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SEO
SEO
8 Questions to Ask Before Zeroing in on a Search Engine Optimization Company
Feb 1st
Search Engine Optimization is what every experienced website owner knows and constantly struggles to improve upon.
There are fundamentally two reasons why an individual or a company have their websites set up. They would either want to earn money or gain greater visibility. Greater visibility consequently attracts larger number of visitors that increases conversion rate. In other words, the level of monetization your website achieves is a result of a number of factors, one among which is SEO.
While an individual webmaster can work toward optimization, it requires levels of skills not every web publisher might be capable of since it is a specialized process. SEO in fact involves a lot of things including fixing up of underlying code and architecture of your website, analyzing content and links and their level of popularity to name a few among them. The goal in fixing your website is to make your website compatible with search engine algorithm so that your site ranks higher in Google, MSN, Yahoo and other search engines.
It is obvious, most of us that are either newbie or experienced but ill-informed would not like wasting our time fiddling with our websites without positive result to show.
There are a number of companies engaged in organic optimization task but the question to ask is how capable they are unless you want to burn your pocket. An experienced company on the other hand understands the intricacies of organic optimization. Your task is to identify the company that can successfully meet your goal to rank your pages high in search engines.
Here are a few things you might want to ask to identify the right search engine company.
Eight Questions to ask
(1) Do they have previous work examples to show?
(2) How long have they been in this business?
(3) What SEO techniques and strategies do they employ for their clients?
(4) Do they have some referrals you could speak to?
(5) What has been their past record, including unresolved complaints, with Better Business Bureau?
(6) Have their clients been penalized by Google or any other search engine?
(7) How frequently and in what manner do they communicate with their clients?
(8) Will they explain the logic and reason behind their SEO recommendations and revisions made to your site?
SEO, Search Engine Optimization Tips
Feb 1st
Search Engine Optimization
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Search engine optimization is extremely important to any business whether they primarily operate online or offline. More and more consumers [potential customers!] are researching online before they buy as well as finding where to buy online. If that customer can not find your website, your business might as well not exist. SEO starts with effective web design, everything from using correct HTML tags, such as H1, alt tags for images, anchor text to building backlinks to your website. Search engine optimization is a long and never ending process, despite it’s vague nature it is extremely vital to any business’s success whether the business is a Fortune 500 Company or a small sole proprietorship.
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Search Engine Optimization Tips
HTML Tags
Title Tag: Use a relevant keywords for the terms you need to rank for, keep the title between 60 – 80 characters.
Heading Tags: Use heading tags to display what a page or paragraph is about, this not only helps users but also search engine spiders/bots.
Site Structure
It it very important to have a simple and easily navigated site structure, attempt to use little sub-folders as possible.
Name your page files after the keyword theme of your site. Example: site.com/tallahassee-hotel-reservations vs site.com/reservations.
Keyword Research
Keywords are everything, how do users search for your services or products? This is especially true when you are targeting local customers!
Long-tailed keywords are vital, as the competition is usually less extreme and the customers searching with long-tailed keywords generally are looking to buy.
Building Backlinks
Backlinks are links that are on other websites that link to your website. Backlinks create relevance and “popularity” of your site within a search engine’s index.
Blog comments, blog posts, forums,articles, and paid advertising are seen as backlinks, be very careful with backlink building!
It is very important to build relevent backlinks that will fit the theme of your website.
If you are building backlinks yourself attempt to have the anchor text be a keyword phrase you would like to rank for, again do not spam!
Conclusion
This should get you started with some basic SEO guidelines! Good Luck!
SEO – Search Engine Optimization Tactics Part 2
Jan 31st
As we discussed previously, your quest for the top of the Google rankings should be based on keywords and how effectively you capitalize on them with your content, on-page search engine optimization and off-page optimization.
Just to re-cap, on-page search engine optimization refers to things that you do on your site to maximize your SEO potential, a few examples of this could be :
Using H1 and H2 Tags with your Keywords
Making sure your keywords are always in the Title with as few other words as possible
Making sure your keywords are always in the top left and bottom right of each article
Using internal linking to other pages of relevance within your site etc…
Off-page SEO could refer to things like:
Obtaining relevant backlinks
Acquiring keyword rich backlinks
Hopefully you have selected a few keywords by now. If your site is about shoes and it is brand new, you should probably focus on long tail keywords instead of the keyword shoes itself.
EX: Shoes vs Nike Air Force One Shoes
The longer keyword will be much easier to get listed for when you are just starting out.
So, lets say your three keywords are…
Nike Air Force One
Nike Air Force Shoes
Nike Shoes
You will want to make an article using these keywords. The first thing is to pay attention to the title of your article.
You will want to use your keywords in the title possibly like this :
Nike Shoes | Nike Air Force One Shoes
Notice how I put a straight line between the two keywords. This is because Google has a fractional method of assessing keyword strength. The more keywords you have in a title, the less each one is worth…
Make sure you incorporate your keyword inside a header tag towards the top of the article. Also remember the trick; keywords should be at the top left and bottom right of each post. Google tends to read left to right so the quicker it can spot your keyword, the better you will do in search.
Notice at the top of this article, I have the following header:
“How to increase your page rank with header tags”
This is the secret to boosting your page rank by several places simply by using your keyword in the header near the top left or top center of the page.
If possible try to only use your keywords with header tags. Sometimes this won’t work well for your readers… In my case it would have been increase page rank. Not the best heading so there is definitely a trade off.
Also if you really want to give Google’s keyword spiders a jolt, try having a sub header after your main header incorporating another targeted keyword.
This can be implemented with the tags… Notice my sub header is the key to making money on the internet. Ok maybe this isn’t the only key but knowing and implementing strong on page SEO tactics definitely won’t hurt.
The content is very important as well… Try to implement your keyword in context every couple paragraphs, spread evenly throughout your article.
And don’t forget to leave your keyword near the end of the article as well!
I hope this information has been useful in your pursuit to mastering SEO. The more you practice these skills the faster you will see your page rank increase. The World Wide Web wouldn’t really be what it is today without search engine optimization right?
