Key To Success

Providing relevant, quality website content is the key to SEO, but we know that search engines also like to find what’s new.  There is a limit to how often you can realistically update your website (unless you are a news outlet), and that is where article writing comes in.

Good, free content attracts visitors. And when it is updated often, visitors will come back often.  In addition to boosting search engine results, writing articles establishes you as more of an authority on the subject at hand.  If it gets published elsewhere, then you get free publicity for your website, and a one-way link!

There are several ways to add article content to your website.  The most popular one for businesses is to have a company blog.  One of the pitfalls of this approach is that if it is just all about you and your company, not many users will want it useful for anything other than finding out about you.  A simple “About Us” page would suffice in this regard.  Instead, consider creating a blog about a subject that your company is expert in, and become a valuable resource to others.

While you’re at it, take your research and compose some bona fide articles and market them elsewhere as such, with a link to your website at the bottom. Sites like EzineArticles, GoArticles, and iSnare, rank highly and send relevant traffic.  Also submit your stories to Digg and get them tagged on Delicious.  This gives it the potential to be recognized by bloggers.

Submitting these articles might be as simple as rewriting material that you posted on the company’s blog, but beware of entirely duplicating content – search engines will recognize it and punish you for it, sometimes by ignoring the original.  Instead, think about repurposing content into a handy “Top 10” list – these are highly shared.

On that note, wherever possible, make sure that your articles have highly visible buttons that encourage readers to e-mail to friends and share on social networking websites.

An essential rule about blogging is that if you can’t regularly maintain it, don’t do it.  Having an outdated, sparse blog will do more to hurt your image than to help it.

If you don’t have the resources to write articles yourself, another option is setting up an RSS feed.  Many websites and almost every blog off a real simple syndication feed.  The danger here is two-fold.  First, you lost out on establishing yourself as an authority – the content comes elsewhere.  Secondly, often the RSS feed is the same content that appears on the site of the provider.  When the text is displayed using a server side include that presents the information as html on the pages, it could appear as duplicate content. When feeds are shown using client side includes, such as JavaScript, it is much less likely that a search engine will pick up that content and index it.

Another increasingly popular option is to add a Twitter stream.  First, of course, you need to be active on Twitter.  This is a great option for those too busy to blog in-depth.  Find relevant information to share in 140 characters or less, and you’re on your way!  Keep in mind though, that just as a company blog is not to be turned into a big “About Us” page, a Twitter feed should not become an RSS feed of latest publications – use it to interact with your client base, partners, and even competitors.  Provide useful information, and your Twitter followers will follow on to your website.

By: Ilene Rosenblum, Twitter @ilenerosenblum

linking

I established in my previous post about an outbound link strategy, that you can’t be selfish about link giving.  Nonetheless, as you link to useful information on other websites, you should be doing the same for your partner websites – just make sure that the material you’re linking to is relevant in and of itself, not just because you created it. A successful strategy will have a mixture of linking out and linking within.

A great place to start with in-site linking is with blog posts.  If you link new posts to relevant previous posts, this will help index your site’s keywords with the engines.

Pay attention to the words used as the link anchor text.  The words that you choose for the link can help you and the site you’re linking to with SEO.  As for outbound links, some experts say that if you link to high-ranking sites for the keywords that you are targeting, it will have more impact.

For in interesting case study in outbound linking, check out Michael Gray’s SEO blog.

It concludes that it is best not to link out from pages that you want to rank for a particular term, but if you have to, use words other than your desired keyword as the anchor text.

A favored tool for analyzing SEO keywords is Google Analytics.  You can use it to get down to the nitty-gritty on your outgoing link strategy.

Again, never lose sight of the goal.  A link is made to bring the useful information to a reader in the same content stream.

By: Ilene Rosenblum

seo

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) uses complex techniques to acquire traffic by making changes to the site in order to improve page ranking, quality, and the relevance of incoming links. With Organic Search Engine Optimization, your ranking or position is maintained because of its relevancy and is not dependent on an advertising budget. SEO Services and Organic Strategies Search engine algorithm principles are a guarded secret; however, understanding the essentials will give you an edge over your competitors.

