Orange County Internet Marketing Advice by Darby Works, Inc.

14 Search Engine Optimization Tips - The Basics

Before we begin, it’s important for you to understand how search engines work. Otherwise these search engine optimization tips won’t make much sense to you.

So what is a search engine anyway?
A search engine is a computer program that indexes and searches a set of documents for specified keywords and then returns a list of the documents where those keywords were found. Now that’s a mouthful! Google is one example of a highly complex search engine built by hundreds of really smart people that has indexed billions of documents. While human beings built the Google search engine, no human being is involved when you conduct a search using Google.

What are keywords?
Keywords are individual search terms or phrases associated with a given document. The document could be a web page, PDF file, Microsoft Word or Excel document, image, or any other file type. People use keywords to find your website. You want to know which keywords your prospective customers are using so you can attract them to your site.

Now, on to the tips!

1) Install a Web Analytics Package for Tracking
Looking at web analytics is like looking at an X-ray of your website. You are able to see the number of visitors to your site, which sites are sending you traffic, which pages are most popular, what keywords people are using to find your site, how long people are staying on your site, which search engines are sending you the most traffic, and more. You can either purchase a web analytics package or install one that is free. Google offers a free one called Google Analytics.

2) Research Your Competition
This is a great way to help you brainstorm and get keyword ideas. Pretend you are your own customer. Go to Google.com and type in the keyword phrases you would use to find the products or services you sell. Click on some of the websites that show up. Try another phrase, and another and another. When you are on a competitor’s website, right click with your mouse. Then choose View Source. This will show you the actual website code. Look near the top and look for keywords in the <TITLE> tag, <META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” and <META NAME=”KEYWORDS” tags. Take note of which sites appear for your different queries. The idea is to discover which keywords will not just bring you traffic, but also targeted, motivated buyers who want what you have to sell.

3) Use Keyword Tools
Try these keyword tools to get an idea of keyword popularity. Keep in mind that the keyword counts are not exact. Use them only as a guide to get a rough idea of how much traffic one keyword gets relative to another. Three keyword tools to try are Word Tracker (paid), Keyword Discovery (paid) and the Google Keyword Tool (free).

4) Find Keywords that Get Leads and Make Sales
Find out which keywords are most profitable for you by running a small Google Adwords campaign. Be sure to use the built-in Keyword Tool Google offers to help build your campaign. Install the Adwords conversion tracking code on your site, and be sure to ask your prospective call-in customers what keywords they typed in to find you. Once you know your most profitable keywords, use them in all the ways below.

5) Keyword-Rich Title Tags
Write a different keyword-rich title tag for each page of your website. Make sure your title tag reflects the content of the page and uses keywords. Do not use the same title for every page! Your title tag should look something like this:

<TITLE>Keyword Title Here</TITLE> or <TITLE>Custom Cabinets by Joe Woodworking</TITLE>

6) Keyword-Rich Meta Tags
Write keyword-rich meta description tags. Make sure to write an original description for each and every page of your site. Don’t copy the same one over and over. The code should look something like this:

<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT="This is where you write a couple keyword-rich sentences describing the benefits of your business." />

7) Keyword-Rich Header Tags
Use your keywords in header tags. Make sure you have a headline with an H1 tag at the top every page, and use your keywords in the headline. The code looks like this: <H1>Keyword Headline Here</H1>

8) Keyword-Rich Web Content
Use your keywords in the text you write on each page of your website. This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many website owners fail to do this. Example: “We specialize in affordable custom cabinets for homes across the United States.” Do not use duplicate content on your web pages either.

9) Using Images Sparingly
Avoid using images where you can use text instead. The search engines can’t identify images very well. Yes, there are image tags called ALT tags which can help to get images recognized, but to my knowledge, text always works best. If possible, make sure your site navigation is text, not images.

10) Quality, Inbound Links
Get relevant inbound links to the pages of your site from other reputable websites. Use your keywords in the “anchor text” for the inbound link. Each link has two parts. The hyperlink is the URL to the page you want the site to link to. The anchor text is the visible text on the page that people see. Your anchor text should include your keywords. The code will look something like this:

<a href="http://www.affordablecustomcabinets.com">Affordable Custom Cabinets</a>

Contact other relevant websites and ask either to exchange links or offer to pay for a link from their site to yours. The basic philosophy here is that links are like little votes for your website. The more links you have from high-traffic, trustworthy websites, the better. These links carry more weight than those from an  obscure website with very little traffic. 

11) Make Internal Links
Link to your most important pages from within your own website. It’s similar to getting links (votes) from outside websites except you are doing it yourself. You probably have one or two web pages in addition to your home page that could use more traffic. Place additional links to those pages so that they stand out to the search engines. Put hyperlinks to those web pages in the content of other web pages.

