Content is King… so now what?

March 22, 2013 by Beth Devine Leave a Comment

If you read anything about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) these days, the focus is on content. But what does that mean? Essentially it means that what you say on your blog or website is more important than any tricks you might use to be found. The more valuable content you have, the more Google and other search engines will show your listing. The key is to have the right content. So where do you start?

Keywords

The first place to start is with Keyword Terms. These are words or phrases your customers/prospects would use to find someone like you. Once you’ve come up with the list, be sure to check it against terms that are actually being searched. For example: I may want to use the term website optimization but find that search engine optimization is searched 10 times more often. This might alter how I phrase and organize my content.

Search Engine Optimization

Once your website is up and the initial keyword research and website content optimization has been done, you’ll want to keep up the momentum and continue with an on-going SEO program. The size and cost of your program will depend on the market you’re trying to reach (is it local, national or international), and the competitiveness of your product.

Your ongoing optimization program should include continually updating your website, blog and/or social medial with new content. In order to stay consistent and on-topic it’s best to have a plan. Create a calendar where you define topics, events, specials and promotions that you want to make sure are included in your online marketing. You can go back to the keyword research and find out what’s of interest to help you tweak your topic choices. The most important thing to understand is that SEO is an on-going program. It’s part of your online marketing strategy and is not something you can do once and expect it to continue to work for you.

Other Online Marketing Options

There are many things you can do to help with your online visibility. For starters, if you want to be at the top of the search engine results quickly—do it the old fashioned way— pay for it. A well-executed pay-per-click (PPC) program is a great way to improve your ranking while your organic SEO is gaining momentum. The key here is to set up your PPC program so you get the maximum return on your investment. We’ve partnered with a Google certified company that focuses exclusively on PPC. Like many things in business and life, unless it’s a focus, it’s unlikely to be done right.

Another way to help with SEO, is to make sure all your online profiles (Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yelp, etc.)are complete and correct. I’m always amazed at the number of consumer businesses that don’t even have a Google local listing. A local listing will give a prospect an immediate snapshot of your business and help drive traffic to your website or directly to your business.

We’ve been working with our clients to take that a step further by adding a 3D Google Photo tour. If you have a shop or office you’d like to show off to your customers/prospects, we’ve partnered with local photographer Tim Becker to create 3D photo tours.

There are many ways to gain visibility online, but beware of SEO consultants who offer one-shot “I’ll get you on top of Google” plans. Their strategies may provide a short-term burst but are unlikely to prove effective long-term and may actually damage your search engine rank.

SEO is one component of the online marketing process. To be effective in the long-term, SEO and marketing should be worked at on an ongoing basis.

Filed Under: Beth's Posts, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools & Tips

Search Engine Optimization and Your Website

November 6, 2012 by Beth Devine Leave a Comment

In real estate it’s “location, location, location,” and in Search Engine Optimization it’s “content, content, content,” which is why it’s imperative to consider your content when creating or re-designing your website. If the terms you want your customers and prospects to find you with aren’t in the copy of your website, there’s no way your site will come up when those terms are searched.

It’s important to invest a fair amount of time and effort into researching terms you think your prospects will use to find you. You may find that a term you feel is important isn’t the exact term they use when searching. In that case, their term is more important and needs to be included. It’s equally important to continually research terms pertinent to your industry when writing blog posts, since this is the most common method used to update website content.

The number one way to drive people to your website is through pertinent and useful information. The days of buying back links and bogus code are long gone. In fact, those practices can get you blacklisted. If through your content you educate your audience and become known as an expert in the industry, then when they’re ready to buy, you’ll be the first company that comes to mind. An optimized website will help them to find you, but it’s your expertise that will convert the visit to a sale.

Photo credit: katerha http://flic.kr/p/7WoYxX

Filed Under: Beth's Posts, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools & Tips

How to Use the Google Keywords Tool

October 12, 2012 by Kacee Erhard Leave a Comment

You’ve been working on great content, linking up your social media, and including photos and videos. Now what? Time to tweak your site with some simple keyword research.

