on October 21, 2011

Keywords and keyword phrases are vital to SEO and getting found on the internet because they are what the search engines use to deliver results. When you have a topic to write about on the internet, you need to do a little keyword research. Think of the words or phrases (keywords and keyword phrases) your target audience might use to search for this topic in search engines. Be sure they are terms your target audience would use. We often see businesses use technical terms when their audience is non-technical laypeople.

Once you have come up with several phrases, use a keyword tool, such as the one in HubSpot or Google, to see if any of your phrases are being used in searches. These tools will also give you ideas for other phrases that are being used. Pick the most relevant phrase to your topic that is getting searched. You usually don’t want the phrase with the most searches, as they are usually very general and you are unlikely to rank for them. Once you have chosen your keyword phrase, sprinkle it throughout your article, use it in your title.

The reason keyword phrases are important is because they are what search engines use to deliver results. All other variables being equal, the more closely your keyword phrase matches someone’s search field, the higher your article will rank in the results.




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