Bretts Marketing Bytes

Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

A lot of people ask if domains matter when it comes to SEO. My answer to this question,  is a big fat YES! A unique domain name describing something that you are trying to rank for is huge. It can dramatically help in organic rankings. For example: If you sold bachelorette party favors, you might have your domain be something like  “bachelorettepartyfavors.com” because that is what people are typing in.

I know what you are thinking… Why did I pick that as an example. Reason being is that it is a niche term and people definitely make those kinds of purchases online. Niche terms tend to convert better when the domains are specific to one product vertical.

The search algorithms look at these domains as highly relevant sites because they match exactly what a user is putting into the search bar. The difficulty is that  your company might not be able to use a domain like this(—Obviously  not bachelorette related but something you sell) due to branding issues. However,  if you can use a specific url to one of your products,  you will be on your way to higher rankings.

Choosing the right keyword or keyword phrase can be a bit tricky. The biggest mistake that most people have when choosing keywords for their website is not being specific enough. For example if you are a staffing and outsourced labor company, you wouldn’t want to spend your time, money and effort trying to rank for staffing services, because it’s not specific enough.

Being specific will direct potential customers to your website, which can lead to a profit for you. A better, more specific keyword phrase for this example would be:

• independent contractor compliance
• contract labor management
• payrolling services

Be specific, because your potential customers have specific needs. You want to optimize every potential customer that uses a search engine to find a specific product or service.

Tracking results from organic SEO can be somewhat difficult, especially if you are trying to explain them to non savvy people. I came across a great method to demonstrate results  to even the most non technical people. It’s called Visibility Score.

If you use the Visibility Score formula you can track the improvements and measure your results. The score is calculated across the 3 major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing.

How it works is each ranking position is given a value up to the last result on page 3 of each search engine.  Example: Position 1 would have a value of 33.3 tied to it. Position 2 would be 32.3 and position 3 would be 31.3 and so on. Now take your position on Yahoo and Bing and then add them all together. A prefect score would equal a visibility score of 100. See below for a practical example on Visibility Score.

Google: Positions 1 = 33.3
Yahoo: Positions  2= 32.3
Bing:    Position    1= 33.3

If you total these up you get a Visibility Score of 96.9. Not too shabby. Good luck

The question of whether a company should hire an SEO before or after a site redesign often comes up in my seminars.

Let me put it this way. Would you let a contractor start to build your house without a blue print? I hope you said no.

My point is that you have to think about your web developer just like that home contractor. Their only job is to build something that functions and looks pretty. Without a blue print they cannot do this, so they rely on you to tell them what you want. However,  you are relying on them to know what works best for SEO, but I have news for you…9 times out of 10, they haven’t got the slightest clue.

Just because they are a web developer doesn’t mean they know SEO. These are two different skill sets.

Let me give you a more practical example. The other day I recieved a call from a company who just had their website redesigned and are now looking for SEO services.  They told me that they used to rank pretty well with their old site and now with their new site their rankings have completely dropped off the face of the Google. The weird part is that they told me they were okay with it, because the new site looks and functions better than the old one. ( Okay, are you kidding me?)

You can have the best looking website in the world but if no one is going to it, your site is worthless.

So I pulled up their site in my browser while I was on the phone with them and immediately noticed that their site navigation was way off for SEO efforts and worse, their pages are producing dynamic non search friendly URL’s.  Those seem like easy fixes right, yes, but the underlying technology that this site was built on was just a nightmare.

So essentially they want me to make gold out of a turd. I’ve done these types of projects before and they never turn out good.  When the technology is not right, you cannot expect good results.

In a nutshell they chose a bad platform to put their website on and probably a web developer who doesn’t know the first thing about marketing. That’s why they call themselves a web developer and not a marketer.

Web developers are not marketers.

Now this company has to back track and spend more money to try and get their website to be search friendly, when all they had to do is get guidelines in the beginning from an SEO. This would have saved them a ton of money. Instead, they are stuck with a turd.

To summarize this post and answer the question of should you hire an SEO before or after your site redesign; do yourself  a favor and start working with an SEO right away. Let them create the blue print. It will save you a boat load of money. Not to mention,  there is a lot of effort that goes into getting solid top rankings and any good SEO might turn down the offer to work with your company if the technology is not going to work in their favor.

To know how to find a good SEO firm you must understand the difference between performing SEO tasks and actually getting ranking results.

Whats the difference between SEO and ranking results?

