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SEO’s Unite! our future depends on it!

By Jennifer Osborne in SE Optimization

The feds seem pretty hesitant to say th “R” word.

But between the sub prime crisis, the credit crunch and plummeting stock markets; you and I both know that it’s not a question of “if” a recession going to hit the US but “when?”

Recession is something that the search industry rarely talk about . . . most of us are currently experiencing a period of tremendous boom.

Our biggest constraint to growth is not finding new clients, it’s finding and training new SEO’s. Where optimizing a site might have cost $350 in the 90’s, now we see SEO’s charge $350 per hour, some even more.

SEO’s won’t be impacted by the recession

Whhaaatttt?

If our clients are affected by the recession then we will be too. Client decisions will be made using different criteria and this will impact us. But it won’t stop there, the industry as we know it is on the verge of a major shift.

Here’s how it’s going to play out…

The Good

A recession is going to drive increased demand for SEO.

It’s counter intuitive but it’s true. When a recession hits companies they respond by reducing costs. The first budgets to be hit are always Marketing and IT (remember the early 00’s?).

When Marketing budgets are decreased, executives will make difficult budgetary decisions based on metrics. All of those Clicks, Conversions and Measurable ROI that companies are currently experiencing with Search, is going to way heavy on their decisions. Much heavier than traditional marketing metrics of Impressions and Branding.

When faced with difficult choices, advertisers will shift their budgets to the mediums that they can measure.

When IT budgets are decreased, executives will trim IT budgets. Often this means an increase in outsourcing. The in-house SEO’s role will change from being the guy to “do” the work; to being the guy to “manage” the work (or the relationship with the outside vendors).

For the SEO shop, it means an HUGE increase in demand.

The Bad

A recession is going to drive increased competition which in turn will create a skilled labor shortage.

Traditional advertising shops are going to have to replace lost profits. Some will get into Search because the want to take control of the adversing dollars back. If they become the “search experts” they can minimize the growth and steer advertising dollars back to their comfort zone.

Others will have true vision. They will see Search for it’s full potential and embrace it. These forward thinking companies will help to grow the search industry.

For some it’s a natural fit. For others (lured into the lucrative search market merely as another way to grow) not so much… ergo, Walmart.

Regardless of motivation or sincerity, the result will be the same. An increased demand for experienced SEO Professionals.

Except,

there are no major barriers to entry into SEO.

Anyone can call themselves an SEO and there is no governing body (association) to dispute this. We have no formal accreditation process or certificates.

And this leaves our industry exposed…

The Ugly

Combine an increase in demand + a shortage in supply = a whole lot of bad SEO

What to do?

There are things that we can do as individual companies and there are things that we should do as an industry.

As an individual company we can…

1) Take a look at our reporting.

If metrics are going to be a Key Success Factor in the near future then improving upon your reporting now is crucial. I’m not just talking about putting together a slick power point presentation. I’m talking about becoming an evangelist for reporting.

Insist that your clients use analytics. Insist on defining what a conversion is and then figuring out how to measure it.

As a Professional SEO Firm you MUST be in a position to differentiate yourself from the UGLY SEO.

2) Review our talent acquisition and retention strategies.

Growing talent in-house will be critical. Do you have a apprenticeship program? Note: hiring a bunch of green SEO’s is not an apprenticeship program.

What about training? Spending time training others takes time away from actually doing the work. Can your work flows absorb the impact of mentoring on your Senior employees?

Growing in-house can be a huge strain on resources. It’s not a tactical decision, it’s a strategic investment.

As a cohesive industry we should……

wait a minute, we’re not a cohesive industry. but we could be…

SEO’s have what it takes to be a cohesive, powerful industry. We support the new guy by mentoring. We help each other out. We brainstorm together when the algorithms appear amiss.

The search industry has the spirit of cohesiveness. We simply lack organization. We are many singular voices.

But this is going to change. Big Business has their toe in the door.

When they come all the way in, they are going to make rampant changes. They’ll organize us. We’ll get our accreditation, but it will it be designed in Big Business’s favor and will probably be designed to keep the little guy out.

The search industry must unite and organize itself because if we don’t, someone is going to come along and do it for us.

Author:  Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Getting The Most From Your Search Engine Optimization Efforts for Your Small Business

By Misty Rae in SE Optimization

Trying to achieve higher organic rankings, but not sure where to start? Here we’ll have a look at a statistically tested formula for the best rankings, and stress the importance of developing a plan, sticking with it, and having just a little bit of patience to see the results. The importance of following a defined strategy cannot be overemphasized — it’s so easy, yet such a waste of time, to get distracted by every new post by Matt Cuts, every new development at Blog-a-licious, or any one of the hundreds of SEO forum and blog postings daily. This is a huge hindrance to getting the real work done. And it is work — but once you’ve got the rhythm down, the rankings increase will be sure to follow.

Let’s start with the all important formula, the 40:40:20 ratio. Through statistical analysis of thousands of sites, these numbers appear to be fairly accurate across the major search portals: 40% of rankings are a result of ‘on-page’ factors, 40% a result of off-page factors (backlinks and same site links), and 20% a result of the page URL (the exact percentages vary slightly between engines). The beauty of this is data is the resultant simplicity of the approach to achieve better search results for your important keywords.

First, on-page factors: Get your keywords in all the right places, with the right density, for each important page on your site. So what are the right places and right density? Get the keyword in the title tag, the description tag and the keywords tag. DO NOT STUFF these tags, be elegant and think about your reader. Experience has shown minor variations to be insignificant in terms of rankings, and more often than not, it seems folks go overboard with their keywords.

Let’s look at the latest data for the ’sweet spots’ for on-page ranking factors. A 10 to 20% density keyword density for the tile, 10% for both the meta keywords description is optimal. The keyword at or toward the beginning of each of these is optimal, but not necessary. What’s this mean? If we use the term ‘essential oils’ again, an optimal title tag might be ‘Pure Essential Oils and Accessories for Natural Health Professionals’. The keyword list would be ten to twenty words, comma separated, with the most important words at the beginning, and ALL words should appear in the body text of the page. The description can be (but doesn’t have to) a well written, attention grabbing sentence — it will likely be displayed in the organic search results, so you’ll want it to be both SEO and customer friendly. Again, 20 or so words, keyword near or at the beginning. Keyword can appear twice, but no more than that. Body text: 1000 words or so (+/- a couple hundred), with a 2% keyword density, and the keyword (or words) appearing near the beginning, in the middle, and near the end of the page code (not just the output text). There are tons of density analyzers on the web — pick one, focus on the body text number and ignore the rest.

