Elite Seo Marketing Blog

Better PR: Custom Blog Creation or Article Writing and Distribution?

seo_writer_mc — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:22:10 +0000

There are lots of reasons you might want to focus on creating an ample amount of high-quality content for your business. The biggest is the social factor: the more you say (intelligently and well, that is), the more people on sites like Facebook and Twitter will talk about what you said. The more they do that, the more traffic you get, the more (free) backlinks get built on your behalf, and so on.

So, knowing this, some people have come to use with a pretty simple question: if you’re going to focus on creating killer content and putting it out there, where should you put it? Google’s recent focus on “fresh” content seems pretty solidly in the camp of “don’t duplicate it”, so that’s out. And really, when you get right down to it, there are two basic options — you can put it all up on a blog, or you can post it to various article directories.

So which is better PR?

If you go for custom blog creation:

Readers are much more encouraged to move from one post to another, learning more about your company as they go.
You can add your own widgets and tools to make your blog more SEO-friendly, more reader-friendly, and more ‘you’.
The various tags, titles, categories, and other natural blog elements all add to your ability to focus each page, SEO-wise, on a specific keyword or two.
As you add more pages to your blog, it will grow in relative authority and each post will benefit from that.

If you go for article writing and distribution:

Readers reach the call-to-action and they’re much more likely to follow it to your site’s landing page than they are to click off to another article.
Article directories tend start with higher authority (and thus significantly more readership) than a blog will, no matter how well-SEO’d.
Article directory pages benefit (or suffer) from the overall quality of the directory as a whole, so a very good directory will pass even more juice onto your content.

On the whole, it’s somewhat of a conundrum, because if you have an established blog with a pile of content on it, you’re better off posting to the blog in most cases — but if you don’t, you’re better off posting to an article directory. But if you keep posting to the article directory, you’ll never get that blog off of the ground. In the end, as was probably entirely predictable, the best answer is to do both.

Social Media Marketing

seo_expert — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:21:23 +0000

Social media marketing. Or maybe you’re saying it in your mind as Social media marketing? Well Social media marketing submits to your sites course and how much attention it can bring to it. Jointly, with Social media marketing comes social media sites and or social networking sites that help advance your process. Examples consist of sites such as Facebook, an urbanized social networking site that is created for distribution of updates, photos, events as well as other activities. Twitter, also for instance, is a social site created to let people provide short messages with others.

Any person can initiate a Facebook fan page, start a blog, or create a Twitter account. To be honest, anyone, and I mean anyone, can make a website. Anyone from 45-year-old men to 14-year-old girls can falsely advertise to be a rich, nice looking 23-year-old woman, actress, lawyer; what-ever the case may be, on the internet. In this world of incredible internet technology we learn to be cautious of what we see, believe and trust. Exactly like Search engines. We tend to fail to remember that search engines aren’t just websites that help us find the latest gossip, or the closest taco bell. Search engines are a business, an organization where success depends on supplying you with the top, most dependable, accurate results so you keep coming back.

Social media frequently gives into the discovery of new content, such as news stories, and “discovery” in a search action. Social media also can provide you with building links that turn support into SEO efforts. This can defiantly be a key strategy to use because it links to other providers that are a back up or proof to what your saying isn’t just coming from you, but from others and the information you’re providing them with is trustworthy. Numerous amounts of people also carry out searches at social media sites to come across social media content. That is what the famous Facebook, popular Twitter, will do for you with the help of search engines along with what was previously explained.

So there’s Social media content, social media marketing, but how do we get that all there? By Social Media Optimization!

Social Media Optimization puts forth to the procedure of advancing a website, (otherwise known as optimizing the site) so that when the content is ready it can be, with no trouble, increased through online communities and networks by users and visitors of the website. With social media optimization, you may alter a web’s design, color, font but overall, links and the well-known “add to” or “share this” icons that are found to be throughout the web these days.

Without social media marketing optimization we wouldn’t be able to start the social marketing aspect of it, by distributing the referral from the optimized page to other social marking sites or social media content. The stuff that is completed “off-site’ are key, for instance, taking part in online communities where your clienteles spend their time. That is a lively role that flows under social media marketing and getting your word, news, gossip, special salsa recipe spread out to the World Wide Web.

