Experience and Age Matter for SEO

Experience and Age Matter for SEO

 Google's continuing mission is to deliver the best search results possible to its end users. So how can a search engine like Google differentiate between a company that is brand new (and might be a fly-by-night operation) versus an organization that has years of experience in the field?

The answer: Google looks at the age of your domain name (along with several other varibles). If your domain name was registered last week, chances are good that your site won't even appear in Google's rankings for several months. (This is called the Google Sandbox.)

But if your domain name was registered eight years ago, Google uses this information as a clue that you've been around for a little bit.

In a nutshell, Google looks at the month and year when your domain was registered — and uses this to give more weight to companies that have been around for several years versus several weeks.

Google also looks forward to see how long you have registered your
domain; if you have registered your domain for five or ten years in the future, you've made a subtle, yet important economic decision that you're still going to be around and in business in 2018. Here's an instance where being frugal with domain name registration can actually hurt your rankings.

That said, Google does place more weight on the past versus the future. I have one domain that's been continously registered for 14 years (since 1994).

Along with many other factors, this site, www.rmiug.org, has a very high Google Page Rank of 6/10.

So, what can you do to increase your rankings?

First, make sure that your company's domain name is registered for at least a few years from the present date.

Second, make sure you know who is the contact person for your domain name. We've recently seen several instances where the person in charge of the domain name moves to a different organization, goes on vacation, or even passes away. And then, if the domain name comes up for renewal, it can be a mad scramble to keep your website and corporate email up and running.

IMAGES FOR SEO SUCCESS

NAMING YOUR IMAGES FOR SEO SUCCESS

Even though search engines can't read words inside graphics, they do use the name of the file and other contextual information to increase your rankings. One of the biggest missed opportunities is not naming images with search engine optimization in mind.

I can't tell you how many times I see a site that has the logo named:
logo.jpg 

While that's sufficient to display the logo in a browser, it's much better to name the logo with descriptive keywords, such as: customer-paradigm-logo.jpg

Another way to look at this is to look at this image name out of context: pass-med-425.jpg
The image name, pass-med-435.jpg doesn't tell you much about what is in the image.

However, this image does seem to give a search engine a bit more
information: passover-in-moab-utah-2008.jpg

If you search for "passover in moab" in Google, see what comes up first. If you want to further increase the relevancy, you can create a folder (also with keywords) that can help you increase keyword density on a page.

For example, placing an image in a directory like this will give you more relevancy than in a more non-descriptive folder: /search-engine-optimizationservices/seo-services-header-logo.jpg

Yes, it takes a little bit more time and effort for someone to type out a longer image name and keep it organized into different folders on your website.

But our research has found that increasing the relevant keywords in your images is a sure fire way to increase your search engine rankings.

Keyword Density

It's All about Keyword Density

What is keyword density? It's a percentage, calculated this way:

Number of times keyword appears on a page / Total word count on page = Keyword Density

Keyword density is usually displayed as a percentage. So, if you have a page that has 100 words on it, and you have a keyword appear 5 times on the page, your page would have a keyword density of 5%.

(5 / 100 = 5%)

In a real life example, the search term "personalized URL" has an overall keyword density on this page of 3.05%:

(15 instances of the keywords /981 total words on the site = 3.05%)

However, not all keywords on a page are treated the same. Keywords in the title tags, page name and section headings are often given higher weight than keywords that appear in the regular content area of the page.

Here's how the keywords break down in the different areas of the site:

Title Tag: 1 Keyword, 8 total times, Keyword Density: 25.00%

Page Name: 1 Keyword, 3 total words, Keyword Density: 66.00%

Linked Text: 1 Keywords, 61 total words, Keyword Density: 3.27%

URLs in Links: 2 Keywords, 237 total words, Keyword Density: 1.68%

Visible Text: 7 Keywords, 627 total words, Keyword Density: 2.23%

Total: 15 Keywords, 981 total words, Keyword Density: 3.05%

This keyword term currently has a ranking of #2 in Google: 

So, how much keyword density is too much? It depends on which study you read, but it's generally best to keep your keyword density between 3-6%.

