Category: Search Engine Optimization

When consumers today search online for the products and services your business offers, you are not only competing with other web sites, you’re also competing with social networking profiles, online videos, blog posts, Twitter tweets, photo sharing sites, online news outlets, etc., all blended together on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

So how can your business optimize for all these different types of media now being included in the search results? By getting vertical.

Getting vertical is simply another way to think about your search engine strategy. Yes, you still need to effectively optimize your web site to do well in the search results. But in addition to that, you now must also optimize for the search “verticals” that contribute to blended search results as well.

For instance, Google determines its blended results (in part) by analyzing what ranks well in its search verticals, including image search, Google News, video search, and social networking information from Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed. That’s a lot of verticals to consider! But optimizing for blended search means that you need to have at least some sort of presence on these verticals to get Google’s attention and boost your position in the search rankings.

Social Networks

Since the major search engines now include real-time information from popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, your search engine rankings can definitely benefit from implementing a social networking strategy. By participating on social networking sites, you contribute a constant stream of fresh information that not only benefits your customers and followers, but also helps get (and keep) the attention of the search engines as they gather new information from these real-time sources.

The key to being successful on the social networks, however, is to implement an integrated strategy that combines all of your social marketing efforts together with your web site and with the other marketing activities you may already have established. (See our web site or blog posts on Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)® for more details on this concept).

Online Videos

Videos can be optimized for blended search, whether on a web site, in a blog post, on a social networking site, or uploaded to a video sharing site like YouTube. In fact, video sharing sites already have built-in features that make it easy for users to share videos with friends and followers. They also allow viewers to leave comments or forward video links to their lists of contacts.

When using videos in your search strategy, be sure to add relevant descriptions and title tags to your videos, and rename the video files to include your targeted keywords in the filename for an added boost. Re-use your videos in as many places on the web as you can, including embedding them in your web pages and integrating them with your Google Place pages to help build authority for the videos as well.

News Content

Another source of blended search results comes from content found in online news from mainstream media outlets, in Google News, and on a variety of online newswire services. One way for small businesses to get online news coverage is to submit press releases to online media outlets, both paid and free, as a way to build quality inbound links and get additional exposure online. You should also try to include video and images in your press releases whenever possible. Multi-media content tends to do well – especially in Google News – and it provides additional press release content that can be indexed in the search databases.

Images and Photos

There are several ways that you can use images to contribute to your results in blended search. First, your images and photos should have keyword-rich file names, such as “keyword.jpg” or “my_company_at_eventname.jpg” whenever possible. Also, be sure to use keywords in your HTML image alt tags and in the descriptions and captions of the photos as well. Then, you can share these photos on your web site, on your blog, on your Facebook page (and other social profiles), and upload them to photo sharing sites like Flickr. Encourage your visitors to leave comments, and also leave your own comments, since this type of participation will also help provide fresh content and gain attention from the search engines as they gather real-time search information as well.

Think Vertical

So if you are serious about improving your business’ positions in the search engine rankings, you will need to expand the way you think about optimizing your entire search profile online. The more you can do to optimize the search “verticals” (like social networking, video, images, etc.), the more influence you will have over what the search engines know about your business and its relevance to searchers today. Thinking vertical can help you stay competitive now that blended search means competing with more than just other web sites.

We are often asked how long it will take before an optimized web site will start showing up in the search engine results, but of course that’s a difficult question with a complicated answer. Seeing results in the search engines depends on many factors, and each web site’s circumstances are unique. However, here are some points to consider in determining how quickly your site will start showing results in the search engines:

• How many inbound links does your site have? Google definitely cares about not only how many inbound links your site has, but also the quality of the sites those links come from. For instance, inbound links from an authority site with a topic related to yours will benefit you way more than reciprocal links or links from a site that is unrelated (or worse – a link farm). And paid links are a big no-no altogether.
• How old is your web site? Believe it or not, the age of your web site matters to the search engines. New sites come and go all the time, and the search engines want to make sure that your site is established and stable before they rank it in their results. However, a new site with lots of inbound links will quickly get the attention of the search engines, since they assume that if others think your site is worth linking to, then it must be valuable.
• How “fresh” is your content? A static site that never gets updated is not all that interesting to the search engines, no matter how great the content may be. The search engines want to provide their users with sites that are well-maintained and contain up-to-date information. Since there are so many sites to choose from, the search engines will choose the ones that have the latest information.
• How many inbound links do your competitors have? If the top-ranking web sites have 10,000 inbound links and your site has only a few, you have some work to do. You may not need to have exactly the same number of inbound links as the top sites, but you definitely need to be close. And of course, having more is even better.
• How competitive is the keyword you are targeting? This is a tough one, because the more competitive your keyword is, the more sites will be trying to rank for that same keyword. If your keywords are highly competitive, you may want to do some research and optimize for similar but less-competitive variations, at least to start with. Then as you build additional inbound links and add fresh content to your site, you can add back the competitive keywords.
• How visible is your business online – overall? Do you have an existing social media marketing strategy in place? Does your company have a blog? Send e-newsletters? Submit online press releases? Syndicate articles? All of these things can contribute to your online visibility, and will help you naturally build inbound links as people discover your content and start linking to it. Plus, the more places your business shows up online, the more opportunities the search engines have to find you.

Getting good rankings in the search engines doesn’t stop after the optimization work is completed, that’s really just the beginning. You must consistently add fresh content to your site and build as many quality inbound links as possible so the search engines will notice your site. There are no specific timeframes to determine how long it will take to see results; however, the more you can do to show the search engines that your site is a valuable resource, the faster they will share that with their users.

One of the most important elements in optimizing your web site to rank well in the search engines is to select the right keywords and then use them appropriately on your web pages. Sounds pretty simple, but with all the bad advice floating around on the web today, we thought you might appreciate some simple, tried-and-true tips for correctly using keywords on your web site. Here are some common “do’s and don’ts” that can help you avoid mistakes and improve your search engine optimization results:

DO research your keywords to find out what users are actually searching on in the search engines right now. Be sure to review your selected keywords periodically, since the terms that searchers use will change over time.

DON’T just guess which keywords you think searchers would use to find your site; you know your business so well that you may overlook the phrases that “outsiders” use to describe what you do.

DO limit your keywords to between two and four per page. This will allow for more natural-sounding text, and will help keep the page focused on a single topic.

DON’T cram as many keywords as possible onto a web page. This will only dilute the effectiveness and value of each keyword, and can lead to page content that is confusing for visitors.

DO select keywords that match your business and services. Keeping a narrow focus will help drive the most qualified traffic to your web site.

DON’T use keywords that are only loosely related to your business. For instance, if your site is about auto engine repair, don’t include keywords like “auto body repair” or “oil changes”, even if these terms pull in a lot of traffic. You don’t want to waste your visitors’ time, or attract visitors who are not looking for engine repairs.

DO write keyword-rich titles, descriptions, and link text, since these elements are taken into consideration by the search engines and can help improve your rankings.

DON’T count on the keywords meta tag to help you – Google, as well as other major search engines, have repeatedly said that they do not use the keywords in this tag when ranking sites. You need to know which elements are useful to the search engines and focus your time and attention on those.

DO write content that reads well to your human visitors. Make this a priority, because the text must make sense to your target audience first and foremost. Write your text so the keywords seem natural and they don’t “stick out” as obvious keywords.

DON’T use keywords in your content at the expense of readability for your visitors. Sure, you need to appropriately mix your keywords into the content of your pages, but nobody wants to read awkward, nonsensical content that has been obviously stuffed with keywords to please the search engines. It can also make you look amateurish and can damage credibility with your target audience.

DO pay attention to how often you use your keywords on a page; you need to use them enough to show that the page’s subject matches the keywords you are targeting for that page.

