Search Engine Optimization & Marketing

I have gotten really frustrated by phone calls and e-mails from link companies telling me they will get me top ranks for the broadest most irrelevant search terms for my businesses. I had it out once with the poor sales guy just taught the sales pitch of his business but didn't really have answers or a legitimate basis to state his claims from.

When these people approach, don't waist your time. Or if you are interested in what they have to say, tell them this. I can get non-competitive words searches on my own and that is not something I see paying for. Tell them you're interested in well researched searched terms that will give me increase targeted traffic, high click rate without the high bounce rate. Yes, part of the bounce rate is about your pages and if your visitors are finding what they're looking for in the first few seconds, but well researched keywords can help with this also. I'll touch on that topic in another post. All in all, if they can't give you a guarantee and they don't disclose how they achieve this, I would not go a step further with them.

These are my 10 Tips in Achieving GREAT Search Engine Rankings

1)  RICH KEYWORD TAGGING: Be sure to research and use rich keyword title tags and Meta tags. Short to the point or descriptive keyword title tags are recommended, however, not any longer than 65 characters including spaces. Keep repetition of keywords to a minimum and stay away from unknown acronyms. Ask yourself what keyword phrases you would use if you were doing a search on your business. Be sure to make your tagging specific to what the page is about and include some of your keywords somewhere in your copy on the page but be sure to write naturally and not to over stuff keywords.

2)  BLOG: Make sure to have a blog to offer great insight to what your business is about. Be sure that your blog links to your business web site easily. Network with other bloggers on blogging communities by commenting and giving tips and insight to other blogs relevant to your field. Keep up with your blog by adding posts regularly and be sure to write for your audience. Reference other businesses and include links of high ranking sites with your content giving your readers good resources to turn to.

3)  SOCIAL MEDIA: Take advantage of other Social Media as well. Be sure to comment on other forums, give tips and insight to other bloggers, join in on social networking groups, and upload your videos on video sharing sites.

4)  GREAT CONTENT: Offer great content! Its true content is king. I've seen many e-commerce sights suffer here, where their pages are just filled with products and specs and not enough description or other informative/useful information. Always edit your work and check for grammatical errors. Make sure to update content regularly and add new quality content on a consistent basis.

5)  VIDEO SHARING: Create and share a video. The popularity of video will only get bigger, as well as video search. There are many video sharing sites you could post and share a video on, not to mention "How to" video sites are becoming more and more popular. Even the search term "How to" and "How to Videos" is a widely used keyword searched by many on the search engines. To learn more about how and where to market a video, please visit GSS's Video Marketing page, "How to Advertise a Video for Small Business Success."

6)  BACKLINKS: Build quality links (backlinks) to your site. Refrain form buying links or resorting to link farms from non-authority sites. Be sure to build your links naturally and with high quality sites similar to your business. Participating in social media mentioned in number 3, contacting similar businesses for link exchange or a review on their blog, distributing press releases, writing and submitting articles are all forms of natural distribution and will help with rankings.

7)  DOMAIN NAME: Include a keyword in your domain name. Many businesses make the mistake of naming their company after the family name or creating some wild made up name that is hard to remember. Create a domain name that has meaning to your business and its purpose will not only help with customers remembering it, it will help rankings.

8)  HTML VS FLASH: Use HTML versus image links and flash. Spiders can easily read html and have a harder time reading anything else. Image links are not recommend and do not assist with your pages ranking better in the search engines. When images are used in the body of your web page, be sure to create title tags for those images.

9)  SIMPLE NAVIGATION: Make navigation simple for the crawlers. Make sure all your important pages are easily found throughout the site and definitely on the home page. Check all links and be sure to fix any broken ones. Develop a site map not only for users but another for crawlers. This will help with getting all your pages indexed. Site map generators for crawlers can be purchased anywhere.

10)  OTHER USEFUL TIPS: If you would like to learn more about SEO or how to rank better in the search engines SEOmoz.org is a great resource for you. I'm not so keen on this articls's title...but, "Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons," by Randfish is a great place to get started on this topic. If your starting from scratch and want to learn more about SEO, "The Beginner's Checklist for Learning SEO," is another great article to turn to.