12) Create Link Bait
Create “link bait” web pages. If your business lends itself to this approach, this can be a great way to get a ton of traffic to your site.

The basic idea is that you craft a well-written article about a topic within your industry. It might be an educational article on “how to avoid the pitfalls” or “the top 10 tips” or a “how to choose” article. Once the article is done, submit it to one of the larger social networks like Digg or StumbleUpon. Make sure the community to which you submit your article is interested in your topic! If your article gets enough positive reviews, it will get pushed to the top of the list, and lots of people will see the article teaser and click over to your web page.

You might even consider creating an entire educational resources area on your site with dozens of articles. Press releases are a form of “link bait” since you are enticing reporters and editors to visit your site. Use a service like PR Newswire or PR Web to get the word out.

13) Blogging Basics
Set aside time for blogs. If you have the resources to maintain a blog and it’s appropriate to your business, creating a blog as part of your website can bring quality traffic. Just make sure you have the time and energy to post frequently. Consider posting on other relevant blogs too, but make sure your posts are well written and informative! Don’t post a silly comment just to get a link.

14) Build Sitemaps
Create a sitemap. Build a simple web page that has links to all pages of your website. This purpose for this page is to give the search engines a quick access point to “spider” or find and index all your web pages. You can also create an XML version of your sitemap to submit to Google and Yahoo! There isn’t enough room here to discuss XML, but you can find XML sitemap tools on the web.

Well, there you have it. These 14 tips are by no means an exhaustive treatise on search engine optimization, but they should help you get started in the right direction!

Do You Know What "Social Search" Is?

A new search company called iRazoo, hopes to make search even more relevant by integrating "social search" elements.

“The real question here is, can a small band of guys uproot a big gorilla? The answer is yes. It’s already been done. Yahoo used to be king and now Google is. Relevancy won in the end of that race and we can be even more relevant using human intelligence and collaboration. Our goal is to have 99.9 relevancy within the first three search results.” That’s from Neal Verma, one of the Houston-based founders of a new search engine called iRazoo, talking to startuphouston.com about their latest venture, billed as world’s first people powered, points driven, search engine.

The great thing about the Internet is that it is constantly evolving. Even as social networking (Facebook, Orkut) has become a major fad, there is a relatively new trend on the block. It is called social search. If you want a single line definition, it’s a trend that is introducing a human element into Internet searches. If search engines are technology’s gift to knowledge seeking and sifting, using spiders and bots which retrieve information in a split second, they are now turning populist, literally, using people to rate sites and thereby influence their ranking. Verma calls it the second revolution of search. “We’re taking computer-driven algorithmic results and mixing that in with human intelligence.”

Read the full story on Social Search And iRazoo here.

SEO: Focus, Focus; Not Hocus, Pocus

By Courtney Heard, Abalone Designs

Anyone who knows me, knows that my biggest pet peeves are loud eaters, auto-loading music on web sites and my next door neighbor. Today we can safely add to this list web sites that are so ambiguous, it could be argued they are part of some cryptic conspiratorial code.

My company offers a free service analyzing web sites from a search engine marketing perspective. At least once daily, we are sent the link to a web site with no clear and apparent focus. It's so bad that we don't know what keyword exactly to talk to the web site owner about in their analysis. I always tell these people, their biggest problem is not search engine optimization (or lack thereof), it's focus!

The most important aspect of any web site in any industry, anywhere in the world is user friendliness. There is no straying from this. Your web site can be optimized for the most competitive keyword in the world, it can rank number one across the board and you can even have your URL flashed across the posing torso of America's Next Top Model on CNN and it will do absolutely nothing whatsoever for your business if your web site is not user-friendly.

Visitors need to come to your site and know immediately what it is about. You have literally just a few seconds to capture their attention. If they don't see what they are looking for, quickly, they will leave.

Some tips to help you make sure your web site visitors stick around and understand what your web site is all about are as follows:

1. Find out the language your target audience is using to find your site, refer to your product or refer to your service. More often than not, professionals in an industry refer to things differently than the layman. If you are using too much jargon on your web site, you will lose your visitor's interest.

2. Avoid start pages, flash intros, or extra steps before getting to your sites info. In this day and age, we've all been spoiled by instant gratification and we all know how to get what we want within seconds. If your site doesn't offer answers as fast as it possibly can, you've already lost customers. Flash intros and welcome pages are pretty and sparkly and fun, but pretty, sparkly and fun doesn't make money. Visitors do.

