SEO Rants and Resources

The importance of Site Maps

A very useful but often overlooked element of a website is the site map. If your site is less than 20 or 25 pages you may not need one. However, larger sites and sites that have problems getting indeed by the search engines can benefit from a site map.

1) Navigation purposes

A site map literally acts as a map of your site.

2) Conveying your site’s theme

Visitors get the "big picture" of your site at a glance.

3) Site optimization purposes

This allows your site to get crawled by the search engines.

4) Organization and relevance

A site map is an easy way to follow your sites structure when you add on new sections.

For a quick read, check out The Importance of a Sitemap by Kayem Chow

Cold Calling by SEO Firms

Well meaning people in the SEO industry sometimes go off on tangents about things that they really haven’t thought through or are just picking up on topics that have been written about many times.

Take for example the nice article I reference in this post. This well meaning person wants to advise people to never hire a SEO that made a cold call.

I beg to differ and here is why. As web marketing gets more and more specialized we have to look at the resources available to us. As we start to specialize in specific industries we are able to use some resources for more than one client without having to re invent the wheel. This increases productivity and reduces costs to our clients. This is especially true when it comes to linking and web 2.0 research; posting and developing industry specific relationships.

By the way, this is a well written article that makes excellent points. It is worth taking the time to read. The article has also turned out to be good “link bait” as several of us have commented, wrote about it and posted the article to Digg etc. 

You can read the article titled, .6 Tips To Not Get Ripped Off When Buying SEO Servicesspan>

The Secret Sauce of Google Success

What do you need to get top rankings on Google? There are many ingredients in the mix, but here are three of the most important that you need to concentrate on.

1.) Keyword relevant copy and content

 Whatever the keywords you want to get ranked in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), be sure that you have enough copy and content about those specific words. Which would give Google a reason to rank you in the first place.

If for example, one of your priority keywords is "virtual assistant software". Create a separate page or section for this keyword (at least a few paragraphs) using the keyword in the headline, the first sentence, the last sentence as well as wherever it makes logical sense in order to achieve the keyword frequency and "density" that search engines are looking for. Ideally, each page will only have one or two keywords and will be very focused on that specific topic.

Additionally, by including on this specific keyword page either articles, pdf files or news items about your keyword, will help you improve your chances of a better ranking. Give Google a reason to rank you at the top. He with the most relevant copy wins …so make it rich and deep.

2.) Can the search engines read and "crawl" all the pages and content on your site?

Probably the biggest surprise to most marketers is that the search engines are unable to either navigate or read most of the content on their website. If they can't read your copy, then it's not surprising that you're not getting the rankings or traffic to your website that you aspire to.

The only thing a search engine can read is words. Sites that are dynamic, or created in other formats such as Flash or Java often can't be read by the search engines. Even if they can read the content on your site, many times they can't navigate it properly or just bounce "off the walls" as there are no specific links or site map to tell the proper sequence or where to go next

Want to see what Google is indexing on your website? Go to Google and type in: site:www.yourdomain.com This will show you the title and description of the pages of your site they know about. If they are all the same or they don’t have a title or description listed chances are very good that your site is invisible to your target market.

3) Links... why they are so important?

Link popularity is one of the most important factors search engines use in determining where you will rank in the search engine for your keywords, and phrases, as it helps them to determine how important or popular your site is and what it’s reputation is.

In essence the search engines are saying "we're going to give top ranking to pages that have important and relevant sites linking to them".

Link Building is the process of finding related/relevant websites and receiving a link from them to you. Natural linking occurs when a site has good content that others will link to. But to get these links people have to know about you. It is a catch 22. Building links has gotten sophisticated in the last couple of years. Today you need a mixture of links from many sources including articles, press releases, social bookmarks, directories and social media sites.

How many links do you need to have? It depends on the individual keyword or phrase you want to be found under and how the links are structured. The search engines look at inbound links as a popularity contest but more importantly, they are looking at the quality of the pages that are linking to you and the “anchor text” - the "clickable link" and what it says about the page that it links to. The key to linking is to have the right anchor text on a link that points to a page that has content using the same keyword phrase.

You do not want to increase the overall number of links by more than 10-15% each month for an established site with history as this may trigger a filter from the search engines as an indicator of artificially inflating the link popularity. New sites have an advantage since there has not been a history established and the link building can be done at a faster rate.

Linking is critical not only with your search engine placement but it helps stabilize you positions in the search engines and delivers traffic directly from the sites that link to you. But linking is not a once and you are done process. Generating new links is an ongoing process.

