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SEO

12 Days of Search Engine Optimization
Sarah Gross
December 23, 2009

Search engine optimization takes time and effort to correctly position your website in the best light. In the spirit of the Holidays, here are 12 steps you can take to help optimize your website this season.  

 Day 1: Create Unique Title Tags
Add keyword-rich phrases to the title tags of your webpage’s code. These tags will be displayed in the search results and will help visitors and search engines know what the page is about.

Day 2. Optimize Your Alt Tags
Place descriptive phrases within the Alt Tags of any image on your site. Search engines can't see images so adding Alt Tags will allow them to identify what the image represents.

Day 3. Optimize Meta Descriptions
Add keywords to the Meta descriptions located in your webpage’s code. These tags appear in the search results and will help visitors and search engines know what the webpage is about.

Day 4. Content is King
Continue to add new, relevant content to your website; the more your site is updated, the more times it will be crawled by the search engines.

Day 5. Submit Your Site to Relevant Directories
Directories are basically online versions of the phonebook. Submit your website to industry specific directories where your website’s target audience will visit in an attempt to attract new visitors.

 Day 6. Emphasize Content With H1 and H2 Tags
Use H1 and H2 tags to indicate headers and sub headers on the webpage. This allows search engines to easily identify what is important on the webpage, giving more value to the keywords placed within these tags.

Day 7. Use Social Bookmarks
Make it possible for site visitors to bookmark your site; this way they can come back to your site easily and refer other web users to your website.

Day 8. Add a Site Map
Create a webpage that will contain a site map of your site. This will help visitors and search engines easily navigate through all the pages on your site and find the content they are looking for easily.

Day 9.  Take Advantage of Keyword Frequency Tools
There are many free tools that you can use to track which variations of keyword phrases web users searched most often; choose keywords that people are searching for and add them to your content!

Day 10. Add keywords to Web Page URLs
Add keywords to page URLs when possible (example: www.URL.com/Keyword). This will help search engines and website visitors know what the webpage is about.

Day 11. Check for Broken Links
If a site has many broken links, visitors will not be able to find the content they are looking for. Search engines also penalize sites for having many broken links so check this often!

Day 12. Purchase a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Disclaimer: This process actually takes much longer than 12 days. Lucky for you, individual posts will be created for each topic to clarify its value and detail the process in more detail.

 

Happy Holidays! 

 

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Dispelling Some Rumors About SEO
Sarah Gross
August 26, 2009

There are many rumors surrounding the SEO industry that often cause people to become disillusioned about the field.  Here are some rumors dispelled:

Rumor: “If I put keyword terms all over my website and in the code, I will rank well”

Reality: While it is important for your keywords to appear in specific parts of the website, over use of these keyword phrases looks unnatural and will not help the website increase in rankings. In fact, if a search engine notices unnatural keyword practices in place, the website can potentially be dropped from rankings for a specific number of days or be penalized in other ways.

Rumor: “This guy says if I spend X amount of dollars, I will rank number one by next week… AWESOME”

Reality: While many people will offer these results, it is IMPOSSIBLE to set a time frame on keyword rankings and it is equally as impossible to increase in rankings in a number of days and stay there permanently.  Some SEO specialists might be able to get keywords to the top search engine positions for a day or two, but because of the unethical way they achieved these rankings, the search engines will penalize the websites and the keyword rankings will fall quickly.

Rumor: “I only need to do SEO until I rank well, then I can stop”

Reality: SEO is a continued process.  If you rank number one for all your keywords and then stop, your competitors will continue to improve their sites, and begin to rank above you.

Rumor: Well-executed SEO can stand alone

Reality: To affectively gain the most site exposure from a target audience, SEO efforts need to be part of an integrated marketing initiative.

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The Power of Localized SEO
Sarah Gross
March 30, 2009

Trying to get the best ROI for your SEO campaign? Well, it’s not about reaching the most people – it’s about reaching the right people. Because most companies don’t have the time and money necessary for a number one Internet ranking of “(enter your industry here)", localizing SEO efforts is essential.

So, how do you reach a geographically desired audience? By creating a long tail keyword phrase with a specific location attached to its end. For example, rather than using “computer repairs” as a keyword phrase, target your audience with a specific location. “Computer repairs Albany NY” will reach potential clients in your market (assuming your business is in Albany) and bypass inquiries from Peoria.

Long tail keyword phrases are generally less competitive and therefore easier to get ranked higher in the search engine results pages (SERPS). They also tend to cost less in paid advertising campaigns such as Google AdWords. 

Fact:

There are over 1 billion local searches done by consumers each month. By using localized keyword phrases, you simply make it easier for these consumers to find you. And that, undoubtedly, is good for sales.


Example:

Results from general keyword phrase search: “Computer Repairs"


The top listings for this keyword phrase are multi-million dollar companies and “spammy” sites that are covered in advertisements.

 

Results from Localized Keyword phrase search: "Computer Repairs Albany, NY"

The results from this long-tailed keyword search are actual local companies providing computer repairs as well as local directories that focus on companies within the visitors targeted area.

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