Search Engine Optimization

Does your current SEO campaign have lackluster results?  If you’d like to figure out what you’re doing wrong and how you can improve your campaign’s performance, carrying out an SEO audit can be very helpful.  During an SEO audit, you’ll analyze, measure, and report on various factors that affect your search engine ranking, so you can determine what areas of your site need improvement from an SEO standpoint.

During an SEO audit, technical, on-page, and off-page elements of your website are evaluated.  The following are key areas that must be assessed and tweaked during your website’s SEO audit in order for it to be fruitful.

Homepage

The first thing you have to do in an SEO audit is visit the primary URL of your website.  What is your first impression of the homepage?  Does it seem trustworthy?  Write down your initial thoughts because more likely than not, casual browsers will have a similar reaction when they land on the homepage.  If you’re having a hard time looking at your website from an objective point of view, get a friend to look at your homepage and give you an honest opinion.

In addition, make sure that the title tag on the homepage is effective and improve it if it isn’t.  A title tag should be highly descriptive and contain target keywords.  Changing the title tag is easy, and it’s important because title tags directly affect rankings.  After tweaking the homepage’s title tag, also make sure that other pages of your website have unique title tags.

Links and Authority

In order to gauge your website’s level of authority, you must find out how many backlinks it has and whether those backlinks are of good quality.  Additionally, determine if the backlinks have good anchor text and if they come from several different domains or just a few domains.  Once you evaluate a website’s backlinks, compare them with the backlinks of competing websites.

If you want to get more backlinks, you should blog, use social media platforms, get a Wikipedia listing, get a listing in DMOZ and Yahoo directories, and get a Google Places page.  It’s also important to do plenty of internal linking with good anchor text.  Internal linking not only improves your website’s search engine rankings, it also makes your site more user-friendly.

Keywords

Keywords are fundamental to your website’s SEO campaign.  During an SEO audit, check the rankings of your website for target keywords and compare them with those of the competition.  Make sure that your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, internal links, URLs, headings, and body text all contain target keywords.  In addition, access your analytics program to determine what other keywords are worth targeting.

Content

Make sure that your website’s content is clear, concise, and easy to read.  If your content isn’t well-written and helpful, website visitors won’t stick around!  Furthermore, make sure that the content on each page of your site is highly unique and optimized for target keywords.  The content should not be within an image, flash, or frame if you want it to be indexed by the search engines.  Also, the content pages of your website should have URLs that are short, easy to remember, and contain target keywords.

Search Engine Inclusion

Last but certainly not least, find out how the search engines react to the content on your website by searching for your website’s URL on a major search engine like Google.  Your website should appear as the first result (unless it’s brand new), so if it doesn’t show up, your website may not be indexed.

If your site isn’t indexed, find out what the problem is as soon as possible, so it can be resolved.  Next, find out exactly how many pages of your site are indexed by Google or another major search engine by typing site: www.example.com in the search box.  The number of pages indexed and the number of pages of your website should match.

So, what are you waiting for?  If you’re going to perform any SEO work, doing an SEO audit of your website is essential.  In order to perform a comprehensive SEO audit, create a checklist and take notes as you go through it. Incorporate the above elements into your checklist and your SEO audit will be off to a strong start!

User generated content is content that is created by the users of a website.  It includes thumbs up/down features, star ratings, comments, blogs, and reviews.  An increasing number of websites welcome user generated content because it has been proven to attract more website visitors and increase conversion rates.  Even large retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart incorporate user generated content into their online marketing strategy.

Are you still on the fence about user generated content?  Giving your customers a voice in your own online territory may seem like brand suicide, but it’s actually quite the opposite.  Here are the top 5 benefits that you can squeeze out of user generated content.

1. Increases long-tail organic search traffic

When you have dozens of reviews on each page of your website and they include long-tail keywords referring to the products you sell, you’ll start to rank for a wider variety of terms.  Essentially, you’ll be outsourcing keyword research and content optimization to your customers for free!

You may even rank for some long-tail keywords that you hadn’t considered before.  For example, your customers might abbreviate product names in ways that you weren’t aware of, so you can take advantage of rankings for unexpected long-tail keywords through them.

2. Keeps content fresh and unique

The search engines love websites that are regularly updated with fresh, new content.  You can ensure that your website is constantly updated by allowing visitors to submit user generated content.

3. Boosts traffic levels

When you allow visitors to submit user generated content on your website, it helps you increase traffic because people feel like they are participants rather than mere spectators.  Sites that are rich with user generated content tend to have a stronger sense of community, and the community is what keeps website visitors coming back for more.

4. Instills confidence in prospects

When people shop online, they guard their wallets fiercely because they are afraid of being ripped off.  User generated content allows you to ease prospective customers’ doubts because it proves that real people have bought from you before and that you allow them to give their unbiased opinions, whether they favor your business or not.  Some companies are afraid of allowing user generated content on their websites because they think that people will leave negative reviews and it will affect sales.  But most consumers have nothing for respect for companies that allow people to leave honest reviews on their websites because it shows that the company is ethical, honest, and trustworthy.

5. Opportunities to make improvements based on feedback from your customers and prospects

Websites that allow visitors to submit user generated content keep the channels of communication open between them and their customers and are therefore able to make regular improvements to their services and offerings.  If you know exactly what people like and don’t like about your website, you can tweak features based on their feedback and get new ideas for products and services to offer.  So, ultimately, user generated content helps you better serve your target customers as well as stay on top of the competition.

Link building takes time, patience, and a thick skin because many of your requests for links are likely to be rejected.  To ensure a higher return on investment on the time you spend building links, it’s essential to target the right people.  You’ll improve your link building conversion rate if you ask leaders in your industry for links because they’re obviously interested in your niche and have a large following, which could lead to even more backlinks for your website.

