Hiring A Good SEO Service

How To Recognize SEO Scams

Published on December 27, 2012 by:James H. Hobson

• Scoop.it
• 

Every day numerous well intentioned business owners are duped by online SEO scams, greedy advertising companies, and people who are simply using the lure of cheap SEO services to hustle cash. As this year drwas to a close we thought this would be a good subject to discuss to help people avoid some common SEO ripoffs and negative ROI situations.

SEO Scams

Greedy Advertising Companies

In terms of dollars hauled in, this is what we consider to the biggest SEO ripoff. The advertising business has traditionally been a massive revenue generator for print publishers. As the use of print advertising such as yellow pages has all but died, these advertising dinosaurs recreated their image as being internet gurus. The transition was relatively easy. It required simply reworking the print sales pitch to an internet sales pitch, building out a directory style website, and then converting the print advertisers over to the online advertising.

During this transition many yellow pages executives abandoned ship to start join or start other advertising companies . . . all using the same basic sales model. The costs for these one-size-fits-all programs are ridiculous and the sales pitches are usually very misleading. A true internet marketing company will dramatically out perform any online directory company in termns of cost control, results generated and overall customer satisfaction.

There are some business owners who are happy with their directory advertising, and there are some ad companies that are reasonably weel intentioned. Our experience is that they send trained salespeople to meet business owners for the sole purpose of closing sales, and they don't send knowlegeable SEO and business consultants to meet and learn exactly what your business needs and develop custom solutions.

Low Skilled Web Designers

Because the market is there, most smaller towns, like Kennesaw website designers, include SEO in their service offerings. It's important to note that very few of these web design companies have been successful in getting their own website ranked for web design, SEO or other terms that are important for their business. For this reason, you have to ask yourself how you can realistically expect them to do for you what they can't do for themselves. If a company can't get their own site ranked well it's a huge red flag signaling really poor search engine optimization skills.

The Craigslist Hustler

Sites such as Craigslist, Backpage and often paid advertising such as Google Ads entices business owners to sign up for "guaranteed first page results" and it always includes the amazing benefits of super low prices and near immediate results. Of course the other sales option is to get a LOT of people to sign up for $100 a month and tell them it's going to take a while. This assures them of a nice revenue stream while they ignore your site.

How does the SEO hustler work? One way is to charge you a low monthly fee and outsource the work to India, Phillipines or other low wage areas. This gives them an 80-90% profit margin and an excel spreadsheet of links to show you. Another way is to use black-hat SEO software to rewrite plagiarized articles, post the articles and build a few backlinks to your site. They may do this work themselves or outsource it overseas. A third way is to simply pocket your money and do nothing - just let you keep paying until you scream, then they ignore your calls, or argue with you and quickly disappear.

The SEO hustler does not truly undertsnad, or care to do, professional, ethical search engine optimization. Their objective is to simply get more people to send them money.

The Robo Caller or Serial E-Mailer

This SEO scam plays the numbers game at the lowest level because it's only mass spam contacts without any personal touch. These services are quite often overseas boiler rooms that invest more in billing software than in hiring SEO professionals, computers and equipment, essential SEO software and third party information services.

Signs of SEO Scams

There are several ways to identify SEO scammers and people who are most probably not going to deliver what you are expecting in terms of ranking or lead generation. Some of the prime indicators of a SEO scam or SEO rip off are someone with:

• no office, business license, EIN or business bank account.
• no business website with well developed organic rankings.
• no employees, only a laptop for equipment and no verifiable references.
• an inability to show numerous live examples of stellar organic rankings.
• a need to find customers on free listing sites like Craigslist.
• a need to promote their business by piggy-backing on another company.
• more interest in a contract and deposit than in learning about your business.

Why do people fall for SEO scams? People that fall for any type of scam rarely fct check what they are told, are infatuated with the idea of big gains with no risk or work, and are naive enough to think they have found a magic secret that true industry professionals and sharp business owners are missing.

Search engine optimization is a professional service but because it is not licensed or regulated the internet marketing industry is littered with unscrupulous and unskilled people trying to make easy money. The best way to avoid SEO scams and SEO rip offs is to take time to qualify your potential SEO company, expect to pay a reasonable fee for professional services and don't trust anyone who promises the moon and the stars for $1.99.

Baton Rouge Web Design

2013 Strategic Website Redesign

Published on December 20, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

• Scoop.it
• 

The beginning of the new year is when many business owners begin to think about a website redesign process. The most common objectives are increasing leads, improving search engine ranking and simply updating the look and feel of their website.

We applaud any business owner who seeks to be on the leading edge of internet marketing. This article will present some of the important considerations in 2013 to maximize the opportunities available when doing a website redesign and redeployment.

Website Redesign Tips in 2013

Upgrade to HTML5

HTML5 is the most current specification for coding a traditional (desktop) website. HTML5 enables your web design company to deliver more features with less work. Using HTML5 means that your website can utilize tags for video that allows streaming multimedia content directly into a browser, enable the placement of interactive content without Flash or plug-ins, enable better controls and features for forms, and is a huge advantage for employing special utility features.

HTML5 Canvas is a great example of how your redesigned website can deliver a much improved user experience. Rather than use the outdated Flash presentation, the CANVAS element allows you to draw graphs, graphics, games, art, and other visuals right on the web page in real time within the user's browser. HTML5 can really make your site stand out!

Use Responsive Design To Impress

The better customers, people with money to spend, have larger monitors. This means that a new website can easily be built around 25% wider than most sites that are over 5 years old. With responsive web design your website can be made to auto-scale to fill the entire viewing space which maximizes your impact on potential customers.

Rethink Your Marketing

The best performing business websites are far more than a "cool design" with some photos and bland text. Your website should be a strategically crafted marketing tool. Your website should reinforce your brand, influence and persuade prospects, and be ranked where the highest relevant traffic is searching.

A good website design copany shuld never require YOU to write the content copy. Certainly client input is valuable but the text must be refined for search engine optimization, visual presentation, optimal messaging, grammar and the typical behaviors of a website user. Additionally, your site architecture, intra-site linking, interactivity, and inclusion of downloadable content are all powerful marketing components.

A large percentage of local website companies are WordPress template tweakers that lack the business knowledge, professional expertise, and physical resources to create a well planned marketing tool. A review of a website designers portfolio, and an interview to discuss their processes should enable you to find the agency that will give you the most value for your investment.

Get A Mobile Website

It is very common for an entertainment venue, trades service business, or professional practice to soon find that 30% or more of their website traffic uses the mobile website. Without a mobile website your business stands to lose a lot of potential customers.

