Online Marketing

Google’s Search Engine Ranking Factors

M. Shifley Leave a comment

You would think that listing all the factors that Google uses to determine your ranking would be a near impossible task, right? Well, apparently not. Today we have your first sneak peek at the list of the almost 200 search engine ranking factors used by Google.

How did this list get started? Well, apparently Mr. Google, Matt Cutts, mentioned at a conference recently that there are over 200 variables in the Google algorithm. So the folks at the WebmasterWorld set themselves a challenge to list them all.

Here is what has been included so far:

Domain

  • Age of domain
  • History of domain
  • Keywords in domain name
  • IP address of domain
  • Location of IP address / Server

Architecture

  • HTML structure
  • Use of Headers tags
  • URL path
  • Use of external CSS / JavaScript files

Content

  • Keyword density of page
  • Keywords in Title Tag
  • Keywords in Meta Description (Not Meta Keywords)
  • Keywords in header tags (H1, H2 etc)
  • Keywords in body text
  • Freshness of content

Per Inbound Link

  • Quality of website inbound linking
  • Quality of web page inbound linking
  • Age of website
  • Age of web page
  • Relevancy of page’s content
  • Location of link (Footer, Navigation, Body text)
  • Anchor text of link
  • Title attribute of link
  • ALT tag of images linking
  • Country specific top level domain
  • Authority of top level domain (.edu, .gov)
  • Location of server
  • Authority links (CNN, BBC, etc)

Cluster of Links

  • Uniqueness of class C IP address

Internal Cross Linking

  • Number of internal links to page
  • Location of link on page
  • Anchor text of FIRST text link

Penalties

  • Over optimisation
  • Purchasing links
  • Selling links
  • Comment spamming
  • Cloaking
  • Hidden text
  • Duplicate content
  • Keyword stuffing
  • Manual penalties

Miscellaneous

  • JavaScript links
  • No follow links

Pending

  • Performance / Load of a website
  • Speed of Javascript

Misconceptions

  • XML Sitemap (Aids the crawler but doesn’t help rankings)
  • PageRank (General indicator of page’s performance)

If you have additional questions about getting your website ranked higher on Google and how important these factors are to helping your company get more exposure online please contact me and I will be more than happy to help. I can be reached at 208.598.0084 or matt.shifley@yahoo.com.

Link building

M. Shifley Leave a comment

The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google’s search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google’s results.

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don’t have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It’s not necessary to get as many links as possible. It’s necessary to get better links than your competitors.

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:

1. Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website.

2. Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website.

3. There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask.

4. If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword.

5. Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website.

6. If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

If you have additional questions about link building and how important they are to helping your company get found online please contact me and I will be more than happy to help. I can be reached at 208.598.0084 or matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

Focusing on the right keywords

M. Shifley 2 Comments

Depending on the keywords for which you want to get high rankings, you have to employ different tactics. Keywords with less competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition. If you target long keyword phrases with little competition, then the relative value of on-page web page optimization is very high.

For example, if you want to be listed for the search term “buy black adidas samba sneaker in knoxville” then it is enough to optimize one of your web pages for that search term because the competition for that search term is not high. You don’t need many inbound links to get high rankings for that keyphrase. The more competitive the targeted keyword is, the higher is the effect of inbound links on the position of your website in the search results.

Which search engine optimization tactic should you use for your website?

1. The best web page optimization tactic: When you optimize your website, optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. Start with longer keyword phrases that don’t have much competition and then proceed with more competitive keywords. For example, start with the keywords “buy sneakers in knoxville”, “buy cowboy boots in knoxville”, “buy pumps in knoxville”, “shoe shop knoxville”, etc. When you have managed to get high rankings for many of these keyphrases, Google will know that your website is relevant to the topic “shoes”.

As soon as Google knows that your website is relevant to the topic, it will be much easier to get high rankings for more competitive keywords such as “buy shoes” or even “shoes”. The more pages of your website you optimize for different but related keywords, the better.

2. The best link building tactic: It’s not always necessary that you have more links than your competitors. You need better links. Try to get links to your website that use the targeted keyphrase as the link text (also called anchor text) and that point to the web page on your website that has been optimized for that keyphrase. Don’t focus on quantity, focus on quality. Getting hundreds of links from a link farm won’t help your website as much a few dozen links from relevant web pages with authority. If your website has both optimized web pages and good inbound links then it will be easy to outrank web pages that only have one factor. 