Consumer reports on retailers have shown that reviews have a significant influence in the overall increase of sales. Customers are searching for reviews online, and if they're given the choice between two similar products/services, they will choose the one with roaring reviews over the one that doesn't provide such customer satisfaction on their products and/or services. Customers like to search, compare products and services, seeking the ultimate purchase for their money. They rely heavliy on customer reviews, in making the right choice, therefore, reading positive reviews of your products and services gives consumers the confidence to purchase your products.

Reviews can also help with Search Engine Optimization. Many keyword searches contain the word "reviews" on specific products and services. The more information and reviews given on your products the better off your company is in getting found in these review type searches. Let's give consumers the convenience of finding great reviews on your products and services to assist with their purchasing decisions. Be sure to include customer reviews and testimonials on your website. Make sure to offer up many reviews on Girl Shop Spot on the "What They Say" section of your Shop Spot page. E-mail your friends and family your Shop Spot page so they can offer a review of your fabulous products and services. All in all, a good review can only help increase your sales, so why not take advantage of the opportunity and list your reviews wherever possible.

Having a web site or web page for your business is nice, but how can you make it work for you? Be a shark at web optimization! Also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is the driving force of people finding your web pages through the Internet. I don't recommend relying on this alone; however, having your web pages fully optimized is one of the most important tools in web site design.

STEP 1 - Research unique keyword phrases that are specific to your business. Using unique and specific keyword phrases that are not as common and competitive will increase the chances of your web pages to be found at the top of the search results. You may still use common search phrases, but I recommend adding a more specific keyword. For example, use a phrase you're known for in your business. If people love your monogrammed children's towels, make that your main phrase. If customers love your custom children's window treatments make that your 2nd main phrase. Or combine them but don't make the phrase any longer than 5 words. To view some live searches to help you determine what keywords shoppers are searching for, you can use these tools: Excite Search and Wordtracker.

How it Works - Your two main keyword phrases will be built-in in html tags. Some important html tags are title tags, description tags, image and meta tags. Search engines read the tags to determine which web pages best fit the search criteria. When someone does a search, they most likely put in these specific keyword phrases to find you. If I was looking for custom children's window treatments, that would be my search criteria. I wouldn't just type window treatments in the search box, I would search for the whole phrase. When hiring a company to create a web site for your business, ask if they will perform search engine optimization when developing your site. GirlShopSpot.com was designed around optimization for your Shop Spot. When creating your Shop Spot web page, you will be asked to enter your "Shop Spot Name/Keyword Phrase." This name and keyword phrase will become the keyword tags in the html for your Shop Spot page. Eventually your web page or pages will be indexed by the search engines, which will be crawling your page for those keywords searched by users.

NOTE - If you're interested in local marketing and local searches on the Internet, include your location in your keyword phrase.  Example 1: Greatest Hair Stylist Ballwin Missouri    Example 2: Yoshi's Sushi Chesterfield Missouri.

STEP 2 - Pick two other keyword phrases and use those phrases along with your main phrase in your copy and throughout your web pages. Pick a different keyword for each page. If you have a Shop Spot page, use your keywords in your Shop Spot Description. Your "Shop Spot Description" is a short paragraph or two about your business.

How it Works - Search Engine Spiders will crawl your page for those keywords. The more the keywords and phrases are seen within a page, the higher the rating of importance for those keywords compared to other pages on the web. Be careful not to abuse or use those words too much. Just write naturally and use those phrases where it's appropriate. If keywords are used too much, your site or web pages could become black listed, which means your site will no longer be indexed.

Back about 8 years ago I remember the cost of an impression being very high. Companies used to pay a fortune on any type of site for banner advertising. However, times have changed and many quality sites have gotten away from the once cluttered web pages, filled with banner ads that would annoy consumers. Banner advertising has taken a new form in the Web 2.0 world and is getting huge value from its newer version of impressions.

Nowadays with specialized search engines and their ever more helpful search results, tag searches, and user interactive recommended lists---a link, a search result, or a tag is 10 times the value of older and annoying banner ads. These Web 2.0 impressions are bringing about new and useful ways to sell products and services to consumers. As an advertiser in the Web 2.0 world, an impression is not just as important as the click, it's even more important.

