Small Business SEO | "Florida 10 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid"

Source        : hongkiat.com
By               : Issac Atia
Category    : Small Business SEO, Local SEO
Posted By   : WebTasks Florida

Small Business SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vital to any successful blogging campaign. Therefore it should be implemented in the right manner. SEO itself is quite intricate for numerous reasons, but mainly because Google uses an algorithm, which takes several factors into account when ranking a webpage, and they keep changing it.

There are virtually so many SEO myths that it has become very difficult to know what’s 100% true, but I can advise you on which SEO mistakes you should not make:

1. Buying Links

You might get a short term boost by buying links if your website is already popular, but you’re still taking a risk here. Paid links are sometimes flagged by Google’s search engine experts. You may wonder, how will they ever catch me? Well, Google’s bots and a special team at the company search for questionable linking patterns every single day!

For example, if you pay for a few hundred links to be pointed to your website in the very same day, some links will probably be flagged as a sort of ‘irregular linking activity’. Links from totally unrelated categories will seem suspicious as well.

I would recommend the old fashioned method of comment linking, manually — your blog will still be able to grow, albeit at a steady pace. Over time, the end results will be worthwhile. If you are however settled on purchasing links, do not use the same anchor text for all of them; mix it up a bit.

2. Duplicate Content

Many bloggers I know try to target the same topic with a variation of essentially very similar keywords. For instance, ‘make money on facebook’ and ‘making money with your facebook’ are quite similar, and creating a completely different page for each keyword won’t add much value to your site.

How much can you really play with topics or keywords that are essentially identical? If you can’t, then you’ll probably end up writing the same content for both keywords, which poses a risk of a search engine penalty. Instead, you should try to penetrate one original topic or keyword in detail and make an effort to strengthen each post.

3. Chasing PageRank

Don’t get me wrong, PageRank is important for any website’s success. The higher the PageRank you have, the better you rank in search engines, and the more visitors you’ll get. However, it’s definitely not the only metric that’ll help you improve your blog’s success. Furthermore, Google has mentioned previously that PageRank is just one of two hundred (wow!) indicators used to crawl and rank a website. Instead, you should focus on your analytics, ROI, and relevancy as recommended by Google itself.

4. Leaving Title Tags Automated

The title tag is undeniably one of the most important aspects when it comes to search engine rankings. Beginner bloggers usually write a post with a long title that describes the topic in too many words. First, you want to keep the title rather short, (not more than 60 characters) but more importantly, you should aim your focus at optimizing the title tags.

For example, if you write a post titled ‘What Is A Niche Blog And How Do I Create It?’ your title tag should be more targeted towards a keyword, perhaps something like ‘What Is A Niche Blog?’ with ‘a niche blog’ being a possible keyword. You would surely want to check the popularity of the respective keyword with a keyword tool such as Google Adwords before optimizing for it. Consider changing it and you may enjoy a better placement in the search engines and as a result, more visitors.

5. Sacrificing Looks For Content

While many bloggers depend on content to grow their blog, there are some who had become obsessed with the design of their blog. Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have an appealing design, some visitors won’t be attracted to your website. However, using too many graphics or images will overcrowd your page and slow it down.

I see many sites using Flash and sacrificing page speed for motion and sounds. Definitely an attractive setting, but not a worthy enough tradeoff. This will also prevent search engine bots from being able to crawl your pages at a desirable faster rate.

6. Using Free Hosting Blogs

Blog services that offer free hosting such as Blogger, TypePad, and many others, can offer a decent platform and an excellent value. However, they are not flexible enough to be able to install the Plugins, themes, and other extensions you truly desire for superior SEO results.

All it will take is to register your own domain, and to purchase an inexpensive hosting plan. If you do enough shopping around, you shouldn’t spend more than $50 for both for the year. It’s worth a few bucks per month to have total control over your website. The power of independence can reap great rewards when your blogging operation grows.

7. Keyword Stuffing

Probably one of the most common SEO mistakes is common stuffing. It’s not only unethical, but also will hurt your search rankings. If you really want to rank for a bunch of keywords, create a separate page for each keyword and optimize for it accordingly. Instead of using hidden or duplicate text, focus on creating useful pages that have your keywords implemented in them as part of the content. Trying to manipulate a search engine like Google is a big no-no.

8. Writing Little Content

Many websites, especially blogs, suffer from posts that are too short. I personally get at least a few guest post submissions per day, and more than often, I have to reject them on the basis that they are too short to publish. How great can a piece be if it’s written at just 400 words? Writing extremely short posts hurts reader loyalty plus your page could be considered as low quality when it comes to SEO rankings.

9. Not Doing SEO Correctly

There’s not only one right way to optimize your posts for the search engine, but there are general proven methods you can use. For example, in regards to link building, several bloggers I know make the mistake of only linking to the front page of their website. Instead, you should build links that also point to your top, most popular posts. There’s always something new to learn about SEO, so make sure your optimization knowledge is up to date by reading articles or guides from qualified authors such as Google’s Matt Cutts.