How is a mobile website any better? Your traditional website may display on a mobile device or smart phone without any noticeable problems but that does not make it a mobile website. A true mobile website design requires a different approach to meet browser requirements and deliver a better user experience. A mobile website auto-scales its size to fit the viewing screen whereas a traditional desktop website must be scrolled around or even pinched to expand the page to a size where the message can be read. A mobile website is coded to deliver the fast load times required by mobile devices, networks and platforms. And a mobile website is designed to leverage smart phone functions such as making your phone number a tap-to-dial feature.

Although the development of some features or functionalities still requires more time and cost, many of the valuable upgrades can be made with the same amount of effort as not using these options. When you're ready to redesign your website you should work with a company that has the knowledge and experience to truly move your site performance to true 2013 standards - and not deliver a rehash of what you had before.

For more information that includes valuable advice from a website redsign consultant you can view and download this free Website Redesign Guide.

SEO Link Building Tips - Anchor Text 2013

Anchor Text vs. Co-Occurrence

Published on December 11, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

• Scoop.it
• 

There is a growing belief among the leading SEO experts that the optimization value from keyword rich anchor text is diminishing. I think we can all agree that the individual personality of each link is usually tailored to affect a specific and targeted ranking. A devaluation of anchor text is a logical step in the progressive efforts being made by search engines to mitigate manipulation of SERPs.

A new observation made by these same SEO experts is that Google’s Phrase Based Indexing capabilities may be placing greater value on overall content specifics. A critical component of phrase based indexing is the ability to associate page content by somewhat averaging the meaning of anchor text. The term for this is co-occurrence, and although this term is new to most SEO companies it has been in play for quite some time.

Although we won't go into the related concept of co-citations it is an area of SEO that any bonafide local SEO company will explore and consider. Co-citation and Co-occurrence are going to be active parts of SEO discussions in 2013.

Anchor Text in 2013

Anchor Text Diversity Is Important

Let me first clarify that every link you acquire should be a the result of tying your great content to places where users would be interested in your information. When these quality linking opportunities are available you would be well served to use diverse wording for the anchor text. First, this keeps your link diversity ratios in scale, and second this is a favorable practice for trending anchor text evaluations.

SEO Experts Speak About Anchor Text Importance

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz

Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea

A very well written article on this subject, which was cited by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, is Not All Anchor Text is Equal which was written by Bill Slawski.

A teaser from this article, and a tidbit to demonstrate the quality of the article is the following pull quote:

The patent includes a number of features associated with a link, and I’ve included a handful that involve which text is actually used within a link, and how they might be analyzed.

• Actual words in the anchor text associated with the link.
• Commerciality of the anchor text associated with the link.
• A topical cluster with which the anchor text of the link is associated.
• A degree to which a topical cluster associated with the source document matches a topical cluster associated with anchor text of a link.

Just as exact match domains have become a detriment for many sites, so may become too many exact match links. And in the end this all comes full circle to what we have known all along - quit gaming the system and simply do things that best serve the user.

The Leading Edge of Business Website Design

Business Website Design in 2013

Published on December 8, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

• Scoop.it
• 

Now is the time to propel your business ahead on search engines! Offense wins the game, right? While most businesses are laying low you can gain ground by taking the bold steps of doing a total revamp of your online precense. This article will speak to persons who understand that simply "having a website" does not mean that your business is on the same level as a competitor. So now you are (or should be) wondering what are some of the differences?

It All Starts With Business Knowledge

Web Designer Experience

Have you met with a website designer that raves about "cool stuff" they can do for your website? And do they get that deer in the headlights look when you start discussing your market, competition, buying process or buying cycle, and core business needs? This is because they lack real world business experience. They've probably never worked as a manager, much less an owner, in a B2B or industrial company. They've never had to prepare a formal bid for an RFQ or RFP, never dealt with production schedules or project management, and never developed a business plan, sales forecasts or operations budgets. They can however, buy a Wordpress template and add the pictures and text content that YOU write for them. It's no wonder that so many business websites do little more than exist - these business websites are made by people you might not hire to work in your back room. Business experience matters.

Technical Capabilities

I'll be quick to admit that platforms like Wordpress can be a great solution for some business websites . . . the simple ones anyway. When you hire a website designer you need to consider their technical capabilities with specific regard for their ability to handle your needs in a customized and relevant manner. Worpress designers rely on plug-ins and usually can't deliver when you need critical development features and internet marketing services.

Website design is a professional skill that requires knowledge of user preferences, color theory, search engine algorithms, traditional marketing concepts and more. Believing that simply buying a template, and adding some text and a few photos will deliver success is a huge mistake.

In the recent past the internet has served as a great tool to get a business found by more potential customers, and get the business found in new areas. Now, online users are expecting to be able to do more than find your brochure website. The ready-to-buy users want interactivity and the ability to control the website experience. The modern user wants to buy online, download brochures, access forms, view GOOD photos of products, and get detailed information. Additionally they are accessing websites from desktop computers and mobile devices. Can your website guy handle all of this? Do they have the technical design ad development skills to make your company more successful now and moving forward?

2013 Website Trends

It's all too easy to say "I've got a website and it's fine". But is it really okay? What criteria are you using to make this assessment? In 2012 Google changed their search engine algorithm over 100 times - did you adjust your website to leverage these opportunities? Is your website designed to take advantage of large monitor screens AND able to render well on mobile devices, smart phones and tablets? Has your website company discussed with you responsive website design, SVG content or app development? If not, you are leaving the door wide open for a competitor to advance far ahead of you. Is looking through their dust the view you want or one your business can afford? It's time to be aggressive and take the action that can protect your bottom line.

How Good Is The Information You Receive?

If you live in a relatively small market you probably have a somewhat small pool of website design companies and fewer website developers or internet marketing companies. This invariably means that the knowledge base is weak and behind the curve when compared to large market service companies. By reaching outside of your local market you have the opportunity to engage professional expertise and technical skills that will devastate your competitors now and for quite some time. Additionally you can hire a company that is not working with your competitors.

Unless you live and do business in a major market, the leading edge of website design and internet marketing is probably hidden from view. In 2013 do you want more of the same or an opportunity to gain ground on your competition?

What Is SEO ?

The Real Meaning of SEO

Published on November 22, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Even after years of active promotion and implementation business owners and managers continue to misunderstand SEO. SEO, the acronym for search engine optimization, refers to the practices used to affect specific search engine rankings for targeted keywords or phrases. Search engine optimization is recognized by Google as a good and legitimate service however certain techniques are objectionable and unacceptable.

