Register Your Domain for More Than One Year – SEO Tip Week 15

I have an easy SEO Tip this week. Make sure you register you domain name for more than one year. Register it for a minimum of three years and more if you can. This is especially important for new sites. The search engines, particularly Google, want to see that you believe your site is going to be successful. They also want to be sure that your site will be meaningful. A good indicator can be fort the length of time you register your domain. And the first place they check is with your domain register company (e.g. Godaddy.com).

Google has also filed United States Patent Application 20050071741 stating this very fact.

“Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.”

Another good reason to increase your domain registration period is it will prevent you from accidentally losing the domain name because you overlooked or didn’t receive the reminder email to renew.

While this tip is not going to rocket you to #1 in the search results, it can provide a quicker exit from the Google Sandbox and may provide some boost in your rankings. With so many contributing factors why overlook one of the easiest things to do. Go ahead and renew, it’ll do a website good!

Every Web Page Should Be Unique – SEO Tip Week 14

Every page on your web site should have its own story and clear message. You must be sure that the search engines have no doubt what each page should rank well for. Do not mix signals or too keyword phrases on a page. If you are selling vinyl replacement windows, have a page directly focused on that product line. If you look at this example link from Creative Energy, a local client of Big Oak, you can see the focus on vinyl replacement windows is clear from the content.. Being a local Richmond, VA company, their goal for this page was top placement in Google for the search term ‘Richmond vinyl replacement windows’. They have the #1 and #2 listing. But we also have them ranked #12 for the term ‘vinyl replacement windows’. How did we accomplish this?

We gave this page individual attention and that made the difference. Let’s look deeper and check out the factors that make a web page unique in your web site.

Title

The title sets up the page for the search engine. Short and direct, this is a good title that states clearly what the page is about to the search engines.

<title>Vinyl Replacement Windows from Simonton Window | Creative Energy of Richmond, Virginia</title>

Meta Tags

While the importance of meta tags is questioned, using the description tag has its uses. And if you are going to use it, make sure it mentions your targeted key phrases. Thr meta description tag on our example page also contains the key phrase vinyl replacement windows.

<meta name=“description” http-equiv=“description” content=“Creative Energy, the exterior experts, installs vinyl replacement windows in the Richmond, Virginia region and recommends Simonton Windows to homeowners in central Virginia.”>

Even though the meta keyword tag is ignored for the most part, if it is part of your plan, make it count and make it different for each page.

<meta name=“keywords” http-equiv=“keywords” content=“vinyl replacement window, simonton window, replacement window, replacement window, vinyl window richmond virginia “>

Keyword Density

I just wrote post on the myth of OPTIMAL keyword density, but having the keyword phrase on the page, of course, makes good sense. If you check out the keyword density for this page for the term vinyl replacement windows it is 4.21%. This may be a little high but if you read the page it doesn’t feel “spammy” so it is acceptable. Remember, you are writing for the search engines and people.

Linking, External and Internal

Make sure you have a few keyword-rich links to your important pages from external sites and your internal links. This is referred to as deep linking and will help your site’s ranking.

Here you can see an article written for the replacement windows with the exact link text we want in the author’s box. For the internal linking, the footer on Creative Energy’s web site contains a link to the Vinyl Replacement Window page with the link text ‘REPLACEMENT WINDOWS‘, a good text link even without the keyword ‘vinyl’ included.

Building Your Web Site One Page at a Time

As you can see this page was given the individual attention it needed to show high in the search engine rankings, but the real message of this SEO tip is that this page is has its own voice on the client’s site. If you view the other product web pages for Creative Energy you will find they follow suit with targted titles, meta tags, content and linking. Take the time to craft each web page individually and take care to spend time on the components I’ve listed.

Graphic Headlines Can Work for SEO – SEO Tip Week 13

This examples in this tip are no longer online. The recommendations are still the same. Using graphic headlines are still okay if you use the title and alt tags.

This week’s tip is for those sites which are graphically heavy or rely on a specific typeface for their headlines. While we at Big Oak SEO always prefer a HTML text headline, we understand that sometimes the client or designer would really prefer to use a typeface that isn’t available through HTML. Instead of being heavy handed and insisting the site be changed to all HTML text we have gone with another, simpler approach.

Let me clarify this: I would prefer to see HTML text used and with all things being equal HTML text will always be better than any techniques applied with graphic text.

