Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
Posts tagged proper SEO
Top 10 SEO Tips
124 months ago
SEO Tips
Most businesses wouldn’t even consider not having an online presence in today’s economic environment. Maintaining a website is cheaper than most conventional means of advertising and most people who are looking for services or products will most likely begin with a web search first. This is why SEO strategies are so important. The point of a web marketing campaignis to get the site in front of potential customers so that they can find and use the product or services being offered.
1. Keywords
Keywords are a very key element in SEO strategies. They should be used in the site content, Meta tags and URLs. This may initially be how a customer finds your business site to begin with. Words that would most commonly be used to find your business should be included in keyword usage on the site. Keywords are also important in other forms of web 2.0 optimization. For instance, tweets are also indexed by search engines and therefore you can optimize tweets with your keywords as well.
2. Contact Information
The best web marketing strategies can drive tons of traffic to your site but it will be totally unprofitable if clientele cannot reach you. For this reason be sure to put contact information on every single page of your site. This is a common local SEO strategy that is beneficial for website optimization (search engines will look for it) and for customers to be able to make contact with the business. Include the business name, physical address (if applicable), phone number and email address. Make it easy for customers and search engines to find you.
3. Local Tags
Include local tags on the site’s Meta tag and anchor text. Also add the business location to various keywords where it is appropriate.
4. Maps
It is important to include a map on your site so that customers can find your business. And obtain a listing in Google maps. While working on Google and the other search engines, make sure that you claim your business in various listings.
5. Backlinks
Local business groups can offer very valuable and relevant back links. Check with your local Chamber of Commerce and other business or civic groups. You may also establish links with various businesses in your area.
6. Photos
Photographs can be used as SEO strategies in several ways. A photo of the business is always a good thing, plus you can geo tag or keyword tag the image description. You can also use various images to display your recent work so that potential customers can see your work. This area might also include various references so that they can see that you are a reputable business.
7. Domain Name
Even though it costs a little bit, it is important to go ahead and purchase your domain name. This will help establish branding. Registering your own domain name can help it be established for years to come. Longevity is one of the factors search engines look for when checking for a site’s relevance to a search.
8. Onsite map
Always include an onsite map. It helps customers find what they are looking for and makes the site easier to navigate. It is also an effective SEO strategy as it will make it easier for web crawlers to navigate the site which can help increase its ranking in search engine results pages.
9. Social Media
9. Social Media
Relevant backlinks are very important to web crawlers. They are seen as valuable to search engines and therefore are an important SEO strategy. One of the fastest ways to get relevant links is to make use of the various social media sites. This is the beauty of web 2.0 optimization. When you make the right connections the backlinks will come naturally. You will not have to build a huge campaign or pay for them. Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter are only the beginning. Make sure to review the site’s TOS before using these powerful media, but when used correctly they can be invaluable.
10. Blogs
Blogs can serve many purposes. They can provide relevant backlinks to your business site. But they can also be used to disperse valuable information to your clientele. They can be used to give information about new products or answer questions that customers may have. Blogs can keep customers connected to your business and when they find your blogs informative they may also share. Make sure to connect an offsite, relevant blog to your site.
What Does Unique Content Mean?
31 year ago
Looking at all of the things that you should be aware of in the world of SEO, few are more important than unique content. Although this term can be somewhat elusive, ignoring it can get your site or blog punished or even banned by Google.
The issue of unique content normally arises when talking about blogging, ex: I read a blog post that I like, and I decide to copy/past it onto my blog, or someone send me a guest blog post which I post, not knowing that this post was not original (unique), in either case I will be punished by Google. If this is something that I do not do often on my blog than what is likely to happen is that that post will simply not get indexed, or will get indexed and will be given much lower weight in search engine results, but if this is something that is done repeatedly on my blog than the likelihood is that Google will delist my blog and will no longer index it. If your blog or website gets delisted by Google it is possible to get this reversed but it will take time (often years) and is not easy. For any would be bloggers out there my advise is for you to not copy existing content! If you see a blog post that you really like, link to it on your blog, and write something about why you think this is a great post, or, if you really like the content in the post you can rewrite the material so that it is unique.
Another concern when it comes to unique content is the use of quotations, in many graduate writing courses it is acceptable to have 30% of a paper be made up of quotes, and as long as these quotations were cited properly your essay would be seen as “original” and not plagiarized, but Google is not your grad school English professor! Google does not distinguish content based on the use of quotation marks, otherwise I could copy an entire article from anywhere and simply put it in quotes, and that would be OK. It is of course OK to copy small parts of other articles (with proper citation) and if you are a prolific writer it is possible that you may accidentally write a sentence here and there that already exists somewhere on the web… not to worry, for this you will not get punished; for the sake of defining unique content for Google, content is unique if 80% of it is unique. For example, this blog post is about 400 words, meaning that it would be OK for me to include a direct quote here that is about 80 words, and by doing this I would not be in violation of posting non unique (duplicate) content.
