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Is Google Giving Your Site Respect?

Nov
17
2011

If not, maybe it’s your fault.

A lot of people feel that Google is treating them unfairly when it comes to search rankings. If you are one of these people, let me be perfectly blunt. There’s a good chance this is your fault. You have to play by Google’s rules if you want to have a good chance of being found in Google (and while there are certainly other ways to generate web traffic, Google is obviously a pretty big one). That said, Google will also be the first to tell you that “no algorithm is perfect”. Sometimes they don’t get it right. But are you doing everything in your own power to darn Google’s RESPECT?

Is your site showing up in search results for its targeted keywords? If not, maybe you’re not effectively using these keywords. Google is on to keyword stuffing, and content that is purely written for search. Do not over-saturate your content with keywords you wish to rank for. That said, you can use them as they make sense without compromising the flow of your content. Think titles, image labels (alt tags/title tags/captions), etc. It doesn’t hurt to keep this stuff in mind as you produce content. Just don’t do it in a way that compromises the quality of your page.

Sitelinks

Is Google showing site links for your site when it appears in search results?

Right now, sitelinks are automated, but Google says it may incorproate webmaster input in the future. Frankly, I’d be very surprised if they didn’t. Still, there are best practices you can follow. ” For example, for your site’s internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition,” Google says.

If Google is showing sitelinks for your site, but you don’t like the ones they’ve chosen to display, you can demote URLs to let Google know which ones you don’t think are appropriate. To do this, go to Webmaster Tools, click the site, and go to “sitelinks” under “site configuration”. In the “For this search result” box, complete the URL you don’t want to appear as a sitelink. In the “demote this sitelink URL” box, complete the URL of the one you don’t want to appear. Note that it might take Google a while to reflect this in search results.

The Algorithm Updates

It’s not just about what Google has done in terms of algorithm updates. It’s about what you should be doing. But perhaps you have been hit by recent algorithm tweaks. If Panda, for example, hit your site, then drastic changes may be needed. Google considers your site to be of low quality. Perhaps a site redesign is in order. Google has a whole list of questions you should be asking yourself about your site in terms of quality.

Included on that list is “Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content.” Google said last week that it is testing algorithms that look more at this factor above the fold. Be prepared for that.

Google also just listed ten of its most recent algorithm changes.

Google Is Listening.

If you think you’ve done everything you need to do to make your site Panda-friendly, and Google is still not giving you the RESPECT you think you deserve, then let them know. The company insists that it is listening. Go to this thread and make your voice heard. Last week, they even said they have an Excel sheet of about 500 sites from this thread (at least, I assume this is the thread they were referring to). There is a person responsible for false positives, they said. You may have a legitimate beef, and Google, at least to some extent, recognizes this.

Are You Expecting Google To Be Perfect?

Google isn’t perfect. They know this. In fact, they make this point themselves all the time It’s why they constantly tweak their algorithm. They’re not launching all of these updates just to mess with webmasters. Google makes over 500 changes to its algorithm over a year’s time. They’re trying to improve the quality of their search results. It’s not in Google’s best interest to return results to users that aren’t helpful. They don’t want to send people to Bing, which is marketing its search engine much more heavily than Google. Whether you think the quality of Google’s results have gotten better or not, this is their goal. Google considers Panda a “positive change across all of its known measurements,” by the way. I’m sure some of you disagree.

What Are Your Competitors Doing Right?

Still, you might see lesser competitors ranking above you in search results, and that can be very frustrating. For some reason, Google is giving them more RESPECT. Do you think it’s going to do you any good to just sit back and complain though? It’s your responsibility to analyze your competition. Look at the page that is ranking above yours. Are there some things about that content or page that they are doing better than you? Richer content? A cleaner design? Google has over 200 signals. Keep this in mind. Look for anything positive about that page, and then look at yours and compare and contrast.

About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter.
Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum

Posted in Google, SEO | Comments Off

14 Popular SEO Myths Examined

Nov
16
2011

With so much misinformation about SEO having been dispensed over the years, it’s hard to know what’s true and isn’t true – making it all the more difficult to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff, as it were. Concerned about the potential harm misinformation about SEO can ultimately cause, I decided to compile an alphabetical listing of the most popular and persistent SEO myths, to either debunk or confirm their factuality.

1. Adwords

Since the arrival of Google Adwords, there has been an ongoing debate over whether or not running an Adwords campaign can improve search engine rankings. Ultimately, only Google knows the answer to that question for sure. However, to my knowledge, there is no credible evidence to support the notion that Adwords can improve your search engine ranking. If there were indeed concrete evidence to the contrary, it stands to reason, everybody would just start an Adwords campaign to boost their rankings.

2. Anchor Text

Although it can be other colors, anchor text is typically the blue, hyperlinked text you see on a web page – the words that you click onto take you to another page. For example:

free marketing tips

Okay, but is anchor text important? Yes, it is because it’s a crucial element in the search engines complex algorithmic formula that helps determine the rankings of websites.