10. Forgetting The ALT Tag

While Google reportedly doesn’t place a big emphasis on ALT tags, other search engines such as AOL, Bing, and Yahoo do. The truth is that a picture is just an image file if it’s not optimized for a keyword. To optimize it, use the ALT tag when inserting your image in a post; you’ll definitely see better results. Also, consider naming the file of the image as your keyword or at least to a defining term. If you’re blogging about copyright laws, name your image as ‘copyright-laws.jpg’, not something like ‘picture10.jpg’ — that simply won’t do you any good.

SEO Company Florida | "Google Panda: 5 Tips You Should Know"

Source         : hongkiat.com
By                : Jen Thames
Category     : SEO Company Florida
Posted By    : Search Engine Optimization-SEO

Google Panda - SEO Company Florida

#1 Silver Generator, Make Colloidal Silver for pennies per gallon. Premium Quality!

It’s here. It’s inevitable. It’s called Google Panda, the latest Google’s search algorithm which aims to promote the high quality content site by dooming the rank of low quality content sites. Since its release and updates, many sites have been shown to be terribly affected by the algorithm, but the worst rumor here is, they can do almost nothing to recover the ranking and traffic.


Although the web haven’t sought out an absolute remedy to the Panda’s update, we all know that Panda is pretty much a content quality filter. We also know a proverb saying, “Prevention is better than cure”, so in this post we are going to provide 5 essential tips to help you to prevent the judgment by Google Panda. Full detail at the jump!

1. Separate Out Low Quality Content

The first and foremost thing you can probably do is to separate out all auto-generated content. Block the indexing and crawling of all low quality content to prevent it from lowering the ranking of your entire site. Low value content can cause the algorithm to slap down your entire site even if a great deal of your content is unique and valuable.

To know whether your site content is low quality or not, here are some helpful questions asked by Google Webmaster Central Blog to aid you in determining the low quality content:

•     Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
•     Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
•     Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
•     Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
•     Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

Interestingly, identical low quality content is particularly endemic across e-commerce websites. For example, why should a pair of audio cables be described differently in each website and in each page on your website? Theoretically to meet the "unique" content guideline every product should be given an unique description and listing to avoid being marked as “low-quality” content by Panda.

2. Focus On Unique Content

As we know the Panda update is aimed to bring the judgment to the content farm and those sites which steal and duplicate, that means in order to prevent Panda from blacklisting you, you have to stop stealing other’s articles, and really focus on creating unique content.

Try to look at your place in your industry and say to yourself:

•     “What is the topic that my readers will be interested about?”
•     “What do I offer to my readers that are unique? What about my content is just here and nowhere else?”

Don’t copy or retype out the article from other site, but craft your article out with your own topic and opinion. Details? Check out our post on how to run blogs that inspire.

That sounds pretty much like old school SEO practice, you might ask? The answer is yes, but now it’s the most important SEO practice!

3. Concentrate on Clout & Authority

In Richard Baxter’s article entitled High Quality Web Sites – The New Google Ranking Factor, elements like trust and authority matter in the new Panda update. It may extend to your links, your tweets and your resources related with the site.
 

According to the writer, trust could be measured by the links awarded to the article, and the more authoritative the link, the more trustworthy the article. If significant volumes of links aren’t enough just yet, possibly a shorter term solution could be to analyze the social buzz associated with the article, such as Twitter and Facebook.

We often talk about the links, but the site content itself is the critical factor which will attract the authoritative links and judged by Google Panda in the term of authority. On this part, Google Webmaster Central Blog has listed out some questions for you as a guideline to produce what they thought is the “authoritative content”:

•     Would you trust the information presented in this article?
•     Is this article written by expert/enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
•     Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
•     Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
•     Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

So you know, these questions aren’t hard to answer, but challenging when it comes to implementation. Build your content with these questions in mind, and your site will be too good for both Google Panda and your fellow readers.

4. Keep Advertising Ratio Healthy

Sure we all like to be paid for ads, but apply ads with attitude. 3 sponsors at $10K are better than 20 ads at $500. Keeping your ads down to a healthy ratio is not only good with Panda but it also improves your reader’s user experience.

So you know, ads is totally okay, but no advertisement scheme that will kill your reader’s user experience really fast, in term of visual experience and page loading speed. Healthy advertising ratio is even the reason that your readers will love and recommend your site than those sites with nastily cluttered ads, and by doing so will indirectly raise the trustworthiness and authority of your site.