Watch A Top Los Angeles SEO Company Build Backlinks

seo_writer_mc — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:08:07 +0000

OK, it’s not often that a top-ranking Los Angeles SEO company goes into any amount of detail about what exactly it does when you hire it to put your website on the first page of Google. Every SEO company likes to pretend it has it’s own super-secret proprietary information that only it can use to succeed in a way that no one else can.

The truth, however, is much simpler: most SEO companies do exactly the same stuff. The difference is almost never in the techniques they use — it’s in the details, like customer service, speed, accuracy, and quality of content. The details that separate an all-American company from an outsourced train wreck.

Here’s what our company does when you ask us to guarantee first page placement for your website:

Analyze Your Website: We check out your website to see how it conforms to the rules of on-site SEO, and to make sure that it’s professional-looking and ready for the public.
Alter Your Website: If it’s not, we’ll give you the specific HTML changes you need to make sure the SEO is spot-on…and we’ll offer a few suggestions to make it a bit more polished if need be as well.
Keyword Research: The most important part of ANY SEO operation. We take our time on the keyword research, making certain the phrases we’re going to target will be money-makers as well as being within your site’s grasp.
Quick Links: Once we know what keywords to target, we split into four groups. The first group pumps out swarms of small, quick links like social bookmarks and directory submissions. These fast links give Google evidence that your site is growing and isn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon.
Slow Links: The second group starts putting together content and distributing it across the best content directories on the Internet. These slower links are stronger individually and cast a wide net with which to capture customers.
A Blog: The third group will create a blog for your company, SEO-optimize it, and start putting out fresh content on a regular basis. This helps remind Google that you’re an active and evolving company that deserves frequent attention.
PPC Management: The last time uses pay-per-click marketing to get your website on the front page of Google instantly and keep it there while the other three teams’ efforts kick in to give you a natural, organic ranking.

That’s the entire plan — sounds simple, doesn’t it? Of course, every one of those parts has an immense amount of experience and expertise that goes into it, which is why companies like ours exist.

Subdomain Links, Unique Root Domains, and First Page Placement

seo_writer_mc — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:52:36 +0000

Here’s an interesting fact: of all of the various statistics that you can easily measure about a website, there is one single number that most directly correlates with high rankings on Google. It’s the number of unique root domains you have that link to your website.

So, for example: say you have a website that has 400 backlinks from 7 different root domains (say, for example, because 200 of those backlinks come from blogspot.com — because he does a lot of blog commenting — and another 195 come from squidoo.com because the guy loves his lenses.) Then you have another website that has 55 backlinks from 24 different root domains. The guy with almost 1/8th as many backlinks is more likely to be ranked highly on Google, because he has three and a half times as many unique root domains linked to his site.

Until very recently, this was also true of subdomains — a subdomain effectively counted as a different root domain. (A subdomain, if you didn’t know, is the part of the URL that comes before the website’s “main” name — so ‘arananthi.blogspot.com’ is a different subdomain from ‘taotenshi.blogspot.com’.) They were counted as separate domains for a long time because subdomains were only really used by big sites like blogspot to separate out their various authors.

Of course, SEO companies caught on and realized they could easily make hundreds of subdomains and backlink from each to a site and pull lots of linkjuice without ever even having to register a new domain name. So Google changed things up and made subdomains count as the same domain as the root domain.

What that means for you — or rather, your SEO company — is that it’s no longer profitable in terms of first page placement to invest in more than one Squidoo lens, more than one Blogspot microblog, more than one of anything on the same URL, really.

The exception that proves the rule, of course, being content that’s valuable for being content rather than as a backlink — so you still want regular blog posting, regular articles up on the top article directories, and all that. Content is still king — it’s just not quite as effective SEO as it was a short while ago.

Get Your Organic SEO And Put On A Good Public Face At The Same Time

seo_writer_mc — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:29:50 +0000

It might be that we’re drilling a little too hard on this concept lately, but it seems like people are having a really hard time understanding the realities of the new organic SEO market. Things don’t work today like they worked a few years ago.

