4 Old SEO Tactics You Should Avoid

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Jenny Stradling

SEO is a huge, booming industry that at the same time lacks a substantial amount of standardization. Let me use an analogy here to help you understand what I’m getting at.

If you go to hire a carpenter to remodel the interior of your home, you can check to see if he’s licensed, right? You could also ask him for some pictures of his work, what professional associations or organizations he belongs to and how many years of experience he has. If he’s own a business, you could check the BBB rating and look up reviews online. By the time you check all of the facts about this carpenter, and maybe a couple others, the right one to work with becomes clear.

Not so with SEO! There are really no respected “SEO” licenses or certifications used broadly across the industry. Also, because SEO is so technical and dynamic, you really can’t physically examine the results of a company’s work. Not to mention, there are so many other variables per website that come in to play (budget, platform issues, corporate restrictions, etc) that it makes it nearly impossible to compare one SEO’s work against another.

When you talk with different companies, you could hear wildly different opinions on what tactics you should implement to improve your web visibility. Some make these claims just to make the sale, while others are simply mistaken or outdated in their approach.

What’s worse is that you never know what’s going to happen until you actually try it… which could cost you large amounts of time and money… and create a HUGE mess!

In an effort to help you avoid hiring a “bogus SEO” I have prepared a short list:

4 Claims and Tactics SEO Companies Use that You Should Avoid

While different companies will suggest various strategies and tactics, there are some claims and tactics they recommend which you should avoid focusing on at all costs. Here are some of those:

1) Focusing on organic rankings as your final results – Increased search engine rankings are always a good thing, but how valuable are they really? If your SEO company helps you rank for many terms, but you receive few customers from those efforts, is it worth it to pay that company’s fee for those rankings? The real goal any SEO company should help you achieve is a great ROI on the dollars you spend with them.

*Don’t forget about our previous post: Why Tracking Your Organic Search Rankings Will Drive You Insane

2) Emphasizing keywords, not user experience – Your site does need to target certain keywords that have a high likelihood of converting. However, if keywords appear too often (“spamming”), that detracts from the message you attempt to convey to the visitors of your site. Within the content of your website, you should focus on the value you offer your visitors and how you can help them solve the problems they have. The keywords should appear too, but only where they seem most natural.

*Remember: The user should ALWAYS come first, SEO is second.

3) 1000’s of links, forum posts, and blog comments – Some companies promise to give you an outrageous amount of these types of links. At first glance, this seems good because your instinct is to think “more is better.” However, the algorithms have changed… a LOT. Several years ago, Google liked large quantities of links, but now Google focuses on quality. Links are still extremely important for increasing your search rankings, but now it’s more important they come from quality websites topically related to yours. A small quantity of quality links will help your site more than a large quantity of poor quality links. In fact, a large quantity of links like this can actually get your website penalized.

*Marketing Tip: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

4) Large quantities of on-site content – Some SEO’s claim the more pages you have on your website, the better. Others recommend certain word lengths on each page, because they believe 1000-word articles outrank 500-word articles. In reality, content is viewed similarly to links by Google: quality trumps quantity every time. If you want to, think of it this way: a quantity of quality content works best.

*Reminder: Content is still King, but it has to be the RIGHT content: 1 Gigantic, Huge, Monstrous Reason Why Quality Content is Necessary for your Website

Proceed with Caution Before Working with Any SEO Company

Because SEO lacks so much standardization, you’ll hear many ridiculous claims from the companies you approach, and these are just a small sampling of such claims. If you start hearing your SEO company talk about using these tactics, you might want to consider moving on. Your search engine rankings, and your bottom line, will thank you for it.

Shameless Plug for Eminent SEO

We have had the opportunity to work with thousands of websites over the years. As the algorithm updates have dictated updated strategies, Eminent SEO has quickly adjusted to accommodate. Because we have access to thousands of website back-ends and analytical data we can generally anticipate a change and update our strategies before the general public makes sense of what is happening with just one site…

In other words: Our strategies are lasting, yet dynamic and built to grown with the algorithm changes.