In Summary, successfully implementing the above 3 strategies either through your own efforts or through employing search engine promotion specialists will deliver the "triple punch" and the knockout punch you need to get top rankings on Google and the other search engines as well.

Article by Terry Mickelson Founder of PageViews.com, one of the foremost search engine optimization companies specializing in B2B search engine optimization and link building programs. For further information as well as a free ranking report on your website, contact Terry Mickelson at 480-556-9752 or email tmickelson - at -pageviews.com.

SEO/SEM firm Pageviews Releases B2B Search Engine Optimization and Marketing White Paper

Everyday more and more people turn to the internet to research products and services prior to making a purchase. This is great news for the companies whose web pages are found in the top search engine results pages. But for millions of business to business companies this is not happening. Too many times, searchers are not finding the best product or service and are making decisions for their company based on the product or service they find rather than the best available solution. This leaves both the marketer and the searcher with less than desirable results.

 For many B2B marketers this is not acceptable but many do not understand how to improve their search positions. B2B companies spend money each year on traditional marketing only to loose new customers to competitors just because the competitor is easier to find in a search.

 There are two ways to get ranked high in the search engine results pages. Companies can pay search engines like Google to be listed in ads at the top of the results pages. The more popular the ad the more often it is shown. Each time the ad is clicked on, delivering a visitor to the advertiser’s site there is a “pay-per-click” charge. The cost of these clicks range from a low of $.10 per click to over $50. per click. While not complicated to set up, management can be time consuming and the cost of clicks can add up quickly.

 Search engine optimization is the process of modifying an existing web site to make it easy for the search engines to read and to index the pages. By changing certain elements on pages it clarifies the exact topic to the search engines.  Working hand in hand with these on page modifications are the search engines definition of reputation and popularity of the page. The reputation is defined by what the page is about and what the links that point to the page say about it. The popularity is defined by the number of relevant links that point to the page.

 According to Terry Mickelson, President of Scottsdale, AZ  based Page Views, “There are many challenges to reaching the B2B buyer at just the right time. For example understanding what words will be searched for at different times in the buying cycle. When a B2B prospect starts researching for solutions to their problem, they may initially search for something like; organize sales leads. The person who has a better understanding of the market may search for customer relationship management or even do a brand specific search; SalesLogix customer relationship management. If you do not have the right words selected you may generate additional traffic but it will not convert to leads or sales, wasting time and money.” 

 Page Views, Inc. a leading search engine optimization firm  The paper details how to overcome this challenge using 10 proven techniques developed for the competitive B2B online marketplace and is available at no cost. To download a free copy of B2B Search Engine Optimization and Marketing go to: www.pageviews.com

Google’s latest Round of Penalties

Over the past couple of weeks some popular and notable sites have taken a hit in the Google Page Rank pocket. I say pocket because these are sites that were selling links. Who got hit? Some very popular sites including Forbes.com, searchengineguide.com and problogger.com. So why the penalty? Google does not like sites that sell links to artificially inflate their link popularity.

After an initial round of penalties a lot of SEO companies were crying the blues because their client’s sites were penalized and lost Page Rank. Just when they were starting to think that the storm had passed Google slapped a penalty on another round of sites. This time Google went after sites that are involved in blog linking schemes.

This is what Google’s Webmaster Guidelines have to say about it.

“Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”

So why do SEO companies put their client’s sites in harms way? Because buying links and doing massive blog posts are the fastest and easiest way to generate links.

The truth is that it takes time and effort to create a solid linking campaign. No site should be totally dependent on one or two sources for links. A mixture of blog posts, social bookmarks, articles, press releases, directories and even reciprocal links are a among a best practices plan for long term success.

Using Google to reach your Target Market

If all it took was a good idea to make a web site successful, millions of web sites would not fail in the first couple of years. 

In reality, the web site is a very important component in the marketing of a business. For most of us who are selling B2B it is not the only tool in our marketing toolbox.  However, most businesses are under utilizing this tool simply because they are not getting found by the people who are searching for the solutions they offer.

Most ad agencies and corporate marketing departments take the time to carefully plan who they are trying to reach and painstakingly craft what their message is. They detail why their company is the right choice to provide solutions to the potential client's challenges. Many have a good grasp on when they want the customer to act by creating a call to action such as downloading a white paper or scheduling a demonstration.

Where many miss the mark is in the How to reach their on-line target market.  They drive people to their sites from Trade Shows, mailings, trade publication advertising, public relations and other largely offline methods. Where many come up short is in getting the free traffic that is available to them from the search engines like Google.