Briefly, other notable on-page factors are image alt tags, H1-H6 tags, bold and italic text, and the number of outgoing (inter and intra site) links. Here’s the scoop: Alt tags matter. Get your keywords in them, but don’t overdo it. Don’t use H tags, as according to the data, they’ll bring your rankings down. Use bold and italics if it suits the design and readability of your site; they may be a positive factor, but not a huge one, and don’t stuff your keywords in them. The higher the number of links on a page, the better. One hundred links seems optimal, but don’t sweat it. Always keep in mind that usability and aesthetics are crucial too. Having javascript on the page appears to be a positive ranking factor. Finally, page size (all the text, minus the images) is optimal at 50-60k. This number is shown adjacent to the page in search results. A note on on-page code in general, a balance is important — the search engines don’t care what your page looks like from a design standpoint, they only see the code. But your customers do. And while data is not available, it is more than likely the major search portals are noticing how long a visitor stays on the page, recording whether they return to the search results to find another page. Strive to make your site clean, useful and engaging — this will pay off in more ways than one.

Off page factors — these include links from within your site and ‘backlinks’ from other websites. You MUST get backlinks to rank well, and it’s probably the most challenging of all search engine optimization to do. You’ll need to continuously acquire backlinks, or your rankings will stagnate, or even slowly drop. Optimally, you’ll get a few links a day, with a steady increase in the total number. The two most often used routes are link exchange (asking for links from other sites, and putting their links on your site in exchange) or article distribution. There’s lots of information on the web about exchanging links, read some, develop a plan and stick to it. Once you’ve got a system in place, you’ll likely be able to hire someone to help you. Article distribution is another matter. Articles should really be quality, readable, helpful information for prospective customers. You’ll get to post links within the author resource box, which serves both as an enticement for readers to visit your site, a means to give credibility to your internet business, plus search engines will also see these links and use them in their ranking algorithm. An effective linking program will utilize both these link sources. Remember, it’s not the total number of links, but a consistently increasing number that has the greatest long-term results.

Some caveats about links — links from within your own site should be text links with the keyword in the link. So the Aroma therapy site would use ‘essential oils’ in all the links to their essential oils page. Off-site links should also use keywords in text links, but not always the same words. Mix it up. Here, for example, some of backlink text examples would be ‘pure essential oils’, ‘organic essential oils’, ‘aroma therapy essential oil’, and ‘essential oils’. Further, about 30% of your links should just include the webpage address, like ‘www.johnnysessentialoils.com’ or ‘www.bestbathproducts.com/essentialoils.php This helps your backlinks appear naturally created, rather than machine made search engine spider spam. A final note on backlinks, all pages that link to yours are not weighted equally. The older and more relevant the page, the more weight your link will garner.

With that we’ll describe the last 20%: the URL. Web pages with the keywords in the address, be it the homepage or any other page on the site, rank better. If the If you’re just starting a site, getting your primary keywords in the url is useful. If not, and it makes sense to do so, use keywords in the filename like www.homepage.com/essentialoilspage1.html. Again, it appears better if the file does not have only the keywords in it, like the title and meta tags. Use a 301 redirect if changing the names of ‘old’ pages. Hyphens are still questionable — short filenames and shallow directory structures appear best.

A few final notes — each search engine has different algorithms and different update frequencies. According to the data, ALL follow the 40:40:20 formula closely enough for you to ignore the differences. A site or page that begins to rank highly on one engine may take months before it ranks highly on another. Patience and persistence are crucial. The age of a page is a factor; wasting your time on minor tweaks, rather than writing a quality article, will lead you nowhere. ‘Close enough’ is close enough with the on-page factors and urls. Once these are done, try adding quality pages to your site regularly, and get backlinks regularly — if this is happening, free your mind to work on your site, or business plan, or product product photos, or whatever you think best. Traffic is only part of the equation for a successful internet business. Visitors plus a well-designed site, excellent products, competitive pricing and superior customer service is the real formula for success.

Author:  The author is a jack of all trades and master of none, including search optimization for natural health websites, including The Ananda Apothecary at www.anandaapothecary.com a source for aroma therapy and essential oil information, and www.wellnessisnatural.com, the homepage for Boulder naturopath Tarah Michelle Cech.

WordPress SEO Tip: Implementing the Power of Theming and Siloing

By John Lamansky in SE Optimization

This is one of many other WordPress SEO Tips and is a follow up to 20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog!, another great resource for WordPress users looking to unleash the power of such a pliable CMS platform.

Let’s face it: Search engines really want to know what your blog is about in order to give relevant results to searchers.

Siloing is the technique of theming your site’s directories to increase search engine relevance in a natural and logical way. It is great for sites, such as blogs, that have quality, topical content for which high search engine rankings are desired.

This step-by-step guide will help you implement the powerful siloing technique on your WordPress blog through a combination of plugins, settings, and strategies.

Step 1: The Preliminary Status Check

Does your blog as a whole have a clear, distinguishable theme? Do your categories logically break your blog topic into subtopics?

I’ll use my blog as an example: The WordPress Expert is, of course, focused on the WordPress niche. Since my content is focused on one topic, the search engines should have a clear idea of what search queries my site is relevant for. My categories (SEO, Social Media, Tutorials, etc.) break the content down into logical subtopics, which further aids the engines in understanding and cataloging the content.

If your blog lacks organization and clarity, consider niche-hunting and/or restructuring your blog’s categories.

This is the critical, foundational step for an effective siloing implementation, so don’t skip past it!

Step 2: Setup Category-Based Permalinks

Go to your WordPress administration panel, then go to Options > Permalinks. Select the “Custom” option and type in:

/%category%/%postname%/

Tip: If you’re using a WordPress version prior to 2.3, install the Permalink Redirect plugin to make sure your old permalinks redirect to the new ones.

