Written By: Sujan Patel On October 3rd, 2007 | 5 Comments
All of the answers to these questions will save you time and help you quickly develop focused and effective SEO strategies.
1.What demographics are you targeting? You can’t do a good job without this answer. If they don’t know, help them determine which demographics they should target.
2.What are your goals? A client’s goals should be your goals when developing an optimization campaign.
3.What is and what is not working with your current Internet marketing strategies? The client may and they may not know, but you want to pay close attention to their answers and figure out what other questions you should ask. Review their stats and compare them with the answers you receive for this question.
4.Are you prepared to make some changes to your web site and the copy on the site? Usually, there are many things that have to be revamped or adjusted. Sometimes there is a lot that needs to be changed. Clients need to understand this from the beginning so they can get use to the idea. Some people love their web sites and want nothing to change! These clients will take a little more time because you will need to explain why the changes need to be made.
5.What is your budget and what are your expectations? Clients typically have a budget in mind and they won’t go beyond that. Their budget helps you decide which services to offer and the best way to offer them. Also, if they expect to be #1 tomorrow they are mistaken. Some can get to #1, depending on which keywords they are using, but most clients have a lot of competition. Your clients need to understand the realities of optimization and they time and effort it takes to do well.
Written By: Sujan Patel On September 27th, 2007 | No Comments
There has been a lot of information floating around the Internet regarding dashes and underscores. A writer at CNET reported that he heard Matt Cutts speak at WordCamp 2001 in July and Matt said that underscores in URLs were either “now” or “soon to be” treated as word separators by Google.
However, on August 10th Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land reported the Matt Cutts was informing everyone that reports of Google treating underscores as word separators is not yet happening.
Matt Said: “I wouldn’t consider it a completely done deal at this point. But note that I also said if you’d already made your site with underscores, it probably wasn’t worth trying to migrate all your URLs over to dashes. If you’re starting fresh, I’d still pick dashes.”
So, Dashes and Underscores Are Not the Same
On August 10th Matt Cutts discussed this issue in his blog and said that they had someone looking into it, but it was not a done deal. On August 25th Matt discussed the issue again and recommended people continue to use dashes
Why Does This Even Matter?
You need to see an example to understand. If your URL says http://blahblah/purple_widgets Google will not see the word “purple” or “widgets”. It would see purple_widegts as one word, so essentially someone would have to search for “purple_widgets” to find you in the SERPs.
What About the Other Search Engines?
On August 2nd Barry Schwartz reported that he contacted the other search engines to see how they handled underscores and dashes/hyphens. He said that Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com confirmed that they do treat underscores the same as dashes.
Web sites need Google to do well, so obviously optimizing for Google is very important. The best thing we can do, for now, is to continus to use dashes/hyphens as word separators.
Written By: Sujan Patel On September 26th, 2007 | 2 Comments
Search engine optimization is great in that it can create nearly instant results across some major platforms. Imagine, you can add a page of content to your site and have it up in the rankings in literally weeks at most across Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and others…
Hold it. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Let’s dissect this a bit and integrate the age old proverb of “Haste Makes Waste”. With SEO, if you try too hard and go too quickly, you’re going to regret it.
First Things First
You should never create a page for the purpose of ranking in the search engines for one specific term. Sound crazy? That may be the case, but effective SEO has to be available from the ground up. Posting new pages without first thinking things through will result in some serious long term issues.
You site can become a bear to navigate… There will be a dozen pages speaking to the same exact issue, all focusing slight variations on what should be there and available for content. In short — you’re going to ruin your site if you’re too aggressive.
So let’s relax and develop a plan…
1. Design with optimization in mind: Design your site’s architecture such that text links are available as a form of navigation. When you post a new page of content, make sure it has the basics in place like complete META tags, page titles, etc. In other words, do the dirty work right out of the gates!
2. Check everything twice: Imagine having a great page, optimized well, with strong content and backlinks in place — only to find it not appearing in the results. After months of effort, you go back and realize that you’ve coded something like the title tag incorrectly, or worse yet, had a misspelling sitting there in plane site in a major area of site content. It can be disastrous, but it can also be easily avoided. Spell check your work. Check the validity of all pages you launch… and make sure you’ve done your due diligence on gaining inbound links from the most appropriate sources.
3. Use Sitemaps and a Robots.txt: There are to major protocols that you should use actively to help your search needs. The first is to police where spiders can grab content from on your site — and it’s called the robots.txt file. Next are sitemaps like Yahoo’s Site Explorer and Google Sitemaps available in Google Webmaster Tools. Both of these services help to show where all of the pages are on your site while also offering up direct links and proprietary scoring to each individual page.