First off there is a lot of gray area when it comes to the term SEO. So your company might sign up for SEO services and not get any results. WHY? because there are a lot of web development firms/SEO firms claiming to perform SEO techniques but they are only doing the bare minimum or what was good 5 years ago.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Think about this… What does that mean? It means that a company will optimize  your website for search engines. In the old days when a site was ranked well, we used to say, wow, thank site is optimized. But today it is much different and there is more that goes into it than just optimizing a page or site.

Optimizing a page is the process of changing page copy and meta tags to include keywords. But, what about link building? Is link building really SEO? A lot of people think so, but I disagree. I think Link building is a part of the end result, which is “Ranking.” I truly believe there is a difference between SEO and Ranking, and if you understand the difference between the two,  you can protect yourself from being mislead.

On-page optimization

Everyone and their brother is doing on-page optimization(Changing page copy and meta tags.) What makes you think that your website is going to rank better than any of theirs?  I hope you don’t say because you have your keywords on the page more frequently than they do. Oh boy, you are really behind if you think that. Those days are long gone. Search engines are way smarter than that now.

On-page optimization is the bare minimum that needs to be done. There is so much more that goes into ranking a page on a website for key terms.

So, how do you know if you are getting the bare minimum? I have created a small list of red flags below.

You are not going to get results:

• When you pay cheap prices. If you are paying cheap prices chances are good you are getting cheap service and you are wasting your money. I had a client who was paying $100 per month to another company before me to rank for 15 keywords. Needless to say they were not ranking for anything after 1 year. If you are paying $100 per month you will never rank for anything unless you get lucky. Save your money and learn SEO on your own.
• When an SEO asks you to come up with your own keywords. How can you come up with your own keywords, you are not the expert, the SEO is. The SEO should only use your keywords as a guideline toward better key terms.
• When the SEO firm tries to rank your home page for more than 3 terms.
• When the SEO firm does not create landing pages for your products or services. I just met with a company who was working with another SEO/web firm who was trying to rank their home page for 10 key terms. Think about this. If Google’s whole algorithm is based on  pulling up relevant content for a search query, how could your home page possibly be relevant for 10 terms? It can’t.
• When the SEO firm does not create links to your individual pages. You cannot rank for competitive terms without links. Note: not just directory submissions either.
• When the SEO firm does not provide monthly ranking reports. How do you know how you are ranking if you cannot see progress?
• When the SEO firm does not offer recommendations on site structure. 9 times out of 10 when I go in to talk to a company their site navigation structure is a mess when it comes to SEO and Ranking.
• When the SEO firm says that they will rank your site for broad terms. Example: Candy, Plumbing, cards, drinks… This should tell you that they don’t understand targeting and they are flat out lying. Those terms are too broad.
• When the SEO firm guarantees results. Truthfully no one can guarantee results as the search engines are in charge not the SEO.
• When the SEO firm cannot provide both national and geographic examples of their work.

I hope these help. Zoodle Marketing Group provides top end ranking results.

A search engine’s goal is to provide searchers with results that are relevant to their queries. Therefore a crucial element to building an SEO strategy is to understand your audience. Once you know how your target market searches for your products, service or resource, you will have a much better chance of reaching those users.

A search engine is built on intent and is much different than entering a URL, picking a link on your home page, or choosing a bookmark from your browser.

In order to understand this you must know the three different types of queries.

Navigational Queries

Navigational queries are performed with the intent of going to a specific website. Often times users will enter in a company name into the search box.  These searches can be good because they are your brand in most cases. They usually result in higher conversions because people know you brand and what they are looking for. However, the overall value of a navigational query is low.

Example: Next Financial Group

10% of searches are navigational.*

Informational Queries

Information queries involve a large range of queries. Example: how to make chocolate covered pretzels, directions, latest news, or simple research on a product. Usually Informational queries are not transactional but can be if someone decides to purchase after doing initial research. The overall value for an informational search is medium.

Example: recipe for almond butter crunch

80% of searches are informational.*

Transactional Queries

A transactional query is not just a credit card purchase, It can result in someone signing up for a free trial, email newsletter or even finding the best CPA in Toronto.  These types of queries have the most value because they result in a transaction.

Example: Buy chocolate covered popcorn online

*10% of searches are transactional.

It is very difficult to determine a searchers intent but the closer you get the better your seo results will be. Good luck!

*All research provided by Pennsylvania State University & Queensland University of Technology.

Google is finally fighting the spam that has plagued the Google local channel for sometime. According to some experts, there are 5 new guidelines.

1. The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name. For example, you cannot use product descriptors such as, bulk silica gel.
2. PO Boxes do not count as physical locations.
3. A property for rent is not considered a place of business. Please create one listing for the central office that processes the rentals.
4. You must use a shared business email account if multiple users will be updating your business listing.
5. If possible, use an email account with a domain that matches your business URL. For example, if your business website is www.menssilkbowties.com, a matching email address would be you@menssilkbowties.com.