DON’T over-use the keywords in the text on your page; high keyword density levels may get your page flagged for keyword spamming by the search engines.

By following these “do’s and don’ts” when working with your keywords, you can avoid some common errors while improving your visitors’ experience, your optimization process, and ultimately your results in the search engine rankings!

When optimizing your web site, use only 2 or 3 keywords per page. That way, you can focus on using the selected terms consistently through out the page content and in the meta data (titles, descriptions, alt tags, etc.), making your page more relevant for those terms. Using too many keywords on a web page could end up dilluting the vaule of the keywords, so limit the number used on each page.

The topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can certainly be a complex one, and for many small businesses it seems like talking about SEO is like speaking a completely foreign language – possibly a language from outer space. But there are some key concepts that, while not entirely simple, are vital to understanding the importance of SEO and what it takes to see a web site listed in the top search results.

Too often, small businesses think that by adding some meta data to a web page or using what they believe are good keywords is going to help them get noticed (and listed) in the search engine results. Unfortunately, those items alone will not make much of a difference to a small business web site’s rankings.

So to help you get a handle on what it takes to improve your web site’s search engine rankings, here are five key concepts that you really should know:

1. Like it or not, getting top listings in the search results will probably take some ongoing work on your part.

   Unfortunately, a web site is not something that can be on your “to-do” list, and then crossed off the list when the site goes live. If you leave your web site unattended and let it go stale, your visitors will stop visiting, and the search engines will have absolutely no reason to keep your site in their search results. Why would they? The web grows and changes everyday with new information, new resources, and new technology that people find incredibly useful. The search engines’ job is to give searchers the most useful, up-to-date results possible, and if your site isn’t growing, changing, and adding value, then it will be left behind.

2. Meta data is only part of the picture – even “keyword” meta data.

   Meta data is the behind-the-scenes code on a web page that tells the search engine spiders all sorts of useful stuff, including what the web page is supposed to be about. But the visible content on your page must support the information in your meta data, so the search engines can see that your page is really about what you say it is. It is important that the meta data and the page content match; however, it is only one of many factors taken into account by the search engines.

3. Keyword research is not optional.

   I cannot tell you how many times clients give us the keywords they think customers would use to search for their business, but when we run the testing, those terms don’t even show up as being searched on at all! In order to be found in a search, you must use the keywords that people actually type into the search engines when looking for your type of products and services. Why would you optimize your site for keywords that nobody ever types into a search engine? That’s why real-time keyword research is essential – let the data tell you what keywords customers are using in the search engines, don’t just guess!

4. Search engine algorithms rely heavily on inbound link scores.

   It’s true – search engines do rely heavily on inbound links as part of their criteria for ranking web sites; at least that’s how it works right now. When search engines first started out, they based rankings on meta data keywords. When scammers figured out how to cheat that system, search engines developed algorithms that gave value to inbound link counts, which is where we are today. No doubt this will again change as search engines continue to evolve. But for now, getting quality inbound links from reliable authority sites is one of the best things you can do for your search engine rankings. Although it is still only one of many factors taken into account when ranking a site, it is one of the biggest factors.

5. Track and measure your search engine results every month.

   Let’s assume you add a new FAQ to your web site every month. It’s great that you are taking the time to do this, but is it working? Does it drive more traffic to the site? Do people come back to that page every month to check out the new FAQ? Does that new FAQ ever show up in the search results? If you are not tracking and measuring, how will you know if it is a good idea to do this each month, or if you are just wasting your time?

   Or let’s imagine that your site falls from position number 6 to position number 106. Without regular tracking and measuring, you probably wouldn’t know the site had slipped, and you would miss the opportunity to intervene and take the necessary action to get it back in the top 10 again.

While there are many, many factors that contribute to how a web site ranks in the search engine results, these five concepts are among the most important. When you understand these concepts it can be much easier to find direction and take action for your own web site. So even if SEO still seems like a foreign language to you, just think of these five concepts as a basic “translation.”