Anything more, and you'll be penalized for trying to spam the search engines.

As a general rule of thumb, if the copy of the site makes sense to a human reading it, you should be fine. But if you repeat the same keyword five times in a row (Personalized URL, Personalized URL, etc), then you can be banned from search engines or penalized.

SiteMaps Important for Search Engines

Sitemaps are Like a Baby Food for Search Engines

Just a few years ago, the philosophy about sitemaps went something like this: If your customers need to use a sitemap to find their way around your website, you haven't done your job organizing your content and creating a navigational system that is easy to understand.

But sitemaps are now back in favor. Why? It's less about human visitors and more about search engines.

What is a sitemap? A sitemap is page that lists all of the other pages on your site, usually in a bullet list.

Here's an example of a sitemap:

As I've discussed before, search engines are easily confused. Many pages of a website are often 'hidden' behind tricky menus or drop-down lists. Or, the links to reach a specific page are too deep (i.e. more than a couple of pages down from the home page).

A sitemap, linked from the home page of the site, will list every page of your site in one convenient place.

When a search engine visits your site map, it's very easy for them to then get a list of every page on your site, and then crawl, digest and include all of your content in their system.

We generally recommend having the link to your sitemap on the bottom footer navigation of your site. But you need to make sure that as your site changes, your sitemap is updated. Otherwise, Google and others may not index the latest pages placed on your site. Our Content Management System, for example, automatically
updates the sitemap each time a page is added, or the name of a page is changed.

And even better than an HTML sitemap is an XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is a sitemap that is specifically formatted for search engines like Google. It's a machine-readable version that allows you to specify all of the pages of the site.

Adding an XML sitemap ensures that a site will get indexed much more quickly and more rapidly than not using this method at all

WHAT DOES A SEARCH ENGINE LOOK FOR?

At the end of the day, a search engine is in business to help you find the most relevant results possible when you conduct a search. Search engines make their money by selling relevant advertising to supplement the natural, organic search results.

Because a top ranking in Google or another search engine can translate into a great deal of business, it's important to know how search engines determine who gets placed at the top of the list.
 

The two biggest ways search engines rank you are based on:

Relevant Content: Search engines are really good at reading text. The more relevant copy you have on your site, the better chance you have getting your page indexed. Search engines love pages that have more than 500 words of text on them.

Why? 

A page with a lot of content is usually more beneficial to the end
user. (Though for every rule like this one, there are many exceptions.)

Adding articles, press releases, detailed information about your products and services all can help quickly increase the amount of relevant content that you have on your site.

Inbound Links: 

The more sites that link to you, the more important your site becomes to search engines. If sites that link to you are very relevant
and/or important, those inbound links worth more. And domains that end with .gov, .edu often perform better than .com for inbound links.

It's kind of like a high schoul popularity contest. If the most popular kids all point to you and say that your website is better than anyone elses, in the eyes of the community, your ranking is elevated.
 

There are many other things as well that affect search engine ranking. I can't go into great detail for the entire list, but even small changes can translate into higher rankings.
 

Title Tags: See Title Tags for SEO

Page Names: Keywords in page names in crease the relevance of the search and are displayed in a Google search result.
 

Image Names: 

Putting relevant keywords into image names helps your ranking.

Alt Text for Images: 

If you hover over an image, this is the text that appears; also used by the blind to understand what an image represents.
 

Keyword Density: 

How often specific keywords appear on a page as a percentage of all of the words on a page.
 

Section Headings: 

In the HTML code, section headings like H1 or 

H2 are treated as more important content than the information on the rest of the page.

Words contained in links: A link like: "Customer Paradigm offers Web Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Services" can help boost rankings.
 

Clean HTML code: Search engines are easily confused if your websites' code is a mess.

How often pages are updated: Search engines like new content, but also have a bias toward pages that have been up on the web for a long time.

Site Map: If you have a site map (and an XML site map as well), it's easier for search engines to crawl through all of the pages of your site.