• Optimization: Reviewing and understanding how your business operates, researching relevant keywords, creating niches, and enticing relevant content are the first steps to optimization.
• Implementation: Our best practices will provide a considerable impact in search engine results combined with your existing.
• Visibility: Our high-tech press release distribution system, link building techniques, and other inbound link programs will deliver unparalleled exposure. Our policy forbids the use of black hat techniques or link farming, which can prohibit your site from the search engines.
• Monitoring: Monthly page ranking reports and continuous keyword assessments are provided to determine your areas of enhancement.

In2website provides organic SEO services that will drive more targeted traffic to significant in-site categories and landing pages. By optimizing the most important pages in each category and ensuring that the site pages are properly indexed at each major search engine, our experts will be able to increase your overall traffic and conversion rates for your website. Organic search engine strategies should be the foundation of every marketing company. However, exclusively relying on paid options as your means of generating traffic will be a costly venture with no sustainable results. Turning your site over to the experts will allow you to optimize content and increase long-term traffic.

Internet Marketing Tools

Looking for some software to help you boost your web copy’s search rankings?  Get a head start on your research with this guide to some of the most popular options.

Standard in SEO software packages are tools such as a rank checker and keyword suggestions – but that is easy enough to find online.  This report focuses on what unique features each product has that sets it apart from the rest.

WebCEO

WebCEO (http://www.webceo.com/) analyzes entire websites, not just individual pages. Its keyword analysis tool is multifaceted, including search trends, keyword popularity indicators as Estimated average CPC, and a Keyword Effectiveness Index, comparing search queries to sites listing a given keyword

Price:

• Web CEO Free:  -
• Web CEO Startup ($199)
• Web CEO SmallBiz ($295)
• Web CEO Professional ($495)

Systems: Windows users; Mac OS X with Intel-based systems can run Web CEO as a Windows application with the help of virtual machine software

SEO PowerSuite

This software (http://www.link-assistant.com/) boasts the most features of the packages reviewed – 187 attributes overall, including contact information retrieval from linking partners and backlick status reports.  Additionally, most SEO PowerSuite reports are fully customizable by date or page needed for focused analysis.

Price ($249)

Systems: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/NT, Mac OS X and Linux Windows

Trellian SEO Toolkit

Trellian’s software (http://www.trellian.com/seotoolkit/) includes “competitive intelligence” to identify the pages driving traffic to competitors’ sites.  It also  integrates SubmitWolf, v 8.0, their award-winning web site promotion software that enables you to submit your web site details to thousands of Search Engines, directories and link pages. Finally, their ROI Calculator helps calculate returns on CPC advertising expenses.

Price:

• SEO Toolkit V3 ($299.95) for use on up to 5 domains
• Enterprise V3 ($494.95) for use on unlimited domains

Systems: Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS

IBP iBusiness Promoter

IBP (http://www.ibusinesspromoter.com/) is the only company offering a top 10 Google ranking money-back guarantee.   Of course, they don’t specify for what keywords.  It’s easy to show up in the top 10 results of a keyword no one searches for.

Still, this is a very popular SEO packages that both beginners and experts find easy to use.  The software analyzes the current top search results for any keyword on any search engine and compares the top ranked pages with your website. Then the report guides you in non-technical English through the items that you must change on your pages to obtain a top ranking for the given keyword on the chosen search engine.

Price:

• Free demo
• Standard ($249.95)
• Business ($499.95)  - allowing for more customizable SEO reports

SEO Administrator

SEO Administrator (http://www.seoadministrator.com) is a package of 11 basic tools, including a Snippets tool.  This feature displays the snippets – the automated descriptions of your webpage that show up in search engine results – so that you can make it more appealing.  Its HTML analyzer provides a full report on the weight and density of keywords and keyphrases in your web pages

Price:

• Standard ($49)
• Professional ($79)
• Expert ($99)

SEO Administrator is the only software provider reviewed to also provide a service.  They offer a start-up seo package including the expert edition of their software, a website audit, and one-way links from their partner websites for $299.00.

