We just received a nice e-mail from one of our recent clients noting their search engine rankings. Without further adieu, here is what they had to say!

We are on the up and up! We show up first page for a bunch of other stuff too.

#1 out of 1,710,000 for Christian Summer Camp ADD
#1 out of 32,900 for Christian Summer Camp Aspergers
#3 out of 128,000 for Christian Summer Camp Learning Differences
#5 out of 63,100 for Christian Summer Camp ADHD

Be sure to check them out at http://charishills.org today!

The new Berry College Facilities Reservation web site has been live for less than one week, and is already ranked very well in search engines.

Here are just a few that we’ve come across so far in Google Search:
#1 result out of 58,200 for Berry Ford Dining Hall
#3 result out of 309,000 for Ford Dining Hall
#1 result out of 89,200 for Berry Alumni Center
#3 result out of 5,070,000 for Berry Clara Bowl
#1 result out of 287,000 for Berry College Green Hall
#1 result out of 48,200 for Berry Ford Auditorium
#1 result out of 14,800 for Berry Interfaith Center
#1 result out of 56,300 for Keown Pavilion
#1 result out of 1,260,000 for Berry Reservations

Visit http://reservations.berry.edu to view the new site!

The newly created Berry College Facility Reservations web site has just launched, allowing interested parties to request reservation information for facilities on campus. The site features a left hand column containing all current facilities open for reservations, as well as an intuitive search function designed to narrow results to only those facilities that are available for a particular function.

Here is a preview of the site search function, under the category of “Conference/Seminar:”

You can see the full web site live at http://reservations.berry.edu/

Hardly a week goes by without us hearing someone touting the value of meta tags in some form or fashion. It’s been years since they have had any relevance in site rankings, but they are an easy sell for an “SEO expert” to a customer who doesn’t work in the web industry day in and day out. Why? Because just like most scams, this one is based in some sort of truth, albeit an outdated one.

It’s true that in years past (many years past), the meta keywords and descriptions tags were helpful. But they haven’t worked in a long time, and now they are just an easy way for a “SEO guy” to help you to part with your hard earned income. We’ve already buried the Meta Keywords tag in our article, “Meta Keywords Tag: Long Dead, But Still Not Gone.” This time around, we’re taking aim directly at the Meta Description tag.

First, a little background.

The Meta Description tag tells Google and other search engines what to say underneath the title of each page on your web site in their rankings, as in the example below.

In the absence of this tag, Google will simply use the first portion of your pages’ content.

Now that we are clear on what the tag does, let’s explore why it is no longer effective in determining search engine rankings. Google’s own blog states that “Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.” Translation? Google may choose to show the description within their index, but it will never make an impact on your search engine rankings.

Is there ever a reason to use the tag?

Yes. If you want to craft the message that visitors will see below the title of your page in Google, then the Meta Description tag is the way to go. Just don’t expect to put in 100 keywords and raise your rankings.

In Conclusion.

Both the Meta Keyword and Description tag are USELESS in increasing your search engine rankings. The next time you get an e-mail or a phone call from somebody who says they can raise your rankings in Google by embedding new meta tags on your site, send them this article and watch their subsequent squirming. That’s all folks!

It’s no secret that there are literally billions of pages of information on the Internet. Most doesn’t pertain in any way to you or your business, but wouldn’t it be nice to automatically find only the information that does, as soon as it gets indexed by Google?

That’s what Google Alerts can do for you. It’s a little known feature from a company that’s full of great offerings, and it’s one that can become invaluable as your business grows. Using it is a snap, and you can set it to update you instantly, or as little as once a week if you have a great deal of new links coming in to your site.

To set up an alert, start by navigating here: http://www.google.com/alerts

Then enter your search terms. These can be your web site (http://www.dynamixwd.com for example), your company or personal name, or anything else that is important to you. Select “Comprehensive” as the Type and decide how often you would like to be contacted. Personally, I have some items come in “as they happen,” and others that I have come in once a day. Last but not least, enter your e-mail address and press “Create Alert.”

Now you’re all set to reap the benefits of knowing who is talking about you online almost as instantly as they do!