As I have written in the past, I feel that examples are the best way to learn and we have applied this technique to Grote Consulting, a long-time client of Big Oak.

You can view the Performance Appraisal page we will be using in the example.

We used the following HTML code to place a <H1> tag around our graphic text and allow the search engines to read it as a heading:

<h1><img src=“/images/headers/performance-appraisal.jpg” alt=“Effective Employee Performance Appraisal Tools” title=“Effective Employee Performance Appraisal Tools” width=“750” height=“96” /></h1>

The key is using both the alt tag and the title tag within the image source HTML code. Matching both tags with the same text is helpful. The search engines may devalue the alt and title tags, but when they conform with the HTML text and title of the page they can contribute to higher search engine rankings.

Further using this web page as an example I have provided a link the the Google cache for this page. The H1 header is clearly identified even though we used graphic text on page. And finally, to prove that Google respects the proper use of this SEO technique I did a search for the H1 header ‘Effective Employee Performance Appraisal Tools’ and the example page is the #2 result in Google.

Let me repeat this, using HTML text is always better, but using graphical text with the technique I have shown you will help your rankings too. If you try spamming the alt or title tag in the image code you are abusing this technique and lower rankings will follow. Use this wisely and be honest when adding text to the alt and title tags, especially when wrapping an H1 tag around them.

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Hope you have enjoyed this weekly SEO tip. If you have any suggestions or questions for Big Oak, please let us know. If you submit a question we like, we may use it in our tips. Contact Big Oak SEO to help you drive traffic and sales to your site.

Internet Marketing with Articles – SEO Tip Week 12

If you have been involved in the mad world of search engine optimization for any time you know that building links to your site is importance in achieving high search engine rankings, especially in Google. You might also know how important writing and submitting articles can be in your quest for one-way links which lead to page one results.

Before starting an article marketing campaign, make sure you invest in a sound strategy. You don’t want to write an article, submit it and then forget it. Article writing should be part of a bigger SEO plan. What do I mean? Well, I like real world examples and Big Oak has many great SEO success stories, so lets take a look at one of our many successful clients who have used articles in their SEO campaign: Danforth Diamond.

Articles, A Gem of a Strategy
Danforth started with us with a brand new site, no search engine visibility and a small budget. Of course they had lofty goals. They wanted to rank highly for search terms such as diamond engagement rings and engagement rings. Both are very competitive search terms and needed an aggressive, yet ethical SEO Company. We have helped them achieve the rankings they were hoping for (#4 in Google, for engagement rings) and article marketing was an important part of the SEO process.

We have published many well-written articles for Danforth, with a variety of links from the author’s box and the article itself pointing to the jeweler’s home page and internal pages of the site. Quality writing is a standard at Big Oak and this has allowed us to have a greater distribution across of the Internet which provides more inbound links for Danforth. Be sure your writing stands above the competition. Take a look at similar articles and be sure your article says something new or at least says it better.

SEO and the Article: Working Together
So what is the strategy I’m talking about? Use articles are part of a coordinated marketing effort. Back up your article with multiple SEO strategies to make the article more effective. Danforth decided to sell a new metal called Palladium. They are ranked #3 in Google for the search term ‘Palladium Jewelry’ and rank well for other palladium search terms so our strategy works. Here is how we did it. (Links show actual examples)

1. Write the landing page for palladium jewelry.
2. Write article about palladium and why it is a good choice for jewelry. Distribute article.
3. Write press release about palladium being available at Danforth Diamond. Distribute press release.
4. Frequent posts on company blog about palladium.
5. Focus link building with keywords such as palladium, jewelry, rings, etc.
6. Be patient a few months and watch top rankings appear.

Trusting the Article Source
All of these steps were vital to search ranking success but article marketing was key. Not only did it provide one-way links, it gave the potential customer information about Palladium so they could make an informed decision. It also established Danforth as a trusted and knowledgeable merchant, which made buying from them with confidence a given.

Running a successful SEO campaign requires a lot work and expertise. Well, it requires a lot of quality writing and expertise. Don’t overlook the importance of article marketing and be sure to use it wisely with other SEO efforts. It will be a better tool as part of a holistic SEO strategy rather than a one-shot, short-sighted strategy.

