Submitedge - Search Engine Optimization Blog

Is it too Late for Christmas SEO?

SubmitEdge — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:25:10 +0000

Well, that depends, if you are a well established site, probably not – and if you already rank highly for your key search terms, you might be able to get a few quickies in if you are in a niche market.

Most companies which concentrate on seasonal SEO are Consumer Products and Retail (CP&R) verticals, but other areas such as financial services and health care can still bump up traffic during November and December. Of course, e-commerce sites will always need a big Christmas push to break even.

SEO should be tailored to fit the holiday season. Seasonal promotional pages and products should be built with the intent to stay live all year long, building authority and consistency with the search engines. You can do targeted advertising during peak season to drive traffic. Done properly, it shouldn’t take long for the pages to rank for terms on their own.

During the holidays many new pages are introduced that have some sort of holiday focus. Adding content specific to the event can increase the possibility of links from holiday news articles, blog posts, and forums. Press releases and articles geared to the holiday can also booost links to your holiday themed content. All links must be high quality to make a difference in time for Christmas 2009.

Directories with holiday categories, may accept additional site listings for relevant pages not already in the directory. Look up links from previous years’ holidays, and ask Webmasters to update these links to point to your latest content.

Holiday SEO performance depends heavily on how well the site is positioned to be able to rank well for new pages. Creating static pages from a URL perspective that can be updated annually is a good idea.

Last note – when updating for Christmas, don’t forget New Year Resolution traffic!

Budgeting for SEM

SubmitEdge — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:13:00 +0000

Paid search accounts are becoming so highly optimized that there isn’t much wiggle room. This means if search volume dips, you may not see much you can do about it without blowing your budget.

Seasonal shifts in search for any given niche can affect your traffic. This means you can manage budget allocation throughout the year to even the spikes and dips. during certain times of year

Current events can also affect traffic – in mmore ways than one. When Patrick Swayze passed away, not only did anything ‘Swayze’ sell like mad, but domains did as well as people rushed to cash in. This meant that the people setting up Swayze fan websites to sell Swayze gear made money – and so did the people who instantly snapped up domains and resold them to those website developers!

However, people who regularly sold Swayze items might have crashed and burned if their budget went out of control with hits in the 48 hours following the death of the original ‘Dirty Dancer’. Making sure caps are in place and third party costs are covered keeps your SEM budget from getting hopelessly in a snarl. Having a thirty day rollover period that you track for trends and anomalies helps, too.

If you are overpacing, you can optimize out of your worst performing ads, keywords, and ad groups. It’s a quick fix – cut back! However, underpacing is usually harder to fix When you’re underpacing, you may have to face the truth – that your budget is insufficient for the desired result. Bite the bullet and do it early rather than late!

If you manage your SEM budget carefully, you can come out ahead at the end of the year, with ideas on how to make the next year even better!

Don’t be a Black Hatter!

SubmitEdge — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:07:56 +0000

Being a black hat SEO artist is walking a very thin line! Trust me, you don’t wan’t to get involved in black hat SEO tactics – the penalties can be quite severe.

If you are tempted to take some shortcuts to the top of the SERPs, think twice – don’t be unaware of the risks. Actions result in consequences, and those for breaking faith with search engines are hard to recover from. The straight and narrow path is the one to walk to ensure a long and happy life in the index!
The top five black hat tactics to avoid when SEOing are:

1. Spamming. Don’t spam through email, or on forums and blogs by commenting. Also, don’t try overloading social sites with links to your site. You might boost your PageRank temporarially, but this type of behavior will result in getting yourself banned from places which have great potential to help you down the line. Incorrect use of these methods can hurt you more than help you.

2. Buying links. Google will always find you out – they even encourage others to report you! This will result in a harsh penalty. Never buy links, don’t pay for reviews, none of that. It’s just too risky. (Note – you can buy links for advertising purposes only if you are certain they will be no-followed and do not send any link juice. )

3. Keyword stuffing. Some people still think stuffing with keywords will result in top Google rankings, but it doesn’t. All it does is irritate your visitors as they will not find such things valuable, and it also damaged your reputation with search engines when they look at your site and you do not have quality relevant content.

