SEO Web Content Writing Solution

Google is now providing it’s customers with even more advantages than before as they have announced plans to unveil the new Google TV product.

Now that Google is expanding to television with the appropriate corresponding technology, supposedly coming in the Fall of 2010 (This year! – They should be increasing their audience even more and word is that all pay per click ads that are currently running on search engine result pages will also be displayed on Google TV.

Getting more for your buck is apparently one of the side effects now of using PPC services with Google as they attempt to better their product offering line for their Internet searching public and in turn, also providing better results for client companies who use Google Adwords/PPC services.

Call (832) 884-1330 to receive PPC services today!

Google Puts Emphasis on Website Speed

Google has a blog. Did you know this?  One particularly informative Google blog is – googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

At this link: Website Speed is Important in SEO you will find valuable information regarding the importance that Google places on website speed for search engine positioning as they are constantly moving forward in their diligent attempt to provide the best user experience for all Internet searchers.

They mention that 1/2 a second is the loading time that they like to see.

This is one reason why I caution my client companies regarding videos on their home page.  Since the home page has the priority among the pages of your website, you want to especially be certain that your home page loads incredibly fast! Some videos do not bog down the system and create a slower loading speed, however, other videos are cataclysmic to the success of your SEO campaign.

Be very careful when you are attempting to move forward in your campaign with video usage that you don’t slow down your site with home page videos that can kill your speed and kill your Google ranking/SERP.

SEO advice is provided in abundance online. One of the issues with SEO advice that you will find however, is the strategic exclusion of very important details that could make your life so much easier when attempting to optimize your website.

One recent article that I read from a supposed “SEO Guru” actually encouraged business owners to “brainstorm” regarding key phrase ideas to use for targeting their online marketing campaign.  This is very cruel advice because that is directing people to waste countless hours of time thinking about what people might be looking up online, when they could simply use any number of free tools to know for a fact exactly what specific audiences actually are searching online.

How Rude!

Indented Listings in Google

Just read an interesting article about indented listings in Google and ways that sometimes achieving this can bring down your positioning on the original posts.  The article provided practical information about the importance of having variety in the different blog posts and articles that you have for your websites in terms of using relevant phrases in your titles and h-tags, but perhaps not using the exact same words in those titles and such that you used in the other article.  One way to target your older content to achieve more reads might be to use anchor text in the body of the new blog or article that matches the key phrase that is displayed in the title of the original post, but making sure that the title is actually different.

At any rate, I found the article to be informative and interesting and I posted a comment.  This was my comment:

“Thank you for this info! Interesting thought that you lose a higher space on the Google page, but you also get a higher percentage of the page real estate…which would not necessarily be a terrible thing if you weren’t already in the top 3, however, that gets touchy because of the great benefit of being in the top 3 category… Variations of terms for some reason does seem to make the search engines regard the content as more unique however…. Sometimes I think we SEO people are forced to worry more about positioning than actual ROI effect we are providing to the client by targeting the variety of key phrases in both the long and short terms that will actually get the attention of more buyers…and while branding is of course, important, it has definitely been proven that branding doesn’t actually increase sales a large percentage of the time…just knowing a product or company exists no longer motivates us to buy from that company the way it did perhaps in the 50s – 80s…Also, I think the idea of Google loving fresh content may be misinterpreted…really, isn’t it all about just providing the latest and most relevant results? If a page shows up as being newly published, it then falls into that category of latest and that’s what searchers want and Google’s bottom line is always giving Internet searchers what they want….Not that they have perfected that by any means and until they do, we SEO people are going to have to keep dealing with outrageously extreme Google algorithm changes I believe….”

Additionally, I am putting my business phone here on this page as I will be putting it on the rest of my posts from now on… I stopped putting my phone number on here for a while because I have a waiting list for SEO clients and so am just attempting to continue to provide good info and keep my website active, without trying to encourage the public to call me for services, although I do sometimes have openings and I always have the ability to refer potential clients to other exceptional SEO companies, so always feel free to call (832) 884-1330  for SEO Information or assistance.