Search engine optimization is the science/art of getting your site found on the search engine results pages when they search for the words that are related to you or your offerings. The search engines do not charge for this traffic.. Search engine marketing is buying ads on the search engine results pages IE: Google Ad Words to get listings.  The price for ranking is as low as $.10 per "click" but competitive terms can cost several dollars per "click". Many web sites have not been optimized and they are not utilizing the tools or making the adjustments to the site that allow the search engines to send them free traffic.

Below is a quick 6 step assessment to determine if your site could benefit from Search Engine Optimization.

1. When the content of the site was created, were the words and phrases that are important to be found by customers and prospects woven into the copy of the pages?              Yes  No
2. Does the URL of your web site contain one or more of the keywords that are important for your site to be found under? (IE: www.yourcompany.com)                                   Yes  No
3. When you look at the pages of your site do the words displayed in the title bar (blue bar across the very top of the page) accurately describe the topic of the page, and do they change from page to page?          Yes   No
4. Do you have an online press release optimization plan in place?          Yes   No
5. Can you find yourself in the top 3 pages for the five search terms, excluding your company name, that are most important to getting found by your potential customers?          Yes   No
6. Do you use a tool to measure where traffic came from and the behavior of site visitors including conversion?            Yes   No

0-3 Uh Oh, you need help and you need it now. The longer you wait the deeper your competitors - anyone who comes up higher than you do for your search terms, gets entrenched and takes more business from you.
3-4 There is a lot of room for improvement and your site can most certainly generate more leads by getting found by the people looking for your solutions.

If you scored 5+ Congratulations! Chances are that your company is doing very well and has a well thought out site that is keeping hr pipeline filled with quality leads.

About: PageViews, Inc. PageViews, Inc. is a professional search engine optimization and marketing SEO/SEM firm specializing in achieving high rankings for their clients on the Internet's major Search Engines. PageViews, Inc. has the search engine optimization experience and implements best practice methodologies to achieve top placements for client sites. PageViews, Inc. is based in Scottsdale, AZ.  For more information, visit http://www.pageviews.com or call 1-480-556-9752  inquiry@pageviews.com

Search Engine Submission Scam - Buyer beware

Like a lot of people who make their living on the internet I own a lot of domains. Some are good and some are just throwaways that I have had for several years. This is not the first time I have ever seen this scam or several variations of it, but it is the first time I have bothered to spend a calorie or two to talk about it.

 Today I got a letter (USPS) delivered to my desk from the CFO, of PageViews.com,  who let it sit on her desk waiting to get paid for a while before she brought it to me.

 It is an official looking piece of mail that is an invoice from Domain Listing Service Corp. in Chicago IL. for “Annual Website Search Engine Listing” on one of my throw away domains. If it was not for it being for the throw away, it would have been paid. There is small print on the invoice: “This internet listing offer is provided to millions of websites throughout the United States to enhance their website exposure. This is not a bill. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated unless you accept this offer”.

 Being in the Search engine optimization business I had to chuckle at what they promise. Domain submission with 8 keywords / phrases to 25 major search engines. Quarterly submissions. Complete details are available at their website. This in it's self is a joke as it does no good to submit to the search engines without preparing the site.

 The “bill” is for $65. Instructing me to send a check or to pay online. I went online and found that there is no site at www dslcorp dot net. The online payment page is up and active at:  payments dot discorp dot net. I entered the “customer number” and the amount on their form and it brought me to a PayPal order form.

The domain Listing Service Corp. shows 27 N. Wacker Drive Chicago, IL 60606 but a search at the Illinois Secretary of state office for corporations http://www.ilsos.gov/corporatellc/ reports:  Your search for domain listing service, did not match any records in the Corporation/LLC-GS Search database.

The who is record for this company is dsl corporation 16420 Park Ten Place Suite 400 Houston, TX 77084

According to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, http://ecpa.cpa.state.tx.us/coa/Index.html Business Name domain listing service was not found.

It is sad that the SEO industry is filled with charlatans of all types. This one is bad on several levels. First the false balling, then the “service” the pretend offer and I fear, there may be some Phishing going on also.

Today, this one got under my skin and I have donated a couple of calories to the ether.

The high Cost of Lost Opportunity

As the search engine industry matures and continues to get more complex, we find SEO practitioners that are unable to keep up with the technology and stay ahead of the learning curve. This has divided the industry into 5 basic groups.

MetaFirst there is the group that still preaches Meta tags are the Holy Grail and that you can achieve top search engine results page listings simply by adding Metatags to any site and submitting it to hundreds or thousands of search engines. Many of these companies are sole practitioners who have created a site to sell the submission service and have a script for search engine submission.