As with any professional service, SEO has both good and bad practitioners. Whether SEO is good or bad is determined by the style of implementation and purpose of its use. A total SEO strategy should include on-page and off-page SEO work. Any work should begin with keyword and competitor research to create an effective strategy.

The Various Ways to Define SEO

As an ethical Atlanta SEO company we work with only legitimate businesses, and therefore seek to place their website for relevant terms. Anyone doing search engine optimization should first and foremost consider the search engine! To this point we strongly recommend becoming familiar with, and adhering to, Google Webmaster Guielines.

SEO - The Laymans Definition

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a generic term for the many methods used to get a website ranked on search engine results pages (SERP's) for specific keywords or search phrases.

It is important to understand that SEO is not a commodity which may be purchased in truly tangible measures. To better understand this term as a consumer, you can think of it as if you were buying home remodeling services. There is a lot that can be done, and each job has its own level of finished quality, time required to complete, and value. SEO work can include specialized website coding, optimizing text or images, link building, content marketing, social media marketing and much more. Each of these areas can be further segmented into specific tasks and needs. All of these tasks can be completed and implemented in varying degrees of quality.

SEO - The Technical Definition

SEO from a technical perspective includes implementing and optimizing code and content elements. This work certainly requires technical coding but also marketing concepts, user preferences and search engine algorithms. While forums and articles can give some technical pointers it takes years of practice and constant study in oder to become an SEO expert. Technical considerations include page load time, block level SEO, using unique page titles and descriptions, alt tags, title attributes and new tools such as Google's tag manager.

SEO - The Marketing Definition

From an internet marketing perspective SEO is the Holy Grail for driving higher volumes of relevant traffic to a website. For the marketing person SEO is a method to get a website ranked and also a process to build branding. To a marketing person this includes content marketing, articles, press releases and distributing white-papers. In a marketing perspective SEO is about implementing brand building content that also improves organic ranking.

Optimizing content for websites and articles includes an understanding on block level SEO, authorship, latent semantic indexing (LSI), and payig attention to word counts, non-spam writing tactics and proper link building methods.

Figure Lie and Liars Figure is a saying I use to alert business owners to some common tricks of unethical hustlers. The person or company working on your ranking should give you progress reports. Typically these reports are a list of keywords where your site is ranked with the actual ranking. Here's where the lies and deception often start. You may be excited about your reports that show a steady increase in ranked terms. You think your SEO company is doing a great job right? Maybe not. Have they shown you the amount of real world search traffic for these terms? Are you ranked for a lot of terms where there is no traffic and that won't generate leads? You need to have a good understanding of what your SEO companies strategy, tactics and goals.

How Search Engines View SEO

Search engines look at SEO in both a good perspective and a bad perspecive. The good perspective holds that ethical internet marketing professionals employ coding, links and content that actually assist a search engine in knowing how to classify and on what SERP's to display a website. The bad perspective is that certain SEO practices may be leveraged in order to manipulate SERP's and thereby provide what may be low quality content.

---

SEO Providers Are Not All Alike

Because consumers do not understand "What is SEO?" or what is required to do quality work, they often rely on price or a slick sales pitch. Because consumers do not understand what they need there are a lot of people who have read forums and blogs enough to speak as though they are knowledgeable. The quality and effectiveness among people offering SEO varies as much as day and night.

There are a LOT of "website designers" and freelancers who pitch SEO simply because they can make some money. A business owner, thnking of SEO as a commodity, can falsely believe they got a great deal because they "got a guy to do our SEO really cheap". Any competitor who hires a legitimate SEO company will slaughter the owner who goes cheap. So, the next question is, "how do you find a good seo company?". Click the following link to learn more about how to hire a good SEO company.

Large Market Internet Marketing

Atlanta Digital Marketing Strategies

Published on October 25, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

You may be wondering why we take the subject of major market internet marketing and choose to focus on Atlanta internet marketing. The answer is that the Atlanta market has some challenges that are unlike what you may encounter in many other major cities and metro areas. If you can be successful doing internet marketing in Atlanta then most other areas are relatively easy.

Meet the Unique Atlanta Marketplace

Atlanta is described as being the hub of a massive metropolitan area that encompasses approximately 16 Georgia counties and includes over 5,000,000 people. Obviously there are numerous incorporated cities within this area, and long established communities within each city or town.

Atlanta is THE crown jewel of the South and continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, and this is where the complexity begins. Unlike most major cities where most of the population was born, raised and has remained in the same city, Atlanta has a very large percentage of people from other states and countries. This means that large segments of the population lack detailed knowledge of the metro area.

Even for long time area businesses like The Varsity, The High Museum, or Fox Theater the newcomers don't know your name, where you are or that your business exists. For any business that wants more customers in Atlanta, the best way to find them is through strategic internet marketing services.

Where Does A Business Start?

The very first thing a business needs to do is to determine the radius from which they can draw or service customers. Next the business needs to analyze the circumference and gray out the areas where land use or demographics indicate the area is less likely to generate customers. For service businesses with trucks spread out across Atlanta this process may be useful to some degree but is not as critical.

Connecting With Your Target Audience

When you have identified the communities or area you need to cover the real work is ready to begin. Atlanta area customers are in the higher tier of internet savvy consumers. This sounds easy to handle but you have to consider what they really means for your internet marketing strategy. Where are customers online, and how are they searching?

Websites? You have to be prepared to engage consumers with a traditional website and you need a website designed for mobile users. Many Atlanta businesses find that half of people searching for their type of business are on a mobile platform. If you don;t have a mobile website design you could lose a LOT of new business.

Placements and Visibility? It's important to know that your potential customers can come to your business through any of a number of online marketing channels. Yes, most will say "Ie found you online" or "I went to your website" but what does this really mean? Let's say the user does the typical Google search to find a business. The search results page comes up with a mixed bag of links (choices). You need to make it impossible for the online consumer to not find you. This means having top organic ranking from traditional search engine marketing, top local search placemetns from local seo work, and high visibility elsewhere by using viseo content, articles, listing s on directory sites, PPC advertising and the increasingly important social media world.

Not all of these are appropriate for every business. And for the channels that are appropriate, each has its own relative value. To get the most from your internet marketing budget you need to engage one of the leading Atlanta internet marketing companies. Don't rely on advertising sales reps, freelancers or companies that have miserable online visibility for your internet marketing needs.

