Denver SEO Guru

Search Engine Optimization

If the strategies used to improve your search engine rankings seem like mumbo-jumbo to you, you’ve most likely been too busy to devote the effort it takes to become proficient at search engine optimization. Even so, if your website is expected to contribute to the bottom line for your business, then it’s about time to face this demon head on.

Statistics show that around 85% of those looking for products and services online find those websites by searching keyword phrases on Google, Yahoo and MSN (now Bing). Seo or Search Engine Optimization is a broad term for the techniques and methods used to create an environment, both on-site and off-site, so that people more easily find your website when conducting a search in a web browser.

Search Engines Rule

It’s a fact that those who are searching online looking for a website are more likely to be looking to make a purchase than any other Internet use, whether it be blog commenting, social media or other communication channels. The higher in the rankings on a page in those search results your page is positioned, the more visitors your website is going to have, period, at least for a particular keyword.

Getting your site ranked higher in the search engine results is the sole purpose of SEO.

SEO Can Be Technical

There are some technical aspects to SEO that require quite a bit of experience and expertise, and there are some labor intensive aspects that just take time and a lot of effort over time.

Although the off-page factors contribute to the majority of the effectiveness of Search Engine Marketing and SEO, there are critical on-page factors that need to be implemented at the onset of your efforts. The first is getting the page Title right.

Title Tag: This isn’t always visible on the page, but is usually visible in the tab at the top of the web browser just above the page. In SEO-speak, this is your Meta Title tag. For the home page, this title tag should contain your highest level primary keyword phrase and perhaps your company name.

Each page on the site should have a unique title tag that represents the content of that page. Also, it’s often best to match the actual title displayed on the page with the title tag itself. I won’t get into the code at this point, but there is some specific code that is used to identify the main header title of every page.

Description Tag: There is also a Meta Description tag which should contain a short description of the content of the site in a way that communicates the site’s value and inspires someone to click on the link in the search results to visit your website. This description is often, but not always, used in the search engine results just under the site title.

Since Google quit including the Meta Keyword tag in its ranking algorithm, it has become irrelevant even though other search engines may still give your site some juice for that line of code.

Content Is Critical

More important is the main content of the page which should contain natural language descriptions of your products and services, emphasizing benefits and using synonyms and other words related to your topic. You don’t want to “keyword stuff” your content, as including your keywords too many times will appear unnatural to Google and your site will receive negative points for including too many of the same words.

For best quality, try to have at least 450 words on a page. In addition, don’t include too many photos, but when you do include photos, which you should, be sure to include the “alt” attribute in the code and include relevant keywords. It also helps to give the images relevant file names. Google will index those images and include them in its “Image” results. Keep in mind that the search engine bots like text when reviewing a web page. Images and iFramed text cannot be read.

Back Linking for SEO

Now to the more important efforts that positively impact SEO and your site rankings in the search engines.

SEO Back links are links from “authority” sites, which when linking to your site are viewed as “votes” for the value and importance of your website…usually, the more the better. This link popularity is vital for improving your rankings in the search engines. That being said, it’s the “authority value” of the site that’s linking to your site that is important. This value is identified by “PR” or “PageRank” which is a measure of the authority value of the site. You want a lot of links from sites with high PageRank.

What Is NoFollow?

In addition, for best results, these high PR sites/pages need to be “nofollow” pages. Often a site owner will put a “nofollow” designation in the code to tell the search engine indexing bots not to follow the links on the page. This makes those links very ineffective for back link value.

Finding, attracting and building these back links is a skill that is critical to a successful SEO campaign. The bonus is that through many of these back links, your site gets more authority and a boost in search engine positioning… And you get site visitors who find your site via those referring websites.

Since search engine ranking is the most important element of any search engine marketing campaign, be sure that your on-page SEO elements are done correctly so that your off-page back linking strategies will be fruitful.

Don’t forget, the higher your site is positioned in the search engine results, the more and better quality traffic you’ll have to your website.

Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and SEO Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. See: Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization.

Have you ever wondered about the benefit of using social media on social networks and whether or not the time spent is worth it? If you’re doing it to improve your Search Engine Optimization, you’re not alone.

Basically, social networks are websites or web facilities that allow people to share their individuality and interests with people of similar interest through personal profiles, blog posting, photo and video sharing, as well as interact with one another online. These online facilities include Profiles, Friends, Groups, Discussions, Blogs and Widgets.

Two of the most important of these social networks are YouTube and Metacafe which utilize videos as their main communication method. If you’re anything like me, you probably shy away from video as you are not very interested in putting yourself out there on film for everyone to see.

That being said, you don’t have to be on video to use video, and you don’t even have to use film to create a video… At least for the most part. The truth is that you’ll need some kind of symbol, avatar or other identity for people to get familiar with.

Personalization that builds a relationship of trust is the key to social media for businesses.

Customer loyalty built out of that trust relationship positions you as an authority in your field and gives you permission to ramp up the communication with your customers, who, more and more will become loyal customers who will buy from you over and over again as a result of increased interest in you, your website and the products or services that you offer.

Back to YouTube and Metacafe… These two sites make it very easy to take part in their huge visibility on the web, but the trick is how to leverage that visibility to your advantage.

