Search Engine Optimization

I've spent the last few weeks reviewing scads of websites for our new SEO Website Review clients and have noticed a lot of interesting things in the process. The sites have run the gamut from the "best I've ever seen" – to – "better off starting from scratch," with lots in between. Some were putting search engines before people, and others hadn't had a chance to even think about search engines yet.

There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions I receive as an SEO is “How long till I start to see results?” This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.

I had previously thought about playing with SearchWiki a bit to see what it was all about for SEO purposes. The thing is, I don't particularly trust Google and was afraid that hundreds or even thousands of SEOs were probably already out there trying to scam the SearchWiki results by moving their clients' websites to the top of the list. I had no interest in flagging our sites as having been SEO'd. Why provide Google with that sort of signal?

Just as you need to prepare for a long trip with your child, you need to prepare your website before simply slapping it up on your server if you want it to behave as you would like it to. And second, just as ignoring a crying child doesn't make it stop crying (and typically just makes it cry louder), ignoring the cries of your website can be just as catastrophic.

Those who've been in the SEO biz for a number of years know how much more competitive it is these days compared to a few years ago. The number of web pages indexed by search engines has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in past years. On top of that, a good portion of site owners and webmasters know just enough SEO to be dangerous. In the golden age of SEO, the vast majority of websites hadn't given a thought to the search engines, and when they did, it was only to place some keywords in their Meta tags. (Which, incidentally, didn't help then either.) Those were the days when anyone who knew even the slightest bit about SEO could easily rank highly in all the major search engines, with very little effort. Even competitive areas were doable with just a little more work than their non-competitive counterparts.

Among computer programming languages, there is no single application that does all the different things, in all the different ways, that programmers need. Because of the great number and diversity of programming tasks, choosing a web application programming language has become a critically important step.
Fortunately, there is continuing development in the field, and today the number of capable applications is expanding. Database-driven websites can now be built with such varied scripting languages as PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, Perl and Cold Fusion, which fall into two main groups – proprietary and open-source. In the foregoing examples, all are open-source except the proprietary Cold Fusion and ASP.NET.

In the summer of 2007, Universal Search was unleashed. Suddenly the search engines were incorporating images, news, shopping, local and video into organic search results.
So far I’ve spoken about the significance of shopping and local in this space. Since then, a recent study by comScore has tagged YouTube as the second most popular search engine. Maybe it’s time to show Video some love.

Before optimizing a website, you should consider whether you are simply masking underlying problems, or integrating your thoughts into a cohesive marketing strategy - from as broad a perspective as possible.

In a world where more and more households are connected to the internet, bandwidth is becoming an issue and brownouts have been predicted to occur in the next few years. With the strain on the infrastructure of the internet this makes having an efficient, fast loading website all that much more important.

A few weeks ago I wrote about building your website from the ground up. This article did not dive into great detail on any specific topics, but rather touched on the key points you will want to address. In this article I will place most of the focus on the promotion aspect of this previous article.

So, you have finally decided to build yourself a website, but really have no idea where to start. The following 10 steps will give you some insight into what you need to address when creating a search friendly website from the ground up.

Sales are down for many businesses due to the slow economy. Business owners and CEOs are looking for that one thing that can pull them through the hard times and keep them afloat. When times get tough, many turn to SEO, hoping that it will be the ticket to increased sales. While SEO is almost always a good idea, if you're counting on it to save a failing business, you may want to rethink things.

When economic times are tough, you have to do more with less. You must continue your marketing program while spending less money in the process. Search engine optimization is the perfect solution to low-cost, recession-proof marketing.

Shopping for a suitable e-commerce solution that meshes with your SEO campaign is easier if you find something that fulfills the four major requirements for software choices that have been outlined here. Avoiding the pitfalls by using a product that falls somewhere in between an out of the box solution will save you and your SEO company a series of headaches and trouble down the road.

While most companies want to revamp their websites with elements of both Flash and SEO, this is unlikely to achieve the desired SEO results. With a site built in Flash, there is only one potential entry page, text is harder for spiders to decipher, and the actual content on pages is lessened. Ultimately, the combination of Flash and SEO can be like oil and water -- individually useful but hard to mix.

I've been on a seesaw for the last year. I have a client who, for almost 12 months, has been asking me to rewrite their home-page copy because they dropped from the top 10 to position #11 (the dreaded second page!). My question to her was always, "Is your copy still converting the way you want it to?" She answered yes every time, to which I advised, "Leave the copy alone." 

Let me enlighten you about something you might not have considered. Ultimate conversions from pay-per-click (PPC) ads come from a process, not a single event. Oftentimes, online marketers focus on the effects of PPC copywriting and the click-through rate it achieves. That click-through rate is thought of as the end-all, be-all for the campaign. But, the overall goal of PPC copywriting is not to get people to click to your site. Clicking a PPC ad is merely step one. The ultimate goal is to get visitors to take action once they reach your site.

When the local search feature was introduced about a year ago, companies were excited to take advantage of these tools to enhance local or regional business, but have since begun to wonder about its usefulness. However, local search engine optimization has benefitted many businesses who wish to draw consumers to their doors by emphasizing the fact that they have a local address and can provide more direct, specialized assistance.

In Part 1 and Part 2 of How to Optimize for Google I discussed general website optimization, links, and Google webmaster tools. In Part 3 we will look at a number of other considerations which play a role in successful rankings in Google, and also touch on some tactics which are best avoided.

Optimizing for top Google rankings includes a number of factors. In Part 1 of 3 we discussed onsite optimization. In Part 2 we will touch on incoming links as well as using Google Webmaster Tools.