5. Recognize & Track Panda Updates

Sites hit by Panda will show massive changes especially the page views. When using Google Analytics you will see an epic fall in traffic, that’s the possible sign of Panda. Limiting the search parameters in Google Analytics to the United States market will show the clear result of Panda attack. If you’re unfortunately the victim of the Panda, you can:

1.     Implement the changes suggested above.
2.     Ask Google to restore your rankings.

Don’t expect immediate improvement because Panda only updates periodically. If you still haven’t reached a Zen-like state of acceptance go and check out Barry Schwartz’s list and Panda archives at SEO roundtable or Mark Nunney’s Google Panda Survival Guide, or ultimately the Guidance of Building High Quality Sites by Google Webmaster Central Blog

And always remember that, all of these Panda updates are to remind you that, don’t be evil.

Search Engine Optimization SEO | "Good SEO Means Putting Your Visitors First"

Source         : brickmarketing.com
By                : Nick Stamoulis
Category     : Local Search Engine Optimization
Posted By    : Search Engine Optimization-SEO

 

Search Engine Optimization-SEO

This might sound a little crazy coming from an SEO professional, but if you want to have the best SEO campaign possible (the kind that can survive just about any algorithm update) the single best piece of advice I can give you is to stop worrying about the search engines and put your visitors first. A good SEO campaign is, of course, going to follow the Google and Bing Webmaster Guidelines but in my experience adhering to the Webmaster Guidelines usually means you put the needs of your target audience ahead of your SEO program…and that usually means you’re going about SEO in the right way!

Google even says in the Webmaster Guidelines;

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

Think about your link building campaign. Links are still very much the bread and butter of SEO and for a long time the only thing that mattered was how many inbound links your site had. But as the algorithm has evolved quantity is now much less important than quality. It’s not enough to just have a lot of links; good SEO is about getting the right links from the right sites. In my experience, the right links tend to come from sites that your target audience actually visits—forums, blogs, community and niche sites, industry associations and more. These high quality sites do provide high quality and trusted links, but they can also direct highly targeted traffic your way. A good SEO program doesn’t look to get links for the sake of getting links; your link building should be about finding new ways to connect with your target audience and create doorways into your site. Remember, each link to your site has the potential to drive traffic over. 

When you focus your link building on the kind of sites that could actually do that you almost can’t help but have good SEO! Having a strong SEO campaign also means you take the time to invest in your content marketing, a critical component of any SEO program. You should be writing content that is designed to educate and engage your visitors, not just rank well for various search queries. In an increasingly cluttered online landscape only the best content rises above the din and that means writing for actual people, not just the search engines. After all, human readers are the ones who are going to be doing business with you in the end, not Google.

Good SEO usually means you aren’t trying to manipulate the search engines or chase the algorithm. A lot of sites do pretty well in the search results after they’ve invested in black hat SEO tactics but in my opinion it’s only a matter of time before they aren’t fast enough to stay one step ahead of the game and Google catches them with an algorithm update. When you put your visitors before your SERP rankings you tend to avoid the kind of tactics that produce short-term results but could ultimately land you in hot water with the search engines.

If you want to have the kind of SEO program that will help push your website to the next level you want to always put your visitors first. A good SEO campaign should be about building your online brand presence, developing your expertise and industry authority and connecting with your target audience and not just about ranking better.

Small Business SEO | "Top 10 Black Hat SEO Techniques"

Source        : ihategoogle.org
By               : I Hate Google.org
Category    : Local Search Engine Optimization
Posted By  : Small Business SEO 

Small Business SEO

Black Hat SEO techniques are methods webmasters/marketers use to get a leg up on the competition in the search engines. Whether they are fair or unfair, legitimate or illegitimate is not up for discussion here. This is just a list and explanation of ten of the top black hat SEO techniques.
 

10. Buying Links

Is buying links a black hat technique? Of course it is. When a marketer pays for a link, they are essentially “buying a vote” for the page they are promoting. That link would not exist except that it was paid for. This gives extra weight to the promoted page in the search engine algorithms. The paid-for link does not itself add extra value to visitors, so the technique must be black hat.

9. Cyber Hoaxing

Hoaxing is a way of “creatively” making news. First, create a fake news website that looks real. Second, write a sensational but false news story. It helps if it is difficult to prove the veracity. Third, create multiple accounts on various social networking sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Del.ico.us, etc., and submit your story there. Fourth, be ready for emails and phone calls from actual big-time media outlets with questions about your story. You will generate buzz and get links to your fake news story. Eventually, when it is discovered your story is false, try to capitalize on the outrage. How you monetize the whole situation is up to the webmaster, but it is commonly done with affiliate programs.

8. Keyword Stuffing/Hidden Text

This technique involves picking a bunch of keywords for which a marketer wants a page to be optimized, and then placing them on the page in such a way that they will be read by search engine spiders, but not by human visitors. They can be located in a hidden div tag, colored so that they blend into the background, or even placed within HTML comment tags. This is truly an old school technique, and is not nearly as effective now as it was back in the day. 

7. Doorway pages

Doorway pages are web pages created solely for the purpose of being spidered by search engines and included in the search engine results pages (SERPs). They are usually optimized for placement in the SERPs by being stuffed with keywords and created in bulk. Often, you will see that the pages are named after the primary keyword being targeted. Also, doorway pages will likely have a form of redirection involved sending visitors to the “money site”. The redirection can be a meta refresh tag or javascript. Most webmasters using this technique will have software which cranks out doorway pages by the thousands.