Call us if you want to talk more on SEO. We love this stuff. (800) 871.4130

Jenny Stradling

CEO EminentSEO.com. SEO and SEM Strategist, social media girl, blogger, music lover, soul searcher. Collects: books, pictures, quotes, music, art, dreams...

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3 Ways Social Media Impacts SEO

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Jenny Stradling

You know that everything on the web is social. The phrase “let’s get social” appears on just about everyone’s website. But, until the last couple years or so, social media had very little, if any, impact on your search rankings. It still had value, no doubt, as companies able to garner huge followings were able to drive followers to their websites and increase brand awareness and sales, among other things.

But now, social has a lot to do with your search engine optimization strategy. We’ll show 3 concrete ways in which it does.

Examples of how Social Media directly impacts SEO

Personalized Results

If there’s one big trend on the web, it’s relevancy, and personalized search is always more relevant to the searcher. You see that icon with the circle around it? If you search in Google and see that icon, it means it’s a personal search result you’re more likely to see when signed in to Google.

When you sign in to Google, it examines people who are in your Google+ circles, and whenever you type in a search term, you’re more likely to see a result from someone in your circles than any other search result. For now, Google only does this for its own social network, but other social media websites are lobbying to be included.

This is also true for Bing. Because Bing is integrated with Facebook, when you are signed in to Facebook and you search Bing, guess what shows up? Social Results:

Follower Count/Social Shares

Google takes these two important metrics into account when deciding which content is more authoritative. Follower count isn’t emphasized nearly as much as the number of social shares (retweets, Facebook shares, LinkedIn shares etc…) because it can be easily manipulated, but both metrics play a role in determining your search engine rankings.

Think of it this way: say your content gets 100 social shares on average each time you promote it on a social network, but say your competitor’s only gets 5. All other factors being equal, who’s more likely the trustworthy source of information?

Searching Directly on Social Sites

Facebook recently introduced its new “Graph Search.” It’s slightly different from Google in that it searches your friends, places, interest, and photos to help you immediately find an answer to your question, rather than providing a link to a website. Practically speaking, you might use Graph Search to look for “Chinese restaurants.” Then, you can see which of your friends went to a Chinese restaurant near you.

Which are you more likely to trust: a highly rated restaurant that people you don’t know on Google say is popular, or a Chinese restaurant your best friend recommends, whose tastes you know you like?

And the interesting part is SEO has almost no place in this type of search.

Build Your Social Media Following!

The most important takeaway from all of this is that being active on social media is essential to your search visibility now, and in the future. At a basic level, develop a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest, and give away interesting content you think will benefit your target audience. It takes a ton of hard work to build and maintain your social media profiles, but it definitely helps increase your marketing ROI. If managing your social media accounts is too much for you, remember you can always contact Eminent SEO for help. We offer a full array of social media services from banner designs to fully managed solutions.

Jenny Stradling

CEO EminentSEO.com. SEO and SEM Strategist, social media girl, blogger, music lover, soul searcher. Collects: books, pictures, quotes, music, art, dreams...

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Common SEO Mistakes | Are You Making Them?

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Star Padilla

Matt Cuts released “The Top 5 SEO Mistakes Webmasters Make” which he mentions, though these were not the worst SEO mistakes you could make, they were however the most common.

Biggest Mistakes He Covers In the Video:

Is your site craw-lable?
Are you including words in your content in the order of which people will search?
Is your content compelling and marketable? Are you giving share value?
Is your title and description maximized on your pages with most traffic?
Not using webmaster resources and knowing how Google and SEO works.

This video is just another reminder that also supports our emphasis on the value of quality content that is optimized for search engines while adding value to your readers.

Enjoy!

Star Padilla

You could say I'm a chatter box with an eye for design. I'm what you’d call a digital strategist. Helping companies and individuals focus on making their businesses money while managing their social media platforms, content and audit their overall design/brand.

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1 Gigantic, Huge, Monstrous Reason Why Quality Content is Necessary for your Website

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Zachary Ankeny

“Content is king” – this cliché is routinely tossed around the digital marketing world with reckless abandon. Unfortunately, it leads many companies to believe the quantity, not the quality, of the content matters most.