Article Submission Sites
It is good practice to find article sites that specialize in your article’s topic. It will give you a higher chance for being published and makes backlinks more relative. Be on the lookout for sites that have articles catering to your web site’s subject matter. You can easily find such sites by searching for your “keyword” + article in the Google search box. Here are some generic article submission sites we use at Big Oak.

• Idea Marketers – http://www.ideamarketers.com/writers.cfm
• Buzzle.com – http://www.buzzle.com/secure/become-editor.asp
• Article Central – http://thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/suggest.asp
• Go Articles – http://www.goarticles.com/ulogin.html
• EzineArticles – http://ezinearticles.com/submit/
• AMAzines – http://amazines.com
• Article City – http://www.articlecity.com/article_submission.shtml
• NetterWeb.com – http://www.netterweb.com/articles/
• Article Insider – http://www.articleinsider.com/start.php

There are hundreds more to be sure, but I would say less than 30 generic article submission sites are worth your time when submitting. Be sure they article submission site you are looking into will provide good marketing exposure for your masterpiece!

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We hope you are learning from our weekly SEO tips. If you have any suggestions or questions, please let us know. If you submit a good question, we may use it in our tips. If you wish to contact Big Oak to help you drive traffic and sales to your site we look forward to speaking with you. Contact us today!

Seven “Secrets” to SEO Success – SEO Tip Week 10

This week’s SEO Tip is more than a tip, it is strategic overview on SEO. I recently spoke with a potential client interested acquiring our SEO services and when I said that SEO really isn’t that complicated he raised an eyebrow. I followed by saying that search engine optimization doesn’t have any big secrets or tricks that only we SEO consultants know. It common sense applied with industry knowledge – knowledge that can be with due diligence and research. So with that in mind, I am revealing the “Seven Secrets of SEO Success” and I’m doing it all for free.

1. Research Your Keyword Phrases.
   Invest the time and do your research. What do users type in the search engines when looking for services or products on your site. We use a few tools such as WordTracker, Keyword Discovery and Overture’s Keyword Selector tool among others to find out what keyword phrases are best to target. Never assume you know which keywords to target until you do the research. I guarantee you will learn something about your business and your target audience when you do. Finding a keyword you didn’t realize was being searched on can add visitors and increase conversions.
2. Design an SEO-Friendly Website.
   I cringe every time I see an all Flash site and I’m asked to achieve high rankings for said site. As much as Flash can hurt a site for rankings there are other things to be aware of, such as: sparse text, poorly written code, javascript on your pages, 404 errors, using graphics instead of text, javascript navigation, deeply nested pages and pages that can’t be found by clicking a link are just a few. Make sure a someone with SEO knowledge with the site design and build. While later is better than never, ideally you want the SEO consultant to work with the designers and programmers.
3. Write Unique Page Titles.
   I wrote about this earlier so take a look at my post on How Important Are Website Titles. It is critical that every web page on your site have a different and unique title. It is the most important part of your web page when search engines are determining your web page message and ranking. This is easy, so be sure to do it.
4. Write Focused Content.
   This may appear to be simple common sense, but too often a web page will try to be too many things and dilute its true message. Each thought, theme or topic should have its own web page. If you sell dog products, then a page for each category would be needed. Dog toys would be a major category with its own page, but chew toys would be a new page and so on. You wouldn’t mix chew toys and dog bedding. The search engines want to see a focus so they know what to rank your web page for as well as where to rank your web page.
5. Insert Keywords.
   If you have written a descriptive and keyword-rich title it follows suit that your page content is also going to have keywords throughout. Write for humans, but keep in mind the search engines. You don’t want to overdue it, but you do want your page theme to be evident. List your keyword phrase in your titles, headers and content and the search engines will know reward you with higher visibility.
6. Build Keyword-Rich Links.
   There is nothing more important for the high ranking success of your site than strategic link building. And with that said, there is nothing more important than choosing the right text to link to your site. If your company name is “Big Oak Studios” and you are an SEO company then you better be sure to request any links pointing to your site have similar terms such as SEO, company, firm, search engine optimization, marketing, Internet somewhere in the links. Let the link state your business, not your web address or company name.
7. Find Quality Links.
   Since acquiring links is the most important off-site task you can do, then it would reason you should do it right. While having a large number of links is important, making sure they are quality is tantamount to your site’s success. This is especially true in high competition areas. Quality links from sites with authority (popular and trusted sites) carry more weight. One link from an authority site can be worth a hundred or more low-quality sites.