Step 3: Install the Top Level Categories plugin

By default, WordPress will setup your category archive pages like this:

www.example.com/category/seo/

In this example, we’d rather have the SEO category show up at this URL:

www.example.com/seo/

Achieving this is very simple: just install the Top Level Categories plugin, and voila!

Since we just set up category-based permalinks in the previous step, then posts in the category “SEO” will appear as subdirectories of the category’s URL. This is perfect for siloing purposes.

Step 4: Install the sCategory Permalink plugin

An annoyance with WordPress’s category-based permalinks system: When a post has more than one category, the category with the lowest ID will be used in the permalink URL.

Fix: Install the sCategory Permalink plugin, which will let you choose which category (silo) each post should go in.

Step 5: Show Excerpts in Your Category Archives

We want the category archive pages to be linking to the posts in the silo, not outputting the full posts themselves.

Whether or not your category pages display the post excerpts or the full content is up to the theme you have installed. Here’s how to check: In your WordPress admin, go to Presentation > Theme Editor > Category Template. See if the code has the text the_content and if so, replace it with the_excerpt

Step 6: Interlink Within Silos

Your silo-ed categories are now set up! Now you need to reinforce your silos by linking your posts to other posts in the same silo.

For example, if your silos (categories) are “SEO” and “WordPress,” then the goal is to have your SEO posts interlinking with each other and your WordPress posts interlinking with each other.

Here are some strategies:

• Deep-link to other posts in the same silo.
• Try to minimize links that don’t lead elsewhere in the same silo. For example, try adding rel=”nofollow” to external sidebar and/or footer links.
• Install the Similar Posts plugin, which inserts a list of related posts you’ve written to the bottom of each of your blog posts.

For an added silo boost, go to your WordPress admin, go to Options > Similar Posts, and then set “Limit matches to same category” to “Yes.”

Conclusion

Siloing is a powerful tool for your WordPress SEO toolkit. It’s easy to implement thanks to the flexibility and extensibility of WordPress!

For more WordPress SEO tips, check out my 20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog.

Author:  John Lamansky is an up-and-coming web developer who has building websites for 7 years and has been working with WordPress for almost 3 of its 5 years of existence. He is experienced with XHTML, CSS, PHP, WordPress, and much more, and looks forward to providing WordPress tips, services, and resources to the blogging community.

Analytics - The Missing Piece

By Jennifer Horowitz in SE Optimization

The ultimate goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to drive traffic to your site. Many people don’t know why, but they aren’t achieving this goal.

The key is staying current and evolving with the times.

Way back in the good old days, SEO was a lot easier and we saw results quickly. What do I mean “we saw results”? We ran a ranking report and we were able to see what words held what positions in the various engines. And admit it now, when you received your ranking reports, you promptly pulled up Google or Yahoo and did a search, waiting with baited breath to see your results right there in the top 20. Ahhh, the good old days.

Now, you get a ranking report and you don’t see all those wonderful rankings you have seen in the past. Competition is fierce and even though your site deserves to be on top, it may take a while to work its way up there. So, what do you do? You call your SEO Firm, you complain, you work on a strategy to get the results you want.

The missing piece here is called Analytics. A well optimized site will bring traffic from many engines, for various keywords that are related to your site. Those keywords may not be on your “approved keyword list” - however they are words people are looking for and they are driving traffic to your site. Many people don’t give credit to their SEO company for these words - however they are mistaken. The fact that your site was properly optimized and content was added is what made the site get noticed by the engines, so the optimization is directly responsible for these “bonus” keywords that are driving traffic to your site.

Because most people don’t understand this, and they don’t give credit to their SEO Firm, many SEO Firms don’t bother looking at or sharing Analytics information with their clients. They simply care about rankings for the keyword list.

At EcomBuffet we understand the value of Analytics information and as a result have added these “bonus” keywords to our ranking reports to show our clients how they are being found.

“Yeah, you point out how great you are and the “bonus” keywords - but how does that really help us - the client” is something we heard when we started sharing this information.

It’s true, it is a feather in our cap - it makes us feel good that we have created more exposure for our clients - but it’s more than that. The information we share tells them what words people are using to find them - it gives them insight into how their prospective clients think and search. That information can then be used to improve and really target your marketing efforts.

In addition to the value of the “bonus” keywords - the other thing we do is look at the other information in your web stats. We can figure out what pages people are spending time on, what pages people are leaving quickly, we can see what interest’s people and what drives people away.

Having someone prepare that information for you and deliver it to you in any easy to comprehend manner is invaluable.

That information becomes your blueprint for web site improvement which means increased conversions, which means more sales, which means more money, which means you are one happy camper!

Imagine, rather than guessing at what to tweak on your site to improve results you can take our analysis and suggested changes and use that as a guide to improving your traffic and conversions. Then you monitor the response to your tweaks to ensure your traffic and conversions are growing because the competition isn’t sitting idle and what worked yesterday doesn’t necessarily work tomorrow.

Web stats or Analytics isn’t new - it’s been around forever. However most people don’t know how to interpret their stats, they often don’t have time to gather the data and SEO Firms typically do not tie this information into a SEO campaign.

Our focus is on results. We can deliver the traffic and use Analytics; to get that traffic to take the action you want - whether it is more sales, more people opting in to your site, or calling you. Whatever “results” means to you - we can deliver them.

Case Study: One of our sites has:

• Top rankings for the phrases “phoenix homes” (generic phrase) and “historical homes in phoenix” (specific phrase) Analytics tells us:
• “phoenix homes” brings traffic but has only a 0.82% conversion rate.
• “historical homes in phoenix” brings less traffic but has a 6.67% conversion rate.

The Lesson Learned:

• Add up the traffic from all your “minor” specific phrases — all with high conversions and compare it to the major traffic and low conversions from your generic phrases - you can learn where to focus your attention — on the phrases that convert! (Note: We wouldn’t even know about the specific phrase without Analytics)
• We can add content for the phrase that converts higher, and drive more traffic from that phrase. We can also use that information to guide us in creating marketing material.

Author:  Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner of http://www.EcomBuffet.com . Since 1998, her expertise in online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer can be reached at Jennifer@ecombuffet.com

Sometimes All you Need are a Few SEO Tweaks!

By Jeffrey Smith in SE Optimization

Sometimes, all it takes are a few timeless fundamentals and a few minor tweaks to unleash your pages to their full SEO potential. I was reading a post recently from Matt Ridout from SEOUnique Blog where he states How I moved up 353 positions for the word SEO Blog. When in doubt, go back to basics I always say, and you just might be surprised how effective they really are.

For example, if you have a blog and have been steadily building links and adding custom keyword-rich content on a regular basis, then just by paying attention to a few simple indicators and making adjustments to your tags and content is enough to topple a competitive top 10 position.

The WordPress blog platform already has strong internal links and produces organic anchor text throughout the pages using breadcrumbs for titles in links in the navigation, deep links (from themed pages to ideal posts) and external links (links from other pages) as a result of your RSS feed.

When combined, these components increase the on and off-page optimization factors that push the sites global keyword density higher (the higher allinanchor relevance a site has the higher the ranking). Even if the blog is a subdirectory, your entire site gets stronger as a result.

Essentially, this phenomenon is setting the table for spiders to feast (at an alarming rate), but without releasing the pressure/keyword credits in the right direction (through tweaks to the code, content or site architecture) it’s just raw potential without momentum. Just from the standpoint of a content penetration strategy each time you publish a page, there is yet another adjustment to the sites respective keyword density.

In a nutshell, this is one of the primary reasons why pages sink or float to the top of search engines. As a basic SEO premise suggests, using a broad range of anchor text (internal links) creates a high allinanchor: keyword density.

Essentially so many opportunities can be found for mining keyword gold as a result of this high keyword density through simple analysis, i.e. which keywords have the highest percentage in your site. If your internal links have your main keyword linked strategically throughout your site, you may in fact require just a few authority links as your site can rank on it’s own merit. Re-tooling a title, a description or sometimes just rewriting a page can be enough to align those factors and create a ranking juggernaut through this strategy.

We use this tactic deliberately to broaden the range of the net or the funnel traffic from a wide variety of related keywords to particular pages. Several months ago we built links for the term Organic SEO, but thought nothing of it and moved on. Now, upon a keyword research tool while conducting research we discovered that it was a worthy target to pursue with little competition. Since the links were already in place from before, we were halfway there.

Since Wordze let me in on the fact that Organic SEO is well within reach, I figured why not, lets just unleash a post using that in the title. At the time of the post in Google, we were not in the top 100, that was last week. Most terms with a 5-8% site-wide keyword density will return a top 20 result when combined with other highly touted terms. Site-wide density for keywords differs from keywords percentages based on a page, so even though 5-8% sounds high, that would represent one of your highest ranking terms.

For this test, the only links built were just our RSS feed and one link from Sphinn just to see what would happen. In less than a week the page has already moved up the 30’s in Google for the phrase “Organic SEO”.

Not the most competitive term, but traffic-bearing none the less. I can sympathize with Matt’s experience from just making a few tweaks to the title and that’s all his SEO blog needed to skyrocket past 352 other sites and respective positions that failed to fine tune their tags as a result of some on page adjustments and website authority in his niche. Whereas in our case, we just write a post for a similar effect.

It just goes to show, developing authority for your blog should be the ultimate goal (instead of just building links), as website authority can translate into bursts or traffic that if they are profitable, they can be solidified through 25-30 external links, a touch of social media and a few stable links from related topical sources to seal the deal (preferably one already ranking for that term at a higher position in search engines).

Just imagine a ranking tactic that uses every page to it’s full potential (as a medium to boost other pages or to rank as a flagship to your brand). Using this strategy, each page is a piece of the puzzle and a source for channeling link juice (as a result of age, relevance and support from other internal and external links tactfully applied).

You should never overlook your own deep links or internal links, things such as navigation, the breadcrumbs from blog titles in anchor text and some tactful tags are sometimes all a site needs to unleash itself in the SERPs.

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Site Builder Issues - Why Shoeless Joe Was Wrong

By Jennifer Horowitz in SE Optimization

Unfortunately, many people are living a perfect example of if you build it, they won’t come.

If you build your site with a standard site builder that doesn’t allow for:

• HTML - to create unique Meta tags on each page, use tags, ALT tags, etc.
• FTP access
• Root directory access to add static HTML files and XML files
• Easy addition of new pages, to grow your site content.

Then you are setting yourself up for failure. If you build a website that can’t be optimized for the search engines, you will be unable to rank highly and tap into the large amounts of traffic that run through the search engines daily. You are missing out on people that are searching for products and services just like yours.

Whether you felt it was cheaper to build a site with a site builder, or you just didn’t know it was a problem - you need to take action and get your site onto a server that has no restrictions that will prevent your site from being properly optimized.

Many of the site builders out there even claim to be “search engine friendly” and then when we go to optimize a site for a client we can’t even do the most basic things like create unique Meta tags on each page.

Many site builder companies lock clients in for a year or more, leaving the client trapped with a site that can’t be optimized. Not all site builders are the enemy. However, you want to be very through and ask very specific questions when evaluating a site builder company. You don’t want to be locked into a contract that will ultimately hurt your website and your business.

Even if you think you are saving money by not hiring an expensive web designer, you are ultimately losing business and money, if you can’t be found in the search engines and your competitors can.

Already stuck with a site builder?

Contact a reputable SEO firm, preferably one that does design as well and have them look into whether your site can be optimized with your site builder. If it can’t, even if you lose some money - leave the site builder and get a quote on having your site moved to a new server (if you own the design of the site), or if the design of the site is a template belonging to the site builder, you’ll need to get a quote on a new design.

It may seem like a lot of trouble, and it may mean finding some extra money in your budget. However, without traffic from the search engines coming to your site, how can you expect to grow your site? Sure, you can do a PPC campaign and various other marketing campaigns - but you’ll always be missing out on the volume of traffic that runs through the search engines.

How will I make changes to my site if I move from a site builder?

That’s a common question. People don’t want to be chained to an expensive webmaster that will charge them for every change they want made. With the site builder, you could make the changes yourself.

There are a couple possible scenarios here. Maybe it’s worth paying a webmaster and freeing up your time to focus on other areas of your business. Another option is that the webmaster show you how to make simple text changes. The final option is to inquire about the control panel that comes with your website hosting package. They often have control panels that have a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor - meaning you still don’t need to know HTML and you can still alter your site - and have it be search engine friendly and optimized.

If you are unsure if your site builder is holding you back or if you know your site builder is and you want to break free, EcomBuffet is offering free consultations and a discount on web design right now.

In an effort to educate people about site builders and how they can harm you, this limited time offer is being made to my article readers.

If you don’t have a site yet and are looking at creating one, beware of going with a site builder, especially if you have to lock into a long contract. The questions you should ask are:

1. Can an XML file be added to the root directory?
2. Can unique Meta tags be added to each page?
3. Can you add an unlimited number of pages to your site?
4. Is FTP access available?
5. Does the builder generate any “special code” that could cause problems for the engines?
6. Can CSS and java script be placed in external files?

If the answer to those questions are no, I would strongly advise that you look at other options and not get yourself locked into something that is going to hurt you in the long run.

My site builder comes with a shopping cart. What do I do if I don’t go with the site builder?

Another valid concern. There are many great plugin shopping carts that are easy to configure and use. There are ones that run off your own server and you will need a secure server and certificate, and then there are ones that run off a third party server.

Many shopping carts these days even have extra marketing features, and allow for the user to load product images, pricing, shipping, descriptions etc in a very user friendly interface that doesn’t require any programming or complex code.

How much traffic am I really missing out on, by not being listed high in the search engines?

• More than 8 out of 10 Internet users look on search engines to find information and the products or services they want to buy.
• Pay-per-click (PPC) costs are rising (over 37% higher from last year to this year Q1).
• Up to 85% of searchers ignore paid listings
• 63% of the top natural (organic) listings get click throughs.
• Natural (organic) search results convert 30% higher than PPC.

Before you lose any more time and more importantly money, check out your site builder situation today and see if there is a solution that will work for you.

Author:  Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner of http://www.EcomBuffet.com Since 1998, her expertise in online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer can be reached at Jennifer@ecombuffet.com

PPC and SEO For Multilingual Web Sites

By Dave McEvoy in SE Optimization

Moving your web site into another language involves many steps and many choices. Getting this process right is critical, and this article deals with each aspect of the process from translation of the site to marketing the site on the search engines used by your target customers.

Translating Your Web Site

Much time, effort and money goes into web site localization. A professional web site localization project can involve:

• Finding good translators (or a good agency)
• Choosing the correct target language ‘flavors’ for your target markets (e.g. European Spanish, Latin American Spanish etc.)
• Protection of HTML and other code
• Localization of graphics
• Text extraction from program-driven areas of the site
• Change detection for frequently changing web sites
• On going localization of changed pages (without retranslation of the whole page)

Simply translating the site, regardless of how professionally this is done, does not guarantee that your site will be seen by the global audience you expect.

In the same way that search engines should be at the forefront of everything you do on the English site, this same ethos must be used on the translated versions of your site.

Ideally, the planning for global search marketing should start before the site is first localized, but if not it is important to know what steps can be taken to rectify the situation.

This article describes the process of bringing visitors to your multilingual web site. Typical Multilingual Search Engine Optimization

Most Global organizations have a search-engine-optimized web site that they then localize, ignoring the optimization of the localized sites.

Most webmasters are not employed for their linguistic skill and therefore the localization of the site is a painful and intimidating process. Following this process, entering the further unknown area of search engine optimization or multilingual pay per click management is ignored or actively avoided.

There are two common misconceptions around web site marketing for multilingual web sites:

1. Optimize the English site then translate it well and it will be optimized in-language.

Multilingual search engine optimization is often ignored because of the belief that if the English site is optimized for search engines, the language sites will be too. This is not the case.

2. For PPC, simply translate the ad copy and keywords.

Imagine a set of English keywords for a site selling a glass replacement service for cars. The marketing specialist or PPC executive would use their knowledge of the industry and the language to expand out a set of keywords that a user might type in to a search engine. They might come up with terms such as ‘vehicle glass replacement’, ‘car windscreen fixing’, ‘windshield repair’ etc. For this simple service there are a multitude of ways of describing the window, the vehicle and the replacement service that spawn a large number of keyword combinations. A good translator would take each one and translate to the most common, most sensible alternative in their language. Unfortunately, this will lead to a reduction in keywords. Windscreen and windshield may translate to the same common term in French. Replacement and repair may translate to the common term used in French for glass replacement. This is not what is required.

If a site is simply translated with no regard for in country search engines, it will support an English language searcher arriving at the site and then switching to their desired language. However, it will not readily support a user finding your site in their language.

It is these new customers finding your site on foreign search engines that will bring the most incremental business from the localized site. How to Localize a Site and Remain Search Engine Friendly

Fortunately, there are some simple steps that can be taken to ensure the site remains searchable in language. However, similar to your English site, in order to maximize the return on investment from the localized sites, outside help may be required. Simple steps

1. Find a quality localization company.

Ensure you ask for examples of web sites that they have localized before and have your in country people (if you have them) validate the translations on the reference sites.

2. Get your page-by-page keyword glossary translated and approved FIRST.

Much effort went into the generation of keywords for each page of the English site. Your English pages are rich with these keywords. Put the same effort into the translation of these keywords. This should be done first, before any localization of the pages begins. These translations should be approved by your in-country marketing representatives if you have them, or be double-checked by your translation company (using specialist marketing translators) if not.

3. Ensure the site is professionally localized.

The site must be well formed (no broken HTML or other code), be translated well, and must not contain broken links (links to pages that have not been migrated to the language site and therefore throw an error). Quality localization requires a quality localization company using specialist tools to protect page code, and to check it once the localization is complete.

4. When translating the web site, use the keyword glossary ELECTRONICALLY.

Do not leave it to chance. Your translation company should be using the translated keyword lists in electronic glossaries so the translators are automatically prompted with the approved language version of the keyword whenever they are translating an English equivalent.

