A Beginners Guide To SEO

he words “search engine optimization” (SEO) may sound a bit intimidating at first but, they’re critical to success for any business. However, jumping into SEO and not knowing how it works is like going to New York City without a map. You can wing it, but you may miss out by not knowing where you’re headed.

What is SEO?

If you can imagine the Internet as a New York City bus, search engine optimization represents the bus stops. Some of those stops are vital, and people need to get to them, and some of them are out in the middle of nowhere and aren’t as important.

Now, imagine that riders aren’t sure which stop they need, but they do know where they want to end up. They say to the bus driver, “I want to go to the most up-to-date library in town.” The bus driver considers all libraries along his route, remembers which one seems most popular with riders, and takes his passenger to that location.

Just as the bus driver makes an educated guess as to which library is best based upon the number of people who visit it, search engines guess which web sites are most relevant based upon how many visits they receive. When someone types something into a search engine, the engine goes to work to pull up websites that will best meet their needs.

For example, if you type “Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe” into your search engine, it quickly makes two determinations: Which recipes in its database are relevant to your search and of those, which are the most popular.

As a business owner, you want your business to be both relevant and popular. One step to do this is by optimizing your rankings in search engines.

The Early Days of SEO

Not so long ago, people who wanted their web site to look important to search engines would simply fill it with words they hoped would match internet searches. Search engines weren’t terribly complex at the time, and they’d automatically send users to sites that may – or may not – have been worthwhile.

Content mills built a business out of promising their clients SEO-rich content. It became a matter of how “stuffed” a site was with particular search words, rather than whether those sites offered any meaningful information to users. It was frustrating for users and for legitimate businesses that wanted to get the word out.

Although users grew frustrated combing through pages of useless websites, the best sites began to receive more direct hits and search engine engineers took notice.

Because of this, there have been some recent changes in SEO resulting in a new set of rules, and we’re here to help you learn what you need to get started.

A New Algorithm

Recently, search engines decided to weed out “stuffed” websites and send users directly to sites with meaningful information to offer. They suspected that sites people were visiting over and over again were likely the ones providing the most relevant information.

The algorithm they devised is made up of hundreds of components aimed at finding the most useful sites for any given search. As a business owner, you want to position your website in such a way as to attract that algorithm.

Create a Clear Path

Creating an SEO-friendly website is really a matter of manners. Be honest with your potential customers about what they’ll find on your site. If you own a bike shop, don’t fill your site with words that have nothing to do with the services you offer in an effort to get people to “accidentally” visit. Doing so is called “cloaking” and is considered shady and won’t help people buy more products or services from you.

Think about every word used on your site and make sure it applies to your business. There’s no reason to use the word “parachute” if you own a dog-grooming business.

Experts tell us that the title tags and page headers are the most important places to plug keywords. You should also make sure that they’re scattered throughout your website: URLs, image names, and content pages.

If you have any text that you want indexed by search engines, keep it clean. Don’t hide it inside an image or any place else it might be overlooked. While we’re on the topic, make sure you don’t bury your content inside JavaScript, Adobe Flash, or other cool-looking rich media as the search engines frown on that.

The Key to Finding Strong Keywords

Coming up with the right keywords for your site is as simple as asking yourself what services or products you offer. Say you’re a spa that offers a full-range of services. Your natural inclination might be to count on the words, “hair” or “massage” to drive customers to your site, but think twice before using such broad terms. Using words that will be used by thousands of other spas drops your website into a deep pool of competition.

Instead, weed out some of your competition by using more specific phrases, such as “Kansas City salons,” or “Swedish massages.” Be specific about what you offer and where you’re located if you’re a brick and mortar business.

The idea is to think about how you personally search online. What words would you type into your search engine if you were looking for a product or service? Take a poll; ask everyone in your family or at the office to write down the phrases they would type into a search engine if they were looking for a business like yours. Those are likely to be the keywords customers search for. You can also use helpful tools like the Google Keyword Tool to help you quickly and easily research how many searches a particular keyword gets, and how competitive it is.

Avoid the “Spam” Label

The content on your website should be concise, honest about what you offer, and keyword-rich. However, loading content with tons of keywords will lead search engines to suspect you of spamming. Search engines are designed to ignore spam sites, meaning that your website won’t show up when customers come looking for your services. Integrate your keywords, but make sure they sound natural in the content of your site and are not just “filler” words.

The Bottom Line

Although at first glance SEO seems as vast as New York City without a map, there’s no reason to be intimidated. Take it one step at a time and you can build a great website full of relevant content that’ll help drive more business.