As an SEO company, we do these things and many more to achieve high rankings. Some of the “secrets” listed above require many hours and creative ingenuity to accomplish the task at hand. But the bottom line is this: there is no secret and if you have the time and initiative and do the research you will have success. Sometimes you don’t have the time and that is when you should consider talking to an SEO Company to help. If you are at such a point, please give us call at 1-804-741-6776 or email us at contact@bigoakinc.com.

Link to Your Home Page Correctly – SEO Tip Week 9

The last few tips have been a little longer than I planned when I originally came up with the idea to post one SEO tip per week. On the other hand I wanted the SEO tips to have some meat to them so I’m okay with making the posts more than a few sentences. But I thought I’d give everyone a break and do a tip that was short and sweet, but very important, of course.

Be sure to provide a link to your home page.

Pure genius, right? Of course we all know we should do this, but how you do it is just as important. I think examples work best so here are some ways not to link to your home page. Let’s assume your page filename is index.html.

<a href=”/index.html”>Home</a>

<a href=”http://www.mysite.com/index.html”>Home</a&gt;

What is wrong with this you say? The problem is linking to the filename. Always link to the root address. Your links on your site and any external links pointing to your site’s home page should look something like this.

<a href=”/”>Home</a>

<a href=”http://www.mysite.com/”>Home</a&gt;

The reason we do this is so the search engines don’t split our PageRank to multiple web addresses of our home page. If all the links are pointing to the root address (http://www.mysite.com) then all the PageRank will be gathered in the root address and not split between the root address and the filename (http://www.mysite.com/index.html).

Get on the Same Page
Be sure all the links on your site point to the root and check them to be sure; even images on your site should follow this advice. It doesn’t matter if you are pointing to the root with just a “/” or using the full url (http://www.mysite.com/), both work the same way. You want any external links to point to the full url as well and ask anyone linking to your website to use the “www” in the link. The key is uniformity. We want all links pointing to the same web address for maximum PageRank and search engine rankings.

Bonus Tip
As a bonus tip, try to use a keyword in the internal links to your home page when possible. Using the link text “Home” provides little ranking support unless you sell homes. Don’t let this cloud your judgment though, having a link to your home page with a three word keyword phrase might look ridiculous and unprofessional.

Next time you are surfing around, click a link to a home page and see how many are linking correctly and how many aren’t.

Duplicate Content & URL Canonicalization – SEO Tip Week 7

Before we get into this week’s tip, let me provide a definition for the term Canonicalization.

“It is the process of converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” canonical representation.”

For SEO purposes this means it creates a definitive and unique page to represent more than one possible page on your site. You want to avoid duplicate pages on your site.

Sometimes duplicate content is a result of two pages sharing the same information in two different files. Sometimes you have duplicate content because of the technology causing two different urls point to the same page. Both of these problems have simple solutions. It is important to correct this because search engines want to show only unique web pages and text.

If your site has multiple pages with the same content possibly through a Content Management System (CMS) or through duplicate navigation, or because it actually exists in multiple versions, you are could be hurting your search engine ranking results. We all know how important linking is to any SEO campaign and if links pointing to different urls of the same information your link value will be diluted because 2 incoming links may point to one version and 3 links to another. It would be much better for all 5 links to point to one url.

301 Re-Direct to the Rescue
The solution is to take any current duplicate pages and use a 301 re-direct to point all versions to a single, “canonical” version of the content or web page.

Most often this problem can be found on a site’s homepage. For example: Search engines view your home page as having more than one version. How? Take a look at the following urls. All point to the same page, but to the search engines they are different: http://www.yoursite.com, http://yoursite.com, http://yoursite.com/index.html and http://www.yoursite.com/index.html. The search engines may find up to four home pages that have the same content.

While this may not cause your site to be unranked it is certainly not helping and can easily cause poor rankings. That is a shame for something that is so easily corrected. Most often this is caused by links pointing to different versions of your site. You can’t change all the links coming into your site, but you can use the 301 re-direct to solve this by pointing all versions of your home page to the full url (http://www.url.com). You can read more on how this is accomplished on our 301 re-direct blog post.

Create a Website Sitemap – SEO Tip Week 6

Some SEO tips can be hard to explain, but this is one of the few that is relatively easy to do and can be done manually with small or large sites. Create a sitemap of your website. There are a few good reasons to do this.

