Archive for February 29, 2012

5 New Content Ideas to Improve Organic Visibility

February 29, 2012 Cory Ellis Search Engine Optimization, Web Marketing

This article is focusing on adding new content to a website instead of optimizing pages already there. You want to do both, but we have already focused on optimizing existing pages so now we need to discuss new pages to help with your search engine optimization.

1.  Content About Related Information

When doing keyword research you look for search queries on questions that people will ask relevant to your website.

For example, while working on a website for a hotel association our keyword research showed that many people were searching for activities, events and restaurants in the area.

So we suggested they develop a search engine friendly directory of area events, activities and restaurants, kept up to date on their website. People who click through to these listings in search results also learn about the hotel association.

2.  Start a Blog

It has been beat into the ground that every business needs to have a blog. Blog articles add new content to your site that incorporate your business views on certain articles. Not only will people find your blog interesting as long as done correctly, but the blog will also help with your organic search optimization.

3.  Answer Questions With Articles

Like stated in the first idea, when doing keyword research you will find search queries of questions that people ask about your website, industry, product or service.

For example, if you sell soda products people might ask questions about aspartame or high fructose corn syrup and what kind of health effects they have. You can make an article/page that answers that question and link to trustworthy resources backing your article for validity.

4.  Glossary/Dictionary

If you define a industry terminology in an un-biased fashion you can not only be found in the search engine on that terminology but when people read the article they have trust in what you are saying. It’s very important to NOT sell yourself on this page. People came to this page to find a definition, not a sales pitch. You won’t convert every person that views this page, but you gain trust which leads to exposure.

For example, we created a page for search engine optimization terminology. SEO is home to some of the most acronyms so we created a page for it.

5.  Learning Center, How To Articles, Videos, etc

If you see competitors offering how to articles, videos or self help information it’s a good idea to offer a similar service. We don’t recommend just copying your competitor but you need to offer a similar service.

You also need to evaluate if you see search queries for “how to …” then you should be targeting that otherwise you are losing potential conversions. This becomes difficult though if you provide a service because you don’t want to share your knowledge that allows people to not use your service. If this is the case, consider charging and offering a “subscription”.

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Why Keyword Research Matters

February 21, 2012 Cory Ellis Featured, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Web Marketing

Keyword research is undoubtedly the most important part of SEO. If you try to implement a search engine optimization strategy without doing keyword research you might as well be shooting yourself in the foot.

You need to research what it is that people might be searching for to find your business. For example, are they going to be searching for “buy apple pie”, “make apple pie”, “sell apple pie”, “eat apple pie” etc. They are all about apple pie, but if you don’t have recipes on how to make apple pie then there isn’t any point to rank on it. Same goes for selling apple buy…if people want to buy apple pie and they find your site but you tell them how to make it then it’s a waste of ranking. You have put focus on a rank that isn’t providing conversion, thus rendering no value.

Once you have determined what keywords people will be searching to find your website you need to determine your audience. Demographics, age groups, religions, societies, cultures etc all can play important roles in your SEO strategy. You need to know if your website is targeted towards middle class stay at home mothers or high school drop out gothic teenagers. These are two very different target audiences that will expect two totally different websites.

SEO companies need to first determine the keywords that are relevant to the website, then the target audience/visitors and then search for keywords that are relevant to that target audience.

Understand that keywords are dynamic and will be ever changing with trends and vocabulary. What sounds good today might not be appropriate 6 months down the road. This means that keyword research should be a continuous process to ensure you are ranking on the correct searched keywords.

Keyword relevancy in content is a must, however it must be done tactfully and where it makes sense. You can no longer “keyword stuff” and expect the best result. Search engines have evolved past that and now penalize those websites whose content has too many keywords and doesn’t read properly. On top of that, if a user find your content but can’t read it because every other word is a keyword then they just hit the back browser and move on…fail.

Keyword research isn’t simply looking at your competitors and trying to rank on their keywords. It requires a methodical approach and continuous evaluation in order to be effective. Keyword research is sometimes described as being the most difficult to be effective at because it can be the most time consuming. Good keyword research is another piece of the search engine optimization puzzle.

