Category : Search Engine Optimization
How to Choose the Right SEO Strategy
We have talked about the importance of SEO maintenance previously about how you need a monthly active SEO plan to stay ahead of competition and rank high on the search engine results page (SERP). To help you choose the right SEO strategy, we will focus on what should be included in the SEO maintenance plan.
- Rank Reports – It is important to have a rank report run so you can monitor your rankings on the SERP. There could be fluctuations due to actions done by your competitor, new sites being added, and changes in the search engine algorithms. Rank reports are a must for a SEO strategy.
- Keyword Research – Competitors can try to outrank you for different keywords or long tail phrases. This means that keywords that you used to rank high for might not be optimal for you to appear on the SERP. Some keywords receive more traffic while some receive less. With the keyword research in your SEO strategy, you can determine what keyword phrases will work best for you – such as whether to rank well on high traffic keywords or target niche ones with possible better conversion rates.
- Competitive Analysis – A competitive analysis in a SEO strategy provides you with a summary of where your competitors are in terms of their SEO efforts. You can see how your competitors are ranking for your keywords and other site elements. Also what are they factors contributing to them ranking well on the SERP. Through that, you can decide the direction of your SEO efforts in order to compete. Factors that come into play include inbound links, meta tags and keyword density, and seo content.
- SEO Copywriting – It is important that your SEO strategy includes SEO copywriting because of the need for fresh content. It is important that new pages or articles are added on a regular basis as it can help expand your reach with more keywords and ways your visitors can find you. Having fresh content is also one of the important SEO ranking factors.
We have outlined the components of what we think is important for SEO maintenance, thus should be included in a SEO strategy. There are other components that are important, such as link building and social media—as outlined in SEO ranking factors. Let Smart Solutions come up with a customized active SEO strategy for you. Contact us now to find out how we can help your business.
Writing SEO Content for Your Website
Writing for the Internet can be difficult. Writing SEO content is even harder. Readers are getting more demanding—speed, ease and informative. Studies have shown that readers skim. When skim readers read an article, they expect content to be short and straight to the point. Don’t expect the reader to stay long if you beat around the bush. Now, the challenge is to balance good content with SEO.
Writing for the Web
It is important for your website to be informative. If you don’t offer readers what they want, they can leave quickly with a simple click of the mouse. How do you get readers to stay?
Short and Sweet: Don’t use fancy words to try to sound more profound when a simple word will do. If readers get confused, they will not read your content. Allow your content to flow smoothly so readers enjoy reading and stay longer on your website.
Paragraphs: I have seen websites that have pages and pages of information with no paragraphs. Paragraphs help readers understand your writing better through organized thoughts. When there is a new paragraph, it is a signal to the reader that the topic is either being developed or that the writer is moving onto another discussion.
Active vs Passive: The active voice is shorter, more assertive and easier to understand. Passive usually requires more cognitive effort from the reader—this stresses the reader and forces them to leave. For example, take a look at “My hard work was appreciated by my boss” (passive) and “My boss appreciated my hard work” (active). Which requires less effort to understand?
Scannable text: As I mentioned earlier, many are skim readers. Readers scan a page to find answers to their questions. It also helps them understand the topic better. When writing for the web, create text that is scannable—headers, bold, and bullet points.
SEO Copywriting
It is important to create search engine friendly content to allow your website to rank well on SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). To rank well, you need to have the following:
Well-researched keywords: You need to understand keyword research and select the ones that can help you rank. By ranking well, visitors can find your site, leading to conversions. Keywords need to be relevant to the content on your page—search engines look at this when ranking your website. This also helps readers understand your content better.
Keyword rich content: Through the effective use of keywords throughout your content, search engines can rank you better. However, a website that is covered with nothing but keywords does not provide readers with the information that they need. You are merely optimizing your site for robots—this defeats the purpose of having a website. Good SEO copywriting involves the proper use of keywords that flow with content.
URLs, titles, descriptions and headers: Your URLs, titles and descriptions have to be well used as search engines use these when figuring out the content of your website. A good SEO copywriter will be able to integrate keywords into them and the content.