Your Online Marketing Strategy

When you wrok with a professional internet marketing company you can expect to get objective advice on what really works, how long before you see results, how much it may cost and learn the fine points of of developing your online marketing strategy.

Major markets represent a huge opportunity to get more customers and watch your business grow. The key to true success is finding a company that can use every dollar of your budget in the mosr cost effective manner, and that has the smarts and flexibility to adjust as needed throughout their engagement with your company.

Interetsed in Learning More?

Certainly we would like an opportunity to speak with you, however you need to speak to several companies to find one that you like and that has the experience you need. Take a few minutes to read other articles on this blog on how to select an SEO company and related topics for Atlanta internet marketing.

How To Improve Website Ranking

SEO Tips and Essentials for 2013

Published on October 22, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

In 2012 Google's two algorithm bombshells were Panda and Penguin. There were numerous other algorithm changes to adjust and refine search results. Visit this link to see the major Google algorithm changes in 2012. As of this week they addeed the "Top Heavy" penalty and the "Exact Match Domain" penalty. Before 2013 arrives we strongly recommend that website owners make a critical assessment of all of their SEO practices for the past two years, and take a hard look at their SEO providers current understanding of best practices.

Out With The Old, In With The New

The Old: Outdated and Harmful SEO

There is a strong possibility that your company website has at least minor associations with outdated or harmful SEO practices. There are "gray hat SEO" practices that are now going to cause ranking losses, and other practices (of any shade) will lose their influence on search engine results pages (SERPs).

You have a very real problem if you have received a message from Google that is similar to the following:

"Dear site owner or webmaster of https://www._____________________/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results."

The fourth quarter of 2012 is a good time to make a top to bottom review of your site to do a comprehensive SEO overhaul. You definitely want to be proactive in avoiding search engine's algorithm based penalties, and certainly prevent manual actions taken by Google. Proactive website SEO maintenance can only help your site, and will almost certainly mitigate having a gut wrenching surprise drop in rankings.

The New: Ethical and Sustainable SEO

On-Page SEO things to look at are your page titles and descriptions which should be unique to each page, alt tags and title attributes which should be written to help the user and not for keyword stuffing, eliminate sitewide footer links, use a canonical meta tag, limit outbound links, keep ads below the fold on your pages, correct spelling errors, don't use h-tags in a spammy manner, make sure your page load times are ultra fast, use an XML site map, add Schema markup when applicable, eliminate low quality or near duplicate content pages, and focus on branding in your messaging.

There are very specific requirements, standards and implementation methods for all of the aforementioned items. Google searches for any of these topics will lead you to pages with more detailed information.

Another great way to get an evaluation of how well your website desginer has performed is to check your website for technical errors. Because things like the Google code for the +1 button and publisher attribute do not validate, your website probably will not validate.

Even with such unavoidable issues, your website should have no more than 6-8 errors or warnings. You should correct as many deficiencies as possible.

Stepping Up Your Game

You can make substantial forward progress by rebuilding your site as HTML5 complaint and get superb enhancements by utilizing CSS3 in your design. An HTML5 site with CSS3 delievrs better performance and alleviates some code deficiencies associated with older doc types. The really top tier website designers offer responsive website designs that resize to fit various browsers using a liquid or elastic layout. Can your web designer do this?

Related SEO Considerations

You need to have these tools in place and use them to improve your SEO efforts. Google Analytics provides key user metrics and can provide valuable insights on ways to improve your website. Webmaster Tools enables you to verify your site, confirm technical settings and manage your site within Google standards. If your current SEO provider has not done this for you it's time to find a new SEO company.

If you're uncertain about the state of your website's SEO feel free to leave a question or comment. We welcome phone inquiries about any SEO matters.

Types of Search Engine Marketing - Part II

Why Social Media Business Pages Matter

Published on October 19, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

This article is Part II in a series on the Types of Search Engine Marketing. This series will continue until the end of 2012, and will cover the different types and aspects of search engine marketing techniques and services.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media used to be considered the fluffiest form of search engine marketing. Almost every business we know stated at one time or another, "our customers are not on there". This position considers only the potential for a lead or direct sale. What was missing is the realization that social media marketing builds brand recognition and loyalty, can directly impact SEO, and it DOES generate leads!

In 2012, social media signals became a key element of Google's search engine algorithm. Social media is also a signature part of strategic inbound marketing services. Any business who clings to the notion that social media is not important is making a big mistake in their marketing efforts.

Social Media Business Pages

It is a fact that your business needs to establish social media business pages. Your company should have a social media presence that includes well structured business pages with graphics, complete profiles and links, and maintained with fresh content.

At a minimum, your company need social media business pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Other social media sites and pages may be useful, and should be selected based on your type of business and customer profile. Sites like Pinterest, Foursquare, and social bookmarking sites are worth considering. The amount of time to create each business page and provide all important information probably averages about one hour. When available this business page setup should include the creation of custom profile images and page main images.

Social Media and Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing intertwines social media marketing, SEO and content marketing to drive traffic, generate leads and build branding. The role of social media is to allow a business to interact with potential customers in a non-sales fashion, present user friendly information and position the product or service for first-in-mind consideration.

Social media is how to build brand recognition, and serves as a nice channel to distribute links to articles, mention promotions and specials and educate consumers. Adding social media icons and links to your website is a strategic online marketing tactic.

Social Media and Your Website

Because social signals are part of Google's algorithm you need to link your website and your social media pages. Additionally you need to utilize content and calls to action (CTA) that drive traffic between these sites.

To learn more about why social media business pages matter you can visit our website or do some Google searches for social media and inbound marketing.

Inbound Marketing - Content Marketing Benefits

How Content Marketing Can Help You

Published on October 18, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

The art of content marketing is perhaps the most valuable way to improve your SEO results in 2013. Content marketing requires the development of high quality user focused content, and strategic curation and publishing methods. Content marketing can deliver measurable improvements in organic rankings and bring forth other benefits.

Three Reasons To Use Content Marketing

Increase Social Signals

Social Signals are an important part of search engine algorithms. Nothing improves social signals more than providing content that users enjoy and want to read and share. Obviously not every business can create that great video that becomes a viral juggernaut but steady improvement in social signals means better SEO results.

When you post your content on social media sites a specific goal should be to generate (as appropriate) a Share, +1, Retweet, LIKE, Pin, or similar interaction. It is icing on the cake if you are added to a new Google+ Circle or get a new Follower on your social media business pages.