4. Focus on your users: Google tries to hammer this point home in their guidelines, but it really is true after a certain point on your site. If you want to create a great online experience and have people coming back often — do your best to improve things. Ranking in the engines may help get you more visitors — but there is little good in more visitors who are uninspired to take action.
Written By: Sujan Patel On September 5th, 2007 | 2 Comments
Videos are an important part of web 2.0 and videos, if optimized properly, will show up in the SERPs (and this is what you want). So, where do you start? We have some suggestions:
Research First
There are two areas that in need be researched and compared.
- The keywords and keyword phrases- determine which apply to you and create an easy to read list for step 2.
- Analyze videos currently doing well and also review some of the videos that have done the best in the last few months. Determine how many of top videos include keywords/keyword phrases that relate to your keywords and video. Search for videos with your keywords and notice the number of views. If not many people are looking the keywords may not be right. If you see that videos with certain keywords do very well, or have done well in the past, you can reduce your keyword list and use the keywords that will increase your video’s visibility.
Video Suggestions
- Create Something Unique – one of the biggest problems on YouTube is you see many videos that are either exactly the same or very similar to other videos. People are not going to watch a video they think they have already seen.
- Create Shorter Clips – People tend to watch videos that are 1-3 minutes long more. These shorter clips can be used as an introduction to your business, longer versions of the video or an introduction to a series of videos on the same subject. If you used the smaller video to publicize your other videos, business and/or web site you have a better chance of people viewing it. Additionally, you can submit multiple videos without running the risk of duplicate content. Your short video is an introduction to the topics you discuss, but they give you an opportunity to submit multiple videos with similar keywords.
- Remember Branding – Your video should be publicizing whatever it is you are discussing. Make sure you remember to brand your web site and business.
- Linking – Many business use their main URL in the description and name of the video and this is fine, but if you are referring users to longer videos located on your web site you want to link back to the page with those videos. People are not going to search all over your web site to find your videos. Also, keep the URLs to your videos as short as possible.
- Use Keywords in the Name of the File – Naming your video with keywords is just as important as using keywords in your alt-tags/attributes.
- Video File Format- YouTube accepts video in WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG file formats. If you are going to create larger videos for your web site you have several options that include Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime and MPEG4. More people have access to a Windows Media player, so it is often considered the best choice.
- DO NOT Forget Data Rate – I am sure you have seen web sites that give you multiple viewing options such as T1, Cable/DSL and Modem. If you only offer one data rate you could be preventing many users from viewing you video(s). No one wants to try and watch a video that stops, skips or has bad audio.
- Web Sites with Video AND HTML Do Better – web sites with both video and HTML tend to do better in the SERPs. All-in-one players are typically not search engine friendly.
- Remember Tags and Anchor Text Keywords – Tags are crucial today and anchor text describing the links to the videos are just as important. Remember these two crucial areas when you are organizing your video data and keyword research.
Promoting Your Video Effectively
You need a publishing tool that supports a Media RSS output with enclosures related to SEO. You also need to have your feed validated if you are hoping for the search engines to index it correctly. These are the beginning steps.
- The next step is to help your viewers sign up for your feed easily. Feedburner is a great way to promote your feed. They give you the HTML to add an email sign-up, a button that brings them to Feedburner where they can sign up and you can also promote your feed through email. Feedburner also offers statistics which will allows you to see what your subscribers are doing with your feed.
- If you place your video on YouTube other video search engines (VSE) will pick up the video quickly. This is an effective way to get your video out there for viewers to find.
- Crosslink to your video throughout you web site. You can also use the link in online articles, email, your blog and forums.
- Submit your video or video feed to video search engines.
- Do not make viewing your video difficult for the viewer. People do not want to work to see something. They want things to be quick and simple. Most people exit sites that make them work. Keep this in mind, If your site and/or video are easy to view the link could easily be passed on to others.
- Do not forget to optimize with keywords, descriptions, tags and title-tags. Blogs, web sites and VSEs all operate differently, but they all allow you to optimize.
- Use web analytics- Google Analytics is free, but a combination of analytics is better. You can see what words people were searching for when they found your site, how many visitors you have had, how long they stayed on the current site, how many returning visitors you have…the list could go on and on. You can use the stats you have to determine if your current optimization is working or not working.