The reality is the quantity of your content pleases search engines, while quality content helps your business attract paying customers.

Why is Content Necessary?

Recent changes in Google’s algorithm have forced website owners to create quality content in order to rank well. Google made these changes because that’s what the marketplace demands. Think about it this way – do you remember several years ago when you used to browse the web, and then you would click on one of the first 3 results, only to find the website you landed on was loaded with ads, the content was awkwardly worded, and for some reason, the same phrase and similar ones were repeatedly interjected into random spots in the content?

Back in those days, this technique worked on Google. But, as you might expect and based on personal experience, you would rather encounter content that’s interesting and answers the question, right? Google was the first to understand that, so it’s been modifying its algorithm to get that annoying content ranked lower and the interesting, useful content ranked higher. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better than ever before, and it’s clearly heading that direction in the future. Some of the recent major algorithm changes emphasizing quality content include:

Fresh (November 2011) – Actually gives preference to sites that regularly publish new content
Penguin (April 2012) – Punished websites using keywords in content too frequently (called “keyword stuffing” or “spamming”)
Panda (February 2011) – Thin content and sites with high amounts of low-value content had their rankings reduced. As of the writing of this post, Panda has experienced 25 subsequent updates.

Keys to Writing Stellar Content that Builds Trust and Grows Sales

If you’re not familiar with writing optimized website content, or if you recently started developing your own, you might not know what works best when writing web content. That’s actually a topic requiring an entire series of blog posts, but here are a few keys to getting started at writing content your visitors find useful:

It’s all about the headline – To get people to actually click through from the search engines to your page, you have to have a killer headline. For starters, use “how-to” and list posts – “7 tips to…” because these titles are time-test and always convert well.
The quality of your customer depends on the quality of your content – Always keep this in mind when writing. If you write short, general posts, people will leave your website. In-depth posts that provide solutions to specific questions your customers ask work well. Instead of asking your customer service team the question, imagine yourself providing the answer when writing your blog article.
Remember the 80/20 rule – 80% of the content on your blog and website should provide something of value to your readers. 20% should promote your business, products, and services. If you go any further than this, you risk looking like you only care about yourself, which scares your readers away.
Humanize your blog – Today’s consumer wants to do business with a person, not a nameless, faceless corporation. Every once in a while, blog about what’s going on at your business – what office games you play, or if a staff member is having a baby. Talk about new hires. Discuss your favorite things about the current weather. Keep these within that 20% rule though!

Now You’re Off and Running!

No, your blog won’t radically transform your business over night, but if you apply a consistent, dedicated strategy over a period of months, you will notice more and better things happening to your digital sales. If you need web content developed, learn more about Eminent SEO’s experienced web content writers and blog writing services.

Zachary Ankeny

After attaining my Associates Degree in Visual communications in 2000, I set off on a long career as a freelance writer and graphic designer. I have designed and headed many marketing campaigns for companies big and small all around the country. It is my belief that graphic design and writing go hand-in-hand, as they are both forms of communication. My non-fiction works have been published in dozens of magazines and publications. I have written for – and worked with – organizations such as: Banner Hospitals, The Jerome Historical Society, The Arizona Historical Society, City of Tempe, City of Bakersfield, Town of Gilbert, Wildhorse Ranch Rescue, Cynic Magazine, e|Fiction Magazine, and many more. Writing and designing is my passion and I look forward to continuing on with it for many years to come.

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6 Things Your Website Needs in Order to Be Successful Online

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Jenny Stradling

As an internet marketer, I can sometimes forget that not website owner understands the basic things they need to have a successful business online.

I have created a MUST HAVE list of 6 basic things all business websites need to be successful online (in no particular order):

1) Quality Content and Calls to Action

Content can take many forms: written information, images, infographics, videos, games, widgets, etc. When creating your content you should think about your users first. Who are they? Why are they here? Give them something to relate to, something that sparks their interest and a reason to act now.

Content is also important for search engine value. Google and the other search engines want to serve up the most relevant information being searched for. If your content is “thin”, outdated or not optimized properly for the keywords you want to rank for – you really need to invest into some updated content – NOW!

