May 29, 2009

Increase search engine rankings: 4 techniques you need to use

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How can I get listed on the first page of Google? That is a question I get asked all the time! Now that is an article that deserves its own space entirely, but there are several things you can do to increase your search engine rankings and create a path straight to the first page of search engine results.
I like to focus on organic methods of search engine optimization (SEO, starting with search engine friendliness. A site that is built to make the search engine's job of indexing your content easier and has timely, relevant, and personal content is one they will grow to like and visit often.

The creation of a search engine friendly website begins with the developer who builds the site. Using a combination of HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the best route to take. By defining most of the design elements and graphics in CSS file, you limit the code on your actual HTML page, making is much easier for the search engines to scan and find your content.

Once your site is built with search engine friendliness in mind, the focus then shifts to on-page SEO techniques that can give your site a big boost.

On-Page SEO Technique 1:


Stop using Flash/JavascriptA lot of web designers push Flash for websites because it is cool, and it makes their portfolio look cool. But Flash does absolutely nothing for you. It actually hurts you. Overall search engines can't read Flash. Some will tell you they can now, but it just isn't there yet. So, if your site is done in flash it is like you don't exist. Using Javascript is also a very unfriendly practice, as a lot of browsers can't read Javascript.

On-Page SEO Technique 2:

Use Headlines TagsBreaking up website copy with headlines and subheads is a must for readability and SEO. But if they are not optimized, they aren't helping you at all. All of your headlines and subheads should be formatted with Header or "H" tags, as they will then be given more attention and deemed more important by the search engines. Your headlines and subheads should also include the keywords and long-tail phrases you are targeting.

On-Page SEO Technique 3:

Use Meta tagsThe most common meta tags, and the only ones you really need to focus on are the title, description and keyword tags. The title tells the search engine the topic of the page, the description tells them what content you're offering and the keywords cover the words and long-tails phrases you want to be found under. If you're targeting specific keywords, make sure they are in all three meta tags.

On-Page SEO Technique 4:

Don't over/Under Use Keywords.The over/under use of keywords is referred to as keyword density. It is the ratio a keyword appears in your content compared to the total number of words on the page. The old school approach was to use the key word over and over on a page – the more the better. That no longer works. That practice can actually hurt your rankings! In researching the best practices for keyword density, I found suggestions for a target density of anywhere from 2% - 7%.
Now that you know the techniques for making your website more search engine friendly and optimizing your content , please put them to work on your site. Remember though, search engine optimization is a process not an event – especially organic SEO. But it is also the most rewarding… and free!




By Jennifer Bourn


http://www.examiner.com/x-8111-Sacramento-Graphic-Design-Examiner~y2009m5d26-Increase-search-engine-rankings-4-techniques-you-need-to-use
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May 28, 2009

Blog SEO Tips from SES San Jose

Blog from the web:

http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/08/blog-seo-tips-from-ses-san-jose/

Blogs have been abuzz for at least 4 years in the tech space and in the past 2-3 years in the business marketing world. Like many new marketing/communication channels, there continues to be a need to demystify shiny new objects and what they mean for businesses. Blogs and search engine optimization are no different.

One point I would make is that companies are wasting their long term time when setting up blogs purely for SEO purposes. It’s short term thinking and over time, results in difficulties with keeping momentum, new ideas and content. How do I know? Been there and done that, many times.

It’s far more realistic to implement blogs for specific purposes such as product communications, online newsroom, thought leader/strategy, customer support/communications, news, branding, advice/tips, aggregation of content in specific topics and many more. Regardless of the purpose, each blog implementation and ongoing management should have an intentional SEO effort.

Our session at SES San Jose on Blogs and Feeds included Amanda Watlington who gave a litany of advice and insights on strategic considerations for blogging ranging from goals to content sourcing to URL. She also offered an impressive list of specific tactics for optimizing both blogs and feeds. Amanda has been presenting on this topic at SES since the session was first implemented 3-4 years ago.

Chris Boggs gave advice on linking from blogs with examples of why not to link to press releases since they can get removed and not linking to other types of content because of archiving and lack of proper redirection.

Daron Babin made an argument based on his personal experience with the new WebmasterRadio.FM site on why it might be better in some cases not to use a blog platform, but to use a custom CMS (content management system) that publishes feeds. He offered numerous ranking examples and technical details of how the publishing platform automates many SEO friendly features of the web site.

My presentation on blog SEO focused on the value and opportunity with links specific to blogs and also offered 3 case studies.

In 2007 there were approximately 70 million blogs tracked by Technorati and this year they post 112 million, although there are likely far more than that. Out of all those blogs, 100 million have less than 20 inbound links. 400,000 blogs have more than 20 links and the top 2,600 blogs have over 1,000 inbound links.