Characteristics of a Good SEO Copywriter
Good SEO copywriters are a unique bunch of people and they tend to have the following characteristics:
- Deep understanding of keywords
- Inquisitive
- Able to tell stories
- Adventurous
- Deep digger
- Solves problems
- Able to surprise and delight
- Enjoys research
Smart Solutions’ SEO Content Writing Services
At Smart Solutions, our SEO team is able to balance good content with SEO. We have the right people with the right characteristics that can create great content for your website. Our experienced SEO content writers that can help you with the following:
Contact us now to find out how we can write SEO content for you.
SEO Maintenance is Ongoing
SEO is not a one-time service, but an ongoing process that businesses should monitor to maintain their organic ranks on the search engine results page (SERP). Your website is an important component of your business and is crucial for you to be found on search engines. A monthly SEO maintenance plan will ensure your business is not ignored. Here’s why:
- Search engines are constantly changing their search algorithms. A recent example is the Google Panda update. Because of the update, many popular websites that used to rank high on the SERP have dropped in ranks—some have fallen from first page of SERP to second. If you rank well for keywords now, do not be complacent. Without SEO maintenance, you might drop in ranks three months from now because of changes in search algorithms.
- Search engines tweak the SERP. When Google announced in May 2007 that they will blend search results with Universal Search, this resulted in news, images, videos and Google Local results showing on the SERP. How does this affect you? If you were previously ranked at position 3 for a certain keyword, related images and videos showing up on the SERP might result in you showing up in position 7 without SEO maintenance.
- Competitors try to and WILL outrank you. You cannot ignore your competitors, because they will not ignore you. If you rank higher than them on the SERP, you can be sure they will be working to outrank you. Ranking factors that come into play include quality of content and backlinks.
Many businesses do not have SEO maintenance because it is time consuming—keeping up with search engine trends, need to make constant SEO tweaks to website, and the importance of keeping content fresh.
Let our SEO analysts do the work for you. Contact us now to find out how we can help you with your SEO maintenance.
The Basics of SEO Copywriting
1. Content is King!
Before you begin copywriting make sure you have done your keyword research and assigned a selection of keywords (ideally shoot for five or six) to each page of your site. Try to utilize each page’s target keywords at least once within the body content. Use the primary keyword (you might choose the one you deem the most important or relevant to the page, or the keyword with the highest search volume) for each page in the first paragraph, the last paragraph and as many times possible throughout the rest of the body text (without getting ‘spammy’ of course – the script should still make sense).
2. Carefully Consider your Title Tags
There are a couple of things to consider when writing a title tag. For SEO purposes you want a title tag to be succinct and keyword rich. The more diluted a title tag becomes, the less emphasis each keyword is given. So… if for a particular page you really want to hit home for one certain keyword, try stripping everything else from your title tag. Alternatively, in a less competitive market, you might wish to target a few different keyword phrases on a single page. Ultimately the choice is yours, just be sure to separate each keyword phrase with a comma (or a symbol of the like). The second point to consider is that most frequently the title tag will be displayed as the ‘heading’ for your listing in the search engine results. Is your title tag going to ‘convince’ a potential consumer to click through to your site over the others? Lastly, to maintain brand identity you may also wish to end each title tag with a dash followed by your company name.
3. Descriptive Description Tags?
Search engines often pull a page’s description tag to act as the short ‘blurb’ in the search results. There are two main points to consider when writing a description tag.
1) Ideally, your description tag will contain your main keyword phrase within the first few words. Words from the ‘search query’ will be in bold in the search results (i.e. if a user searches for ‘brown dogs’, each time the word ‘brown’ or ‘dogs’ appears in your description it will be in bold) and likely catch the eye of a potential visitor to your site.
2) The description should be enticing in order to persuade a potential customer to click through to your site over the others.
4. Utilize Header Tags
Headings should be catchy (from a ‘traditional’ marketing standpoint) to draw in a reader, but also include your main keywords to emphasize these words in the ‘eye of the spider’. You will also want your heading to relate to your title tag (so as to minimize bounce rates) and remain relevant to the overall content of the page (to maintain your site’s reputation for reliability).
