SEO

Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

Don’t get confused, seo isn’t dead…but rank reporting is going obsolete.

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Within the recent month's the major search engines, particulary the almightly Google have made some very drastic algorithm updates which have been tossing up search engine rankings like an ocean tempest. Reliable search engine "ranking reports" are now thing a thing of the past for most search engines (especially Google). So for example lets say that you own a flower delivery service website. On your own computer you are ranking on page 1 of Google for "flower delivery". On another computer a mile away your website listed on page 3 for the exact same phrase. on another computer a few miles away your website is on page 4, then on the computer in building next to you you are listed nowhere at all.

Why is this happening? There are several reasons, but one particular major change is due to what search engines call "personalized search engine results". So lets say you are working in a office and you have a co-worker who is a programmer. You happen to work in public relations and you love coffee. You both do a google search for the keyword "java". You get results about coffee. He gets results about programming language. He is only a few feet away. Why is this? Google is now looking at your past search history and delivering personalized search results on your preferences. This is making consistent ranking for general, ambigous keywords next to useless (a trend that has been happening for years...but finally taking full effect)

It was first believed that Google would only deliver personalized search results depending if the web surfer had a Google account or not. Some search engine optimization experts noticed that personalized results where being observed even when web surfer had no Google account. Also your particular location and IP address can effect your search results as well.

So is it time to stand on your roof and yell at passerby's that "SEO is DEAD!!!" ??? What is the point in optimizing your website if you can no longer impact how the search engines rank your results? Not so fast.

The surprising answer is SEO is still an very effective strategy for internet marketing (at least for the time being). Why? For ranking and indexation search engine algorithms still need to know what your website is about and your website could benefit from optimization.

Here are a few keypoints

Search Engines need to know what your website is about

Search engine algorithms still need something to grab onto to understand what your website is about. Creating good quality content and optimizing your title, header, h1 still make a very big difference. They can make your website show up for certain keyword searches. So if you are selling coffee and you have your website optimized for "java" somebody searching for java (and has a history of browsing coffee sites") your optimized webpage has a much better probability of being ranked high.

Focus on traffic, forget rankings

The toughest part of this change is explaining to the average layman that keyword ranking no longer reliable. I can't tell you how many times i have spoke with clients and the issue of "my competitor is ranking higher than me for so and so phrase" conversation is brought up. To absolve this issue make sure to focus more on the end product: traffic. Having optimized webpages will help you bring in more traffic from the right visitors (higher rankings OVERALL). Make sure to have detailed analytics reports. Google Analytics is always a good option.

The only exception to the "ranking reports are dead" theory is if you can use a tool that checks ranking reports on multiple IP address. There are a few out there. One free and simple one is at http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/multiple-datacenter-google-search/. This tool allows you to check your search engine rankings across multiple datacenters to see how well you are ranking. For example our website seprodigy.com was consistently ranked on the first page for "web marketing" on multiple datacenters when we tested this tool.

You can also get a good idea of how your search engine rankings are appearing by using the Google Webmaster Tools program (it's free!). This is basically a ranking report "straight from the source" where Google reports your highest viewed/clicked keywords and their average positions.

After you activate your account you will see a option on the right hand side for "Statistics". From there click on "Top Search Queries".

Notice how Google specifically says "from all search all locations". This is a decent indicator of how your SEO/Web Marketing efforts are panning out.

Just remember that good keyword research, content optimization and quality landing pages still goes a long, long way to getting your website better visibility. SEO may no longer the end all, be all. But it is still a strong backbone to almost any internet marketing campaign.

Tags: google algorithm change, optimization, search engine rankings, SEO, seo dead, seo is dead, website optimization
Posted in Online Marketing | 6 Comments »

Geo Targeting for SEO - Best Practices

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

If you are a business with presence in multiple countries you might as well be considering to have web presence in these different geographic areas. Often businesses when trying to have websites across multiple geographies/countries implement half baked practices or have dilemmas prevailing. Here are some of the best practices geo-targeting from SEO perspective.

a) Get a country specific TLD (top level domain). So for example if you sell ipods have www.ipoddiscount.com for the US and www.ipoddiscount.co.uk for United Kingdom. This is a big indicator to the search engines that your domain is targeted to that
specific country.

b) Physical Location of Server - While this might sound a little expensive it is worth the effort. Try to host the different country specific TLDs in different servers that are physically located in those country. So make sure that www.ipoddiscount.co.uk is hosted in the UK. Search engines are smart enough to figure out where your domain's IP address is located.

c) Language - Use the local dialect for your targeted geography. A common mistake that is often committed by many businesses is that they would typically serve the same content in all English speaking countries. The british don't use "zs" as much as the american's do. So for example if you promote a website that offers "search engine optimisation" targeting american clientelle you are going to look pretty silly. Contextual English in UK is widely different from English in USA. Similarly English has also got its own nature in other countries like Australia, India etc. Using a local copywriter is the best solution because they are aware of the spellings, expressions, idioms use in the language by localities. Try posting for a job on craigslist to accomplish this. While this adds an additional flair of localization to the website and earns more credibility from the visitors, it is speculated that modern day search engine algorithm are smart enough to understand this nuances of language and give additional boost to the website in respective geography.

d) GWT - This is a Google specific info. Google Webmaster Tool allows you to specify the targeted geography for your website. This is again a direct way of informing the search engines about your target audience.

While these four points are really helpful in establishing a proper geo targeted SEO strategy for any website here is another tip that would help you to do good in geo targeted search results - If you have a physical location in those targeted geographies, prominently mention the detailed address of your local office along with zip code and also the phone number. Google gets a big clue out of this and gives you a decent boost for searches in your targeted geography.

Tags: Best practice, Geo targeting, Local Optimization, local seo, SEO
Posted in Local Optimization, Search Engine Marketing | 1 Comment »

Marketing Through Search Optimization, Second Edition: How People Search and How to be found on the web (Paperback)

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Book Description

How to use the Web successfully?

Product Description

This book guides readers through proven techniques for achieving and measuring success in search engine marketing (i.e. how to be the top of the rank), along with a review of the most important search engines and directories.

. Explains why and how marketers can and must optimize their sites for searchability from the outset

. Describes how to optimize, for both local and international users using tutorials and walkthroughs to demonstrate how to steadily improve your site rankings

. Completely revised and updated this new edition focuses on the key aspects of how people search, the mobile Internet and pay per click adverting

See all Editorial Reviews

Buy Marketing Through Search Optimization, Second Edition: How People Search and How to be found on the web (Paperback) at Amazon

Tags: Find people on web, Marketing Through Search Optimization, optimization, Search, Search People Online, SEM, SEO
Posted in Books | No Comments »

Is SEO Recession Proof?

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

The economic downturn has affected all of us big or small. Businesses have drastically cut down on their budgets and marketing budget have taken the axe in most cases. However, fortunately what we have observed is that this recession has not really dampened the SEO business and speaking to a few of my other industry acquaintances confirms the same. So, is SEO recession proof ? Why is it not affected ?

There are actually multiple reasons for this as I can think of..

a) Effectiveness : When various sales channel are measured, web always gives any of the two results - a slaes channel with high ROI or a sales channel with huge growth potential. Now who would ignore such a channel when you want to make every penny count ?

b) Easy to Measure: Unlike offline channel, web gives you exact measures of what you have earned and what you have spent. Its much easier to keep track and know where your money is going. Many companies are een moving budgets from offline media to online media.

c) Time for Thinking - If you are an established business you are most likely using this slow down to do an audit of your existing activities and see where you can improve. Given the high rate of broadband adoption and Internet access you would most likely put revamping your website and SEO on top priority, so you are ready for the market when it starts getting bullish.

d) Search Traffic Doesn't Reduce - Yes, economic slowdown might stop people from making purchases but it has definitely stopped people from browsing the web, rather it has increased with the increasing adoption of broadband and deeper penetration of Internet access. So being present on SERP , necessarily means that you are able to reach more prospective consumers. The conversion rate may be low but more people visiting your website would mean the absolute number of conversion would likely remain the same or increase.

e) Paid Search to SEO - many companies who have been using Paid search on a regular basis might be considering the option due to its high spending nature and definitely most of them also know that the major share of traffic actually lies with the organic results. Many of them would probably consider SEO as a low spending option to capture that Free traffic.

f) SEO Now a more acceptible Practice - With Google releasing a formal SEO guide, people & businesses now realise that SEO is not BS and search engines don't hate SEO. SEO is becoming a more acceptible practice with the major search engines supporting the move and also the major brnads in traditional media conducting inerviews and discussions on SEO.

Tags: economic downturn, marketing, recession, SEO, slowdown, Web Analytics
Posted in Search Engine Marketing | 1 Comment »

Quick Tips for Image Optimization

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Image optimization has often been discussed among the SEO communities and with all the major search engines now turning to Universal search image search has now become all the more important. Here are few best practices that you can follow to increase the chances of getting your images ranked for related keywords and not just that it would also contribute to the overall SEO of your webpage.

Use descriptive names for images. If you have an image of the Boston flea market instead of naming the image as D00123.jpg or market.jpg, it is always better to name it as Boston-Flea-Market.jpg
Use proper Alt attributes for images. Search engines recognize your images from the alt attributes that you use for them. Make sure your alt attribute describes your image properly.
Add a Title for images, again make sure your title is descriptive and contains your keyword for the image.
Surround your image with properly optimized text related to the subject. Contextual text adds value to your images and adds relevancy for the image from the search engine's perspective
Last but not the least for really important images that has got a message in it, use the Long Desc attribute to explain the image properly.
If not for the search engines but for your users, optimize the image size. Not all users are on high bandwidth, so optimize your image size and make it easier for your users to view the images.

Feel free to add your own points or questions on image optimization in the comments section. We are all ears

Tags: Alt attribute, Image optimization, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Marketing | 1 Comment »

5 Advantages of Long Tail Keywords

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Anyone who takes minimal interest in SEO or Paid search marketing must have heard the term "long tail keywords" and how good they could be for your business.As we have not covered much on the keyword research strategies before, I thought it might be good to do a short post on the advantages of long tail keywords as the search marketing industry is getting increasingly saturated and ranking for short keyword phrases is becoming and enormous task.

For those uninitiated to the concept of Long tail keywords -
"The long tail in keyword research is basically an expansion of a core, generic, high volume keyword phrase to include numerous combinations and permutations of the keywords and their associated or relevant phrases. These phrases individually are unlikely to account for a great deal of searches, but when taken as a whole, can provide significant traffic." - Wikipedia

To put in a layman's language, these are long phrases containing three to six words that describes some niche segment of your website and thereby drives highly targeted traffic typically in very less numbers.

Now if we would look at the advantages of long tail keywords, they are

Long Tail keywords are very easy to rank for
If you have a lot of long tail keywords the cumulative traffic received from all of them would probably surpass the traffic volume received from some of your main optimized keywords
Optimization of long tail keywords doesn't require a lot of link support and is primarily based on onpage optimization factors
Long tail keywords typically drive a very high conversion rate as they are very niche and are able to match the user query to your website content specifically
If your long tail keywords contain your main keywords in them, while optimizing your website for the long tail keywords, your main keywords also gets optimized automatically.

Tags: advantages, keyword research, long tail keywords, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Marketing | 2 Comments »

Link Building - Things to Check

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Link building has always been critical for search engine optimization process and there are various sources through which SEOs and Link builders get their links. However, more than the quantity of links the quality of links often becomes important and there are certain things that link builders must check to ensure that the links they get would actually be helpful for the SEO process. Here are some pointers:

a) Relevance: Links that comes from relevant web pages to your website are always given more importance from SEO perspective compared to other links.

b) Page Rank: Check the Page Rank of the page that contains the link to your website. The higher the Page Rank of the linking page the better it is for you.

c) Anchor Text: Ensure that your links contain the most relevant keyword in the anchor text. A link with your targeted keyword in anchor text is most effective for SEO.

d) Outbound Link: The lesser the number of outbound links on the page linking to your website he better it is for you.

e) Avoid JavaScript Links / Redirection : Check the web pages well to ensure that the link that you get is not a JavaScript link or redirected through another URL.

f) Check Robots Meta tag / Robots.txt - Check if there is a robots Meta tag on the page or if the site has a robots.txt file restricting the spiders from crawling the linking pages. If the pages are restricted from the spiders then it would be of no use to get a link from that page.

Tags: backlinks, link building, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Marketing | 3 Comments »

5 SEO Tips for WordPress Blog

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Wordpress is one of the most popular blogging platforms and while by default the platform is pretty search engine friendly , some easy tweaks can make the search engines fall in love with your Wordpress blog.

a) SEO Friendly permalinks : This would help you to change the default URL structure from www.yourblog.com/?p=8 to a search engine friendly URL like www.yourblog.com/category/this-is-your-post-title. Go to Options > Permalinks. Choose the option for Custom and use /%category%/%postname%/. You are Done!

b) Page Title - Default Page Title shows as "Blog Title - Page Title". Change it to Page Title -Blog Title. As your main page specific keywords would be in the page title search engines would love this.

c) Make your Post Titles Clickable - Some templates have it by default, some don't . In case you are using one of the templates that doesn' provide this feature, tweak the code a little to make your post titles link to your permalink. Incorporating the permalink in the post title makes it much easier for users who want to link to your content. Its a small and easy trick..

Find
[h2][?php the_title(); ?][/h2]

Replace with
[h2][a href="[?php the_permalink() ?]” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to [?php the_title(); ?]“][?php the_title(); ?][/a][/h2]

* note we have used"[ ]" where as in the actual code it would be "< >"

d) Title and Meta tags - There are various plugins available for Wordpress. Use a suitable WP plugin to create custom Title and Meta tags for all your pages.

e) SiteMap - A sitemap is always good to have . Use the Google Sitemap generator for Wordpress plug in to generate a sitemap for your blog.

If you can implement all these 5 tips successfully search engines are sure to love your blog. All you would need to do is post good content and get some link love and you should be on your way to success.

Tags: Plugins, SEO, Wordpress
Posted in Online Marketing | No Comments »

New Google SERP with customized results-SearchWiki unplugged

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Something interesting has popped up in the search results. A SearchWiki that enables searchers to move their favorite result to the top, or have them deleted/moved down in the SERP for that particular keyword search. It seems to be a good tool, especially for people who search for their results rather than using social bookmarking, or other bookmarking ideas.

SearchWiki was launched the previous month, and lots of speculations and rumors were doing their rounds in various blogs and forums. Personally, we are interested if this will have any implications on the rankings front. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is. For instance, if a large number of people are bumping up websites from the third or fourth page to the top, Google can easily determine and categorize these as authentic websites.

Now, this is something that will indeed help websites with quality content, tools, and services. We just hope Google has a way of determining spam with this latest tool.

Should there be concerns that the SearchWiki's will impact SEO? That all depends on how many people actually decide to customize their SERPs. It would be certainly cumbersome to customize the results for every keyword search we do.

For the time being we suggest to just optimize as usual. SEO can and will improve search engine rankings and traffic.

Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, Web Marketing, web marketing services
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »

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