Think about that. To be one of the top 1% of all blogs according to Technorati, it takes (among other things) 1,000 inbound links. That’s a number any competent search marketer could achieve in a reasonable amount of time provided there’s good content to work with. It represents a good illustration of the opportunity for SEOs to leverage blogs as a compliment to search engine optimization programs.


The first case study I presented concerned a Senior Housing Development Company, that wanted to provide an informal communications channel to address topics of interest to their target market and also to motivate a shift in thinking of their industry from “old folks homes” to “senior communities, senior living”.

Tactics included updating their blog and optimizing with keywords as well as leveraging categories to offer an online newsroom to archive optimized press releases both chronologically and by keyword-rich category.

Results included the blog becoming a top 5 source of referring traffic to corporate site, a huge increase in keyword rankings and a 500% increase in unique visitors.


The second blog SEO case study involved an online book and games retailer that wanted to tap into the passionate communities of games and puzzle enthusiasts online.

The tactical approach involved creating robust online game content include taking old style carnival games and having them made into Flash games to be played on the blog itself. A presence was created on Facebook as well as social media promotion efforts on StumbleUpon, Digg and bookmarking sites. Also, Twitter data was mined for users talking about games, puzzles, learning etc and followed to create a channel for promoting the latest games posted to the blog.

Results for the online puzzles site included a doubling of unique visitors from organic search, a quintupling of monthly traffic and more than qunitupling of page views to well over 400,000 per month. Now the site not only sells books and games but monetizes content/traffic with contextual advertising.

The third blog SEO case study involved our own blog, Online Marketing Blog. Our strategy was to transition a news blog into a unique content destination that would demonstrate TopRank’s thought leadership on topics ranging from Push and Pull Public Relations to Digital Asset Optimization. Increasing awareness in the search, PR and direct marketing industries as well as with prospective clients were specific, long term objectives.

Tactics for Online Marketing Blog include a regular schedule of unique content: industry and SEM agency insights, interviews, conference coverage, surveys, blog reviews and blog tools, photos & video.

Results include being ranked in the Technorati 100 (#31 favorite out of 100 million + blogs) and in top 15 on the AdAge Power150 list of top marketing blogs. However, the more meaningful results according to objectives include media coverage in influential publications:

Additionally, our blog ranks in Google on many, difficult keyword phrases such as “online marketing” #2, over 13,000 RSS subscribers and about 80k monthly web visitors. However, the most meaningful results are that we get daily advertising requests, weekly requests from the media, weekly requests to speak at conferences and daily new business requests.

Blogging alone can be a long term productive marketing channel. Blogging, optimizing and promoting great content delivers a far greater competitive advantage.

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BASIC SEO-TIPS

Use your primary keyword in your blog domain
The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps.

For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html. So choose a URL like www.htmlhelp.com.

You can also use the keyword in subdomains like www.web-design.com/htmlhelp

Use your primary keyphrase in the title of your posts
If your primary key phrase is html help make sure that the word html and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.

Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.

But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.

Use your keywords in the anchor text of links
Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog. Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily
Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

Get backlinks from other blogs
You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily.

So how do you get backlinks?

The first thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories.

Start by submitting your blog to all the directories listed on this page:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities.
If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. The trackback will become a link back to your blog.
Lastly posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs will help you get backlinks. Regularly post legitimate comments in similarly-themed blogs with high traffic to get many backlinks.
Update your blog frequently
Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.

Stick with your blog
Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.

Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it’s about pets don’t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget’s because you will loose traffic.
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5 Tips for Creating, Promoting and Managing a LinkedIn Group

5 Tips for Creating, Promoting and Managing a LinkedIn Group

via HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Ellie Mirman on 5/4/09


linkedin groupIt's no secret that LinkedIn is a great place to network professionally, post and find jobs, and answer questions and build thought leadership. But if you're using LinkedIn solely as a place to maintain an online resume, you're missing out on a great opportunity to reach and engage with potential customers -- LinkedIn groups.

5 Tips When Creating a LinkedIn Group

There are still a lot of industries or groups of professionals not yet represented in LinkedIn groups. If no one has created a group for your industry, go create one. A few tips as you get started:

  • Your name is important! Consider which keywords your target members will search for. Make sure your group name is clear and includes these keywords.
  • Create a group for your industry, not your company. People are more likely to join a group when it's not simply for fans of your company.
  • Design the group logo to fit the small standard logo size. The group logos that are displayed will actually be quite small - keep this in mind, and don't cram lots of hard-to-read-text into the small image.
  • Create a custom webpage for the group on your website. When we created the ProMarketers group on LinkedIn, we bought the URL www.ProMarketers.com and redirected it to a page on our site with more information about the group. This type of page will provide more context, engagement and visibility for your group. It can have as much or as little information as you like.
  • Display the group in the Group Directory and on members' profiles. Take advantage of the functionality already in place on LinkedIn to help your group get more visibility.

