Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
Archive for September, 2011
What is a Name Server?
07 months ago
Those of us who use the internet most likely have used a name server many times without ever knowing it. Computers are constantly exchanging data across internet paths and the Domain Name System (DNS) is the set procedure for doing so. The simplest explanation is that it takes a domain name like “domainname.com” and translates it into an internet protocol address. (IP) Each domain name has an IP that looks more like a sequence of numbers. This number is what the internet actually uses to find the site. It is similar to how a GPS works using coordinates. You type in an address and the GPS uses the proper coordinates to help you find your destination. The name server takes the user friendly name for a domain and uses the “coordinates” to help the user find the web address.
Name Server
There are four types of name servers available: active directory, primary server, secondary server and forwarding-only server. An active directory name server is completely integrated with Active Directory and stores all the data for the DNS in the directory. A primary server is the main DNS and it is only partially integrated with the Active Directory. It saves all the DNS records along with the configuration files for the domain name. These are all stored as text files which use the .DNS extension.
The secondary server is basically a backup for the domain and it will store copies of all the DNS data which is obtained from the primary server. For updates it will rely on zone transfers. A server which will store DNS data only to pass it on to other servers is called a forwarding-only server. A DNS server service must first be installed and then it will be configured to provide one of these four services.
There are a few things that can be done to enhance DNS. One thing that will help your DNS perform optimally is to perform periodic checkups. It may seem that the infrastructure is working just fine, but it is good to run a DNS health check. These tools are available online from various sites. Running these simple checkups will make sure that your configurations are performing and configured correctly.
Staying on a public DNS is adequate for most people. In general, most of us are only in need of the caching system which keeps information on websites that are visited frequently.
How to Use Facebook for Business
17 months ago
As of August 2011, Facebook has crossed the milestone of having over 750 million members. This social networking site can be a useful tool for a business. However, it must be marketed carefully to stay within Facebook’s user policies. Your user profile cannot promote your business, but you can create a fan page for the business.
The page name for your
Facebook for business
business fan page will be one of the biggest ranking factors. Make sure to add some relevant keywords because there will not be an opportunity to change the name of the page later. You will be asked to add a profile picture, be sure to make the most out of this opportunity. If it is possible it would be good to use a business logo for the profile picture. Use a picture that can be easily associated and identified with the business.
When you fill in the information about your business make it as brief as you can and still keep it relevant and engaging for your viewers. Think about search engine optimization best practices and use keywords where relevant. Each of these tabs is individually indexed by search engines. You can also put a URL under the profile picture. It will automatically become a clickable link that can be used to send visitors to your business website, twitter or blog.
Having users “like” your Facebook page is similar to having someone follow you on Twitter, although it is a little more complicated. When someone likes or comments on your status update it will be shown on their profile. On fan pages after you get enough “likes” it will move it to the Top News section of the news feed of that user. This will make it more visible.
People will be joining your page because they are interested in what you have to offer. Simply put, the page needs to be kept current with fresh and interesting data such as pictures, videos and pertinent links. You do want to be careful that you do not inundate your fans with too much traffic, but you will need enough to keep them engaged and aware of what your business is doing. Frequent uploads of pictures displaying product information or uploading recent hosted events can keep the content relevant and fresh for users. You can also upload your own video creations and give your fans that personal touch that can be great for internet marketing.
These are some ideas you can use to begin using facebook for marketing and business purposes.
Small Business Search Engine Marketing
187 months ago
Today we will wrap up our series on why social media will not replace SEO.
Social media marketing
Some businesses (particularly new or small ones) get caught in the glory of building a large number of Twitter followers or Facebook fans. They assume that once they establish a large following, word of mouth will be easy and the sales will inevitably follow. However, the hole in this logic is evident when you take the following example: Say you have 5,000 followers on Twitter. Even if you tweet something about your awesome new product, if your followers don’t need the product at the time, they’re not going to care, which means that your tweet will be lost and gone to waste. Even if they need your product later, what are the chances that they will actually take the time to comb through your old tweets to find that one <140 character update you wrote about it? There are too many other web marketing message your customers are seeing daily. This goes back to our previous point about how SEO tailors to the customer’s experience. Combined with your web marketing efforts, SEO can really target your customers. If you properly optimize your site for target keywords, then when people find themselves in need of your product, your website will be one of the first things they see when they use a search engine. SEO brings users to the pages that are relevant to their wants/needs, and this facilitates your customer conversation rate in a way that social media is not capable of doing all on its own. Financially speaking, the ROI in SEO has proven itself against the test of time. Yes, SEO is certainly an investment. However, it is a worthwhile investment that will reap fruitful benefits for your company in the long run.