Earn More Links to Your Website

People link to websites, information and content that they like. Whether it is white papers, articles, videos, press releases or other informative content you can provide the content to which people will link.

The people who find your content, and certainly those that link to it, are almost certain to be considered relevant to your business thus these links pass the legitimacy test. Sharing your content increases the possibility of gaining even more links, and increasing site traffic, and further developing your brand.

Develop Your Brand

Business owners often fail to understand or appreciate the true value of branding. Branding should be valued as a key element of the marketing strategy for any size business. Branding goes beyond having a recognizaable logo. Branding encompasses every aspect of how people view and feel about your company.

Content marketing, even for a relatively unknown company, introduces your business to prospects and creates that all important first impression. Both prospects and customers that are engaged with trustworthy and valuable information will embrace your company. Ultimately, through a consistent delivery of high quality content, your brand will become a "first-in-mind business" when an engaged consumer needs your type of service or product.

Content Marketing Challenges

Because of the known benefits of professional content marketing, internet marketing companies and SEO companies are working to use this new approach. The challenge for most is that they lack adequate understanding of the proper methods and they lack the resources to make it happen. Content marketing requires more than the average website company or freelancer can grasp or provide. For content marketing success you must know how the pieces fit together!

Examples of resources are third party software to facilitate and expedite the processes. Personnel resources you need are internet marketing analysts, professional copy writers and social media experts. Content marketing failures result from trying to post low quality content to social media sites and using spammy promotions.

Professional content marketing requires strategic planning and implementation, as well as a deep understanding of how all of the pieces fit together. When it is properly managed content marketing delivers incredibly good benefits.

Top 10 SEO Mistakes in 2013

Is Your SEO Company Competent?

Published on October 18, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is as relevant and useful as ever. What you need to know is that the best SEO practices for 2013 will be substantially different than in 2012 or before. Search engine algorithms changed dramatically in 2012 and the older ways of SEO can now cause extreme ranking losses. It is vital for every business owner to know the Top 10 SEO Mistakes in 2013.

Who Does Your SEO Work?

The issue of who does your SEO work, and their level of expertise has never been more important than now. To cite an example, in 2012 Google sent almost 1,000,000 notices to website owners concerning bad SEO that was going to harm their rankings. These messages were sent to only website owners using Webmaster Tools, so obviously these types of problems are very widespread.

You need to learn how to evaluate your SEO provider to avoid search engine problems and confirm that only good, safe SEO work is being done on your website.

A Top 10 List of SEO Mistakes in 2013

There are far more than 10 items that can harm your SEO efforts. Many of these are very technical issues, and some have generally been out of practice for many years. Our top ten list includes issues that are common to do-it-yourself types and the average web design company or freelancer. Here are our Top 10 Bad SEO Practices:

• Ignoring Webmaster Tools: Google Webmaster Tools is a free product and an invaluable tool for helping you to manage your website in a Google friendly way. If your SEO company has failed to implement this for you they are not worth whatever you are paying them. Being able to affect page settings, verify your site on Google, and measure key performance metrics are very important. You need to be using Google Webmaster Tools.
• Chaotic Site Architecture: Many websites are created without adequate strategic site architecture planning. Your site should have a logical page flow (navigation). Top level pages should be more general with lower level pages providing more and specific details. Intrasite, page-to-page, linking should be limited to related content. A content silo methodology is often a very good strategy. In 2013 you should eliminate low quality pages (use 301's!) and add richer content.
• Using Low Quality Content: If your site has very little content, text that is more sales pitch than factual information, has spelling or grammar errors, or is poorly structured your site is going to suffer ranking losses. Your site should use well structured content that informs users. Use shorter statements and don't engage in keyword stuffing or blatant attempts to affect search engines.
• Using Duplicate Content: Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act your site can be totally banned in search engines if you hav palgiarized content. Even innocent instances of duplicate content can cause multi-page ranking losses. An example of innocent duplicate content is very common on e-commerce sites. Iamgine every dealer of a product uses same product description provided by the manufacturer - this is duplicate content in the eyes of a search engine. Plagiarism was not committed but nonetheless the site gets penalized. You can visit Copyscape to see if your website pages have duplicate content issues.
• Keeping Sitewide Links: You should immediately eliminate sitewide links! Obviously this does not apply to your site navigation, although navigation link structure is another important aspect of SEO work. The types of sitewide links to drop are the redundant links often found in website footers or sidebars. Social media links may get a pass if you use them above the footer and the socail media pages are actively maintained.
• Long Page Load Times: Page load times have become another key factor in search engine algorithms. This matter is complicated by the need to load quickly on both desktop PC's and mobile devices. Eliminating Flash content, optimizing image files and streamlining code are easy ways to reduce page load times. Creating a mobile website design is strongly recommended because mobile use in many areas represents over 30% of searches.
• Bad Inbound Linking: Bad link building is perhaps the number one problem with ranking problems today. Link building needs to be very controlled and paced with an eye on domain diversity, link velocity and natural anchor text. Any SEO company using blog wheels, link farms, mass link building services and article spinning is on a path to extreme and perhaps permanent ranking losses. If your SEO provider is continuing to stress link building as a top tactic you need to drop them without delay!
• Too Many Outbound Links: Google looks at your outbound link quantity and evaluates the sites to which you link. You should not use Adsense on your site, link to affilliate programs or any type of spammy, low quality content sites. Any outbound links should go to only sites with definite value for your site visitor.
• Bad Page Titles and Descriptions: First, each page needs a unique page title and description. Your title tage should be 70 characters or less, and your description tag should be 150 characters or less. Keyword stuffing is an absolute no-no.
• Ignoring Social Media: Search engine algorithms now measure social signals when ranking websites. Social media has become a critical tool for brand development, content marketing and lead generation. Business owners who say "our customers are not on social media" are missing the big picture and lack proper understanding on SEO in 2013. At a minimum you need business pages on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. It is absolutely critical to create complete pages and integrate them into your online footprint.

The Benfefits of Better SEO

Improving on-page SEO will improve your search engine rankings. Higher rankings means more traffic. Improving your content improves user engagement and icrease on-page conversions. All of this means that applying new best SEO practices will improve your lead generation and branding. Inversely, allowing your website ranking to plummet will relegate your website to virtually an online brochure that few people will see.

SEO has changed and internet useage continues to climb. To improve your situation, make certain that you are not making mistakes in your SEO work, and get in touch with a SEO company to make your site ready for 2013.