5 Tips for Promoting a LinkedIn Group

  • Invite coworkers, past colleagues, and customers to join and start discussions. Leverage your existing network to get your group started. After all, who wants to join a group with no members?
  • Promote the group on your website, blog, email newsletter, and social media networks. Make sure people know that you have a group and how to join.
  • Invite key industry experts to join and engage. If there are some heavy-hitters in your industry, invite them to engage with the community.
  • Cross-market to related groups that you manage on different networks. Create a similar group or Page on Facebook and invite members of each network to join the group on the other network.
  • Integrate LinkedIn into all of your marketing efforts. Every time you do a webinar or go to a conference, notify your group and invite those you meet to join the group as well.

5 Tips for Managing a LinkedIn Group

  • Add discussions, news and jobs. The more opportunities for interaction you add to your group, the more valuable your group will be to the community. All of these features are standard for LinkedIn groups. Unfortunately, it's an all-or-nothing deal -- to add discussions, you must also add news.
  • Use featured discussions to highlight particular content or offers. The group discussions can quickly get overrun and it can be hard to get your discussion thread noticed. But, as a manager of your group, you can mark a discussion as featured and this will pin your thread at the top of the discussion board. You can also unpin it at any time.
  • Send announcements. Announcements are emails sent by you through LinkedIn to your group members. The benefit of sending these announcements through LinkedIn is that your recipients -- and their ISPs -- are more likely to recognize the email as trustworthy and your deliverability may be higher than if you had sent the email yourself. Announcements will also get added as a discussion thread for your group, and you also have the option to mark this thread as a featured discussion for extra visibility. Announcements are text-only, and have no analytics, so if you want to track clicks, use a URL shortener with analytics to measure the response to your announcement.
  • Import your blog RSS feed. If you write a blog that's relevant to the group, you can import your articles automatically to the News section. Go to News -> Manage news feeds and add the RSS feed for your blog.
  • Make your own LinkedIn analytics. LinkedIn is still catching up to Facebook in terms of a lot of its advanced functionality. One major piece that's still missing is analytics. So, if you want to track the success of your group, you'll need to make your own LinkedIn analytics. To track the growth of your group, check the number of members every week and keep track of the group size in a spreadsheet. To track the click through rate of links in your announcements, use a URL shortener with analytics like bit.ly. And, of course, be sure to measure the traffic, leads, and customers you get from LinkedIn over time. Hopefully, your group will help drive people back to your business.

If you want to check out a LinkedIn group in action, and want to connect with other marketers on LinkedIn, check out the Pro Marketers group on LinkedIn (and the Pro Marketers group on Facebook, too).

Inbound Marketing Kit

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Don't Make a Macro Mistake With Your Micro Site

Don't Make a Macro Mistake With Your Micro Site

via HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Rick Burnes on 5/14/09


microscopeLast week I spent some time speaking with Jess Dennis of Red Shoes PR about the firm's upcoming seminar, Bottom Line: Social Media for Business. (If you're near Appleton, WI on June 4, stop by -- I'm speaking!)

When we spoke, Jess explained that she and her business partners were trying to figure out whether to put the event website on a new domain (a microsite), or make it a page within their existing site (www.redshoespr.com).

Because they were hosting the event in conjunction with the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce, they wanted to create some distance between the event brand and their own brand, so they were leaning towards a microsite on a new domain.

I agreed with their assessment.

I was fired up about the event when I got off the phone, so I turned to one of my colleagues who sits next to me here at HubSpot, and explained the situation. I got an unexpectedly sharp reaction: "Microsite -- why would they want to do that?"

Then he went on to explain the basic problem: Microsites can be SEO liabilities.

Think about it. You spend years building links and optimizing pages on your main site. You build up some Google juice, you start ranking for some great terms. Then a new project comes along and because it has its own brand identity, the powers that be decide it needs to be on a separate domain.

Goodbye Google juice.

Instead of building on the SEO authority you worked so hard to accrue, you have to start building it all over again. And in the mean time, your new microsite isn't going to rank well.

Of course, there are circumstances in which a microsite makes sense. For example, if you're trying to build a new, long-lasting brand, a microsite is probably the right way to go.

When we set up the website for the Inbound Marketing Summit last year, we knew we wanted to keep the name and build it into a brand. So we went with a microsite.

That decision cost us search engine traffic in the short term, but it's now helping New Marketing Labs, the company that purchased the Summit from us earlier this year.

