Let me start out by stating that all hosting companies are not created equal.  Far from it.  In fact, I would go so far to say good hosting strive to make themselves transparent.  The good ones, are content to exist quietly in the background, allowing webmasters and companies to advance their online presence, providing support when needed.  The good hosting companies realize that their customer’s primary goal is to scale their business online.  They exist to provide solid customer support, stellar reliability, and expanding resources when needed.  This is the business model that separates the excellent hosting companies from the wannabes.  If your hosting makes it difficult to get things done, well it’s time to find a new one.

I recently had an experience working with a client’s hosting provider that felt compelled to offer unwanted and many times inaccurate advice, making it next to impossible to get things done in a timely manner.  I thought to myself, why would a hosting company appear difficult, even at times belligerent?  The answer became obvious.  It’s because they cannot provide the resources necessary to “keep pace” with today’s technology.  That’s why it is important to familiarize yourself with the factors that differentiate good vs. bad web hosting providers.

Keys to Good Web Hosting

1. Support

This must be at the crux of selecting a web host solution.  Excellent support is what makes or breaks hosting companies, and should be a primary focus of your decision to use one.  What do I mean by support?  Nothing short of 24/7 support with an option of phone, email, and chat.  That means, when you have an issue at 2:30 in the morning, they will be there for you.  Support should be providing a solution to your goal.  I prefer chat for 95% of my technical issues, and all good hosting companies will provide this option with little or no wait time.

Click Image to Enlarge

2. Reliability

Uptime is another very important metric for web hosts.  What percentage of time do they guarantee servers will be available?  Even though 99.9% is the standard and may seem good, even tough to beat.  Consider that if a website that is down .1% of the time over the course of a year, that translates into more than 8 hours of downtime!  Be wary of this easily manipulative fact.

3. Control Panel

This may seem obvious, but make sure your selected host provides a way for you to administer your website, other than simply FTP (File Transfer Protocol).  Administering a website without a user interface can become very inefficient.  Look out for ones that force you to rely on their in-house expertise to get things done.  This is totally unacceptable in today’s hosting environment.  cPanel is one of the best out there.

4. Expansion of Resources

Another obvious one that can be easily overlooked, but ever so critical.  Look for the inability of your host to expand vital resources such as bandwidth and disk space at will.  When your business grows, so shall your online business.  You do not want to get stuck with a host that charges you and arm and leg, or worse yet take forever and a day, to allocate more resources.

Conclusion

There are a ton of good hosting companies out there.  There’s also many bad hosting companies.  My choice for the good is Host Gator.  Their customer service is superb and they offer world-class hosting.  The key takeaway from this article is do your homework and settle for nothing but the best hosting money can buy for your website.

Hosting is a Commodity.  An important commodity at that, but nonetheless one that should not prevent your company from making massive progress.  High competition has driven prices down, which allows you to select the best hosting that money can buy.  Do not settle for hosting that has the inability to reinvest in its own growth and in the process sabotage your online growth.

by Dan DeRoeck

Google PageRank has been around seemingly forever, at least in relative terms of the Internet; it was once a very important measurement of a page’s ability to rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and closely tied to the ultimate success of a site.  It was first made public by Larry Page and Serge Brin, and later went on to be one of the most significant marks in Internet history.

We as SEO’s had come to respect PageRank, almost revere its ever-presence that had the power to seal our fate.  The toolbar was a way to measure ourselves against competitors.  And for many years, this was true.  However, as you well know, everything must come to an end.  PageRank has lost much of its credibility and appeal, due mainly to the ability to game the system.  This ultimately led to Google’s diminishing focus on it.  Nevertheless, like the mystique of the Loch Ness Monster, PageRank still carries an almost cult appeal to many that still swear it corresponds to site performance.

But, is Google PageRank still relevant?  Does it still measure the ultimate success of a site?  The answer is yes and an astounding no.

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.“

Even though Google used PageRank extensively in the early days of the search engine, it’s simply now one of hundreds of signals Google uses to rank websites.  No more, no less.  Google now has no choice but incorporate a large dose of Link Analysis and Trust Rank into the mix to offset some of the inherent weakness.