A few years ago, it was easy to buy cheap traffic. Google’s Adwords and similar markets hadn’t been discovered by the corporations yet, and so it was open season for any small business to pop out $.15 per click and get good traffic to their site. At the same time, genuinely good content was hard to find — most $.02/word writers were from the Philippines or Bangladesh, and if you wanted content done well for your business, you basically had to do it yourself or pay a small fortune and hire someone to do it.

Today, it’s switched. The recession has driven thousands of unemployed people from the UK, the US, and Australia online — and as many as have become entrepreneurs, even more have become content producers. That means that content isn’t that hard to acquire anymore — which means, in turn, that the average quality of content online has shot up. At the same time, corporations have taken over AdWords and other PPC networks, which means traffic, which used to be relatively cheap, is at a premium.

That has created a unique effect on SEO. At the same time that it’s become even more important to small businesses (because PPC isn’t an option), it’s also become higher quality (because of the surplus of native English content writers.) Sure, you can still get cheap one-off backlinks pumped out by SEO companies in Bangladesh, but today, if you want a high-quality, relevant-content backlink, chances are some stay-at-home dad in Washington State will write you a piece for a press release service at $.02/word quite happily.

What that means for YOU, the business, is that you should be able to count on your SEO company to produce backlinks that not only give you authority on Google, but also bring traffic directly to your table — because they’re written by intelligent, English-speaking people who have a basic grasp of how to market to their peers. If you’re not getting that level of service from your SEO company, you need a new SEO company.

Why Every Website SEO Company Needs To Master Public Relations

seo_writer_mc — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:07:07 +0000

If you intend to do any serious amount of business with your website, SEO is only one small part of what you need to succeed in today’s internet business environment. Having backlinks used to be the be-all and end-all of SEO, but with last year’s Google update codenamed Panda, lots of things changed — and each successive update Google performs, from increasing the number of secure searches to punishing content mills, only pushes SEO further into the realm of PR.

Here’s what I mean. It used to be that you could outsource a few dozen 250-word articles to your friends in Bangalore, get them spun into a dozen articles each by some other friends in Calcutta, and post your 144 articles to 144 different article directories to get 144 unique backlinks with controllable anchor text and LSI — and it would matter. Not anymore.

Panda has killed thin-content pages — especially those on weak websites (like almost any article directory that’s not on the Top Ten Article Directories list.) You can still do that whole process, and it’s even gotten cheaper and quicker as automation software and outsourcing quality has improved; it just won’t actually bump your traffic much at all. If you want to see improvement in your rankings, you have to play to Panda’s demands — and that means real content on quality websites that pass legitimate juice through your backlinks.

So how does that force organic SEO and public relations to join hands? Simple — if you’re creating fat content, people will read it. If your content is looking like it has being written in the Bangalore, people are going to associate that level of quality and knowledge with your company forever. You never know which piece of content will be the one that a given surfer will find and use as his first impression of your company — and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

In other words, every ‘fat’ backlink you post needs to be something you would proud to have your customers see. And that means hiring an SEO company that knows a little something about PR.

How Will Secure Search Change Small Business SEO?

seo_writer_mc — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:48:09 +0000

Google has started redirecting people who log into their Google accounts before searching to a new, more secure form of Google search. The difference is a small as an s: it’s https://www.google.com instead of http://www.google.com — but the effects the change has on the searching process are profound to everything except the searcher.

If you run a search on the new secure Google, you won’t notice any difference at all — but the owners and users of first- and third-party applications ranging from Google Analytics to Market Samurai will. Those applications take information from Google’s database of searches and use them to tell various people about your Google searches. The new secure search prevents those applications from ever getting your data.

If you’ve got Analytics, for example, and someone uses Google to get to your site, you’ll learn that they did so — but you won’t get to see what search term they used to get there. If you use Market Samurai, you won’t see the missing data, but the data that you don’t see will be incomplete — because whatever small percentage of people that are using the secure search don’t have their data counted by MSam’s keyword research module.