Title Tags for SEO

Title Tags and Why They Matter

When you search in Google, the search results on the next page each start with a blue underlined link.

What displays in this blue link is usually what is contained in the title tag of a web page. The keywords you placed in the search box are usually boldfaced in the search results.

So, just what is a title tag, and why does it matter for search engine positioning?

According to the World Wide Web Consortium, the Title tag was designed to help people "identify the contents of a document." When people view individual web pages out of context (often via search), context-rich page titles help tell the visitor a summary of the page.

Instead of a title like "Introduction", which doesn't provide much contextual background, web designers should supply a title such as "Introduction to Medieval Bee-Keeping" instead.

Google and other search engines use these rich contextual clues as a way to hone its search results. On a web page, the title tag is part of the HTML code. Here's what the code looks like on Customer Paradigm's site:

<title>Customer Paradigm: Website Design, Development, Email Marketing, Content Management, PHP programming</title>

Most end users won't see the title tag. But if you remember back to my email tip about subject lines, the title tag is what a subject line is to an email campaign: It entices the end user to pay attention and open the page to read more.

Top Five Most Common Mistakes for Title Tags:

1. Untitled: When many of the popular programs create a new HTML page, it puts 'Untitled' into the title tag. It's up to the Web designer to change this... and since most users don't see it, sometimes they forget to change it.

2. No Title Tag: Like the "Untitled" tag, another key mistake is simply leaving out the title tag. If you do a view source (Internet Explorer: View —> Source), and the title tag appears like:

<title></title>

 ... then you don't have a title tag.

3. “About” Tag: Another common mistake for title tags is to have the title tag refer to a section of your website. But a title tag that reads, "About" doesn't tell me much about what the company or website is "About." Instead, have it read:

<title>Customer Paradigm - About the Company: Website Development & Marketing, Email Deployment, and PHP programming</title>

This is sure to get more keywords into the title tag, and if you're searching for a company, you instantly know what they do. 

4. No Company Name In Title Tag: We recommend putting your company name at the beginning of the title tag, so that people can quickly see your company's name when they search.

5. Same Title Tag on Multiple Pages: You should have a unique title tag for each page of the site. Why? As each page is unique, you should have a title tag that describes it's unique content. If your messaging is not relevant, however, you’re quickly going to find that your messages are filed in the "I’ll get to these

later" pile.

Search Engines Confuse with Graphics

Don't confuse the Search Engines with Graphics

Search engines are really good at reading text. But they're very easily confused. And if Google gets confused when it crawls through your site, you won't rank very high in search results. Search engines, for example, can't read words that are contained in graphics or flash animation. So if your company's name is only contained in a graphic on your site, this content is ‘invisible' to a search engine. Same thing goes for product or service names.

The root of the problem lies with graphic designers. Graphic designers are really good at building graphics. Don't take this to mean I don't like graphic designers (I employ a bunch of them), but they sometimes don't know how to create SEO-friendly design.

Most websites, however, are designed by graphic designers who are really good at building graphics, and less interested in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It takes a bit more time to have content placed in text, and use a stylesheet to format it so that a search engine can read it. Especially when it's so easy to create a good looking graphic in Photoshop.

Here's an example of a graphic:

Here's how it could be formatted, instead, using text and a cascading stylesheet (CSS): See the title of this section (above) for a live example. 

Some sites use all flash (and are thus invisible to search engines). While the sites may look pretty to humans, to Google the content is completely invisible. If you look at Google’s cache (go to www.Google.com and type in the site’s name, click on the “cached” results), you can see that there is no text or content that appears.

Even if you're not worried about organic search positioning, but are doing paid search engine marketing (like Google Adwords), it's important that the content on your site is easily digested by a search engine.

Why? Google Adwords ranks the pages on your website, and compares it to your keywords and ad copy. The more relevant Google ranks the text on your site, the less you'll have to pay for a sponsored ad on Google (and the higher your position).

In Summary: Don't confuse search engines by keeping your content ‘locked up' in graphics. It's a small little detail in the web design process, but one that will pay dividends for a long, long time with increased search results.