6. Web Page Cloaking

This technique goes hand-in-hand with the doorway pages technique. The idea behind cloaking is to show a doorway page to search engine spiders but the “money page” to human visitors. Both pages are accessed using the same URL. Software is used to identify the search engine spiders and serve the doorway page to them. There is a dual purpose to web page cloaking: competitors are kept from scraping the content of the optimized doorways, and human visitors are kept from seeing the ugly doorway pages (the redirect is unnecessary in a properly executed cloaking solution). I may be a little biased about web page cloakingbecause I am the author of KloakIt, a cloaking software application (note: KloakIt is no longer for sale to the public, unless you make me an offer I cannot refuse).

5. XSS Injection

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a technique used to take advantage of certain pages with a special security flaw. They accept input from the HTTP GET request and display it on the page. Therefor, it is possible to construct a URL to one of these pages which will be displayed as a link to the site you specify, with the text you specify as the link text. The constructed URL can be set up as a link somewhere that a search engine spider will follow, getting the XSS-generated page indexed. Very sneaky. 

4. 302 Redirect Hijacking

This technique is a really nasty black hat trick where the evil webmaster creates a web page on a high-page-rank domain with a 302 redirect to the page he is trying to hijack. Googlebot (or another search engine spider) follows the redirect to the second page and indexes it, but on the SERP, the URL of the indexed page will be that of the page with the redirect. In other words, the evil black hat webmaster will own the SERP, and the page with the content will be de-indexed. A truly evil hijacker builds cloaking into the redirect so human visitors to the page will go to his “money page”, while search engine spiders will still see the 302 redirect.

3. Scraping and Spinning

Scraping and its cousin spinning are a black hat technique that uses software to spider websites, grab the content, mix it up a bit, paraphrase, randomize, and generate “new” content from it. Often it will contain links to sites the marketer is trying to promote. Or, it will contain Adsense or other ads which are used to monetize the content. Spinning content into duplicate-content-penalty-avoiding text is the holy grail of black hat techniques. Programmers who come up with methods for doing this on-the-fly have created true money machines for themselves. Here’s an excellent scraping and spinning story.

2. Splogs

Close cousins to scraping and spinning, splogs are simply blogs with worthless, automatically generated content. Many splogs read RSS feeds and create blog posts for themselves from them. Splogs are the framework into which scraped and spun content is laid out to create made-for-Adsense (MFA) sites. Also, splogs can be used to get other sites indexed or their Pagerank increased, by including links to them. A large percentage (some say 20% or higher) of the blogs on the web are actually splogs.

…and the number one black hat SEO technique is…

1. Link Spamming

King of black hat techniques, link spamming is just a way getting links to the websites of your choice through the use of automated software which accesses unprotected blogs through anonymous web proxies and leaves links in their comments. Long, frequently updated lists of proxy IP addresses are necessary, as well as decent comment generation software. Blog software developers have fought back, however, such as the the development of the Askimet comment filter for WordPress. More Info

Now that you are an expert on black hat SEO techniques, go out and make your millions. But wait! I’ll through in one more technique as a freebie… “churn and burn”. This is actually not a technique, but a strategy. Churn and burn means you have to be prepared to lose domains to penalties in search engine rankings as Google or other search engines discover they are spammy. The real secret to black hat success is to always be developing new domains and campaigns. If one is slammed, you should have two on the back burner.

Orlando Local Search Engine Optimization | "Why SEO Isn’t SEO Anymore"

Source      : virante.org
By             : Phil Buckley
Category  : Orlando Local Search Engine Optimization
Posted By : Local SEO Services

Orlando Local Search Engine Optimization

Been doing SEO for a while, not since the stone-age of SEO, but as far back to remember when you could so easily game the system. That is now a lost world.

Super Diet PillsIn the not so distant past SEO’s could offer their clients a the equivalent of a diet pill. No need to spend hours on the treadmill, just take this fairly expensive pill and you will become more attractive to your suitor (Google).

Last year, Google finally put their algorithm where there mouth is. In the past, Google has averted their gaze from “low quality” sites. They discounted many of their tactics, but an aggressive site owner who is driven to rank can make it up in volume. Thousands of inbound links based around highly sought after anchor text could overwhelm more conservative sites that played by the rules. White hat SEO consultants would advise their clients to take the high road and follow the Google webmaster guidelines, but their sites seemed to float around on page 2 or 3 of the search results.

As the 2 monochromatic animals of the SEO apocalypse rode through the SERPs a change took place, and mostly for the good. Sites that had looked good only by subsisting on super diet pills started to lose their attractiveness. The sites that had spent their time on the treadmill started ranking.

A search for a fairly generic term like “insurance” now rarely shows a weird result like the one below (which was on page 2 when I grabbed this screenshot).