This is a simple list of some of the things we have heard in the past from supposed “Search Engine Optimization Experts.” We have created this list in an effort to help you keep your site on top, and to help you know when you are dealing with a potential scammer. Note that this is by no means a conclusive list, just a selection of some of the more common ones we hear. If you received a proposal from another company that sounds a little fishy and want to discuss it with us, we will be happy to do so at any time, completely free of charge or obligation. Simply contact us.

1. You Need to Re-Submit Your Web Site Monthly/Weekly

-FALSE!-
This one is particularly pervasive, and a just plain silly concept. The idea is that you should pay to have your site resubmitted to Google, Yahoo and others on a weekly, monthly or bi-monthly basis so that they will come back and reindex your web site. Now, realistically these search engines exist and have risen to the top because they are very good at what they do. Google knows when to reindex your site, and they don’t want, nor will they take your input on when to reindex them. Now, Google may be nice the first time you resubmit your site to it unnecessarily, assuming that it could just have been an error on your part. But keep submitting it for no reason, and you could find yourself banned for six months in search engines. These search engines won’t send you a nice e-mail explaining why you are banned, you will just notice one day that far fewer people are finding your web site, and you will find out the hard way that you are no longer indexed on their site.

2. You Should Submit Your Site to 10,000 Search Engines

-FALSE!-
This one has been around for almost as long as search engines themselves. The premise is that you should pay to have your site submitted to a thousand, ten thousand, whatever the number of search engines so that your site will be well indexed and people can find you. It sounds almost reasonable on the surface until you stop to think about it. How many search engines do you use? Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and maybe one or two others. The chances are that you only use one search engine, and the chances are good that if you polled all of your friends, they would all use one of about five search engines. Knowing that, how beneficial do you think it will be having a search engine created by some guy in his basement pointing to your web site? Most of these pull their content from the larger search engines directly already (meaning that you are already in their index), and even if they don’t, the chances are very high that not a single person will ever find you from one of these “other” search engines.

3. Google Adwords Will Increase Your Normal (Organic) Rankings

-FALSE!-
Google has stated repeatedly that the Adwords program is completely independent from the normal, organic Google search engine rankings. Paying for traffic through Google Adwords is a great option if you do your research and set it up properly, but it will have absolutely no impact on your normal, non-paid search engine rankings.

4. The More Content You Have on Your Web Site, the Better

-Yes & No-
Yes and No. Yes, you should have adequate content to present your company and its expertise, and you should have that content written in such a way that people can actually find you in search engines. But just adding content for content’s sake may actually hurt your web site rankings. A good rule of thumb is if you wrote it, it makes sense, and that same text doesn’t exist anywhere else, then it’s probably okay to have on your web site. But taking canned text from another web site will not grant you any favors in search engines, and indeed can actually hurt your rankings. Google is smart enough to know when your text has appeared on other web sites, and will mark you as simply a “copycat,” a web site that doesn’t provide any real benefit over the many others that exist with the same content.

5. Link Directories and Exchanges Help in Search Rankings

-FALSE!-
Google is VERY good at what they do, and that includes knowing when you are just trying to artificially pump up your search engine rankings. If you submit your site to these link exhanges (also known as link farms and link directories), Google knows you are trying to artificially boost your rankings, and they can penalize you for it. Will they every time? Probably not. But just because they aren’t punishing you now, it doesn’t mean they won’t tomorrow when Google changes their algorithms. Bottom line: Bad practice is bad practice, and at some point you’re going to get busted for it.

6. You Can Buy a Guaranteed #1 Ranking on Google

-FALSE!-
We hear this one a lot as well. People come to us and say “I want a web site, and I want to be the number one result in Google. Now, I’ve talked to someone already who promises he can do it for me, can you?” The sad truth is that no one can promise you a number one result for anything but Google, and they aren’t going to. That’s not to say that by good practices, meaningful content and an attention to detail your web site can’t be highly ranked for the keywords important to you, maybe even the top result, but there is no way that anyone could possibly promise that to you. If you hear this from a search engine firm, run the other way. Think we’re bluffing? Read what Google has to say (Look for “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google).