So what does this have to do with small business SEO? Pretty simple: even if all your doing is basic local internet marketing, you still need to know which keywords to target. As secure searches become more and more common (and Google has said outright that this is one of their goals!), obtaining the information you need to properly target keywords is going to get more and more difficult.

That said, this isn’t something that should be blown out of proportion. To a degree, local internet marketing isn’t ever that hard — if you sell martial arts supplies to a small down like Aptos, CA, the keywords “sparring equipment Aptos” or “Aptos ninja gear” are always going to be safe bets. It’s only for the long-tail keywords, particularly pay-per-click marketing long-tail keywords, that will really suffer — making PPC an even worse bet for small businesses than it is today.

Mobile Websites 101

seo_expert — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:37:18 +0000

There are over 2.5 billion mobile phone users in the world and the numbers are quickly increasing. Additionally, many of them are applying internet access to their phones, making it easy for them to browse online while on the go. For this reason, website owners are reconfiguring their settings to fit the standards of mobile devices. Some phones, such as iPhones, have the capacity to upload any site, whether it is reconfigured or not. But most every other phone, particularly older versions, do not support the capacity of a regular website. Small screens require smaller space. By decreasing the size of your site to fit 20MB, you will become accessible and viewable to any mobile website user.

To further understand what is needed to make your website mobile-accessible, you may want to first access your website from a cell phone and analyze what you see. Does it even load? Can you view important information on your website? What can be accessed on the site and what is missing? Many websites have flash features that do not work on phones at all. In order to make the site mobile ready, you may have to remove this feature completely and replace it with something else. The main thing to keep in mind is the user and what is most important that they view on your site.

Here are 5 essential steps to keep in mind when altering your website:

1. Trim Down Content- Mobile phones do not have the same capacity as regular computers when it comes to uploading content. Therefore, it is important to trim down unnecessary content. Depending on what your company is selling or promoting, you need to decide what the most important features are and alter your site around these features. If you own a restaurant, for example, you may want to stick with the most essential information such as contact information, a map and directions to the restaurant, a menu and maybe any special promotions you are having. By doing this, you are not only making your site mobile ready but are also developing the key selling features of your site. Your clients will have an easier time accessing the important information from your site and will not waste time searching through useless pages.

Immerse Content into Single Columns- Because phone screens are smaller than monitors, having multiple columns can often confuse and frustrate a user. Having a single column that the user can scroll up and down on is much more practical. They will find all the information they need easily and won’t find themselves spending minutes just to scroll through a page.

Prioritize Your Content- While a regular website can easily spread their content all over a web page, mobile phones are harder to sift through. It’s important to prioritize your content, offering the most important features at the top or bottom of the page so that they are easily found by users. For example, if you are selling brand apparel, it may be best to add a search browser or a drop down menu at the top or bottom of the page. That way users can just type in or search through categories to find what they are looking for. All information such as text and photos will then be placed in the middle of the page. The main idea is to make the site as user-friendly as possible.

Customize Text Entry For Mobile Users- Typing on a mobile phone can be a lot trickier than typing on a standard keyboard. Often times, users will make grammatical mistakes and take up lots of time typing in information. This is why adding features that will require less typing are best. Program “My Account” settings on your mobile site that will enable clients to simply type in their information one time and access it whenever they want. This is especially handy when they are purchasing from your site! Also, instead of requiring a password to be entered to access a site, maybe install a pin feature that only requires numbers. Another big feature that is offered on mobile phones are inbuilt functionalities that will enable the user to access addresses and maps, make calls by simply clicking on a number and find the nearest restaurant, hospital, etc. of their choice.

Design For Touch screen & Non-Touch screen- While it is key to fit as much important information as possible into your mobile site, it is also important to bear in mind the accessibility of certain features on the site. Because touch screen users browse a site with their fingers, clicking on things can be a clumsy challenge. If you make crucial links too small, it can be a challenge for them to access the link. Make sure to make links a bit larger and easier to read and access.