Written By: Sujan Patel On August 30th, 2007 | 2 Comments
What Consists of an SEO Friendly Web Design?
When you optimize a web design you are optimizing for the search engines, but you are also creating a web environment that is meets the needs of your visitors.
Pleasing Your Visitors
There is a basic list you need to implement in your web design:
- Easy Navigation - do not make navigating your site difficult at all. Some people do not know how to look, they do not want to look hard and some of your visitors will have physical and/or mental disabilities. For example, if your users have to see a particular color to find the navigation you could be eliminating any color blind visitors to your site. Make the navigation simple and make sure any visitor can use it without problems.
- Scannable Content - this means creating headlines that people can scan to see if your page has the information they are looking for. People always scan, so create headlines that describe the paragraphs. This way you allow readers to quickly find what they are looking for and once they start reading you have an opportunity to sell your products or services. Additionally, you should use keywords/keyword phrases in your headlines for optimization. Headlines are a crucial part of any web site.
- Content With No Spelling or Grammatical Errors - This may seem like a no-brainer, but there are so many business web sites with errors that make them appear less professional and trustworthy.
- Understandable & Informative Content - no one is an expert in everything. You may think that everyone knows the proper way to plant a palm tree, but in reality the majority of people coming to a site selling palm trees would have no clue where to start. You have to write content that is easy to read and in a non-condescending way explain everything point by point. If someone is an expert in your field they will skim past the things they already know, but someone that is looking for the services you provide is seeking to understand the process and gain confidence that you know what you are doing.
- Be Congruent - you want your pages to be similar in design/organization. If every page is different the visitor may get tired of looking or get confused and leave.
- It Should Load Fast - no one likes to wait for a page to load. We have all been to sites that take a long time to load and what do we do? Say, “forget it” and back out. Pictures can really mess up your loading time. Use a program like Photoshop and try to shrink the size of the picture, but try to maintain the quality of the picture.
- Follow W3C Suggestions For Accessibility - W3C.org has some testing recommendations all webmasters should follow to ensure your visitors have complete access to all areas of you site.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There are some very important things SEO does for a web site and without them a site will not do well. An SEO Friendly Web Design will:
- Make the site easy to find on the search engines
- Adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
- Appear in the SERPs for relevant keywords and keyword phrases
- Include the right amount of optimized content, as well as optimized headlines and meta tags
- Have clean code for the search engines
- Be crawlable- search engine spiders and bots should be able to smoothly move through all of the pages on your web site
- Use anchor text effectively
- Interlink relevant pages throughout the site
- Have a sitemap with text links to every page
In Conclusion
An SEO Friendly web site design should please all web site visitors; this means those that have complete knowledge about the subject of your site and those that know nothing about the subject. It should also meet guidelines set by the search engines and be properly designed for search engine spiders/bots. Most importantly, your web site should be easy to read and navigate
Written By: Sujan Patel On August 29th, 2007 | No Comments
If you are new to the industry and business of marketing web sites, harnessing the power of social media optimization seems like a no brainer. For the experienced veterans in the search marketing industry, social media has created a new set of rules to follow.
Today, we will take a look into how you can adapt an aging site optimization plan to better utilize the opportunities that social media has given us.
Understanding What “Social Media” Is…
As the name implies, there’s a social or community aspect to social media web sites and services. Sites that use social media as their primary means of content share some common traits. They are sites that are rich in user generated content. In other words - if you were to own a social media web site, you would not be creating the content… Your users would.
Why Social Media Assists SEO Efforts
Most social media sites are really social bookmarking sites, or sites where links and summaries or opinions are shared. Let’s say you write an article on a topic that relates to your business. You can submit that article to various social media sites like Digg, Reddit and even former big time players in the aging search industry like Netscape.
Once submitted, other users can comment on the story and help to raise it’s value on the bookmarking system. That alone generates more attention and increased visitor flow - but there’s another major factor in play - free inbound links.
Wait, Aren’t the Links Using NOFOLLOWs?
In some cases they are, and in others - they are not. Regardless of that, there has been evidence that engines are still seeing and considering the hyperlink using a NOFOLLOW in context to the rest of the page.
Even if all of the spiders and bots out there ignored the backlinks, you’re sure to raise some eyebrows and instigate others to comment, trackback to your article from their own sources, etc.
In the end, you’re generating backlinks to your unique content… and that’s the name of the game when it comes to SEO.
