seo

Content is King

M. Shifley Leave a comment

By design, online search engines like Google create result listings based on hot and relevant SEO (search engine optimization) keywords. The most ideal website rankings mostly rely on the strategic use of common SEO practices (i.e. long-tail keywords, blog entry tags, meta tags, link exchanging, etc). However, no matter how visual or audible any Web page may be, the actual content matters the most.

Not only do search engines rank your site by keyword relevance, they also determine whether your site is relevant and unique to a user’s defined search. So when it comes right down to search results, it is more valuable to have something worth saying rather than a page designed with repetitive key phrases.

Following are a few useful writing tips that can enrich the value of your site, increase your readership, and raise your overall web ranking:

1. Stick to a solid writing format: introduction, body, and conclusion. The copywriting should smoothly lead readers to the climax of the story. With a Web audience, you have only a few seconds to make a connection, so your writing should reveal the main point within the first 150 to 200 words.

2. Say more with fewer words. Are there any unnecessary pieces of your copywriting that are clouding the core message? Consider how you can avoid wasting words, or using up your space with ranting, musing, or stream-of-conscious writing that lacks direction. Readers who keep coming back to your site desire originality, and sometimes, meaningful information that may be read, recommended, and linked to over the next 10 years.

3. Think creatively with titles. There are many ways to entice readers with new headers or titles. For instance, you can pump it with SEO keywords to show up higher on the results listing. You can pose a stimulating question or startling statement (i.e. “10 worst predictions in 2009 politics,” “sex, lies and health care reform,” or “will your investments be worthless in 2020?”).

4. Encourage interaction with readers. One of the best ways you can expand your audience is by making your site more interactive. In addition to posing intriguing headers or titles, you can assert your take on a controversial topic instead of presenting an informative and neutral position. You can add a kicker in the middle or end of the copywriting, which will encourage commentators to post their opinions.

5. Offer something unique or original. Above all, make sure that your website benefits readers with unique information that they wouldn’t necessarily find on a related blog or site. Think about the entire online experience that you would want to create with your readers. Is there something extraordinary about the opinions you offer (i.e., are you an expert in your topic?), do you allow your audience to get more involved, and does your site provide the full multimedia experience? What is the true value of visiting your site, and what keeps users coming back for more?

If you have additional questions about how I can help your website generate more leads with great copywriting and how important copywriting is to helping your company increase their presence 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.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Copywriting

M. Shifley Leave a comment

Can your copywriting be effective without the awareness of search engine optimization (SEO)? Sure it was probably possible in times of typewriters, but now submitting articles in online directories or to search engines without a proper density of keywords nowadays can ruin an article or a website page by not giving it opportunity to be noticed.

There are two factors on the basis of which your article or website page will be noticed or not. First, the content of it. If it is interesting, vivid, catchy and attractive, you will definitely get the readers your article deserves. Second, keywords which should appear in the title and the beginning of the first paragraph. But how often should the keywords should appear in the article? Once per paragraph or more, or maybe less. No matter what the answer is – one must be aware of SEO as it will bring some great benefits and popularity.

SEO copywriting is also especially popular among business owners nowadays who find it very beneficial for their link building campaigns. By writing great quality articles and submitting it to the top directories they gain backlinks. It makes the search engine rankings better for the given website which means that the company becomes more popular and has a higher probability that it will be noticed by its potential clients. Article marketing becomes the top marketing method now and online businessmen are fighting to get the best SEO copywriters for their website.

If you have additional questions about SEO copywriting and how important it is to helping your company receive 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.

Dos and Dont’s about Link Building

M. Shifley 1 Comment

Bing recently published a document about link building. Although it focuses on how Bing deals with inbound links, it can also help you to get better links for Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. The most important points of Bing’s document can be found in this article.

The importance of link building

The Bing engineers know that link building is important and they describe link building as follows:

“Link building is a very important form of self-promotion on the Web. You contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill in your site is evident to them, they will assist their own customers by linking back to your site. That, my friend, is the essence of link building.”

In other words, reciprocal linking is fine. They also remind webmasters that link building is an ongoing process:

“Think of link building as your chance to build your reputation on the Web. As your website is likely one of your business’ most valuable assets, consider link building to be a primary business-building exercise. Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution. You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time. Good things come to those who wait (and work smartly!).”