How to screw up your SEO
21 year ago
I’m sure that most of you have heard the old saying “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” (or a similar saying, depending on which region of the world you are from). Well, this saying applies directly to SEO; SEO can be a tricky business, and as with everything, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way, or rather there are multiple “right ways” and multiple “wrong ways”. The reason that it is vital for you (business owner, blogger…) to be aware of the right way to do SEO is b/c if you do SEO the wrong way you are likely to be punished by Google, and this may mean the total delisting of your website or blog. Additionally a number of SEO companies (those that guarantee results) have been known to follow “Black Hat” SEO practices, and as a result have gotten their clients sites banned from Google. (The term “Black Hat” refers to things that Google deems illegal, I will go into this later; “White Hat” refers to legal SEO techniques) In this post I will discuss a few ways that you can screw up your SEO, although I may suggest a few unscrupulous methods of doing SEO, I am in no way endorsing these methods, nor will I give a clear explanation of how to do SEO illegally.
Before I start talking about the wrong way to do SEO I would like to spend a minute talking about what I mean by the “right way”. When I use the term “right way to do SEO” or “White Hat SEO” what I am referring to is the current best practice methods for SEO, these methods have changed and evolved over the years, and it is certain that SEO best practice will continue to change as the field matures. At the moment there are many best practice/White Hat strategies that you or your SEO company can choose to use in order to improve your rankings in search engines, these include link building (organic link building rather than fake or paid links) the usage of proper keywords, proper keyword density… There are indeed many best practices, and I will gladly discuss those in the future, but for now I’d like to focus on ways to screw up your SEO.
When it comes to screwing up your SEO there are many ways that you can accomplish this, and a few of these ways may earn your site a lifetime ban from Google. There are a number of Black Hat tricks that unscrupulous SEO’s like to use in order to try to beat Google’s system (such as keyword stuffing, mirror sites, duplication of content…); these tricks may get you to rank high for a little bit, but if you use them they will get you banned, but that is enough talking about the illegal stuff, I do not want to give anyone any ideas…
I would like to talk about the best way that most people screw up their SEO, by choosing the wrong keywords. If you choose to target the wrong keywords you can get one of two outcomes: either keywords that are too competitive, where you will never rank for them; or keywords that have too low of a search volume, in which case you might rank #1, but since there are only a few hits each month you will never get good traffic. Basically, choosing the right keywords is a combination of being able to select keywords that have a high enough volume in order for you to get enough traffic, and yet are not so competitive that you will never rank, a good way to accomplish this is by targeting keywords that are geo specific or that have adjectives, for example, “Hardwood flooring NJ” is a competitive keyword, but you might instead want to target “Best hardwood flooring in NJ” or “Hardwood floors Summit NJ”.
If you have any further questions about screwing up your SEO, selecting the right keywords, or anything else, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog. If you know of a good way to screw up your SEO that I overlooked please tell me about it in a comment.
Questions about nofollow
02 years ago
Today, quality backlinks are still the most important thing when it comes to getting your site to rank for your top (competitive) keywords (discussed in previous blog post, Link building 101). Links can come in many forms, but one of the key distinctions is between “Do follow links” and “No follow links”; a no follow link means that that link is not given weight (or is given much less weight) by search engines. No follow links were invented a few years ago in an attempt to try to cut down on spam links. Better understanding no follow links can help you better hone your link building strategy and can help you get the biggest bang for your buck.
This video discusses some features of Do follow/No follow links as they pertain to proper SEO. This video features Matt Cutts, who is one of the senior developers at Google.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4UJS-LFRTU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Some facts about H1 tags
22 years ago
H1 tags are one of the more important technical features of your on-page SEO; this is b/c the H1 tag is a title tag that essentially tells search engines what the particular page is about. Having good H1 tags therefore helps greatly improve the SEO of your site. Here is a video that helps explain some more about H1 tags. This video features Matt Cutts, who is one of the senior developers at Google.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Does Google index some sites faster than others?
12 years ago
It is a widely known fact that Google does not treat all websites equally; this is intentionally built into the algorithm by Google developers so that the crawlers are always able to find the latest content. To this end, sites that are well designed (for crawlers), have utilized best SEO practices and have a history of regularly updating content will be crawled far more often than sites that remain static and never add content. Another interesting thing to note about this topic is that blogs are crawled much faster than websites, b/c Google sees blogs as a credible method in which to disseminate the latest information. The video here helps to explain the way that Google indexes blogs, as well as the reasons for why they do this.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8PQ3nNCYuU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
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