2) A Blog – Updated Often

Of course a blog is more content, but the beauty in having a blog ON your business website is it is generally an easy way for you (or your marketer) to keep your content fresh and up to date. In order to see the true value of a blog, it must be on your company website (www.yourwebsite.com/blog) and it must be updated at least a few times a month. If you aren’t keeping it up to date it really adds no value. The key is to write about interesting information relevant to your audience and keep it current.

A blog is also a great way to link to important areas of your website, giving the users a reason to click through to the landing pages that you use to push your products (*note, this is also good for SEO value). We also always suggest you install social sharing icons on your blog to make it super easy for your readers to share your content.

3) Social Media

Social indicators actually enhance your website visibility, so even from just an SEO standpoint, social is important. Also, many sites, like Pinterest for example, have high domain authority and when you create profile your verified website profile link creates a nice authority link to your website.

Of course there are several other key benefits to having business social profiles. For example: brand visibility, new and current client engagement, direct clicks to your website, social shares that contain your website, brand or products and even brand reputation management.

Just like your website blog, your social profiles should be kept up to date if you want them to really benefit your website and business. You should be sharing often, posting interesting content, images, videos and links to important information on your site. You should also link to your important profiles from your website, making it easier for your clients to find you on their favorite social platforms.

4) Website Marketing

In order to drive targeted traffic to your website, you are going to have to do some form of website promotion and marketing. Internet marketing can mean a number of things from Google Pay Per Click Campaigns to High Profile Banner Ads.

Here at Eminent SEO we believe in a custom marketing solution for each client. This generally starts with a website audit, competitive analysis and a market research project to help us better understand your needs specifically. A new marketing campaign is always a test, but if you analyze and strategize on the front end, you are at least giving your marketing dollars a better chance of converting into sales.

Because the web is such a competitive space, we really recommend you hire a professional marketer to handle your website marketing. This is key to the success of your online business and is a MUST have for anyone trying to make money online. It takes money to make money. Marketing isn’t an expense though, it’s an investment!

5) Website SEO

Your website needs to be structurally sound, technically optimized and include your marketing keyword strategy if you expect any of the above to result in increased search engine traffic. SEO is really an umbrella term that covers a wide range of on and off page variables that impact the way the search engines view and rank your website.

Just like any good marketing strategy starts with research and analysis, so does SEO. We really need to fully audit your website from a technical aspect in order to assess your website SEO needs specifically. Many website owners don’t realize they have major issues with their website that are preventing them from becoming an authority on the web.

Proper SEO will ensure your website can be crawled properly as well as help tell the search engines what your website is an authority for. When the search engines can easily tell what you are all about, you have a much better chance of getting visibility in the search engine results for the keywords you are targeting. Better SEO = better website traffic.

6) Conversion Tracking

Okay, so you have a beautiful website with optimized content, proper calls to action and a solid marketing strategy in place – good for you! But, how do you know if you are getting traffic and how do you know if it’s converting?

Most websites use some form of analytics, such as Google Analytics, to track their website traffic. Knowing where your traffic is coming from is important, but if you can’t tie your traffic sources to conversions, how do you know if you are spending your marketing dollars properly?

If you are a call centric business, you should have some form of call tracking metrics built into your site. This allows you to tie your calls into traffic source so you have a real idea of where your calls are coming from. You can also rate your calls and input conversions – so each month you can see exactly where your conversions are coming from. This is powerful information that you can take back to your marketing team so they can focus on marketing to the areas that convert!

Need Help?

Many of the things I listed above seem may seem basic or simple to some, but you’d be surprised how many website owners I talk to who are not leveraging all of these techniques. If you need help with your website and marketing, just call us at 800-871-4130. We can come up with a custom solution that works for your specific website needs.

Jenny Stradling

CEO EminentSEO.com. SEO and SEM Strategist, social media girl, blogger, music lover, soul searcher. Collects: books, pictures, quotes, music, art, dreams...