Hire an SEO Expert - What Really Matters

How To Hire SEO Services in Baton Rouge

Published on October 17, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Whether your customers are local or spread across a wide geographical area you can increase your sales when you hire an SEO expert. Before you hire SEO services it is very important to understand that effective SEO requires a strong skillset. Almost every website company claims to provide SEO but few actually know SEO best practices.

Risks of Hiring Bad SEO Services

If you make a bad decision when you hire SEO services it can cause long lasting and even permanent ranking losses. Poor SEO work, whether intentional or simply done from ignorance of best practices, now carries a high risk of search engine penalties. If you engage an unskilled person or company for SEO you are gambling with your sales.

Is A Local Company Better?

It is extremely important to hire a SEO company that is in the United States, and that does their SEO work in-house. In cities with populations under 1,000,000 it is always a very big challenge to find a very good SEO company. SEO companies in small markets simply don't have top notch talent and rarely have had to perfect their skills by competing against other top SEO companies.

Your chosen SEO company does need to be able to understand your business, types of customers and be able to relate to your marketing area. Ideally they would be willing to sometimes come to your location for a personal meeting, and certainly be able to provide convenient forms of communication.

For top SEO, results are the top priority, location is not. Through phone and email communications, SEO reports and seeing ranking results you will be able to assess how well your SEO company is serving your business.

Finding A True SEO Expert

When you speak with someone who knows more than you do, and tehy have a convincng tone, you can easily begine to view them as somewhat of an expert. The SEO and internet marketing industry is packed with people who espouse unfounded claims, ill-advised practices and mislead clients. We believe that you need to know how to evaluate and hire SEO experts.

Experience matters to some degree but can be misleading. Because SEO changes so much, SEO experience that is over 3 years old does not mean a lot for being able to do current SEO best practices. Ask questions about on-page and off-page techniques. Ask to see live examples of client rankings. Definitely ask about tier inhouse team, tools and processes. If they use outsource services, rely on free keyword tools and can't explain their SEO process then they are one of the places to avoid.

Local Search SEO

For the traditional brick and mortar store it is important to hire a company that understands local SEO. This means how to properly create and customize local search listings and business pages. How to create local search citations and how to improve local search rankings. Local search SEO requires techniques that are unlike what you need for organic SEO.

How well developed is your local search presence? Local search services such as TigerSEO Marketing offer a free local search evaluation and a phone consultation to discuss how to improve your local search presence.

Organic SEO

Is your site ranked well on Google? Organic SEO services improve your search engine rankings for specific search phrases. Organic SEO techniques must evolve in order to keep up with changes to search engine algorithms. In 2012 alone, Google Panda and Penguin algorith updates caused significant turmoil in search engine rankings. SEO companies using sketchy or outdated practices caused their clients to lose a LOT of business, and are finding it nearly impossible to help their clients recover.

These black-hat and novice SEO people rely on meta tags, keyword stuffing, cloaking, doorway pages, exact match URL's, blog wheels, link farms and other bad practices to get their clients ranked on search engines. These bits of trickery did work for a while but their use ultimately generated very negative outcomes.

Even the manner in which white-hat SEO is applied has changed. The proper ways to manage character counts, partial match, latent semantic indexing, content stucturing and off-page techniques have become substantially different in 2012. Companies that upgrade their SEO in 2013 are going to take a lead in search result rankings.

SEO services, and internet marketing services, have become much more sophisticated and complex. To get the best possible results, and mitigate chances of penalties from bad SEO work, you should abandon the notion that a hiring a local SEO company is necessarily better. If you want top tier results, you need to find top tier practitioners - wherever they are located.

Types of Search Engine Marketing

Internet Marketing vs Inbound Marketing

Published on October 15, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

One of the most common discussions we have with new clients centers around the types of search engine marketing. Business owners and managers have been introduced to numerous terms yet often do not understand what each entails or how it is applied. Our discussions frequently delve into what types of search engine marketing are outdated and the trends in search engine marketing.

For the next few months we will publish article which compare different types and aspects of search engine marketing techniques and services.

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

The term search egngine marketing is one of the oldest phrases used to describe the techniques and methods used to promote a product or service on search engines. Search engine marketing covers most any form of internet advertising, public relations, branding or other action wich has the specific purpose of positioniong information in front of potential customers.

About Internet Marketing

The term internet marketing is effectively the same as search engine marketing. An arguable distinction is that where search engine marketing focuses on how to position content online, internet marketing includes other activities required for online marketing. Internet marketing can include website design and development, especially concerning activities to better engage site visitors and increase conversion actions. Internet marketing applies core marketing principles and has earned a top priority in a company's overall marketing mix.

About Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a new and refined form of search engine marketing. Inbound marketing is designed to engage prospective customers early in the buying process and nurture the prospect engagement to create a warm lead. Inbound marketing is also very effective in brand development and in building brand loyalty.

A typical search engine marketing approach is too often simply spreading advertising funds across a wide array of services. Inbound marketing is a strategic approach to coordinate the development of SEO, social media and content marketing to create a somewhat monolithic initiative. Unlike search engine marketing, inbound marketing requires a deep understanding of how to develop and leverage each element, and an ability to create the necessary deliverables for each.

How To Hire The Right Company

The very first thing to do is to find a company that is ranked well for inbound marketing. Review their websites and look for a company that offers a more personalized style for client interaction and support. Develop a rapport with their representative and ask about their services, examples of their work and always ask about their inhouse capabilities. An example of why this matters is the fact that you cannot get quality copywriting from foreign outsourcing or untrained writers.

About Expected Results

Internet marketing remains a viable way to achieve online success. Using any of the established methods to promote your business website remains logical. Inbound marketing, because of its strategic characteristics, can provide better lead generation, search engine ranking and visibility, brand development and shelf life of information published online.

For more information you can call our company, or spend time doing some Google searches. If you prefer visual learning you should see some of these inbound marketing inforgraphics.

We invite you to post questions, or to request articles that cover any area of search engine marketing. We will consider all reasonable requests and write articles for the subjects which seem to be of greater interest.

SEO Trends Continue To Drive Professionalism

2013 SEO Best Practices Will Be Better Than Ever

Published on October 10, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

The 2012 algorithm changes have proven to be very effective in driving SEO best practices to more professinal levels. As we move into 2013 it is safe to say that effective SEO results will be the result of refined and more professional practices than ever before.

SEO 2012 vs SEO 2013

At the beginning of 2012 there was a plethora of websites that continued to hold high organic rankings that were achieved with spammy and black-hat techniques. By the end of the first quarter of 2012 Google implemented algorithm changes that forever obliterated vast areas of black-hat SEO. As Google continues to make algorithm changes it is important to rethink and rebuild your SEO structure.