Benefits of PageRank

But lets not forget, there are still benefits of carrying a heavy PageRank.  Websites with a high rank still command higher advertising rates.  It’s a known fact, advertisers like to pitch websites to clients for the perceived higher value, most likely for convenience and ease to sell it to customers as a valid metric.  Another obvious advantage is sites with higher PageRank do have much higher crawl and indexation rates.  Google is much more apt to crawl a website with high PageRank more frequently than one with a low one.

Overall, PageRank can be used to eyeball popularity of a site and gain some intrinsic benefits.  However it does not take into consideration other devaluing characteristics, such as spam and theme relevance.  This was the reason Google abandoned PageRank.

Using MozRank as a substitute for PageRank

So it’s true PageRank is no longer deemed the performance indicator it once was.  In fact, many have turned to “Google-like” algorithm models instead.  One such model is MozRank, a real-time, comprehensive set of metrics that can be used to guide SEO’s through the treacherous waters, giving us real-life depiction of site strength while providing us ways to improve…

“MozRank represents a link popularity score. It reflects the importance of any given web page on the Internet. Pages earn MozRank by the number and quality of other pages that link to them. The higher the quality of the incoming links, the higher the MozRank. “

Conclusion

Overall, Google PageRank is now a venerable indicator;  a ghost of the once baron of search engines.  As indicated, there are still benefits to having a website with a high PageRank.  But all in all, it’s simply one that now deserves respect and a nod of  unspoken greatness.  Having a website that produces strong and unique content will gain in popularity and strength and always trump PageRank.  We as SEO’s must now look to the future and continue our fight to gain respect through quality content.  This is truly the only way to success.

by Dan DeRoeck

The best web framework, WordPress has launched a newest version, affectionately named “Sonny,” and is now available for download.

WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration is focused on new user experience, uploading, navigation, and imports. Check out Sonny 3.3 video from WordPress:

This is a quiet, but slick upgrade, adding nice features from the admin perspective and designed specifically for a decent HTML5 browser (hint, don’t use IE or anything related to Microsoft for that matter, who said that?).  You will never need to use that atrocious “browse files” dialog box again!

In addition, there’s now a single upload panel for all media — no matter what file types you want to add, WordPress has you covered: RAR, 7z archive formats, and even the new Tumblr Importer!

If you’ve ever received the “Warning: Bob is currently editing this post” message, you’ll be pleased to hear that co-editing activity lags should be a thing of the past.

And, there’s more!

Version 3.3 also offers:

• a new dashboard welcome screen for fresh installations
• a new post-update changelog screen
• more flexible and faster permalinks
• an overhaul of the editor API
• a new WP_Screen API for working with admin panels
• a new is_main_query() for determining whether you’re in the main loop

A nifty update from the world-beater WordPress to be sure, download it here.

by Dan DeRoeck

In a recent survey of 2,500 small business owners, Merchant Circle reported search engine optimization (SEO) was considered the top marketing channel for 2011.  That statistic is good news for those that have been an evangelist, spreading the word that search must be included in overall business plans to remain and/or become more competitive.

The most notable question in the survey was framed as, what if you were on a deserted island; which would you choose, water or food?  “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?”  SEO came out ahead as the channel of choice.

It was also noted that business owners are now considering online as their main source for lead generation, which gives assurance that it’s the right direction.  As a side note, it came as no surprise that Facebook came in as the most commonly used social media marketing channel.

Traditional advertising has obviously taken a severe blow at the hands of the Internet, more notably Google.  It will be interesting to see how advertising as a whole, plays out in 2012.  My guess at this point?  Search marketing will begin to finally flourish and become mainstream.   Business owners will become more educated and comfortable making decisions that include SEO in their 2012 marketing plans.

by Dan DeRoeck

When a website links to your site for the very first time, that's considered a new link.  However, some people believe that the link is given instantaneous credit.  Not so at all.  In fact, there are many links that could even go unaccounted for, or at a minimum take time to be discovered by search engines.  This depends on numerous factors, many of which are out of your control.

While it would be fantastic if links were recognized instantly, things just don't work that way on the web.  For example, let's assume you attain a link in your desired vertical, and was placed on their site today.  That link would not be considered until Google crawls that website and that page, and picks up the link.  Note, I said considered.  There's still much more to this picture than meets the eye.

Google uses what is referred to as Google bots that essentially do nothing but crawl web pages.  These bots work the web at unbelievable rates.  But when you consider the vastness of the Internet (billions of pages), it's not likely or even reasonable to think links are updated instantly in Google's vast database.  And even if the link were picked up quickly, there still remains countless analysis that will be done to that link to determine relevancy and whether it should be considered "earned." 