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Website Analytics Audit: 5 Things You Should Know About Your Business Website

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Jenny Stradling

If you are considering a new marketing campaign for your business website, there are several important elements you should look at. I typically suggest using a website checklist to help you narrow down the most important elements for your needs specifically. Custom marketing strategies are essential to a successful campaign, and a custom solution can only be delivered by auditing the proper areas first.

Although it’s important to look at the bigger picture, if your budget is limited and you want to focus on the most important things first, here is a list of 5 things you should absolutely include in your website analytics audit:

1) Where your traffic is coming from (source)

Once you understand where your traffic is coming from, you can better understand where you should be spending your marketing dollars. Sometimes that means following each conversion back to the source it came from and then generating a list of top sources to invest into because they convert the best. Google Analytics will allow you to see what percentage of your overall traffic is coming from organic search engines, referral sites, direct hits and paid search.

2) What keywords people are using to find you

Although Google blocks a fair amount of your keyword traffic, it’s good to take a look at what keywords are driving traffic to your site. Just as you should follow your conversions back to your traffic source, you should also track your conversions back to the keyword used to find you. If you know what people are searching for, you can use those keywords more in your website optimization and off site marketing. It’s also good to know what isn’t converting so you don’t waste your budget on keywords and techniques that don’t covert.

3) What page your traffic is landing on

When you know what keywords are leading traffic to specific pages to your site, you can focus on making those pages more optimized for conversions. By incorporating those keywords into the on-page SEO, content and calls to action, you can increase your conversions by really improving the user experience by giving them exactly what they are looking for.

4) Top socially shared content

If you are blogging and you don’t already have social sharing built in to your posts INSTALL NOW! Your blog should be ON your website and you should track what content is getting the best visibility and social shares. If you are blogging regularly, you should be covering a number of target keywords in your content and individual post optimization. Once you see a particular type of blog getting a lot of traffic and shares, you know where you should focus more of your efforts.

5) Conversion channel – how well your website is converting

If you have implemented a solid keyword strategy, your website is ranking but your traffic isn’t converting, there might be a problem with your website. A lot of people blame marketing but the truth is marketing can drive traffic to your site, but if your website is outdated, not clear on what to do or hard to navigate, your visitors will try another site instead. If your website sucks, people know there are 1000’s of others to check out instead. Keep your users there by evaluating your conversion channel and developing a strategy to give the traffic exactly what they need to convert.

BONUS: Know your goals, short and long term

You’d be surprised how many SEO clients look for rankings and traffic, but they have no idea how that translates into sales and profit!

You need to understand what you can realistically expect from your marketing dollars so that your goals make sense for your budget. You should start with what you can afford and then once you reach your initial goals, reinvest so you can go after bigger ones! If you are not meeting your short term goals in the expected time frame, you might want to reevaluate what you are doing and adjust your strategies.

Final thoughts:

SEO and online marketing is all about testing. You need to develop a strategy based off of your initial research, but when you implement a strategy you have to watch it and adjust. It can take several months to get your strategy just right depending on a number of variables. Before you make major adjustments, look at how much traffic is coming in – you should ensure you have collected enough data to analyze your marketing efforts properly.

Analyze, test, analyze again, adjust – that is the KEY to a successful marketing campaign.

If you want help with a website audit, we have a range of custom audits we can perform for you…

Just call us at 800-871-4130 or set up a discovery call by emailing hello@eminentseo.com

Thanks and happy analyzing!

Jenny Stradling

CEO EminentSEO.com. SEO and SEM Strategist, social media girl, blogger, music lover, soul searcher. Collects: books, pictures, quotes, music, art, dreams...

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Why SEO is Not Dead

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Jenny Stradling

SEO is not dead! And, if you are reading this, neither are you… PHEW! Just like the Mayans predictions were wrong, so were the predictions that SEO would die in 2012…

SEO will never die and here’s why:

Unless ALL of the search engines die (including Google who is now worth over $250 Billion dollars) or the government shuts down the internet (or you know, Zombies take over the planet and kill all electricity) then there will always be a need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is so much more than optimizing a web page for the engines. You can optimize a number of things: videos, articles, images, social media profiles, press releases, newsletters, blog posts, mobile applications…. Heck, you can even optimize your Tweets.