Start out by brainstorming what kind of people would be interested in your website’s content and where they hang out online.  If you have a small local business, find influential people in your local area who could give you links.  You can do this by using the advanced search function on Twitter and looking for influential users in your local area.  You can also search for websites in local directories and then contact them to let them know about your website.

Find Leaders in Your Industry on Forums and Twitter

Although Twitter and forums may not provide worthwhile links themselves, they can serve as effective tools to help you find influential people in your industry.  When you connect with leaders in your niche on forums and on Twitter, they may eventually spread the word about you and help your website get more links.  To find influential people in your industry on Twitter, search for your target keywords using the WeFollow tool.  WeFollow will provide you with a list of Twitter users in your industry with the largest followings.

In order to build a relationship with these influential Twitter users, pay attention to what type of content they usually link to, share their content with your followers, and interact with them on a regular basis.  Once you build a rapport with leaders in your niche, you can start sending links to your content to them in order to get their opinion and get them to link to you.

If you want to find influential people in your industry through forums, look for active forums in your niche, and then find out who the most active contributors and moderators are.  You can do this quickly by looking at the list of “top contributors.”  After you find the most active users, interact with them within the forums and check out the links in the signature section of their profiles so you can connect with them on other social networking sites.

Research, Research, Research

The key to maximizing the results of your link building campaign is research.  Hang out online, determine who the influencers are in your industry, and then study what kind of content they link to before you jump into the conversation.  Once you familiarize yourself with the territory, you’ll be in a better position to provide the influencers with the kind of content they’d be enticed to share with their audience.  Just remember that having killer content is imperative because no matter how much you promote your stuff, your efforts will be fruitless unless your content packs a punch and sparks the interest of leaders in your niche.

Creating linkbait is a natural, effective way to build quality backlinks to your site.  Linkbait generally consists of a controversial article, video, or unique tool that attracts tons of links that typically increase in value over time.  Unlike with other types of links, such as paid links, you normally don’t have to worry about the massive devaluing of linkbait.  Creating and promoting linkbait, however, is difficult.  It’s not easy to create a post that many people will be compelled to link to and then get your post noticed by the right people.

Common Types of Linkbait

A common type of linkbait is a single killer article or a series of useful articles.  If writing isn’t your forte, hire a professional writer to write your linkbait article for you.  Find a writer who’s passionate about your niche if you want your linkbait campaign to be successful.  Promotion is important, but content is everything.  Anything humorous, controversial, or sexy tends to do well on the interwebs.  Breaking news is another effective way to generate a slew of links.

Creating a useful tool is another way to attract links to your site.  For example, you could hire a developer to build a WordPress plug-in and then allow people to download the plug-in for free on your site.  Hiring a skilled developer isn’t cheap, but having a plug-in on your site will allow you to drive a significant amount of traffic to it over time.  And every time people share information about your plug-in on their websites, you’ll get links back to your site.

Study Your Competitors’ Links and Then Decide on Your Content’s Angle

Prior to creating your linkbait, check out your competitors’ links and see what type of content people are linking to the most.  This should give you a good idea of what type of content is effective and what people in your niche are interested in seeing.  Determine what it is that you can add to the conversation, and then create linkbait based on that information.  Also, when you’re checking out your competitors’ links, find out which bloggers and websites are linking to them so you can ask those same people for links down the line.

How to Promote Your Linkbait

Start out by trying to get some links from bloggers and webmasters you know.  Then, pitch influential bloggers in your niche by sending them a quick note about why you think your post would benefit their readers.  You should also email the content to your friends and colleagues and encourage them to share it with their networks.  And last but not least, submit your linkbait to social voting sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

Just keep in mind that no matter how many hours you spend creating your linkbait or how much you pay someone to create it for you, there’s no guarantee that it’ll pan out.  Online audiences are a tricky bunch, so your attempt at creating linkbait isn’t guaranteed to work.  But for the most part, creating quality content is a worthwhile endeavor.  Even if it doesn’t give you immediate results, it’s bound to pay off later, because the more attention and social proof you generate over time, the more people will take notice of your fantastic content.  Having a track record of creating high quality content is exactly what you need in order to attract valuable links and build a strong online presence over time.

You probably understand the importance of building backlinks to your website.  The problem is that you may not have time to build links on your own or know how to do it.  Managing and building links is a challenging and time-consuming process, especially if you’re new to it.  But link building is essential to your website’s success, so whether you learn the ropes and do it yourself or hire an experienced link builder to do it for you, you have to invest time and/or money in the link building process.  If you decide that hiring someone to build links for you is the best bet, here are 5 traits you should look out for when researching candidates.

1. Excellent communication skills

Having excellent oral and written communication skills is vital for professional link builders since they have to spend so much time communicating with others.  It also helps to be a natural when it comes to pitching people, building rapport, and maintaining relationships with them.

2. Well-organized

Link building requires tons of research and tracking, so being organized is an absolute must.  Link builders must keep track of link requests they’ve made as well as links they’ve obtained.  Ensuring that your link builder tracks all link requests is essential if you want to know exactly how much value you’re getting for the price you pay.

3. Honest

Make sure that the link builder you hire is honest about how he gets links.  Does he employ only white hat techniques, or do the search engines frown upon some of the link building tactics that he uses?  Ask him how he plans to build links for your site and whether he can provide you with references.  Be wary of link builders who cannot produce a list of their previous clients.

4. Good time management skills

Many business owners decide to hire a link builder because it is so time-consuming.  To ensure that your link building campaign is successful, you must hire a link building specialist with top-notch time management skills.  Find out how many other clients the link builder will be working with at the same time and how much time he will devote to working on your site.  A professional link builder must be able to manage your link building campaign efficiently along with others.

5. Creative and resourceful

A savvy link builder does more than send generic link requests to website owners.  In order to stay on top of the game, a link builder must be creative, innovative, and resourceful.  The best link builders see opportunity where others don’t and aren’t afraid to push the envelope.  Link builders should also be willing to personalize all of the link requests they send out to maximize results.  The links that are worth getting aren’t easy to obtain, so link builders have to be resourceful in order to succeed.