5. Internal Linking – Set Yourself Up for Success
Internal linking (a link from one page of your site to another) is very important to your overall SEO efforts. Try to create at least one internal link to every page of your site. But don’t just go adding links willy nilly, using vague phrases such as ‘click here’ and ‘learn more’ – for an internal link to be truly valuable the link text needs to include a keyword for the destination page. This will be easy if you keep the idea of internal linking in the back of your mind whilst writing your copy. When opportunity arises for you to include a keyword for one of your ‘other’ pages, highlight this keyword in another color, that way when it comes time for content placement you’ll have a visual reminder of all the spots where you had intended for an internal link to go.
6. Emphasize Your Keywords
Search engines consider bold text to be important text, so… put a few of your keywords in bold. But don’t get too carried away! You don’t want to your site to look ‘spammy’. Try opting for one bold term in the introductory paragraph, one in the closing paragraph, and a couple more throughout the body text (depending on the length of your page).
7. Don’t Duplicate!
Keep your content fresh! The search engines want to see that you have new, interesting and relevant information, and they don’t look kindly on websites that copy content from other sites (not to mention the plagiarism issues this raises). Search engines also don’t want to see same content across all the pages of your website. Be sure to write new content for each individual page, relevant to the assigned keywords. If you need to talk about similar points on multiple pages, try taking a different angle and paraphrasing your text rather than repeating it word for word.
Quality Score: the Great Misnomer
One of the great Adwords misnomers (a term which suggests an interpretation that is known to be untrue) is the phrase “Quality Score”.
The name implies that it is a measure of the ad copy’s merit, when in fact it measures more than just this. It measures not just “relevancy” and landing page quality, but also “commercial intent.” However, this last piece has been largely neglected in widespread discussions about Quality Score.
It is simple to think of QS as something wholly under an advertiser’s control–we control the ad text and the relevancy of that copy to each keyword, and we control the landing pages. That said, the only excuse for poor Quality Scores might seem to be failure on the advertiser’s behalf.
QS has been a favorite focus of outsiders who are inexperienced in the paid search game. It is easy to run a report and sort by Quality Score, concluding that,“25% of your keywords have a QS of less than X and that needs fixed.”
The problem with this simplistic view is:
- A higher QS may not be in the advertiser’s best interest. More compelling copy may increase CTR but may simultaneously drive ‘unqualified traffic’ (i.e. non-converting traffic) decreasing conversion rates to a degree that the trade off isn’t worthwhile.
- A higher QS may not even be possible. If the commercial intent of users searching with that phrase is low, there may be no wording under the sun that can improve the QS beyond a certain point.
It is this last piece that the industry outsiders really don’t get.
Consider a user searching for “motorcycle”. The user’s intent isn’t particularly clear. They may want motorcycle gear, they may want information on nearby races, they might want videos, or simply a picture of a motorcycle.
Look at the screen shot above. The fact that none of the paid ads appear above the organic listings indicates that Google doesn’t see much ‘commercial intent’ here. Therefore none of the advertisers meet the minimum Bid * QS threshold needed to secure a promoted listing. It is wagered that the QS of NONE of these ads is above an 8, and potentially not even above a 5.
The advertisers here can flip copy until they’re blue in the face and it won’t impact those scores.
Note: this doesn’t mean the ads will perform badly. These could be tremendously valuable ads if those who do have a commercial intent click on the ad and this leads to a conversion (assuming an appropriate price is paid for the click).
A Proposed Solution
A simple metric to help advertisers understand whether their QS is below par because of something within their control might simply be to provide a benchmark against all other ads running on that same keyword. You may think that a QS of 5 is low, but if that score is in the 95 percentile of all ads running for that phrase, then you might be better to save time for more ‘high-value’ projects instead of trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
Straightforward Ways to Improve Page Speed (Part 2)
This continues our discussion about “page speed” and what’s needed to stay competitive in organic search rankings. If you missed first blog, go here.
Though Google said that it expects fewer than 1% of search queries to change as a result of incorporating site speed ranking to their algorithms, many site owners want to improve page speed now. Here’s three simple, straightforward ways you can.
Optimize Your Images
If your images are not optimized, they can significantly increase page load times. The problem comes when images are scaled down to fit the application rather than physically being resized. What this does is require the browser to load the full high-resolution image, when it only needs a fraction. Several free file size calculators can help you do this.
Optimize Your Files
Having clean HTML, CSS and other files can speed up your site load time. A good idea is to remove extraneous and old code from your files.
