Search engine optimization (SEO) is art and science of developing web pages that succeed in search engines. Post articles here exploring SEO, concepts, trends, ideas, etc.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 - Posted by: techbiz
Search Engine Optimization is an important marketing strategy because it can deliver inexpensive targeted leads. It's a long term process where a company will attempt to create a site that is viewed by the search engines as the authoritative source for that term and will be displayed first.
Over time, a company active in SEO marketing will determine which phrases result in the highest conversion. For truly valuable phrases, it's often not enough to claim the top spot. Instead, the company will work to box out their competitors on the first page. In other words, the company will promote additional pages so that they will also be listed on the first page causing others to be pushed to page 2. Since search engines will only list 1-2 pages per domain per search, the company would need to have other domains that are relevant to that keyword phrase. This doesn't have to always be their domain. They might have a listing in a directory, a page on another site such as Squidoo or Wikipedia, or an article on somebody else's site.
For a while, people used sub-domains to box out their competitors, but there's talk that the search engines are going to start looking at sub-domains as folders, which limits it down to the 1-2 links per search. Because of this, the only reliable method is to promote pages on several sites.
The more you own a keyword phrase, the better. Repetition is a powerful selling tool. The more somebody sees references to a particular business related to what they're looking for, the more credible that company becomes in their mind.
Friday, February 13, 2009 - Posted by: techbiz
Content Island ™
A Content Island is a term I've coined for the process of creating a set of pages that link to each other. This can be a full website, but it doesn't have to be and usually isn't. The fact is that it's far more beneficial to have higher ranking pages linking to your website than pages with few links back to them.
To create those higher ranking pages, you'll need to have several pages linking to them, and that's where the concept of the Content Island comes into play. Many websites allow you to link to your website from your profile page, and those same websites link back to your profile page in many places. Take, for example, a blog site where you can comment on other's blogs. Typically, part of the comment will include a link to your profile or blog. The more you use their site, the more links are pointed back to your profile or blog, which will increase your profile page's value. This makes that one link from your profile on their website to your main website much more valuable.
In addition, you'll start to build credibility on that site assuming that your comments and other activities are legit and sincere. This will result in more traffic to your pages on that site and ultimately more traffic to your real website.
ProSPOTLIGHT is a great site to create such a place because it gives you the ability to create a 5 page website, a blog, and a profile. Each of these pages link to each other, which gives them intrinsic value for both your readers and the search engines. When you comment on other's blogs, there are additional links that point back to your spotlight page, which further increases your spotlight's worth.
Friday, February 13, 2009 - Posted by: techbiz
The Internet is a massive encyclopedia of knowledge that millions of people have contributed to. The web is made up of billions of pages that are all linked together. Some of those pages are linked to by thousands of others, while some are linked to by very few. This is nothing new since it's the fundamental concept of the world wide web.
The search engines have looked at the Internet as a whole and have tried to figure out what pages are the most important. Google, in particular, decided that each link is like a vote. The more links that point to a page, the more important that page must be. In addition to this, they've decided that a vote's worth is determined by how many pages link to it and so on. They also look at how closely both pages relate to each other. The closer their subjects are, the more valuable that link is. Google calls this concept PageRank.
As with any sort of ranking algorithm, there's an underlying problem. The pages and sites that are deemed important are shown to more people, which in turn makes them more important since more people will view them and potentially link to them. This makes it so the sites that are on top stay on top, while the rest are left in the dust.
There are as many strategies to get somebody on the top of the search pages as there are people trying to get there. What it ultimately boils down to is that a web site needs to generate some buzz to break into the upper crust of the existing monolithic websites. Once a buzz gets started, more people will link to them, which generates more buzz. Over time, they'll reach the top of their prized keywords.
So how do you generate buzz?
There are many methods, but the one that I like the best is a technique I've coined Content Islands.
Thursday, February 12, 2009 - Posted by: seomarketing
A web site is a location on the internet comprised of multiple web pages. The pages link together creating the site. Web pages (hereafter "pages") should be specific, providing mass to a web site.