And if the above reasons haven’t convinced you of why social media can’t replace SEO (at least not yet), another reason you should devote a chunk of your web marketing strategy to SEO is because well, quite frankly, your competitors are most likely investing in SEO. Your competitors are doing their best to rank higher than you in search engine results, so unless you want to lose all your potential customers to them, you might as well invest in SEO, too. And if you are fortunate enough that your competitors have not (yet) invested in SEO, then optimizing your web pages before them gives you a great advantage.
Social media may be the new big thing, but let’s not forget about what is tried and true. If executed properly, SEO can (and will) drive in more traffic and revenue to your business.
Benefits of SEO
137 months ago
Last time we discussed the temporary nature of social media. This leads to our next point about why SEOis just as important (if not more so) than social media.
social media strategies
Yes, social media can bring publicity to your business. Social media allows you to engage in conversation with others who are also interested in the same topic as you. It allows you to share knowledge with others about that topic. It even allows you to inform others about your own products and services, a hidden web marketing tactic? However, one drawback of social media is that you can’t tailor to individual customer experiences. Here is where the major flaw of social media without SEO is exposed: When you update your business’ Facebook page about something, you are no doubt putting out information that you want users to see. However, if the timing is not right, then your update is lost amidst a sea of other updates. The issue with social media is that it presents a lot of information to an audience of people who are not necessarily looking for the information/product/service at that time. The great thing about SEO then is that it guarantees that your services will be presented to the user when he/she is actually looking for it.
Updating your social media frequently helps build your brand as well as maintain your credibility among those that follow you. Building your brand through web marketing and social media can be very beneficial. From a different angle, it basically heightens awareness about your company to those that already know your company’s name. However, the other wonderful thing about SEO is that it is able to bring awareness about your company to those that are looking for your product/service but don’t know about you yet. SEO puts you in front of the people who are interested in your product/service but don’t necessarily know about your business.
To read more about why SEO is here to stay, be sure to check out our next blog post comparing SEO and social media.
Social Media Marketing Analysis
87 months ago
Last time we noted that a mildly alarming number of business owners are completely forgoing SEO in favor of social media. Today, we’ll explain the risks behind putting all your eggs in one basket (that is, the social media basket), and moreover, why SEO is still relevant and why we don’t see SEO disappearing from online marketing strategies any time soon.
First, we’d like to acknowledge that social media is still a viable method for establishing one’s online presence. The point of this post is NOT to belittle the merits of social media (after all, we use Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress, too). Rather, the purpose of this post is to remind business owners that social media should not be the only thing that they focus on in web marketing.
The great thing about SEO is that all the optimization you do on your website is yours and no one else’s. In contrast, when you update your Twitter or Facebook page, you are conducting online marketing through a domain that is not your own. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but what happens if one of these social media outlets goes out of fashion? Say good-bye to all the content that you poured into that external site.
The truth of the matter is that all the marketing you do on social media platforms is ephemeral, but all the optimization you do on your own site is permanent. If you get kicked off of Twitter for some reason, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to retrieve your past content. However, if something similar were to happen to your website (say, for example, your web host chooses not to host you anymore), at least you can easily take your backup files and move to another hosting site. But with Twitter and Facebook, you don’t have that option. You are left completely at the whim of the social media powers that be. On the other hand, if you own your own domain, you are in full control over what happens to your content. This is also why, if you blog, we highly recommend that you try to have your own domain name for your blog. Why? Because if you blog through a subdomain and one day decide to switch platforms, you run the risk of losing a lot of traffic, incoming links, search engine rankings, etc.
To read more about the crucial differences between SEO and social media, be sure to keep an eye out for our next post.
SEO vs. Social Media
118 months ago
Social media has become an important part of many search engine marketing campaigns, so much so that many small businesses seem to focus more on social media than they do on search engine optimization. They create a Twitter, Facebook page, and blog, all with the expectation that using these popular social media platforms will increase their online visibility. However, the social media craze has created a false sense of security in many a business owner’s eyes. A common rookie mistake is to invest more time in updating social media than in SEO. In fact, some businesses don’t even bother creating (let alone building/opt
Social Media Marketing
imizing) their own website. Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, and Google Places are al
l ways for companies to make themselves known on the web without the expenses that normally go along with SEO. For this reason, some business owners decide that they’d rather focus all their web marketingefforts on social media.
