New Site Media Group » Charlottesville Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Considerations When Optimizing Your Content for SEO

Steinar — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 18:00:49 +0000

When people search on Google there are a variety of results shown, including Local, News, Images, Video, Blogs, and Real-Time social media content.

To maximize your website’s exposure it’s important to understand the implications of optimizing your content for SEO to appear in several of these categories simultaneously. For example, instead of just showing up in the standard website index, you might also drive significant traffic from Images, Blogs, or News.

Depending on your subject and niche, I recommend you start by picking two or three of these categories to start. The simplest is blogs. Setup a free blog at wordpress.com or blogger.com and start writing. Link to your website and pages within your website. Include your keywords in your content. Include at least one picture in every post and populate the title, description and alt tags with your keywords. This tactic alone should increase your search engine traffic.

If you have a physical location go to google.com/merchants and register your company with Google Local. This will enter your address and company information into the Google Business directory and possibly land your listing in the Google Local results set when someone searches for your business. This is important since most users click on the Google Local listings before scrolling down to high ranking organic results.

Advanced users should consider optimizing for video as well. Upload a few videos to Youtube, which is owned by Google. Include your keywords in the title, description, and tags within the video post. If your video is well ranked by Google, you might actually secure the #4 position in Google search results, which they reserve for videos.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. What do you think? Are these good strategies to consider for DIY SEO?

How search engine traffic stacks up and what this means for your internet marketing strategy

Steinar — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Much has been speculated about the future of search engine marketing, especially with the increased reliance on social media networks to find more relevant information from trusted sources.

A review of the search engine landscape illustrates that the market for search is still tremendous on a global basis. Google search leads in total number of searches and maintains a market share leadership position.

If you are looking to revamp your search engine marketing strategy consider focussing on Google. Most of the optimization techniques you apply will have a positive impact on your ability to rank well in less popular search engines, such as Yahoo and Bing.

Use WebsiteGrader.com to check if your site is Optimized for Search Engines

Steinar — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:32 +0000

To check if your site is optimized for search engines I recommend you start with a free service called WebsiteGrader.com

This service uses the following criteria to grade your site based on millions of other sites previously reviewed:

Content

Blog Analysis
Blog Grade
Recent Blog Articles
Google Indexed Pages
Readability / Grade Level

Optimization

Metadata
Heading Summary
Image Summary
Interior Page Analysis (3 pages)
Domain Info (Age)
Crawl Date
Inbound Links

Promotion

Delicious Bookmarks
Twitter Links
Twitter Grade

Conversion

RSS Feeds
Conversion Forms

Check out websitegrader.com for more information.

September Workshop at PVCC: How to Cost Effectively Drive Audiences To Your Website

Steinar — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:37:27 +0000

I’m very excited to host an upcoming workshop at PVCC. If you’re in Charlottesville and would like to learn hands-on how to drive traffic to your website, please register!

How to Cost Effectively Drive Audiences to your Web Site
Thursday, September 30, 9 a.m.- noon
PVCC Stultz Center for Business and Career Development
Instructor: Steinar Knutsen

This workshop is designed for marketing directors, business owners and senior sales pros that need to make their web sites centers of revenue growth. This important and timely three-hour workshop led by industry experts will give you the knowledge and step-by-step techniques you need to succeed online, including how to:

Drive people to your site for FREE using organic search engine marketing
Target and interact with clients-to-be on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook
Quickly tell if your site is search engine friendly and how to fix it if it isn’t
Use a blog or publishing platform and a publishing strategy to attract qualified visitors

Chamber Member Price: $42 (Class Nbr 58984) Register now

Non-Member Price: $65 (Class Nbr 58983) Register now

Search Engine Optimization: Back to Basics

Steinar — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:00:03 +0000

Search engine optimization is the process of implementing on-page and off-page tactics to drive search engine results placement. In other words, the stuff you do to help your site show up on Google.

Long-tail keywords refer to the combination of terms into a phrase that represents your site, your products and services, etc. Think of them as the words that people might use when searching for your website, company or products on Google. Much like any marketing strategy in general, choosing the right long-tail keywords has strategic implications much like choosing the right target market, niche, or micro niche. The more focused you are, the more relevant you are to that audience.

On-page optimization refers to the activities to incorporate on your website to drive search performance. This may include proper coding, the content itself, a site index, the frequency with with new content is published, etc.

Off-page optimization is the collection of activities you execute outside the scope of your site to improve indexing and drive traffic. This may include submitting your site to search engines and other directories, submitting your RSS feed to 3rd party sites for syndication, commenting on other blog posts with high PageRank to drive inbound links. The list goes on.