Things that you can do to get good links to your website

Here are the things that Bing recommends:

  • You should develop your website as a brand and brand it consistently. People like to link to high quality websites.
  • You should find relevant bloggers, industry websites and product reviewers and make them aware of your website.
  • You can publish concise and informative press releases online.
  • You can publish expert articles in article directories.
  • You can participate in relevant conversations on blogs and forums and add a link to your website when applicable.
  • You can use social networks to connect to industry influencers. Your profiles should contain links to your website.
  • You can use email newsletters to notify people about new content on your website.
  • You can launch a blog or a forum on your website.
  • You can participate in relevant industry associations and their online forums.
  • You should strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry while promoting your website.

Warning: the following things will get your website in trouble

Just like Google and other major search engines, Bing doesn’t like to be cheated. If they detect unnatural linking patterns, your website might be penalized. The following things can trigger search engine filters:

  • Your website get a lot of additional inbound links a very short time.
  • Many links that point to your website are from unrelated websites or blog comments.
  • Your web pages contain hidden links.
  • You get links from links farms or automated link exchange systems.
  • Paid links point to your website.
  • Known spammers link to your website.
  • Your website links to known spammers.

Here’s what Bing does when they find suspicious data that is related to your website:

“When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction. If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.”

Getting inbound links requires some work. The Bing engineers are very clear about this fact: “Make no mistake: getting legitimate and highly valuable, inbound links is not a couch-potato task.”

If you have additional questions about getting more links for your website  and how important these links 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.

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.

Getting Found Online

M. Shifley 1 Comment

There are many things that you must do if your website is going to be found online and that it is optimized to be found in the search engines. One of the most important items you must do is title tags, and below is some information that explains title tags in a little more detail.

Title tags
Although they are not visible on the page, it is the single most important on-site search engine optimization (SEO) factor so it definitely shouldn’t be overlooked.

1) Aim for 65 characters, this is the cut-off point in Google when listed with search results and it also helps to keep your title tags concisely targeted towards the most important keywords.
2) Include keywords towards the start of the title tag.
3) Include consistent branding in the title tag. This comes down to preference, but the branding value of having your company name seen several times when listed in search results can be very valuable. I normally opt for a consisitent style of “Keywords | Brand” but this really is down to personal preference, if you have a long brand name it may be worth abbreviating or cutting this down in some way.

If you have any questions about Title Tags 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.

The Importance of Link Building

M. Shifley 1 Comment

People that are relatively new to search engine optimization (SEO) often wonder what link building entails and why it matters for their website. Although there are many ways to accomplish link building, just knowing the basics will help you understand the importance of receiving and how to obtain links back to your website.

Consider a link as a vote towards your website for being relevant or popular on the Internet within a specific industry or niche. The more links you have from other websites, the more your website will benefit on search engines for specific user searches, while the likelihood of more traffic to your site increases.

For example, let’s say Website A and Website B are competing for the same consumers. Website A has a total of 10 links pointing back to their website while Website B has 100. Which website do you think search engines are going to “reward” more for its relevancy within their industry? Which website has the greater chance of having traffic go to their website because of exposure on the Internet?

Another important aspect is using specific keywords while link building, or in other words, utilizing anchor text as the link back to your website. Essentially, anchor text is the keyword/text of the link back to your website. Generally highlighted a different color and/or underlined, anchor text helps Internet users and search engines to understand what your website is relevant for.

Let’s suppose that Website A sold various types of baby blankets. If they wanted to rank highly in search engines for their product cotton baby blankets, it would be most helpful if they used “cotton baby blankets” as their anchor text for links back to their website. Doing this allows Internet searchers (if they stumbled upon that particular link) to have a good idea where that particular link would lead them. Also, the anchor text in this instance would help search engines to know more information about your website.

Of course, it’s always good to vary your anchor text (i.e., from our example, use “baby blankets,“ “100% cotton baby blankets,“ “organic baby blankets,“ “baby blanket store,“ etc.). There is a good chance that search engines may penalize your website if you solely use one phrase of anchor text for all of your links.

The following examples are different ways to receive some inbound links to your website:

• Directories allow you to list your website within a specific industry and/or genre, providing you with a link back to your website.

• Social bookmarking is a way for people to save and share websites of interest, categorizing the websites/links by tags.

• Writing an ezine article is a great way to utilize anchor text (keywords), but remember to write brand new, original content and follow the publisher’s terms of use.

Though link building by itself won’t guarantee top-ranking results (as you have to consider other factors like the age of your website, the website’s on-site content, etc.), creating a number of backlinks to your website will help improve its relevance on search engines and increase its opportunity for more traffic.

If you need help with building links or search engine optimization, 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.