Insurance SERP

This listing is no longer on page 2, but at one point it had in excess of 20,000 backlinks pointing at it. Many of the backlinks were from foreign domains (.ru, .ua, .pl etc.) but it was enough to push them into the space that is normally reserved for the giant insurance brands.
backlink spike

8,000 to 22,000 backlinks in a month

Their backlink graph looks like a Everest in Kansas. This site might as well camped out on the front lawn of the Googleplex flying a pirate flag and dancing around a fire pit.
The New Face of SEO

We still need to talk to site owners and explain the benefit of high-quality, relevant backlinks because they are still a major force in the core algorithm  but there is so much more to it now. How are you planning on building links, where, when, what will they point to?
Links to the homepage

If you are getting sites linking to your homepage, chances are it will be a branded link. For example, if I mention my favorite restaurant is The Pit in downtown Raleigh, I use their name and link to their root domain like any normal person. If I want to link to an interesting video I ran across on the Cisco website about the basics of data protection I’ll probably link directly to the interior page with a more descriptive anchor text.

When I look at the link profile for a site and see a lot of highly sought after anchor text pointing at the homepage I immediately get suspicious. So that begs the question, how does a site get highly optimized links for their site? The answer is easy to say, but hard to do.
Content is your only hope

If you want to rank for a term like “data protection” you need to start creating content around that idea that is worthy of links! I know, you’re rolling your eyes because it’s like your doctor telling you if you lose 10 pounds you’ll feel better.

Go look at a site that ranks well for some term that you’re not specifically knowledgeable about. I’ll use a competitive term: “small business phone systems“. After the ads I see Panasonic at the #1 position. When I click-through I see an entire page about best practices when choosing a business phone system that comes complete with case studies. The page itself has 26 back links from 7 unique domains and needless to say the Panasonic domain is a super trusted and authoritative domain.

Panasonic has people (or an agency) to generate great content for their site. They will continue to rank well for that term because of it.
There’s nothing exciting about my product

This is the knee-jerk response by someone who is intimidated by the thought of being forced into a creative role.  There are thousands of sites out there that are doing great things around products that often seem ho-hum. My favorite is Best Made Company and their axes.
Best Made Co. "Unfinished" American Felling Axe

“Unfinished” American Felling Axe

Best Made Company takes the time to tell their story about why you should consider yourself happy to fork over $158 for an axe. They have an interview with the axe designer and even footage of the axe being used in a snowy forest chopping down a tree. It’s great content from a company who is all about the content and telling a story.

If you’re not a story-teller you need to set aside some time and figure out how you’re going to convince people that your product is worth them considering. The average American no longer actually “needs” what you’re selling, they have everything the need and a $99/month storage room full of shiny stuff they thought they wanted.

Find your internal storyteller. If there’s no answer, find someone who can help you. Crafting your story is job one.

If you’re unsure where to start, ask questions. Start by talking to your best customers. Ask them why they buy from you. Ask old customers why the left. Ask strangers to talk about problems they’re having that you might be able to address with your product or service. After a couple of weeks, your story will start to take form.
I’m a commodity

If you sell something where you think the only way to more sales is to compete on lowest price, you can stop reading. Racing to be the low price leader is only going to work for one person. There are a lot of products that probably feel like their a commodity, like paper towels. Yet there are paper towels that sell for less than a dollar a roll and linen based paper towels that cost a fortune. The biggest problem when you race to the bottom is that you lose the drive to make something great, because all your focus is on making it cheaper. My friend runs a site at cheapens.com. You can probably guess what she sells… right. The new world order is not a friendly regime for her site. Yes she offers a nice variety of inexpensive pens. She has great promotional items and everything your expect. The problem comes from the site needing to be different/remarkable/noticeable. How do you take the $0.19 pen and build a community around it. Who will become your evangelist? There’s the rub. It’s a transactional purchase of a true commodity. If the site went dark tomorrow, there would be someone else selling the same pens at about the same price and the customers wouldn’t care. It’s the same thing that would happen if your local Mobil gas station becomes a Sunoco station.

I would say that Lynne’s best hope is that SHE has to become the brand evangelist. She needs to be the artist in residence at cheapens.com and make people’s dreams come true when they need 300 pens for the trade show next month.

Best SEO Company | "Judging The Quality Of A Link"

Source       : searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
By              : Nick Stamoulis
Category   : Local SEO Services
Posted By  : Search Engine Optimization Orlando

Best SEO Method

The Google Penguin update has site owners running scared from link building. But just because Google is cracking down on web-spam that doesn’t mean you can afford to abandon your link building campaign; you just have to be smarter about it. And getting smarter about your link building means making sure you are only building links that can actually help your SEO.