And not only can you optimize all forms of digital content, if you aren’t, you should be!

“Isn’t SEO just spam?”

I think people first became scared of SEO when Google started cracking down on websites who were practicing spam techniques. Unfortunately many website marketers who practice spamming call themselves SEO’s, giving the rest of us who are legitimately doing SEO a bad name. Google has been updating their algorithms for several years now, but when they rolled out Panda and then Penguin all hell broke loose and many website owners started reconsidering their marketing strategies.

The fact of the matter is SEO is NOT spam. Spam is spam, so there you have it.

The right way to do SEO:

I am not saying there isn’t a “wrong” way to do SEO. There is such a thing as OVER optimization and Google has come right out and said certain methods that used to work are no longer effective. As the internet continues to evolve, and as new technologies are developed, the way people use the search engines changes as well. Clearly Google updates their algorithms to accommodate changes to human behaviors as they aim to serve up the highest quality, most relevant information on the subject being searched.

Because Google (and the other engines) are updating their algorithms frequently, we (website owners, content optimizers and SEO marketers) have to be prepared and, for lack of a better term, roll with the punches. What we do today may not work tomorrow, but there are some basics that EVERYONE should be doing. So, here is my quick list:

Oh, and let me just preface this with saying although all of this is basic, most of it requires a certain amount of SEO know how, technical skill and access to tools. But, nevertheless, here it is. If you don’t think you can implement it on your own, I highly suggest you hire a professional. They don’t pay me the big bucks for nothin’

Nail down your keyword strategy

I put this first on the list because it is the VERY first thing you need to do before you start optimizing anything online. This is an involved process and if you don’t know how to do it already, this blog post isn’t going to help you much. But, what you should know is a solid keyword strategy includes:

Keywords for conversions. Many used to believe that the highest search volume term in their space was the most important term to rank for. This is just NOT the case. Sure, you want to target key terms that bring in some volume, but it’s more important to focus on the terms that will bring in the highest quality traffic for conversions.
Keyword diversity. One of the biggest mistakes you can make post Panda/Penguin is go to heavy on any one keyword phrase. If a root term is important to you, pick at least 10-20 similar supporting phrases to include in your strategy.
Brand “keywords”. If your entire backlink index consists of anchor text keywords only, you are sending Google the wrong signal. Avoid a red flag, go heavy on variations of your brand, your URL, your product names and direct click calls to action “keywords”.

Optimize your meta data

On-page SEO consists of a number of things from basic keyword inclusion in important areas of each page, to siloing your website architecture for a deeper search engine spider crawl. When a new client comes in and asks me to do a website audit, I use a checklist of over 100 things I think are important to consider when trying to improve your website authority. However, I am often surprised how many people miss the most basic on-page SEO – your meta data! Some of the basics:

Meta Title. The title of the page is the first thing the search engines see when the visit. What a lot of people forget is that the title is also the first thing the user sees in the search engine result pages. Therefore it is extremely important that you write your page title for the search engines AND the user. We like to include the important keyword for the page along with a benefit or unique value offered. Sure, it’s nice to get rankings but if no one is clicking, what’s the point of ranking?
Meta Description. Although Google doesn’t always serve up your meta description in the search result pages (they are now using keyword rich snippets from the page content instead in many cases) I still suggest you write optimized content for the meta description. We like to include the root keyword phrase used in the title, along with a call to action. Again, we are NOT just writing for the engines here, we are writing for the users and clicks!
Meta Keywords. Back in 2009 Google announced they would no longer be using the meta keywords in their algorithm to determine where your site should rank. So, why do I bring it up now?Although Google may not be currently using this data, there is a chance they might in the future. Also, many believe that Yahoo, Bing and other engines use this data. So, although it might not be helping your Google rankings, it’s not hurting them either. However, there are some that also think you should avoid using them as your competition can simply peek at your meta data to see your strategy – so, if you do decide to use them, just keep it short and include your root targets (seen in your other meta data and content as well).