Here is an example.  Suppose you earn a link from a website that links to an article on your client's site.  After going back and forth with the webmaster for two weeks, the link is finally placed on the site.  Now, if we determine the crawl rate of the site where the new link was added to be two weeks, there is a very good chance, the new link will not be indexed for a full month! 

And it's still not that easy.  As I mentioned, there is additional analysis done on each and every link to determine if it passes a slew of Google criteria.  On the flip side, things can also happen very quickly, you may see credit for links happen in as little as a few days. 

The key takeaway here is you must explain to your clients that organic search ranking takes time and patience.  Most clients will ask you how long will it take to get high rankings for their keywords?  The honest answer is it can take a couple days, all the way up to several weeks.  It depends on the credibility and update frequency of the sites where the links are appearing in the campaign.

by Dan DeRoeck

Google announced the end of a short-lived era called Boost, and sparked the beginning another, already established on, called Adwords [Express].  Most everyone has heard of Google Adwords, some have even heard of Google Boost.  But very few know about the new Google Adwords Express, at least until now.  It makes total marketing sense for Google to leverage the well known Adwords brand to help Boost break onto the other side, and that’s precisely what they did… another smart move by the search giant.

The newly packaged Adwords Express is specifically designed for the local business owner that do not have the budget, time, nor inclination, to manage a full blown Adwords campaign.  It is automatically managed by Google’s algorithm based on your current Goolge Places account.  Because Boost never really went mainstream, Google is hoping to leverage the well known Adwords platform to breath new life into Boost.

“We have seen great success with the Boost product and signup rate and to better indicate its ties to Adwords we are going with new name.

We have seen users in all 50 states and tens of thusands of customers. I spend a lot of time talking to customers and the main piece of feedback is that they are surprised by the simplicity. The product is so simple that it has allayed fears of involvement in on-line advertising. A pizza shop that was getting 30 clicks per day had to pause their campaign due to significant increase in business.”

Anyone that has managed an Adwords account understands the complexity, and the level of monitoring needed to truly reap the benefits from the platform.  Well, say goodbye to complexity and hello to simplicity.  Google has taken all the guesswork out of Adwords to make the Express version a very attractive alternative for the busy business owner.

The differences between Boost and Adwords Express are minimal.  There is a new sign up process that you will need to follow, but other than that, it’s business as usual.  If there is one major takeaway from this move, is that this brings small business owners one step closer to needing a Google Places account set up and optimized to compete – you must have one to use the new online advertising platform.  For the remaining holdouts (which account accounts to over 50%), here’s another chance to lay claim and setup a Google Places account for your business.

Google has officially launched Google+ in beta mode to early adopters, and the results are coming in quickly.  The conservative opinion has the newcomer as a strong contender in the social media space, and the more aggressive model has Google+ unseating Facebook in short order.  Right now, beta users are testing Google+ on a limited feature basis only – you’ll need an invite to participate.  Google will no doubt take their time to ensure a clean launch to ensure the best chance of building up anticipation and taking it viral.  By all indications, that won’t be a problem.  Since the beta launch, as much as 18 million users have staked claim to the exploratory version, eclipsing any other previous launch.  I thought it would helpful to write a quick post highlighting some of the features, and how Google+ plans on separating itself from Facebook.

Design

If you like the Facebook design, you’ll like Google+.  The two are for all practical purposes identical.  And why not?  There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel, this is Internet Marketing 101 and Google understands this better than anyone.  If something works, use the pieces that work and improve upon it.  This is exactly what Google did.

The Interface

Unlike Facebook, Google did a magnificent job of making it easy to get things done, hmm, what a concept uhh?  This was one of the first things I noticed first when navigating my way around Google+, the innate intuitiveness and ability to “figuring things out” was so easy.  Facebook’s navigation always seemed clunky and non-modular to me, so Google won this battle using a clean and elegant interface.

Circles

This is one of the features I like most, and something Facebook had a hard time incorporating.  Circles is basically a way for you to set up streams in your account.  For example, instead of sharing something to everyone on your list, Google+ allows you to share by nomination, a concept that is absent in Facebook.  You select which people you share with based on the circle of interest, i.e. Family, Friends, Workers, etc.