YouTube.com

Take YouTube which has an Alexa rank of 3 worldwide (meaning it’s the 3^rd most visited site) and a Google PageRank score of 9 (out of 10). It’s not usually this easy to piggy back on those kinds of stats to the benefit of your business, but with YouTube it is.

Your first step is to sign up and create a “Channel” which becomes your main page under which you’ll add all of your other videos and build status for your brand. As people become familiar with your published video content, they can choose to subscribe to your channel so they don’t miss any future videos that you upload over time. In addition, you have options to send out bulletins to those subscribers from time to time.

The Seo benefit of back links to your website.

The “home page” for your channel provides opportunity for your to advertise who you and your business is, as well as create a link back to your main website. You can also add additional links in the description field of every video that you add to boost your Internet Marketing efforts.

The value of high quality relevant SEO back links from YouTube can’t be underestimated. One way back links from high PR websites like YouTube (PR 9) can contribute a lot of link juice to boost your site’s search engine rankings.

Metacafe.com

There is a difference between Metacafe and YouTube, and it’s significant. While YouTube is wide open, but appeals to niche markets, Metacafe is wide open. Even so, Metacafe has moderators who filter out non-entertainment videos that they feel may not be the quality or type they feel will appeal to a broad based audience. These volunteer reviewers are a core part of the culture of Metacafe as are the viewers who then rate the videos themselves.

The good news is that similar to YouTube, Metacafe also provides Profiles, Links and promotional opportunities.

What is Good and Acceptable Content?

First, videos on YouTube must be kept under ten minutes and on Metacafe must be somewhere around a minute and a half since they like quick blasts rather than longer discourses.

One way to take advantage of user searches is to create your video as a “How To” video. Large numbers of people search the web constantly looking for information about how to do something. In fact, just about everything you can think of can be structured as an informative how to video.

Another related video is the Vlog or video blog. If you run a blog or regularly post to an industry blog, adding video can begin to create fans for your business, as well as authority status for you. The main different between these two video sites is that with Metacafe you’ll want to keep it short and fun.

If you need help with ideas, check out YouTube’s “Creator’s Corner” where you can review some of their more creative recommendations and ideas for optimizing your video for best results.

If you plan to post videos regularly to your channel, then you should constantly seek to get visitors to subscribe to your channel or visit your website where you have additional calls to action, perhaps a newsletter signup of free offer. The best method for accomplishing this is to create high value content and tell the viewer where they can get more of the same.

Non-Video Option

You can create a niche market YouTube channel that has references to the best in your niche and continually comment on related videos of others. You can offer playlists on your channel that are on topic and will definitely be of interest to your subscribers. People will appreciate the work you do in your market to consolidate information, thereby positioning you as an expert in your field.

People that I know who are successful with social networking sites are consistent in their posting activity and always on topic.

Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and SEO Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. See: Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization.

Web Video

If you’ve been looking into how to optimize video for  Seo Services and Search Engine Marketing  for your website, you know that it can be a lot of work, even taking you away from your core business. Even so, we know that Online Marketing Is so important today that without it, we will fall further and further behind our competitors.

As a result, we tend to pursue the path of least resistance that gets us the most bang for our buck, so to speak. Well, one method for leveraging your Search Engine Optimization efforts is to use web video, in particular YouTube.

Since Google now owns YouTube, it has been integrated into Google Search or more technically, Universal Search which provides results for all of its properties to be searched at the same time. This means that when a search is conducted, the results may include websites, photos, images, videos, maps, etc., all from that one search.

Although goofy personal videos may go viral and get a lot of attention and media notoriety, business related videos are getting huge exposure in traditional web search results. This is especially true when your video is set up and submitted properly on YouTube.

A recent study from Forrester Research indicates that the results from a Google search rank video very high in search results, and more often on the first page of Google, when optimized properly and closely relevant to the search inquiry… Often, even more highly ranked than a optimized website.

So, What Should You Do?

Since the Google search algorithm still favors video in search results, we recommend incorporating YouTube video as a “Piggy Back” strategy to leverage the power of this high ranking we property into your search engine marketing.

Of course, this assumes that you have some decent web ready videos that you can use to promote your business. And, even though videos can be created easily by anyone today in a relatively short time, effective videos of acceptable quality are labor intensive and take skills that you may not have.

In any event, let’s assume that you do have some videos that you’d like to use to gain visibility for your business using YouTube.

Here are Some YouTube Video 101 Basics

Title: This is the most important decision for your SEO since it defines the message and the web page content. As people search YouTube or the web, this title will be the link text that gets created and represents your video.

Description: The description must compliment the title with more detail including the benefit the viewer will receive by watching it. It should include the keywords you want to rank for that you used in the video title.

Tags: These are both keywords directly related to the title and description, but also should include synonym related terms. These keywords will be used to categorize the video to make it easier to find. Your video will show up under various related categories depending on how you define your video’s tags.

Distribution: One free service, TubeMogul, will upload your video beyond YouTube to a large number of other popular video hosting websites that include Yahoo!, Viddler, MySpace and many others to get you increased visibility and influence online.

Bottom line…if you are looking for quick results, video should be a key component of your Search Engine Marketing and Seo Strategy.

Author Steve Josephs is owner of Intellidon Marketing LLC, a Search Engine Marketing and SEO Services firm specializing in attracting new customers for local businesses through Online Marketing Strategies. See: Wikipedia on Search Engine Optimization.