7. It Doesn’t Matter Who’s Linking to You as Long as They Are

-FALSE!-
Search engines don’t just look at how many web sites are linking to you, but also the quality of those sites, and what relevance they have to your web site. For instance, if a very well known and well respected soft drink company were to link to our web site, we would receive a boost in our rankings because they are very important in search engines, but as soft drinks are not at all relevant to web design, we would not see the boost that could come from an equally large software company linking to us, as they are both large, well respected and relevant to our web site.

8. Meta Keyword Tags are Important

-FALSE!-
Ten years ago, you would have been right. But today’s search engines are far too smart to give you any credit for having meta tags on your site filled with hundreds of your key words. The way to bring visitors in is to use those keywords meaningfully within the content of your web site, not in a one-after-the-other format in a meta keyword tag at the top of your web site. Search engines won’t give you any benefit for these meta tags, but oddly enough there is research to say that having too many meta tags can actually hurt your rankings. Not only that, but by keeping a list of your most important keywords on your site in the form of meta tags, you are giving your competition prime advice as to the most important keywords to your business! Your competitors can easily copy and paste this list right into Google Adwords and start bringing in your potential customers.

9. The Quality of the Code on Your Site Doesn’t Really Matter &

10. A Web Site is a Web Site, SEO is All that Matters

-BOTH FALSE!-
Google can’t index your site if it can’t get through your code. Errors and problems can prevent search engines from properly reading your site. In addition, poorly created pages using tables and iframes may be difficult – or impossible for a search engine to see. Many sites use images in lieu of actual text, which Google cannot read at all. This means that, while you may have a long paragraph that does a great job of describing your company or product, if it’s in an image without alternate tags, Google doesn’t know what it is and you will get no credit for it, just as if you never included it on the site at all.

Interested in learning more? Give us a call toll free at 800.203.8139, or send us an e-mail.

We are happy to announce that one of our clients, BMSCC is currently listed as the number one result out of 11,900,000 for the term “building materials consultant” (without quotes) in Google. Screenshot included below.

The BMSCC web site was created from the ground up by DynamiX Web Design, and they had no prior web site. Congratulations BMSCC!

We created the DynamiX Labs web site as a resource for anyone who is looking to get more in depth with PHP, HTML, design and CSS. Recently, it has come to our attention that the DynamiX Labs site is ranked #4 out of a staggering 142 MILLION results for the phrase “loading icon” (without quotes) in Google.

In addition, the site is ranked #2 out of a whopping 95,300,000 (that’s 95 Million) in Yahoo for the same keywords.

Thanks to all who have linked to and referenced our articles!

Probably the most common questions we receive about search engine rankings relate to keywords. People ask how many keywords should be added on a given page, whether hiding text behind other objects works in increasing rankings, if adding words that the company is not actually relevant for will help in search engines, etc. Hopefully, this article will help to dispel some of these myths, while providing a clearer understanding of what is necessary to create a web site that is both highly ranking, and also friendly to site visitors. Because, after all, who cares how search engine friendly a site is if customers leave in disgust as soon as they find it?

Myth #1: Forget wasting my time writing good content, Adwords will do the work for me, right?

Yes and no. Yes, if you want to keep piling money into adwords, you will keep bringing in traffic. But, the moment you stop paying for adwords, you are right back where you were before but with less money in your pocket. Google Adwords will not increase your organic rankings. It’s worth saying this again, because it seems to be a very pervasive myth, Google Adwords will not increase your organic rankings.

You can spend $100 million dollars, but as soon as that money is gone, so is the traffic that was created. You can’t throw money at your search engine rankings and hope that they will raise. Now, that’s not to say Adwords doesn’t have it’s place, it’s great for sites with a low organic ranking to start (ie a new web site, or one that has recently been redesigned and is still being indexed), as well as for bringing in traffic in an incredibly competitive arena (we use Adwords ourselves), but the fact is that organic rankings are always more important and valuable to your company than paid rankings.

Myth #2: People will search for my site using industry jargon.

This one is less a myth than an attitude. Consciously or not, most people tend to write their content from the perspective of an industry insider (you know your industry better than anyone, right?), and don’t think to review their content with the people who matter most, their customers and potential customers. If you sell “Information Technology” but someone is looking for an “IT guy,” you lose, plain and simple.

Thankfully, there is a quick remedy. Talk to four or five people who are outside of your industry, and ask them “if you were looking to buy a (insert product or service here) online, what would you type into Google to find it?” Take those phrases and words, and make sure that they are actually on your web site. If they aren’t, then add them in, in context on your web site.

If it means removing some of your industry jargon, all the better, as visitors probably don’t know what they mean anyway. If your industry is highly technical, consider a page that provides straightforward definitions for some of your more complex terms. This has the added benefit of giving you a great place to write the list of phrases that you have gleaned in talking to your customers.

Myth #3: I heard that I can just write the top 100 keywords on my page, in no particular order, in the description of my product and call it a day.

You could do that, but you’d run the risk of annoying your customers. No one likes to see a page full of paragraphs of nonsensical content when they are looking to purchase from you. It shows that you have shady morals, or at the very least that you don’t really care that your description doesn’t make sense. And since Google can read your content almost in the manner that a person does, they will quickly notice that your text is garbage.

Myth #4: Someone told me I can hide text on my site by writing it in the same color as my background.

Yes, we still hear this one, and no it won’t work. Google is way too smart to be tricked by an obvious scheme like this one. Enough said.

Myth #5: I heard that Meta Keywords are important, and I want to add them to each page of my site.

This is a complete waste of time. Instead, take that hard work you spent making a list of keywords for each page and put it to good use, by making sure that those are actually written on your web site in some context. If they aren’t, consider rewriting the content. For more on meta tags, read our article entitled “Meta Keywords Tag: Long Dead, But Still Not Gone.”

Take these tips to heart in your writing, and take a hard look at your web site. When is the last time that you isolated half a day to cover your web site’s content? Just how old is what you wrote on there? Does the site even mention your latest products or services? What about the ones that you no longer offer, are they still prominently displayed? Set aside a day’s worth of time every few months (at a minimum) to focus on your web site. In particular, take these words to heart if you just said to yourself “the web site doesn’t bring us enough business to justify spending time on it.”

The web site doesn’t bring you business because you have not taken the time to create value. Make your site a resource, and you will have no shortage of business coming from it.

I was driving down the road a few days ago, when I passed a sign that made me stop (metaphorically speaking of course) and think. It read something like this:

“Our plumbers, 100% steroid free.”

What???? Why would anyone care that a plumber doesn’t use steroids? Does it affect job performance? How does this have any bearing on anything?

Then I realized, the ad was simply designed to catch my eye and to keep me thinking about it. Well, it succeeded at that, but it failed in it’s ultimate goal – as I spent so much time wondering how steroid use impacts plumbing that I have no idea which plumbing company was the advertiser.

I see similar ads all over the place. I see more and more radical headlines, company names and colors than ever before. Usually, the “attention getter” makes literally no sense whatsoever (like the plumbing ad), and is simply created in a desperate attempt to get noticed.

I say, take an extra hour of brainstorming to uncover what stands out and would interest people about your company, instead of just throwing out whatever you think will get people to look. I will notice something out of place on an ad (until it’s so common that it gets ignored too), but I won’t be impressed that a company spent it’s ad budget to tell me something nonsensical.

What if the plumbing company had instead said “Our plumbers wear belts,” accompanied by a picture of a plumber leaning over a sink and not flashing himself at the drivers passing by the sign?

Instead of a minute spent wondering why plumbers would use steroids in the first place, I’d spend 10 seconds smiling about the companies’ sense of humor. Their ability to poke fun at one of the biggest stereotypes in their industry (and consequently themselves) would go a lot further for me than some ill-planned ad simply designed to catch my attention.

And in the end, which is more effective? Is it the minute spent thinking not about your company, but an ad that doesn’t make sense? Or is it the 10 seconds spent reflecting on a humorous ad, one that gives the viewer a shot at also remembering the name of the company, instead of just the ad?

I want a company with a sense of humor, not one that deliberately makes no sense in an effort to get my attention.

Anyone else with me on this one? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.