Business2community.com

{ Read More }

Helpful Productivity Tips

If you are like most business owners, you are juggling about a million and one different things. If you are a smaller organization or entrepreneur, you may not have a lot of support staff to help you out. Staying focused and on track is essential to your business growth. After 13 years of being in the SEO industry, I’ve learned that managing my time is an on-going battle. I’m sure it’s the same in every industry. I’ve written countless articles telling you all the things you need to do (Blogging, social media, SEO etc) so here are some tips to help you manage it all!

Plan tomorrow today: Before you end your day, create your action plan for the next day. You’ll be a lot more effective and focused if you start the day knowing what you need to accomplish. Extra tip: Do the boring, grungy work first – you’ll never enjoy doing it so you may as well get it out of the way and that leaves your brain free from the dread of those tasks. You’ll enjoy the rest of your day more and you’ll be more creative if those tasks aren’t weighing you down.

Schedule a “brain dump” once a week and then map out the contents: Take an hour or two once a week to jot down everything on your mind. Keeping an on-going list helps keep your brain free from clutter so you can better focus. Once you’ve got the info down, you can organize it into categories. Just a few sample categories are: Must do, Administrative, Opportunity, SEO, Social Media etc. You can then prioritize the tasks from within the categories.

Create the ideal workspace: Know yourself and know what environment you need to get the most work done. The workspace may also vary by task. Some people need to write in quiet, other people are inspired by the energy and noise of working in Starbucks. Create the ideal workspace for yourself and make sure it is armed with the supplies you will need. Doing some brainstorming? Try having a whiteboard handy. Need to refer to reference book, keep them stacked on your desk (place them there the night before so you aren’t wandering around looking for the books when you should be getting to work). When you are feeling low energy, try turning on a fan and getting some air circulation or crank up the tunes to get you going (stand up and dance it out for a few minutes – that really helps!)

Plan your meals and snacks: For those of you that work from home, we all know what it’s like when you are so busy you forget to eat. It’s somehow harder to remember to take a break when you are working from home. You have to get up and stretch and make sure you are eating proper meals and snacks. Nothing zaps productivity like hunger.

Create a policy for your phone, email and social media: There is a constant deluge of information coming in from phones, email, RSS feeds, social media feeds and more. Set aside some time to disconnect and just focus on the task at hand. Some of your work probably includes social media but that doesn’t mean you need to be a slave to it all day long. Taking a quick peek at email or Twitter often leads to losing a lot of time and losing your focus. If you set rules for yourself in advance and adhere to them, you don’t even have to think about it.

Set a timer: I’ve found it beneficial to set a timer for one hour and focus solely on one project for that whole hour. No phone calls, no emails, no social media and no mind wandering. I put all my energy and focus into that one project. At the end of the hour, I stretch and get some water and move on to the next task.

Manage calls and appointments: Phone calls and appointments are a necessary part of most jobs. Have you ever noticed that calls and meetings often lead to more work? That’s a good thing but it should be factored into your plan. If you have a day that is heavy with meetings and calls, be sure you plan a quieter day the next day so you can catch up on other things and get to work on the tasks that were generated from the calls and meetings the day before.

Read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”: It’s a great book. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out!

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate: Learning to delegate is difficult for many people. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking no one can do it better than you can. No one knows your product or service, no one cares as much as you do. While that may be true, it is still possible to find reliable help and sometimes getting something done “well” is good enough. Not everything needs to be perfect and not everything requires your time and attention. Learn what you can and can’t delegate and find a team you can trust.

Learn To Say No!: You can’t do it all, no one can. Learn to evaluate and prioritize opportunities and tasks and know when to say no.

Look For Inspiration: Nothing keeps you on track like motivation and inspiration. Find your source of inspiration and motivation and use it to keep you going. It may be motivational words or it may be a reward you’ll get or it may be reaching a financial goal, or a combination of all of those things.

Check out Evernote: It’s a great tool that allows you to keep notes – you can grab from emails and the web. It’s a great way to capture things you don’t want to forget and have it easily at your fingertips when you need it. You can organize notes into notebooks and add tags. You can search by the tags, the date the note was added or even see the location it was added from. It’s a great way to store information so you don’t spend forever hunting around for it. You can have it on your computer and smartphone or tablet and access it from your hard drive or the cloud and all versions sync up. It’s been a lifesaver for me. I store stats and ideas and websites and pretty much everything!

There are many other tips that entrepreneurs use to stay focused and productive. Share yours!