Reduce HTTP Requests
Trimming the number of components on a page can reduce the number of HTTP requests required to render a page—and in turn, shorten your page load times. Combining files using CSS Sprites is an additional way to improve page speeds.
All of the ideas above are good, but the most important strategy to keep your users and Google happy is continuing to deliver relevant content. Relevancy will always be a priority to Google; site speed a bonus.
Google Instant FAQs
1. What Is Google Instant? It’s a new feature that predicts what an online user is searching for and shows results as the user types.
2. What are the benefits? Instant results allow searchers to find what they’re looking for without clicking ‘enter’ or ‘search’. According to Google this provides faster and smarter searches.
3. What has changed, and what has not? The ‘basics’ remain the same. Google has been predicting and suggesting search terms for at least a year based on a user’s search history and location. Google Instant takes this a step further by displaying a full page of results before the user has finished typing. With every character typed the organic, paid, maps and news results change in real time. It’s important to note that Google Instant does not affect all Google search results. It can be turned off by users who don’t like it. Plus, Google Instant is only available at Google.com, so for now things will stay the same for users who search exclusively in their browser toolbar.
4. Does Google Instant impact or rankings? According to Google the answer is ‘no’. A well-rounded approach to solid content development and optimization should actually benefit from Google Instant. Now it’s simply faster, and the results will change as the query changes. However, Google Instant undoubtedly creates a major traffic bias towards top ranked search results for short-tail keywords.
5. Does Google Instant impact my PPC ads? No. Targeted pay-per-click ads continue to show as they normally would – just faster, and will change as the query changes. Click here to view how Google Instant will affect Impressions and Click-Through rates.
For more information, see this article on Search Engine Land.
Is Your Web Page Fast Enough? (Part 1)
That’s the question heating up blog airwaves since Google incorporated site speed as one of more than 200 signals used to determine search rankings.
To get answers, site owners are using the Google Page Speed Tool and Google Webmaster Tools > Site Performance to track the speed of their site. The tool is bringing relief to some and heartburn to others. For those of you who are experiencing the latter, let us help you interpret what the tool compares—and what comparisons would be more valuable.
The tool may report your site is slower than XX% of sites on the Internet because it’s comparing very simple pages with a few images and little or no dynamic content. More valuable comparisons are whether your pages are faster—or as fast—than your ranking competitors and comparing actual page types. For example, if you have a blog, what are the page speeds of other blogs? If you have an ecommerce store, what are the speeds of other ecommerce stores?
Another tip about learning if your page is speedy enough for search rankings, is to assume sites that have achieved first page rank in certain categories already have a page speed that is acceptable to Google. So learning how you compare to these sites is also a valuable guideline.
Read Part 2 blog that shares simple, straightforward ways to improve page speed.
How Mind Mapping Helps Smart Solutions’ Clients
For awhile now, our team has utilized Mind Mapping, from the tools from a great client, Mindjet. Mind Mapping has assisted in organizing client’s site architecture while easily and quickly highlighting areas of weaknesses for content structure. Recently, KM World Magazine interviewed Smart Solutions and posted an article, titled Enriching Web Sites and Engage Customers Better.
Excerpt:
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Firms that rely on advanced Internet services for their marketing, customer relations and other business processes are turning to knowledge management solutions that measure customer response to Web sites, in order to improve traffic and to identify customer preferences so they can retain them and boost sales.
Smart Solutions, a software and Web development company, was working with a local nonprofit firm that wanted to redevelop its Web site to gain new members and achieve higher attendance at events, many of them fundraisers.
“The non-profit wanted to drive traffic to the site, then have visitors engaged in a meaningful way,” says Smart Solutions President Mark Knowles. Smart Solutions was using MindManager 8 from Mindjet for meetings and to collect relevant information from the Internet and other resources. A feature of the software enabled Knowles to map the existing structure of the nonprofit organization’s Web site.
“By exporting the navigation structure of the site into MindManager, we were able to see the relationships between different [pages and elements],” Knowles says. MindManager displayed the navigation structure as different branches from the same tree, and it was easy to see that some branches weren’t grouped together properly, according to Knowles. That meant that it was difficult for users to navigate.
