Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

You’ve rolled out the Web site marketing strategy map on your war room table. You are pondering how successful you’ve been against the enemy. You’re confident that your Web site is helping you to win the battle against your competition, but how can you tell if your site – and search engine optimization results — are winning the war?

Since you are trying to measure the success of your SEO campaign, you need to pay attention to how your natural search engine traffic is improving. This fact means you need to look at the referrer domain data from Google.com, Yahoo.com, and any other search engine domains you are targeting. Any other metrics, like overall page views and visits, are meaningless unless they are tied into the referrer domain.
Keeping track of the keywords that drive traffic to your site can give you a heads up on what keywords you should be targeting. Sometimes a visitor will arrive at your site through a search term that you did not intentionally target. By paying attention to your web analytics, you can capitalize on SEO opportunities you may have missed.

Many Webmasters believe that Google Analytics is the best thing to happen to the Internet marketing industry since pay per click was introduced. The service is free, feature rich, and it’s a powerful tool that means you have no reason not to start using web analytics. Providing this free service helps the industry tremendously. Web analytics tools are necessary.

The bottom line is that Google Analytics is a powerful piece of software when used properly, and comes at an affordable price – free! The goal for Google is of course to increase AdWords spending; a goal many of today’s enhancements will help them to achieve.

OK, so now your company has finally concocted a slick new Web site with more bells and whistles than a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game. But will your customers be able to find your site on the Internet? The ball’s in your court on this one. Your presence depends on how effectively your search engine optimization company can place you on the Internet.

Most SEO companies use techniques to make a Web site more search engine and people friendly. Accomplishing this is mission not always. Careful research of your SEO company is paramount to the successful presence your site will enjoy on the Internet.

Keep in mind that there are basically two components to SEO: onsite optimization, which is Web site optimization, and offsite optimization, or Web site reputation through inbound links. The onsite optimization aspect of SEO is the work performed in enhancing and optimizing your site. Offsite optimization concentrates on increasing the number of inbound links and the description of the current links leading to your site.

Remember, part of a SEO’s job is to target which keywords are appropriate for placement on the Web, and which ones are inappropriate for placement.

Finally, here are a few items to consider as you search for an SEO firm (http://www.webconfs.com/choosing-a-seo-company-article-21.php).

• Do they promise to guarantee a No. 1 ranking? If they do, you have a serious reason to doubt their competencies. No SEO company can guarantee a No. 1 ranking in Google.

• Get recommendations from friends, business partners, and associates. Word of mouth is very important for the credibility of a company.

• Google the company name. If the company has a past history of fraud, chances are that you will find a lot of information about it on the Web. However, lack of negative publicity does not mean automatically that the company is great, nor do some subjective negative opinions mean that the company is a scammer.

With these thoughts in mind, you should have no problem finding the right SEO company to maximize you Web site.

Your Web site conveys the first impression that potential customers receive about your company. Having short video features about your company can heighten visibility on such sites as You Tube and Google. Video clips also provide a human element to your site – if you company president is giving a brief overview of the company – and can help to educate your customers . It’s become rare to visit a Web site that doesn’t have some form of video contained within.

Today’s consumer generally prefers video content to text primarily because the video shows proof that “real” people at your company can resolve problems – or you can resolve them yourself simply by using information contained within the video. Videos can be shared via blogs, You Tube, and Google — further enhancing your online marketing efforts.

Video marketing is one of the most useful forms of viral and online marketing. Most of your customers who view your video almost always respond to your advertisement. With mobile search on the rise, and phones such as iPhone causing a stir in the mobile search market, video marketing is expected to become the top form of online marketing .

Picture this. By no means is video the only answer to your online marketing initiatives, but when used as part of a wider campaign, video can deliver amazing results. If your not into making your own videos, check out this Cleveland internet-only video production company.

Are you laying the groundwork with a designer to develop a new Web site for your company? Here’s a suggestion: ask the designer to use flash items sparingly. Granted most designers find animation and graphics to be an integral part of a nice looking Web site, but an overabundance of flash can hinder your site’s search engine optimization efforts.

You just can’t imagine what a disadvantage flash is with search engines – it is a top rankings killer! Although search engines are being able to index content inside a flash animation, keep your important information away from flash animation. A search engine may simply ignore the animation altogether.

Further complicating matters is the fact that your visitors may not be able to view your flash content. Your site must make accommodations to provide alternative content for when flash does not load properly. Other problems may arise as a result of using flash. Visitors will use their Web browser back button when viewing a flash animation to try to return to the Home page, but this process reloads the entire animation. There are many usability problems like this. A designer needs to keep these in mind when building a flash interface.

Ideally, your site content should open within 15 seconds. While flash can do a lot for your Web site’s presentation, from the SEO point of view it should be used sparingly – or not at all. If you must use flash, use it only on non-crucial content pages (http://www.blue2.com/art-03.htm).

Contact ATXWEBMASTERS in Cleveland, Ohio for more information on web design, ecommerce, email marketing, and of course, search engine optimization.

As you steer your company’s Web site down a road toward search engine optimization prosperity, you will need an effective site map in the glove box. As the name implies, a site map is simply a map of your site on one single page that shows the structure of your site, its sections, and the links between them. Site maps make navigating your site easier. A site map also is comprised of an XML file that lists URLs for a site. Site maps provide search engines with important information about your Web site .

There are many advantages of using a site map. These benefits reach beyond easier navigation and increased visibility by the search engines. Site maps can help you to notify search engines once you make changes to your site. When you have a site map and send it to the search engines, you rely less on external links that will bring search engines to your site. Site maps can help you through a maze of cumbersome internal links as well.