2012 Google Algorithm Changes

In 2012 Google launched an initiative to improve search engine results pages by knocking out sites that have used black-hat SEO techniques. The 2012 algorithm changes included the bombshells known as Panda an Penguin, the DMCA penalty, link warnings and a number of lesser algorithm adjustments. These changes penalized sites that were deemd to be specifically involved in buying links, using link wheels, using plagiarized copy or content, and having low quality site content.

Transitioning To Better SEO

Sites that experienced profound ranking losses during 2012 will require significant hours to amend algorithm based problems and resolve manual actions taken by Google. For other sites, even those not affected by the 2012 changes, it is a good idea to make certain modifications as SEO preventative maintenance.

Changes we recommend are eliminating site-wide links, removing pages with low quality content, use htaccess 301 redirects for dead pages, create unique titles and descriptions for each page, minimize the number of outbound links, modify text content to avoid any signs of keyword stuffing, and update your XML sitemap. Pay attention to your link velocity, anchor text and diversity of domain sources.

Additional SEO tips are creating social media business pages and linking to them from your website, include some video content, and avoid using any "miracle SEO services". Certainly you should terminate any and all relationships with black-hat SEO people, and not use article spinning software or buy backlinks.

Vetting Your SEO Provider

To protect your site from algorithm driven ranking losses we recommend vetting your SEO provider. It is absolutely critical to know that your SEO company has a sound understanding of current best SEO practices, and knows how to make the changes that will keep your site in a competitive position. In all fairness, if your site has been negatively affected it may not be the fault of a prior SEO provider and not your current SEO provider. In this case, what matters is having an SEO company that can accurately assess the root causes and is capable of making the necessary corrective actions.

Branding Beats Spam

Google appreciates fair and legitimate marketing that builds branding and serves to inform potential customers. Spammy e-marketing techniques are the pathway to failure. Build your brand reputation with high quality content that informs buyers on features, benefits and factual data. Keep the sales pitch to a minumum.

As Google continues to improve their algorithms you will see significant improvements within the SEO industry. The poor SEO people may remain able to make a good sales pitch but their inability to achieve first page rankings for their clients will set them apart from the true SEO professionals.

Our SEO Tool Recommendations For 2013

The Best Search Engine Tools In 2013

Published on October 9, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

SEO discussions seem to always include mentions of "the best SEO tools". I think it is safe to say that people tend to assign "best" to whatever works for them. Accordingly, the term best is very ambiguous thus it would be a mistake to immediately embrace such casual proclamations. This article is intended to provide some insight on how to find good, useful SEO tools.

Trust Only The REAL SEO Experts

My personal belief is that less than 25% of online SEO tips are original and of high value. Anyone trying to learn about SEO should be skeptical when watching SEO videos on Youtube, reading forum posts and spun articles, and being hit with SEO software ads. Regular contributors such as Rand Fishkin and his Whiteboard Friday are the types of people and SEO resources to follow.

The best SEO tool is a mind that has a well developed understanding of SEO. Simply knowing what to do is dangerous. You need to know what to do, when to do it, and why it is so. This means taking time to understand search engines, algorithms, coding, content development, and commit to continued education.

Local SEO Tools

Due to the importance of local search listings to many businesses we need to include some information on local SEO tools. A good free local SEO tool is Brandify. With Brandify you get a decent evaluation of your local search presence, tips on improving local search, and a progressive scoring to evaluate your work.

Signing up for paid services such as Whitespark or BrightLocal can be useful. These services can help you to evaluate local ranking for specific keywords, find quality citations, and conduct local search competitor information. A lesser known but respectable tool is DIYSEO which offers a free trial and paid subscription services.

Organic SEO Tools

SEO Keyword Research Tools

All good SEO programs include front-end keyword research efforts. If you fail to identify the exact and relevant terms, and then determine which have the higher search volumes your SEO work is doomed to mediocrity or failure.

A list of the best SEO tools includes SEOmoz and Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, SEMRush, SpyFu, and Market Samurai. Google Keyword Tool and the Microsoft SEO Toolkit are other SEO tools to consider. For links to these sites you can check the footer of our main SEO information page. If you are serious about doing quality SEO work, you should be prepared to invest at least $300 a month for paid services.

Creative SEO Tools

If you are a creative person with good instinctive skills, observation skills and can read trends there are some other tools to consider. Google Analytics can provide interesting information on how users find your site, thus "showing" how they are not finding your site. Sites which provide search trend information can provide you with timely information on how to reach qualified traffic.

Evaluating SEO Tools

The first tip here is to ignore any "Fast and Easy SEO Results" software, programs or services. There are no shortcuts in proper and ethical SEO work. Services that are recommended by SEO experts such as Jill Whalen, Rand Fishkin Wil Reynolds, Bruce Clay and other top tier practitioners will lead you in the right direction. When you develop a shortlist of services, begin to evaluate the breadth of the services, compare the volume of accounts and information you can manage, and compare service fees. Don't be discouraged by rates of $1000-$3000 a month because a quality service will truly enable you to be very successful.

Content Marketing and Content Curation 2013

What Is Content Marketing

Published on October 8, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

Broadly defined, content curation is the process of discovering, organizing and presenting web based information about a particular subject or topic. Content curation is somewhat different than content marketing. Content marketing is essentially creating and publishing online various types of content. Content curation gathers multiple, related pieces of content marketing efforts to create a mini-pool of information.

Content curation is not a sketchy black-hat SEO trick although there will be those that try to use it as such. The true and proper use for content curation is to inform the reader and persuade them to take a particular action or make a preferred decision. Obviously the content should be very light on the sales pitch and heavy on the features, benefits and factual data.

Sources For Content Curation

For anyone interested in content curation it will quickly become obvious that finding information is not a problem. A great feature about content curation is that you are not violating copyrights or plagiarizing content but simply sharing it.

Common sources of content for curating are RSS feeds, blog articles, video content, unique website pages, whitepapers and news articles. Using a news aggregator or a free tool like Google Alerts can somewhat automate the process of finding valuable content.

Content curation in 2012 is a polished form of what many people have done for years. Finding and sharing information via Twitter or social bookmarking sites are the old school ways. Being able to gather related information and present it in a portfolio of sorts is much better.

Content Curation Best Practices 2013

Content curation has really begun to find a place in 2012. Moving forward, content curation in 2013 will definitely be an instrumental tactic for SEO and building brand awareness. Online marketing professionals will be able to develop an authority presence by curating mass content of high quality. They will also be able to develop branding by curating content about a single subject, from a single source (company). The latter approach is building a Content Curation Silo.