For example, suppose you have a blog that reviews digital camera’s; the more links you have with the words “digital camera reviews” in your anchor text, the greater your chances of increasing your ranking for the keywords digital camera reviews.

3. Alt Tags

Alt tags are used to display a short text description of an image. It gets displayed when you hover your mouse over the graphic. But are Alt tags an important part of SEO?

It depends on whom you ask. Some experts dismiss the importance of Alt tags altogether, while others tout its importance. Personally, I used to léan in the direction of “not important,” until I read a couple of outstanding articles that made me rethink my position.

SEO expert Bill Hartzer makes a strong argument for the use of Alt tags. In his article, Search Engine Optimization: Why Image Alt Tags are Important.

“There is strong evidence that the search engines are now giving more weight to Alt Tags than they are the Title Tag or even an H1 Tag on the page. What?!? Yes, that’s right. You do need to make sure you use proper Title Tags and H1 Tags, but more SEO value for organic search engine rankings can be gained by using proper Alt Tags than using proper Title Tags or H1 Tags.”

And in his article, Why You Need to Stop Ignoring Image Alt Attributes, AJ Wilcox of OrangeSoda.com makes a compelling common sense argument:

“Keyword usage in image alt text is classified as having minimal importance by a consortium of SEO experts, but that doesn’t mean it’s worthless. It is yet another opportuníty to declare your relevance to your given keyword. The little things add up to big things together, so don’t ignore them.”

I agree with AJ. A lot of little things in combination do indeed add up to big things.

4. FFA Pages

FFA is an acronym for “Free-For All.” Here’s an example of an FFA page:

In a nutshell, FFAs are basically web pages of worthless links where anyone can submit their website’s URL for free (hence the term Free-For-All). One of the biggest and oldest SEO myths is, if you post your website’s URL on FFA pages, you will get massive traffic, as well boost your link popularity and search engine ranking. Here’s the truth: People who visit FFA pages do so only to post their own ads – not look at someone else’s. And any traffic you do get will be completely worthless!

In addition, FFA pages are considered both spammy and scammy, and posting on them could adversely affect your website’s reputation with the search engines – which could in fact hurt your ranking – or even get you banned. Why? Because in essence, FFA pages are nothing but link farms – and you know what Google thinks of link farms.

My advice: RUN, DON’T WALK away from FFA pages!

5. Header Tags

Header tags, for example H1, H2 are standard HTML elements used to define headings and subheadings on a web page.

Are they important? To my knowledge, there is no credible evidence to suggest that header tags have an effect on search engine rankings one way or the other. My advice: If you’re currently using header tags, continue using them if you wish. If you’re not using them, don’t worry about it.

6. Keyword Density

Question: What is the correct density of keywords on a web page?

Answer: There isn’t one.

Yes, I know this topic has been debated back and forth, but personally, I don’t think keyword density even exists as a calculable numeric constant. In other words, don’t worry about the correct keyword density. And don’t worry about counting keywords. Just create your web pages naturally, without trying to force or stuff keywords where they don’t belong. Then, let the proverbial chips fall where they may.

7. Keywords in Domain Name

Do keywords in a domain name help your ranking?

Based on my own personal experience, yes, having your primary keywords in your domain name does help with your ranking. To what degree, however, only Google knows the answer to that. But since Google uses over 200 signals to determine the ranking of websites, I can’t imagine keywords in your domain name not carrying some amount of weight.

About The Author
David Jackson is a marketing consultant, and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com

Posted in SEO | Comments Off

Using Google + For Business

Nov
15
2011

Google+ has been a useful business tool since it was launched. Immediately, people started following relevant people and adding them to Circles. People started engaging in interesting conversations and even video hangouts. There is clearly a lot of potential for business from a platform that lets you to connect to customers like this.

This week, Google launched Google+ Pages, which gives businesses even more tools. For one, they come with Google Apps integration. For two, you now essentially have a Google+ counterpart to your Facebook Page, and Google+ already has over 40 million users.

Need to know how to set up your Google+ page, we run through in easy steps here.

Google+ also has big ramifications for your visibility in Google the search engine, which is a good reason not to ignore it. When you put the Google+ badge on your site, you can tie all of your site’s +1′s to your Pages’s +1 to give Google a stronger signal of how much people actually recommend you as a brand.

You can also tie these to your AdWords account. Google has a blog post up about connecting your page to your AdWords campaigns. Here’s an excerpt:

This week we introduced Google+ Pages, a new way to get closer to your customers online. At that time we announced that you’d be able to link your Page to your AdWords campaigns, so that all your +1s — from your Page, your website, ads and search results — get tallied together and appear as a single total. We’re happy to announce that starting today, and rolling out to all advertisers globally over the rest of the week, we’re making this functionality available with a new AdWords feature called Social Extensions.

With Social Extensions, consumers will be able to see all the recommendations your business has received, whether they are looking at an ad, a search result or your page. This means your +1′s will reach not only the 40+ million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day.

