One of the top questions that I get from local business owners is in reference to the Local Phone Book Directory on whether or not to advertise in it. To be completely honest I haven’t used a phone book to find a business in many many years, pretty much since the creation of Google. So do many of my friends and family, the use of a paper phone book is pretty much obsolete with print publications not to far behind. Technology has pushed most primitive forms of communication out of the way with less and less people using snail mail and using much more email.
As times change so should businesses, but in order to develop a great brand you need to keep up with times as do the consumers you so seek. As a resident of WNY I am presented with the ever not-so popular Yellow Pages; err I mean The Talking Phone Book; I mean Local Edge, heck with it I will just use Google.com
How can you trust something if you use multiple names? When weighing your options on an already limited online budget (that is increasing rapidly) you have to be careful on where you spend your marketing dollars to make sure you reach the right audience you are seeking. Notice in a phone book that there is hardly any web development companies or web design companies in the phone book for these reasons. We just don’t use them, personally I use them as a call list to target local businesses that are in desperate need of an overhaul to their marketing plans. Using good SEO techniques you should be able to achieve high rankings without even breaking a sweat, giving you a chance at the business you are missing out on because you spent your budget on Yellow Pages.
For the businesses that still lack an online presence using a yellow page directory seems to be the only logical solution for your marketing plan aside from mailers and flyers or other print publications maybe even a tv or radio commercial. You could be listed within Google and be found by potential customers without a website.
email us to find out how.
If you want to learn SEO and expect to see immediate results you might want to check out some SEO Basics where you will learn SEO from the start.
Linking your site can produce very positive results or negative depending on how your link structure is set up. Link structure starts with the way your own website’s navigation is set, if you linked your site correctly, you will be able to get to any one page of your site with 1-click. From earlier articles on SEO Basics | Web Design, you will learn SEO on a web design level in where you have your main navigation, company information and so-on. Actual positioning of the navigation menu and what type of menu navigation makes a difference for the search engine crawlers and the people you are targeting that search for you. The search engine spiders and crawlers will follow all links, but will only associate links with text, nothing else. So make sure that your navigation “buttons” if any, have actual html text in them to alert the search engine spiders that “this link” is associated with “a service” or “a product”. People will associate links with what is presented to them, but if you don’t present it properly to the search engines they will never see it to click on it anyway. Text navigation menus help a lot when trying to apply SEO tactics to your website, a lot more then using just plain images with tags. If you use proper navigation, search engines see all your pages and so do the searchers.
Learn SEO | Linking Back to Your Website
After you have installed the snippet of code for Google Webmaster Tools, you will now be able to track incoming links to your site. Other websites, usually forums, blogs, facebook and other social media will have a link on their site going to yours just as if you were to link to another site relevant to the content on your website. You may start to get requests from other webmasters requesting to add a link on your site. Do this only if the content is relevant to the content on your site and the website or company appears to be a reputable company. If the content of the site you are linking to is questionable you may lose rankings for being associated with a “harmful website”, so be careful who you link with when linking. If they are linking to you, there is nothing you can do and you shouldn’t be penalized for this since you can’t control the content on a website other than yours.
Learn SEO | Linking Spam
If you were to add a bunch of links in a short period of time, it is evaluated for a spam check and I am not talking about the stuff in a can (although I guess it is equally as bad) this may negatively effect your linking thus having a negative impact on your SEO campaign. If you learn SEO properly, you can identify between the two and keep your link strategy spam free.
Many SEOs and clients performing their own SEO ask what they need in order to perform SEO. It is actually quite simple and you really don’t have to be that technical to implement on page and off page SEO.
First you need an FTP program, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard network protocol used to copy a file from one host to another over a TCP/IP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server applications, which solves the problem of different end host configurations (i.e., Operating Systems, file names).FTP is used with user-based password authentication or with anonymous user access. (via wiki-pedia)
I know this sounds complicated but all it does is allow you to transfer files from your computer to your web hosting server where your website is located. It is just as simple if you were copying files from a flash drive and putting them somewhere on your hard drive. The programming aspect of the website should be done by someone with extensive html coding experience, but you can add meta information and the proper html snippets of code to your website via FTP by just using a notepad application or a web developer software.
