Is Your SEO Content Hot or Not?

June 21st, 2011

SEO hot or not

Summer’s finally here, even though the June gloom in Los Angeles says otherwise! Is there anything that says ‘summer’ more than hitting the beach? Take a look at the photos above: if you were to compare your website content to a beach body, would you say that it’s HOT (left) or NOT (right)? Not quite ready for the hot category? Here are 3 easy tips that will help you be more self aware of your onsite content:

Making a Commitment – Just like your health routine and physique, SEO content is something that requires care all year round. Not just when summer (or any another peak season) happens to roll around. After all, do you really expect to hit the beach after a few weeks of preparation?! I think not! It’s never too late to better your SEO efforts by having a consistent plan for maintenance, review and improvement.

Quality over Quantity – This means having a ‘less is more’ mindset. But less is definitely more when it comes to certain aspects of your online marketing efforts. Shorter, concise pages will help customers and draw their attention without leaving them bored. Having less keywords on a page is always better than keyword stuffing. If you can get your point across in 100 words, why would you do it in 1000? The truth is, your customers don’t have the time or interest to stay on your pages for that long.

Don’t Let Your Content Stand Alone – Who really wants to be alone at the beach when you can go with a good group of friends? If you publish content and think that’s it, your SEO efforts will truly suffer. Think of social media and networking like the other components that will make your beach party shine. We’ve also talked about different types of content that can be thrown into the mix, besides just standard text. Pictures, PDFs, videos and sound clips are all interesting complements to your content.

So, what do you think is on the hot or not list for SEO this summer?

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Making the Most of Your Social Media Content

February 14th, 2011

content creation

After all your hard work , you want to make sure that your efforts don’t get lost in the sea of online content. From your regular blog posts to  Tweets, here are some ways you can make sure that you’re making the most out of your social media content:

  • Blog – Writing a post-worthy blog isn’t enough to get your content found. Make sure to fill out the Title, meta description, anchor text, tags with meaningful and relevant keywords before you post. You can also edit the URL of your post to make it shorter and more concise (see: the url of this post vs the title)
  • Images – When you add pictures to your blog or website, always remember to add a title or description. Even if it’s just your brand name or a broad description, these words will go a long way!  My pet hamster made it to the first page of Google Images because I optimized a Flickr photo his name in the title, tags and description.
  • Video- It’s easy to optimize YouTube videos. Properly optimized videos are powerful assets that will benefit your brand in the long run because they have a strong staying power (especially if you get them to rank for a specific location/niche.)
  • Twitter- Keep your messages short and sweet and don’t be afraid to include target keywords and other terms you want to be associated with. A fun part of Twitter is that your responses to other users and retweets also count as content.
  • Facebook- This isn’t the place to blast the same messages over again. Neither is it a place to overtly self-promote. With New Facebook Pages rolling out, you can make your fans keep them engaged and make them feel like they’re part of something exclusive by creating unique, well-timed messages.

What are some other ways you properly optimize your social media content?

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SEO During the Website Redesign Process

January 17th, 2011


In many ways, website redesign can be a lot like moving. There’s so much stuff to pack and rearrange that important things can get misplaced, lost or even left behind. And when you arrive at your new place, it can take a while for everything to be put back in it’s right place again.

If your business is ready for a new SEO web design makeover, here are 4 components that you CAN’T forget about:

1) Transferring tags and descriptions over – Sure, it’s time consuming but title/meta tags/descriptions, even alt tags for images, should reflect the content on each individual page. It’s considered bad SEO practice to have the same information reflected over and over on every page of your website.

2) 301 redirects – It may take awhile for Google to re-crawl your new site. In the meantime, your old URLS will show up in search engine page results. The most efficient way to make sure that this information is not lost is to create a 301 redirect from your old URL to new URL. This is simple for your webmaster to implement and will help preserve your search engine rankings.

3) Forgetting to link keywords – Transferring content from an old site to a new one often involves copy and pasting text. During the transfer, make sure that you don’t drop and URLS and make sure that they’re linking to the right working page.

4) Testing – Lastly, don’t forget the importance of testing before going live. This means checking links and overall usability before you go through with the complete site transfer.

Finally, even when your new website is completed it’s crucial to constantly review your SEO. The excitement of a brand new site may be overwhelming but remember that without the right SEO strategies, no one will be visiting!