Read the whole thing here.

Google also gave a presentation at ad:tech in New York, talking about leveraging Google+ for marketing. The company is aiming to address five key marketing issues with Google+:

1. Fragmented marketing

2. Recommendations that lack staying power

3. Comments, not conversations

4. Impersonal messages

5. Limited insights

“Google has never had a place on Google where you could connect with all of our customers and directly communicate with them,” said Google’s Christian Oestlien. You can do this with Google+ pages. He referenced the ability to connect all of your +1?s and put these recommendations “in a lot more places.”

He also talked up the Circles concept as a way for brands to address different groups of people to deliver the right message to the right people.

In terms of insights, he talked up a recently announced feature of Google+ called ripples, which allows you to track the social activity of posts. This can be very helpful for marketing your business.

Let me point you to some relevant articles to help you get better prepared to use Google+ for your business (we cover this stuff a lot at WebProNews):

Google+ For Business Discussed at ad:tech New York

How to Make A Google+ Page For Your Business

Google+ Pages A Must For Businesses, But Come Off As Rushed

Google+ Pages: 10 Things You Need To Know About the Terms of Service

Google+ Pages Roll Out Includes Google Apps

Google+ Just Got More Critical to Search

Google+ Pages for Businesses Now a Reality

Google+ Gets What’s Hot, Ripples, Photo Editing, Apps Integration

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.

Posted in Google, SEO | Comments Off

3 Onsite SEO Touchups

Nov
14
2011

“SEO is never done” is a phrase that is thrown around a lot, mostly because it’s true! However, when most people talk about the continuation of a SEO campaign, they are usually referring to offsite link building. SEO is about more than developing inbound links! Without a well optimized link to send traffic to, all your hard work offsite is just going to waste. Don’t let your onsite SEO go years before you revisit it. Here are 3 quick onsite SEO touchups you can do today to make sure your site is in top SEO shape:

Replace Old Whitepapers With Updated Versions

All industries change with time, some just evolve faster than others. If you want your website to become a trusted source of information for your target audience, you have got to make sure you are giving them the most up-to-date and relevant information at all times. That’s simple enough to do on a business blog; as long as you are publishing new content on a regular basis, the blog will stay fresh and useful. However, many site owners forget to treat their website’s resource section with the same care.

As part of a well-rounded content marketing strategy, you should be creating whitepapers, articles, videos and other forms of informational content for your target audience. However, these whitepapers/articles are not forever current. As your industry evolves the information in them becomes obsolete. Unlike your business blog, which may get updated every day with the latest and greatest industry news, these whitepapers can sit for years on your site, waiting to be downloaded. When was the last time you read through those whitepapers? How much of that information is still applicable today?

Writing an entirely new whitepaper is going to take a lot of time, research and effort. If you just can’t fit that into your schedule, why not just update your existing whitepapers? Some of the core information might still be relevant, but you can add or delete sections as needed. You can re-promote them as your 2012 version and give them a second chance at life!

Revisit Your Keyword Research on Poorly Converting Pages

Every page of your website has the potential to be a landing page for a visitor. This is because the search engines rank individual pages, not websites as a whole. It’s important to conduct keyword research on a page-by-page basis for that exact reason. The keywords you select should be an accurate reflection of each page of content. Many websites fail to convert because they target the wrong keywords, meaning they attract the wrong visitor.

Using your website’s analytics, determine which pages of your site are under-performing in terms of converting. Reread the content with fresh eyes and make sure the keywords you are targeting make sense. Did you miss the mark the first time around? The more you know about your target audience the more you can understand their intent when searching. For instance, “BPM” could mean “beats per minute” or it could mean “business process management.” The same search phrase is applicable in multiple situations! Is your website taking that into account?

It could also mean you missed out on important keyword variations your target audience is using. For instance, I run a SEO company. It could also be called a SEO firm, SEO agency, search engine optimization company, SEO services firm and so forth. People are going to search for the same thing using different terms. If your website only focuses on one of these variations, you’re alienating a large segment of your target audience.

Incorporate New Call-To-Actions

You have to make it very clear to visitors to your site about what you want them to do. Should they call your office? Fill out a lead form? Download a free tríal? Spell it out for them and then repeat those call-to-actions throughout your site. Every visitor to your site is going to have different motivations driving them, so you can try to appeal to those motivations by incorporating different call-to-actions throughout your site.

For instance, an e-commerce site could use call-to-actions like “Búy now and guaranteéd delivery in 3 days” to appeal to last minutes shoppers or “Spend $50 today and receive 10% back as a gift card for future purchases” to go after shoppers looking for a deal. The goal is all the same, to get shoppers to purchase now, but each call-to-action focuses on a specific benefit that appeals to particular shoppers.