There’s no denying the allure of using social media as your only source of content marketing. Social media can reach a large audience at a very low cost (note: the reason I say “low cost” instead of free is because although social media platforms like Twitter and Blogger/Wordpress are free, you still have to spend time writing updates, or at least paying an employee to write them for you).
This leads to the ever-looming question: does the rise of social media in today’s virtual environment make SEO obsolete?
The clear answer is no, social media has not made SEO outdated. To find out why SEO isn’t leaving any time soon, be sure to check out our next post on internet marketing.
SEO for Yahoo!
38 months ago
There are only a few major search engines and Yahoo! is one of them. Each one has their own algorithm for how sites are ranked in search engine results. Because of these differences, SEO’s will have to use various optimization techniques so that websites will rank higher on multiple search engines. For each of these search engines various details must be given attention. For Google it means that there will be strong keywords used in meta descriptions, tags and site title; and back links are important to Google ranking. For Yahoo! there are four main things that need to be addressed: keyword density, site structure, back links and aging.
SEO for Yahoo!
Keyword density is difficult to nail down; but it certainly does not mean keyword stuffing. This will get the site penalized by most of the search engines. This is an area that should be under constant scrutiny for those working in internet marketing. It’s not like a one-size-fits-all type of deal. The type of site and industry will determine the optimal density. A good way to get an idea of proper keyword density is to check some competitor’s sites and how they rank in the results. If you are building a site for a contractor who does some form of home remodeling, check out various home remodeling sites to see how they rank in Yahoo! search results. Those which rank higher have the keyword density that Yahoo! prefers and that should be your goal in order to optimize your site.
Yahoo! puts more emphasis on site structure than any of the other major search engines. There are two reasons behind having an organized site structure. One is that it determines the order the page content is viewed and what content has the highest priority. In other words, content that appears higher in the page code will be given more value than the content situated lower down in the code. And secondly, good site structure will be reduced in code. This means that the reduction in the code will help to push the content higher on the page and it will be given more weight by the search engine.
As with the other major search engines, relevant back links help the site’s quality. This is one area that Yahoo! is pretty similar to Google. There are four aspects of back links that Yahoo! considers when ranking a site. One is the quality of the link. To consider the value of a link when optimizing a site for Yahoo! one must look at if the site ranks well with Yahoo! for related phrases, is the site related to the one being optimized, and if the link is from a trusted domain. A trusted domain is one that has been in existence for over 3 years and has solid non-reciprocal links coming from a lot of different sites. The position of the link on a page is important to search engines too. A link has more value when it is located at the top of a page rather than at the bottom.
Aging of a site can bring a delay in search engine results. It simply takes some time to build a site’s reputation and to gather various relevant links to the site. Yahoo! is not as stringent on age delay as Google is. Generally it will take at least 3 or 4 months to get a site established.
SEO for Bing
48 months ago
Microsoft released their new search engine, Bing, most of us thought the algorithm used to rank sites in search results would be the same. Everyone seemed pretty surprised to see Bing give Yahoo! a run for their money in the Search Engine battle; and overall Bing received good reviews. Its popularity raises a question or two, such as what are we to do now to optimize a site to rank high in Bing? And I think most of us are curious as to what th
SEO for Bing
e differences are between what Google looks for and what Bing searches for.
We are pretty familiar with Google and being able to get a site ranked in search engine results. Google’s results center around keywords and back links to the site from outside sources. Bing’s ranking algorithm is based on two things. One thing that a website owner has no control over is the age of the domain. Domains which have been up for a longer period of time will rank over newer sites.
The second criterion that Bing uses to rank sites in search results is centered on inbound links. The difference from Google’s algorithm is the placement of the primary keyword. The main site’s primary keyword must be included in the referring site’s title tags. Google considers inbound links from anywhere, but Bing only looks at the links from other sites and directories which have relevant keywords.
For any of the search engines, quality content is essential but it takes more than this alone to rank higher in Bing’s search results. It is really about acquiring links from authoritative and relevant sites to boost a site’s rankings.
What does this mean for the small business or contractors who have been using proper techniques to optimize their sites? Marketing for contractors or local businesses is pretty much unchanged; especially to be listed in the top three of Google and Yahoo! search results. Site building is still important and the same SEO should be used. Continuing these good practices will keep the sites ranked high in the other two search engines.
In order to have a site rank high in Bing’s search engine results you will need to engage in some link building techniques. Instead of just trying to get as many back links as possible, you will want to build links from other sites with relevant keywords in their title tags. This can be time consuming and you may need to hire an SEO professional to accomplish this goal.
