Search Engine Optimization

I firmly believe that companies have to keep a clear line of communication open between themselves and their SEO partner. Bringing in a third party to handle your SEO is a great idea if none of your current in-house employees have the background or the time to handle implementing an SEO plan. But to create the most applicable SEO strategy, your outside SEO partner needs insider knowledge into your company. That’s why it is important you keep them well informed about what is going on with your company and brand, especially anything that deals with the marketing department.

That being said, I feel that sometimes clients go overboard for the sake of communication. I do want to know what is going on at your company, especially if you are thinking about launching a new website or are bringing in a new employee to the marketing department that I will be working with. These scenarios directly affect the job I am trying to do for you. Staying informed is how I know I am on the right track or if I need to change the plan up a bit. But that is what our scheduled meeting times are for!

I take customer service very seriously. When I try to contact someone I’ve hired to do something for me, even if it just a landscaping service, I expect them to get back to me within a reasonable amount of time. Because I expect that of those who I hire, I try to give the same consideration to those who hire me. I’ve responded to emails and voicemails on the weekends, in the middle of the night or incredibly early in the morning. I want my clients to know that I take their business very seriously.

But sometimes clients get a little over-zealous. I’ll get a bunch of emails from one client in one day, or have a quick phone call turn into a full-blown department conference call. I do appreciate the enthusiasm; it is much better than being blind sided with a big change. But in the world of SEO there is nothing so urgent that it can’t wait.

I say it again and again, SEO is a long-term process. It builds upon itself over time and you will rarely, if ever, see your actions have irreversible effects overnight. There are few crises in SEO that can only be solved in a limited time frame. So please, don’t fret over the small details and waste time worrying. There is nothing so pressing that it can’t wait until our next scheduled meeting.

There really is no secret sauce when it comes to search engine optimization. There are however some important efforts that every new website owner or SEO beginner should be doing when it comes to getting their message out.

Meta Tags: Every meta tag on your website should always be unique. I come across websites all the time where all the meta tag information is exactly the same throughout the entire website which is a very horrible approach. Keeping all your meta information unique on every page of your website is important in order to pull in different amounts of traffic. A successful product page is not going to have the same meta information as your home page. Keeping your meta information different will allow your website to pull in different types of visitors over time. You should always identify all your targeted keywords for your web pages prior to starting the process of onsite optimization. It is important to execute this correctly because it will set the path for all your future website visitors.

First Keyword: Whatever your first word in that meta tag keyword section is should be the first word in your meta title tag. This allows the search engines to realize that the word has high importance for your SEO strategy and more weight will be put on that word. It gives your search engine optimization that much more of an ability to really rank for those designated keywords in search results.

H1 Tags: Don’t forget to use H1 tags on your pages. An H1 tag is a bolded header sitting above any piece of content that acts as a title. You always want to incorporate a keyword into this area as tastefully as possible and you don’t want to over stuff your keywords. Bolded paragraph headers often times have really nice SEO weight when it comes to search spiders reading and ranking material.

Interlink: Don’t forget to interlink your pages throughout your website. Interlinking is a very important component of SEO and you always want to hyperlink keywords that appear naturally in the copy of your website and link those keywords to other important pages of your website. Interlinking your website will allow your site to look like a giant spider web. Interlinking creates shortcuts to important pages of your website which search engines really like. Plus the user experience will increase allowing web readers to find other important pages much quicker than having to look for them.

Launch A Blog: Search engines tend to really like blogs. It is a nice healthy way to add new fresh content to your website and keep your web traffic engaged. Plus if your blog is on your website you can interlink important pages from your site right into your post helping with your internal linking structure. Over time your blog posts will really start to rank in search results bringing in new streams of targeted web traffic. If you ever decide to enter the social realm of marketing your business your individual blog posts will be a great way to leverage your social audience and let them know you have arrived.

Alt Tags: Don’t forget to optimize your website images for image search. Each image on a website has an opportunity for some keyword placement. The best approach is when you can describe exactly what is going on in the image while tastefully using your targeted industry keywords.

URL Structures: Don’t forget to properly optimize your URL structures when you are optimizing your website. If you have launched a new website than this shouldn’t be a problem. If you website is aged make sure your web pages are not ranking currently before you change the URL structures because you could see a dip in rankings.

In a nut shell these are very important efforts to focus on when either first starting a new website or optimizing an old one. This will allow your site to run like a well oiled machine when it comes to the search engine results.

Search engine optimization and online marketing was once for industry big wigs. That has changed drastically over time. Local SEO is more important than ever. As more and more people fire up their handheld devices and computers to find what they need less people rely on archaic forms of information such as the phone book and newspaper. Local search engine marketing has changed and will continue to change. If you are a business who still relies on ancient offline marketing efforts you will be in for a surprise if you don’t shift gears on the marketing front.

Location marketing and geo targeting internet users is all the craze right now. Currently websites like Foursquare and Gowalla are just for recreational use but trust me, the engineers at all the geo-targeting social communities are scrambling to find a way to tie in a local business marketing element into the mix. Some of the savvier local businesses are already starting to implement coupons for check-ins and other incentives to stir up new business. More local businesses are starting to submit their business locations into these platforms so users that pull up their iPhone or Android can clearly see your business in the area. This is a form of marketing that is really just getting started and will most likely grow in to a fierce local marketing effort in the near future. Like Twitter once was when it first came out on the scene people were reluctant to test it and apply it to their business model. Now it is a must for any local business to be visible on.

Local SEO is something that is not new. With today’s marketplace being what it is every localized business needs to have some local presence in the online space. The local marketing game is not what it once was. A few direct mail pieces and a phone book ad will not get you the return that you are looking for. Social media has changed the way a community interacts with each other. It has changed the way people shop and look for things making it even more important for a small local business to start climbing the ladder on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Some businesses have been known to grow very successful simply from using these websites on a strategic calculated and consistent basis.

There is a thin line between being a good internet marketer and not being a marketer at all but rather a technical spammer. It still gets me how some of this “crap” can still appear in search results that has zero to no user value. You know those links that you open and there are 100 interlinked keywords, 47 blinking affiliate banners and content so painful to read you want to pluck your own eyeballs out. I don’t know what happened and where things took this turn, but that is just not marketing.

Let’s take a look at some efforts you should all avoid:

1. Title Tags: For starters your title should be around 60 characters long. Don’t stuff keywords all the way across the title tag so it actually runs off the page on the far right. This is not quality marketing, this is something my dog stepped in outside. Keep it clean and unique and your meta tags will do much more for you than the other method.

2. Interlinking & External Linking: Interlinking and external linking is a very important component of SEO but when your website has more links than content you have a problem on your hands. This is just a horrendous approach to marketing. If you do have a visitor that actually hangs out on your page for more than a few seconds with this approach consider that a victory. When abused this is an approach that is a turn off for most people.

3. Keyword Stuffing: Your website content should be easy to read and have the ability to walk your readers down a path through a story. Stuffing the heck out of your content with keywords making it impossible to read or spread your company message is a lose-lose situation across the board.

Web users have grown weary of these internet tricks and they don’t respond very well to it any longer. The days of spamming your website to achieve rankings is long gone. Even if your website uses these methods and your pages do actually rank the chances of them converting to an actual customer is going to be slim. Bad SEO will not get your business growing in any way.