Monthly Archives: October 2012

SEO – It Takes Time

Search Engine Optimization is a process. During the first years of search you could get away with grabbing keywords and stuffing them into your website to drive rankings. Another method people used to get away with was using meaningless links from and to their websites. Google’s algorithm has changed immensely since 1998 when it was introduced to the public. Now if you want your website to appear on the first page of Google there are several important steps to take and some things to avoid as well.

First things first, content is king. Having a website with good content is extremely important. Having the right amount of keywords mixed into that content is also important. To many keywords can get your rankings lowered while to little keywords can do the same thing. Maintaining a relevant website that provides people with important information will not only increase your rankings but will also increase your websites retention rate which is just the amount of first time visitors that return to your website for a second and third view.

Second, links are no longer viewed as always being a good thing. Google has caught onto the fact that people are link farming; simply linking to as many websites as they can (relevant or not) in an attempt to increase their websites rankings. In order to maintain your rankings or increase them your link building needs to be appropriate. Linking to other sites related to yours that are seen as ‘good’ sites by Google (meaning they follow the rules and provide relevant content) is a great way to increase rankings.

Third, don’t think keywords and good content is the silver bullet. Stay in the mix of things by creating strong social presence; Google and other search engines are taking into account social circles more than ever. In an attempt to compete with Facebook, Google launched Google circles, a new social media site where you can invite people into different circles based on their relationship to you; work, school, friends, family. These social circles (facebook or Google Circles/Google+) are the new way for Google to start ranking how important/relevant your site is.

Finally, stay relevant with good OFFPAGE optimization. Some good ways to do this is to write articles about your industry and submit them to article directories which are basically phone directories for websites on the internet. While articles are great, you can blog about your industry and stay social while doing it. Creating a blog that people read and learn from is a great way to bring traffic to your website. You can also guest blog on other peoples websites in order to increase your online presence.

Remember that content is King! Good content and the right targeted keywords will increase your rankings. Stay focused on good content with about 8% keywords and brining your website efforts to social media and other online activities such as blogging and you will have a nice SEO start.

www.seosolutions .us – An Illinois SEO company, Chicago based.

A Few Words on SEO / Important UPDATES!

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SEO UPDATES!

Search has become one of the best marketing tactics to increase ROI since marketing was invented. Not only does it produce results but it allows the marketer to geo-target, check important analytics and act on those analytics to implement stronger and stronger campaigns month after month.

With the new Panda Updates Google has deployed websites that use a tactic called link farming are being punished. Farming links, which is at its core, building links to your site to make it look popular when the content is nothing but garbage. So what do we do now? Well those of us who use unique content and a little bit of hard work to drive rankings are in luck. We continue to blog and write press releases every week. That’s how you stay relevant; you give people what they want without shoving it down their throats!

The beauty of a good search campaign is that once you deploy all the right tactics and you “get rolling”. It is much easier for you to continue to drive your rankings. The tough part is getting started. This may be because results aren’t immediate and small businesses typically don’t have money to blow without seeing an ROI relatively fast. However, medium sized businesses seem to stick around long enough to truly reap the benefits of a campaign that is driven and lead to a strong online community and presence that is interactive and growing.

Search Engine Optimization: The Basics

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Let’s concentrate on the basics. What exactly is search engine optimization? It is the process (and it is a process indeed) of organizing your site with specific keywords while creating links to your site via social media, blogging and other marketing venues.

Keywords can be single words or phrases. A keyword for a construction company may be for example; Campbell Construction, Illinois. This keyword would be considered a phrase. Notice how Illinois is also attached the end of the phrase. This is an excellent way to geo-target your marketing audience. This also works by county, township and can also be done using zip codes.

Another huge aspect of creating a great Search Campaign is making sure that the site is set up correctly on-page. This may be anything from having a strong domain name to load-time to having strong written content, and the amount of content and the specific ratios of keywords mixed into your content will affect rankings.

However, off page optimization is also important, these are all the activities performed away from the website but are in one way or another linked back to your website. Off page optimization activities range from a large number of things from blogging, to social media campaigns to video creation and deployment, press releases and more. It is important for most businesses to concentrate on their own business while hiring an outside firm to implement a strong online campaign that will boost search engine rankings.

Shocking Statistics about Search:

Google is the most popular search engine.
Over 500 million searches are completed daily
85% of online traffic only views the first page on search engines
85% of traffic finds accurate information which is useful to them.
81% of online users find new websites from using search engines.
73% of online transactions start with the use of search engines

Mobile Marketing is Here to Stay!

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Mobile marketing delivers results, period. 85% of consumers are searching for local businesses online; however, 63% of small businesses still do not have a mobile website. Keep in mind that smartphones are always on, always with us and always connected (the typical mobile user spends an average of 2 hours each and every day using their mobile device).

Smartphones are transforming are consumer shopping habits. They are creating smarter consumers, 79% of consumers use a smartphone to help them with their shopping needs. 54% of consumers use smartphones to actually find their retailers; on top of that, nearly 50% of consumers use their smartphones to compare prices. We use are smartphones to find everything from the nearest restaurant, movie show times or to find the nearest store that carries the item we are looking for. Astoundingly, 88% of us use this information to make a purchase within the same day!