If you have additional questions about keywords and how important they are to helping your company get found online please contact me and I will be more than happy to help. I can be reached at 208.598.0084 or matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

How Small Business Owners Can Get Started with Online Marketing

M. Shifley Leave a comment

Small business owners don’t have the resources that larger businesses have, but in most cases they can move much more quickly.  They need  to take advantage of their ability to move quickly especially in regards to online marketing, but where do they start?

The first step is to get educated or find someone you trust to help you along the way (subliminal message -> think Matt Shifley).  Find a blog or two, like this one, to follow and pay attention to industry trends.  Making uneducated decisions can lead to money in the hole and wasted efforts.

Next, it’s important to prepare a strategy that works for your business.  Do you run a service business, e-commerce website, or retail store?  Do you need search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) or both to get targeted leads?  Get your campaigns going and enjoy the process of refining and optimizing.

One of the easiest steps to success that provides lasting results is to start a blog on your website.  WordPress is a great  starting point.  Even if you only update your industry specific blog once a month and you don’t get hundreds of comments it’s still providing great SEO value.  There are lots of great sites that allow you to submit your blog to their directory.  By doing this you gain a link to your website and set yourself up to get noticed.  More importantly, blogging helps show your passion for your business and allows you to express your expertise.

Another method that works well for some and wastes time for others is social media.  Twitter, Facebook, and community websites can be valuable ways to find prospects as long as you stay focused and don’t let the hours go by as you explore.  Setup accounts specific to your business and provide meaningful information about what you do best, your business.

Finally, plan on revisiting your campaigns regularly.  Dig into the numbers to see what’s working, what’s not and where you need to put more money.

And if you want to go the extra mile try podcasting or creating a video to put on youtube.

By putting time into all of these different methods you can spread a wide net and capture a larger client base.  And don’t forget, while you’re getting things done the big competitor down the street is still working it’s way through all the corporate red tape.

Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

The Advantages of Social Networking

M. Shifley Leave a comment

A good article from the Search Engine Guide Blog demonstrating some of the benefits social media sites are providing for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). Some of the most popular sites include Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, and YouTube however, it does not stop there as the list of sites is nearly an endless with new ones coming on board all the time. Even eBay and Netflix have jumped on the social bandwagon, allowing users to create social media profiles within their accounts. It probably won’t be too long before every site has some sort of social media or networking aspect built into it. This leads to the question of “what opportunities are available in this space to help SMBs?”

1. Branding Opportunities

In the same manner that it is important for companies to make sure they have all the various domain names that relate to their brand (.com, .net. .org, etc.), it is now becoming important for companies to make sure they secure their brand on social media sites – at least the popular ones. I wrote about this subject at the beginning of this year and made the following statement:

With all the social networking sites popping up everywhere, the idea of branding comes to mind. Sure there is the thought of how web sites can draw traffic from social networking sites, even sell product or services but in addition to that, what about protecting your brand before someone else beats you to it? This is especially important with respect to user names and unique URLs.

It was important back then and is even more important now. Typical with most social media sites, once you create a profile, you have a unique URL where you can access that profile. That URL, if you set it up correctly, will include your brand name (i.e. http://www.linkedin.com/in/searchrank, http://www.flickr.com/people/searchrank, etc.). The brand name is also used in the title tag of your profile. Why is this important? As I wrote in my last piece on social media, having a number of profiles spread out among various social media sites may help you to have better control over the first three pages of search results for your unique brand name. It also may help users of specific social media sites to find your company if they are actually looking for your brand. Finally, you keep competitors from sitting on your brand and/or people that may misrepresent your brand as I have seen in many cases.

2. Build Link Popularity

Websites essentially need three things if they are to experience good visibility in the search engines – 1.) good content, 2.) good SEO and 3.) good links. There are two ways to get links from other sites – naturally or pay (or beg) for them. Buying them is the easiest but due to Google’s recent declaration of war on paid links, they can fall prey to their big guns. So, natural is and always has been the best.

One way to obtain natural links is to link back to your original web site within the social media sites you set up. Many social media sites will allow you to include a blurb about yourself or your company and in many cases, add a link or links to your sites. Once you get these various social media profiles indexed, they will count as inbound links to your main site. You may even find it useful to include specific anchor text related to keyword phrases you wish to target and point them to pages that have been optimized for those same terms. The bottom line is that social media profiles create opportunities for natural links. Best of all, they’re free!