About The Author
Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, a SEO services and social media marketing company based in Boston, MA. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis share his knowledge by posting daily SEO tips to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers. Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

Posted in SEO | Comments Off

Google + Pages A Must For Businesses, But Come Off As Rushed

Nov
11
2011

It can’t be smart to ignore the search giant’s network

If you’re ignoring Google+ as a business, you’re ignoring Google. Google+ is Google, according to Google. Google+ also provides Google Search a window into our social activity on the web, providing a view that it does not have access to via Facebook or even Twitter. Facebook may have the social network users, but Google+ is growing, and its importance to business goes beyond that.

Social and authorship are two big elements in ranking success these days, and Google+ plays to both of these. The +1 button, which we know influences rankings, is obviously a big part of the Google+ feature set. This is a signal that helps Google determine how good people think a piece of content or a website is, and now, perhaps even a business in general (it’s not a perfect signal, but it’s a signal).

Now, with the launch of Google+ Pages, businesses get to tie the +1′s on their Pages to the +1′s on their site (though this doesn’t seem to be working fully just yet), which should send a stronger signal of brand reputation to Google search. If only you could tie your Facebook page likes to it too, that would probably be a much better indicator, but Google does what it can. This is in effect why Google has to have its own social ecosystem – so it can have access to this kind of data. It needs that kind of data to remain relevant and deliver relevant results in an increasingly social world. That’s not to say Google can’t see when people like your page on Facebook. That is public data. I’m guessing Google’s not ignoring that.

On that search note, Google is also giving searchers easy ways to add brands to their circles. You can add from the search result itself, when a Page is returned, or with the “Direct Connect” feature, you can enter a “+” with the Page you’re looking for, as your query:

Businesses can also link their Pages to their AdWords accounts. +1′s there count too.

“The new +1 aggregation may also affect the auction on the display network,” says Pamela Parker, an editor at Search Engine Land. “Google has said it would use +1 data to better target ads on its display network, serving advertisers’ ads more often to friends of those who +1ed the ad or the landing page URL. Presumably, this new way of aggregating +1s for the brand as a whole will make this affect all the more powerful.”

Set up a Page. Local Pages have a little more.

To set up your page, simply sign into your Google+ profile, click “create a Google+ page” on the side of your stream, pick the category of page you want to create, and click “create”. Categories include: Product/brand, Company/institution/organization, local business/place, arts/entertainment/sports, or other.

“Don’t stress out about choosing the perfect category,” Google says. “Use the ‘Other’ category if none of the others seem to be a good fit. The core functionality and discoverability of a page isn’t affected by its category. Right now, only pages that use the Local business or Place category have different features. Local pages are designed to help people locate the business using its physical address.”

Local pages include a map of the business’s location, and include address, phone number/address, and hours of operation.

About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter.
Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum

Posted in Google, SEO | Comments Off

Small Business Blogging Tips For Beginners

Nov
10
2011

It’s no secret that companies allocate a great deal of time and effort to develop credible blogs that draw additional traffic to their sites. Unfortunately, small business owners oftentimes find themselves at a disadvantage. They might not have the experience or finances needed to establish a blog that will increase their company’s SEO — or so they think.

Step 1: Effective Site Development

If you’re setting up your first professional blog, keep in mind that less is more. Be ambitious but don’t bite off more than you can chew. Otherwise, you could end up with a blog that doesn’t engage readers. As such, there are two crucial fundamentals to designing any blog.

It must be functional and easy to use.

It must be organized in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Along these lines, the key to setting up any worthwhile blog is to always consider your audience. Make sure your site serves your readers in the best possible way. For example, the surety bond blog I maintain isn’t overly fancy or complicated. Instead it has a nice, clean presentation that makes it easy to navigate.

It’s true that it can take a significant amount of time and money to develop an authoritative blog that supplements your company’s website, but it doesn’t have to. For starters, there are numerous affordable web hosting companies vying for your business. For a small monthly hosting fee, you can quickly install WordPress and start blogging immediately. Using a basic WordPress template can be especially helpful if you want it to work effectively and don’t have

experience with coding

a budget for the project

very much time

You can always alter a blog template later on as you develop further online branding, but this is a good place to start when setting up your first company blog.

However, if you’re still hesitant to take on the task yourself, there’s another great option for you to consider. Contact a local institution of higher learning to see if the school’s IT, marketing or graphic design department offers partnerships with local businesses. These partnerships allow students to gain experience working with real companies and also give small business owners access to web development services they might not be able to afford otherwise.

Step 2: Effective Blogging

The greatest benefit of blogging is that it generates new content for your site regularly, which allows you to attract new readers and potential clients. When you set up a blog for you business, updating it should become an important aspect of your online marketing strategy. Search engine algorithms value websites that update their content frequently. Maintaining a blog as an extension of your site allows business owners to keep their websites current.

However, you shouldn’t establish a blog to shamelessly promote your business. Your audience won’t want to read a blog that’s simply an advertising supplement to your regular site. Instead, use your blog to educate those who are invested in the market, which will establish your company as an industry authority. This can be achieved in a number of ways.

Share what you think about new products and trends within your industry.

Explain new laws or regulations that will affect the industry you work in.

Help clients understand complicated legal issues related to your industry.

By establishing an authoritative blog and then updating it regularly with quality content, you’ll be able to maintain an effective online marketing strategy that can increase consumer awareness of your business and attract new clients.

About the Author:
Chief Editor & Marketing Specialist at SuretyBonds.com. Freelance Graphic Designer & Photographer.

Posted in Blogging, Internet Marketing | Comments Off

Internet Video Formats: Which is Best for Video Marketing?

Nov
09
2011

OK, so you’ve decided that getting some web video on your website and social media profiles is a great idea to make you more appealing to prospects and put your SEO (search engine optimization) on HGH. You realize that video marketing is a key part of your overall search engine marketing and social media strategy. Bully for you! Now onto the tech stuff. Video formats can be mind-boggling and vary depending on the equipment the video was shot with, the type of computer you use, and the final destination where you want to host and serve up your on-demand video as part of your video marketing plan.

So which is best for you?

Lorraine Grula provides these tips from her years of experience as a top shelf video photographer and producer in ReelSEO.

Web Video Guidelines

Depending on whether you are doing research to get started with web video or if you are making use of existing equipment and software, you may be limited to formats below:

* Raw Video Format – As determined by your camera or, nowadays, your recording software. For instance, the software I record SmartVu Video Interviews with processes raw video the best when saved as Windows Movie (.wmv). I have a PC based application. Your camera or software may have a different standard, especially if you are utilizing a MAC.

* Editing Standards — Your editing software may also have a limitation on types of video it will accept and types that it works the best with. My videos are material related, not glitz and glamour, so I use programs like Corel Video Studio and Windows Live Movie Maker. Most video editors will accept nearly all the basic raw video formats, but you’ll want to confirm.

* Video Platform — What type of video format works best with your online video platform that will serve as your host? Will you host it on your site? Take into account Adobe Flash for speed reasons of loading without buffering. YouTube? They convert your incoming video to Flash (.flv) for display. If you’re using a 3rd party, inquire about their favored video format.

Obviously if you have a mismatch in your video camera output and your editor, for instance, you’re up a creek without a paddle and will need to convert your raw video to be accepted by the editor. Avoid this, as every conversion results in quality loss for the video. Try to avoid too many conversions.

Resolution versus File Size

Look, with internet video marketing, you are facing a tradeoff between two things when recording, editing and finishing videos: resolution and file size. Lorraine describes compatibility too in the ReelSEO piece, and we talked about that already. The better the quality, the larger the file size (usually), and that means the longer the buffer when loading the video on your player upon demand (especially if uploaded directly from your site server). If you want extra clear quality, the first thing you need is a work-horse computer loaded up with RAM and a uber-fast processor. I am a PC guy and I had to get an I-7 Dell to accommodate recording Hi-Def video. My old PC (5 years old) could not manage the large files without Japanese Monster Movie style mis-tracking between voice and image and I was obliged to record at lower resolutions until upgrading.

The Main Video Formats for Web Video

If you ‘re looking for the best of both worlds and your hardware can handle the recording and editing, see this brief (did I say brief?) analysis of web video formats you’ll be using:

Windows Media Video (.wmv)

This is the basic PC video file format that comes with Windows set up for Windows Media Player. It is well-known, yields reasonable quality and a pretty small file size. Want higher quality? Record or finish-edit at a higher resolution and the file size goes up accordingly. The advantage of .wmv is that it’s standard with all Windows PCs and, if shot in low enough resolution, can really be small enough to share via email. I use this format for ‘SmartVu Video Interviews’ (http://smartcompanygrowth.com/smartvu-executive- video-interviews/) and then stream them on YouTube, and they convert without much problem with nice finish quality.

Audio-Video Interlaced (.avi)

This is the original video format from Microsoft and has a tendency to yield very large files unacceptable for sharing, but of good quality for master files. For sharing, most videographers finish-edit the file in another format to reduce file size. According to Grula there is some inconsistency with the codecs (tech video term here) depending on the recording device, making .avi not a great choice for small business video and novice producers.

Motion Picture Experts Gróup MPEG-4 (.mp4)

Growing numbers of video producers online are digging .mp4 as the format of choice. It has the H-264 compression codec which is considered top drawer, and is quickly becoming the standard output of camcorders and video cameras. For online sharing the .mp4 format is moving toward the universal choice and in fact is recommended by YouTube, the big fish in the platform market.

Apple Quick Time (.mov)

This format has been around a while and is standard from Apple Quick Time, but is not restricted to Macs. File sizes are big and quality is high. If super-tight quality is your concern, this may be your format.

Flash Video (.flv)

This is the most prevalent file format on the web today, playable in the Adobe Flash Player which is standard on 99% of all computers. Video sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. take your existing videos and convert to flash for streaming to watchers of the site. File sizes are small, it streams fast, and the flash player can start playing the videos while they are still loading which is fantastic for longer videos (5 min or longer). If you host video on your server, converting to .flv is almost a requirement for user experience. I have used the Riva converter to convert some .wmv files to flash and noticed quality degradation in exchange for the file size and speed issue; nevertheless, YouTube conversions seem to be very clear.

Tips

Here is my suggestion to small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to get into video marketing on their sites and social media profiles.

Record raw footage in the best possible format for your device. If that is .mp4, you’re one step ahead of the game.

When editing, complete the video in .mp4. Test to see if your quality is acceptable with no degradation. MPEG-4 is much easier to upload and move around. If you see a quality reduction, save finish edits to the same file format as your raw footage.

Upload your videos to a video sharing platform. I recommend YouTube. It is the biggest, gets the most traffic by far, and let’s face it Google now owns YouTube. If you’re streaming video on your website from YouTube or another site, which one do you think will get the best SEO results and page 1 positioning? YouTube will convert to either .mp4 or .flv and do a fine job with it, taking that off your plate.

Now you just need to learn how to use YouTube without providing 100 options for people to abandon your video and go somewhere else. I’ll tell you more on that in a later post.

About The Author
Is your Video Marketing not getting the prospects you want? Karl Walinskas of Smart Company Growth helps business SEO with Video Interview Marketing to spur traffic and build expertise and trust. He works with firms on Growth Strategy and LinkedIn Presence to get the phone ringing! Karl has authored Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership and been published in print and online a trillion times, maybe a billion.

Posted in Internet Marketing | Comments Off

Are You a Victim of the 5 Biggest SEO Content Myths?

Nov
08
2011

Publishing great SEO content is harder than you might think. After all, you need content that wows readers, teaches them something new, and convinces them that you’re a bona-fide expert – all while letting the search engines know exactly what keywords you’re trying to rank for.

Anytime you’re dealing with SEO content, you’re walking a fine line. That next article or blog posting you publish has the potential to make you stand out, make you blend in with the rest of your competitors, or make you look downright bad.

Making matters even more difficult? There are a ton of SEO content myths floating around out there. On the surface, many of them look legitimate – so it can be tough to separate the wisdom from the rubbish. In fact, you may not even know that you’re operating your entire content writing philosophy under a myth!

Are you falling victim to any of these 5 popular SEO content myths?

1. The Best SEO Content is 1,000 Words. (or 500 words, or 250 words)

This is a common sentence uttered by people who just don’t know a whole lot. You may be inclined to think that longer is better, or that shorter content will leave people yearning for more – but the truth is, there is no “magical” SEO content length.

Instead, the best length for your SEO article, blog posting, or sales copy depends on your topic. Sure, it may be easy to create 1,500 compelling, well-researched words about getting over a divorce – but imagine what it would be like to read 1,500 words about heartburn medication or pipe welding. Trust me, your readers won’t want to do it, either!

Great SEO content writing leaves readers feeling like they’ve learned something new, and it instills enough trust in you that readers want to see what else you have to provide. Sometimes, you can do that in 400 words. Other times, it takes 1,200 words to do it.

2. If Your SEO Articles Get Re-Published on a Bunch of Different Sites, It’s Duplicate Content

This might be the biggest SEO content myth out there! If one of your SEO articles gets picked up (either from your site, an article directory, or from a site you published a guest post on), it’s called “syndication,” not “duplicate content.” That’s because “duplicate content” refers to have the same content on multiple pages of your site. Syndication, on the other hand, is a great way to build links and get exposure.

Anytime you publish SEO content, the goal is to get it syndicated. That way, it winds up in front of the eyeballs of people who are going to do business with you.

3. Your SEO content Isn’t as Important as Your Backlinks

The high-quality links out there – you know, the ones that are going to boost your ranking in the search engine results – are not the ones that you trade for, or purchase. Instead, the only way to get those high-quality links is to give something that other people WANT to link to. That means coming up with SEO content that knocks people’s socks off. If you publish content that people can’t help wanting to share with their friends and colleagues, you’ll wind up getting a ton of high-quality backlinks.

4. Your SEO Content Has to be Updated All the Time

Actually, this is a half-myth!

Yes, the search engines like websites that are updated on a regular basis. That’s why your new SEO article or blog post can bump you up a few spots in the rankings right after you publish it.

However, that doesn’t mean that you have to edit your existing content. For example, if you have a great homepage that’s generating results, don’t change it just to appease the search engines. Instead, add new content to the internal pages of your site.

5. Optimizing SEO Content Properly Means Having a High Keyword Density

Of course, you need to have your target keywords sprinkled throughout your article, blog posting, or sales copy. After all, that’s how the search engines know what you’re trying to rank for.

However, if you use your keywords too frequently, all you’ll do is turn off readers and search engines.

The right keyword density for your content depends on the keyword itself. Some keywords lend themselves nicely to a density of 1.5% or 2% – while others can only be used less than 1% of the time and still look natural.

Remember, your readers shouldn’t be able to read your content and pick out the keywords you used. If your keywords stick out like a sore thumb, you’re not optimizing your content properly. Instead, your SEO content will cast a negative light on you and your business!

About The Author
A former award-winníng journalist, Nicole Beckett now focuses on SEO content writing. As the owner of Premier Content Source, Nicole knows what it takes to create content that’s well-researched, compelling, and strong enough to get results.

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Ending Social Media Marketing Confusion

Nov
07
2011

Consider this scenario: You know you’re supposed to get on Twitter to somehow promote your website. So you start randomly tweeting out links to a product or service page on your website. But who is going to care? Sure, you could do some Twitter searches and find people who are asking their own Twitter followers about a product or service that you may happen to provide. And yes, you could reply to them with a link to your information, but overall, is that really a good, scalable social media marketing strategy? No, it’s not.

For one thing, they don’t know you.

It’s likely that they may even consider your helpful tweets to be spam. They weren’t asking you for a recommendation, they were asking their online friends. Why would they trust some random person who seems to only be on Twitter to promote their products and services? And their thoughts will be confirmed when they review the rest of your tweets and see that most of them are similarly self-promotional in nature.

Sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone.

Surprisingly, this is a typical corporate social media marketing strategy!

You probably heard that you should be tweeting out your content without understanding what that means, or what type of content is even tweet-worthy. Twitter, and to a certain extent Facebook, will be helpful to you and your business only if you have specific content to promote on your site. That is, content that goes beyond just describing your products and services. Content that is interesting, quirky, funny or passionate. Content that teaches, makes people think or riles them up. In short, content that tells a story that’s in some way related to the products or services you provide.

The hard part is figuring out what kind of story you want to tell. Not to mention that you probably don’t have the time or money to tell it in a way that makes an impression. Again, you’re not alone!

I’ve run into this problem with many clients and potential clients. My SEO expertise has traditionally focused on the technical issues that often plague websites from being properly spidered, read and indexed by search engines. Once that’s all set, I’m usually done. I stay away from traditional link building because I find it detestable and spammy. However, in the past few years, social media has opened up countless additional marketing avenues that can bring lots of interested people to websites – and it can also help with SEO.

This makes an SEO consultant’s job much more like a traditional marketer’s job.

For example, earlier this year I did an SEO website review for a small company that compiles and sells gourmet cooking classes along with adventure travel tours that are available in various countries. It’s a cool idea and a great way to combine two passions that many people have – cooking and active travel. The classes occur in some of the most amazing cities in the world, and they are taught by local chefs. When I first reviewed it, the website itself had tons of technical issues that were causing duplicate content and other SEO issues. Thankfully, the client took my recommendations to heart, hired a developer familiar with her back-end system, and got most of her on-page SEO in good order.

But as I’ve been saying a lot lately, traditional SEO can only take you so far these days.

Traffic and sales quickly went up, but not as much as she had hoped. She asked me what else she could do to make more sales. So I took another look at her website and realized that there wasn’t much more to do with the on-page SEO. What she needed now was to start doing some heavy-duty marketing to build up awareness, brand, and ideally, links. So I told her that she should probably get herself involved in social media marketing through Twitter and Facebook. I really didn’t give her any specifics beyond pointing her to a few articles I’d written about it, however.

A few weeks later I heard from her again as she was wondering if paying someone $500 to set up a Twitter and Facebook account was a good investment. That’s when I realized that she had no idea why she needed to be on Twitter and Facebook, and how they might help her business. I told her that setting up the accounts was the easy part – it’s what you do with them that’s difficult. Her $500 investment would be wasted without the knowledge or the time it was going to take to get anything out of her efforts.

I wanted to make sure she understood this, while also providing her with some creative sparks to get her thinking about what she could do if she pursued this form of marketing online.

Here’s part of the email I sent her:

“Do you ever go to any of the cooking excursions yourself?

“I’m asking because you need something to be writing about on a regular basis on a blog (or similar) area of your site. If you go to some of the excursions, that would provide you with great content. You could detail your experiences, perhaps even interview the chefs and maybe even create some videos. There are limitless opportunities.

“If you don’t go on the trips yourself, perhaps you could solicit others who do to write about their experiences. Maybe you could provide a discount on future trips for those who agree to post about their experiences in your blog. The whole blog could be like a travel diary from various travelers’ points of view.

“There are surely lots of other things like that which would be of interest to your target market and bring more visitors to your site while also making it more interesting and keeping people coming back for more. It would also make it more link-worthy in general. I’m sure if you start thinking about this some more, you’ll come up with even more ideas, since you’re more familiar with what happens on the cooking excursions than I am.

“The Twitter and Facebook part is simply a way of telling interested people when you have new content to read (or watch). So until or unless you plan to do that, there’s no sense in setting up your accounts.”

I also told her that while I could help her to brainstorm ideas, she was going to have to be able to implement them or have someone else who could. One simple way to test the waters might be to hire a good copywriter to do telephone interviews with some of the chefs and write those up. It wouldn’t be quite as powerful as first-hand accounts from someone who has experienced the trips, but it would be a start.