Write quality content; optimize it for your keywords

Content has always been THE most important part of any website marketing strategy. If you want the search engines to see you as an authority, your content has to be unique, relevant and fresh. Of course you want to give your users something interesting to read as well, so you don’t want to write for the engines, you want to write for your audience. However, you won’t have an audience if you don’t optimize your content for the keywords that will drive them there. So, write for your audience, but include your keywords where possible. A few content optimization tips:

Web pages. Once you have your keyword strategy and you’ve properly optimized your web page meta data, you need to write (or rewrite) your page content to include these keywords as well. I am NOT talking about keyword stuffing – so don’t get carried away. But, pay attention to your headers and be smart about how you talk about your products and services. If your goal is to rank for “red roses” make sure your content includes that term and variations of that term.
Blogs. I believe everyone should have a blog on their site. It’s the easiest way to keep your content fresh, giving your users AND the search engines reason to visit your site more often. Updated content also makes your site more of an authority on the subject, increasing your search engine value as a whole. I suggest including your keyword strategy where possible in your blog post titles, content and tagging – however, a BIG no-no is to write for the engines and not your users. If something interesting is happening in your industry, write about it, even if the content isn’t exactly in line with your overall target keywords.
Video, images and other digital content. Content isn’t just written word. Content can be a number of things from a video to an image. Because the search engines look at your website as code, the only way they will know what your videos and images are about is if you tell them through your optimization. Don’t forget to add relevant tags to your videos/images and include your keywords where possible. Oh, and this goes for your off-site content as well – when you load video to YouTube, add your keywords in the title, description and tags. If you are going to share an image socially, name the image file with your keyword, post the image with keyword related content.

Share your content

Remember that movie, Field of Dreams? Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) hears a voice that whispers, “If you build it, they will come”. That might have been true in the movie – but unfortunately it is not that easy when it comes to website marketing. You may have an interesting design, compelling content, beautiful images and videos – but if you don’t share it, no one will know it’s there. Proper sharing for higher search engine rankings involves a strategic marketing plan that includes a number of methods, but if you are looking for some tips on how you can do some of the work yourself, here are a few:

Get social. I don’t care if you are a local plumber or a big, glossy brand, you need to be social. There are a number of reasons to have a social presence online from branding, awareness, networking and partnerships to direct clicks. But as an SEO, I want to focus on the search engine value. Because social is such a large part of how people now use the web, Google and the other search engines have integrated social mentions into their algorithms. If your site and content is getting social mentions and shares than you are relevant and worthy of search engine results. So, if you are already creating interesting content – get social and share it!
Submit. Okay, this is not the time to get into the value of a press release or article syndication link – but what I will say is that quality content, with a mention of your brand or a link back, that is hosted on a quality site can pass value to your site. Some do guest posts, some submit their content to high end news sites, some pay to submit their site to a relevant web directory – there are a lot of methods. If you are looking for help in this area, well, you’ll just have to call us. It’s a strategy developed over years of trial and error. But, if you come across an opportunity to submit your site or a relevant article you wrote, don’t pass it up. Even if you don’t get a link back, just mentioning your company name as a citation can add value to your overall authority on the web.
Bait. Possibly one of the trickiest content marketing strategies, link baiting or content share baiting is one of the most powerful methods for increasing your web presence.The practice of viral marketing includes creating something people WANT to watch/read/see and share. Sometime companies have found success with developing something funny, connecting with people through a humors video or an animated meme. Others have pushed the boundaries and developed something controversial – creating content or a series of ads that hit hard and spur debates and conversation. If you are having a hard time getting visibility – creating something interesting and sharing it can end up giving you 100’s or 1000’s of shares, link backs and direct clicks.

I think it’s safe to say that SEO is harder than it used to be. In order to be a true SEO, you have to know the history of the internet, understand the search engine algorithms as well as human behavior. You have to be logical, technical and creative. You have to be humble and willing to change on the fly. You have to listen, study, test and analyze. Because of this, perhaps SEO is a dying art. Not because SEO will ever die, but because it’s hard and people don’t want to put in the work. But, I am okay with that – why? Because WE are willing to put in the hard work. And we do, every day…

Jenny Stradling

CEO EminentSEO.com. SEO and SEM Strategist, social media girl, blogger, music lover, soul searcher. Collects: books, pictures, quotes, music, art, dreams...