What Do I Need to Learn SEO
First off if you don’t have a computer and cable/dsl or better don’t bother reading any further, there is no reason for you to learn seo! Now that you have a computer, Internet access and an FTP program you are ready to perform SEO or search engine optimization. Anyone can sign up for a Google Account which then will give you access to all of their internet applications like AdWords, Analytics and AdSense. From their you can get the snippets of code to install into the HTML of your website. From here you will copy the code they give you and paste it into the HTML where they verify the code to give you access to:
Google Analytics– Analytical data compiled real time for you to view statistics of website traffic
Google Webmaster Tools– More analytical data which allows you to track links, set crawl rate, see what keywords are triggering your ads and even what pages aren’t working
Google AdWords– This will allow you advertise on Google search results pages for a CPC (cost-per-click)
Google AdSense– Adding this snippet of code will allow Google to show ads from websites using AdWords to share the CPC with you that the advertiser pays
These are just a few of the Google programs that will allow you to track the success as well as earn income or advertise using the Google Network of advertisers that you can use simply by having FTP access and very little html knowledge.
I must get about 10 emails a week from various companies telling me that for a nominal fee they can submit my URL for indexing to Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing along with hundreds of other directories and search engines. What most website owners do not know when they get these emails, is that they can easily submit their URL to these Search Engines free of charge. Another thing is if 75% + of the search share is Google, 8%+ for Yahoo, and pretty much the same for Bing sitting at about 8% what else is there to submit to? Most of the smaller search engines get their search results from Google, Yahoo or Bing anyway.
Free URL Submission to Google
So I watched a video once where Matt Cutts was giving a lecture on proper setup of web pages to be indexed properly in Google. Matt Cutts himself gets these emails to submit his URL to Google for 29.99 or 99.99 for a bunch of other search engines.
A website URL submission is just a faster way to get you listed in Google as if you were to sit back and wait for Google to find it and index it on it’s own. By no means does this mean that immediately after your URL submission to Google you will start appearing at the top of search results, or that you will even be listed in Google at all let alone at the top. It takes some time before your website is approved for submission maybe a day or so, then you may see yourself if you were to type in www.YourDomain.com in the Google search bar depending on the competition for your name or a variation of it.
Free URL Submission to Yahoo VS. Paid Inclusion
So Yahoo has 2 different types of URL submission. The first being the free submission to the search engine waiting your turn to be indexed, or Paid Inclusion which you can pay to be included right away with maybe even some prime real estate on higher search engines results pages. Either way, its a big waste of money, you are only being promoted to less then 10% of the search market share at ridiculous prices. I am not saying that advertising in Yahoo is bad, just paying to have it grace the search engine with it’s presence. I never personally submit my websites to Yahoo or Bing, they just find it on their own usually before I even see myself on Google after I submitted to Google.
So take responsibility and don’t waste your money on something that takes less then a minute.
The newest form of the “original AOL Instant Messenger” and social media hotspot, Facebook is becoming more and more of a user interface for people everyday.
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
Facebook Meta Description Via Homepage
What it doesn’t say is that you can play video games, click on sponsored ads, allow different programs and companies access to your photos and friends list for advertising reasons unless you click otherwise when the default is automatic to allow. You can also start groups and fan sites which other people see you approving or dissaproving. This can be a useful tool when starting a variety of different things, including but not limited to a new website. Starting a group can allow followers the ease of everyday specials, events and news articles without the annoyance of emails, snail mail or even the dreaded phone call.
Facebook Pay-Per-Click
Facebook has a PPC system in place that allows businesses to advertise for a cost per click, but when you think about it do you ever click the ads on the side of your facebook page that you are on? People do love the different social media games that use your friends list as a catalyst for using them in the new game, so if you have a web based game that you created, facebook is a great place to start.
Recently Google has been providing a little more information on Google Analytics, allowing you to drill down to find exact searches and how many clicks you are missing out on. There are a lot of requests for SearchandRank to decipher the unknown on Google Analytics. The best part about it, is that you can’t screw anything up while clicking around, the only thing you do is enlighten yourself and learn from your mistakes. When you really can’t make mistakes while accessing Google Analytics Dashboard, which is really where the bulk of the important information can be stored. You can really set up your dashboard to display the information you feel as the most important to you analysis of your website traffic using Google Analytics. One of the most important factors of SEO is tracking the data that is at your fingertips and making changes on the fly to improve your rankings and be ready to make any changes back if the changes negatively affect your rankings.
Submit your email address to SearchandRank and we will send you a Google Analytics “breakdown guide” at no cost, which is trademarked information and can’t be resold!
Business’s ask all the time if I can work for them full time rather than just to do the SEO as a consultant. It is not really worth the budget to hire a full time employee for SEO unless you are an Internet Marketing Company and have many websites to look after. Hire the full package, an IT webmaster/seo/web designer, the perfect employee has extensive programming experience in different languages but you are going to pay an arm and a leg for such expertise since the employee should have his or her own company with that much knowledge.
Learning to do SEO on your own could very well be the factor that determines your website performance as a small to medium business owner. Spending the time learning the basics to some of the more advanced techniques will greatly improve your chances of being ranked higher in search engine results page. Even having some of the basic SEO techniques down pat while operating your website will effect the rankings of your site. Depending on your keyword setup that may be in a bad way or a good way and how you apply the basic SEO techniques you will see different results. Which is one of the key ingredients in a successful SEO campaign, trial and error. This is what Search and Rank was founded on, using the best practices in different fashions.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Benjamin Franklin
If you are doing the same thing over and over and you don’t see any positive changes, make some different adjustments and look for different results. So take the time to learn seo, even if you were to spend an hour a day, could make a huge difference, but like always if you don’t feel like putting in the time, let us handle it for you!
If you want to learn how to do SEO, you really need to read. If you don’t plan on putting in the hours, don’t bother starting the project. A lot of times new website owners will go full board for a month or two, then stop what they are doing because it gets mundane and extremely boring. Well that is what SEO is, repetitive, mundane tasks that all together make a great and effective SEO campaign.
Pay to Learn SEO?
I cannot discredit things I have never myself experienced, but I probably wouldn’t waste my money on school for SEO only because of the nature of search engines and their ever changing algorithms. If something is a moving target, how could you teach on the past? Only to show bad habits that have been stopped, but if you never knew a bad habit, the times you do something that may effect your rankings negatively only in multiple examples or exploiting, not when you do it accidental or you just don’t think its wrong. My number one rule in SEO is if you don’t feel right doing it, don’t do it.
Anyone can do SEO
Learn to do SEO from the courtesy of your own home and for free, but if you don’t feel like doing it yourself, hire someone, hire someone reputable and has had some success. If you want really good results, let us handle your SEO, 33% of your revenue should be spent on advertising if you want to succeed. Internet marketing is taking over for all of marketing only because that is where the traffic is and that is where the traffic converts.
As you play around with more websites and you try new tactics, you start to see different results from different SEO strategies. In recent research, the use of meta keywords in the search engine results algorithm are becoming less and less influential in ranking your website higher on search engine results.
What happens if I don’t use Meta Keywords?
If you choose to leave any pages without meta tags, choose specific product pages. Ones with less importance if you are testing for your own research. You will want meta-keywords for Yahoo and Bing search results, those search engines still show a lot of credit towards search engine rankings. Make sure that your pages are keyword content rich, make sense and link to other relevant pages within the site and other websites.
Can you use too many Keywords in the Meta?
There really isn’t a limit to how many keywords you use in the meta-keywords section of your web page. Really you should use as many keywords as you see fit with the content on the page that you are optimizing. The content is really what produces the keywords for your page. The more text content that you use on the page, the more keywords you could use within context of the content. If your page is all over the place you really don’t have a chance of ranking the page, however if you repeat keywords or stuff keywords on a page your rankings could suffer as well.
When choosing to advertise your website on Google AdWords you need to first start out with a campaign. A campaign is a complete advertising group or advertising campaign full of ad groups, keywords and ads. Each campaign you create on Google AdWords has it’s own settings which can include:
Geo-targets of countries, states and cities
Demographics from age, sex, gender, income etc.
Day-Parting or showing your ads at or within specific times
Languages the ads appear in
Max CPC (cost-per-click) across the entire campaign
Choose which networks
Content Network, places you on relevant websites participating in the Google AdSense program
Google Search, for Google and their search partners
Mobile Devices
Daily Budget
Scheduling
Position Preference
Ad Rotation
Ad Frequency
These settings for your campaign can be changed or modified at any time and over time you will probably change these settings multiple times.
Google AdWords Ad Groups
After you create the Google Ad Campaign, you are then prompted to make an Ad Group. The ad group is what consists of the keywords and the ads associated with those keywords. From here you can choose your keywords from a broad sense to an exact sense. The difference between broad match and exact match is simple.
Broad Keyword Match is any keyword search performed containing that particular word or words in the search. If you bid on the keyword “steak” any search performed with that word in it will show your ad as long as you meet the min. bid requirements and have enough of a budget and have met the Google Advertising Policy standards.
Exact Keyword Match is any keyword search performed with only the keyword or keyword phrase in the exact order you selected. If you bid on the keyword “buy steaks” your ad will appear when someone searches “buy steaks” onlyas long as you meet the min. bid requirements and have enough of a budget and have met the Google Advertising Policy standards., if they type “steaks buy” your ad will NOT appear.
Keyword Phrase Match is any keyword search performed with the keywords you selected only in any order.
During your SEO campaign set up you come to a point where you brainstorm on keywords to target giving search engines something to rank you for. Effective keyword research will allow you to find that broad search terms like “SEO” will receive more traffic due to the broad range of phrases that can be made using that one word. A long tail search phrase like “Learn How To Do SEO” which is more specific in what the searcher was looking for.