More Feedback

Is there a piece of software not listed that you would like to see reviewed?  Is it necessary to use special software, or are browser plug-ins and websites enough?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.

web design ideas

Before creating a website, you should take the time to develop a comprehensive website design. There are many important elements to consider in website design. Most importantly, you should think about how visitors will use the site. The website design itself can affect how easily users can navigate a page, which influences how likely they are to return to the site. Keep these simple website design ideas in mind when developing your site:

• Make sure the site is easy to navigate. The first and most important website design idea is to consider navigation. Users should be able to easily navigate to multiple pages on the site. They should also be able to access the important that they are looking for as quickly as possible. A good website design should focus on ease of navigation before considering other design elements.
• Use a clean, simple layout. A simple layout allows visitors to view images clearly and to read information without interruption. Adding too many bells and whistles to a site can ultimately hinder it usage, since visitors will be too distracted to focus on the page itself.
• Make it interactive. A good website design idea features interactive elements on the page. For instance, the site might contain applications such as polls or surveys that ask visitors for their opinions on related subjects. However, keep in mind that these interactive website design ideas should not interfere with the navigation or layout of the site.
• Consider menus and effects. There are many website design choices when it comes to menus and buttons on the site. Drop-down menus offer the benefits of being familiar and accessible to most users. One of the most popular website design effects is to use rollover buttons, which can swap images when the user clicks on each button. Other graphics and image effects can play an integral role in website design.
• Think about templates. If you are just beginning to delve into the world of website design, you might think about using ready-made templates to get started. These templates make it easier to build the site from scratch, and they provide many website design ideas to help you customize the site for your needs. Dreamweaver offers easy to use editor interface to modify those templates.
• Make sure it looks great everywhere. When gathering website design ideas, you should keep in mind the multitude of ways in which people can access the Internet. Some visitors might discover your page while surfing the net on their laptop, while others might find the site from their mobile phone. The website design should be capable of being viewed at different screen resolutions and screen sizes as well as on different devices.
• Keep these easy website design ideas in mind before beginning to build your site. A good website design is essential to attract more visitors to your site-and to make sure that those visitors return. These website design ideas can help you make your site a success!

linking

Applying outgoing links in a site’s copy and navigation structure seems to be one of the areas that create the most Webmaster paranoia and greed, but if you follow these common sense guidelines, you can be generous and still safely contend in the search engine-ranking race.

Where does this link apprehension come from?  Primarily, webmasters fear that having too many outgoing links will damage their page rank, as if sharing links meant giving away of the search results pie.  If we examine this fear, we see that it’s not entirely rational.

Search engines will flag sites with a massive amount of links and especially irrelevant ones.  However, so will readers.   If you stick to producing quality copy with the reader in mind, the search engine will like it as well.

This means that linking out to material that is relevant and beneficial to readers, it will be beneficial to your search ranking as well.  Keep in mind that the Internet is a World Wide Web of linked material – not just Google.  Links make this World go ‘round, and webmasters that are so afraid of losing their PageRank that they only link to their own sites or internal pages neglects the purpose of linking in the first place.

Many webmasters also express concern that linking to a competitor will send customers elsewhere.  While you might send a customer away, if you are a reliable source of information, you’ll be flagged as an important source, and others will link to you.

Unfortunately, in order to get one-way links, which are the holy grail of link building, someone has to be giving away those links.  If we all hoped to get links, but never gave them, then there would be no such thing as one-way links at all.

But don’t get too carried away.  Most fears are based in some truth, and the fear of the outgoing link is no different.  Linking too much both overwhelms the reader and makes your site seem more like a bogus link farm to the search engines, meaning you could get flagged and then your PageRank will suffer.  Stick to quality copy and only the outbound links that will assist your reader, and everybody wins.

