Internet Solutions. Period.
Recently in Search Engine Optimization Category
WordPress SEO: How to Optimize Your WordPress Site
WordPress has made it very easy for small businesses to have a website that is easy to update and maintain, but do you know how to optimize your WordPress site so that it has the best chance of appearing at the top of your customers' search results? The process is similar to optimizing any website, but with a WordPress installation you can customize many of your pages' SEO elements, as well as automating them to cut down on the time it takes to post a new item to your site. WordPress vs. WordPress.com Templates Having your blog hosted at WordPress.com limits the changes you can make to your page template. But more importantly, it restricts your SEO. Having your site hosted on WordPress.com only benefits WordPress.com in terms of backlinks generated. Make sure that from day one you're in control by hosting your blog on your own domain. That way...
Continue reading WordPress SEO: How to Optimize Your WordPress Site
The 4 Ps of Search Engine Optimization
If there is any one reality to SEO, it's that there are winners and losers. There are certain qualities that are necessary for any winning SEO strategy that can be broken down into the 4 Ps of SEO: proactive, persistence, perseverance, and patience. Proactive Being proactive is fundamental to being a good SEO for a couple of key reasons: Latency Effect Between Work and Results Any SEO work done today likely won't affect traffic or revenue today. When it comes to SEO there is a latency effect as new changes to your website or your off-site profile (backlinks, social activities, etc.) get indexed by the search engines and filter into the SERPs. How long the latency period is depends on the situation. If you put up a new targeted page on your site that gets indexed quickly, you could indeed start to see some new traffic from new keywords within...
Continue reading The 4 Ps of Search Engine Optimization
Basic SEO for Facebook Fan Pages
Many have tried, and failed, to write a good post about how to SEO a Facebook fan page. For example, optimizing the filename of your profile picture is one popular piece of advice that doesn't really matter, considering Facebook just renames the file something like 198135_10150109366....jpg. Another popular tip: you should link to your main website from your Facebook page. Yes, you should for visitors. But this doesn't optimize your fan page because Facebook just nofollows, redirects, and clusters your URL in a mess of code anyway. So let's take a different approach to Facebook SEO today. I want you to imagine that your Facebook fan page is your website - or another website for your brand at least. While it may not ever rank first for a keyword, you still want it to be optimized. If you want to keyword optimize your Facebook fan page, these are the areas...
Continue reading Basic SEO for Facebook Fan Pages
The First 7 Items On Your SEO Audit To-Do List
You've just been given one day to do an SEO audit for a site, and you're asking yourself what to do with so little time. Instead of following your instinct to yell at the person who made the request, today's column will outline a practical approach to doing the best job possible in one day. The focus of this rapid audit is to identify issues at a strategic level - either because they are big impact items or may require large development team efforts to address. Given the one day restriction, we'll focus on identifying problems, not fixing them. This plan is not thorough, because you can't be in a day. The major elements are: 1. Look at Google Webmaster Tools For the Site If Google Webmaster Tools isn't currently set up, then get it put in place. The list of great data you can get from this is long,...
Continue reading The First 7 Items On Your SEO Audit To-Do List
Landing Pages That Convert
So, you SEOed, Tweeted, Facebooked, wrote articles, did PPC, used banner ads, sent out press releases, wrote email campaigns, connected on LinkedIn, commented on Blogs, set up joint ventures. You've done everything possible to drive traffic to your pages, BUT you still don't have sales (or leads or phone calls or whatever it is you wanted from that traffic). Or you've actually gotten traffic, but they just aren't taking action. There are many possible reasons, but the one you should look at first is your landing page. In my experience, some people are so focused on driving traffic, they forget to make sure their landing page is prepared to convert that traffic. Here is a collection of tips and tricks to create Landing Pages That Convert: Split test: On my last 2 ad campaigns, look at the improvements in conversions (in this case the conversion was getting an opt-in)...
Continue reading Landing Pages That Convert
Google Sitelinks Keep Getting Bigger: Good or Bad?