Domain SEO

Ultimate Tips to Domain SEO

First things first, a lot of beginners in online marketing would ask what is a domain? Some business owners who are planning on having their own website may ask why do I need a good domain name. A domain is the address that you type in the address bar of your browser. For examples www.google.com, www.youtube.com, www.facebook.com and www.hotmail.com etc.

Brand recognition

A good domain name gives your website brand recognition and Search Engine recognition. Brand recognition is important if you want your customers to remember what you website stands for and Search Engine recognition is important it you want search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and others to give preference your competitors in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP.

Before you buy your first domain name it is important to "Do Keyword research first then buy a domain". Keyword Research is important because you want to find out first if the domain name that you will buy has some commercial viability to it and if people are really searching for it.

Rich Domains

When choosing domain names it is important to choose keyword rich domains because search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and others see keywords as an important factor in ranking your website in their Search Engine Results Page. Choosing keyword rich domain names saves you a lot time, money and effort in ranking your websites compared to not choosing keyword rich domains.

I cannot reiterate how important it is to choose keyword rich domains if you want to rank faster and higher in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP with less effort and time. To help you out, here is Domain SEO which lists the different keyword matches, domain extensions and other important points to consider when choosing your own domain name that will last through the years.

Keywords Matches

I have point out some important examples of  Keywords Matches:

1. Exact Match     --    carhire.com : "Rank Highest"

2. Phrase Match   --    mycarhire.com

3. Board Match    --    hiremycar.com

4. No Match          --    johmcarrentals.com

Domain Extensions or Categorization

1- gTLD (Generic Top Level Domain) - .com, .net, .org

2- ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain) - .com.au, .co.us, .co.uk, .ph, .ca, .pk, .in - country specific

Points to consider:

1- .com's hold the greatest resale value and brand recognition compared to .net or .org

2- Some SEO Experts claim that  .com hold's and SEO advantage over other domain extensions.

3- Between .net and .org - some SEO experts experience better ranking with .org's

 

Local SEO (Local Search Engine Listing)

Local SEO or local search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your site so you can gain higher local search rankings. It is optimization process for the local results in various search engines. This type of search engine optimization is crucial for those with brick and mortar stores or businesses that have a local presence.

Local SEO is an art and this will also allow you to be easily located by people, especially in the case of mobile searchers currently in your area of operations. But local SEO and its processes differ from SEO that target ranking globally.

For businesses that serve specific geographic regions (i.e. Denver, Colorado), you can create search engine ads in Google and Yahoo that only appear to people in your area.

How does this work? A search engine like Google uses a computer's IP address and other information to discover where someone is searching (including city and state).

Why does Google care where a person is located? Google's mission is to give their end users the best search results possible. So, if I need someone to Chinese Restaurants Framingham, MA, it does me little good to receive a paid search result from Framingham . This is a real example — my brother has a petsitting business, and I've used local Google search engine advertising to drive new clients to his organization.

Thus Google (and the others) tries to match search results to the geographic location of the person searching.

How does Google make money? Google gives businesses and organizations the ability to display paid advertisements (sponsored results) on search results pages. These ads are triggered by keywords you choose (more on this in a different strategy).

You don't have to pay for your ad to display; you pay Google only when someone clicks on your ad. The technical term is Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising. The more relevant your ad (more on this later), the less you have to pay for specific keywords, and the higher up you will appear in the

sponsored advertising results.

Local Search CPC Ads. In Google Adwords, you can create an advertising campaign that will target someone in a specific city or state. You can even specify a 5, 10 or 25 mile radius from a specific location (like your retail showroom or office). Below your local ad, Google will place the name of your local area (i.e. Denver, Colorado)... making it more likely that someone searching in your area will choose your organization vs. an out-of-town competitor.

Local CPC Ads are usually a more cost effective option than a national search engine advertising campaign. As a general rule of thumb, the more geographically targeted and specific you can be, the less money you'll need to pay to acquire new customers. And make sure you have conversion tracking code placed on your site, so you can measure and track how much you're paying for each new customer via local search engine advertising.