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4 Common SEO Mistakes

August 5th, 2010

Search engine optimization is considered to be an art to some and a science to others. I’d like to look at it as a mix of both. No matter what you believe, it’s important to avoid these common mistakes:

  1. Forgetting about keyword research – People often feel tempted to use the first words that come to mind. Remember, it’s not about the words YOU think are relevant to your business, but what customers think. Keyword research is important to see if anyone is actually looking for specific words/phrases.
  2. Feeling too attached to general keywords – Many times people aren’t too thrilled about niche keywords or phrases that include a location. They may have their mind set on “dog groomer” when what they really need is “Los Angeles dog groomer”, “gentle dog groomer” etc.
  3. Expecting too much – Clients can sometimes get frustrated with SEO as a service because it’s not tangible and it can take a while to see results. This means that you won’t instantaneously show up under relevant keywords, so don’t trust anyone that tells you otherwise! Patience will be your best friend as consistent SEO is a long-term investment.
  4. Linking with useless anchor text – Resist the urge to link with words like “Click Here”. Example:
    Bad: Click here to learn more about internet marketing design.
    Good    : Learn more about internet marketing design today!

Is there anything else you’d like to add? Remember, the best way to avoid the pitfalls of SEO is to get educated or ask the experts for help.

internet marketing design

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Six of SEO’s Most Troublesome Myths

June 21st, 2010

By its very nature, the realm of search engine optimization is laden with a wide variety of myths. This can make life difficult for anyone trying to get their start in SEO, or for seasoned veterans, who are discovering their time-honored practices to be letting them down. Here are a few of the most troublesome myths I’ve encountered, and the real answers behind them.

Meta Tagging is the Place to Start SEO

Every site needs to have meta-tagging. Just not for the reason everyone thinks. Other than maybe a title tag, there isn’t much that the so very often keyword-stuffed meta tags can offer a website, at least from an SEO perspective. Search engines have learned, for the most part, that these fields shouldn’t be trusted. That’s not to say you shouldn’t waste your time on them, though: More often than not, your listing on the Google results page will be gleaned from that meta description, so it’s a critical step in selling your site to searchers.

The Duplicate Content Penalty

I’m just not sure how this myth ever got started; it just doesn’t make any sense! Imagine a mild-mannered blogger, just writing for fun. That blog’s content gets scooped up by a big, bad, black-hat SEO, and scattered across the web. Google can’t condone the copy-and-paste practices that made that post get copied across the web, but they don’t want to punish that blogger for writing! So, and forget they ever saw the copies, but they offer normal SEO credit to the original.

From a purely SEO standpoint, it’s still a bad idea to use duplicate content, but only because you’ll be throwing away you time on material Google won’t be considering.

“Bad Neighborhood” Links

Many website owners fear sites from “bad neighborhoods,” worrying that links from these domains will pull their own website over to the wrong side of the tracks, damaging their rankings. But just as Google knows a creator of content cannot control who snags their copy, and shouldn’t be penalized, a site owner cannot control who is linking to them, and will not penalize that owner. Of course, if your site returns links back to those bad-news sites, that’s a whole different story–don’t do it.

Flash=Bad SEO?

Accuse me of being biased if you will, but as someone whose portfolio is built almost entirely in Flash, I can tell you that it is not as bad most people think. Okay, it’s not great, either, but for the right kind of site, the benefits of a partially-Flash site can outweigh the drawbacks. As time goes on, search engines are learning to extract more and more from Flash animations, all while site designers are developing new ways, such as XML importing, and internal linking techniques, which are helping them make their content more Google-legible. It won’t be the best-SEOed site out there, but a Flash site won’t be left out in the cold anymore.

Link Swap

One of the biggest trends in small business and small blog SEO right now is the link exchange. While this does have some benefits, I’m not sure that it has enough. Search engines are very good at detecting these boomerang links, and have deprecated their worth to a large extent. Not to mention, there is the risk of a naive site owner being burned by a received link which isn’t worth what was handed out. Also, and maybe this is just me, but I don’t like having too many links cluttering up my site. For most SEOs, the best practice is to link naturally; if you like the site, and think your users will, then link away!

SEO Is a Sinister Process

One of the most virulent myths in the interactive marketing community is that SEO is an awful process, conducted among secret societies who mastermind sneaky strategies that will help their clients jockey for Google’s top spot. Not (always) the case, or, at least, it doesn’t have to be. The heart of SEO simply involves presenting the content of a website to its natural audience, then reaping the benefits in the form of Google placement. Search engine optimization is a technique and a skill, which, like anything else, can be abused. Just as any other form of marketing can falsely advertise and misrepresent their products, SEO can allow a site to misrepresent itself to an audience, and gather undeserved benefits.

Brandon Rhodes works for Response Mine Interactive, specializing in online customer acquisition through search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and more. Follow Response Mine on Twitter: @Responsemine.

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