What do you think? Are your SEO tactics driving more, higher targeted visitors to your site? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Think SEO Long-Term, PPC Short-Term

Steinar — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:10:35 +0000

There are many reasons why SEO is a better investment than PPC, but the most compelling one is this: SEO drives more than 75 percent of all search traffic and PPC drives less than 25 percent. In short, your opportunity is more than three times greater.

via Selling SEO Projects Against PPC Campaigns – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

Of course, this really depends heaviy on your business model and sales funnel. For some businesses that sell directly online, PPC is a fantastic option, since you have the ability to track ROI to the penny and can quickly coorelate keyword performance with sales to tweak your PPC strategy.

For more traditional selling models, PPC is great to get initial traffic coming in, but it’s SEO that will drive long-term organic rankings and search traffic.

Furthermore, SEO tactics, such as developing great content with RSS feeds, gives you the ability to increase inbound links, where PPC is a one-shot deal with no long term impact. Once you stop paying the traffic stops.

Take an hour today to revisit your traffic generation plan. Consider PPC and SEO among other strategies, specifically thinking about the short and long-term goals you hope to achieve with each.

Deep Links for Search Engine Optimization

Steinar — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:53:06 +0000

It’s still shocking that many newbies don’t understand links. You don’t need to link to a lot of Web sites. You need a lot of good Web sites to link to you. And, it’s best if you can manage to get some of those links to include — in some fashion — the keywords that describe the page they’re linking to.

For example, if I’m linking to Search Engine Watch, I would want to link using the words “Search Engine Optimization News” within the anchor text of the link. If I wanted to “deep link” (that is to say, link deeper within the Search Engine Watch Web site), I would link to the Promotion & Link Building page using the words “Link Building Resources.”

via Top Signs Your Site Isn’t Ready for Prime Time, Part 2 – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

This strategy is so critical. I would also add that not only do you want to use your keywords in this deep linking strategy, but you should also link from sites that have a high PageRank.

For example, you could generate dozens of inbound links from sites with a Google PageRank of zero and your efforts would yield very little in-terms of SEO. Whereas one link from a .gov or .edu site with high PageRank could significantly improve your rank.

To lean more about PageRank, check out Wikipedia on PageRank

To check the PageRank of any site, check out prchecker.

Optimizing YouTube videos for SEO

Steinar — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:04:00 +0000

YouTube.com is the second most searched site on the Internet, next to Google, so you might conclude that it is the second largest search engine. It so happens that Google owns YouTube so the implications are something to be well understood and taken seriously as YouTube relates to your Internet Marketing strategy.

As the largest online video sharing site, YouTube is home to everything from Obama’s weekly radio address to corporate sponsored infomercials and people showcasing their musical talent. The list goes on and anything you can imagine can be found on YouTube. It’s free to sign up, free to upload videos, and free to view videos. Honestly, there’s nothing stopping you from taking advantage of this great medium to communicate and engage with your market.

The fact is most people do not understand how to properly optimize their videos for search engines and thus most video get very little attention.

[ Open this video to study the following optimization techniques. ]

Keywords

As with any search engine optimization strategy, keywords are critical. Think of them as the combination of words or phrases that people search for on the Internet. Since YouTube videos are frequently indexed by major search engines, it’s important to understand some simple steps to make your videos more search engine friendly.

It so happens that you can also call out these keywords in a special Keywords section with every new video you upload. Here’s your chance to thoroughly differentiate your video from the pack.

Titles

The title of your video needs to include two things: 1) your keywords and 2) something to hook viewers as they scan through a list of titles. If you fail to include the right keywords, search engines will ignore your video and if you fail to use a catchy title viewers will ignore your video.

For example, instead of using a title such as “Great House on 1.3 Acres!”, you might get better results with “4581 Morgan Creek – House for Sale in Roseville, CA”. The first example would be fine if the video was for a specific client, but the second video will ultimately draw more viewers since it names the city and uses the keyword phrases “house for sale” and “Roseville, CA”.

Descriptions

The second most overlooked section of posting a video on YouTube is the description field. When search engines index your video, the description field is a key element.

First and foremost, if you have a URL that you want visitors to visit, put that as the first item in your description. By default, only the first few lines of the description are displayed above the fold, so you want your URL to be right there at the top in the most obvious position so viewers click on it. Be sure to format the link correctly so it’s an active link using “html://www.mysite.com”.

The description field is also a great place to pack in your keywords and keyword phrases. Take care not to overdo it – strive for something that makes sense and gets the point across, but still incorporates the keywords where possible. An extra bonus is that YouTube cross-references related videos and people are more likely to find your video if you follow these general guidelines.

Search Twitter via Google

Steinar — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:10:57 +0000

This article got me thinking … isn’t Twitter indexed by Google and therefore a good ‘ol domain based search on Google provides another valuable Twitter search option. Try it – I find it’s pretty useful.