 

Here are 4 ways site owners can judge the quality of a link:

Relevancy
One of the most important things that helps determine the quality of a link is its relevancy. Is there a logical connection between your site and that link source? For instance, there is an obvious connection between a website for a small business financial adviser and an Intuit.com blog. That’s a highly relevant link. A non-relevant link would be if the same financial adviser got a link from a pet store. They may have helped that pet store’s owner get their finances in order but there is no obvious SEO relevancy that would make that a quality link.

Authority
In order to determine the quality of a link you also want to look at the authority of the link source. Is this a site you would link out to? If not, why would you want a link back from them? Is this the kind of site that gets a lot of traffic because they produce thought-leadership content? Do they have a strong social presence? Or is this a site you stumbled upon in the recesses of the internet that no one has ever heard or and never will? This is not to say that you should completely avoid newer sites which may have less authority, but what kind of road are they on? A new site can provide valuable content even if their reach is limited for the time being.

Uniqueness
You want to make sure you are building as diverse a link profile as possible so be on the lookout for unique linking opportunities. Don’t just do what the competition has already done, look for places that no one else has taking advantage of yet! Maybe there is a niche social network you could join and get involved with; or a forum that your competition has ignored. Are their own unique sponsorship opportunities that will help present your brand to a new audience? The key is to set yourself apart from your competition with link building and not just follow in their footsteps. There are a lot of things that impact the quality of a link and uniqueness is definitely one of them.

Context
And last but not least be sure to gauge the context of the link in order to help determine its quality. For instance, some blog networks (before they were de-indexed thanks to Panda and Penguin) used to sell exact match anchor text links in blog posts, although the link would have nothing to do with the theme of the post. It would be like me hyperlinking “anchor” to a site that sells boat supplies. Yes, the anchor text itself is relevant but look at the context of that link; it has absolutely nothing to do with the readers of the post itself. Definitely stay away from those kind of links (especially if someone is asking you to pay for them!)

Best SEO Company | "Studies Reveal SEO Analysts Are In High Demand"

Source      : bruceclay.com
By             : Kristi Kellogg
Category   : Local SEO Services
Posted By: Search Engine Optimization Orlando

Search Engine Optimization

It’s a good time to be an SEO analyst. Why?
Studies show a 112 percent year-over-year increase in demand for SEO professionals with salaries as high as $94,000, as reported by Conductor, an SEO technology company based in New York.

Earlier this month, Search Engine Optimization surveyed the SEO industry and found that 93 percent of respondents expected their SEO business to grow by the end of 2013. It makes sense, then, that 82 percent of respondents also reported plans to hire additional SEO staff this year.
Last month, Digital Journal proclaimed “there is no doubt that a career in an SEO agency as an SEO professional can be an exciting and rewarding one. Stress levels would match the lows found in other online positions, while the employment opportunities in such a fast growing business are obvious … Mid-level strategist and management roles can earn from $60,000, while senior marketing directors can expect to approach six-figure sums.”
SEO Analysts at the Highest Level

What skills do you need for this profession? These are Bruce Clay’s standards for experienced SEO analysts:

Excellent communication skills. SEOs live in a constantly changing space between marketing and IT, and have to communicate needs that cross the divide. Of course the best SEOs communicate in the universal language of the bottom line, translating technical requirements into the business benefits they serve for laymen business owners and managers.

In-depth understanding of HTML, CSS and web programming languages. While SEOs need not be programmers, a sufficient literacy in the most common code is needed to manage client SEO projects.

Strong knowledge of Google Analytics. ‘Nuff said.
3+ years of proven SEO experience. We feel that 3 years studying Google guidelines, interacting with search features and technologies, testing optimization tactics and listening to the goals and pains of businesses is required before SEO proficiency is possible.

Develop and keep your skills up-to-date with our SEO training — whether you’re interested in a career as an SEO analyst or want to be able to optimize your own site, SEOToolSet™ Training can help you strengthen your skills. All Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO analysts take SEOToolSet Training once each year, continually honing their skills in the information-packed event.

The week-long standard and advanced courses are being presented this week in Simi Valley. The next time you can catch the full training event is here in July. You can also attend a condensed version, excellent for marketing managers, business owners and the C-suite looking for a intensive foundation setting SEO workshop at SMX Advanced in Seattle on June 13.

Search Engine Optimization is a rapidly growing field with tons of opportunity to learn and grow! We welcome the findings of these surveys and signs of growing demand for our professional SEO power in the bright future ahead. We’re proud to be part of the SEO education institution and look forward to continued evangelism for adoption of white hat SEO methodology.

Small Business SEO | "Top 10 Google Tools For Your Business"

Source      : sitepronews.com
By             : Ivana Katz
Category : Local Search Engine Optimization
Posted By : Small Business SEO

Google-Tools-For-Blogging-Small Business SEO

Google is mostly known for its search capabilities, but did you know there are many other services offered by Google – tools beyond Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube – and most are free? Check out the following excellent products that may help you to run your business more efficiently.

