Search Engine Optimization

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.