Why? It's the impression that leads to a click, if not today, maybe another day. Advertisers should ask themselves how many impressions they're getting all round. In other words, advertisers need to consider the overall effect of their online presence, from paid advertising to directory searches, tags, and more. Users now have the choice (and we are giving them the choice) to find like items---similar products or services---which may be complementary, with the small scheme of a single specialized search site. What this means is that you create up-selling opportunities via these methods---from tags, search results and user interaction. Companies have just begun to realize the true value of the Web 2.0 version of the impression.

To figure the value of an impression, calculate how many times your business comes up in search results with the use of web 2.0 tactics and divide that by the number of what you paid for those impressions. SEO studies have shown that sites with organic placement of 50 or below---which means the first 4-5 pages on any major search engine for highly searched keywords or multiple versions of more specific keyword searches---are considered top tier. So chances are, they are getting you your impressions, and yet, the cost to advertise online is still way less than any other form of advertising. So why not leverage the opportunity?

You can't have clicks without impressions, and the more impressions the higher ratio of clicks. Get the impressions and everything else will follow.

Why is it that good things can turn bad, mad, or ugly? Link exchanging use to be a relevant business on how to get higher page rank (PR). Now, I get spammed with 35 links at a time from the same company working for all these other companies wanting to improve their PR, not knowing the company they are using is spamming the link exchange request with other requests from companies that are not relevant to my sites content. I also get the wild companies requesting me to link up to a site they don't return a reciprocal link to. They return your link on a site with a different URL than the one they requested you to link to. All this madness has lead companies to tricking the system with spam, irrelevant links, and incoming links pointing to a different URL than the one you're found on. There is a win win situation. Exchange links with sites you think will add value to your site. But is that really a winning situation? That's what we're told anyway. From what I've learned, here are a few factors that affect page rank:

1. Great content and grammar
2. Title tags and fully optimized sites
3. The use of researched keywords that will perform well
4. Incoming links with different IP addresses
5. Incoming links from .orgs and .edus
6. Incoming links with main keyword anchor text
7. Incoming links on sites with high PR and less outbound links to other sites
8. Link pages with over 100 links on a single page are not really considered a relevant link

I read this foolish statement once in a group. "The only legit sites are those that you find and not those who find you, Amen." Sorry, but this statement is not a legit statement. It's an incompetent statement. There are many legit sites out there, or should I say competent, that are professional businesses and may possess better functionality and great user interface design for the better of the web than those that you find at first glance. Many of these sites are optimized, marketed, well run businesses, but are new, or for some reason, their pages haven't been ranked yet. And when it comes to highly competitive search terms, these sites will not come up on the first few pages for these terms. But they may come up for more specific search terms, and after they are aged some, may even take over the number one spot on the search engines.

Many sites are found by paid advertising. If they pay one month to be in the number one spot of search engines and don't pay to be found in a search the next, does that make them any less legit. I would take a look at other things, such as, functionality, promising representation, great customer service, and if they're knowledgeable in their field. Now, would this statement be any more legit? A site that does not receive any traffic can't be found. Therefore, it is not a legit site. Yes, you should question the traffic they receive to measure a sites competence. I would ask, what is your visibility for popular search phrases, paid or organic? If the answer is 0 and they are a directory or your thinking of advertising with them, it's probably not smart. But I have never come across a new, old, bad, or good site that has never received any traffic. The question there is, can they retain their visitors? Thus, a more competent statement would read, "The only legit sites are those that can retain their visitors."

I'm offering a warning brought on by experience. Online communities may not appear as they seem. There needs to be a red flag out there alerting us. We typically join an online community to meet new people with similar interests. Well, please make sure to research the community fully before joining. I joined one the other day and it was not what I had thought, to say the least. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to terminate my standing. Figured it out, but my time was wasted. Many online communities are getting bad raps these days too. They are turning into filth and creating a different type of society we don't necessarily want everyone subjected to. Not to say that everyone on the site falls into this type of category, but you never really know who you're meeting. How to prevent this, not sure, but hopefully one day, the positive, good natured communities will out number the bad, along with the people making the choice of letting their guard down.