Are you ready to hire a link builder to improve your site’s search engine ranking and ramp up your online marketing efforts?  Keep the above criteria in mind when interviewing candidates, and settle for someone who has both the right attitude and a proven track record of success.

A lot of SEOs and internet marketers run article marketing campaigns in order to accumulate backlinks and leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to their site. But few website owners realize that guest posting on relevant blogs is another great way to promote their website and improve its SEO.

Although article marketing remains a common practice, it’s not nearly as effective as it once was. For one, everybody and their mother is an article marketer these days, so the search engines don’t value the backlinks on article directories as much as they used to. Furthermore, the quality of the writing on article directories has gone south over the years.

If you are looking for a legitimate way to build links that doesn’t require you to spend money, email people to request links, or engage in black hat SEO, consider guest posting. Guest posting consists of writing and submitting posts to relevant blogs. Guest posts typically contain a short bio about you that includes a link back to your website with anchor text of your choice.

Still not sold on the idea of guest posting? Consider the following 5 benefits.

1. More Traffic

Guest posting drives more traffic to your website than your typical article directory. Why? You’re tapping into the subscriber base of the blog where you submit your post. When you publish an article on an article directory, most of the traffic you get comes from the search engines, but on a blog, you get both search engine traffic and visits from regular readers of that blog.

2. Promotion

When you submit an article to an article directory, it doesn’t receive much exposure, but when you submit a guest post, it is promoted by the blogger as well as his/her loyal readers. Therefore, your article will be seen and read by far more people in the long run. It may even go viral on social media networks like Twitter if you get lucky.

3. Strengthens Your Online Reputation

The barrier to entry is practically non-existent for article directories, so they commonly feature poorly written content. On the other hand, bloggers usually have higher standards, so you won’t be able to submit any old article to an influential blog. You’ll either have to spend time writing a high quality article or hire a copywriter to do it for you. But ultimately, your online reputation and brand will grow stronger since your website will be associated with the quality and authority of the content on the blog where you submit your post.

4. Networking Opportunities

Another major perk of guest posting is that it allows you to network with influential people in your niche. If you submit an excellent guest post to an influential blog, the blog owner will be highly appreciative and that could possibly lead to other opportunities. Also, you open yourself up to new audiences when you guest post, which could lead you to meeting future business partners or collaborators. The opportunities are endless!

5. Front Page Exposure

When you submit a guest post, your article will be featured on the home page for anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on how often the blog is updated. As a result, your article will receive far more exposure and traffic. Conversely, it’s extremely difficult to get an article published on the home page of an article directory because of the sheer quantity of articles they publish.

Conclusion

Guest posting is a fantastic way to build links back to a content-rich site. Some bloggers rely on this promotional tactic alone to rank for competitive keywords in their niche. Even if you don’t consider yourself a blogger, you can leverage the power of guest posting in order to drive more traffic to your website and boost its authority in the eyes of search engines.

One of the most important components of any SEO campaign is link-building.  While link-building strategies like submitting your website’s link to directories and trading links with other webmasters still have their place, these tactics aren’t nearly as effective as they used to be.  If you want to attract high quality links from authority websites, try appealing to bloggers and getting links organically with these 5 tips.

1. Use social media

If you want to spread your content and socialize with influential bloggers, now’s the time to hop on the social media bandwagon.  Sharing links via social media is a great way to drive traffic to your site, but don’t treat it solely as a promotional channel, either.  Take some time to casually chat with bloggers and get to know them on a personal level so that they’ll be more likely to share your content with their followers and link to it on their websites.

2. Be helpful

Do you want to get on a particular blogger’s radar?  Then follow the blogger on Twitter or another social media channel and offer them help when they need it.  For example, if a blogger writes an update that says something like, “Agggh, I need a new designer!” take some time to handpick a few rock star designers and recommend them to the blogger.  The blogger will appreciate your generosity and possibly do something nice for you in return, such as link to your blog.

3. Be direct

Don’t be afraid to contact bloggers and ask them to link to your content.   They don’t bite (well, most of them don’t, anyway). The worst thing that could happen is that they’ll say no.  But don’t approach them with an attitude of entitlement.  When you contact them, explain why you think your content would benefit their readers.  Bloggers are always on the hunt for new, useful content for their audience, so if you can provide them with that, they’ll be grateful.

4. Do interviews

Doing interviews with influential bloggers in your niche is a great way to create quality content for your own website while getting the attention of key players.  Those bloggers might link to the interview itself, and even if they don’t, you’ll at least get your name in front of them so that they’re aware of you and are more likely to link to your stuff in the future.

5. Make lists of useful blogs in your niche

Not nearly as many people link out to other blogs as they used to, so linking to useful blogs in your niche is a great way to get some attention and traffic from bloggers.  For example, if you sell shoes online, you can create a top 10 list of the most influential blogs about shoes to get the attention of shoe bloggers.  The bloggers you mentioned will probably link back to your post because it sheds a positive light on their work.  So, not only will you be able to generate a few links with the post itself, you’ll also be able to get on more bloggers’ radars.

And last but not least, focus on creating useful, high quality content.  After all, you won’t attract many links from bloggers if your content isn’t worth linking to!

Search engine optimization (SEO) provides a fantastic return on investment for ecommerce sites.  It is a proven way to attract more targeted traffic to your website.  Here are 10 tips for improving your ecommerce website’s SEO.

