Haste Makes Waste! SEO With End Results in Mind
By Sujan Patel with 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. Read More
Guide To Video Search Optimization
By Sujan Patel with 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. Read More
SEO Friendly Design
By Sujan Patel with 4 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
- Avoid content in frames
- Be W3C compliant
- 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
Using Social Media To Assist Your SEO
By Sujan Patel with 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.
Lack of SEO Knowledge Puts You at High Risk
By Sujan Patel with 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.