Marketing for Contractors
18 months ago
Internet marketing for contractors requires much dedication to be successful. It is no longer sufficient to just put up a web page and say you have a web presence. SEO for contractors takes careful planning and diligence to make sure that their services are made visible to customers. Contractors want to let their clients know about the varied services that are available.
One of the many things that will be an ongoing process is keyword research. It is a good idea to do this before the website is built to see what types of phrases and keywords people are using to try to find specific types of services. For instance, marketing for contractors may require specific keyword usage such as remodeling, or house painting. You want to use the proper keyword to reach your audience and put the services you provide at the top of search engine results. This little bit of research needs to be repeated occasionally to see what targeted words get the most searches.
Marketing home remodeling websites
Creating relevant back links is also an important part of search engine optimization. There are a few ways to achieve this. Blogs offer a great way to create some relevant links to your site and offer valuable information about your services to potential customers. For instance contractors who do residential roofing can write a blog about the various types of roofing materials and how they perform in different climates. This offers customers some firsthand knowledge that can assist them in their choice of roofing material. The blog can then be linked back to the relevant page(s) on your site. The blog can be updated frequently with news about various types of materials and their efficiency.
Don’t over look the power of social media in the world of internet marketing. It’s pretty much a free platform with a lot of punch. Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo and StubleUpon are all great places to post the URL to your business. When an update on your blog or website occurs it is easily posted on Facebook and Twitter. And a Suqidoo lens can be used to create a page specific to the services you offer and can also be linked back to your site.
The new web 2.0 world allows for much interaction between businesses and clients. The ways to use the web for site promotion are limitless. Don’t count anything out! Forums, directories, articles and videos are all available as resources for successful internet marketing for contractors.
Understanding PageRank
98 months ago
As SEOs, one of the most important ranking factors we focus on is PageRank. There’s no missing it in the SEO realm – PR is a big deal and everyone wants to get their hands on some. However, in our haste to gather our high PR links, many of us completely misunderstand what it is we’re looking for. Here’s the big SEO blunder:
PageRank is NOT SiteRank!
Have you ever heard this phrase? “High PR forum backlinks”
If you see it, head for the hills because it is complete and utter nonsense. What these sellers are doing is purposely misidentifying their links to appeal to the not-so-savvy buyers. What they are saying is that the homepage of the forum has high PR so you will get high PR backlinks. Well, it’s just plain wrong regardless of if they understand PageRank or not. None of that link juice will actually make it to your newly created profile page.
The idea is really not too complicated: it is called PageRank because it is a value given to the specific page not the whole site. Otherwise it would be called SiteRank, but there is no such thing as that. Often times, we only focus on the PR of the homepage of a site which is why marketers start saying site XX has a PR of X. Rather, it should be stated that the homepage of site XX has a PR of X.
PageRank flows freely through links on the page which is why a high PR homepage will spread decent PR to all of the pages, internal and external, that it links to. To calculate the PR that any given page passes, you can use this simple equation:
PageRank divided by the total number of links on the page minus 10-15% PageRank decay.
For example:
PR 5 / 20 links = 0.25 PR – .025 (10%) = 0.225
In other words, if you get a link on a page that has a PR of 5 and there are 19 other links on the page, your link will receive 0.225 PageRank. This is why the number of outbound links is an extremely important factor when trying to get PR. When you see those high PR “dofollow” blog pages that have 50+ comments on them already (they’ve already been spammed) they are not very valuable anymore. Your time would be better spent on a lower PR page with fewer outbound links. Focus on the PR AND the number of outbound links because a PR 2 page can pass much more link juice to your site than a PR 5 depending on the amount of outbound links.
With all this obsessing over PR, you have to stop and wonder, is it really that important? I used to believe otherwise. Google has stated multiple times that it is just one of over 200 metrics for calculating rank, so stop worrying about it so much. However, the many other signs of authority a webpage has are inseparable or hard to separate from PageRank. In other words, a page with high PR likely has high scores for Trust and other ranking factors. These other factors, such as Trust, are somewhat mysterious and difficult to measure which is another reason for the obsession on PR. It’s so clean-cut and visible. This webpage is PR 4, that webpage has PR 3, 4 > 3 got it!
Don’t forget about relevancy when building links, anchor text and title tags are two very important factors to consider when link building. However, building links for PR is a good idea as long as you do it right. Make sure you are getting “dofollow” links and focus on the PageRank AND the number of outbound links.
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