1. Make sure that URLs consist of target keywords, not numbers or other meaningless ID’s.  This will make it easier for the search engine bots to navigate your product pages.
2. Your website’s greatest source of page rank is your home page, so your product pages should only be two to three clicks away from your home page.  You can do this by using rollovers or increasing the number of products that you display per page.
3. Create unique title tags for each page of your website, and don’t repeat the same keywords over and over to avoid diminishing their value.
4. Create unique keyword and description meta tags for your website to avoid the duplicate content penalty.  Furthermore, don’t add keywords to the meta tags for a particular page if they aren’t relevant to the content on that page.
5. Optimize product pages for singular keywords because they are far more popular with searchers than plural keywords.  Think about it: most people want to buy one product, not products in bulk, so they search for singular keywords.
6. Keep all of the pages on your website fresh and up-to-date.  One of the best ways to keep your website fresh is by adding user-generated content, such as product reviews, to each page of your website.  You should also consider adding a blog to your site if you haven’t already and then categorize the posts appropriately so that the feeds show up on product category pages, keeping them fresh and up-to-date.  In addition, regularly review and tweak the copy on product pages to keep things new and interesting for your website visitors and hint to search engine bots that your site is always being updated.  Taking these steps will ultimately help to boost your site’s ranking.
7. Use plenty of internal links within the textual content of your site.  Use relevant, keyword-rich anchor text to tell the search engines what the pages are about.
8. Make sure that the product descriptions on your site are unique.  Although it might be tempting to copy and paste the manufacturer’s descriptions, chances are that your competitors are doing the same thing.  You can make your website look unique to search engines and human visitors by writing original product descriptions.
9. Allow your customers to tag products on your website.  Tagging is a common social media strategy that will help you rank for keywords that you probably wouldn’t have imagined ranking for, such as slang words.
10. Optimize all of the images on your ecommerce website by ensuring that each contains unique alt text attributes.  You can add the product and brand names to the alt text in order to get more traffic from Google image search.

Most of you probably know about the algorithmic change that Google made on May 1^st of this year.  To ensure that higher quality pages would surface when people search for long-tail queries, Google made a few tweaks.  As a result, many sites have found that the rankings of their pages that target long-tail keywords have dropped significantly.  Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that fewer people search for individually but that provide a significant amount of traffic over time.

Websites that were hit the hardest by Google’s Mayday change are large sites that have pages deep in their archives that don’t attract many inbound links.  Ecommerce websites, in particular, have product pages that don’t get many links or feature any unique content.  Essentially, pages that are several clicks away from the home page and that do not contain much useful, unique content are the most vulnerable.

Google’s goal in making this algorithmic change was to ensure that higher quality content would show up when people search for long-tail queries.  If you want to determine whether or not your website was affected, take a look at your analytics reports from the end of April through around May 3^rd or 4^th.  Was there a drop in traffic levels or a drop in the number of pages that were getting traffic?  If you noticed the latter, it’s probable that your site was affected.  You can also check your site’s crawl stats to determine if the update did some damage.

What to Do

If you’ve been affected by the Mayday update, there are several changes you can make to regain your site’s rankings and traffic levels.  First of all, you need to ensure that every page of your site contains a sufficient amount of quality, original content.  Also, make sure to do plenty of internal linking with relevant anchor text so your site’s content looks more important in Google’s eyes.  In addition, build quality inbound links to pages of your site that target long-tail terms, so you can boost their authority.

To find out which pages of your site were affected by the Mayday update, take a look at your analytics reports to determine which set of queries has been getting less traffic and then find out which pages are still ranking highly.  What makes the latter pages different?  Think about what you can do to make the pages that are getting less traffic more valuable.  When you work to improve these web pages by sprucing up their content and boosting their relevancy, you’ll find that your website visitors are also more engaged with your content and more likely to convert to customers.

Google’s Official Take on the Mayday Update

Matt Cutts of Google posted a YouTube video about the Mayday update here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM.  The video explains very clearly what the update is for and what website owners can do to recoup their losses.  Matt recommends adding great content, boosting your website’s authority, and making sure that your content for each particular query is highly useful and relevant to website visitors.  Basically, as long as you continue to focus on providing high quality content and following SEO best practices, you’re on the right track.

New SEO companies are born about as often as you blink and many of these companies make grandiose claims, so how on earth can you figure out which ones are trustworthy? In order to wade through all the lies and find an SEO company that knows its onions, you have to know what to interview several companies to see what they’re all about. The following are 8 questions to ask when you’re shopping around for an SEO company.

1. Do you have references?

Don’t hire an SEO company unless they can provide you with references. It is very helpful to speak with a company’s previous clients to determine whether or not their service is indeed reliable and efficient. Be wary of SEO companies that are reluctant to provide you with the contact information of their previous clients or that don’t have any previous clients to speak of.

2. Ask the SEO company you want to hire exactly what SEO techniques they plan to use.

Choose an SEO company that can explain to you exactly what they are going to do and why. You shouldn’t trust an SEO company that’s secretive about their SEO process or that isn’t able to explain their process to you in plain English. Beware of jargon.

3. What are your pricing options?

Pricing is a good indicator of whether or not an SEO company is worth your time. Good SEO companies are typically expensive, and they’re picky about which clients they take on. If an SEO company’s pricing model sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. You may as well flush money down the toilet if you’re going to buy a package that costs, say, $39.95 per month.

4. What kind of off-site SEO techniques do you use?

If an SEO company doesn’t mention a word about off-site SEO techniques, run in the other direction. Off-site SEO is an essential component of any and every SEO campaign. A good SEO company will implement ethical SEO tactics and understand which social media sites and directories are worth your time.

5. Have you worked with businesses that are similar to mine?

Find out if an SEO company has worked with businesses that are similar to yours. An SEO company that has had success with similar websites will be better able to replicate that success with your site.

6. How long will it take to see results?

It may take months for you to see results, so be suspicious of any SEO company that guarantees you overnight success.

7. Do you use any black hat SEO techniques?

Beware of SEO companies that use questionable tactics. Black hat techniques may bring you temporary results but they could get you banned from the search engines in the long run. Only hire SEO companies that use ethical, white hat techniques.