4. Cloaking. Don’t redirect the webcrawlers and bots to one page, and show your consumers another. Trying to trick Google or any other major search engine with a bounced pageview is a very bad idea – they will find out and you could be penalized.

5. White on white text. Google will penalize you if they catch you. And, again, they will catch you. Just don’t do this! It is way past the age when that was considered clever – now it’s just stupid.

Black hatters may be dropped from indexes altogether, and never be able to get re-indexed. Once you are penalized, it can take hours and hours trying to track down black hat actions and fix them, and meanwhile your customers are lost and trust in your site is destroyed.

SEO Step-By-Step Guide– 218. Taking Advantage Of Blended Search Results

fara — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:26:55 +0000

Not many of us are aware of the terms such as blended search results and universal search results. Though you may not know what exactly these terms mean, you have certainly come across blended search results or universal search results. When you make use of popular search engines such as Google, you are no more getting just the websites listed as part of your search results. You will be able to notice that the search results include video listings, images, results from book listings, news pages, blogs, dictionary listings, etc. As you can guess now what the term universal search results mean, your searches now fetch matching information in all possible formats so the results are universal.
This can be both good and bad for you. It will throw you into an enormous level of competition online. You are not only competing with one form of results, rather you are now to deal with the competition that results out of clubbing results from information available in all possible format. For the one who is searching it is of great help because they will be able to find more information on their search topic. So the intention of the search engines is not to increase the competition but to provide better search experience for the users so that they can find the information they need fast.
However, you will be able to take advantage of universal search results or blended search results. You will be disadvantaged as long as you are going to stick to the conventional or old modeled search engine marketing approach that limits itself to textual format for sharing the information about their website, products and searches. On the other hand, you can multiply the chances of getting listed in the top positions by knocking of the boundaries and exploring all possible formats. Create impressive videos and post them online, post relevant images in your website and optimize the images properly with keyword rich captions and image names, create blogs on your services and products. Add maps to your location, add your business to Google business listings. There is nothing to stop you, you just need to get little creative with your search engine marketing efforts. You can enhance your online success by using multiple formats. So universal search results is indeed doing you good as long as you do not limit yourself to single format.
You will be able to tap the potential of the universal search results easily and this is one of the most cost effective approach to driving traffic to your website. Not only Google has started featuring universal search results but you can see the same phenomenon other top search engines including Yahoo. It will not be too long before all the search engines start showing blended search results.

Not Indexed? No Problem. Five Tricks to Get Indexed Fast

SubmitEdge — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:56:34 +0000

Sometimes it may seem to take forever to get indexed. This may mean you need to take a quick look back and make sure you did everything correctly!

1. Each search engine has a form you can fill out to add your url. This is slow. If this is all you did, you may be waiting a while for the search engine to spider your site! However, it is one way to get indexed.

2.Keep doing content updates. If search engines notice change happening, they scoot your way faster.

3. Make sure you didn’t hide your site with ‘no-index’! This is a common rookie mistake

4. link from a blog or social site with a lot of daily content – they get spidered fast, and a link from there can get fast attention. :

…are all great places to start. Just don’t spam!

5. If you have another indexed site or blog, or a friend does, have them link to you. They can remove the link later,but it provides a bridge for the spiders.

If all that fails, have a seasoned SEO take a look at your site. You may be in the Sandbox for something you did or your web designer did hat is considered black hat!

SEO Step-By-Step Guide– 217. Effective Social Media Brand Identity Management

fara — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:21:05 +0000

Today ‘Social Media’ is the buzzword in everyone’s search engine marketing plans. If you want to promote your brand identity, then the best way to go about is to choose every social media platform that is available to you today. Never underestimate the capacity of social media tools and websites in brand name promotion. You cannot overlook the benefits that you can possibly enjoy by using social media. If you are ignoring it, then you are going to trail behind in the competition because your competitors are already making use of every social media platform available to them.
Though social media is one of the best ways of search engine marketing, many of us fail tap the full potential of social media marketing. One of the main reasons for the under utilization of social media marketing is that we lack planning. You cannot get any quantifiable results by taking random efforts. You must have a decisive social media marketing strategy.
Your social media marketing should bring two pronged benefits. First of all, it should promote your brand name by increasing online visibility of your brand identity so that the online community can recognize your brand name when they hear it being spoken by others. Secondly, it should bring traffic to your website; the traffic that you get to your website through social media should be highly targeted. There is yet another benefit through social media marketing, which is gaining back links to your website. But this is gradually waning out because of “Nofollow” attribute used by almost all social media websites. If you can get good back links through social media marketing well and good but this should not distract your brand name promotion strategy.
You should incorporate your efforts social media efforts to your overall marketing strategy. Only when it part of your overall marketing strategy, you will be able to achieve the desired results. If it is not integrated as part of your over all marketing strategy, you social media efforts will turn out to be sporadic efforts without any considerable benefit.
The second important aspect of your social media brand identity management strategy is to tracking and monitoring the results that you achieve through social media. Metrics are crucial in quantifying your success. This will also give a definitive direction to your efforts; without these numbers your efforts will turn out to be vague. These metrics should also include ROI calculations so that you will know whether your efforts on social media marketing is being fruitful and where you can make corrections to get the desired results.
Your success in social media marketing efforts depends on how well it is planned. Careful planning and implementation of your strategy will bring a great difference to your social media marketing efforts.

Serenity Now! – Solving SEO Stress

SubmitEdge — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:41:07 +0000

Ever get so stressed about SEO you considered chucking the whole idea? NOT a good plan, but most webmasters have felt this way at one time or another.

When it comes to our websites, things are usually in a state of change. The world of search is constantly altering its focus to deliver more specific results, so we have to adapt!

If the search engines make links more relevant, we need better incoming PageRank giving links. If they decide that quantity and quality of pages is of importance, content becomes a priority.

Managing your time and your budget is critical if you hope to have a prayer of getting everything done. You can in all likelihood do some of your site work yourself, but in some cases help will be needed. Knowing what to hire out is important.

Remember, there is no shame in not knowing how to do something! The only time to be ashamed of yourself is if you pass up the opportunity to learn. Just try to determine what you can change yourself, and what you may need help to change.

Content is king. If you have no sense of what it takes to write a good article and make it optimized for search engine relevance, you need to consider having a professional writer do your content, and possibly your distribution as well. Content on your site or blog is important, but articles and posts out on the web are almost imperative for links and traffic driving. A good SEO firm will be able to help you get your content in places it will be noticed.

Build a back link portfolio by talking people into giving you links, if you are a social network butterfly. Research PageRank to see where you need to focus your efforts. A quick SEO campaign to get the link juice flowing will teach you valuable things about how link juice travels. so watch what your SEO firm does, and learn!

An SEO firm can give you a lot of Serenity when it comes to optimizing your site, as they take the guesswork out of it. Its their job!

SEO Step-By-Step Guide– 216. The need to include SEO in your Developmental Cycle

fara — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:53:57 +0000

If you are planning to start your website’s SEO after the completion of your web development, then it is high time that you stopped a moment and reviewed your own approach. If you want your SEO to bear results and to make your website into a search engine blast, then you must incorporate your SEO as part of your development cycle. If you have to incorporate your website’s SEO as part of your developmental cycle, then your SEO company should be part of your developmental cycle.
Your SEO company should be able to send directives to your web development team on the navigational requirements, file sizes, site architecture, content positioning, etc. Your web development team in turn should discuss with your SEO team on the suitable language platforms. For example usage of JAVA script can hinder your SEO efforts. If your web development incorporates a lot of JAVA script to create those stunning effects in your website then it will be both time and money consuming to have it replaced with a another search engine friendly script. On the other hand if your web development team is already directed by the SEO team on the usable and search engine friendly scripts, they will develop a solution using the search engine friendly script. Your website on the whole will be a search engine friendly website.
Thousands of such factors can be taken care off if during the developmental cycle if your SEO is made part of the developmental cycle. This will also give you the website owner a greater understanding of SEO and your websites search engine strength. One of the main advantages of taking the trouble right at the beginning is that your overall SEO spending will be reduced considerably brining you a lot of savings on the long run. Moreover, you will also be able to save a lot of search engine time. The longer you take to optimize your website the later it will start producing results. On the other hand when you launch a well-optimized website, then it can start attracting the search engines right from day one. You cannot expect for a better reason why your website’s SEO should be made part of your developmental cycle.
Certain things cannot be changed at a later stage even if you are prepared to spend the required time and money. In such cases, your website’s SEO will suffer a great deal. It is much easier to develop a solution that is SEO friendly than make amendments later. Therefore, we cannot stress enough the importance of incorporating your website’s SEO along with the developmental cycle. It goes without saying that your SEO team and your web development team should work hand in hand to produce the desired results.

SEO ‘Science?’

SubmitEdge — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:18:58 +0000

Most of us tend to glaze over when words like ‘algorithm’, ’statistics’ and ‘trend variations’ start being tossed around. However, SEO isn’t a crap shoot or a gutsy gamble – it’s a science built on accumulated data and fairly predictable results.

You have to have content, which is creative, but you also have to have an idea of keyword density, rewrite rules, and other data driven numbers and percentages.

SEO is subjective at times – there will always be differences of opinion, and trial and error is a god part of certain aspects – but objectivity is certainly not absent.

The algorithms change, but they do exist, and at any given time there are definite rules which must be followed to achieve results.

Google, Yahoo and Bing’s algorithms are ever changing, which is why there is always a need for SEOs who are full on geeks, to reverse-engineer those algorithms and find the cracks to exploit. When you are able to define the algorithm enough to formulate a plan of attack, you are in essence working out your own algorithm to analyze your site and pages and turn the tables.

This means using all the data you can gather to make decisions. You have to create a benchmark against which to score your Content, Keyword Choices, PageRank, Indexation, Internal Links, Inbound Links, Hierarchical Linking Structure, HTML Templates and CSS

Examine all urls, title tags, internal anchor text, keyword prominence, H1s, and meta descriptions, Deconstruct your site and distill all the data you can from each component to figure out what your algorithm should be.

Then and only then will you be able to compete effectively.

What can you Expect from your SEO Firm’s Efforts?

SubmitEdge — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:56:15 +0000

You pay your SEO, and sit back. what happens next?

Well, ideally your site soars in the rankings naturally, and you start to receive higher traffic and more importantly higher conversions. A recent conversation in a forum I frequent got me thinking. The two involved were an SEO and a freelance writer.

The writer was shocked that the SEO had provided a service and was patiently waiting for payment instead of demanding instant release of funding provided. The SEO kept saying. ‘No – it’s cool. They’ll pay me when they see the results’. The writer couldn’t wrap their head around the idea that the SEO was willing to let their work be judged by its results. The SEO knew that what they had done would deliver the desired result, and that the proof was in the pudding.

Demand more than empty words from your SEO. Don’t be satisfied with vague promises such as ‘we will make your site rank #1′ or ‘we will get you a thousand back-links’. Ask questions:

Will you be using organic SEO or PPC to make my site #1?

Where do you get links from?

What kind of PageRank do the sites my back-links come from have?

~~How much will my traffic increase~~ I mean,

How much will my conversions increase?

When can I expect to see results?

By asking all these questions, you gather valuable information about what your SEO actually knows, what they can do, and how fast they can do it. Your LAST question should be ‘How much will it cost?” – not your first.