Having done a session at Search Engine Strategies New York this week on Twitter (Beyond Googling: Where Will We Be Searching in 5 Years) and written “Should Google Buy Twitter?” I’ve started to see a shift in the search world.

I’m sure Google will always be a major presence on the Web and the place to go for certain types of information. But not for all types of search. The search engines are a database of information and always will be. The factors on how information is pulled from the source is up to the individual companies at this stage, but who knows how that may change in the future.

Google has given us tools to rank the listings for ourselves for our personal results pages. In the future, this methodology could be a big play, but for now it hasn’t taken off.

Twitter’s rapid growth and pervasive presence — mentioned in newspapers, on TV and just about everywhere you look — has opened a new information source. “Real-time search,” “social search,” or whatever you want to call it offers an alternative.

There are no databases (not yet anyway) except those in each user’s brain. We share what we know and that accumulated knowledge tops the search engine databases.

If we could get total numbers of searches for the top three engines, I’m certain there will soon be a noticeable drop. Social media is having an impact and Twitter seems to be leading the way. When once we looked to the engines for all quick finds of needed information, we’re now getting some of that from “the global village” of social media.

For all the inanities passed around on Twitter, there are as many links to new current information. Mahalo Answers has jumped on the medium with its @questions and @answers. It’s early yet, but we can see the movement to this search source.

It seems to be the natural order of things. When search engines first started, people would make two-word searches, then three and four, and then more. We’ve become more educated searchers. Using Twitter as a source for finding information seems a natural progression.

Twitter could also adapt to take advantage of this change. There has been mention of them pushing information to users on an alerts basis — the ability is there now for being alerted when someone is discussing any topic you want to follow. Add alerts for local emergencies and other important local-specific information that you couldn’t think of in advance, and you have a situation where search is sitting there delivering your future needs.

Google’s desire to “give people access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it” is a good one, but it seems Twitter is becoming the major player in one of those spaces.

Chris Boggs Fires Back

Searching Twitter has one fundamental problem, at least in my experience with search.twitter.com: the only return sort order is by date, with the most recent post listed first. Google, Technorati, and other blog search choices out there also offer a “Sort by Relevance,” with Technorati taking it to the next level with multiple “classes” of blogs to search within, based on their Technorati-granted authority status. Until Twitter has a larger sample of users to choose from, it will be hard for them to provide another way of sorting search returns.

Speaking of Twitter, Lisa Barone’s scathing post describes the feedback I got from many attendees since Tuesday morning’s keynote by Guy Kawasaki: he kind of blew it. Kawasaki advocates the use of Twitter for marketing purposes, and I certainly feel that has great potential.

One tactic Kawasaki discussed was getting as many followers as possible. This would be a good precursor to becoming a power-user that may be considered if Twitter begins to try to group/associate users to specific subjects. In short, that could be leveraged like Teoma (now Ask.com) uses “authorities” to guide which links have more value pointed to pages around specific relevant areas.

Twitter’s adoption rate will continue to grow, but in order for them to become a valuable search tool on their own, they’ll have to augment their capabilities and really build a trustable algorithm. The best way to search Twitter is through something paid like Radian6.

Listening to what people are saying about your brand is important, but only better technology makes it a manageable process, especially for very large well-known brands. I’m interested, Frank, to see what 2009 holds for Twitter. Hopefully, we’ll continue to see additional search functionality added, without the need for Twitter “organizers” like Tweetdeck and others.

via Does Twitter Reflect a Change in How We Search? – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

Online Video Marketing for Charlottesville businesses

Steinar — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:44:07 +0000

Online video marketing is exploding as technology finally catches up to business needs. As the web continues its evolution, there has been a change in both the quantity and quality of web videos. Many of the social media sites like YouTube began as platforms for online users to upload their own personally produced videos. With the increasing number of TV episodes shown online and the advent of premium TV content sites like Hulu, the demand for higher production values is rapidly increasing.

This increase in professional content has created a higher expectation by the typical user. This evolution does not mean that individually produced videos will not still make their way to social media sites especially, if they are out-of-the-box creatively. But it does set the bar much higher for businesses that want to remain competitive in their online marketing programs. Although a large percentage of the professionally produced videos online are derived from longer format TV shows, the growth rate for high quality videos last year was close to twenty-five percent.

YouTube will continue to be a valuable venue to help support for your business’s Internet marketing program, but it will become increasingly more important to provide production values that surpass the user-generated content that proliferates. A good starting point can be TV spots that have been custom produced for your company. Since they can be viewed from anywhere, custom spots are preferable to “donut” spots that have your name and phone number added for your market but also air elsewhere.

By working with an online media company that specializes in internet marketing, videos with high production values can be produced for your firm’s web site and for use on the social media platforms. It is also important that your partner provide complete SEO services so that your videos can be optimized for the web. Producing great video content may be key, but it is equally important to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible.