Category “Search Engine Optimization”

Good SEO Firms Offer a Strategic Approach to Internet Marketing

Sunday, 29 August, 2010

SEO firms can make any Internet website into a dollar-churning machine! The Internet is a buzzing marketplace and finding a foothold with a website is just not enough. If you really want to make profit, your website needs to draw traffic and figure in top listing of search engine searches.

Good SEO Firms often offer a strategic approach to internet marketing. Some of them feel that achievement of top ranking alone does not serve any goal if customers are not really buying your products. For this they offer a customized internet marketing option which not only gives you visibility and ranking but ensures that your website successfully completes deals.

An Internet surfer does not have the time or inclination to sift through the thousands of pages listed for his keywords by a search engine. On an average he is bound to look up only the first ten. So, if your website is not search engine optimized, it is unlikely to show up on the first page of a search engine and you would miss out on potential traffic. Further, if your website is not linked with the most popular keywords that relate to your potential customer base and target group, your website is likely to be missed out completely in a search.

You will end up regretting it. Consider all the specialized benefits that they can bring like user friendly web designs projecting your brand, pay per click campaigns, SEO Buzz marketing services backed by continuous tracking, measuring and reporting to help project your website, at the same time protecting it. In a nut shell, a professional SEO Firm will be a 100% guarantee to increasing your sales and profits. Harnessing the full potential of your business requires expert help from SEO firms.

It is only a professional who can put your website in the prime location for search engines with right key words and links. An SEO marketing company is liable to bring you results and there is no better result other than getting the visibility by the search engines. So it is so assured that the SEOs work for the good of the client and are reliable.

Of course one can attempt to do some search engine optimization on their own. But, in the bustling Internet marketplace, where professionals are working round the clock to garner top rankings in search engines, it is unlikely that an untrained SEO novice or amateur can beat the competition. SEO firms keep tabs on the latest happenings in the industry and know exactly what your site needs.

Now the whole world haven’t yet relived from the grim days of recession. This is a golden chance to keep the bricks back on the pavement and to light the torch for a new beginning. The cuts in the budgets can be easily made good of by cost saving procedures through the efforts in driving, traffic sales and profit.

SEO – 4 Reasons to 301 Redirect ASAP (for nerds)

Sunday, 29 August, 2010

After a major website redesign, it’s not uncommon for page locations and even page extensions to change. Maybe you’ve switched web development languages, or changed your website’s structure into a Search Engine Optimized or “SEO friendly” themed set of silos. Whatever the reason page locations have changed, it’s vital that the old page locations are 301 redirected to the appropriate new pages.

It’s time sensitive for the developers to make the change, as:

  1. Pages will start dropping out of the index (Google hates sending visitors to bad pages, and can see the bounce rate skyrocket). When Googlebot comes to visit your site, it will probably receive a “404 Error Page” as well as a 404 HTTP error code. A 404 error code is the surefire way to get a page out of Google’s index.
  2. Humans that have bookmarked the old page will be stranded. Depending on the 404 error page (Your server’s default is simply awful), your loyal return visitor may think the entire site is down.
  3. Search engines will stop counting the power of the links coming into broken pages, and rankings will drop. Search engines do not count links to missing pages. The wonderfully diverse link profile you’ve built over the years can disappear as links to subpages are no longer counted.
  4. Webmasters linking into subpages might notice the 404 and remove their links. Some webmasters routinely monitor where they are linking to, and remove links to broken destinations.

Don’t make the most common of 301 redirect errors: Sending everything to the home page. to preserve a diverse link profile, you’ll want to keep those links spread naturally across your site’s homepage and subpages.

Hope this helps.

Are You A Local Business? SEO Tips

Sunday, 15 August, 2010

Optimizing your website in external websites is as important as the basic elements your web guy should put in your website by default. Have questions about those basic elements? Contact me. So where should optimize of-site?