8. Do you have a portfolio of your work?

Any experienced SEO company that’s worth its salt will be able to show you a portfolio of its work. Don’t hire an SEO company that doesn’t have a portfolio because they probably don’t have enough experience to live up to their guarantees!

One commonly overlooked SEO technique is image optimization. Among blogging, news, shopping, and other search niches, image search is growing the fastest. So, if you’re not optimizing the images on your website for search engines, you could be losing out on tons of traffic and better search rankings. To capitalize on image search traffic, follow these simple tips.

Use a Descriptive Image File Name

When naming your images, be very descriptive and put dashes between the words. Incorporate your website’s target keywords into the file name if applicable.

Use a Caption

Place a caption on top, under, or on the side of each image on your site. Captions are a good place to describe images in further detail.

Save Photos as JPG Files and Images as GIF Files

Save photos on your site as JPG files and images as GIF files. The search engines interpret JPG files as photos because they have millions of colors, while they interpret GIF files as standard graphic images.

Use the Alt Attribute of the Image Tag

Use the alt attribute of image tags so that you can tell search engines exactly what your photos contain. It’s good to be descriptive and use lots of your target keywords, but don’t go overboard; make sure that it sounds natural. Stuffing Alt tags with keywords can get you penalized by the search engines.

Use Descriptive Anchor Text

Any time you link to an image on your site on other pages of your site or on different sites altogether, use descriptive anchor text that contains your target keywords. Anchor text tells search engines exactly what your images are about and assists them in ranking for your target keywords.

Use Large, High Quality Images

In general, the search engines prefer large, high quality images, as searchers are more likely to click on them.

Optimize the Page on Which the Image Appears

In addition to using optimized Alt tags, file names, and anchor text, you need to be sure that your images are placed on optimized pages. Context is very important in SEO, so if your images are completely irrelevant to the surrounding content, they won’t rank as well. Follow on-page SEO best practices to ensure that each page of your site is optimized for search engines and relevant to the images that they contain.

Add Images to Articles and Press Releases

Are you distributing press releases and articles as part of your online marketing campaign? If so, add optimized images to those press releases and articles and make sure that they link back to your website. Images improve your website’s search ranking because they provide backlinks. As an added benefit, press releases and articles that include images tend to be more appealing to searchers.

Use Descriptive Tags

On social networking and sharing websites, you can typically add tags to each image you upload. Tagging is beneficial in image search because it helps searchers find your images more easily and enables search engines to determine what your images contain.

Contrary to popular belief, SEO copywriting is not dead.  In fact, writing for SEO is more important than ever before because of the sheer amount of competition that’s out there.  There are over 200 million websites online, so you have to write copy that’s optimized for the keywords that people are searching for to find websites like yours.  Besides, what’s the point of writing if no one is going to be able to read your stuff? 

The problem with lots of SEO copywriting you’ll find on the web is that it’s chock full of keywords.  Take the following paragraph for example, which is optimized for the keyword, “online dating.”

“Online dating websites are all the rage because people love to meet people through online dating.  Online dating is convenient and online dating doesn’t require you to hang out in seedy bars and flirt with creepy guys.  Online dating is the best choice for anyone who wants to meet a special someone because online dating rocks.”

Basically, many SEO writers are so focused on optimizing for keywords that everything they write sounds absolutely ridiculous.  If you want people to read your content and link to it, you have to write in a compelling, entertaining style.  Sure, content and copy needs to contain keywords in order to rank well, but that is only a small part of the SEO equation.  Online writing also has to attract backlinks in order to rank well.

Say No to Keyword Stuffing

If all you have on your website is keyword-stuffed content, you’re going to have to hustle to get links.  On the other hand, if you write valuable, informative content that people enjoy, you’ll be able to attract organic links over time. 

But Don’t Ignore Keywords

The point is not to ignore keywords altogether.  Keywords are important.  Researching keywords and incorporating them into your writing will help your website get found and allow you to reach your target audience.  The problem lies in going overboard. 

If you want your site to rank but you also want to attract a readership and accumulate some valuable backlinks, you need to write with human readers in mind.  Just add your target keyword to your headline and in a couple of spots within your content.  You don’t have to aim for 5% keyword density in order to achieve a decent ranking.  But do bear in mind that keywords have more weight when they are placed in the headlines and sub-headlines of content.  

The keywords on the page account for approximately 15% of the total factors used to determine the page’s ranking.  That means that keyword frequency actually matters far less than you think.  So, if you want to create content that boosts your website’s search engine ranking, focus on writing content that entertains people and provides them with value, as it will prove more beneficial your ranking in the long run since attracting backlinks is the most important ranking factor of all.  

There are many advantages to using WordPress as a content management system.  Whether you use WordPress solely for your blog or to manage your entire website, it is a great choice because of its search engine friendliness, resistance to spam, and easily customizable interface.  To maximize your WordPress website’s search engine visibility, download these top 10 SEO plugins.

1. Related posts

The Related posts plugin posts entries with related tags or words after each of your blog posts.  This plugin is good for SEO because it improves your website’s internal linking structure.

2. All in one SEO pack

The All in one SEO pack plugin is the Cadillac of all SEO plugins for WordPress.  It allows you to add title tags, keywords, and descriptions to each page of your website. It also helps you avoid duplicate content.

3. SEO slugs

This plugin removes words that the search engines ignore from your site’s permalinks (unique URLs of your blog posts) so that they rank better for target keywords.  For example, if you write a post titled, “Why you should use this WordPress SEO plugin,” the permalink normally looks like this: “/why-you-should-use-this-WordPress-SEO-Plugin.”  The SEO slugs plugin removes the unnecessary words so that the permalink looks like this: “/WordPress-SEO-plugin.”