If you haven’t signed up for Google Local yet, you can do so by going to the Google Local Business Center.

Okay, I know  url Canonicalization sounds really technical and confusing, but truthfully it is an easy concept to understand. Not to mention it is very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

First lets define URL Canonicalization as the process of establishing a single URL as the location of a web document. The web document being a page on your website. So what does “establishing a single URL” mean?

When it comes to SEO, search engines look at a URL with “www” in it differently than a URL that does not have “www” in it. For example, in Googles eyes, http://www.yoursite.com is a different URL than http://yoursite.com.

Why does this matter? Well mostly because of inbound links, which are very important for SEO. If you get one company who links to your site by putting in the “www” and another company who doesn’t use “www”,  your link equity will be split. Because of this you will not be driving as much link juice to your pages as you possibly could.

The idea is to generate one URL for all occasions, so no matter what they type in or link to it goes to one location. The way that you do this is  by 301 redirecting non “www” to the “www” version of the URL. Or in some cases vice versa, depending on what you want.

If your site is written in PHP you will most likely have a file called .htaccess. In this file is where you create the redirects. See below for the two scenario’s. The following code should be placed at the top of your .htaccess file. Make sure to save a copy of your current .htaccess file in the event you screw something up.

#redirect from non www to www

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

#redirect from www to non www

##www to non-www
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yoursite\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Hope this helps you on your quest to ranking higher on the search engines.

A lot of customers who I first begin to work with get the idea that by hiring my company to do SEO work for them it is like flipping a switch and they will be ranking for highly searched keywords in a week or month or so.

Even after I make every attempt to tell them this is not the case. I don’t know how many different ways that I can say SEO doesn’t happen over night. I guess some customers just want to believe what they want to believe and they ignore what I repeat over and over. So I decided to write about it.

SEO is like growing a really nice lawn from scratch. Think about the process. First you lay the foundation soil, rake it smooth, seed it, cover with hay and water every day until it is fully grown.

This is similar to SEO. In the beginning you lay the foundation by creating the landing pages, fixing the technical issues with the site, optimize the page copy, submit  site-maps and finally link build every night.

Just like the first few weeks of watering your lawn it feels like nothing is happening. Link building is the same, you are germinating the links.  But then one day you wake up and you have a thin layer of grass or a sign that all your link building efforts are paying off.

Of course you can’t just stop watering your lawn at this point or your grass won’t grow to be full and lush. So you water it for the next few weeks, then cut it and then water it some more.

And if you want a really lush lawn you spend even more time fertilizing it and maintaining it for several months each year.

SEO is not much different. If you give up once you start seeing some results you will never have a really successful campaign. It takes time to see that first result but once you get some traction, you must nourish it and continue to build links to  help it become a healthy campaign.

In summary growing grass and SEO are really not all that different when it comes to patience, time and results. The more time and effort you put into it the better your results will be.  I hope this helps clarify the SEO process.

Keywords are at the heart of every SEO campaign. But what most people do not realize is how important their keywords choices are. Most people think that broad terms are the way to go, but niche targeted terms is where it’s at.

The idea is that niche targeted keywords will produce less traffic than broad terms, but will bring in more quality traffic, hence producing more conversions.  Below are a few examples that will help you identify niche targeted keywords.

Broad terms are for shoppers and niche terms are for buyers

1. Let’s say we have a company who makes Liquid Absorbers for Hazardous waste spills. The first broad keyword term that comes to mind is  Liquid Absorbers. This is a very broad term that could mean anything. Who knows what the searcher is looking for? A better term to target would be Hazardous waste liquid absorbers. This is a better term and will result in more conversions.
2. Let’s do another one. This time we will add a geo target. This website will help families find a nanny. The first keyword that comes to mind is the broadest term, find a nanny. But usually when someone is looking for a nanny they are in a geographic location. Let’s just say that our nanny searcher is in Boston. A better keyword to target would be find a nanny Boston. Pretty simple right?
3. Okay, one more. This time we have a website that caters to the tourist region of Niagara Falls USA.  Of course the broad term would be Niagara Falls, but a better and more niche term would be things to do in Niagara Falls. This  keyword is more relevant to the tourism industry and will produce more conversions on this site.

Summary: The whole idea is that broad keyword terms will produce a lot of traffic to your site, but niche keywords will bring in more conversions.  I hope this helps you identify the proper keywords to use in your SEO campaigns.