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Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
One of the platforms behind search engine optimization is content. “Publish useful keyword content regularly” has been the mantra for over a decade now, however, one wonders if that is all about to change and that content on websites could become defunct. I know that will raise eyebrows, but then, we do know that Google, the number one source of traffic for many websites, is trying to escape the inbound link component of their algorithm.
There’s an interesting article on TechCrunch which, while discussing privacy issues related to Google+ and Facebook, also had this to say:
Google’s PageRank algorithm is seriously out of date. It promotes pages based on the number of links to it. Today, pages are no longer the unit of publishing. Far smaller items than a page dominate our senses. And those smaller messages are produced in huge quantity and in real time.
Those smaller messages are references to Facebook, Twitter and many other social media sites, forums included. This raises the question of content on websites – will it become defunct and replaced by short messages? I for one hope it never comes to that. The content on Facebook and Twitter can never really adequately answer a question. Forums are a different story, questions are answered, often in depth, and with a lot of input from a range of users. You are more likely to find an answer in a forum than you will on Facebook or Twitter. Interestingly, most small messages on those two sites generally include links to more indepth answers often on blogs.
Logic would then suggest that the indepth answer is more relevant and more important than the smaller message on a social media website. Keith Teare, the article’s author, is right when it comes to the privacy issues facing social media. However, when it comes to content, I don’t think we’ll be losing that anytime soon. Yes, Google will find a way to reduce the effects of links in its search ranking algorithm, but that will be because they have found a better way to measure worth, and yes, social media mentions will most likely lead that change.
I wouldn’t be tearing down content or reducing the amount published in too much of hurry. Rather, I’d be concentrating on content that individuals find important enough to share with others. Blogging for small business is still one of the best ways to communicate with the rest of the world, and that won’t be changing anytime soon.
Tags: content, search engine optimization, SEO, social media marketing
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
Online marketing has, to a certain extent, blinded many business people to some of the simpler rules of business. Analytics is one area where the online world often seems to have different rules than an offline business. What’s the most important metric for a small business. Traffic? Conversions? Search rankings? These are all areas that online businesses concentrate on, and whilst they are important areas to measure, they are not the most important.
For small businesses, the bottom line always has been and always will be profitability. Engaging in a pay-per-click campaign is fine, and measuring traffic and conversions is always going to help with future planning, and perhaps even modifying your current campaigns. At the end of the day, if your pay-per-click is not making a profit, then your business could be on the slide. The same can be said for SEO and social media marketing. If your profitability is being compromised, then you need to either modify your marketing campaign or to look for alternative marketing methods.
Pay-per-click, search engine optimization and social media marketing are not always the best channels for some businesses. Alternatives such as email marketing and banner advertising can achieve better results in terms of profitability – the former, often achieved through data collected offline. You would be surprised at how many brick and mortar businesses now collect email addresses at the checkout and then use those email addresses as very successful email marketing campaigns.
The most important metric for any small business is the return on investment (ROI) that is measured against any campaign. There are times when a marketing campaign – for example, a brand awareness campaign – doesn’t result in short term profits that are easily identified. As a small business owner, you need to make judgements as to whether or not a marketing campaign should be measured or designed more for PR or branding. Analytics are important, however, you need the right data and that data should be measured against a desired goal.
Tags: Email Marketing, Pay Per Click, search engine optimization, small business finance
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is often made out to be some strange and scary beast that only professionals dare go near. In reality, SEO is a tame beast. In fact, it’s a beast that you have a lot of control over. Sure, once you get past the basics, SEO can be time consuming, and perhaps even frustrating at times, but in reality, it’s still a simple concept.
For a web site to rank well, it’s necessary to understand what goes into the ranking process. SEO is the process of optimizing your pages (and web site) to gain the best position possible in search rankings. And that process is, as I have mentioned, fairly simple – there are only three steps:
- Discovery – search engines need to find your content, however, I wouldn’t leave it to their efforts alone. Search engines need help and that help comes initially in the form of sitemaps that are submitted. You can expedite this process by creating a Google Webmaster Tools account – there you can submit your sitemaps encouraging the search engine to visit and crawl through your website.
- Indexing – the second step in the SEO process is to have your pages indexed. You could submit a sitemap with 100 pages, and still find that a search engine has only indexed half the pages. External links to your pages can help as can social media mentions. It also helps if your web pages are easy to find, and easy to crawl. Pages that are deep within a website often fail to get indexed. Search engines will often only travel three or four links deep into a website. Your web pages should be easy for a search engine to read – that means ensuring your content is as close to the top as possible (of the root index file), and that Java and Flash are limited and SEO friendly as well.
- Ranking - the hardest step in the process is ranking. This is where a page is compared to other pages and ranked for search terms. You can increase a page’s ranking by building inbound links and by gaining social media mentions. This is one area where website owners make life harder for themselves. The real key to ranking well is to create content that others find useful, that others will reference on their sites (inbound) links, and that people will discuss on social media sites (social media mentions).
SEO is the sum of those three activities and you will never succeed if you skimp on one area. You can have the best content in the world, however, if a search engine can’t find it, or finds it impossible to read when it does find it, then it won’t rank. Likewise, poor content will not receive the external support that is so vital to rank a page highly.
In a nutshell, build your site, tell the search engines where your content is, and make sure it easy to find and easy to read and that the content is worthy of ranking. Get that right and you have created a great SEO platform to build on.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, sitemaps
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
Due to the current job market crisis, more people are working from home than ever before. There are a lot of opportunities to work from home or to work for someone else from home. Whatever you choose, you will still have a small business working from home. What have others found out about balancing home life with your job sitting on the kitchen table?
Anyone can have a small business out of your home. Once you have the basic business set up out of the way, you then need to consider to balance the two. A small business still needs to operate as a small business and family still needs to be family.
Be sure to set yourself boundaries. It is very easy to get lost in your work on the computer or the phone. But, don’t lose sight that it’s still a job. You need to make a schedule for the business. This way you still have your home life.
For example, let’s say you want to work your business from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Then, set an alarm that will remind you when 2 p.m. rolls around. No matter what, stop as soon as you can, close up shop and return to your “home,” even though you are still in your home.
It needs to be just like a regular job. When your time is up, you go home. You also need to make sure you take breaks to stretch your legs and back and to just step away from the computer for a few minutes.
And, remember, don’t feel guilty. Rest assured, the emails, the voice mails and any other related work tasks will still be there the next morning when you return to “work”.
You too can be successful operating a small business out of your home. Look at it this way, you will have the freedom to be your own boss, have your own business and still make money.
Tags: business, search engine optimization, small business
Posted in Tools for Small Business | 5 Comments »
Saturday, December 17th, 2011
There are all kinds of ways to advertise your small business on the Internet. From social media to search engine optimization (SEO) to classified sites. While all are good, which one really stands out? More small businesses are going with SEO because the visitors to their sites got there by doing a search for something that related to their business.
This drives rate conversions up more than social media as a search is more targeted to a specified thing. Don’t get me wrong, many businesses use social media and are quite successful with it. That is great! But, effective SEO delivers far more traffic and converts better.
It works like this. Someone, a consumer, is searching for plus size clothing. Their search on Google will be “plus size clothing”. Once the search button is clicked on, Google does it’s thing and pulls all the businesses that have plus sized clothing. That’s how you get the long list of sites to choose from.
Eventually, when you get more and more customers, you will move up through the ranks to the first page. And, that’s exactly where you want to be. It’s already been proven, most people searching for something typically will not move past the firsts page of search results.
You’re thinking that’s great, but how do I do it? If you are not sure how to go about optimizing your place on the internet, it would be a good time to seek out SEO consultants. SEO consultants can sit down with you and customize a plan that will benefit you the most. And, it will be much easier to let the SEO consultant do that for you as they know what they are doing.
It may cost a little to get a consultant, but you don’t want to let your website sit with only a handful of visitors. That will not do you any good at all. A sound investment of hiring an SEO consultant will drive more traffic to your site and your conversion rates will rise. Now that’s a plan.
Tags: advertising, internet marketing, local search, search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 7 Comments »
Monday, December 12th, 2011
We have been hearing a lot lately about Facebook. What it means to individuals as well as businesses. Most of us understand basically what Facebook is. It is a way to stay connected with family and friends and to keep current on events in their lives. That is correct. What a lot of us don’t understand is how it will actually help businesses just by staying connected with friends.
In nearly every aspect in our lives we depend on the references or opinions of others that we do trust in order to make informed and responsible decisions. This can be something as simple as where to eat to what companies we will trust our personal information on the internet.
That information is what drives the search engines to small businesses. It’s like the old saying “what goes around, comes around.”
For instance, you are chatting with a family member on Facebook. You may be telling them that you need a new roof replaced. They may have used a company from your area that they were very impressed with themselves. They give you the name, but they don’t have any other information. After you get off Facebook, because you trust that family member, you are going to do a search for that particular company, right? Right. That is just one way Facebooking and Search Engines can work together.