If a site on a given topic has 50 outbound links to relevant sites and another site that is very similar only has 3 links out of it, the first is more likely to be a comprehensive source, right?  If a site is a more significant resource of information about a given topic to a reader, a search engine will see it this way too.

In SEO copywriting, if you do the writing and linking well, your readers will appreciate it, and so will Google.  In other words, be a copywriter first, and the SEO will take care of itself as you earn trust.

For more on a link building strategy, stay tuned.

By: Ilene Rosenblum

seo hosting

Sure, you’ve heard of optimizing your website’s content, but what about optimizing your host? “SEO Hosts” boast that they can boost your business’s online presence in the following ways:

• Multiple Class IP addresses
• A Dedicated IP Address

What is an IP Address?

An Internet Protocol address is a number that identifies each device (computers, printers, routers, etc.) on a computer network.  They are set by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

An IP address looks like 12.34.567.890 and in the format AA.BB.CCC.DDD., so that if the address is 12.34.567.890, the 567 is in the C place. When as SEO host provides you with multiple Class C IP’s, they have different numbers in the C set.  Otherwise, when you are delivered multiple IP’s, it is all the same A.B.C class, but with a different D.

A Domain Name System (DNS), allows the IP address to be translated to words – your domain name. Thus, 12.23.567.890 gets translated into “www.yourwebsite.com” or you@yourwebsite.com.

Multiple IP Addresses: The Claim

Some SEO hosts will say that owning multiple IP addresses will effectively allow you to list your website in multiple places in the search engine marketplace.  The theory is that by keeping a client’s domains listed as separate web properties, search engines will give better search rankings.  The spider will see that one property links to another from a different Class C IP range. (Class C is the class of most mid-to-small business domains).  To the search engine, each site from a different Class C IP will appear to be unconnected to other sites within the network.

The Reality: The quality of your inbound links is very important in SEO.  However, if you try to boost your rank by linking between multiple websites you own, this can actually hurt your ranking.  If the sites appear to be on the same IP block, the spider may read it as spam.

You can check if you are hosting multiple sites in the same IP range here (http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/class-c-checker.php).

Dedicated IP Address: The Claim

If your website is the only domain linked to an IP address, some experts say that it is a factor considered by search engines and that it helps servers find your domain.

The Reality:

There is debate in the SEO industry about how much having a dedicated IP address can help, and in my opinion, it won’t help much.   Some experts say that because you have no control over who you share an IP address with, you run the risk of sharing with a spam or adult site, thereby raising a search engine red flag.

This claim doesn’t seem very reliable, since the majority of sites on the Web are hosted on a shared IP. Search engines are able to ban anything on a domain name and will likely do that rather than block an entire IP neighborhood.  Finally, because there is a limited number of IPs in the current form called IPv4.  Search engines will not punish them.

Author: Ilene Rosenblum, @ilenerosenblum

Staying Fresh

Website content is a lot like produce at the market.

The fresher the better, and, if you’re providing the same exact thing as the competition, whether it’s granny smith apples or information about buying a car, you need to stand out as being the highest quality or offer a different taste.  If your material is old and rotting, no one will want to look at it for long.

Imagine yourself at a farmer’s market.  Each stand is selling apples.  How do you pick from one vendor and not another?  Do you go to the first stand, closest to the entrance, or do you look for the best quality produce?  Is customer service important to you, sending you to the vendor that you have a personal relationship with?

Using SEO properly will get you that prime real estate at the entrance to the Internet marketplace, but both Google and your customers will figure out pretty quickly if you are selling something phony or if the quality of your goods is sub par.  Keeping content updated but with irrelevant or outdated search terms for your ranking class will not help for long.  Traffic will go elsewhere.

Social networking is where you can score points with the customers looking for the best service.  Maintain a relationship with your customers by letting them know what is going on with your company. Regularly updating a blog (which also boosts your SEO) and your social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is a great way to do this.  Depending on the nature of your business, this is where you can add the personal touch. Zappos and JetBlue  are well known for regularly updating social media networks with company information and irreverent comments or uplifting quotes.  Let your unique style grab their attention.