I have found all of the items I mentioned to be helpful but I have to say the biggest one for me is learning to prioritize. Not all tasks have equal importance or outcome and not all tasks require the same amount of time and energy. Learning to quickly factor all these things in and creating your To Do list in order is crucial when you are juggling so many things.

With over 13 years in the industry, Jennifer Horowitz, Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet, has amassed much knowledge and experience and has much to say about all things SEO (marketing, copywriting & social media). Always happy to share with an audience, Jenn is now a regular contributor at Level343.

{ Read More }

What, Exactly, Is Business Development?

Comment Now 

Follow Comments

“I do biz dev.”

Few times in history have more ambiguous words been spoken.  Ask ten “VPs of Business Development” or similarly business card-ed folks what is business development, and you’re like to get just as many answers.

“Business development is sales,” some will say, concisely.

“Business development is partnerships,” others will say, vaguely.

“Business development is hustling,” the startup folks will say, evasively.

The assortment of varied and often contradictory responses to the basic question of “what, exactly, is business development” reminds me of the way physicists seek to explain what, exactly, is the universe.  With conflicting theories on the nature of black holes and bosons, the ultimate goal for those scientists is a Grand Unified Theory, a single definition that can elegantly explain how the universe itself operates at every level.

Lacking any concise explanation of what business development is all about, I sought to unite the varied forces of business development into one comprehensive framework. And eureka, for I have found it - the Grand Unified Theory of business development:

Business development is the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships.

There is elegance in simplicity, but perhaps this definition leaves you wanting more.  At its heart, business development is all about figuring out how the interactions of those forces combine together to create opportunities for growth.  But a theorem requires a proper proof, so let’s break that statement down:

Long-Term Value

First, what do I mean by “long-term value?”  In its simplest form, “value” is cash, money, the lifeblood of any business (but it can also be access, prestige, or anything else a company seeks in order to grow).  And there are plenty of ways to make a quick buck for you or your company.  But business development is not about get-rich-quick schemes and I-win-you-lose tactics that create value that’s gone tomorrow as easily as it came today.  It’s about creating opportunities for that value to persist over the long-term, to keep the floodgates open so that value can flow indefinitely.  Thinking about business development as a means to creating long-term value is the only true way to succeed in consistently growing an organization.

Customers

The “customers” portion of the definition may be slightly more obvious – customers pay the bills.  They are the people who pay you for your products and services, and without them you won’t have any business to develop.  But not everyone is a natural customer for your business. Maybe your product doesn’t have the features I’m looking for.  Maybe your product is perfect, but I don’t even know your company sells it.  Or maybe you’re not reaching me because you’re not knocking on my door.

Markets

That’s because customers “live” in specific markets.  One way to understand markets is by geography – if I only focus on selling in the U.S. but you reside in London,  then you are currently unavailable to me as a customer as I do not currently reach the European market.  But customers also “live” in markets that are defined by their demographics, lifestyles, and buying mindset.  Identifying opportunities to reach new customers by entering into new markets is one important gateway to unlocking long-term value.

Take for example the Pet Owners market.  The customers who live there, of course, are people who own cats, dogs, fish, etc.  Petco is a company that clearly sells to customers who live in the Pet Owners market.  I, on the other hand, do not have a pet.  I don’t live in the Pet Owner market. So what if Petco wanted to sell something to me? Then they’d need to find a way to enter into a market where I do live.  For example, I have red-hair and pale skin and as such, I am prone to spontaneously combusting when exposed to the sun.  Therefore, one market that I “live” in is the Sunscreen Buyers market.  If Petco wanted to sell something to me, perhaps they can find a way to enter into that market by offering sunscreen, hats, or sun-reflecting aluminum foil suits.  Now, determining whether that’s a good idea or not for Petco to do so is a job for the business development team – and another story for another blog post.

Relationships

And then there were “relationships.”  Just as the planets and stars rely on gravity to keep them in orbit, any successful business development effort relies on an underlying foundation of strong relationships.  Building, managing, and leveraging relationships that are based on trust, respect, and a mutual appreciation of each other’s value is fundamental to enabling the flow of value for the long-term.  Relationships with partners, customers, employees, the press, etc. are all critical to the success of any business development effort and as such they demand a bold-faced spot in any comprehensive definition of the term.

So, is business development actually sales?  Is it partnerships?  Is it all about hustling? Well, frankly, yes.  It’s all of the above and as we’ll see in future posts, it’s much more.  It’s a complicated and fascinating discipline that deserves a clear understanding, so that we can marvel at the beauty of a well-done deal as much as the stars.