Find the right keywords for your blog posts

The Google Keyword Tool, originally created for ad campaign strategy, serves as a free and easy way to search for the best keywords for your blog post. Give your blog improved search engine ranking by first doing a quick search.

Improve SEO with Keywords Search Terms

How do you choose the best keywords to use? Begin with terms you want to use in your blog post. Include short phrases, using different variations to see what your search generates.

Don’t be surprised to find that the terms you were considering do not show the best results. For example, if you were considering writing about cat memes, you would quickly figure out that the popular search terms center around pictures, pics, and captions.

Turns out not everyone knows what a meme is.

Your Keyword Choices Might Change

By playing around with the various options, you learn more about your keyword selection. By clicking “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms,” your results will greatly differ. Try both ways to see the best results.

When trying a “cat memes” keyword search, the search needs to be broad for any results. For the term “cat pictures,” the search must be narrowed to eliminate irrelevant keyword results.

For the “Sorted by” option, select “Competition” and then click on the arrow in the Competition column to sort from low to high. Look for low competition results with high monthly search results. Concentrate on the numbers in the Local Monthly Searches column.

Clicking on a keyword idea will give you further options, including “Exclude term” or “Show more like this,” depending on its relevance. For example, the “can i has cheezburger” result, which turns out to be a website URL, might not be at the top of my keyword choice list for a cat memes blog. (But not to fear, there’s even an iTunes mobile app for this handy-dandy resource.)

The things you learn while doing a Google keywords search are not to be scoffed upon.

Remember to Use Your Chosen Keywords Selectively

Once you have your keywords, plug them into your blog post title, headline, and text. Add some tags using the variations that showed high monthly search numbers with low competition. Don’t over do it. You aren’t writing for search engines. It’s the quality that counts.

You can create a Google AdWords account using your Gmail or other Google account information. You are not required to pay for or begin an ad campaign. This eliminates the need to enter captcha information for each search.

Once you sign in, check to be sure you are looking under the “Keyword ideas” tab and not “Ad group ideas.” It’s easy to miss.

With a little practice, you will become a keyword-tool-searching fanatic.

Filed Under: Kacee's Posts, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools & Tips

Why You Should Use Google+

August 9, 2012 by Kacee Erhard Leave a Comment

Experiment with my own blog. Results were sooner than 44 minutes, but I was too surprised to think to take a screenshot right away.[/caption

Having just tried a little experiment to determine how effective all this Google+ hype is – they were all advocating it at the CT Business Expo – I am left stunned.

Google+ Really Does Help Your SEO

There’s so much more to learn (*vast understatement*), but here’s the scoop to get you started with your Google+ profile and improved SEO.

The content you share on Google+ can show up in minutes in a search listing. When the right search terms are used and the user is signed in to Google+, it could even be on the first page.

Optimize Your Headline

Google grabs the first 70 characters of your post’s first line, so make it count with a catchy headline.

Choose words that will reflect well in a search and put asterisks around them. The asterisks won’t show up in the post.

Write a Compelling First Sentence

The first 160 characters becomes your attention-grabbing listing description. This is your chance to keep your readers long enough for them to decide to click through. Learn from David Sedaris on how to craft seductive first-liners.

Link Your Blog/Website to Google+

This can’t hurt your SEO, even if the results are as yet unclear. This link should influence searches inside Google+. Here’s a walk through the steps with some good visuals.

Display a Link to Your Google+ Profile From Your Website

You can either use a plug-in method to create a widget, or you can make a social icon button like the ones you made before. WordPress shows you both ways here.

Verify Authorship

This will help you get more followers, which will in turn help readers discover your other content on the web, and will ultimately help users to find high quality internet content. Join the club now while it’s still rather new, and you will stand out even more.