  • Yelp/Google Local. Critical for local businesses, optimizing in these community pages should be priority number one. Don’t forget: credible reviews play a role in both algorithms. Instead of creating a five Yelp accounts and spamming reviews (bad idea), see if some of your supporters (a.k.a. customers) are on Yelp. Ask them if they’d mind spreading the word about your great work. As for Google Local, take some time and care in creating your listing.
    • Tags matter: Use keywords in your titles, descriptions, and tags.
  • YouTube. YouTube is a fantastic way to establish thought leadership or create that perfect piece of viral content to bring your brand into the mainstream view. The quintessential example is Blendtec’s, “Will it Blend?” an oddly fascinating web series in which the Blendtec people demonstrate their awesome blending power in tidy two minute videos that have reached more than 100 million viewers. The lessons of Blendtec are simple: use your product to tell a story that will mesmerize your audience.
  • But I’ll warn you, creating “viral” is hard. In fact, most agencies struggle with this and will avoid the subject all together. Another great example is when I was trying to fix a bike earlier this season. I searched for adjusting caliper brakes and bicycle and there was a step-by-step video. It established credibility, competency and helped me as a customer – I even visited their website after as I consider purchasing new bikes in the Spring.

    So with regard to developing thought leadership, try developing a series of “how-to” guides to position your brand as informed experts. It’s a less sexy permutation of its viral counterpart, but a great way to drive keyword friendly searches in a competitive landscape that’s likely still wide open. Delallo’s Pasta Channel is a solid example.

    • When optimizing YouTube content, remember these important steps:
    • Encourage user interactions (they matter): These interactions include comments, ratings, views, favorites, likes, embeds, and incoming links.
    • Fascinate your audience: Don’t waste your time creating YouTube videos if the content isn’t going to compel your audience to share it.

  • SlideShare. Have a killer presentation? Slideshare is frequently one of the best places to share your authority documents as the domain has been trending much more highly in search engine results pages. Like YouTube, optimize your titles, tags, and summaries. A few incoming links won’t hurt either.

  • Guest blogging. Top search rankings in Google aren’t always realistic, especially if you’re working with start-up resources and a fresh domain. Try leveraging the authority of a strong domain by offering to guest post. It’s a win-win scenario in which the domain owner receives traffic and the poster benefits from increased recognition. When selecting opportunities for guest posting, look for domains:

    • That frequently update.
    • With a solid following (comments and compete data are great sources).
    • That have at least the PageRank of the top result for the keyword you’re looking to optimize.
    • When optimizing blog posts, remember:
      • No keywords in title, no ranking: Semantic relevance is nice, but a bit unrealistic. A keyword-rich title tag is still a necessity when looking to rank traditional content.
      • Don’t forget to link: An incoming link to your site won’t hurt, so long as there’s relevancy, right? Be sure to link with best interests of your readers in mind.
      • Add some attractive images, then optimize them: Try to summarize all of your thoughts into one attractive image and chart. It will be a powerful way to communicate your ideas and will be quite link friendly, as well.
      • 500 words, minimum: Don’t skimp on the content. Make sure the search engine has enough crawlable content to determine your information to be rank-worthy. The length of content needed to rank will vary based on competition, query-type, and user intention, but a 500-word minimum is a great rule of thumb.

The key s to be present in these high-traffic websites. I am here to provide you guidance, but remember if you ned leadership and direction you can hire us to help. Contact me and we can help you get that lift you’ve been needing.

How Web Video SEO is Finally Coming of Age

Tuesday, 27 July, 2010

Though publishing videos on the web has been child’s play for years now, the process of getting them to rank high in search remains enigmatic at best, frustrating at worst. The pace of video publication is accelerating faster than ever, and though video SEO seems to have been left behind the rest of the industry, it’s finally starting to catch up through some exciting developments that will hopefully provide more incentives for publishers to produce great video content.

As we start a new year and a new decade, here’s a look at the state of web video SEO right now.

Read More >

The Death of Natural Linking

Tuesday, 13 July, 2010

Links play an incredibly important role in rankings. While a search engine can scan the contents of a web page and get a good idea regarding the topic of a web page, this isn’t sufficient because it doesn’t provide the right type of signals to indicate which pages are the most important ones for any given topic (i.e., of web pages on the same topic, who to rank first, second…).

Links act like votes for a given piece of content, and as a result content with the best link profile usually does extremely well in the rankings for related terms.

The problem is that there is so much money related to search that this approach caused the birth of link buying industry, other types of spam, and corresponding problems for search quality. Accordingly, the link based ranking algorithms adapted to do a better job of handling this type of activity. But there are still problems with the link-based algorithms, and this has caused the search engines to look for other signals, such as signals from social media sites.

This has led to many theorizing that natural link building is dead. Or that links are no longer as valuable as a citation and other signals are needed.

Read more >

Getting More From Google Insights

Tuesday, 13 July, 2010

Google Insights for Search can be a great tool for understanding how to most effectively target your campaigns and find out where you should focus your search efforts. While it uses the same data sources as Google Trends, its advanced features are designed to be useful for advertisers.

The data is normalized to allow different datasets to be analyzed simultaneously and can be compared by either search terms, location, or time ranges. In addition, the data can be split on the different industry categories and across other Google properties, such as image search, news search, and product search.

Read more >

Boise SEO Company

Tuesday, 22 June, 2010

Hi, I am George Seybold, President of Seybold Scientific a Boise SEO Company. I’m writing this post to illustrate a point to my would be colleagues and competitors. It’s in response to some that boast that they have some sort of monopoly on knowledge and that they are the only Boise SEO Company that should be considered – I beg to differ. In this article I will break down SEO into the simplest of terms, share all the secrets and expose the depth of what this blog post will allow, the truth about being a Boise SEO Company or an SEO company anywhere for that matter. Let’s begin.

Any Boise SEO Company worth their salt will certainly agree that SEO can be broken down into a few distinct parts:

  • Website Framework
  • Content
  • Links
  • Traffic

I’ll focus on each of these individually.

Website Framework

To be a legitimate Website Design Company in Boise you’ll need to understand the basics of what constitutes a search engine optimized website framework. The framework must adhere to several best practices like :

  • Using stylesheets instead of tables and HTML declarations like font, etc.
  • Using a document hierarchy that builds upon itself. In other words, use H1, H2, H3 just like you would in Microsoft Word. If you are working with a website design firm that fails to use these basic tags then please stop immediately and hire a Boise SEO Company. If your website never gets found then it is useless from the start.
  • Move all scripts including JavaScripts into external included files.
  • Use inline tags like title=”" and name=”" as appropriate to further enable the use of keywords in the code.
  • Use alt tags to textually declare the content of an image
  • Link to other pages, internal and external to your website using the keywords as the linked words. I’ll elaborate. If I am linking to a Boise SEO Company on another website I would hyperlink the words “Boise SEO Company” not the words “click here”. The objective here is to provide context to what will be fond beyond the link.
  • Avoid, if not eliminate flash all together. Flash that must be retained should use XML and  sifr technology to pull text from the XML source. Ok that’s geeky and you may need some help from your developer, but here is the key. XML is plain text that is wrapped in “contextual containers”. You can search for a definition, but the crux of the matter is that this plain text is pulled into the flash and rendered as the designer would like, but because it can still be read as XML by the search engines then it is search engine friendly. This is a common mistake most Boise SEO Companies make.
  • Use an XML sitemap. An XML sitemap provides a dual benefit. It both defines the pages in the website for the search engines; and it can be linked into webmaster tools for the major search engines.
  • Which leads me to: submit your sitemap to the search engines through their various interfaces. An XML sitemap tells the search engines that something has changed whenever it is updated.
  • Use a title tag, description and meta-tags. Google weighs title tags very heavily, but does not place any emphasis on descriptions and meta-tags. That being said, Microsoft and Yahoo! do, so don’t ignore them.
  • For good measure, ensure you write a value based message as your description. This is what provides the searcher context for what comes next. Seriously, don’t miss this opportunity to sell them into clicking on your link.
  • Include your keywords in your URL (web address)