3. Attracting Traffic

Depending on the industry you are in, social media and networking sites can send quality traffic to your site. In one example, music and entertainment entities are successfully using MySpace to attract its millions of users. How many times have you seen movie URLs that are located on the myspace.com domain? Now if you manufacture and sell contemporary furniture, then you may not benefit much from MySpace traffic seeing its demographic is mostly comprised of youth but you may draw traffic from a photo sharing site like Flickr.

In another example, many companies are using YouTube to attract and drive traffic to their web site. BlendTec is a good case study of this with their “Will It Blend” videos, a series of short videos where they blend everything from golf balls to credit cards to even an iPhone in their industrial strength blenders. People just love to see stuff demolished and the videos have brought much attention to a blending product that many were unaware of prior to seeing the videos.

These are just a couple of many examples of how companies are utilizing social media to drive traffic to their sites. A good strategy is to select sites that are somehow specific to your industry and then let the creative juices flow. The bottom line is that just like millions of people are using search engines everyday, millions of people are using social media and networking sites as well. Creative marketers will discover ways to tap into these users in order to drive additional traffic to their web sites.

4. Interaction With the Public

The reason why it is called “social” is because it allows web users to socialize or interact with each other. This has been one of the biggest fears keeping small to medium sized business from embracing social media – the transition from “talking to” customers to “interacting with” customers. SMBs may be afraid that someone is going to talk about their businesses and it may not always be favorable. If this is your fear then I have news for you –  consumers are already talking so you might as well join the conversation.

Having the ability to interact with consumers is not just about dealing with bad mojo but also taking advantage of social media to bring further attention to products, services, company news or even put a personal face on the company. I reveal personal things all the time about myself and my company and have received numerous compliments from clients stating that they feel more comfortable doing business with us due to the fact that they now know something personal about us.

5. Networking Opportunities

A final reason how SMBs can benefit from social media is the networking opportunities. Trying to be the lone ranger of your industry is not always the most productive way of running your business. Personally, I have discovered many benefits from networking with others in my industry and getting well connected. Many social networking mediums offer opportunities to join specific groups of interest where you can then interact with like-minded people. Facebook is a great example of this – not only can you join groups, you can create new ones, add events and even build interactive applications that run within the Facebook environment.

For me, many of the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others, have allowed me to develop numerous relationships which are not only beneficial in day to day operations, but especially rewarding when attending industry conferences. The conference becomes more like a family reunion than a boring, uninvolved trade show.

Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

Making SEO Work For You

M. Shifley Leave a comment

If you plan on implementing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to your website it is crucial that the SEO basics do not get skipped. For example, it is very rarely explained how, exactly, when you get down to it, search engine optimization actually works.

The answer is really very simple, even if the methods of SEO aren’t. Search engine optimization uses a number of tactics to draw the attention of search engines to your site. The idea behind SEO is to make your site fit as closely as possible with the searches performed with your target market. This is achieved by streamlining the elements within the site in order to make it more easily read by search engines.

Of course, making your site easy for a search engine to find is only part of the journey. SEO is also designed to help make your site appear the most relevant to the searches your target viewers are likely to make. This is what makes SEO such a tricky game to play. While search engines, algorithms and computer behavior follow lines that are relatively easy to predict, human behavior is slightly more complicated and a lot more volatile.

This is where keywords come in. A keyword is a term that is commonly used in connection with the subject of a site. When a site is found to have a certain number of keywords that are related to those used in the search, it appears relevant to the search query. Sites are then listed in order of relevance, although this is calculated via a far more complex equation than is easily explainable or guessable.

A site can boost its relevance by becoming the authority within its topic area. Older sites have the edge on this, as the age of a site is taken into account in the search engines’ algorithms. This means that sometimes the key to becoming number one in search engine results pages is playing a good waiting game. In order to stay in the competition, however, work must be done to keep the attention of the search engines. SEO is an ongoing process.

Search engine optimization is unwittingly led by the search engines themselves. When a person searches on Google, the query is compared with stored information hauled back by the search engine’s spiders. How these spiders choose the information and how it is then sorted is a secret closely kept by the search engine companies. SEO techniques are extrapolated from observations about search engine behaviour. Search engines respond by dropping sites whose behavior catches the attention of spiders, but do not provide valuable results for searchers.

Optimization begins at the page level and branches out to include everything about a site that is on the web. From the page’s place within the site and its URL, through its code and content and out to its links, SEO tactics can be implemented to make it more search engine-friendly. Clarity is important here, but a certain amount of finesse and reaction to the changing world of the internet is also required, and this is why it’s always good to get the advice of our experts when planning SEO.

