Search Engine Optimization Tips

I came across an interesting whitepaper on Blogging, regarding how to target yourself locally and how the use of multiple blogs can be helpful in targeting several different local markets. I thought about these main principles and came up with a list of small things you can do to help your own search rankings (whether it be on a blog, or a website).

Make Your Page Titles Relevant to your Keywords and Key Phrases

Once you know the keywords that people use locally to find the product or service you offer, it’s critical to create individual pages that are titled with these phrases. For example, if you are a business consultant trying to get clients in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania you should use that statement as a base for your keywords as well as your page title.

If your keywords are “Business consulting, Scranton, Pennsylvania” and then title your page with “Amy’s Advice Website” you are not using search engine capabilities to your best advantage. It’s more effective to create a page title and header that coincides with your keywords such as, “Scranton Pennsylvania Business Consulting”.

Promote Your Company Name and Local Location

Matt MaGee the famous search engine optimizer says: “Imagine a law firm in Philadelphia with four offices and one Web site. A common mistake is to list all four locations on a single page of the Web site. This page would list an office in South Philadelphia, an office downtown, an office in Yardley, PA, and one in Cherry Hill, NJ. That one page will never rank highly for any of the appropriate keywords. If each office had its own page, the firm could optimize each page for terms like “Cherry Hill NJ lawyers” or “South Philadelphia Attorneys.”

• Use your company name in combination with your keywords when possible. For example, my company name is Bullzeye Design. Whenever possible I use phrases such as “Bullzeye Design Website Design and Development” or “Bullzeye Design Band and Music Flyers” – any way you can combine your company name with your services will be helpful.
• Use your local phone number - You offer customers an 800 number for customer service, but that doesn’t help a search engine crawl for your location. Use your local phone number, with the area code, to help the engines connect you to local searches.
• Use your local address on your website – If your business doesn’t have a street address, rent a post office mailbox. Renting a box can give you a street address and will make you start appearing in many more online searches, nearly overnight! Consider choosing a store location that’s easily found using a mapping website such as Mapquest.com or Google Maps. If those mapping utilities can pinpoint your address location, it will help with your rankings.
• Mention the obvious – Describe your business, services and products in detail. This may seem like common sense, but eliminating copy that is very keyword intensive will hurt your rankings. Search engine users are looking for information and solutions. They will only find you if you provide them with the information and solutions they need. Again, blogging is a good way to expand on your products and services using multiple posts.

Frequently Update Your Website With Fresh Content

This may sound like a difficult task, but often times, updating and adding new content to your website helps you gain better search rankings. It’s helpful to update the content of your pages to better reflect your keywords and phrases, or add new content and unique descriptions. If you like your website the way it is, and don’t have the flexibility to change it frequently, it might be in your best interest to start blogging. By using a blog, you can update the content regularly which will help with your search engine rankings. The more you write about a subject, the better it is for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

For example, if you own a dog grooming business, you can come up with countless articles related to dog grooming. How, you ask? First, you can start off by writing about your business and location, how you groom the dogs, and about your staff or facility. After that, perhaps you can write about different situations you’ve experienced throughout the week. Maybe a dog came in that was sprayed with a skunk, or you helped a local shelter at their ‘doggy wash’ fundraiser. You can use these little stories and anecdotes to write an article in your blog — be sure to pepper the article with your keywords, and you are good to go!

Thanks for reading -

Amy Fedele, Creative Director
Bullzeye Design, Graphic and Website Design

What you need to know About Search Engine Optimization… BEFORE you get your site designed

Basically, there are no secrets to Search Engine Optimization. The steps are outlined in Google’s Webmaster guidelines. You can read and follow them just as easily as anyone, but it requires some work. There are a few things you could do that would go a long way in your quest for SEO.

1. Domain Name
If you’re starting a new website and have the opportunity to select a domain name, try to select a name that includes your keyword(s). This provides you a valuable relevancy to the services you are providing on your website. For example, if you are starting a website that sells soccer jerseys you may want to think about including those words into your domain name (EX: www.affordablesoccerjerseys, www.soccerjerseysforless.com, www.bestsoccerjerseys.com). By including your keywords in the domain name you will help your search engine rank right off the bat.

2. Selecting a Web Host
There are some free hosting companies but I don’t recommend using them. Some free web hosting companies bombard your site with ads that drive traffic away from your site, or clutter the content so much that the site doesn’t look “reputable.” Often times, if it’s a busy time of day, your customers or vistors may not be able to access your site because there’s not enough bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred to or from the website or server. Since you’d be sharing your website space with other sites, the ability for visitors to access your site is completely dependent on the popularity of other sites hosting with that same company.

You want to select a web host that meets its promises to keep your site running 24 hours a day 7 days a week and that offers great support with a bandwidth that is not limited for your business use. You only have a few seconds to hold on to that visitor once they’ve reached your site, so don’t risk losing them by saving a few bucks which could potentially cost you a lot of business.

3. Search Engine Friendly web design
Your website homepage should be aesthetically pleasing and attract attention, but you also want it to be “friendly” to search engines. Search engines read the text and code of your page and use that information to determine how relevant your site is to it’s keywords (compared to other sites with the same keywords). If you optimize your site correctly, you will gain a competitive advantage over other businesses providing similar services.

Make your home page rich in keywords. This is something you can start to think about before you get your site designed. Thinking about your copy and it’s importance ahead of time is very beneficial. Use keywords early on the page to obtain more prominence or importance. The rule of thumb is about 8% max. That means no more than 8 words per 100 should be keywords. If you use more than 8/100 ratio, you are setting off a red flag that the text on the page may not be relevant data that people can use.

Be sure to share your optimization plan with your graphic designer before they start working. There are a lot of ways a designer (and programmer) can organize your page content and structure to give you the best organic search engine results.

4. Selecting key words
Keywords/phrases are the search terms people use to find the information they’re looking for. Search engines use those to find your site so they can display it in the search results. For example, for my business, which is designing websites, a good key phrase would be “unique website design”. Choose words you think people are going to use to search for your goods or services. There needs to be a balance between using unique phrases (to set you apart from competition) but not TOO unique that your target customer would never type it into a search engine in the first place.

You can use a program such as Google Analytics to track your keywords. It allows you to see where you traffic is coming from, and even what words they’ve typed into the search engine to find your site. Remember to keep an open mind and flexibility and trial & error are key to finding good keywords and phrases. By tracking your keywords you will be able to see trends and which words are working better for you. Use that to your advantage to improve your site’s optimization.

Resources:
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines – Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site.

Google analytics – Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners.

Search Engine Marketing – Do You Have InBound Links?

A great way to increase your search engine ranking is by gathering inbound links to your website from reputable sources.

Best of the Web – Online Directory

Web directories are “search engines” that are powered by people rather than computers. Websites are organized according to subject categories for drill down searching… but the directory also has a search function that you can use on the homepage. The subject directories may be smaller than other searchable databases because of the human interaction involved. But sometimes smaller is better.

Human editors can very often provide a better level of results. In addition to the direct traffic that a directory listing can provide, computer based search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo often crawl directories, looking for new content. When the crawlers find your site listed in a directory with other relevant websites it can help your “organic” listings on the major search engines.

AVOID “link farms” – these are typically web directories that allow “FFA” listings (Free For All)… These directories often include many irrelevant websites in all directories, sometimes even porn. Linking to these sites is a very bad move on your part.

Best of the Web (BOTW.org) has been around since 1994, and has always been a “human edited” directory. Click here to submit your site today.

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Your sponsorship is displayed at the top of a relevant directory category of your choosing, as well as alongside Best of the Web search results. Only three sponsors are allowed per category, ensuring maximum visibility. Also, large title and description fields allow you to tailor your advertising message. This includes allowing marketing language and even phone numbers.

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Amy Fedele, Creative Director
Bullzeye Design – Targeting Your Web and Graphic Needs!