Microsites also make sense if you care more about the site's unique brand and user experience than about search engine optimization.

So what's the takeaway?

Simple. The next time you're considering setting up a microsite, ask yourself this: Is the new site a permanent brand I want to invest in? And, if that's the case, am I willing to take an SEO hit in the short term?

If the answer to either of those questions is no, you probably shouldn't go with microsite on its own domain.

What do you think? What reasons to use or not to use microsites am I not considering?

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Four Implications of Universal Search for Small Business SEO

Four Implications of Universal Search for Small Business SEO

via HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Ellie Mirman on 5/26/09


Inbound Marketing Universal SearchGoogle first announced a new kind of search - universal, or blended, search - back in 2007 that, in addition to text-based results (web pages), would integrate different kinds of results such as video, images, and news, just to name a few.

Roll out has been slow (a Google rep recently reported that 1 in 4 searches now contain universal search results) and research on the effect on consumer behavior is limited and potentially inconclusive (both OTO Interactive and iProspect have conducted studies - iProspect mid-2008 and OTO late 2008, to be released soon).

Still, there are a few clear implications of universal search results for businesses who want to better optimize their web presence for this new search landscape.

1.) New Real Estate

Before universal search, SEO (search engine optimization) was all about creating remarkable content that people would link to and would be optimized for certain keywords so that your web pages would show up as one of those top 10 search results (the first page). But now, those 10 spots are cut down to 9, 8, 7, or fewer. Some of that old real estate is now reserved for different kinds of content across the web - video, images, etc. - that are on their own ranking algorithm.

There are new opportunities to get on that first page of search results, and businesses need to create multimedia content to take advantage of this new real estate. That means posting videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr, and tagging this multimedia content as thoroughly as possible.

2.) More Emphasis on Top Search Results

With these new, visually appealing, search results part way down the first page of search results, there is now a visual barrier that focuses users' eyes even more on the top of the search results page. We already know from eye tracking heat map analysis that users focus on the "golden triangle" (planted in the top left hand corner of the SERP) and few people scroll to the bottom of the page or go on to the second, third, etc. SERP.

It's very possible that this multimedia will continue to focus users' eyes on the top of the first SERP, so your website better be one of the first search results.

3.) How Do You Convert Viewers of Multimedia?

Creating content is the absolute best way to attract more prospects to learn about and engage with your brand - on your website as well as social media sites like Twitter, YouTube, or Flickr. But how are you supposed to turn YouTube video views into leads and sales for your business? With this new SERP real estate going to multimedia content, this issue has become even more pressing.

For all of your multimedia, give people a way to further engage with your company, whether it's by including a link to your website or relevant blog article in the video/image/etc. description, or including your logo or call to action within the multimedia.

4.) Are You Listening to Your Customers?

This multimedia content is yet another way for content written about you by you, your customers, or fans, to bubble to the top of search results. While you may not yet have posted any multimedia about your company, your customers are most definitely already talking about you online, in a variety of ways and mediums.

Universal search results make it that much more important for you to listen and engage with your customers online, so that you know what they're saying, and so that you can promote flattering content and respond to negative criticism.

How does your business plan to create multimedia content to leverage universal or blended search?

Search Engine Optimization Kit

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4 Minutes to Optimize a LinkedIn Profile for SEO

4 Minutes to Optimize a LinkedIn Profile for SEO

via HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Mike Volpe on 5/22/09


There are two really quick things you can do on LinkedIn to optimize your profile for SEO -- both to make your LinkedIn profile more discoverable, and to make your profile work for you by sending some SEO authority (link juice) to other pages on the web that you choose.

The video below explains it all and shows you exactly how to do it in under 4 minutes.

2 Tips to Optimize a LinkedIn Profile for SEO

  1. Customize your URL with your name. My LinkedIn profile URL is http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikevolpe - and you can have one just like it with your name in the URL making it more likely for your profile to rank for searches for your name because the search engines do look at keywords in the URL. It is also a much easier URL to remember and looks nicer when you email it to people.
  2. Add Custom Anchor Text to Links. You can have up to 3 links on your profile to other websites, and these links pass SEO authority. If you customize the anchor text on the links, you can get the most out of them because the search engines do look at the text of links to understand more about the content of pages they link to. So, if you want your marketing TV show to rank on the first page for "marketing video podcast", make sure to use that text in your link.

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SEO - The Best Blogs On The Web

Dear All,

You will find some of the best blogs and articles from the CyberWorld in this blog. I seek support from all those who are successful in and wants their followers to be like them by learning minutes of SEO. Please feel free to share and comment if anything goes good or bad with/in this blog.

Thanks,

Webmaster