Sparks

Combining the features of Networkedblogs with the ease of RSS Feeds, Sparks allows you to create and display your main interests using Streams.

How will Google+ affect SEO?

It’s difficult to tell how much, but one thing is for certain, it will affect SEO at some level.  Google, Bing, and Yahoo announced last year they were taking “social media signals” into consideration and incorporating them into their organic ranking algorithm, it’s obvious Google+ will be a major player.  They are already included quite extensively in the Personalized Search.

Will it rival Facebook?

It remains quite obvious Google+ was created to take on Facebook and win the war of the social media circles.  This battle will be reminisent of an Ali vs. Frazier epic, two heavyweights going at it until someone drops to the canvas.  And don’t think for a minute this project does not high visibility amongst the Google brass.

Page “sent out a company-wide memo … alerting employees that 25% of their annual bonus will be tied to the success or failure of Google’s social strategy in 2011.”

Nope, the Google+ vs. Facebook is about to begin, so take your seat and let the fight begin!

 Summary

Clearly Google has been the aggressor by coming out with a very versatile and user-friendly social tool that should do very well.  Only time will tell, but my early prediction is Google+ will make a large chink in the armor of the social media glamor boy.  Facebook will obviously continue to thrive, but will scaled back as arrival of the new kid on the block will lay claim to this booming space.

Every so often, something is published that minimizes the complexity, and wraps the density of a topic into a nice little neat package that stands on its own merit.  Such is the case with the Search Engine Land – Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors.  This article comes on the heels of a popular post by SEOmoz earlier this year on the 2011 search engine ranking factors.

Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seems overly complex on the surface and at times when trying to explain it, sounds like something out of a Greek mythology class.  Nevertheless, many SEOs encourage clients to learn as much as possible about the benefits of optimizing your website.  After all, this is the new marketing landscape, and participation is the key to most SEO campaigns.

SEOs still at times, grapple to come up with the right verbiage, analogies, and angles to successfully explain what is needed to take their website from rags to riches.

Well, this may be your answer.

What I especially like about the table is the sheer simplicity, putting a somewhat complicated topic into context that most can relate to, high school chemistry class.  So go ahead, take a trip back in time to your high school days.  Click here to enlarge the table, and find the similarities between neutrons, electrons and SEO.

This may not qualify to be your go-to reference when explaining SEO to your next would-be client.  But it does give every professional SEO a good reference point that encapsulates the things we should be focusing on most.

SEO and the Periodic Table of Ranking Factors - http://t.co/eqWDq7l

June 22, 2011 12:09 pm via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@DanDeRoeck

Dan DeRoeck

As an Internet strategist and SEO , I run across many websites in my travels; some good, many fair, but most downright dismal at displaying even the most basic Internet marketing essentials.  A poorly optimized site will give any level headed business person a sour taste in their mouth, wondering why they put any money into this “Internet thing.”  On the other hand, a properly optimized website will give that same business person a rush of optimism when they see tangible evidence for their investment.  There are a limitless ways to optimize your site.  My goal today is to simply give you the quantifiable basics.  In other words, make sure you leave today armed with the basics for a properly optimized website.

Below, are my top 5 quintessential elements for a successful business website.

1. Optimize your web pages

This involves simply targeting each page of your website to a specific topic or subtopic, and optimizing them using Meta tags.  These pages should be the focus of the services and/or products of your business.

After dedicated pages are set up, Meta tags must correspond with each one.  Title and Description Meta tags must be complete and valid.  Search engines will use these Meta tags to determine what your business is about and how relevant the web pages are to their customers.  A lack of page optimization is far and away the most common and easiest problem to fix.    

2. Google Places

Why businesses are not heeding this advice always seems to mystify me.  Google has long been throned the king of local search.  In fact, over 90% of people search for a product or service online before purchasing.  Google Places is the cornerstone of local marketplace.  Yet only 42% of businesses have even bothered to claim their account!  If you leave today with only one takeaway, make sure you claim your Google Places account.  It is the most important thing you will do for your local online presence.

3. Email Marketing/Set up Opt-in

A prerequisite to email marketing is providing a place where interested patrons or visitors can sign up.  Set up an account with Constant Contact or my personal favorite, Aweber.  Add an opt-in to your website and begin building your list.  Don’t forget to communicate and nurture the list after people have shown an interest.  Email marketing is arguably the most targeted way of marketing your product or service. 