It allows easier indexing of your site by the search engines.
In other words, it helps the search engines find all the pages on your site. Some websites only have a few of their pages in the search engines and this can be due to poor linking, sparse navigation or a host of other reasons. A sure-fire cure is to have a sitemap links to all of the major sections of your website. If you have a small website, linking to all the pages is a good idea. Web-crawlers will thank you for making their busy lives easier.

It provides PageRank or link popularity to all pages it links to.
If you read about SEO then you have read how important it is to have high-quality links pointing to your site from other sites. While this is true, don’t underestimate your own internal links (as seen in last week’s SEO tip) pointing to your own pages. A sitemap can become another source of quality links with descriptive text for your own pages.

Sitemaps help with usability and site navigation.
You website users can now access any important page on the site with only two clicks. This allows for deeply nested pages to be found easier and not just by the search engine spiders but by people visiting your site. Making navigation easier by including a sitemap is just good business sense as well as SEO sense.

Examples of good sitemaps

• Even if you have a large site, using a sitemap to provide quick access to major areas and important pages is very helpful. The Apple sitemap is a good example of this.
• A more detailed 4-column sitemap by A.M.Best
• Small sites, like Grote Consulting, only need small sitemaps
• Organization and categorization is crucial for an ecommerce sitemap as created by Danforth Diamond
• Sometimes sitemaps can be a more integral part of the site. Look at this “footer sitemap” by Agee Woodworks

Do I really need a sitemap?
Sitemaps can be viewed as a luxury, but for new sites they are critical. It can take the search engines months to crawl your new site and they may never crawl the entire site. Adding a sitemap can speed this process up. It also helps when adding new pages or sections, the search engines have easy access to all pages through you sitemap

Don’t overlook this simple step in your search engine optimization success.

Internal Linking – SEO Tip Week 5

As with most SEO tips, this one is simple, overlooked and easy to do. Your site’s navigation is an important part when providing a pleasant user experience and it can be beneficial in aiding your SEO efforts. Even important is how you handle your internal linking strategy, or your body text links.
Repeat after me: “I must include internal links within my content.” This is the very foundation for Internet: hyperlinking text to provide more information about the linked text. Not only is it crucial for SEO it just makes good sense.

For example, let’s take a look at this page on our client’s site, Agee Woodworks. Within the copy of this web page are a number of keyword phrases that link to other pages within their site. Some of these internal linking phrases include “custom fireplace mantel” and “fireplace shelf“. This is simple and clever way to increase the link popularity of other pages within the site. A text link from the home page is delivering PageRank to internal pages with a targeted keyword phrase. This helps both pages. The only links you can control are the links on your own site, so use them to your best advantage.

Another example, Grote Consulting Services Page, shows how internal linking can guide you through the site and provide a lift for the link destination pages. One of the terms linking on this page is “performance appraisal systems” and when I search in Google for that term it shows a first page listing for the link destination page (http://www.groteconsulting.com/services/performance-appraisal/index.asp). While other factors clearly play a role, don’t discount the helpfulness of an internal link especially when it is one of the few things you have total control over.
Fortunately, for you, very few sites are aware of the importance of internal linking. By using this SEO strategy you help the search engines index more of your site and more importantly those internal links will contribute to higher rankings because of the keyword-rich anchor text that is being used.

Don’t ignore internal linking; use it and watch your own rankings increase.

Create A Blog – SEO Tip Week 1

Blogs can be helpful if correctly used. But, blogs will not guarantee high rankings.Blogs provide an easy way to add new and hopefully unique content. Search engines love new content and they love original content even more. Blogs are a great way of adding new information to your site because if search engines know a site is adding new articles or posts on a continual and frequent basis, they will come around more often to index the site. You can add a blog internally to your site directly (http://www.sitename.com/blog) or as an external site (http://sitename.blogspot.com).

Think of your blog as a way to reach potential clients on a more informal basis. Your blog will also allow you to tap into “lower hanging fruit” keyphrases that you use in your posts. You will be surprised at the keyphrases typed in the search engines that will bring users to your blog. It may even inspire a new Internet marketing initiative.

I recommend WordPress as the blogging tool of choice. Easy to set up, very powerful with the ability to add plungins and it has a great support network.