Get More Followers

The more followers you get, the better the search results. This key point can’t be overlooked: Your posts directly affect your followers’ searches on Google+.

The screenshot here is on page one, but when the same terms were searched when not on Google+ as a follower, the results were buried. I gave up after page 70.

I seriously need to add followers. Let’s get out there and add ‘em!

Miscellaneous tip: When posting on Google+, use hashtags where applicable. Like Twitter, themes are being generated which can add to your exposure. Where possible, include #cutenessoverload for maximum awwwww effect.

Google+ gives you immediate, front-load airtime, a built-in mugshot, and a direct link to your webpage. Content marketers are quickly realizing the benefits.

It won’t be a ghost town for long.

Filed Under: Kacee's Posts, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools & Tips

Thank you Google and Bing for validating my SEO viewpoint

March 21, 2012 by Carolyn Griswold Leave a Comment

For several years now, I’ve rebelled against SEO Voodoo.

What I mean by SEO Voodoo is the process of hyper-focusing on optimizing your website to the detriment of building a good website. Folks get so caught up in the SEO hype—keywords, link building and so on that they forget that good content will cause people to naturally link to your website and will include the keywords that apply to your material.

Instead, I’ve promoted the concept that a well-designed website with well-crafted, informative content is a far better investment than spending time and money on voodoo search engine optimization. At times, I’ve had clients look at me as if I had two heads. Sadly, in some cases they’ve gone out and hired someone else to do the voodoo.

That’s not to say that I dismiss SEO concepts. I employ practical SEO principles as I build and maintain websites. I believe in classic html SEO practices like creating relevant unique page titles, using heading tags to highlight topics of the website, and I believe in cross-promoting your business and website online with social media sites and e-mail marketing. As a practice I create 301 redirects if I redesign a site and the urls change.

But I’ve never bought into the practices of “guaranteed” SEO tactics — you know — things like cramming keywords into your content, artificially creating links and some of the other crazy ideas the SEO specialists recommend to my clients.

Some SEO tactics, like keyword cramming, are kind of like a guy stuffing a sock in his pants. It might entice some visitors, but they’re disappointed when they get there.

I guess I figured the search engines were smarter than that or maybe I just figured it was more important to create a website that focused on your user’s experience. You know, spend time to create useful content that might actually sell your product or service?

It seems, Google and Bing might agree with me. Last week, Matt Cutts from Google and Duane Forrester from Bing had a conversation at SXSW about SEO. You can listen to to their conversation here. Among some of their points (paraphrased):

over-optimization is a problem that can reduce the relevancy of search results and Google is trying to solve the problem
if you’re not engaged socially, you’re missing the boat
algorithms are not static—many variables affect search results
search engines try to do what’s best for their constituents – the searchers
spend less time on building artificial links and more time on creating news or content that other sources will pick up
instead of trying to beat your competitors at the SEO game, offer more compelling content than your competitors
don’t buy links, instead:
1. work on social media
2. on becoming an authority in your industry
3. if someone is doing an article on you, ask for a link

So take the advise of some of the search engine pros and focus on creating good content for your website; it may serve you better than SEO voodoo.

Related blog posts:

Filed Under: Carolyn's Posts, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tools & Tips

SEO is Not a Silver Bullet to Sales

November 2, 2011 by Carolyn Griswold 2 Comments

This morning I came across a post offering the top things not to do when optimizing your site for Google search. See “Search engine optimization Elite Review On Google Prime ten NoNo’s“ The points are all valid and a well optimized site should follow all the rules if they want to have their site rank as high as possible. The problem I see with many customers is their laser-sharp focus on getting a good search engine rank while neglecting other marketing and possibly even the website itself.

This hyper-focus may have been enhanced by the glut of SEO experts telling people how vital SEO is to their success. But, web site owners would be wise to remember that the only thing good SEO will do is have your site show up in a site search. It’s not a silver bullet to sales. It will only improve the odds or bringing customers to your website. After that it’s up to you and your website to impress potential customers with amazing content–content that’s current, clear, accurate, informative, and attractively designed.

So while you’re reviewing SEO strategies (because I’m not discounting the effectiveness of a well-optimized site at getting people to the door) don’t forget to review your website. The stuff that customer’s actually see is as important as a good SEO strategy. Here’s a brief checklist of things you should be looking at:

Is it clear (to the layperson) within seconds of landing on any page in your website what you’re selling?
Is your phone number visible? On every page?
Do you give people a reason to call you? Do you clearly state benefits of doing business with you?
Is your navigation easy to follow?
Are your markets clearing defined. Do you provide market specific content for different market segments?
Do you update your content with current information?
Does your site design look professional? Does it look current or dated? Does it show well on mobile devices?
Is your site design (colors, typography, logos, images) consistent with your brand?
If you have a shopping cart, is the cart secure? Are products clearly displayed and identified?
Are customer service policies, shipping methods, return policies, privacy policies in place.
Do you provide a physical location and multiple ways for people to contact you?
Are you using social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others that are appropriate for your markets?

Always focus on building a website that benefits your clients and potential clients. If you keep that in mind as you optimize your site and your content you may find that customers are not only finding you, but they’re also buying from you. And that’s really the ultimate goal isn’t it?

Filed Under: Carolyn's Posts, Internet Marketing 101, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Tips for a good website, Tools & Tips

Three web design mistakes that can hurt SEO

May 12, 2010 by Carolyn Griswold 1 Comment

You just started your business. Your marketing budget is limited and you know you need a website, so you opt to use one of the many low-cost tools available to build your own website or you have your daughter, (son, nephew or sister-in-law, name the friend or relative) who “knows the computer” do it for you. You work your way through this uncharted territory and you manage to get your website up and running and it even looks pretty good.

Job well done! But as time passes, you begin to wonder why it doesn’t rank better on the search engines. Many techniques factor into good search engine optimization (SEO) but novice website designers or do-it-yourself business owners often make three big mistakes that can hurt their SEO.

Search engines can’t read an image. Overuse of images. If you have website pages that are made up entirely of images or if you have blocks of text that are made of images you’re preventing search engines from reading the text on your pages. If search engines can’t read your page, they don’t know how to index your page. I usually see this mistake made by those with some graphic design experience. They may know how to create a beautiful layout but they haven’t learned the HTML/CSS code to transition that layout to the web correctly so they opt to insert the image into the web page instead of taking the time to code the page correctly.
Search engines can’t read an image – the sequel. Underuse of image alt tags. Each image used in a web page should use a descriptive alt tag. If alt tags are not used, search engines are not able to discern what the image signifies, so they ignore it. For example, say you’re Joe and you sell bicycles. You’ve created a fantastic logo that clearly identifies you as Joe’s Bicycle Sales & Service. You put it on you web pages and it looks beautiful but you fail to use the alt tag. Now when search engines crawl your site they’re not able to discern what the logo says. However, if you have used the alt tag correctly, the search engines will read the alt tag that says “Joe’s Bicycle Sales & Service” and because you’ve provided that information, the search engine will have more information available to index your website.If you’re building your website using a do-it-yourself tool, you should see a field called alt or image description in the tool. If you’re coding, you’re image code should look something like this:
<img src=”logo.jpg” alt=”Joe’s Bicycle Sales and Service” />
If you wrote a book you, would you title it “Book”? Title tags and meta descriptions not used at all or used ineffectively. Just like a book or magazine article, every web page should have a unique title. In addition each web page should also have a unique meta description that accurately describes the content on that page – think of the meta description as the book synopsis often found on back or inside jacket of the book. In an html document both the <title> and <meta description> tags are within the <head> of the document which, as you might expect since it’s called the head, is toward the top of the document. So when search engines crawl the page the title and meta description tags are among the first indexable information they come across and search engines expect the tags to describe the content on the page because that is what the tags were designed to do.
But too often, inexperienced or lazy web designers use a title tag like “home” instead of “Joe’s Bicycle Sales | Yourtown, Your state”. Or on the page that shows products the title tag says something like “products” instead of “Bicycles – Raleigh, Schwinn, Trek, bikes for all ages”. And the meta descriptions are either ignored entirely and left blank, or the same generic information is duplicated on each page.