Google claims that 95% of mobile users look up local information daily on their mobile devices. Considering 87% of the world has a mobile device, by not having a mobile website, your small business is missing out on large numbers of potential clients. If your website is not able to be found on a mobile device within the next year, don’t plan on beating out your competition for any new business.

Another mobile trend that is on the rise is spending through mobile devices. In 2011, 86.1 billion dollars was moved around the world from mobile devices and this number is expected to rise. What does this mean? Companies that begin to offer a way to pay from a mobile device will experience an increase in their revenue stream.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization – Your Path To Profits

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Why SEO and Who Needs It
In this age of information when searching for something on the Internet people normally look it up in popular search engines like: Google, Alexa, Gigablast, or Yahoo. They do not go beyond the first or second page of the searched results i.e. the first 20-40 of the hundreds of thousands results popped up by the search engines. If the information is available on the Internet, it is found, more often than not, in these first few search results. Browsing through the top websites thrown up by the search engines related to the information suffices. Studies on internet search behavior and eye tracking have confirmed this.

As obtaining information and doing business online has become a popular practice, individuals and organizations that are conducting business on the Internet fully or partially should be more visible on the Internet. Websites of such organizations need to come up among the top ten/twenty of the search results to be noticed by people. Small businesses as well as large organizations that depend on online business need to rank high up on the search engines. The higher the rank of a website more is its number of visitors, and possibly more business for the website.

The websites that come at the top of the search engine results are not there by accident. Careful planning, designing, and programming are the factors behind pushing the ranking of a website higher up. The process of elevating a website to a better ranking and higher visibility is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

How SEO Works
Imagine the World Wide Web to be a huge library stacked up with innumerable websites. When somebody tries to search for specific information using a search form, a robot (much like a library assistant) scans the relevant section of the library of websites. Similar to libraries that have categorized sections for books, the search engines have indexes for the crawlers to search through. The robot (also known as spider or crawler) searches through HTML data bases and selects the most relevant websites first. Search engines use different algorithms to judge relevance of websites to the information searched for.

SEO consultants help in designing websites by using keywords and other methodologies. They attempt to make the meta tags, contents, and links of the websites become more tractable for search engine algorithm. Search engines outline their own policies of search engine optimization and it’s the responsibility of the SEO consultant to adhere to those. Failing which search engines can ban websites. Therefore SEO consultants have to strike a balance between ‘keyword stuffing or spamdexing’ and ‘paucity of keywords’.

Search engine optimization has gained importance with the growth of online business. A website foraying in to the World Wide Web without using SEO techniques is akin to a soldier rushing in to battle without a gun. Obviously, SEO is being hailed as a valuable marketing tool.”No wonder, SEO is being hailed as a valuable marketing tool.

Search Engine Marketing & Mobile Websites: IMPACTFUL!

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In 2011, Search Engine Marketing’s ROI increased over 18% quarter on quarter. This statistic simply means that marketing through search engines continues to bring in more and more dollars, per dollar spent on the advertisement you displayed (and at an increasing rate).

Today, Google has increased its share of advertising on the internet to over 45%. Search Engines are where modern businesses, potential customers, clients or whoever; goes to find what to do, what to buy, where and what to eat and how to get there to make the final purchase. Google it! You can literally get prices, pictures, virtual tours, dimensions, ingredients and much more, all from going to a website! The key for small business owners is being that website that stands out and gets found.

Realizing the impact of such a powerful, speedy and reliable form of marketing is just the beginning for many small business owners. Taking advantage of this concept is when small business owners truly see an impact on their own profits. Let’s keep in mind that word of mouth and having a Facebook page is very impactful marketing, however, if you want to see a true trending growth in your business, keeping your businesses website presence substantial and up to date is an absolute must. That is as long as you’re also willing and able to keep up with the sure to be incoming business yourself.

This means that part of staying on the top of people’s minds when they want to make a purchase is keeping up with how the internet is accessed. Mobile websites are fast becoming the new, and they reach 86% of the global population! Why go to a computer downstairs and leave the comfort of your couch or bed to check your Facebook page or look up a good restaurant to eat at tonight when you can do it right from your phone, and just as fast if not faster. Or when you’re out and about, a desktop computer is not even an option for finding services or products. It is fast becoming the norm for people to pull out their phones and quickly check the closest needed product or service with a few quick finger strokes.

Keeping your website available on desktop and mobile devices, fast loading and full of correct and up to date information is crucial to growing your small business. You’re an entrepreneur and your expertise might be selling clothing or selling household items such as vases and lamps so staying on the first page of Google might seem like a difficult task. However, the right SEO company can provide you with weekly reports of your Google rankings and keep your site active so that Google views it as a site that is healthy and viable for the first few pages of Google.

If you’re not on the internet and your next potential customer is, well then they are just that, a potential client. To make sure that they become a customer you need to make sure they find you on the internet can access your website and view your products in a fast, clean and efficient manner. But you don’t specialize in uploading content to the internet, so what do you do, you hire somebody to do it for you.