Written By: Sujan Patel On August 22nd, 2007 | 2 Comments
While SEOs consider themselves to be techie, and at times almost nerdy - search engine optimization is an applied science that blends technology alongside content and keywords.
Knowing this, someone who is new to optimizing web sites is at a high risk of failure and long term issues if they decide to abuse the system at all.
Since red flags, penalizations and being blacklisted from the major engines isn’t an option for you - here are some ways that you can protect yourself, your SEO work, and the brands that you represent - even if you are just starting out.
Know the Limitations
As an example, you should not include every word in the dictionary within your META Keywords tag. META keywords are nearly useless. More over, abusing elements like META tags are a surefire way to raise some red flags in the eyes of the big engines.
There are limitations to every component involved in SEO, and various thresholds you should be aware of and comfortable working in.
Do Your Homework!
If you are at a point now where you know that want to optimize web sites, do yourself a favor and read up on communities, blogs and resources online. In most cases, these resources are all free for you to use and browse, and the knowledge gained can be invaluable.
Ask the Questions as They Come to Mind
The search industry is always changing. Because of the dynamic nature of the industry, you need to remain on your toes to understand it all. Even the most seasoned SEOs fall behind from time to time - and that is when it’s important to rely on the industry to provide some answers and feedback.
At the end of the day, we’re all after the same types of goals. Optimizing sites can be a fun and exciting way to earn a living - but you need to carefully obey some simple rules. Reading up on blog posts like this will go a long way to developing the foundation you need to be successful further in this market.
Written By: Sujan Patel On August 8th, 2007 | 1 Comment
Whether you are looking to market your site through paid search or organic search, you need to have a quality list of keywords and search phrases to target. Getting that data seems easy enough provided that you either hire a professional, or rely on leading tools like Wordtracker or KeywordDiscovery.
Behind the scenes though, there are three primary elements to every keyword research session. Here they are, in no particular order…
Search Volume
A complete no brainer, right? Wrong! Many companies, managers, and firms all have this uncanny taste for ego searches. In the end though, all the rankings or campaigns in the world won’t help your site to become more productive if no one is out there searching for them in the first place.
And this is why you need to know the volume. It’s increasingly important to rank your targeted terms based on their volume. The more there’s a search audience, the more traffic and hopefully business you’ll get!
Competitiveness
If you can dominate a search term market, do it and do it now. Do not hesitate. The trouble with many markets these days though is that they are all over saturated and littered with sites that have little to now long term value. That’s where you come in. Use your creative judgment to find competitors in the space and exploit holes in
their campaigns. Using these holes you can and should be able to compete less - and produce more.
Relevance to Your Site
Targeting new cars on a web site that sells office supplies is completely pointless. And while that’s an obvious statement to make, many SEOs out there are willing to cut corners and stretch things a bit for the sake of generating more traffic. It’s not worth doing, and you should really be able to generate quality content that speaks relevantly and directly to your audience. If not, go back to the tools and get some new search terms in view!
Written By: Sujan Patel On August 6th, 2007 | 3 Comments
When you are optimizing your web site you cannot forget how important it is to optimize for local searches. We understand the importance of optimizing for national clients, but you should consider how beneficial it could be to bring local traffic to your site. Optimizing for local searches is really not difficult and can be done fairly quickly.
Start With Your Web Site
There are several things you can do that will dramatically increase your chances of showing up for local searches.
1. Add your address to your contact page. Bold it- Google considers words that are bolded, bulleted, italicized & in a larger font more important than the other words on the page. Then place your contact information into your title-tag, keywords and description. Regarding the title-tag, the city and state are the most important, then your phone number and zip. If you can fit the address that is a bonus, but if it doesn’t fit you will still benefit from it being in the content of the page, keywords and description.
2. Choose a few pages throughout your site to mention your city and surrounding cities in the title-tag and combine it with keywords. For example, if you type “San Diego SEO” into Google, Single Grain comes up on the first page. You want to switch up the keyword phrases throughout the title tags, such as “San Diego SEO” and “SEO San Diego”.
3. I always try to add a sentence to the bottom of almost every page (sometimes it just doesn’t apply) that says something like, “The Blue Widget Company is proud to serve the communities of San Diego, Orange County, Spring Valley, Coronado and Los Angeles.
4. Add the name of your city and/or keywords to alt-tags and anchor text.
5. Some web sites can have a local resource page, depending on the subject of the site. Resource pages can include local schools, restaurants, sports activities or anything that relates to your business. These pages allow you to use the name of your city repeatedly without being penalized for spam. Additionally, Google likes resource pages.