1. Google Gadgets

Gadgets are miniature objects that offer dynamic and fun content that can be placed on any website. You will find handy tools such as to-do lists, currency converters, calendars, calculators, weather forecast, world clocks and thousands more. The gadgets are divided into categories including News, Tools, Communication, Technology, Fun and Games, Finance, Sport and Lifestyle. For more information, go to Google Gadgets for Your Webpage.

2. Google Analytics

If you have a website, Google Analytics can track all your traffic, referrals, ads, sales and conversions. It gives you insight into how visitors behave on your website: which page they arrived on, how long they stay, how many pages they view, what search words they use to find you and so much more. It also lets you see how effective your social media efforts are and which parts of your website are performing well. To install Google Analytics, all you (or your web developer) need to do is place some simple HTML code into your site and the tracking begins immediately.

Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, and how you can keep them coming back.

3. Google Alerts

Google Alerts lets you set up e-mail updates of the latest relevant Google results, so you can monitor current news stories, keep an eye on competitors or the industry and find out what others may be saying about you or your products and services. Google alerts are easy to set up.

4. Google Drive

Google Drive is a great suite of products that lets you share files and folders with other people including your customers and business associates. It allows for multiple people to work on the same document at the same time. Google Docs, which is like MS Word, Google Spreadsheet, similar to MS Excel and Google Slide the equivalent of MS Powerpoint are all part of Google Drive. No more having to e-mail files to yourself or transfer them via a USB stick. Simply connect to the Internet and all your files are accessible from any computer.

5. Google Translate

Google translate allows your website to be translated to other languages including Spanish, French, German, Chinese and more than 60 other languages. The free website translator plugin expands your global reach quickly and easily. Google Translate is also useful if you need to have phrases, comments or documents translated to English.

6. Blogger

<a href="www.blogger.com Blogger is Google’s own blogging tool. Blogs provide a way for you to communicate with your customers and give you an increased presence on major search engines. Most people update their blogs daily or weekly with information about their business, industry news and useful tips and tricks. Blogger is free and extremely easy to use.

7. Google Calendar

Google Calendar lets your co-workers and staff see your calendar and schedules, helping you to manage your time and appointments easily. Two-way syncing with your mobile phone’s calendar means you can access your information even when you are away from your desk. You can set customizable reminders and even invite other people to events in your calendar. Guests can RSVP to invitations by e-mail or via the Google Calendar.

8. Picasa Web Photo Album

Share photos of your products, recently completed projects and pictures from tradeshows and seminars with your business partners and customers. You can also edit the photos, create special effects and organize them easily.

9. Google AdWords

Google AdWords is an easy way to advertise your products and services on Google, regardless of your budget. The ads are displayed along with search results, generally at the top of the page or on the right-hand side. When you create an AdWords keyword-targeted ad, you choose keywords and key phrases for which your ad will appear and set the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each click.

10. Google News

Stay up-to-date with current affairs and information from your industry. Google News is a computer-generated news site that displays headlines from news sources around the world, groups similar stories together and displays them. You can set up your page to show you the stories that interest you most, not only on your computer, but also on your mobile phone.

Google offers many more useful tools and services including iTalk, AdSense, Google+, Custom Search, Webmaster Tools and others. The great news is that most of these are free and easy to use.

Orlando Local Search Engine Optimization | "SEO tips - Internet Marketing"

Source      : webdesign.org
By             : Darren Carter Forum
Category : Local Search Engine Optimization
Posted By : Local SEO Services

Local SEO Orlando

I just found an alternative website called SEO Forum Tips. This web site covers all you need to learn about Search Engine Optimization  This SEO Forum discusses many key areas of SEO the first of which is keyword research which is something you ought to research before you even make a website. There are various back link building strategies including blogging, bookmarking, reciprocal linking, building forum links, directories, video submission and social network linking. This SEO Forum covers all of them in great detail by giving you a guide for best practice.

How important is on page optimization  The web site that you're attempting to optimize will need to have relevant content for the keywords which are being targeted. There are several places where keywords can be used in the code of an website and this forum lets you know what's the most crucial.

secret top high Google rankings

Today social networking plays an important part is SEO. Websites like Facebook and Twitter can play a significant part is SEO but not simply to help climb in the search engine ranking positions. You are able to create these and lots of other pages ( much like this information) that can also be present in search results and then send referrals towards your main website.

The SEO Forum also covers tools that can be used for SEO. There are many tools readily available for free or to buy which often can help your website to gain visitors. As an example; you can find tools that may look for blogs and forums that are related to the theme of your website where one can comment and leave a one way link returning to your site. You can even find high page ranking webpage's and filter out ones without page ranking whatsoever. Just think how long this may take should you searched for these websites through Google! Lots of people employ this type of tool to build spam comments but when used in the right manner (white hat) they could be very beneficial to your internet site.

Another discussion covered on this SEO forum is marketing. Should you have a new website and want visitors before your SEO strategy begins to take effect you may want to consider spending money on advertising that may be in the form of Adwords. This can be a very expensive way to gain visitors but by targeting long tail keywords the amount you spend could be cut down tremendously.