Internal Link Structure: Build a Strong Foundation

Internal link structure – For some reason, this is a topic that is not discussed as thoroughly as it ought to be among SEO circles and between business owners and their SEO companies.

An internal link structure is the network of links that you have within your website directing pages of your website to other pages within your website for a variety of purposes.

One of the biggest mistakes companies have made through the years is to put these internal links as hyperlinks from one page to the next over the phrases “click here” and “contact us” and “more info” and so on….

What is being missed when doing this is a huge opportunity for assistance in online positioning….one of the most important aspects of SEO.

Take Advantage of Every Opportunity for Online Positioning Increases

Each page of the website is an important opportunity to build your Google and Alexa rank.  Every single page can provide power for your website in search engines, leading to increased exposure, branding and ultimately, lead generation in order to grow your business through increased sales.

While there are many aspects of achieving increased sales, the bottom-line is that the customer first has to be able to find you online.  Next, you need call to action content.  Content is still king in cyberspace, but the way that you set up that content is a vital aspect of making it as powerful as it could be.

Use your web content to develop anchor text.  Some will attempt to tell you that key phrase density is no longer very important.  This is not necessarily true.  However, while key phrase density within your web pages through content, alt text, h-tags and titles is important, it is also extremely important that you turn some of those key phrases into anchor text so that they will better stand out to the search engine companies as words that heavily connect to the information you are providing the consumer public.

Creating a strong internal link structure as the foundation of your business website is one important way to develop the anchor text that you need in order to achieve desired online positioning.

Another important aspect of the internal link structure is that it shows your site is easily navigated for the ease of public usage.

There are many, many pages that are created in websites that no one bothers to link to.  You have the opportunity to provide links for yourself throughout your very own web pages.

If you do a link search for your website in Google, you will find that at times, your own internal links actually are providing you with credit as backlinks….Strange, but true fact.

Your Business Website is an E-Book

Every web page is basically a website, although attached to the same root domain and held within the same server files.

Creating many new pages creates a robust appearance for your root domain and you can even think of your root domain as almost being the name of a book or the cover of your book.  The pages in your website are like the pages within the book.  In SEO you are attempting to let the search engine companies know that your book is the most resourceful, modern and updated book on each particular topic.

You also want to let the consumer public know that they can visit your website at any time and find relatively recent information, so that they are not wasting their time during their Internet searches when they click on your link or read your “book.”

Your business website should basically be an illustrated, article compilation e-book.

There are firefox add-ons that can help you to look at your website in much the same way as the search engines look at your business website.  When you look at your website through the eyes of the search engine company, it is a very basic, simply way to develop a better understanding of just what your website looks like and can help you to comprehend some points you may need to adjust.

Use Relevant Key Phrases for Online Power

If your website has words such as “click here” that are hyperlinked, then that is telling the search engine companies that when their consumers search for the phrase “click here” that your website is among the millions or billions that they ought to bring up in the search results.  If you want to come up at the top of those search result listings, then you had better have about a million pages in your root domain folder, all with the phrase “click here” linked in them.  Will that increase your sales or put you in front of the eyes of your potential customers when they are performing a key phrase query relevant to the products and services that you offer??

Take advantage of opportunities to link to new pages after you have created them so they become as powerful as the first few pages that you created.  Make sure that you demonstrate what the pages you are linking to are actually about or regarding by using key phrases that you want the search engine companies to display your web pages under in search engine result listings.

Internal links, or hyperlinked key phrases in your web page will help to provide credence to the fact that not only is the page you are linking from about this particular topic, but also that the pages you are linking to are about that topic as well.

Remember that while content may be king, so is relevancy.

***Alicia Crowder is the owner of SEO Web Content Writing Solution.  Her catch phrase: “Turn Your Business Website into a Lead Generating Machine”***

Additional Commercial Links:

Houston Shelving Company

Wedding Photographers in Houston

Wedding Dress

Insurance Quotes

Window Insulation

Laptop Security Carts

The Art of Give and Take in SEO

Ah! The art of give and take in SEO.  There are a lot of methods that people use in attempting to get their business website to rank higher in Google search engines.  One of these methods is through link building. Link building includes both internal link building (often overlooked by businesses and SEO companies alike) and External link building, i.e. back-linking.