4. Create blog

Many smart business people forgot about this one.  They may think that a blog is… well, for bloggers.  This is a big mistake.  A blog on your website provides many benefits, too numerous for this post.  One of my favorite analogies in describing the usefulness of a blog is simply: “every keyword on a web page is a potential keyword.”  And if you think about how search engines crawl and index your website, it makes sense.  Suffice to say, a blog is a literal “hot bed” for keywords.  And with a blog, those same keywords eventually turn into long-keywords, arguably the highest converting search phrases in marketing. 

5. Mobile compatible

This will become huge in 2012.  It looms important now, but in 6-12 months, the clear-cut must-have winner will be having a mobile compliant website.  Most websites in existence today are simply not mobile compatible.  And with over 35% of web users using a mobile phone device to surf the Internet, the time has come to look the 800 pound gorilla straight in the eyes and take action to correct it.  Don’t leave money on the table, make your business website mobile compatible.

There you have it, my top 5 must-have elements for a solid website marketing foundation… and this only gets you in the game.  Once you get these basics in place, the real fun begins.

Taking advantage of the opportunities the Internet provides, is an exciting time for all of us.  Never before have big companies been taken to task by the “little guy” looking for the piece of the American dream.  We are all on a level playing field, so now is the time to take advantage of some of these basic website foundation elements.  Take massive action to correct these simple elements, and you will be on the road to online marketing success.

5 Quintessential Elements of a Successful Business Website: As an Internet strategist and SEO connoisseur , I ru... http://bit.ly/km8ctP

May 30, 2011 9:04 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@DanDeRoeck

Dan DeRoeck

Brightlocal.com, a provider of local search tools for SEO’s and SMB’s, released a new report called “Where do local business websites get their traffic & do consumers appreciate local search results?”

The study was done to determine how valuable local search results were to consumers and marketers – the group consisted of 648 SEO’s and 1,250 United States consumers.

Study Highlights:

• Google Places drives 33% of all website visits to local business websites
• Organic search drives 25% of all website visits to local websites.
• Yahoo and Bing account for less than 7% of all website visits to local business websites.
• 59% of consumers use Google every month to locate a good local business.
• 71% of search users value local search results and actively use the results.
• 60% of consumers give more consideration to local results that have images.

Below, is the ranking of local search sources:

Immediately following the Google local search algorithm update in November of 2010′, I hypothesized that local search results now appeared to be a blend of Google Maps and Google organic search.  The results of this survey should convince you now that it is more important than ever to have your website organically optimized.  In other words, if your website is poorly optimized or worse yet, you have no website at all, your chances of being competitive in the local search rankings are now compromised.

Below, is a startling chart that shows just how important blending organic search optimization with Google Places has become.  A whooping 58% of website traffic originates from Google Places and organic search [click image to enlarge]:

From the consumer survey, it was determined that 59% use Google every single month to find local businesses.

Another finding of the study shows 71% of people found search results helpful and useful.  This rises to 80% between the ages of 18-34.

So what does this new information tell us?

In summary, it certainly draws more conclusive evidence that an Internet presence is vital for the growth of local businesses.

It’s no longer acceptable to simply claim your Places account [although that is a start, and I will show you how later].  You need to focus on optimizing both your Google Places page and your website in order to stay in the game.

One of Google’s ranking factors is now heavily bias toward businesses that can optimize both their Places account and their website.  This ranking factor is now bigger than life, and ultimately determines whether Google will show your business as a viable contender in your space.

If you have not claimed your Google Places account, please start now by going here: http://places.google.com/business

If you are not sure you have claimed it, or you see your business listed in Google Maps and are unsure you claimed it, follow these simple steps.

1. Search for your business name in Google.
2. Click on Place Page in Google Maps – your listing should look like the one to the left [click image to enlarge]:
3. If the listing shows “Owner-Verified Listing,” the listing has been claimed [hopefully by you] and you can make changes.  If the listing shows “Business Owner?,” the listing has not been claimed and your business listing is controlled by 3rd party information, i.e. Yelp.

I hope you found this post helpful and that it entices you to take action optimizing all of your web properties.  Google Places and your website are excellent places to start your marketing your business.

Please contact me if you have any questions.