“The site was static. That tends to happen because Web sites are built organically, a page at a time. After a while, they become disorganized,” he says. “People would come there, but they would leave quickly.”
That’s if they found the site at all. According to Knowles, part of the organization’s problem was branding. People could find the site if they knew what to look for, but they would likely miss it if their search was less specific.
Google, Yahoo and similar services use site navigation as part of their search parameters, according to Knowles. “That’s part of the SEO [search engine optimization] puzzle,” he says.
Once the site was revamped, it was much more intuitive and easier to use, with the nonprofit organization benefiting as a result. Some wording was changed as well, helping to catch the attention of the search engines.
As a result, the site has seen a 25 percent increase in traffic and a 40 percent increase in conversions (memberships and attendance at events), Knowles says.
Full Article
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Mind Mapping, as well as the other products we use and love, help our team deliver client solutions for increased web traffic and conversions on their web sites.
Choosing the Right Business Name – from an Internet Marketing Perspective
What’s in a name? Frankly, a LOT. Any marketing and branding agency can go through the important details of naming a new business or one that is renaming from a brand perspective. It’s fascinating how business naming research is performed, tested and consumer analysis is created – in fact I totally respect it. However (and this is important), it is essential that this research is embodied from an Internet Marketing perspective.
Here’s how to protect yourself from online blindness when naming your business:
#1 – Make sure the domain name is available or easy to acquire ahead of time. Domain names, i.e. www.yourbusiness.com are the life force of branding online. Your domain availability should include these principles:
- You can “see it, spell it.” In other words, it’s simple
enough to resonate without a lot of possibility for misspellings. - Determine that most or all extensions are available. Everyone thinks of the ‘.com’ but it’s important to grab the important extensions (.net, .org, .us, etc.). If you’re a larger organization – grab as many as you can. Brand hijacking – by your competition buying those domains is not a pleasant situation to find yourself in.
- Misspellings are available. If there is a possibility of misspelling your domain name, grab all the necessary misspellings too. A random example would be: www.smithswarehouse.com – be sure to grab www.smithwarehouse.com and www.smithswearhouse.com
- Moderate length. We get the question, “Is my domain too long?” quite a bit actually. With domain names at a premium these days, it’s more important to “see it, spell it” than it is to keep it short. Moderate length of the domain is okay as long as it’s not overwhelming.
- Domain names (i.e. business names) with search specific keywords have a double advantage. Although sometimes this is not practical, it is helpful.
#2 – Evaluate the competitive landscape of your business name online. If it’s competitive, be prepared to have the resources necessary (time and money) to effectively launch an SEO campaign early. Here are some basic things to check when evaluating the competitiveness of your keyword phrases:
- Review the total number of Google results for your prospective business name. (As a very general rule of thumb – If it’s less than a total 250,000 results, and incorporate SEO from the beginning, you’ll be golden). Any words results over 1 Million – plan ahead for potentially robust ongoing SEO resources.
- Review PPC bids for your phrase, amount of PPC ads. You can use Google’s AdWords tool to evaluate the average bid amount for your business name. Anywhere over $1.00 per click mark may get expensive and is an indicator for the need of a moderately or severely competitive SEO marketplace.
- Evaluate the number of links/number of pages indexed of top results for your keyword phrases using tools such as the: Bruce Clay Toolbar, SEO Book , Yahoo Site Explorer. Plan on acquiring the same amount of links and pages of content indexed as the other top 10 listings. If this will take significant effort, that may be an indicator for a competitive marketplace.
- Evaluate whether you business name of choice has associations outside of your category. For example, a recent organization named their business the same name as a popular TV show – their rankings were buried at onset outside of local specific searches.
#3 – Check to see if your Social Media profiles are available. Social media is essential for business marketing in most all cases, so double check to see if your profiles/usernames are available. The big three would be Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – but that’s just a start. Social media profiles, such as: www.facebook.com/smartsolutions or www.twitter.com/smartsolutions are just as powerful, and just as limited, as domain names. Check profiles using www.knowem.com.
As you can see, there are many factors to determining a valid, compelling business name at the onset. Along with your branding, marketing research efforts – don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you get out of the gate by not reviewing the online marketplace of your potential business name F-I-R-S-T.
We welcome comments on example stories – please post!
By: Wendy Roe
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