4. Nofollow case by case

By default, the comments on WordPress blogs have the nofollow attribute, meaning that commenters do not get any SEO value from providing a link back to their site.  The Nofollow case by case plugin enables you to make the links on blog comments dofollow.  This plugin is beneficial for new websites because it encourages people to comment, drives more traffic to your site, and builds community.

5. Google positioner

The Google positioner plugin helps you choose the right keywords to target in your content.  Rather than blindly targeting keywords that you think people might use to find your site, you can use this plugin to determine exactly which keywords are leading searchers to your site and then optimize your content for those specific keywords.

6. SEO friendly images

This plugin will help to ensure that all of the images on your site have alt and title tags so that they are indexed properly by the search engines.  Images are often a great source of traffic, particularly when they are optimized for search.

7. Google XML sitemaps

This essential plugin creates an XML sitemap that is readable for Google, Ask, Yahoo, and MSN.

8. Redirection

Whenever you make changes to your blog, the permalinks also change.  The Redirection plugin will ensure that visitors are redirected to the new permalinks in order to reduce the amount of traffic you get to pages that no longer exist.

9. SEO blog roll

To prevent the blogs listed in your blog roll from feeding off of your page rank, install the SEO blog roll plug in so that all of them receive the nofollow attribute.

10. Automatic SEO links

With this plugin, you can choose a word or phrase for automatic linking (internal or external), set anchor text, and then choose the dofollow or nofollow attribute.  This plugin will only create an automatic link for the first mention of the word or phrase in a post, so the same page isn’t linked to multiple times in one post.

In this day and age, no matter how much you strive to do your best work and provide excellent customer service, somebody out there is bound to say something negative about you online. And before you know it, when people search for your company or brand name on Google or another major search engine, they’ll see a negative result on the first page of search results.

How can you bump those damaging results off of the first page? How can you protect your company’s reputation and minimize the effects that negative search results can have on your brand and business?

Well, there are two things you can do to lessen the impact of negative search results. You can either have the search results in question removed or bump them off of the first page by publishing tons of content that sheds a positive light on your brand.

What to Do BEFORE You Start Applying Online Reputation Management Techniques

The first thing you should do is contact the person who wrote the negative content or review about your company. Call or email this person to try and fix the problem. If you do your best to improve the situation, the person will most likely write about that experience, too, which is good for your brand because it shows potential customers that you care.

Remove Negative Search Results

If you want to remove the negative search results, start by nicely asking the person who posted it to remove it. If the negative content is in a forum, ask the forum moderator to remove the thread or post.

If simply requesting that they remove it doesn’t work, you’ll have to take more stringent measures, such as offering a settlement or threatening to take legal action. Some businesses even counter-attack the person who posts the negative comment by writing something defamatory about them online and blackmailing them. This tactic, however, is not recommended, as there are many other effective ways to deal with the problem that won’t require you to put someone else’s reputation and livelihood on the line.

Push Negative Search Results off the First Page

Another effective way to manage your online reputation is to fill up the first page of Google with positive results about your company in order to bury negative results. If you don’t already have your own website, the first step you need to take is to build a website with your company name in the URL. Next, start a blog so you can dominate the search results for your brand name. Blogs tend to rank well, even if you do very little to promote them. Just make sure that your blog title and post titles contain your company’s name.

You should also create social networking profiles on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook because they rank well. Naymz is a great site where you can create a profile and then link out to all of your other social media profiles. Eventually, after creating several social media profiles, you’ll be able to rebuild your reputation on the search engines.

So, there you have it.  Whether one of your ex-employees defames you or a disgruntled customer writes a negative review about your business, you need to do whatever it takes to protect your online reputation. Your first step should be to try and resolve the issue with the person who wrote the negative content in question, but if that doesn’t work, follow the steps above and you’ll eventually get that negative result off the front page for your brand’s keyword and limit the damage that it causes your business.

One of the most important aspects of your search engine optimization campaign is content. Not only must your website content be optimized for target keywords, it also has to be readable for humans. When you write new content or improve upon your current content, keep these 8 steps in mind.

1. Research popular keyword phrases

Don’t ever assume that you already know which words your customers use to find your site. Use a keyword research tool such as the Google Adwords tool so you know exactly what keywords your potential customers are using to search for websites in your niche.

And make sure that the terms you choose will actually convert to sales. For example, if you have a web design firm in Denver, you ought to target specific terms like, “web design company Denver,” rather than more generic terms like, “web designer.”

2. Spy on your competitors

Examine the websites that rank at the top of the search engine results pages for the terms you are going to target. Things you’ll want to pay attention to when evaluating your competitors’ websites are their linking structure, site architecture, and keywords phrases their content targets.   

3. Target two to three keywords per page of content

To ensure that each page of content on your site will rank for particular terms, you should target only two or three keywords per page. The two or three phrases that you target should be relevant to each other and appear throughout each page of content as well as in the meta tags.

4. Target several long-tail keywords in your content

Don’t focus only on very popular terms. Target long-tail keywords because they are easier to rank for and tend to be highly specific in nature. Because long-tail keyword phrases are so specific, the people who search for them are usually ready to buy.

5. Develop meta tags for each page based on selected keywords

There are three types of meta tags that you must create for each page: the title tag, meta description, and meta keywords. Each tag should contain the target keywords. You should also ensure that your title tag contains your company name so you can rank well for that as well.

6. Put targets keywords in both the headlines and body of your content

Keywords have more weight when they are in the headlines and sub-headings of your content, so make sure you include them there. Also, be sure to add them to the body of your content without going overboard.

7. Optimize your content for humans – not just for search engine bots

When you’re incorporating keywords into your content, it can be easy to lose sight of who you’re really writing for. Make sure that you don’t use an excessive amount of keywords so your content remains readable and enjoyable for humans.

8. Interlink to other pages of content throughout your site

When possible, link to other pages of content on your site. Make sure you put your target keywords in the anchor text of those links. Interlinking improves your website’s SEO and drives more traffic to different pages of content on your site.

Should you take the time to pursue no-follow links?

Yes, you should, but it depends on the types of links.  The no-follow links you pursue should have marketing value and be relevant to your niche.

There are several factors you ought to consider when you measure the marketing value of a no-follow link.  A link with good marketing value may be on a site that:

• Ranks in the top 20 of SERP
• Has many links on social media sites
• Has an old backlink on Wikipedia
• Has many feedreader subscribers

But websites aren’t the only places where you can leave your link.  Here are 5 types of links with high overall marketing value that you should consider pursuing.

1. Links on your marketing materials

Don’t forget to put your website’s link on all of your offline marketing materials, including flyers, newspaper and magazine ads, and radio and TV advertisements.

2. Links on social media websites like Twitter and Facebook

Although the links on these websites are no-follow, they can bring a significant amount of traffic to your website.  Furthermore, if your content is a hit, people will naturally start spreading it on these social media websites.

3. Blog comments

When you comment on blogs, it won’t improve your search ranking, but it WILL bring targeted traffic to your site, especially if you leave thoughtful comments.

Try to comment on blogs in your niche, so you attract a relevant audience.  It would be even more beneficial if you comment on blogs that are frequented by influential people in your niche.

4. Links on social voting sites

Submit your content to social voting sites like Digg.  If your content gets some buzz, you’ll get a temporary surge in traffic.  Plus, if people really like your stuff, they may link to it on their websites.

5. Links in email signature

Links in your email signature don’t have any SEO value whatsoever, but they will drive traffic to your website.  Make sure you attach your website URL to all of your emails so anyone you come into contact with can click on your link and check out your website.

So, there you have it.  These links won’t improve your search engine ranking directly, but they will bring you more traffic and conversions.  And the more people know about your site, the more likely you are to receive links that do have SEO value.

When you’re planning out your link-building strategy, consider making these links a part of your overall campaign.  After all, they’re not links that you have to beg for; they simply require you to make some tweaks here and there as well as take some time out of your day to be active in social media.

Article marketing is an early form of search engine marketing.  When it first came out, it was considered a highly effective link building method.  However, is article marketing still relevant?  Is it worth the investment of time and money that it requires? 

Several SEO companies continue to run article marketing campaigns because valuable backlinks can accumulate if the articles they submit get picked up and syndicated outside of article submission sites.  And although article marketing doesn’t have the weight that it once did, it remains an effective method for driving traffic to your site.

How to Use Article Marketing to Your Advantage

In highly competitive niches, article marketing doesn’t have much effect.  But in small niches, article marketing continues to be an effective strategy for building links and driving targeted traffic to your site.  For optimal results, write articles targeting long-tail phrases and submit them to directories around the web.  Even the relatively low quality links you get from article directories can help the inner pages of your site rank for long tail keyword phrases in your niche. 

To maximize the effectiveness of an article marketing campaign, make sure you submit your content to article directories that allow you to leave a link back to your site with anchor text containing your target keywords at the end of your article.  Some article directories even allow you to embed one or two links within the article itself. 

The Downside of Article Marketing

In terms of link building, article marketing isn’t a very solid strategy.  Search engines don’t value the links from article directories nearly as much as they do links from large, popular websites.  But when it comes to driving traffic, article marketing is very effective.  If you write quality content that’s optimized for target keywords and submit it to various article directories, it has the potential to reach the top page of search engine results. 

Tips for Improving the ROI of Your Article Marketing Campaign

Apply direct-response strategies to create enticing headlines for your content.  People are more likely to click on your articles when they find them in the search results if your headlines are good. 

Also, be sure to write compelling, informative content that entices people to click on the link in your bio.  If you write content that’s packed with valuable information, people are likely to click on the link in your bio and visit your website.  Furthermore, great content is more likely to be syndicated outside of article directories, thus giving you more link juice. 

Article directories have lost credibility, primarily because there is no barrier to entry.  Virtually anybody can submit an article to these directories, which means that the quality of the content is often questionable.  On some article directories, people can even get away with submitting keyword-stuffed junk articles. 

The silver lining to all of this is that you can stand out if your content is good.  If you steadily submit high quality articles to these directories, your articles are more likely to get picked up and syndicated. 

So, There You Have It

Article marketing is certainly nowhere near effective as it once was.  Nevertheless, you can drive a steady amount of traffic to your website and attract links if you submit quality content to article directories.  There are several automated services that will submit your content for you to several different directories simultaneously. 

Just don’t rely on article marketing as your sole link-building strategy.  As long as you treat it as a supplemental tactic, you’re sure to get some value from it. 

 

 

Do you have a local, brick-and-mortar business? If so, you’re in luck. Optimizing websites for geographical terms is generally far less competitive than optimizing website for general queries. Here are 7 simple steps you can take to boost your website’s search engine ranking.

1. Do keyword research

First, figure out who your target audience is. Then, conduct keyword research to determine what words potential customers are searching for in order to find websites/products/services like yours. You can use Google’s free Adwords tool to find keywords with good search volume that you think will convert well.

2. Make sure the title tags on each page are unique and include target keywords

Every page on your website should have a title tag that contains keywords that are relevant to the content on that specific page.

3. Create a meta description tag for each page that is promotional and informational

Write unique sentences containing target keywords to serve as meta description tags for each page of your site. The description should provide information to searchers as well as promote your site. It should entice searchers to click on your site’s search result. Keep in mind that the description is what will appear under the title of your website in search engine results.

4. Add internal links to your site

The quantity of links that your website gets matters, even if those links come from your own website. Your home page is considered the most important page on your site, so make sure that your website’s most important pages are linked to on there. Use relevant keywords as the anchor text of those links. Furthermore, on other pages that you want to rank highly on the search engines, add more internal links.

5. Make sure your contact information is on every page

Try to include your business’s address and phone number on every page of your site. Not only is this helpful for your site visitors, it also makes it easier for the search engines to rank you in local results. If you serve multiple locations, try creating a page for each location or at least one page that lists all of the locations you serve.

6. Build in-bound links

There are lots of yellow pages-like directories where you can get your website listed. Not only will these sites help to drive traffic to your website, they’ll also improve your website’s search engine ranking because of the valuable link juice they provide. Examples of directories you’ll want to check out include: Dmoz, CitySearch, Yahoo Local, and Google Maps.

7. Add a blog to your site

Adding a blog to your website is a highly effective way to increase your site’s search engine ranking. Blogs provide fresh content, which search engines love. And you don’t have to write Pulitzer Prize-worthy content in order to create an effective blog. Simply incorporate keywords that you are targeting into your blog content in order to get your site to rank better on the search engines.

SEO has become an essential part of marketing for both online businesses and offline businesses with an internet presence.  Many companies, upon deciding that they need SEO, struggle with deciding between outsourcing and using in-house staff. 

Typically, delegating SEO tasks to in-house staff is the most economical choice, but it may not be the best available option in your company’s situation.  Here are the pros and cons of both outsourcing SEO and using in-house SEO staff.

Benefits of Using In-House SEO Staff

• Internal staff tend to know their company’s industry better than external staff
• Cheaper than outsourcing to meet your long-term SEO needs
• They can focus solely on your website because they aren’t juggling projects for multiple clients
• They probably never utilize black hat SEO methods because they know that their job would be on the line if it were to backfire
• They can ensure that SEO is addressed in all areas of your marketing, such as web design

Benefits of Outsourcing SEO

• SEO firms tend to have more experience and are thus familiar with a wider variety of SEO tactics
• Cheaper than hiring in-house SEO staff for brief, short-term projects
• Smaller companies that can’t justify hiring in-house staff can benefit from outsourcing
• SEO firms are more likely to keep up with the constantly-evolving SEO industry
• SEO firms are not caught up in a company’s internal politics, so they aren’t afraid to provide constructive criticism and are more likely to give objective advice
• SEO firms are often able to provide faster, more significant improvement to your site’s SEO

When making the choice between outsourcing and hiring in-house SEO staff, take your company’s specific needs into consideration.  A problem that often presents itself is the fact that most companies haven’t even the slightest clue about SEO, so they aren’t fit to judge whether their internal staff members are capable of doing SEO in-house. 

If you already have staff that is educated in search marketing, by all means, take advantage of their expertise.  However, don’t assume that after taking a Search Marketing 101 course, your staff members will be ready to take care of all of your site’s SEO needs.  Just knowing the basics isn’t enough to handle the complexities of ongoing search marketing campaigns; people with limited knowledge of SEO may unknowingly employ bad practices. 

For companies that don’t have qualified in-house staff, their site’s ranking is likely to improve at a much faster rate if they outsource because they won’t have to spend time and money getting their in-house staff up to speed.  Companies that do have qualified in-house SEO staff can outsource to an external SEO firm whenever the need for additional support arises. 

Are you still undecided about whether you should outsource or rely on in-house staff?  If you think your in-house staff might be capable of taking care of your site’s SEO workload, try them out, but be sure to keep track of the results to ensure that they are truly helping you increase traffic and conversions.  Then hire an SEO firm to carry out an audit to be certain that your staff is following best SEO practices.  

Video is exploding on the web.  According to stats, the average American internet user watches approximately 3 hours of video online each month.

Since videos are now incorporated into standard search results, you can dramatically increase the visibility of your website by utilizing search engine optimized videos.  However, you have to create compelling, entertaining, and search-friendly videos that people are eager to watch and spread virally.

Although everyone and their mother can record a home video, creating remarkable videos that have good searching rankings and help you generate traffic and sales is another story.  15 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute, so take the following steps to ensure that your videos don’t get lost in a sea of oblivion.

Use Keywords

Make sure to use target keywords in the video file name as well as the video’s URL.  You should also include target keywords in the title, tags, and backlink anchor text.  In addition, write a brief, keyword-rich description for each of your videos to ensure that people searching online can find them more easily.

It’s important to optimize the textual content on the web pages where you post videos so they can be found more easily.  For example, you can bundle videos with their transcripts or include transcripts in the video descriptions to improve spiderability.  And last but not least, be sure to include the word, “video,” in the title of each of your videos to accommodate searchers who are looking specifically for video content.

Distribute Your Videos All Over the Place

In addition to posting videos on your site, make sure to distribute them to various video sharing sites on the web.  If you don’t want to do this manually, you can pay a video distribution service like TubeMogul to do it for you.

And don’t forget to optimize your company’s channel pages on video sharing sites with keyword-rich content.  Additionally, be sure to place a link back to your site at the very beginning of each video’s description at sharing sites so you can drive some traffic back to your site.

Build Links to Your Videos

Just like they do with textual content, search engines judge the value and relevancy of videos based on the backlinks they have.  To help build links for your videos, make sure you enable sharing and embedding on video pages.

In addition, you can bookmark your videos, share them on Twitter and other social media sites, and link to them on relevant blog posts and web pages.  And don’t forget to cross-link your video to other relevant videos on your site.  Not only will cross-linking help to improve the search engine ranking of your videos, it will also lead to more views and make your site more user-friendly.

Increase the Number of Views

Okay.  So you’ve created a wonderful video, optimized it, and distributed it.  Now what?  You need to increase the number of views, that’s what!  Although sharing videos via social media will help you do that, there are a few other strategies you can apply as well to increase views.

For example, on video sharing sites like YouTube, you can submit video responses to highly popular videos in order to generate traffic to your own video content.  You can also pay for placements in YouTube’s Promoted Video program.  In addition, you can approach social media power users, explain to them why you think your videos will benefit their audience, and ask them to share your videos with their audience to give them a viral push.