The title tag is the information the web browser shows at the very top of the browser screen–above the toolbar and url address field. You generally want to limit your title descriptions to less than 60 characters. The meta description tag is not viewable on a web page (unless you view source) but search engines sometimes use the meta description you provide on your html page as the description in your search engine listing. Limit your meta descriptions to about 160 characters.

So if you’re not satisfied with your search engine rank, check to make sure that you haven’t overused images in your design; that you have described all your images with alt tags and that you’ve written unique title and meta descriptions for each page on your website.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design, Web design/Internet Marketing, Website Maintenance

Clean up incoming website links after redesign

January 15, 2010 by Carolyn Griswold 1 Comment

Every so often you need to take a look at your website and prune some of the old material from your website. I recently went through the process with cgwebhelp.com. During the recent redesign, I removed the whole FYI section and many sub pages from other sections. The material was dated and it was time to streamline the site.

While search engines love to see current relevant content, you should take care when completing a redesign so that you don’t lead visitors and search engines to an old page or worse a page not found. Not only is it confusing and annoying for people coming to your website but it can also hurt your search engine rank.

If you go to Google and search site:cgwebhelp.com, you’ll see all the incoming links that Google has coming to the site. Many of the links listed are pointing to old pages. You’ll want to fix that so all listings are pointing to your new website. To do that, you’ll want to do two things.

Make sure that the old pages are actually removed from your server
Set up a 301 Permanent redirect for any removed pages to an applicable section of your new website.

If you’re working with a web designer you’ll want to ensure that they’ve completed those two things when completing the updates to your site. To check, you can do a search on your site by searching “site:yourdomain.com” and start clicking through the links — if they all direct to your new site, you’re in good shape. If not, there’s still some work to be done.

If you’re a do-it-yourself kind of person and you have access to your hosting account and Cpanel you can set up the 301 redirects yourself. Log in to your Cpanel and look fro the Domains>Redirect link. Once there choose “Permanent 301 from the dropdown, type in the url of the old page or directory that needs to be pointed to a new url and the new URL in the spaces indicated click update and you’re done.

If you want to redirect a whole directory as I did in the example shown above click the “Wild Card Redirect” box. That’s it. Now go back to Google and click through your links to verify that they’re all going to your updated pages.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website Maintenance

Question of the Day: Any Value to Reciprocal Links?

December 4, 2009 by Carolyn Griswold Leave a Comment

Is there any value in responding to the email and to providing a link to the website from your site? If you have a website it’s likely you’ve received emails like the email below:

I have visited your website yourdomain.com and I was wondering
if it would be possible to get a link to my partner’s website on it?

I’ll place a link back to you on our website, your link will be placed exactly here:

If you agree, then please link to me….

Please don’t forget to send me the title of your website after you
place my link so I can do the same.

Years ago getting reciprocal links was a pretty common practice. It was thought that search engines would rank sites better if they had numerous inbound links. It may still be true that sites with numerous inbound links will rank better than those without inbound links, but modern SE’s recognize if the links are relevant or if they are just exchanged links. So rather than respond to or initiate reciprocal links with unknown sources, a better strategy for obtaining inbound links might be to find relevant directories or businesses that are a source of referrals for your business in the “real” world and if appropriate ask them to link to your websites. Inbound links can also be generated through the social networks – join a discussion on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook and you’ll likely see a spike in traffic to your website

Filed Under: Question of the Day, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)