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How Mobile Augmented Reality Will Change the Lives of Everyone on the Planet

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Zachary Ankeny

A new movie trailer came out yesterday for the Will Ferrell movie “The Campaign.” If you want to watch the trailer, all you have to do is pull a dollar bill out of your pocket, aim your ipad, iphone, or android phone at the currency – using the app “Blippar” – and the dollar bill comes to life. Will Ferrell replaces George Washington on the bill and the various words and engravings turn into fighter jets and eagles soaring and many other “American things.”

This impressive technology comes from Blippar, a tech company in the United Kingdom, which has been hinting all over the web at the newest things they intend to become “Blippable.” The company considers it’s technology “highly advanced,” and promises that it will take us into a futuristic new world.

“Blippar™ is a revolution for traditional print and marketing offering the power to turn every single piece of print or physical branding in the real world into an instantaneous digital, interactive experience,” Blippar proudly states.

Using image-recognition technology, Blippar is able to recognize quite quickly what is on your mobile device’s screen and then enhances the reality by making the environment interactive, allowing 3d images and videos to swirl around you.

After only a single hour of Blipping nearly everything I could find, I am as confident as Blippar staff is, that this technology will definitely change the world.

While there is not a wealth of information on the company or the product yet — the start-up is still in its infancy as they are perfecting the technology — there are many videos of what this app can do, and what they plan to do.

Watch a video of “what exactly Blippar is,” and how it works.

Watch a video of how Blippar turned Virgin Media Magazine completely interactive. Billionaire Richard Branson is excited to be using this technology and is devoted to pushing Blippar’s possibilities to its limits.

Amazing video ad for Nissan/The Dark Night Rises.

Visit Blippar’s Official Website for more details, images, and demos.

Zachary Ankeny

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SEO: Post-Penguin Era Craves More Promotion than Content

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Zachary Ankeny

Much confusion still abounds within the web-world as to how exactly the recent Google algorithm updates have affected rankings for established and new websites. While great debates over links, content, and keyword strategy still rage – often times contradicting from source to source – one marketing practice has remained virtually unaffected by the updates: promotion.

The bottom line of search engine optimization is, and always has been, increasing visibility. Many websites and pages’ rankings on Google’s search results immediately declined right after the algorithms had been updated. While their placing slipped on Google, placing remained virtually unchanged, or – in some cases – had risen higher on other engines such as Yahoo, Bing, etc.

Increased rankings on other search engines are always a good thing, though Google is still the most widely used search engine, by far.

There still is no 100% effective way of guaranteeing your site a high Google ranking, but promotion is a 100% effective way of gaining visibility to your site. Whether your content is informative, entertaining, or just simply “sought-after,” good content will draw-in traffic, if only it is properly promoted. Guest-blogging on other sites, advertising, social media interaction, and reaching into new forms of media are all very good forms of promotion.

As regular web-users become more savvy and comfortable with delving into new devices, hardware, and software; brands and companies also need to feel comfortable reaching into these media outlets. Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, and other apps/sites are virally becoming more and more popular. With their growing popularity, comes a necessity for businesses and websites to acquire an understanding of and familiarity with these products.

Though promotion within these various sites and applications is a growing necessity, maintaining and creating new and relevant promotional content in numerous locations is requiring more and more time, making it a full-time job for not only one person, but a staff of dozens.

This need for promotion management is boosting business and requiring more employees for marketing and SEO firms alike. While marketing and advertisement agencies had been hit hard by the move from print to web promotion in the past, businesses that embrace classic promotion tactics and implement them into new forms of technology have a wealth of opportunities ahead of them.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” was quoted by Alphonse Karr in the 19^th Century, but as we are reaching further into the 21^st Century, the quote is still relevant. While big changes are afoot within the online community, adaptation and promotion continue to produce great results that allow your brand and company to remain visible, successful, and profitable.

Zachary Ankeny

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