The challenge of broad search terms in any SEO campaigns is the amount of competition you will have trying to target the same term. Using long tail search phrases you will find a lot less competition and you will find a higher conversion rate on the searches that do find you. Keep in consideration Google and most search engines do not recognize certain words as search query words. “?” “if” “for” “a” are examples of words and grammar that they don’t recognize.
If your website has a product or service to offer chances are you can set your website with keywords getting more specific as a searcher clicks deeper into the site. On your home page should contain the most used search terms and the broadest of all the terms brainstormed by you.
Many friends ask me, what can I do to help with the optimization on my site, or their site. Since none of them are really technically savvy, I have them perform the off-page optimization, basically the stuff that doesn’t happen on the website.
Some off-page optimization can be:
Link Building (with minimal reports/adds for a developer to do after)
Website Promotion (getting the name out there, talk to people, emails)
The worst part about off-page optimization is that it all is dependent on the on-page optimization and page content being accurate enough to convey the correct message from the off-page optimization.
Off-page optimization can be done daily to improve search engine rankings. The process of link building should be a consistent process in order to build a habit of forming relative external links back to your site. Blogging can also increase visibility and diversity of the entire site allowing the spiders and crawlers to index the pages for various keywords. If you keep it informative and relative, you can come up with hundreds of keyword variations all supporting the content on the site, thus increasing your search engine visibility.
There is more things you could do for off-page optimization but if you came for the free tips, you obviously wanted to learn how you can do SEO without spending any money and these steps don’t cost you anything.
What to look for in a CMS (content management system)
1.Be able to optimize page titles, meta-description, meta-keywords and text content on each and every page to obtain unique pages.
2.Be able to optimize each and every image (alt attributes).
3.Have a page for conversions (static “thank you” page for purchases) need to install tracking code on each conversion page.
4.Make sure pictures and images are smaller, the larger the page the slower the load time and the lower the rankings because of it.
5.Navigation rollover scripts, other JavaScript-based code, and all CSS scripts should be taken out of the code of each page and put into external files to which each page of the site is referenced. Doing this has several advantages, but one of the most beneficial is that any site’s keywords and content all move up in the code, communicating their importance to the search engines and boosting the site’s relevancy ratings. In other words, this can boost search engine rankings by improving the code to text ratio of the page. This is a simple and relatively inexpensive thing to do, depending on the total number of pages in the site.
* Important *
oIt can take a while for the search engines to index a site and the rankings to change for that site. For some search engines, the lag time between the work and seeing results can be as long as six months. Clients need to be patient and have realistic expectations (from sales) regarding the time frame involved with organic (the natural, non paid results) search engine rankings. If the business need for increased search engine prominence is greater than can be met with optimization alone, I recommend adding a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign to the marketing campaign mix to bridge the time. PPC campaigns such as Google’s AdWords can be set up in a matter of a few hours, allowing for immediate results.
Content Piece of the Puzzle (the design)
You get better results if you design with optimization in mind from the beginning. If you incorporate optimization into the very construction of your website, it is much more seamless and genuine than if you build your site and then try to tweak it for optimization. The most search engine friendly sites are straightforward sites built from basic, non-frame, non-Flash, HTML documents. Your site should also use basic HTML links (not links in dropdown flash menus or hidden in fancy animations) as these are most easily followed and indexed by search engines.
First, a site loaded with high-quality content of interest to site users will give them a reason to stay and a reason to come back. After all, the reason they came to the site was to find information. Second, you will receive the added benefit of serving up exactly what the search engines want – content. Search engines will have more information to store about the businesses and products; that information will translate directly into the ranking they give the site for related keyword phrases.
oEach page should contain about 200 words of text content increasing relevancy ratings and thus making optimization of the pages easier to monetize increasing the search engine rankings.
Prominence of Targeted Keyword Phrases – It is not enough to have your keyword phrase(s) somewhere on the web page, the placement and prominence given to them also affects your search engine placement. For example, leading off the site’s first paragraph with your keyword phrase gives it more weight than burying it half way down the page in the middle of a paragraph. Also, using larger font sizes and bolding the text can emphasize its importance and positively affect the page’s ranking for that phrase.
Using keyword phrase(s) in the <h> tags of the site will also improve search engine rankings. Specific use of just one type of header will not be as effective as using multiple <h> tags on the page.
Text-Based Navigation – Search engines cannot read images. If the site’s navigation system is done with images (most are), you will need a text-based navigation system that the search engines can follow to ensure that all the important service and product-related sub-pages of the sites are indexed by the search engines.