Keep in mind that there are many SEO tips and tricks that help in optimizing a site. The primary tip is to have a good site map – and not to underestimate a site map’s importance. Remember, users go to site maps if they are lost, frustrated, or looking for specific details on a crowded site.

Are you in the process of having a new Web site designed for your company? If so, you should check with your Web designer to make certain that the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) code he is using is valid. A valid HTML code is an important part of successfully promoting your SEO and Web site.

Most Web pages are written in HTML, and as with any language, HTML has its own version of grammar and syntax. Every document written in HTML is supposed to follow these rules. The reason that a valid HTML is crucial for search engine optimization is because search engines have to scan your Web site’s HTML code to find the relevant content. If there are errors in the HTML code, search engines will be unable to find the content on the page, ending your optimization efforts and quest for high rankings.

Although most major search engines can handle small errors in HTML code, a single missing bracket in your HTML code may account for the fact that your web page cannot be found in search engines (http://www.villainsupply.com/). If you don’t close some tags properly, or if some important tags are missing, search engines might ignore the complete content of that page.

You can check the validity of your HTML code via one of several free services available on the Web. The search engine optimization community’s HTML validator is the W3C HTML Validator.

When a browser is interpreting your Web page, if you have valid HTML code, you have the advantage of the browser understanding the exact structure of your pages, and all your visitors, whatever browser, should see exactly what they should see and not a complete mess (http://www.websiteoptimise.com/valid_html.htm). Remember, your badly coded pages may look fine to you, with your browser, but not everyone will see the same.

How much weight do title tags carry among the search engine result pages (SERP) that you’re trying to capture? Plenty according to most Web site development experts. This reason is why you need to pay close attention to the words that appear in the title tag – and the order in which they appear. It is extremely important that you develop a crisply worded title tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases and performs the function of announcing the summary of your Web page content.

Title tags carry hefty algorithmic hefty weight when it comes to search engines. Title tags are equally important as your visible text copy and the links pointing to your pages. You should definitely incorporate the name of your company in the title tag. If your company’s name is well known, it is essential that you include it in the title tag. The title tag gives you a great opportunity to further market your company and its brands.

The title tag has been and will continue to be one of the most important elements in search engine rankings. Title tags are the over-arching descriptors for the page; they communicate with the search engines telling them what each page is about. Don’t overlook your title tags. Their importance simply can’t be denied.

Looking to steer more traffic to your Web site? The key to motoring your success up the search engine ladder is in your keywords. Keywords are the function that drive search engines, and the most important keywords are what lead customers to your site. Once you’ve developed your site and understand which keywords are most important to you, it’s time to write the content for your site. You probably know that by repeating the keywords you can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) status. The frequency of which the keywords are repeated is commonly referred to as the keyword density.

Keyword density essentially is the ratio of the word that is being searched for against the total number of words appearing on a given Web page. If your keyword occurs only two or three times on a page of 500 or more words, it stands to reason that it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur 10 times on a page of similar length.

Keyword placement on the page, and their density on the page, are two important areas where keywords are felt on your Web page. The choice of which keywords to target on a page is often of vital importance, especially for highly competitive keywords.

Your choice of keywords – and their density — is the primary reason people will discover your Web site. Customers are led to your Web site through their searches for information. With this thought in mind, it becomes vitally important that your site offers as many opportunities to be included in those search results as possible.

There is no magic formula or guarantee for success behind keyword density. Just remember that no keywords translates to no placement among the search engine results page.

The Google Toolbar is a free utility that attaches to your browser that adds features that optimize the web browsing experience. It is available for Firefox and for Internet Explorer. One of the features that it adds is PageRank. PageRank is one of many key aspects that makeup search engine placement. It acts as a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weight (0-10) to a webpage based on the quantity and importance of websites that point to it.

Ideally, in order to maximize your PageRank, you want a great deal of backlinks on sites that have high PageRanks. Adobe’s Website has the maximum PageRank of 10 because of the vast amount of reputable websites that link to it for downloads.

For ideas on how to obtain backlinks, check out our discussion titled Inbound Links - Link Trading and Exchanges

It is important to avoid putting too much emphasis on PageRank. It is only a piece of search engine optimization. Just because you have a PageRank of 8 doesn’t mean you will appear higher than a PageRank of 6 on search engine results. Spending too much time attempting to increase PageRank can detract from other important aspects of SEO.

Wikipedia defines an Inbound Link as the following:

An inbound link is a hyperlink transiting domains. Links are inbound from the perspective of the link target, and conversely, outbound from the perspective of the originator. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO).

Pretty technical definition if you ask me.

Basically, an inbound link is a link that appears on any outside website that points to your own. Why do you want them? Inbound links not only help increase the amount of traffic visiting your site, they help to increase your search engine rankings. It’s win win. However, in order to promote White Hat SEO we want to use only ethical methods of obtaining quality inbound links.

The easiest way to obtain inbound links is to submit your website to directories. This is usually a fairly simple process that consists of filling out an online form with fields for the URL, title, keywords, and description. There are literally thousands of directories available, some are free, some charge. The very first directory you want to submit your website to is DMOZ. DMOZ is the most popular directory available and it is free to submit your website to. Although directory submission may take time to process, it will give you quality inbound links.

There are other methods for obtaining reputable inbound links. Emailing reputable sites requesting for a link is one method. It is important to remember that it must be beneficial to that website to allow your link to be posted or they will not bother. Another effective way is being actively involved in posting on discussion boards. Many discussion boards allow users to attach a website to their signature in return for being actively involved in posting.

There are a variety of methods for obtaining inbound links. Just be cautious about how you’re obtaining them. Using unethical methods like link farms, is an easy way to get your website penalized or even banned from search engine results.