Social Media marketing is only going to grow. Make sure your business stays on track by using social media sites to build your business. Start a fan page. It’s just like word of mouth, but it will be word of friends and family. The family and friends of fans of your page will look at your page. Because they trust their family and friends, they will like your page as well. Your audience will only grow. And getting bigger means more sales for your business.
Tags: advertising, Branding, business, facebook, publicity, search, search engine optimization, small business, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
When you think of doing business online, do you first think about those big businesses with million dollar budgets? You don’t have to. Small businesses are alive and well on the internet.
So, where do you fit in? What’s up with all that talk of keywords, SEO, social media, and such? There are three basic elements that will drive your business online. They are:
- On-Page Content – If possible, have mixed content on your site. Take advantage of articles, videos, etc. and provide your site visitors with a wide range of content to match their interests. Optimize your content to help it rank better in the search engines for your most profitable keywords.
- Off-Page Content – Content you create for marketing off of your website is good for building links back to your site and delivering new visitors to the site.
- Behind The Scenes Content – This is the code that makes your website visible to search engines and web browsers. You can have too much and you can have the wrong kind. Make sure your code is optimized for better results in the search engines.
Since the internet is growing by leaps and bounds, it is very important to have these elements successfully optimized on your website. It sounds complicated, but it really is not.
With the right guide and a good web marketing strategy you can build a great website with excellent on-page content, a wide variety of off-page content that drives traffic to your site, and great code that gets you well deserved rankings in the search engines.
Tags: advertising, google, keywords, link building, PPC, search engine optimization, SEO, small business
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »
Friday, November 25th, 2011
Some search engine optimizers are stuck on keywords and links. If you listen to them talk, these are the Holy Grail of online marketing. But are they?
Don’t get me wrong. SEO is important. I mean, how will you rank in the search engines for the key terms you want to be known for if you don’t employ sound SEO strategies? But you should also understand that there are some things about SEO that you can’t control. The search algorithms, for instance.
It’s important to study what you can about SEO tactics and perform your best practices. But don’t hang your hat on them. They can change at any time.
Branding, however, is something you have 100% control over. It’s your image. You control what images, taglines, and statements are associated with your brand. No one else can control that for you. So if you focus your time and energy on building your brand with some thoughts how to employ SEO and a social media strategy effectively, then you’ll fare better in the long run.
What I’m really saying is this: Build your brand first. Market it secondly. SEO and social media are the nuts and bolts of online marketing. Without a brand, they’re just nuts and bolts.
Tags: Branding, online marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Branding | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
When you plan your search engine optimization efforts, do you do it for the long term or the short term? Most search marketers do it for the short term.
Short-term SEO can be characterized by a list of do’s and don’ts on your search company’s list of best practices. They are essentially a list of things to do today so that your website ranks next month. But they don’t account for eventual search engine algorithm changes. They are essentially based on a follow-the-crowd mentality.
Long-term SEO is different. It doesn’t concern itself with what everyone else is doing. It just does what makes sense and what will ultimately make sense five years from now.
For instance, a short-term SEO strategy usually leads to broken links and bad website navigation. Long-term SEO, on the other hand, takes into consideration how a user might navigate several hundred web pages on your website before those pages have even been planned. It takes into consideration the taxonomy of web pages and puts together an intelligent web design plan that will make as much sense next decade as it does next week.
So I’ll ask again: Is your SEO strategy a long-term strategy or a short-term strategy? How many times to do you want to build that website?
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, web design
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 30th, 2011
Here’s a joke for you: How many SEOs does it take to optimize a website?
Answer: Only 1.
So that’s not funny? I didn’t suspect it would be. It’s not really a joke.
The reason I bring it up is because some clients seem to believe that if they hire multiple SEOs to work on the same website, then they’ll get better search engine rankings. That’s not true. In fact, you could actually be hurting yourself.
Not all SEOs think alike. Some put more emphasis on link building while others emphasize on-site SEO factors. If you hire more than one SEO to work on the same website, then your optimizers could actually compete against each other and cancel each other out. What you really want them to do is work together and enhance each other’s efforts. But can you really expect them to do that?
You’ll save yourself a lot of headaches if you just use one SEO for each web property you own. If you own more than one website, you can have a different SEO working on each site. But don’t let two SEOs work on the same website. Ever.
The only time multiple SEOs working on the same website will work is if you have a division of duties system where there is one decision maker at the top who assigns responsibilities and tracks your total SEO efforts. It’s the only way to ensure the team remains a team.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEOs, website optimization
Posted in SEO for Small Business | 2 Comments »
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