Think carefully about how staying fresh fits into your overall company image and business plan.  Are you targeting a specific niche, like organic tomatoes?  Or do your customers like you because of the variety that you offer?  Be sure that you’re constantly rotating in new stock, but don’t lose sight of what the customers are coming to you for in the first place.

By: Ilene Rosenblum

SEO cannot make users stay on the page longer. However, having a low “bounce rate,” or the percentage of users who come to a page and quickly go somewhere else, will boost your rankings. This can be achieved by creating an easy-to-navigate and frequently updated site. Keep users interested, and they’ll stay longer. Sites like Facebook have low bounce rates because users fill out forms, interact and give feedback. This improves the site’s ranking.

SEO cannot directly make you more money. Good SEO will drive more relevant traffic to your site. However, the quality of the content drives conversion. This is a measure of the number of potential customers that go on to buy. In the context of a website, it is usually the percentage of visitors that make a purchase. A store that gets a lot of customers in the door only to leave moments later because of the clutter or poor customers service is not as successful as a store that gets fewer customers that are able to see the merchandise and are interested in buying.

SEO cannot guarantee ranking results or visitor counts. No company can guarantee organic listings, or it wouldn’t be organic, right? Something that is hot today is not tomorrow. Trends change by the nanosecond.

A higher score in Google’s PageRank of popular websites does not automatically constitute success in SEO. It is possible some of these “shortcuts” or “black hat” schemes may appear to work in the short term, but they can’t last for very long.

Like any project that yields real results, it requires a big investment of time and money, and if an “expert” tells you something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. SEO takes time and requires patience.

You cannot do SEO once and expect great results to continue. A car requires constant maintenance, workout routine needs to be rearranged to continue to yield results and break plateaus, and your SEO campaign requires regular attention. Good SEO is ongoing, requiring a commitment to adding content.

By: Ilene Rosenblum

website content

Website content incorporating SEO is part of a larger overall picture that has to be kept in mind.  To start, answer the following questions:

• Is the site being created or recreated from scratch?   Or does content need to be rewritten on an existing site?
• If it’s an existing site, what is or isn’t working?
• Who is your target audience?  Are there multiple markets?

If you’re working with an SEO professional and are responsible only for the content development, he or she can help you identify which sites outrank yours and which ones you should target.

SEO is a game of keeping up with the Joneses that forces each site to create the most engaging content.  Some of the competition will be significantly better than you at this, and that’s okay.  I wouldn’t tell a yellow belt karate student to fight a black belt.  I’d tell him to try to become the yellow belt champ.

Keep in mind your time and money budget and the scope of your audience and you’ll be able to hone in on a realistic goal.  A small shoe store in Northern California should not aim to be the top hit for “shoes,” or not even necessarily “shoes, Northern California,” but they may be able to claim the top spot for “designer shoes in Northern California”.

SEO forces you to think outside the box.  Maybe you always figured that visitors to your site were looking for one thing in particular, but you might be able to corner a related market.  This would push up your site hits and links, and eventually that could make you even more attractive to your main audience.

For example, a computer retailer in San Diego might conduct some SEO research and find that “computer repair” is a really popular search term, and so is “computer repair San Diego”.  In fact, it’s so popular that it’s a market they couldn’t enter without breaking the budget.  They might find, though, that “office relocation” is a less popular, though related, search term, and with a little work, they could be the top hit for that query.

After a while, the site moves up in the rank of Google and other search engine hits.  As that happens, more users click on it and link to it.  The site becomes more established, more valuable online real estate.  It may then be ready to compete on the level of more popular keyword search terms.

What does this mean for the content writer?  You have to rewrite the site content, or maybe even restructure it to accommodate the new keywords.  Consider making the new keywords a drop-down menu, or the topic of an article or blog post on the site and refer to it often.

By: Ilene Rosenblum