6. If you sell products and your web site creates an individual page for each product you should have the name of the product and your city and state if it fits.
Important Tip- always add some misspellings to your keywords list. Some people may be typing fast and misspell a word like “San Deigo”. Misspellings allow your site to show up when people misspell a word and this happens constantly.
Tweaking Your Blog
Try to include the name of your city in your blog description and title-tag. You can add a signature to every post that includes the name of your city. Add your city and surrounding cities to your about and contact page (remember the “We are proud to serve…” sentence).
Google Business Center
Add your business information to the Google Business Center. Adding your business has many benefits:
Your business may come up with a Google Map when someone searches for a local business. Google displays 3 business listings when they are coming up with search results. If your business is in these three you will be at the top of page one. If your business does not show up you will still be in their list for “more results” and this will bring you business.
You can use keywords in your description.
You can choose three categories to show up for, such as SEO, Web Design and Marketing Services.
Your listing will include your web site, hours of operation, payment options, photos of your business, contact information and you can even make coupons (everyone loves a discount).
You can now add Google Map information to your site, which will give your potential clients directions to your business.
Verizon Superpages
You can add your business to Superpages for free. As with Google, you can add your web site, hours of operation, contact information and more, but you are able to choose more categories for your business. If your business is listed under multiple categories you increase your chances of obtaining more clients.
Other Business Directories You Should Add Your Business To
- Yahoo Local
- MSN Local
- Ask Local
- Local.com
- TrueLocal.com
- InfoUSA
- Valpack
- City Search
- SuperPages
- Switchboard
- Internet Yellow Pages
Press Releases
If you release a press release with a reputable service you will see your business name all over the net. You can create press releases about sales and discounts, such as “San Diego Blue Widget Sale”. Press releases can be very beneficial.
The Importance of Links
We all want links pointing to our site from sites with high page ranks and we all need these links to have the right anchor text. You can use directories (usually have a high page rank) and local search sites to point back to your site with the right anchor text. Typically, these places ask you for the name of your business. Just add some additional keywords- “Single Grain- San Diego SEO”. The anchor text that will be pointing back to Single Grain will have the business name and two other keywords, “San Diego” and “SEO”.
Why Should I Bother?
Well, the bottom line is the more business you have the more money you make. You may want to be appealing to clients nationwide, but local clients are just as important. Also consider that people are always searching for information. You could show up for some random search if someone is researching your city for vacation information or looking for a news story. Anyone that comes to your site is a potential client, even if they came to your site by accident. Optimizing for your local area is truly important. Lastly, optimizing for local search will increase your web site’s traffic, more traffic means more sales.
Written By: Sujan Patel On July 30th, 2007 | 2 Comments
With Web 2.0 front and center, the general use of the Internet is evolving. As users change their surfing habits, so too must search engines change the way they provide results for their users.
For many years, search optimization was about core elements such as on page content, inbound links, and overall site stature. As more people mashup, comment, tag and bookmark though — the waters suddenly get muddy.
Inbound Links
More than any other element, the number of inbound links can be influenced tremendously by social media. Every time a user posts a comment on a blog, there’s another opportunity for a backlink. Every time you cite someone else’s posts, there too is another backlink.
With the use of tags, bloggers are encouraging others to basically create a network of links all involving similarly focused content. That is not a bad thing, but it does create more opportunities for people looking to game the systems.
Tagging & Bookmarking
We have seen Google push Wikipedia to the limits in nearly all types of search results. As more people Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us posts though, there’s a scary alternative available.
Imagine if Google were to suddenly promote one of these social networking services in their results similarly to how Wikipedia is showcased. Instantly, thousands of less-than-ethical SEO’s and link builders would be spamming the systems for a piece of the treasure.
Is Interaction the New Backlink?
Optimizing for Google is all about Google PageRank, right? If you can score some links to your site on high values pages, you’re suddenly one step closer to dominating the SERPs.
As more people adapt to the community aspect of web 2.0 though, less traditional backlinks will become available — and more will likely be focused on interaction. Every time you comment on a blog post, rate a video, offer a Digg for someone’s content, or give them a positive thumbs up on StumbleUpon… a link is being generated.
Therefore, it’s entirely possible — and quite likely — those social interactions on the above services are what will create the new era of backlinks. To that degree, major engines are faced with a difficult decision. Should all links created through such social networking retain less value, or, should they be scored on using a proprietary algorithm similar to how PageRank is currently determined?
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see!