The second group is of the belief that if you do your keyword research properly and understand what your customers are looking for you can write your site copy to exactly meet the customers needs and what they are looking for. The concept is that if the content is right people will link to the site and you will get found. There are cases where this has worked very well. The key is to impress the right people initially so they will spread the word. Most businesses don’t have the luxury of this type of patience.

Third is the group that says put up any old web site and get links to point to it.  The concept is to get as many links as possible and to control the “theme” of the link with the anchor text - the clickable text link on the page that points back to the site. Back in the day (circa 2005) this strategy worked and was called Google bombing. At that time entering the search term “miserable failure” in Google would produce the White House official site for George W. Bush. There is a very high number of offshore companies doing this today.

Fourth, you find companies that may have success in search optimization for companies that have sites already built correctly and have been online for some time. Much of the success of these companies comes from better distribution of the correct keywords through the site. These companies offer a choice of packages, “Silver, Gold and Platinum” that are relatively affordable because of the one size fits all approach. In most cases, packages come with an initial set up fee and an ongoing “tweaking fee” every month.

The fifth group is made up of experts who take the time and the effort to test and analyze a web site to see exactly what restricts it from getting found in the search engines. For example, many content management systems are structured in a manner that does not allow the search engines to index the pages of the site. Once a SEO needs analysis diagnosis is made, they lay out a clear best practices plan to optimize the site including issues with servers, site structure, content, linking, and reputation management. At this level, the analysis of visitor behavior, tracking listings in the search engine results pages and pay-per-click management is usually offered. Some are taking the process to the next level adding full services such as lead management and conversion tracking.

Like everything else in life, there is a price to pay. Some may think that the business they are involved with only merits a $20 investment to get submitted to the engines and others will understand that the true cost is not in the optimization investment but is in the cost of lost opportunity when the site is not being found by the people who are looking for it.

The author, Terry Mickelson is the founder of Page Views, Inc. an Arizona based Search Engine Optimization firm. PageViews specializes in affordable custom business to business search optimization and search marketing campaigns. Terry can be reached at 480-556-9752 http://www.pageviews.com

Increasing Your Page Rank

When a site has useful content, other webmasters will naturally place links to the site, increasing its PageRank and flow of visitors. When visitors discover a useful web site, they tend to refer other visitors by emailing or instant messaging links.

SEO practices that improve web site quality are likely to outlive short term practices that simply seek to manipulate search rankings. Means of improving web site quality include:

1. Clean, fast loading websites that are content rich, and frequently updated.

2. Websites that follow the web's simpler conventions (short and descriptive titles, easy navigation, no disabling of browser buttons, no keyword stuffing or other blatant SEO work).

3. Natural-looking link building: a few links from directories, very minimal reciprocal or three-way linking, no apparent buying or selling of links, no attempted PR manipulation (buying/selling/hogging), no outward links to less reputable sites.

4. No auto-generated nonsense content and no machine translated content, but original, useful material.

5. No technical errors, no duplicate pages, a valid robots.txt, a sitemap, and custom error pages.

SEO Necessity #1 – On-site Optimization:

These are the factors that you can control on your web site, such as keyword density, hyperlink anchor text, keyword proximity, and so on. This is what most people think of when it comes to web site optimization, but in reality this is only a small part of the equation. It DOES count, just not as much as most people think.

 

 SEO Necessity #2 (the biggy) – Off-site Optimization

There are only so many things you can do to your web site itself to help your rankings (I’m talking about the on-site stuff). And you can bet that your competitors are at least doing some on-site optimizing. Off-site optimization simply refers to the things that are out of your control that affect your page’s ranking. Namely, links. Who they are from, and how many you have. If you can perfect the off-site optimization for your site you will be at the top of the search engine results. Easy as that, but unfortunately it’s easier said then done.

Getting Discovered by a Search Engine

For a new site to get discovered by a search engine is not that big of a hassle. The new site does not need to be submitted to search engines to be listed. Now a simple link from an established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and spider its contents. It usually just takes a few days or less from the acquirement of the link to all the main search engine spiders visiting and indexing the new site. This means that it is good practice to have some means (such as a site map, or plain hypertext links), so that once a spider finds part of a site, it can navigate to the rest of it. Otherwise, individual dead-end pages must be found from outside the site. Any pages that are not linked to the outside of a site would have to have a link within that site to be found.

 

For those search engines, like Yahoo, who have their own paid submission, it may save some time to pay a nominal fee for submission.