Forbes.com

{ Read More }

Google SEO Guide for Small Business Owners

Are you a small business owner that is relying on the search engines to drive traffic and sales to your websites? If so, this Google SEO Guide is for you.

(photo credit by jimbowen0306 under CC2.0)

The ultimate goal  of the search engines is to provide the most relevant and useful of information for the keywords being searched. And in order to achieve this goal, Google has to “weed” out spammy and irrelevant websites from the top of the search results.

While Google claims to make at least several hundred updates in a year (500+), they have also released several “animal” updates targeting low quality websites.

These “animal” updates are popularly known as the Panda and Penguin updates. The Panda update was launched in February 2011 which targeted low quality websites with duplicate content, content farms, and thin pages of content. Currently, there have been 24 Panda updates since it was first launched.

The Penguin algorithm update was launched last April 2012 to target spammy link building techniques like irrelevant links, unrelated blog posts, and link networks.

How to Determine if your Website has been affected by the Panda and Penguin updates?

Open up your Google Analytics and check your traffic and keyword stats. Go to the day view and check your stats to determine when your traffic dropped.

Check with the dates below to find out if you have been affected by the Panda or the Penguin update.

These are the dates for the Panda updates (Drops in rankings usually occurs during this day or several days after the update was rolled out).

• 02/23/2011 – Panda 1.0
• 04/11/2011- Panda 2.0
• 05/09/2011- Panda 2.1
• 06/21/2011 – Panda 2.2
• 07/23/2011- Panda 2.3
• 08/21/2011 – Panda 2.4
• 09/28/2011 – Panda 2.5
• 10/05/2011 – Panda “flux”
• 11/18/2011 – Panda 3.1
• 01/18/2012 – Panda 3.2
• 02/27/2012 – Panda 3.3
• 03/23/2012 – Panda 3.4
• 04/19/2012 – Panda 3.5
• 05/27/2012 – Panda 3.6
• 06/08/2012 – Panda 3.7
• 06/25/2012 – Panda 3.8
• 07/24/2012 – Panda 3.9
• 08/20/2012 – Panda 3.9.1
• 09/18/2012 – Panda 3.9.2

Related Google updates:

• 01/19/2012 – Above the fold Google Update
• 01/12/2012 – Venice Google update

Dates of Google Penguin updates:

• 04/24/2012 – Penguin 1.0
• 05/25/2012 – Penguin 1.1
• 10/5/2012 – Penguin 3

Go to Google Analytics > Traffic sources > Search > Organic and choose “Keyword” as the primary dimension.

I usually choose landing page as the secondary dimension (to check on specific pages that might have been penalized) and set my date range from Feb 2011 to the present date.

Find out which keywords dropped in traffic. You can use a Google Chrome extension called “Chartelligence” to help you visualize dates on your analytics.

You can also use the Penguin Tool, which will provide you with a similar overview of your analytics.

In the screenshot below, it clearly shows how our own website and blog have “survived” the Panda and Penguin updates.

If you need assistance and guidance on how to deal with the Panda and Penguin updates, you can contact us and we’ll let you know how we can help.

We have successfully revived, regained and maintained rankings and traffic for our SEO clients and here are some of the strategies that we have implemented in order to maintain market dominance for most of our clients.

The New SEO Approach for Small Business Owners
(Post Panda and Penguin)

Google is always after a high quality website and relevant user experience for their searchers. Last May 6, 2011, they’ve released an article on what they consider as a high quality website.  (View the original document here)

Our Internet Marketing Strategies particularly our search engine optimization strategy is now entirely focused based on these quality guidelines that Google released.

On Site Optimization – SEO Basics

Target Long Tail Keywords

If you want your website to rank in the search engines, you should start focusing on long tail keywords, instead of broad searches.

Long tail keywords might have less search volumes but they convert highly.

An example of a long tail keyword is when you’ve added Geographic locations to your terms.

ie: Windows and doors oakville

Start optimizing for these keywords because they would be easier to rank in the search engines and they would have higher conversions than generic search phrases.

Increase User Engagement and Improve User Experience

The search engines, particularly the Panda updates are looking for factors that help determine if a site should rank high in the search results or not.

Factors like average time on site, pagespeed , pages per visit, bounce rates and click through rates must be closely monitored in order to avoid algorithm penalties.

Web design, user experience and usability are very important. Avoid making the mistake of hiring an amateur website developer, because your search engine traffic will be affected.

Ask us on how we can help you have a website that the users and search engines would love.

