New Site Media Group » SEO

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

Google PageRank Checker – Check Google Page Rank of any Web Page

Steinar — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:05:24 +0000

Google PageRank is a factor that many consider important to search engine optimization and how your site ranks in Google search results. Here’s a site that lets you quickly check:

Google PageRank Checker – Check Google page rank of any web pages.

How to increase your PageRank? Well, that’s one of the great mysteries. Here’s how Google explains it:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

How to properly tag your images for search engine optimization

Steinar — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:17:17 +0000

Tagging your images for search engine optimization is a great tactic to drive more targeted traffic to your site.

If your site is being indexed by Google, chances are your images will be indexed as well. I suggest you sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (free) just to make sure Google know you want your images indexed.

First, I tend to only use one image per blog post, so the optimization settings are pretty simple and only take about 10 seconds.

Once you’ve inserted your image you want to set the Title, Alt and Description tags to include your keywords or at least some description that relates to the topic of your content. Some content publishing systems, like WordPress, allow you to right-click and set the tags, but you might have to look at the HTML in some cases.

For example, if I’m blogging about “homemade fishing lures”, my optimized code would look like this:

Easy right? Give it a shot and track your image related traffic in Google Analytics.

What do you think? Do you tag your images for search engine optimization?

3 Lessons on Blogging this Week

Steinar — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:40:31 +0000

I had a great week meeting with several clients, all of whom are new to blogging or have a blog but still have yet to find their rhythm. It is not surprising that many people think blogging is either nerve-racking, a waste of time or difficult in terms of finding something to say. Add in the concept of SEO and people really start to shut down.

So, in my discussions there are three main lessons I reinforced with my clients:

1) Start small. It’s not necessary to write every day and your posts don’t need to be very long. Find your voice over time and see blogging as a journey.

2) Get over your fear. People may agree or disagree with what you have to say, but if you’re honest it’s unlikely that people will criticize you. Of course, depending on the subject and tone of your post this may vary. The point is, if you’re new to blogging don’t be afraid to get started and put your ideas out there. You may learn something in the process and meet new people as well.

3) Be optimistic and keep a postive mental attitude. I hear so many excuses why people don’t want to blog. For me it’s about helping others and reinforcing the learning I’ve had in my journey. No one likes a complainer so, look on the bright side and people are more likely to continue reading your blog and engage with you along the way.

That’s it – something to chew on for a couple days.

What do you think? Are these lessons you can relate to?

Optimize your WordPress Blog for SEO and User Experience – Joost de Valk (Video)

Steinar — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:37:56 +0000

Another great video from Joost de Valk “Yoast”, including some useful advice on strategies to optimize your WordPress blog for SEO and user experience.

In particular, Yoast shares some very helpful hints for Analytics, Automation, RSS, Commenting and Plugins. Hope you enjoy.

What tips do you have to share to optimize your WordPress blog for SEO and user experience?

Drive More Traffic to Your Blog and Engage Readers (Audio)

Steinar — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:10:25 +0000

In this audio post I’ll touch on a few techniques to drive more traffic to your blog and engage readers in a more meaningful way.

002-more-blog-followers.mp3

Topics Covered:
• Creating unique and compelling content
• Search Engine Optimization and long-tail keywords
• Commenting on third-party websites
• Leveraging Social Media

How are you attracting more readers? Which tactics are getting the best results?

Deep Links for Search Engine Optimization

Steinar — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:36:47 +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.