Every SEO campaign should be somewhat unique based upon the current ranking of a website, the popularity of a website, the type of industry and the geographic for that industry, including regional vs. national campaign needs and so on.

All of these matters should be taken into consideration, to list only a handful, when initializing an SEO strategy.  Yes, there are many, many more aspects that should be taken into consideration, such as how competitive the market currently is for that industry and the productive key terms, etc….but this is not an all-inclusive list by any means for this specific article.

Building an Internal Link Structure

Power is provided your Google page ranking status via links that are coming INWARD. This means that it is extremely important to build a strong internal link structure and to receive back-links from other websites.  The internal links also create a number of additional benefits for your online positioning campaign.

Search engine companies will look at your internal linking to determine how high of a placement you should receive under specific key phrases.  Internal linking also adds ease of website navigation. Internal linking is providing your own links to other pages of your website from the various pages of your website.  You cannot have a strong internal link structure if you do not have a variety of pages on your website, nor can you receive very good positioning from a 1-3 page website for the most part.

Some people would tell you that you should never link out from your website to another company website because of the loss of “link juice.”  This is true in some ways, but not entirely.

The art of give and take in SEO involves the process of making your website a highly informative website. It involves partnering up with other companies to join forces in achieving mutual benefits. Be very cautious, however, regarding reciprocal link requests, as this is generally not a good choice for your online positioning.  If a business website with a higher page ranking than your website would like a reciprocal link and if you feel confident that they will both link to you and are a credible company and source for information, then by all means….link up!!

However, the majority of cases are simply other websites attempting to get your “link juice” for their own benefit.

All of that being said, there are actually some very good reasons, beyond that listed above, to link out from your website to other websites.  However, your particular industry or SEO strategy may not be one that benefits best from linking out.  Talk with your SEO provider to ensure that you are making the right choice when linking out to another company’s website.

The primary reason that having outbound links can be good for your website would be to create an excellent resource for your readers.  If your business website becomes known as a good place to find information and easily access a number of links to become particularly informed on a specific topic, then that can help your business via increased visits and popularity.  You may want to consider restricting your resource provisions to one page and simply linking to the resource page from the other pages in your website though, so that you are not focusing too  much of your energy on that particular aspect of your SEO strategy and are simultaneously providing additional strength to your own web pages.

Back-linking to Your Website

The more back-links you can get coming in to your website, the better.  All links are not created equally however, and appearing to have purchased from a link farm does not do you any good service whatsoever…..quite the contrary.

However, if relevant websites make up a large percentage of your back-links and if you can actually get people to back-link to your website mentioning how great you are….That totally rocks!

When you check out the number of links going back to some of the very highly listed websites on Google and in other search engines (Google holds more than 65% of the search engine activity and is currently the best choice to optimize for.) you will discover that these websites often have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of back-links.

Sometimes give and take is required.  Sometimes you will truly have to read other people’s articles and web pages in order to fully understand them and connect with them in a sufficient way, doing your part to receive the credible back-links that you really need.

If you focus only on yourself…and make that obvious, you will not be generating any concern from others or encouraging them to give a little to you.  If you are truly involved with others, you have a much greater opportunity to receive quality back-links than via any other way.  Having the help of a good SEO firm who knows how to get involved with others as well is particularly useful.

Remember, have the smarts to use your resources wisely is more effective than just being smart in general and trying to do everything yourself.  You will generally receive better results, have a better life with more quality time included in it, meaning having a better family and personal life and you will usually spend less money as well in the long run.

Leverage your resources, connect with others, build your link structures, carefully analyze your SEO strategy and remember that every aspect of a successful online marketing campaign is an ongoing process that should not end until you decide you no longer need to be in business….and then, of course, even after that, you should find ways to show your gratitude to those who helped you when you were “in the game.”

******The Art of Give and Take in SEO – This article only touched on a few points for this topic, but was hopefully informative and helpful.  The author, Alicia Crowder, enjoys participating in coopetition and providing assistance where she can to other individuals and businesses.  If you have a question, please don’t hesitate to ask!******

Web Content

February 2010 Search Engine Company Statistics

February 2010 search engine company statistics show that Google is still in the lead by far!

Google continues its reign as King of the search engine industry while holding more than 65% of the recorded online searches.  At the very bottom of the top 10 search engine company list is Whitepages with only 0.3% of the searches.

Yahoo Search came in 2nd place during this month of February 2010, with 2% more than Bing, demonstrating that even with all that money that Bill Gates has shoveled into once again attempting to compete in the online arena, Microsoft has still not quite figured out what they are doing wrong.  Perhaps it could simply be a matter of Google having too many satisfied customers with no reason to change, but then, why can’t Bing seem to even steal Yahoo’s customer base more effectively?

All of the search engine companies below Yahoo and Bing in the top 10 search engine company stats hold less than 3% of the market.

Also, while the search engine companies continue to compete for “Top Dog” status in meeting the needs of Internet searchers, their fight is proven to be a significant and worthy cause as television viewing continues to decrease and Internet usage consistently increases.  Latest reports showed that in Canada, the time spent on the Internet has now surpassed the time spent viewing television.

This trend is occurring all over the westernized world and has been building steam without let-up.  While there were those experiences many years ago where the dot com companies all seemed to go bust, the fact remains that the Internet never died and has kept climbing up the scales 10 steps at a time for the commercial world.

There were a number of pieces that had to be connected years ago in order to fully bring the Internet to the attention of all, but this has been thoroughly accomplished and the progression is not slowing any time soon.

SEO Changes: Keep Your Business Current!

What businesses need to understand in their efforts to compete with Internet advertising and through business websites is that at times, they may have to re-invent themselves online.  This means that using the resources that understand the successful methods to use in an online business marketing strategy is key, as these Internet advertising techniques are not a learn it once and then go with it kind of a deal.

Technology advances and so must our comprehension of how to best leverage that technology to reach the potential customers and maintain current clientele.  If you are running a business, it is not likely that you have the time to keep up with the fast pace of technology’s advancement in the online arena.  Therefore, you must use the resources available to you for this process and if you are going to get the most bang for your buck, you will use an SEO service that consistently stays on top of the latest information and trends and the ways to best utilize this data.

You cannot expect one of your current employees to take on and learn quickly enough all of the many details involved in online marketing and search engine optimization, nor can you expect to pay an employee less than you would be paying an SEO service.

SEO Services

With SEO services, you will save money and experience better results…That is…with the right SEO service.  There are a lot of companies out there that only learn one or two pieces of the puzzle and then go into business promising excellent results. They might even work out of fancy offices and sound like they know what they are talking about, but be careful and do a bit of research first.  Don’t let yourself get steamrolled by SEO companies that try to show you page captures of results, rather than a long list of real-time search results proving their abilities.

Also, be wary of any SEO company that isn’t interested in providing you with open communication and explaining to you exactly what they do and what they will do for you. You may not understand it all, but you should at least have the opportunity to know the nitty-gritty details of search engine optimization. If they tell you that they cannot tell you their “industry secrets” then JUST SAY NO. They probably don’t even have any real “industry secrets” and they should certainly not be keeping their methods hidden from their potential customers.

This is the age when more and more people are realizing their need for SEO services and during this time, a wealth of information is publicly available.  If they won’t tell  you what they are doing for you, then they are trying to hide information that is public from you or they simply don’t know what they are doing.  They probably have a few tricks in their bag and are hoping to figure out some more as they go.

Additionally, you need to be extremely careful that you do not use anyone who makes wild guarantees because they may be able to get you to page one of Google today and then get you de-indexed tomorrow.  Some unfortunate souls are still using ghost technology that the search engines only take a few days to figure out before they de-index the site.  Some SEO companies do get away with black-hat techniques for a while….but rest assured that the end result is going to be the death of your business on-line.