Quick Links Like Forum Posting Or Slow Links like Article Writing and Distribution?

seo_writer_mc — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 22:14:35 +0000

Last week, we mentioned a divide between two different kinds of links in the SEO world. Since then, we’ve gotten several Emails from interested readers who wanted us to explore that difference in a little bit more detail. Here goes.

Quick Links
The first category of backlinks are the ‘quick links’ — links that take very little creativity, time, or even expertise to generate. These are links like the ones you get from forum posting, social bookmarking, RSS aggregation, directory submission, and blog commenting.

The goal of a quick link is to get a backlink pointing from a unique root domain that you’re not already linked to — all other elements of the backlink are secondary. It’s nice if you can control your anchor text, your link context, your LSI, and all of that — but it’s not necessary. The simple fact that there’s a new root domain on your list of “root domains that are linked to my page” is the goal.

You can get quick links from almost anywhere — even most SEO-ignorant stay-at-home moms can be trained in the art of quick link building in a matter of hours. The important attributes of a quick-linker are a long attention span, an immunity to boredom, and a resistance to carpal tunnel syndrome.

Slow Links
The second group are the ’slow links’ — links that get built at the rate of two per hour instead of twenty per hour. These links take a spark of creativity, because they need content in order to be built. Article writing and distribution, press releases, Web 2.0 properties, guest blog posts, and marketing videos are all slow links.

The thing about slow links is that they’re like the Swiss army knives of SEO: they do everything, and they do it all pretty well. A well-written slow link will give you:

* A backlink — and usually one with decent authority and juice behind it.

* A landing page from which potential customers can find you.

* A public work that you can point to as evidence of your expertise and use as a tool to build your reputation.

* A piece of content that other people might backlink to voluntarily, widening your sales funnel even further.

In the end, the best SEO strategies probably involve a bit of both kinds of links. Focus too much on quick links and you’ll lose to someone with a better reputation. Focus too much on slow links and someone with a mountain of quick links will outrank you. A divided approach is the best answer for most companies.

5 Common SEO Myths

seo_expert — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:44:06 +0000

Let’s face is, the world is filled with myths and the internet is no different! Most of these myths are relatively harmless, but problems arise when people actually believe and act upon them. The Search Engine Optimization industry has a bountiful amount of myths that often get many people in trouble because they take them to be true. Not only are they seen all over the web, but businesses actually feed these myths to innocent bystanders in hopes of making some extra money. The key is to be knowledgeable about what the industry is really about and what realistic expectations you should have. This is especially important if you are planning on signing up with an SEO company. By doing your homework, you can save yourself lots of time and ultimately, lots of money. To get you started, here are 5 very common SEO myths you should avoid at all costs!

1. SEO Guarantees a #1 Spot- If a company is guaranteeing a #1 spot on Google or any search engine for a key phrase or website name, run in the other direction! SEO fluctuates constantly and is such a competitive industry that there is no way anyone can guarantee a #1 placement. Period.

2. SEO Works Instantly- SEO does not work instantly. Again, if any company is dishing this myth out to you, be wary. SEO is a very involved and time-consuming process. Not only does it take time for webmasters to develop the code and optimize your website, but you must allow the search engines time to index your site and decide where your website will rank on their SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages.)

3. SEO Is a One Time Deal- This is a very common notion that many website owners seem to have. Once they have applied SEO to their website, they think they are set for life. This is simply not true. SEO is one of those tactics that needs constant updating and supervision. This may seem like a hassle, but honestly, it is worth it if you want your website to rank.

4. SEO Can Be Done By yourself- Sure, anything can be self-taught! However, SEO is not something you can learn overnight… or even in a month. The tactics are so in depth and they are in constant transformation and fluctuation. In other words, what is pertinent one day, may not be important the next. Therefore, it will probably be far more time efficient to hire a professional SEO to do the work for you. It may seem costly, but you must realize that you are paying for quality! If you want something done right the first time, it’s best to hire an expert.

5. Search Engine Submissions Work- Nope! Don’t waste your money or time trying to submit your website to search engines because SEO doesn’t work this way. Search Engines want you to put in the hard work it takes to get ranked, so trying to pay them off isn’t going to buy you much. If a company is trying to sell you this tactic, tell them no thanks!