Well written pages (and tools) give true value to the web site. In the end, well written pages will convert looky-lou users into clients and draw search engines as they demonstrate good SEO practices. A well written page will have a focus. We see sites all the time that have two dozen topics on the home page and then another dozen on each page thereafter. Pages like these are confusing to users and to search engines. When writing a page the author should first choose a great page title (thesis) about one topic. Add that title to the top of the page and then write about it, and it only. A home page is a little different. It is OK to lay out the scope of the site with A FEW topics. It should contain the thesis of your site. Each page thereafter should have the narrow thesis in the title and describe that topic in its content. They should all relate in one way or another to the main site thesis.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - Posted by: seomarketing
Having the right domain name is very important. A domain name is the name of your web site. For example, "Yahoo" is the domain name in www.yahoo.com and "ebay" is the domain name for www.ebay.com. Search engines give a lot of weight to web sites with the right keywords in them. In fact, some web sites have a hold on a top search engine spot simply because their domain name has the right words. Granted, in competitive markets the domain name is only a small factor in the overall SEO game. Some site owners pay huge amounts of money to companies specialized in making a site popular.
Search engines prefer authority sites. Over time, an authority site is given significant preference over any other sites.
To learn more about choosing your domain name, visit us "SEO and Domain Name Importance"
Thursday, January 8, 2009 - Posted by: seomarketing
Some internet gurus blog for a living. In some cases, it's their full time job and they work lax hours and they make a lot of money.
For most, we won't dedicate that amount of time.
However, most professionals who have something to promote or sell can benefit greatly from frequent blog posts. In experiments, we've learned that professionals who blog 3 times a week for 45-60 minutes increase their web site visibility significantly.
On my las vegas real estate web site I tried all sorts of things to promote it. I'd get the traffic to grow some but I didn't see the real traffic growth until I joined several online communities. Even then, I didn't see much change until I used the communities to blog and publish public content.
Within several months of blogging in a couple of communities, spending roughly 45 minutes a day, I saw my search engine rank begin to rise quickly. I also saw leads begin to flow in.
We have since run other experiments on other topics and web sites and found similar results. The key is to find a community that allows you to publish public content and network with others. It's also important that the community architecture is friendly to search engine optimization (SEO).
ProSPOTLIGHT is a community that provides the right tools and the right search engine visibility.
Monday, January 5, 2009 - Posted by: seomarketing
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the technical ways of saying, "get good search engine results." SEO is a science the every web geek tries to master. It is the reason that many of us use well designed web tools. SEO drives people to our web sites, which may be an online brochure, application, or some other web presentation. Optimization makes the text on pages stand out to engines so a site surfaces to the top.
There are two key concepts to web site SEO as far as search engines are concerned: popularity and relevance. Imagine your just wrote a book. It becomes very popular and well cited and becomes a best selling novel. Distributors make the most money by selling books people want to read. So, they advertise those books at the top of their lists and in the front shelves. Your web site is the same. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. want sites that are cited on other sites and they want the site's content to be relevant to what the searcher is looking for.
Relevance: write great quality content for your users. Figure out what key words you want to use in each page and write about that topic. Don't have less than 4 solid paragraphs with at least 2 descriptive sentences each. Engines crave content. They don't care about design (your users do but we'll talk about that later) and will likely discard most images, flash, and other fancy stuff. They want words to chew on. A few well written pages is much better than many with a couple of sentences each. Some site designers will get pages out there just so engines can see them with the intent to flesh out the pages later. That is OK as long as the "later" doesn't take too long. Poor pages can penalize a good site. We'll get into search engine timing later too.
Popularity: get others to link to you. If Ghandi recommends a book many people read it. If President Hinckley recommends a book many people read it. If the Pope recommends a book many people read it. Search engines are built to judge how many people are recommending other web sites and they know how popular the site doing the recommending is. The key is to get as many high ranked and relevant web sites to link to you as possible.
We will talk much more about SEO as we go. It is a very important topic in your web site's success.