SEO is a form of communication. It is also a marketing method. It informs target viewers in an honest manner and at the same time tries desperately to win them over. It both works with search engines and tries to trick them. It is technical, but it is an art.

Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

Drive More Visitors To Your Website

M. Shifley Leave a comment

The Internet is becoming increasingly crowded with lots of new e-commerce businesses starting every day.  How can you be sure your website won’t get lost in this vast crowd?  By using experienced search engine optimization (SEO) copywriters like myself who skillfully embed targeted search terms with appropriate density into your website’s content.  Content is critical because search engine spiders (programs Google and other major search engines use to survey your website) only read text.  One of the determining factors in where Google ranks your website is the relevance of keywords and phrases in your site’s content.

I  have experience in properly using SEO copywriting techniques to create content that will improve your search engine positioning for your targeted search terms.  I create content that is original, well-researched, on-topic and search engine friendly.  I seamlessly fold keyword phrases into content that flows smoothly for the reader.  Quality SEO copywriting is invisible to your site visitors.

Benefits Of Our SEO Copywriting Services Include:

  1. Improved ranking in the SERP’s (search engine results pages)
  2. Greater volume of visitors hitting your website
  3. More narrowly targeted traffic leads to higher sales conversion rates
  4. Promoting your website as an “authority” site in your field
  5. Establishing trust with your site visitors
  6. Developing a new customer base while solidifying your existing one

In today’s uncertain economy, every online marketing dollar is precious.  My proven SEO copywriting services can help you increase your income without busting your online marketing budget.

Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

Questions about Search Engine Optimization and Copywriting

M. Shifley 2 Comments

A few questions and answers about copywriting in regards to online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

  • Do you think making some of the keywords like “example 1″ “example 2″ etc. as anchor text links pointing to articles on the site might be a good thing? Only if those are terms being targeted on the pages. You want to keep the same keyword throughout. They should be a matched set. If you put “example 1″ or “example 2″ in your title tag, description tag, page copy, ALT tags, etc., then yes, you can use those terms as anchor text with links pointing to the pages. But don’t target a page to “blue widgets” then use “example 1″ as anchor text pointing to it. That defeats the purpose.
  • I have over 100 articles on my own site, all original content. 30 days after they have been posted on my site, I submit them to specific article directory sites with a back link to the original article as well as multiple links to the site I am trying to promote. Do you think this is a valid SEO strategy? Yes. I do not want the sites I submitted the article to, to out rank the original article. Why not? As long as the reader still has access to the link back to your site, what difference does it make? If they are interested in what you offer, they’ll click to your site.
  • Do you think that by adding a backlink to the original article this will tell Google who had the article on the web first and who should be ranked for the article? It doesn’t work that way. Google will know you’re the original source for the article because it was published on your site/blog/forum/whatever first. Once it’s spidered and included in the index, you’re good. They know you were the first. Being first to publish doesn’t mean you automatically get ranked higher than others. There are LOTs of elements that go into deciding which pages get ranked where for what.
  • Does it help to wait 30 days to re-publish the article? No. Once Google picks it up, you’re good. Just type the title of your article into the Google search field (using quotes). When it shows up, go for it!
  • Also would you syndicate all of the articles to various sites or maybe 10-20 articles to 5 different sites? It’s not the quantity. It’s the quality. There are a bazillion article directory sites online and most of them are fly-by-night pieces of trash. They have no visitors (thus, no people to read your article and click to your site), they have lousy PageRank, etc. Be selective. Don’t worry about quantity. It’s not the article directory link that will do you a lot of good anyway. You get the power of article distribution when other sites pick up your article from the article directory and republish it on their high-quality site.
  • When marketing people talk about a “127% lift” in conversion rate what does that mean? Will I get a conversion rate of 127%?No. That’s a common misunderstanding. The lift is the amount of increase shown. So, if you started with a conversion rate of 2% and you experience a 127% lift (or increase), your new conversion rate will be 5%, not 127%.
  • I know you can split key phrases with punctuation. But can you split key phrases with line breaks, paragraph breaks or bullet points? Will Google ‘jump over’ the gaps and see the key phrase in its entirety?You can split keyphrases with *most* punctuation. The common stuff like commas, periods, semi-colons, dashes, etc. Tildes, brackets, etc. are iffy sometimes. When in doubt, check. Go to Google and type in the keyphrase without the punctuation and write down the top 5 sites. Then type in the query with the punctuation and see if the same top 5 sites come up. If they do, Google sees it as the same thing.Yes, you can split with line breaks, paragraph breaks and bullets. Spiders will read right through. Except that bullet points count as special formatting and *might* give you an extra point or two as far as SEO goes because the info in the bullet list would be considered important.

    Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

Getting your company found online

M. Shifley Leave a comment

Do you want your website to show up in search engines? I know a dumb question but one that some companies will emphatically answer yes but do not realize how to make that happen. I can help.

Optimizing your website for maximum search engine visibility is a little bit art and a little bit science. I have a great track record for increasing search engine visibility for my clients and more than 5 years experience in the art of online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

If you are interested please give me a call or shoot me an email and I will start by conducting an analysis of your website to identify content, keywords and structural issues that might hinder organic search engine indexing and ranking. From there I will tweak and optimize your site and content. Every SEO campaign is unique and requires a tailored approach to meet the client’s specific objectives.

Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.

Non-SEO ways to get your website ranked

M. Shifley 2 Comments

Search engine optimization involves getting lots of moving pieces coming together in the right way to achieve better search results for your website. But are their non-SEO ways to get your website ranked? According to the folks at searchenginewatch.com there are five ways to improve your rankings beyond best SEO practices.

1. Enhance Web Site Usability – Dr. Jakob Nielsen is considered to be a foremost authority of site usability factors, and he also has a knack for SEO. In his book “Designing Web Usability” (which many consider to be the “Bible” of usability), he writes that “site design must be aimed with simplicity above all else, with as few distractions as possible and with very clear information architecture and matching navigation tools.” From an SEO perspective, this is preaching to the choir. If sites aren’t human-friendly, they are usually even more unfriendly to search engine spiders.

Typically, enhancing usability also involves improving the information architecture of a site, which of course will help the site to be more easily spidered, and will often increase the potential for solid anchor text-rich internal linking.

2. Work with Other Marketing Teams – Many SEO projects fall victim to “marketing-in-a-vacuum.” SEO teams should work together with other marketing teams to ensure the same message being delivered offline is incorporating its way into the site’s visible text. Also, not combining efforts with the paid search team is a top way to miss out on search ranking opportunities.

It often takes extra “pushing” to become involved in other marketing efforts, or at least well informed of future planning. Fortunately, many of our clients have bought into the idea that we’re their partners in a mutual effort to gain visibility and traffic. Typically, the stronger the in-house SEO team is, the more clout they already have in their organizations, which certainly helps this effort. Every year, Super Bowl advertising gives us insight into how many top companies are combining these two forms of marketing.

3. Incorporate Traditional PR Efforts into the SEO Plan – Press releases should be optimized to help the company’s site perform better within search results. Again, this calls for involvement by the SEO team, especially in the distribution of the article and in the placement of properly structured hypertext links within the article to relevant pages on the site.
.

4. Monitoring and Leveraging Communities – Every industry has an online community of some size. Some industries — such as travel in particular — have literally thousands of forums and blogs talking about deals and experiences. Savvy marketers can leverage these platforms by becoming an active participant — without being “spammy” or invasive — and gain traction within rankings as a direct result of this community participation strategy. Additionally, there’s lots of user-generated content about products and services in these communities, providing both invaluable feedback for refinement of current offerings and services, as well as an excellent base for R&D efforts.

5. Keep Content Fresh by Updating it Regularly – For some organizations, content is hard to update on a regular basis. For example, a company that sells one type of widget that never becomes obsolete may seemingly have no reason to update its content. However, the majority of sites on the Internet could benefit from occasionally “sprucing up the place.” Bottom line: if the content seems like it’s “getting stale” from your human perspective, imagine what a search engine that crawls it every month may feel.

Even if you’ve never done SEO, chances are that improving and updating your content can help you to gain rankings for terms that will drive traffic. Although this can be argued — especially for competitive industries — the core of the belief is certainly sound. There are sites out there that have simply followed best practices by including important content in tags, and maintained rankings and traffic simply due to keeping the content fresh.

Keeping these five factors in mind when thinking beyond traditional SEO best practices will likely yield long-term success in terms of driving organic traffic.

Please give me a call today at 208.598.0084 or contact me at matt.shifley@yahoo.com for more information to discuss how I can help you or your company with its search engine optimization, online marketing, or copywriting needs.