Write Epic Content

As Denise Gervais has coined, EPIC content stands for Engaging, Personal, Intelligent and Converting. 

Write content for the users and not just for the search engines.

Find the biggest problems of your customers and blog about it. We don’t randomly create content for the sake of beefing up your website’s pages. We’re actually creating content that will be beneficial to readers. This will increase engagement because these are the articles and blog posts that your readers would love to read and would likely share across their social networks.

Off Page Optimization – Link Earning instead of just Link Building

SEO is not dead and link building is definitely not dead.

As long as Google relies on backlinks and algorithm factors to rank websites to the top of the search results, seo and linkbuilding will be present.

Paid links, link schemes, and black hat techniques, are still working and it will be a constant struggle between the search engines and people who utilize these methods.

But is it a risk that you are willing to take?

SEO is such a lucrative source of traffic that even big brands like JC Penney, Overstock and even Google’s own Chrome Website have all been involved in some sort of paid link schemes (this is against Google’s terms of service) and they were all penalized.

Lately it was Interflora (an online flower site) that was recently involved in some paid and “spammy” link building methods. They worked, until Google gave them the ban hammer.

Interflora’s rankings are now back after 11 days, but Google will not comment on it.

As a small business owner, what are your chances of getting your rankings back if you have been using “spammy” link building techniques? My guess is very low.

That is why here at WSI Milton, we are doing link earning campaigns instead of the standard link building campaigns.

The old methods of link building like article submissions, bookmarking, press release submissions are still working to a certain degree, but most small businesses are doing the same. That is why we are focusing on “link earning” for all of our clients.

What is Link Earning?

Link earning is the really the old way of link building.

Before article directories and before any press release submission service became mainstream, the internet was connected with links from relevant websites, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and industry relevant links.

People would link to your website because they’ve known you, found your content useful, and shared it with their readers via links.

The idea of link earning is that in a world without SEO, you would still want that link because it’s useful and beneficial to your readers and website.

Here are several examples of link earning methods that we employ for our clients.

1. Local Directories – If you are located in Canada, and the website is a Canadian directory, we want to be listed in that local directory.

2. Memberships and Industry Associations – Are you a landscaper, a home remodeling company, or a flooring retailer? There are several industry websites that list their members and their website’s contact details. These are highly relevant and useful links not only for the search engines but also for the users as well.

Note: Not all industry and membership associations provide an SEO benefit. Our SEO process determines the best industry and membership associations that have a beneficial effect to your website’s rankings.

3. Niche Bloggers – In every industry, there are several niche bloggers who are very passionate on what they do. If you have a home improvement company, you might want to connect with Mommy bloggers who might benefit from your home improvement tips.

Connect with them via Facebook, Twitter, or simply send them an email and share your home improvement tips with them. If they found it really useful and beneficial with their readers, they might blog about it.

Link earning is a continuous and evolving process in our Search Engine Optimization strategy. Make sure that you’ve subscribed to our updates to receive the latest updates on these methods.

Summary: Google SEO Guide for small Business owners

1. The search engines are evolving. SEO is not dead but the search engines are really determined to remove low quality websites in their search results.

2. The search engines are releasing 500+ algorithm updates each year, and two of the most widely known updates are the Panda and Penguin updates.

3. The Panda updates started in Feb 2011 and are targeting websites that have low quality content. The Panda update is concerned with the content on your website. Find duplicate content, low quality pages and thin content. Remove them to get out of the Panda penalty.

4. The Penguin updates started in April 2012 and are targeting low quality and spammy link building techniques. Avoid paid link schemes, black hat techniques, and spammy link building methods because they can get your website penalized just like what happened to big brands like JC Penney, Overstock, Interflora and Google’s Own Chrome website.

5. Use Chartelligence Chrome extension or Panguin Tool to check your analytics and visualize whether you have been affected by the Panda or Penguin update.

6. User metrics are important for ranking websites and maintaining rankings.

7. Write Epic Content – Engaging, Personal, Intelligent and Converting.

8. Start using Custom Link Earning Methods instead of the traditional Link building packages.

That’s over 1500+ words of SEO Guide for small business owners.

If you are not getting free search engine traffic to your websites, then you are missing on a lot of leads and sales. If you have been hit by the Panda and Penguin updates, you need to start fixing your site to get back in the search results.

If you don’t know where to start, you can contact us and we’ll be happy to help you.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/seo/google-seo-guide-for-small-business-owners-0427113#h1zGiPygpPWbfTPc.99 

{ Read More }