The SEO forum provides SEO How-to's for you to consider when you are implementing your Search Engine Optimization strategies. The web site has been created as part of a HE student's dissertation and it is an ongoing project so over the coming month more content is going to be added and optimized  Hopefully resulting in the website eventually gaining high search engine positions otherwise he will probably look really stupid! Why don't you follow this project to check out how he gets on and if he really knows what he is discussing or if he will fall flat on his face.

Local SEO Services | "Search Engine Marketing: What Every Online Business Needs to Know"

Source       :  sitepoint.com
By              : Travis Banks
Category    : Search Engine Optimization
Posted By  : Local SEO Services

Local Search Engine Optimization -SEM

The world of online marketing has been growing at an accelerated pace, and many techniques have emerged to help businesses promote themselves on the web. These techniques have evolved with time and become more efficient in terms of performance and costs.

One of the many techniques employed in online marketing is SEM – search engine marketing. The objective of SEM is to increase the visibility of websites among SERPs (search engine results pages). SEM is an umbrella term that encompasses different processes for increasing websites’ visibility, such as SEO (search engine optimization) and paid display advertising on search engines.

The techniques SEM uses can be classified into four different categories. They include:

1. Keywords

There are three steps that search engine experts have to look into to be able to increase search engine visibility:

i. Indexability

Whenever a search is requested by a user, search engines scan through their indices. Some websites are not included on indices for certain reasons such as violation of the rules laid down by Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines. There are plenty of ways that websites can get banned from the indices of search engines. They include:

Duplicate Content

One of the criteria search engines use to rank websites is the originality of their content. Hence, if your website contains content that has been copied word-to-word from another website, it is likely that it will be banned sooner or later. Also, make sure that no other website copies content from your site, otherwise both of you will have to face the consequent reaction from search engines.

Cloaking

Another practice that early SEO experts used to employ to increase visibility in SERPs was cloaking, and some still do — only to find out that their website no longer appears among other search engine results any longer. Cloaking involves the hiding of keywords and links (that increase the visibility of websites) behind CSS layers, matching the color of the text to that of the background.

Spamming

The higher the density of keywords in a website, the higher it is likely to appear among search result pages. However, content too dense with keywords ruins the website visitor’s experience. Since it is a search engine’s role to recommend users to particular websites, they’re responsible when a person lands on a keyword-ridden page. Hence, search engines now penalize websites if they go overboard with keywords. Although they don’t entirely ban them from them their indices, they lower the websites’ ranking among other results. The maximum keyword density should be 5%.

ii. Finding Keywords

Once SEO experts confirm the presence of their websites on search engines’ indices, they find out which keywords people are likely to use to get to their website. Different people from diverse geographical locations and with varying demographic backgrounds may use various keywords while searching for the same thing.

iii. Inserting Keywords

Once keywords have been identified, SEO experts pass them on to content developers, who create or edit content on the website to incorporate keywords.

2. Website Saturation

Another factor that contributes to visibility of websites is the number of its webpages present on search engines’ indices. The more webpages that are indexed, the more saturated the website’s presence will be.

3. Website Popularity

Website popularity refers to the number of backlinks a site has. Technically, a backlink is a node on any other website, web page, directory, etc, that directly leads readers to the website in question.

SEM experts first measure a website’s popularity and saturation. Some of the tools they use to do so include Search Engine Saturation, Marketleap’s Link Popularity, Top 10 Google Analysis and Link Popularity. Once they find out about a website’s current status, they know exactly how much effort to put into the case.

4. Back-end Tools

Back-end tools include HTML validators and web analytics tools. They help SEM experts find data related to the visitors of a website. This data could include their geographic location, IP address, the browsers they use, sources that referred them the website in question, and the amount of time they spent on the website and other web pages they visited before and after hitting the site.

Back-end tools can either be as simple as traffic counters or log files that experts use. Three popular tools that search engine marketing experts use to find in-depth information about the visitors of websites include:

NetiQ’s Web Trends

Web Side Story’s Hitbox, a tag-based analytic program

TeaLeaf RealiTea, a tool that focuses on transactions

5. WhoIs

WhoIs another tool SEM experts use to find out the identity of people behind certain websites. This information can be obtained only to the extent to which the owners may have allowed their website hosting services to make information available about them. Legitimate sites do not have any issue sharing their basic information with people on the internet. In fact, they make themselves available so that they can be contacted easily.

SEO and SEM

Often people get confused between the terms SEO and SEM. As mentioned earlier, SEM is a superset of SEO. SEM incorporates all the tools used by experts to increase visibility of websites among search engine results, including search retargeting, paid search advertisements on search engines and organic search engine optimization. However, the term SEM is often used to denote PPC (pay per click) ads. Hence, it is important that the definition of the term search engine marketing first be clarified by those discussing its different aspects.