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Proper Landing Pages Generate Leads

February 19, 2012 Cory Ellis Featured, Search Engine Optimization, Web Marketing, Website Design

Landing pages are a very important puzzle piece with search engine optimization and are essential in funneling and engaging your customer. However, you can’t optimize landing pages for the search engines…you have to optimize them for your readers because the search engines aren’t going to be the ones to use your service or buy your product. While you do need to be found, once you’re found you have to be able to convert that into a revenue of some sort.

How to Build the Landing Page:

These are numerous guides and books available on the web about building landing pages. One of the more important common themes among all these available guides is that you need a “call to action” above the fold. Most SEO companies will say that they want text at the top of the page and all the other stuff can go below it because search engines like it that way. Once again, your customers and end users should be your target when building landing pages…not the search engines.

Before you create landing pages you need to have a purpose. Your website certainly has a reason whether it’s to sell a product, educate people, provide funding, deliver a service or whatever it is…it has a purpose. Now you have to determine with that purpose how do you want to attract people and convert them into customers.

Once you determine that you move on to grabbing the attention of the users and keep their attention while you push them towards your goal of converting them into a customer. You can do this with an attractive first paragraph with an almost immediate call to action. With this though keep in mind you need to attract not only the visual and mental users. Some users prefer images (visual users) and some prefer text (mental users).

So on your landing pages make sure you don’t mislead a user in any way. You need to provide them the information, product or service they are looking for and if you do that without making it difficult to find they will keep coming back to your website.

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SEO and Social Media Are Intermingled

February 10, 2012 Cory Ellis Featured, Search Engine News, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Web Marketing

Whether you are a website owner or a business it’s imperative that you are involved in both search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing (SMM), also known and social media optimization (SMO). SEO and SMO go hand in hand and you need to be sure that your strategies work together to accomplish the same goal.

Search engines exist because they provide users the best possible search results based on a users input. They base results of matching hundreds of different evaluation points on any given website, then assign a rank to it and display those in a ranked order to the user.

Search engines don’t inherently trust website owners because not all website out there are legit or have a purpose. Some website are built solely to attack your computer so obviously search engines use extreme negative impacts on those sites to keep visitors away. One way to build trust within search engines is having your website linked to in a manner that makes sense. This doesn’t mean links farms or spamming links across the web. It means providing quality links from other websites so those surfing the other website can find your website and find it relevant.

Inbound linking has never been an exact science and unfortunately black hat SEO companies used spam tactics such as paid links, link farms and link exchanges to play the system. Search engines needed a better procedure for establishing which web pages were trusted by human visitors.

Social media was the answer that search engines were looking for. As popularity continues to grow and corporations started using it to share information and communicate with target audiences, the search engines took notice. Social media networks are an entire framework in which people share links to content they found useful. This data provides insight to the search engines as to which links are “valuable” based on “social signals”.

With this creating of “social signals” social media marketing and search engines optimization are now intermingled. This doesn’t mean that the same company has to do your social media marketing that does your SEO work, it simply means that the two need to communicate and be sure they are working towards the same goal. Social media content needs to be optimized and SEO content needs to be sharable so it will be shared across social media networks. Social media now has a major influence and its impact on search will allow for a more productive overall online marketing strategy.

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Why Quality Content Is Key

February 2, 2012 Cory Ellis Clients, Featured, Search Engine News, Search Engine Optimization, Web Marketing

Improving site quality from the user’s perspective is the best way for sites negatively impacted by Google Panda to recover. According to Google, “high quality content is content that you can send to your child to learn something.” By raising standards for producers and driving progress in terms of content quality, Google Panda will increase the quality expectations of users over time. In order to successfully acquire and convert traffic from organic search channels moving forward, marketers, webmasters and site owners will need to understand, employ and embrace best practices for developing quality content. With that in mind, a number of web professionals clearly still do not understand the meaning of “quality content.”

Below are some things that you can do to increase the quality of your content:

  • Authors of credibility (names instead of usernames)
  • Content actually having a purpose beyond search ranking (target content for your customers, not search engines)
  • Don’t have articles about Obama state of the union address if you sell toilet accessories…be relevant
  • Have reliability, check your site often to ensure EVERY link works and links to the right articles/pages
  • Content format is crucial – don’t use adveritsements hindering your article/pages
  • Content should be unique and accurate with zero spelling or grammar errors – employ some quality control

All of these things can help you with Google rankings after the release of the newest update from Google … the famous “Panda” release.

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