Google finally announced the mega, huge and jumbo sitelinks we have seen them testing for months. Let me take you through the history of Sitelinks, even before they were named sitelinks.In July 2005, Google had this format:Then a month later, it looked more like this:Here is one from 2006:Then can other forms, I'll skip some, but here are the anchor based sitelinks:Then also the two column view:Heck, even AdWords sitelinks:But now the Jumbo sitelinks are here:The algorithm has changed for how Google handles this, they will show up to twelve results plus likely show less indented results for the same domain. Is this a good thing for online reputation management?In addition, we're making a significant improvement to our algorithms by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links. This reduces link duplication and creates a better organized search results page. Now, all results from...
Continue reading Google Sitelinks Keep Getting Bigger: Good or Bad?
3 Great AdWords Tools You've Probably Never Heard Of!
Tools are essential in search engine marketing. They save us time, teach us about our market, help us grow our campaigns and make our job easier. Sometimes, they make the difference between a good search engine marketer and a great one. Here are 3 absolutely free tools that are rarely talked about but can deliver very useful insights for your paid search efforts. 1. Microsoft Advertising Intelligence The first on our list wasn't destined to be used with AdWords. What's cool about it? Enter your keywords and it will show you a great variety of competitive metrics about your market you would have never found otherwise. For example, you can enter an entire keyword list and learn what the average CTR is for each keyword on Bing. Which means that you can pick and choose only high CTR keywords and easily avoid those that would yield low CTR before...
Continue reading 3 Great AdWords Tools You've Probably Never Heard Of!
The Lazy Man's SEO : Building Content That Matters
I'm a lazy man when it comes to SEO.I like my SEO to happen as naturally as possible with as little marketing effort as possible.I like to wake up in the morning and discover that I've got dozens of new high-powered links to an article I published just the day before. With very little marketing effort.But we all know that content doesn't market itself. The old adage "if you build it they will come" no longer applies, right? Yes and no.I call my method of SEO, The Lazy Man's SEO (LMS) because most effort does not go directly into SEO, but rather into the content. Content certainly doesn't self-market, but it can do a whole hell of a lot.The success of LMS comes down to these four items: 1) how much your content matters to a given group of people 2) how large the online presence of this group is...
Continue reading The Lazy Man's SEO : Building Content That Matters
6 Examples of Google+ Advertising - How Combining Search, Social, and Behavioral Targeting Could Be a Game-Changer for Marketers
I know what you are thinking. Yet another Google+ post about how great the social platform is and how it can kill Facebook. Well, hold on a minute and hear me out. Yes, I've been testing Google+ extensively over the past two weeks. Yes, I think Google did a fabulous job with its social platform. And yes, I think Facebook should be worried. Google+ can definitely pull users and usage away from Facebook, which can cause problems for the giant social network. But I'm not here to write about Google killing Facebook (or vice versa). I'm going to write about the unique advertising opportunities that are possible now that Google+ has arrived. No, the opportunities aren't available yet (and the screenshot above isn't real), but they could be, and soon. Needless to say, it's an exciting time for digital marketers. Since I started testing Google+, I've been thinking a...
Continue reading 6 Examples of Google+ Advertising - How Combining Search, Social, and Behavioral Targeting Could Be a Game-Changer for Marketers
How SEO and Social Media Add Up to Online Marketing Success
Social search, as defined by Wikipedia (everyone's most trusted online source), is "a type of web search method that determines the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users." Some marketers have claimed that social search is doing away with traditional search methods and that SEO is dead in the water because of it.But social media and social search are not the magic bullet to online marketing needs. They are just one more piece in the growing arsenal of Internet marketing tools available to SEO professionals. SEO and social media should not exist in separate silos, vying for online dominance. In fact, SEO and social media marketing can be intertwined to create more online brand presence for companies than they could ever do alone.Here are 3 examples of how social media and SEO work together:1. Social promotion of content generates natural linksAccording to Twitter, around 25%...
Continue reading How SEO and Social Media Add Up to Online Marketing Success