Social media marketing means having something worth promoting that goes beyond your products and services. It means being creative, thinking about what would interest your target audience, and then taking the time and manpower to start doing it!

About The Author
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen

If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future!

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10 Surefire Marketing Tips That Will Improve Your Website Conversions

Nov
04
2011

Like millions of other people, I’m a huge NFL football fan (go Giants), and the one thing I’ve learned over the years is that on any given Sunday, the worst team in the league can beat the best team in the league. It happens all the time. Why? Because in sports, just like in business, there’s a very thin line between success and failure – winníng and losing.

And the team that executes their game plan the best and makes the fewest mistakes will invariably win the game. That’s not a theory – statistics bear that out. In sports, mistakes are the wild card – the great equalizer. You can have the greatest team and game plan in the world, but if you make mistakes and don’t execute your game plan, it will be all for naught. You will lose. Mistakes prevent you from performing up to your potential and winníng the game.

The same logic applies to business as well. Regardless of the competition, the businesses that execute their game plan the best and make the fewest mistakes will invariably come out on top. That’s why you constantly see small businesses outperform larger, more powerful companies with greater resources. It’s all about having a solid game plan and executing it.

Following are 10 surefire marketing tips that will improve your website conversions:

1. Have a Plan

There’s an age old proverb by Thomas Edison that famously states:

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”

Truer words haven’t ever been spoken. You need to have a plan before you start a business. Why is a business plan so important? Because a properly constructed business plan is like a roadmap to your goals – a GPS if you will.

Having a business plan will give you a much clearer vision of your goals and objectives, and will keep you on track and enable you to achieve your goals that much faster.

One caveat about business plans: They aren’t written in stone, and more than likely, you will have to change or adjust your plan multiple times along the way to keep yourself on track. That’s just part of the process.

If you need help writing a business plan, you can obtain a free business plan template from BPlans.com.

2. Focus on Organic SEO

While paid marketing methods are fine for the short-term, for the long-term, organic SEO (non-paid traffic that originates from search engines) is what separates the wheat from the chaff. If you can establish a significant presence in the search engines, it will give you a competitive advantage over your competitors. Stock your website with plenty of quality, relevant content and refresh it regularly. Also, concentrate on acquiring as many quality, relevant backlinks as you can. It will pay huge dividends in the long-term.

3. Develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Here’s what master copywriter, Michel Fortin had to say about a USP in his article How to Hook (More) Copywriting Prospects. “A USP is what distinguishes you from the pack. It increases perceived value, expertise, and credibility – without needing to state it outright. Just by being 10% different, unique, original, or special is enough to make you stand out like a sore thumb in an overcrowded, hyper-competitive marketplace.”

You simply can’t say it any more succinctly than that. Be smart. Get an edge on your competition, and develop a USP.

4. Be Obvious

Have you ever landed on a website and didn’t know what it was about? How did you feel? You didn’t like it did you? And I’ll bet you probably clicked out of there pretty quickly. Well, your visitors don’t like it either. Don’t let your visitors have to try and figure out what your website is all about. Make it crystal clear, right from the beginning. Be obvious. Having a big, descriptive headline or logo on your home page is a very effective way to announce what your website is about. Also, choose relevant keywords for your pages, as opposed to trying to trick people just to get eyeballs. Always make your keywords relevant to your web pages.

5. Install Internal Site Search

Studies have shown, you have less than 10 seconds to engage visitors on your site, or they’re gone. That’s why it’s imperative to make sure visitors to your site can find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily. But how?

If your website has more than one page, or has lots of content, install internal site search. If you haven’t done this already, take care of it now. Studies have shown a significant number of people use the search function on sites to help them find the information they’re looking for.

Studies have also shown internal site search definitely helps improve conversions. Here’s why:

If your visitors are able to quickly and easily find the information they’re seeking, they’ll remain on your site longer. And the longer visitors stay on your site, the greater your chances of converting them into customers.

So how can you add internal search to your site?

Just do a search for “internal site search.” You’ll discover you have a lot of options – both free and paid. Personally, I use Google Custom Search on my site. I’m pleased with it. It works quite well for me, but like I said, you have a lot of options.

6. Nurture Your Subscriber List

On average, it takes seven contacts with a visitor to your website to convert them into a customer. That means visitors have to see your marketing message at least seven times before they’re comfortable enough to purchase from you.

That’s why your subscriber list is so important. Even if your subscribers haven’t purchased anything yet, they are interested in what you have to say. Think about it. These people have taken the time and made the effort to opt-ín to receive your newsletter, blog updates, whatever. This gives you the ability to have contact with these people over and over and over again. Eventually, they will develop enough trust in you to purchase your products and services. And if you treat them right, they’ll keep on purchasing from you for years to come. More importantly, they’ll tell others about you.

About The Author
David Jackson is a marketing consultant, and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! free-marketing-tips-blog.com

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