3. Do not, under any circumstances, ever have auto-loading music or sound on your web site. A vast majority of computer users listen to mp3s while using their computers, and now their mobile phones with built-in mp3 players. If they're listening to the new Jimmy Eat World record or singing along to The Cult, the very last thing they want is to have some cheesy sales pitch interrupt the chorus. The first thing I do when I hit a site with any sort of sound or music, including the web sites of my favorite bands, I leave. I immediately leave, no questions asked. They could probably pay me to stick around for a bit, but cold hard cash is about the only thing that would keep me around and being as the purpose of your site is to make you money, paying people to visit it isn't necessarily the most cost-effective route to take.

4. Use nice, clean, professional looking graphics AND text. Most web users tend not to read. They skim and usually will only go that far if prompted by something graphic that strikes their interest. As is the case with storefronts in the real world, what draws people into a store they've only just seen or heard of for the first time, is looks and what it's selling. Think about it. If you're looking for antiques and you walked up to a store called "Joe's Emporium" and the entire thing had tinted windows so you couldn't see in, would you bother going in when the store right next door says "Betty's Antiques" and has a beautiful display of some the prettiest old stuff you ever saw? No. Joe would be out of business in no time.

Your site needs to be clean, professional and enticing. Cut the bells and whistles, stop beating around the bush and give it to them straight. No one wants their time wasted or their intelligence insulted and no one wants to be chasing white rabbits around trying to make sense of your web site. Give them the goods, give it to them fast and give it to them with class. When you've done that, then focus on search engine optimization and you will find that your numbers in traffic will reflect nice and proportionately, your numbers of enquiries.

8 Content Development Strategies

I currently work with a number of freelance writers who produce keyword rich content for my clients' sites. I thought I’d pass along some content development tips I’ve discovered over recent months. As you probably know by now, creating new content on your website gives you more “real estate” online. It’s another way to broaden your influence and attract new visitors.

Write Quality Content!
People like to read good articles on the web. Solid advice can ingratiate you to your visitors, help build your brand equity, and create new customers. Don’t get sloppy, people!

Avoid Lousy Writers At All Cost.
Just a corollary of what I said above, but it must be said. You may be able to get people to your site, but if your content is lousy, you’ve not only lost a visitor, but you may have damaged your brand. That visitor may never come back. Worse, they may tell others never to visit your site.

Avoid Automated Content Creation Tools
There are a number of software packages out there that claim to create instant content. I would think twice about using any of those. Google will eventually catch on and filter that stuff out. Why waste your time for a flash-in-the-pan solution? Instead, write your own original, evergreen content, and attract visitors for months and even years to come.

Consider Writing Content for “Influencers” Instead of Your Normal Website Audience.
Here is what I mean. Would you rather your article get noticed by the L.A Times or the Ghost Town Herald? Get to know the “influencers” in your niche on the web. You’ll probably discover a number of bloggers in your industry who really carry some weight with their readership. Get to know their blogs. Become a contributor. Consider writing an article mentioning the blog or blogger by name. Tailor the flavor and style of your article to the blog itself. The basic idea is to get noticed by this “influencer.” If this blogger picks up your article or mentions it, you suddenly get instant exposure to his or her entire blog community. Now imagine doing that 5 or 10 times over.

As an example, I wrote a post a couple weeks back on Pay Per Click Marketing Tips. Someone picked it up on Digg, and I got 800+ visits to that post in one day.

Choose Your Content and Keyword Phrases Based on Your Company Goals and Resources.
This may sounds obvious, so let me unpack it a bit. Content is all about keywords. The keyword phrases you choose or don’t choose are critical to your success. If you think you are going to write a quick article about “music downloads” or “stock trading” and suddenly get a ton of web traffic from your instant #1 Google rankings, guess again. Now if you have the time to build links to those articles, blog about them, get them circulated and ranked well on StumbleUpon, Digg, and some of the other big social networking communities, then yes, maybe it’s possible. The key, however, is to write rich, compelling content that has the possibility of going “viral” and get distributed widely across the web.

Consider Keyword Trends
Google Green Bars: Use the free Google Keyword Suggestion Tool, and only write articles using keywords that have lots of green bars (good traffic, strong trends, and advertisers.) If you are going to spend time carefully crafting an article, why waste it on a topic that has little or no interest?

I’ll digress here by saying that, yes, some people purposely go after hundreds and hundreds of topics that get just a little traffic. They write lots of articles and get a little traffic to each one. Unless you have lots of time, money, or already have  access to rich compelling content, this approach is long haul.

Use the other tools like WordTracker, Keyword Discovery, and Google Trends.

Keep Your Articles Short or Long
Confused huh? After reading dozens of opposing views about this topic, I have come to the conclusion that it simply doesn’t matter. Length is not the issue. Good content is good content. If a 500 word article works brilliantly to cover a topic, then so be it. If 3,000 words are needed, then that’s fine too. The reality is that people will read it IF it’s a good article! Are you getting the point here?

Consider Outsourcing Your Content Development.
Here are a few companies I have worked with directly or have heard good things about:

• Constant Content - worked with directly
• WeWriteIt - worked with directly
• Associated Content - worked with directly
• CKMG - have heard good things

And the last tip?

Write Quality Content Always!

Cheers!

SEOmoz.org Seattle SEO Conference Review

A good time was had by all in Seattle at last week’s SEOmoz.org Premium SEO Training Seminar. I had never been to Seattle so I was really looking forward to the trip. I arrived Sunday night for the Monday conference, and stayed at a fantastic hotel called the Watertown – A Unique Urban Hotel. If you are ever need a place to stay, I recommend it highly.

The conference venue was on campus at the University of Washington inside Kane Hall. The fall colors were already on display, and a beautiful blanket of ivy was in its full glory up the entire side of one of the buildings.

The conference itself was a series of eight sessions that Rand Fishkin had developed. Rather than bore you with every little detail, I’ll just recap and tell you briefly what I learned.

One of the coolest things I enjoyed was how Rand explained how a story goes viral and the “The Digg Effect.” Basically you write a really good article that is deemed worthy by fellow Diggers. It gets lots of votes, and from there the rest is history. It was great to hear it from the horse's mouth.

When 37 top SEO gurus were asked, “What factors matter most at Google to get your pages ranked well?", here is what they said:

#10 - Topical relationship of inbound linking page
#9 – Global link popularity of linking site
#8 – Keyword use in body text
#7 – Link popularity of site in topical community
#6 – Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
#5 – Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure
#4 – Age of site
#3 – Global link popularity of site
#2 – Anchor text of inbound link
#1 – Keyword use in title tag

Top Social Media Marketing Sites

1. YouTube
2. Wikipedia
3. StumbleUpon
4. Yahoo! Answers
5. Yelp
6. LinkedIn
7. Flickr
8. Craigslist (Get into “Best Of” if possible.)
9. Facebook
10. Amazon
11. MySpace
12. Technorati
13. Newsvine
14. CitySearch
15. Wikihow

Write content for “influencers - the linkerati” in addition to your normal audience.

In order to reach the linkerati, you have to play in their space. If you want to get exposure on the social bookmarking sites, you need to be an active participant, contribute, and get known.

Get a blog NOW. Rand said he recommends getting a blog to 90% of his clients.

Be careful if you decide to try the paid blogger services like PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and SponsoredPosts. Many of the blogs there tend to be low quality and really won’t do you much good. Be sure to be very particular about who you select.

Search for good blogs at Google’s Blog Search Engine.

And last but not least, SEOmoz’s superfood to keep them ahead of the SEM curve -  tasty Seattle donuts:

The after party at Gillian's bar was a blast, I stood on my feet for 3.5 hours and talked and talked and talked to some really amazing people who just love what they do. I left around 10:30pm and rushed over to the Seattle Space Needle for the last elevator up to the top, but alas, I just missed it.

Here are some great people I met. (There were many more, but these are the only ones I remembered to get cards from.)

Scott Willoughby - campaign coordinator at SEOmoz.org

Garth House – an independent web development and marketing guy from Korea Town in Los Angeles.

Amanda & Anand from At Large, Inc. – a sharp, boutique interactive agency in Sarasota, Florida.

Miguel and Farukh from Solid Cactus, an amazingly fast growing e-commerce firm who has a strong alliance with Yahoo! Stores.

Jeremy Dearringer, partner from Slingshot SEO out of Zionsville, IN. Where the heck is that? Do they actually do SEO in Indiana!? LOL. Seriously, Jeremy is a brilliant guy and an expert at product channel distribution, SEO, and spotting new trends in the market.

Matthew Franklin, a passionate marketer and programming guru from Captures – online solutions for small and medium size businesses.

Carlos del Rio, founder and creative director of New Media Northwest, LLC – an expert and AB Testing and optimizing your website to sell more effectively.

All in all, I really enjoyed the conference, the Seattle area, and the new friends I made at the conference. I look forward to next year!

Thanks SEOmoz for a great time!

Seomoz.org Conference in Seattle...

Hi,

I just got back from a great 1-day conference by Rand Fishkin from Seomoz.org in Seattle. I'll be sharing my thoughts in detail in a day or so. Stay tuned...

Search Engine Marketing or Merchandising?

Dave Pasternack over at Didit.com, writes a nice piece with a different twist on SEM...

SEM means search engine merchandising (not “marketing”)