Following these steps will ensure that the site gets the basics right and can be effectively indexed on the correct keywords by the engines. However, to ensure you are getting the correct prominence on the search engines, you need to read on. Advanced Multilingual Search Marketing

If you want to perform in your foreign markets, and fully capitalize on you localization investment, you need to consider the following:

1. Domain

Geolocating your site in Google’s eyes involves more than changing the language. Changing the language does not guarantee that your site will appear in local searches. You should consider the domain. Some companies build a .com website, with folders or sub domains for several languages (IBM) whereas others build local versions of the site using the top level domain of each country (Nokia). The first option can be cheaper and easier to implement because it means that you can use one content management system for all content on one server. However the top level domain gives Google additional information that will provide weight in the search results.

2. IP Address

Google maps the IP address to the country and when looking for relevance in search results, will score locally hosted domains higher than non-locally hosted. In other words, it is better to host the French version of your site in France. This can be awkward and expensive, so you need to consider whether you are able to beat your competition without this. It is not the only factor that Google considers so do not think that this is essential.

3. Webmaster Tools

It is now also possible to select the geographic location using Google’s Webmaster Tools. But for now only full sites can be geolocated, not individual folders, although that is promised for the near future.

4. Links

In the same way as you have build vast numbers of links to your English site, the language version is a rich and often untapped source of links. Local links from local domains in the local language are important. You may need outside help for this, and again, the question is what you need to do to beat your competition. As with English SEO, links are a major part of success.

5. Engine-Specific Optimization

This involves the identification of important engines by country for your target market. Google is not necessarily the dominant player in all countries. In China, for example, at the time of writing, you won’t find Google in the top ten sites. An engine called Baidu is by far the most used site. In order to identify, and then optimize and monitor for these engines you will require support from external specialists.

6. Pay Per Click (PPC) in each locale

PPC is the fastest method to achieving search engine prominence in any country. Professional multilingual PPC allows you to quickly succeed in a foreign market, but is also a fantastic keyword targeting method so you can discover the most powerful keywords in your target language. Running a PPC campaign may also not require the full localization of the web site which can be an expensive exercise. It is often effective to localize only a landing page. However, ensure your landing pages are culturally optimized because they are critical to gather conversions.

Conclusion

We hope this article has shown that there are some basic steps that can be taken during the localization process that will start the search engine optimization process on the right track. These basic steps will fall easily into place if your localization company know the details of search engine optimization. Make sure you test them out.

Author:  Dave McEvoy writes for Search Laboratory who are Adword experts with years of experience in Multilingual ppc management. For more information please come and visit our site.

Mythology In SEO Explained Away

By Andy MacDonald in SE Optimization

Mythology is in essences a story that sounds like it could be true, but is not! Even today we have myths in different aspects of business including SEO. Ever wonder what the biggest SEO myths are? I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an Search engine optimisation firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.

Myth # 1: All Meta Tags Are Of Equal Importance

Some Meta tags are useful while others are not. I have stated this many times. Search engines are relying more and more about what is on the website than what the tags are telling them. The description tag is used by some (but not all) search engines. The same goes for the keyword tag. Keyword tags are used more by spammers and people using software to find you as a link partner than the search engines. In my opinion, the only tags you should concentrate your efforts on are the robot tag and the description tags.

Myth # 2: You Should Submit Your Site to Search Engines Weekly or Monthly

Honestly, I never submit any site more than 1 time and sometimes I don’t even do that. If you submit your site once, you’re good. The engines will come back on their own. You can sometimes speed up the process of getting your site indexed by linking it to a high traffic or high PR site. The search engines will find the URL to your site and index it automatically.

Myth # 3: SEO is Too Expensive

Actually, SEO is probably the most cost effective form of online marketing. Organic SEO is cheaper to set up and maintain than a PPC campaign or banner advertising. With PPC and banner advertising, you pay for clicks or impressions. With SEO, all clicks are Free. You simply pay for the set up and monitoring of your site’s pages.

Myth # 4: PPC Is More Effective Than Natural SEO

In the short term…true. In the long term…false. Why, you ask? Organic SEO is preferred by searchers over 5 to 1 to PPC. People trust organic searches to return relevant results. People also know that the ads to the right of the page are sponsored ads. They have long ago figured out that anyone can bid on any term they want, as many often do, without even a hint of relevance. So, long term SEO structuring can indeed be more effective than PPC, especially when considering the preferences of search traffïc. A top search rankings may take some time to get, but once you are there (and provided you can maintain it), you will get better results than from a PPC ad.

Myth # 5: Hiring an SEO Specialist “In House” is Cheaper

The problem with hiring someone in house is that they are paid hourly or by salary. Most SEO firms charge per item or project. It doesn’t matter how long it takes us, you pay a one tíme charge. When you hire a firm, it’s like having a team of SEO experts on your payroll. Paying a flat rate saves you monëy and speeds up the time it takes to complete a job. Additionally, most SEO firms have specialists who write, submit, redesign sites, post pages, etc… Hiring one person who can do all these things competently is highly unlikely.

Myth # 6: I Can Only Optimize My Homepage for Key Terms

You can and should optimize every page on your site. Each page should have its own key terms, with no more than three phrases per page (preferably one).

Myth # 7: All I Need to do is Write Content with the correct Keyword Density and My Site Will Rank Well

Wrong…especially if you want to rank on Google. You will need off-site SEO as well as on-site SEO. Keyword density may work on MSN (for now), but it will take more than that to rank well for all search engines.

Myth # 8: I Shouldn’t Aim for the Most Competitive Keywords and Phrases

If the keywords you are competing for are very competitive, should you optimize your site for them? Of Course! I would optimize for some high, medium and low competitive key terms. Cover all your bases. The worst case is that you won’t rank well for the high competitive key terms and that’s ok. You can always work to improve them. Don’t shy away from top key terms just because they are competitive. You may nevër know how close you could rank for them unless you try.

Myth # 9: Only Work With Companies That Give You A Guarantee

Guarantees would be nice if they were worth the paper they are printed on. In fact, most guarantees from SEO firms have the same stipulation in them. This stipulation usually states that as long as they get one of your key phrases to the top of any major search engines, they have fulfilled their end of the agreement. This is irrelevant to the competition of the term. In other words…it’s easy to be number one for terms no one is competing for. Don’t be deceived by high rankings listed on SEO sites as they can be misleading.

Myth # 10: SEO Requires a 1 Year Commitment on My Part

It certainly shouldn’t. Don’t lock yourself into a year contract with any company unless you already have an established, favourable business relationship. SEO, in most cases, should be performed on a month to month basis with a mutual understanding of the objectives and relative timetable. Often, both the long and short term maintenance contracts that many firms insist on including with each job are unnecessary. As an example…If you have a new site optimized, especially right after an update, you may not see results for three months. Why pay for maintenance in the interim time?

Additionally, you may not be happy with the results of an SEO firm or even the level of service. A long term contract may only ensure that you receive a full year of bad service. So, don’t lock yourself in with a year contract, at least until you are comfortable with whom you are dealing with.

Hopefully, I put a few common SEO myths to rest.

Author:  Andy MacDonald owns and runs his own website design company called Swift Media UK which also incorporates logo design & reliable web hosting. Also checkout our SEO Blog which is updated regularly with posts to help you achieve a top search engine ranking.

Organic SEO and Low Hanging Fruit or PPC, Which is Better?

By Jeffrey Smith in SE Optimization

Just like planting seeds Organic SEO as an internet marketing strategy requires patience, but the rewards when reaped are plentiful. Although organic optimization is not the first choice for many (depending on the brand and business model) organic search does have inherent benefits that are unparalleled by sponsored or paid advertising tactics.

Conversion is all About Trust

The distinction of hearing something directly from a trusted third party referral is one of the oldest and most successful forms of market leverage a brand can develop. Particularly when purchasing decisions are being formulated in the mind of prospective consumers.

It is this element of trust (like hearing about a great coffee shop or restaurant from a friend) that encourages people to part with their hard earned cash and step up to try a new product, travel to a destination, try something new, etc.

With the obvious advantages of organic search (ranking highly in the natural search results) and the multitudes of low hanging fruit available for the picking (as far as keywords go).

Is it simply lack of patience, lack of brand flexibility or simple ignorance to the benefits of an effective organic search engine optimization campaign that keeps PPC in business or the people who use it so enthralled by it’s influence.

You have to consider the variables:

• Not everyone has content that is ideal or suitable for organic search.
• Branding may conflict with excessive verbiage
• Timing, market share and a fast yielding sales cycles may not provide ample time to wait on organic search results to mature

The entire notion of being select keywords and bid on them (based on competition and click through rates) doesn’t necessarily encourage businesses or webmasters to focus on content quality first, only cost per click & conversion.

Rather that viewing your marketing campaigns short-term goals using logic of PPC, the downside of PPC is just that, you have to pay per click.

Not a problem for a publicly traded company or a product with a high profit margin (since branding is important) as not all products can have 10 pages dedicated to them or an entire site wrapped around it to create relevance to develop the process of growing seed keywords into fully grown top 10 rankings. But for many struggling businesses the costs keep rising and just like gas prices, exorbitant fees are a result of supply and demand.

In contrast, the upside of Organic search engine optimization is, once you overcome the on-page (content) and off-page (link building) factors, you can potentially reap untold amounts of traffic from various long-tail keywords if optimized properly.

The Bottom Line, It’s all about the Brand Strategy

It’s not always what you sell, it’s how you sell it that determines if renting via Pay Per Click (PPC) or owning/developing brand equity (Organic SEO) is the right decision for your business.

I wanted to use an example to elaborate such as the difference between “high self monitor advertising” and “low self monitor advertising”.

A high self monitor mentality is akin to a stark Madison avenue ad where images are the brand, the feeling they create is what they are selling, where the person transposes themselves with the subject or theme of the ad. They envision the fulfillment and how the use of the product or service will impact them. Which type of consumer are you or does it depend on the product?

An example of a “high self monitor ad” would be a new fragrance launch employing the advertising angle of a young, attractive, successful couple relaxing on the beach scantily clad in casual attire, the girl wearing a designer bikini and a few pieces of glamorous jewelry, the man ideally wearing a $30,000 Rolex watch, shirt open, pants rolled up and barefoot in the sand, exhibiting playful demeanor and expressions of care free abandon as they frolick through the beach.

Then, naturally, “THE BIG FONT” with a stylish Name (after months of A/B testing, focus groups and rounds of review of course) and actual fragrance product/bottle are the only things in sight. The Price tag (doesn’t matter) and you probably wont see one until you go to purchase it, it’s the lifestyle your buying into.

Whereas a “low self monitor advertisement” and low self monitor consumer would focus on the product (why is the bottle so strange?), the details, what’s in it, how much does it cost?, do I need it, why in the hell are they on a beach with perfume?, etc. Clearly the needs of the consumer dictates the marketing method employed in the brand strategy. Which one are you?

Organic search and sponsored internet marketing are no different. There is a clear-cut method that appeals to each type of consumer, so based on the product you are selling it really boils down to if the ends justify the means and who benefits. It’s all about building pre-qualified traffic that inherently has a need for your product or service vs. window shoppers or tire-kickers if your business model utilizes e-commerce.

Conclusion:

Organic SEO is fine if you;

1. Have a product that you can dedicate 300-750 words to to describe it’s value.
2. Can exhibit supporting materials images, references and materials that emphasize the products benefits.
3. If you can shroud it in semantic synonyms or jargon (essentially keywords consumers might use to find it) in enough frequency, that it can leverage a high-ranking organic search result.

Aside from that, if you have a product that has a high price point, where there is some wiggle room for how much you are willing to spend to keep the cost per sale within bounds, then by all means pay per click advertising is a viable solution. Another alternative is possibly a hybrid of the two (organic SEO and PPC) to find which method has the highest conversion for your brand.

At the end of the day, if you’re in business, you have to weigh the advantages of how your marketing strategies and profit margin impact the bottom line. In closing, one key factor to consider is with organic search results, the keywords branch out over time, so dozens of the keywords you pay for every time someone clicks, you could achieve through an organic search engine optimization campaign. If you have the time and a great product that is news or review worthy, ultimately, the choice is yours…

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

SEO and LSI: How to Use Latent Semantic Indexing

By Peter Nisbet in SE Optimization

People get worried when they hear about terms such as SEO and LSI, and when they try to find out how to use latent semantic indexing, they get even more worried when they get conflicting messages. On the one hand some say that LSI doesn’t exist and therefore can’t be used, while others, on the other hand, state that it is critical to your website’s success with the search engines.

We all know what computer people are like, the way they try to make acronyms of everything. LSI is one of these, although not quite what you would call an acronym. LSI does exist, but not in the form that Google would have us believe, and not in any form that you can use to make your website ‘LSI compliant’. Anybody claiming that they can do that are simply playing Google’s trick and using big names for what is a very simple thing to do.

LSI or LSA?

Without going into any detail as to the mathematical background of LSA, it can be used, and is used, to determine the relevance of a passage of text to any given topic based upon a keyword or multiple word search term. LSA was, incidentally, patented by a group of people in 1988, although the basics were known prior to this. LSI is nothing more than the use of LSA in the indexing and retrieval of information. It is therefore a concept, and you cannot make a ‘concept compliant’ web page.

However, it is all semantics (ha-ha!) and the meat of this article is not to knock holes in the way the terms LSA and LSI are being wrongly used by SEO experts, but inform as to how you can make your web page more likely to be considered relevant to the main keyword for which you want your page indexed. This is very simple and does not warrant all the books now being offered on the subject.

The Development of Adsense

Latent semantic analysis is used by Google primarily to detect spam, in respect of excessive repetition of keywords in order to fool the search engines into providing a high listing for that keyword. There was a time when smart people could indeed achieve this simply by writing a meaningless template with rotating synonyms into which any keyword could be multiply inserted by means of software. Thousands of pages could be generated in minutes, each targeting a different keyword. Some were making $thousands daily from Adsense using this method.

In fact the principles of LSA to determine the content of web pages were used by a small company called Oingo that changed its name to Applied Semantics who developed a search system to determine the relevance of page content for specific advert placement. They called this Adsense. This company was in turn bought by Google in April, 2003, and Adsense used to replace their own system which was still under development. Adsense, then, was not developed by Google, but purchased by them.

BigDaddy and Character String Analysis

The principles were also applied to determine the relevance of on-page text to specific search terms and used in the web indexing algorithm called BigBaddy, used by the Googlebot to index your web pages. BigDaddy appears to view links and relevance as the two major factors among many others that determine your listing position in the index for any specific search term as used by a Google customer.

Back to spam. Your web page content is now analyzed by the statistical mathematical analysis tool known as LSA/LSI and indexed according to the meaning of the words in your text. It goes further than just checking for the excessive use of specific words, and no longer searches only for indices of your stated keywords. LSA informs Google of the true meaning of your text, and you cannot hide this by repetitions of a single key phrase. Let’s call it LSI because that’s what Google calls it. LSI analyzes the character strings in your text and compares them to a large database of words, the meanings of which have been defined.

Same Words - Different Meanings

LSI is used to determine the true meaning of homonyms, heteronyms and polysemes. Homonyms are spelled and pronounced the same, but have different meanings, such as lock, with three meanings. A heteronym is a word spelled the same as another, but with a different pronunciation and meaning, such as lead: a metal or to be in front. Polysemes are words spelled the same, and from the same root, but used differently such as a mole - a burrowing animal, or a mole - a spy deliberately placed in an organization. Both moles have the same root, but the words are used in different contexts. LSI or LSA can be used to determine the difference by means of analysis of the other words in the text.

If your page has been written around the keyword lock (my usual example of a homonym), without any decent content the reader would find it difficult to tell what type of locks you were writing about. The LSA algorithm would be looking for words such as canals, keys or hair to tell the difference and know where to list it.

All you need do is to look up thesaurus.com, and then use plenty of alternative vocabulary in your content that explains its meaning precisely. You can also use the tilde (~) in a Google search for your keyword. While Google does not highlight exactly correct synonyms, it will give you an indication of what vocabulary it regards as being equivalent. If you do that with ‘locks’ all you get are ‘lock’ and ‘locks’, and all are security locks. Interestingly, when you do it with ‘canal locks’, Google also highlight ‘narrow’. This indicates that if your topic is on canal locks, using the word ‘narrow’ will be to your advantage.

Semantics and Vocabulary

If you keep in mind that the main purpose of the LSI component of BigDaddy is to detect keyword spamming, and to determine for what search term the page should be indexed, then it should be obvious to you that the sue of contextually related vocabulary will reveal the semantics of your page. Semantics is nothing more than the meaning of the words you are using, and where your keywords could have more than one meaning, you have to make the meaning clear through the use of related text. Nothing more than that.

If you write naturally, as you would if you were talking to somebody, and trying to explain your subject, then you will not have any problems with the LSI algorithm. There is no need to use an SEO expert, since they are not necessarily qualified in their knowledge and use of language. A thesaurus will do the job fine.

Keyword Density is not What it Was

Do not overuse your keywords, and the old adage that you should have between 1% and 3% keyword density on your page no longer applies. Use it often enough to stress its importance, which means as the page title, as the heading in H1 tags, and in the first 100 characters and in the last paragraph. Google will check all four of these, and will regard any words it finds there, other than fillers and stop words, as being important. Use it again every 300 words or so and that is enough.

SEO and LSI are not really related since the term LSI is used in the wrong context here. However, in the way that it is used, if you use good vocabulary, contextually relevant to your keywords, then you will also be using good SEO. How to use latent semantic indexing properly is irrelevant in pure terminology, since you can’t use it on your web page. Google can use it in their algorithm, and you should make your vocabulary as understandable as possible by means of simple words that express the meaning of your text.

Author:  Pete has his own theories of the way that SEO and LSA can be used to improve your web page listing positions, and more information is available on his website SEOcious and his blog SEOscopy where you will find how to use these concepts to their maximum effect.