    Content

    Now there is a lot more, but if you got this far then you will be a long way towards optimization. So next we’ll talk about content.  You’ll notice I used the words Boise SEO Company several times in this article. I used it in the title, in the meta-keywords, and linked it even back to the home page of this website. Well quite honestly I am stacking the deck a little bit; and it’s a fine line. For every 100 words you write use your keyword of phrase 3 to 5 times. There I said it. Rocket science right? No, it’s not! It’s a process and method of writing that will ensure that if your page gets found.

    Consider this: These dumb little search engine spiders that crawl the web trying to discern what this page is about has to look through everything I have written and land on Boise SEO Company. I can be verbose, mix the words around, be clever, whatever, but if I do not provide adequate saturation around the key phrase Boise SEO Company then the spider will put my page in the wrong place. It’s not that your website isn’t in Google, it’s simply in the wrong place. As a Boise SEO Company it is my job to realign it and get it correctly positioned; and this happens through proper saturation of keywords.

    Links

    Links, well they for a very long time were uber tricky. I’d write an email begging some company to link to me with a promise that I’d link to them and then I’d have to verify it was all linked right and then keep checking cause they wanted the link and didn’t want to link to me and always assumed that they could sneak and break the link 15 days after we talked .. Yeah, what a mess! Ok, it’s easier now. Here’s how to get links. Shhh I know my competition will hate me for telling you, but here it is, the secret.

    • Use social networks to get links. Write something and put a link to your website. Don’t shrink that link, write it out and post it. Sounds hard huh?
    • Write summary articles and press releases about anything cool your company is doing and publish them using the free PR wires (Google it). Make sure you include a link back to your site. A good article can get you 40 quality links.
    • So let’s broach the subject of quality. Quality links are better than quantity. Links transfer equity from the originating site to yours. This means if they are a trusted source, you know reputable then it means a lot. This is so simple. In the real world if the President said “this is a great company” that means a lot more than some guy in a check out line. It works the same. The good news is that news websites tend to score high on the reputation scale so a link from them transfers a lot of equity. Love it? I do!
    • We are  Boise SEO Company and we are located on Fairview Ave. If you’ve riven down Fairview ever then you’ll realize that there are a lot of signs. In the business world the bigger the sign the more visible you are, but when big gets too big it becomes ridiculous. Links are kind of like the size of your sign. You need enough links to be a little than on par with your competitor. In other words make your sign slightly larger (more links). Don’t go overboard here because it doesn’t provide a viable cost / benefit. You simply have to be better optimized than the next guy. Certainly he is going to build a bigger sign than you right after you put yours up, and I hate that too, but I didn’t make the rules so don’t shoot the messenger.

      Traffic

      Ok we are almost there. If you are still with me please stand up and stretch. I am putting myself to sleep, but I think I’ll make it. Here’s the chicken and the egg scenario. I need optimized to get traffic, but how do I get traffic before I am optimized? Traffic plays a role in that it tells the search engine that you are worthy of note. Facebook gets a lot of traffic and therefore ranks high in the search engines .. you get the picture. So how do you get traffic? Again with the secrets .. Use social networks to drive traffic. As a Boise SEO Company (thought I would sneak that in again ;-) we never perform SEO for a client without including the social networks as a part of the optimization. We have to feed the content machine because that is what Google wants. Feed Google and Google will feed you.

      Ok so that’s really it. Sure I didn’t include everything here, but most everything is here. SEO is not rocket science, but it is a skill set and that is why companies in Boise and far beyond hire us to help them with their SEO. SEO is like accounting – sure you could do it, but having a professional do it for you ensures it’s done correctly. There is no fuzzy magic here and at Seybold Scientific we are completely transparent (as you can see) around our processes. We’d love to earn your business, but more so we’d love to see you succeed and if that means using our methods to grow your SEO position then more power to you. Thanks for spending some time with me.

      All the best,

      George Seybold

      208-639-0781

      The Facts (for Business) Around Google’s Recent Changes to Their Search Engine

      Friday, 11 June, 2010

      Originally published on Google’s blog:

      Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

      Some background for those of you who don’t build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you’re not searching the live web. Instead you’re searching Google’s index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here’s a good explanation of how it all works.)

      So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

      To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, we’ve built Caffeine. The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine:

      Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

      With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before — no matter when or where it was published.

      Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

      We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

      Source: Google

      ___

      Seybold Scientific provides search engine optimization and advertising (PPC) management services. To find out more, contact us at (208) 639-0781

      Search Engine Marketing Investment Increases in 2010

      Monday, 7 June, 2010

      Search has remained a crucial tool in digital marketing and should not be overlooked.

      Stefan Tornquist, research director at Econsultancy, emphasised the fact that this area is still experiencing solid growth that he describes as “significant”.

      “Looked at in comparison with other digital channels, the percentages of growth in 2010 might be higher,” he explained.

      Mr Tornquist warned that this could be due to a larger drop in these alternative channels.

      He predicted that the North America will experience a similar growth rate in this area as will the UK, France and Germany.

      Earlier this year, Econsultancy and Guava published research that showed the proportion of firms looking to increase spending on SEO and natural search has risen five percentage points this year only.

      It found that only 14 percent of companies reported that they are decreasing paid search spending, with four percent planning to spend less on SEO in 2010.

      Growth in search marketing is likely due to gains in the economy as companies enter the marketplace again.

      —-

      Seybold Scientific offers a host of search optimization and advertising services. Please contact us at (208) 639-0781 to learn more, thank you.

      The choice for search engine optimization (SEO) in Idaho.

      Friday, 20 November, 2009

      Why choose Seybold Scientific?
      Results. Seybold Scientific has steadily built its reputation as the premier provider of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services in Idaho. We have literally hundreds of top-page rankings on the major search engines. This is clear evidence of our position over the competition. We will do the same for you.

      Do you perform SEO services or just tell us what to do?
      Seybold Scientific implements all changes necessary for the optimization of your website. We take pride in offering a full service from start to finish.

      How long does it take to see results with SEO?
      Good things come to those who wait!……Results with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are typically seen in YAHOO and Bing first. Top-ten ranking is often achieved within the first few months. Results on Google can be a little slower, although positions on YAHOO and Bing are good indicators of future trends on Google.

      How long does it take to see results with PPC?
      With Pay-Per-Click, (PPC) results can first be seen within days, rather than months. PPC is therefore a good interim solution while building an SEO campaign.

      How much do SEO services / PPC management cost?
      Seybold Scientific offers highly competitive pricing for SEO services. SEO plans typically vary from $1000 to $5000 per month, depending on the level of service required.

      Please contact us for an exact estimate on your project.

      Why is there a monthly SEO service fee? Why not do the Optimization all at once?
      Search engines like to see websites grow at a natural, organic pace. If a website undergoes optimization too quickly, it can have negative effects on search engine ranking. For that reason, our SEO work is done on a monthly basis, spreading the optimization out over a measured period of time.

      Spreading the SEO work over time also has the benefit of telling search engines that your site is constantly changing and needs to be indexed frequently, rather than a “dead” site which has not posted any new information for several months.

      Is there a minimum commitment?
      There is a 6 month commitment for SEO services and a 3 month commitment on Local Listings. PPC management is performed on a monthly basis – there is no minimum commitment.