Content curation should be designed to support other areas of your internet marketing plan. Cross linking your content curation silos with social media pages will help to get your information in front of somewhat qualified prospects. Using sites like Twitter can get your information in front of new prospects.

Content Curation Tips In 2013

The first order of business is to determine the topics, subjects and areas where you want to engage customers or other internet users. The next step is to identify authority sources for high quality (non-spam) content that fit within your niche. Ideally you will try to mix new content with previously curated content to develop a seasoned content portfolio.

Content Curation Etiquette

We would be remiss in writing this article if we failed to mention basic rules of etiquette for content curation. It is good form to always provide due credit to the content author or publisher, and retain or add links to the original source.

SEO Copy Writing Tips

SEO Copy Writing Tips For Websites & Articles

Published on October 1, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

How to write search engine friendly, optimized content seems to baffle a large number of people. Ths article has been written to provide SEO copywriting tips for website text content, and inbound marketing services for content marketing such as optimized articles.

SEO Copywriting Basics

The most important thing to know and understand about SEO copywriting is that your content needs to focus more on the user and less on search engines. If you focus on search engine algorithms you will write quirky content that is anything but natural language. The final copy needs to be informative, persuasive and yet have the characteristics that algorithms will embrace.

It is very important to also understand where your copy will be used and its intended purpose. The best SEO copywriting services use a layered approach to develop high performance content. The layers of defining requirements, organizing information, writing text and adding SEO touches are basics. Even when using these basics there remains different ways to apply your SEO copywriting skills.

Use Keyword Research For Quality Traffic

If you are writing copy for a website you should focus on engaging site visitors, and generating qualifie leads. This form of SEO copywriting is geared towards increasing quality traffic.

Keyword Research using professional SEO software (not free SEO tools) is essential to your success. From the perspective of the sales process or sales funnel your keyword research can be clustered. Segregating terms in this manner will help you to develop appropriate content for your website. In some situations you may want to develop separate pages to serve each of these steps in the process.

Use Trending Topics For Increasing Traffic

Some SEO copywriting, such as articles and blog posts, are done to increase website traffic and build branding. In these situations it is important to get your message and company in front of as many eyes as possible.

Search Term Trend Research is the best thing you can do for this purpose. Using professional SEO tools you can identify hot topics and search phrases related to your business. Writing content about these subjects and posting it online while the subject is hot can increase website traffic. Because blog articles and posts generally have a short shelf life the trendy element is nothing about which you should worry. And building good content will help your long term SEO organic results.

Block Level SEO

Just as you should have learned in grade school, how you structure your content does matter. again, don't worry about the search engines, just use basic composition techniques. Determine your article or page title, develop sub-titles (headings) and then develop content for each paragraph. Your paragraphs should be related and stay on topic. Don't obsess with outdated concepts such as keyword density and stuffing. Write in a natural manner and avoid long sentences.

Special SEO Copywriting Tips

Any content that you develop needs a few simple touches to maximize its SEO potential. Be sure to make each paragraph heading an appropriate heading tag, add a phot or two and use descriptive "alt tags". If oit makes sense, link the images to a target page. Limit the number of outbound links to no more than two or three.

With deliberate thought and well organized information you can learn to write SEO copy for websites and articles. Remember that the purpose of your writing is to inform the reader. Quality content is read, shared and appreciated by people and search engines. Write well and prosper!

SEO Strategies In 2012

SEO Tips In 2012

Published on September 24, 2012 by: James H. Hobson

When a domain name and website are new they lack any existing off-page SEO elements. The SEO process for a new domain and website presents unique challenges and opportunities. Success for achieving high organic placement for any particular keyword or search phrase requires a level of work (skill + hours) to not only “define the site for search engines” but to also outpace and out maneuver your current online competitors. Specific and deliberate efforts will need to be made for each and every of your desired target keywords or search phrases.

SEO Opportunities

A new domain and new website have no history with search engines. Although this means an initial flat-line for organic rankings, it does assure that there are no problems with past SEO work which may be deemed by search engine algorithms to be “black-hat” or non-compliant to desired standards. Starting with a clean slate is a great opportunity however you need to have patience and be willing to invest a very substantial amount of work to sculpt your online ranking.

SEO Challenges

Search engine algorithms are ever evolving in their ability to gather and process information about a website. Algorithms process over one thousand factors to determine the order in which sites should be ranked for a given keyword or phrase. A new website is challenged with building a properly structured profile of “SEO credentials”. Because a new website is starting at ground zero, there is a tremendous amount of work to be done to become competitive with very well established and ranked websites.

A factor that is of value, but cannot be managed, is the “domain age factor” for your domain name, the age of backlinks and the age of online content that is associated with the domain name (URL). Typically, SEO work will yield even better results after the site has been online for at least one year. . It is worth mentioning that if you purchase a domain that has been used before it WILL have a history with search engines. Sites that have been banned for black-hat SEO have destroyed all value for the associated domain. Any site that is subsequently using this domain will suffer from the bad history of that particular domain.

Important SEO Elements

Unique Content is extremely important. Any scraped content (copied from other sites) is not only illegal but it will affect your site with a duplicate content penalty. You should write all original content or, if you are using a web design company or SEO company to write your content, get a written statement that they are providing all unique content and not violating any copyright laws.

Backlinks are a key part of any SEO strategy. The process of building a backlink footprint must be implemented with a strategy that will mitigate the risks of search engine penalties and yet achieve optimal results. Obviously acquiring a large number of high quality links is important however Google’s algorithm is particularly sensitive to link velocity, meaning acquiring “too many” links “too fast” is a signal of “unnatural linking” and will yield very negative results.

You should always avoid any “link farms” or services that provide mass links from spam blog posts. There are many online services that offer outsourced link building and may seem to be legitimate however if you make a mistake in choosing the right company your site may suffer severe ranking penalties. Under no circumstances should you get links from “bad neighborhoods” meaning sites dealing with gambling, porn, etc.

Social Media Signals are a key factor for current search engine algorithms. You should share links between your website and your social media business pages. It is important to note business pages and not from your personal social media pages. Examples of top social media links include Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Frequent social interaction is the key ingredient for social signals. Posting good content and obtaining social approval signals such as a +1, Like, Share and Follow are all something you need to acquire. Hiring an inbound marketing company to develop a true inbound marketing strategy is worth considering.