Remember, what worked 5 years ago often doesn’t still work today.  Experience does count and stability in the industry does count, but the best way to find out if you are going to be getting what you are paying for is to sit down and have them show you live search results and walk you through the process of change that needs to occur to your website, show you various sites that they will link you from and even pull up the coding to show you the back-end process that will be involved. It may not be the most fun hour you have ever spent in your life, but it might just be the most critical hour you have spent in order to grow your business and reach your Internet advertising goals.

The Technical Nature of SEO

The technical nature of SEO is one of the reasons that it is greatly misunderstood among the business community.  Too often SEO companies either do not have a great deal of SEO knowledge and understanding themselves in order to provide adequate information to their clientele or a long-lasting result that keeps up with the changes that occur in time, or they have a thorough technical understanding and realize that it would be way over the heads of their business clientele and so do not make any attempt to truly describe what it is that they are doing for their client companies.

Both of these breed a lack of trust in the business community toward SEO professionals.

Search Engine Optimization

The technical nature of SEO or search engine optimization, includes a wide variety of factors.  These may be analytic research and development, the number of characters in a url and the order of these characters, the title tags, the H-tags or heading tags, the platform upon which the website is built, the avoidance of frames, the understanding of where tables are acceptable, the focal points of each individual page, the key phrase density percentage, the order of wording throughout the pages of content, the number of words actually on each page, the meta description tags, the relevance of links, the robot.txt files, the xml sitemaps, the key words, the optimization of images and videos, the nature of the hypertext, and the list goes on and on and on….

The importance of a continuous SEO plan for a company’s ability to remain competitive, along with the importance of an SEO professional constantly updating his or her education in their field is extremely critical.

A good way to learn about search engine standards and more about the technical nature of SEO is to simply visit Google webmaster tools and look at all of the documentation provided there…  This will help to begin your process of understanding of SEO and the importance of having a dedicated SEO professional working for you.

You will save a great deal of money and time in the long run if you use the services of an SEO company for your online business marketing campaign. Just make sure that your SEO professional knows their business and uses open communication and always provides you with complete control over your campaign, giving you any log-on/password information they use for any of your related accounts, etc. and so on.

SEO Companies and Link Building

SEO Companies and Link Building – Benefit from Links While Avoiding the Pitfalls

How?

There is a big difference between dealing with link farms and obtaining good, credible, paid links and unpaid links, but that you pay an SEO company to create.

Initially, I want to discuss the importance of making sure that any links that you do pay for with credible business directories are set up in your name and with your contact information provided.  All too often, companies will just leave this entire process to the SEO company they are dealing with, not realizing that there could be consequences in the future.

Consider this, if you are paying someone to set up links for you with various websites and then you terminate the services of this SEO company, how will you know when it is time to renew your links? The big and important links are purchased on an annual basis, meaning that they will go away if you do not update them when the time comes for possible expiration, or if you are not aware of the need to update them…

Back-links – Press Releases – Articles – Internal Link Structure

The number of back-links that you have going to your website can severely decrease and your ranking and search engine positioning can go down at that point.  This is one reason why not only is it extremely important for your link plans to be set up under your name and with your information, but also for you to explore additional back-linking options such as those provided through article sites and major press release distribution sites.

Once a press release is published and distributed through a major site like Media Wire, if you have optimized it correctly, you will have effective back-links to your business website that span across multiple media outlets across the World Wide Web that cannot be taken away from you by any Client-SEO Company separation.

Additionally, your link building campaign should include a major focus on building a strong, internal link structure.  When this is done properly, it can create a great deal of power for the key phrases you are targeting and this, also, cannot be taken from you, other than from a discontented web design or web maintenance employee or contractor.

Open communication with your SEO company is extremely important if you are to avoid the pitfalls that can come with SEO services and link building.  Be certain that you fully understand what is being done for you and check your results online under a variety of key phrases that you are targeting in your campaign to see where you are regularly ranking.

Using the services of an SEO provider can greatly benefit your business if a diversified plan that matches your individual business needs is developed and executed.