SEO

Why do I need Search Engine Optimization for my site?

Your main goal is to drive traffic to your site or what is the point of creating a website that can't promote your business due to lack of traffic. Search engines are the biggest source of traffic for websites. The higher your site appears on the search engine the better it will be for your business. Keep in mind that 80% of viewers don't go beyond the first page of searches on a search engine.

Why does my site not rank well?

There are many factors that decide how a site ranks. Meta-tags, link text, keyword density, page titles, inbound links and keyword density are just a few of those factors that have an impact on your site ranking. You need to ensure that these things are done well the first time.

How long will it be before I start seeing results from SEO work?

It really depends on the search engine. The frequency of when they update their indexes varies thus it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for you to see results.

Why aren't all my pages being indexed?

Stop reading now if your website has been up for less then six months. Your website is too new for all of it's' pages to be indexed. Patience is a virtue. It takes time for search engines to crawl through your entire website and then to add your web pages to the search engines' index. If you're positive that your pages are search-engine friendly, then there's nothing to worry about.

If your website has been up for more than six months, and your site isn't optimized, you must check your website to ensure all of the pages can be found and indexed. To do that, you need to see if you've done the following:

1. Make an HTML sitemap.
2. Make a Google or Yahoo sitemap.
3. Use search-engine friendly URLs.
4. Use search-engine friendly linking navigation.

One more piece of advice is to get incoming links. These are important, as the search engines' algorithms feed off this, and this may play an important part in terms of how deeply search engines crawl that website.

How do I check if my site is search engine friendly?

Turn off JavaScript, CSS, and cookies in your web browser and then look at your website. The way you're now viewing the site is pretty much how search engines most likely see your website. If you can successfully view all of your content and navigate through your website, then your site is, for the most part, search-engine friendly. The only other thing you need to check is your URL names. Don't use a session ID or 'id=' in your query strings. Rather, use descriptive names for link names.

Do outbound links help my rankings?

No. This is a common myth.

The entire outgoing link topic has been discussed by amateurs, and has been going on 4 or 5 years now. Someone has yet to prove this, and many have actually shown evidence of it not making a difference. Newer SEO people tend to see Google's goal of "do no evil" as one to police the webmaster community and make sure everyone plays fair. Google is not a referee. Google have always been first and foremost a search engine, and as such Google only cares about serving relevant results.

Newer SEO people also don't really understand what PageRank is, other than being a buzzword. PageRank is a measure of perceived page quality. In other words, if an outgoing link adds to a page's quality, it will get more incoming links and thus rank better. If it doesn't add to a page's quality, nothing is gained, it's that simple. There's no reason for Google to second guess itself and add bonuses or penalties to all sites just because a certain attribute is always making a site better or worse. So, in short, because Google measures incoming links, they have no need to measure outgoing links, or anything else that supposedly marks a site as having a higher "quality." In the end, if it truly does have a higher quality, it'll get more incoming links naturally.

Finally, there are hundreds of sites and pages that rank perfectly well without any outgoing links. Certain types of sites, such as blogs, normally have outgoing links and it would look abnormal for them not to. However unless your site is a blog, it normally should not have outgoing links, and traditionally websites haven't had them. This is going back to the 90s, long before Google came about. Most business, commercial, ecommerce, or service sites do not have outgoing links. This isn't because they're hoarding PR, but because they're trying to sell something. As such, they don't want to distract from the user experience or send users away.

Most people fail to remember a time before the advent of incoming-link algorithms. In those days, to measure quality search engines, one needed to guess based on on-page factors. That made the job near impossible to do. Once incoming links, or PageRank, came into the scene, search engines had a fantastic way to measure the quality of a site, and so then one only had to discern topicality. Why then take a step backwards and again start using on-page factors to measure quality?

Google has a lot of geniuses working for them, and as such it realizes that if external links do add to the usefulness of a site, then that site is already receiving a bonus because more useful sites garner more incoming links. This also applies for anything that allegedly adds usefulness. They aren't going to say, "Check this out, we have this cool algorithm here, but we're going to second-guess it and assume that pages without outgoing links must be penalized for being less useful." Why would you ever assume something that you can already measure in numbers?

And remember, Google itself invented the no follow link attribute to give webmasters an easier way to block links.

In all, if Google would give value to external links, it would be pointless. As soon as Google confirmed this, spammers and laymen alike would just add one or two links to their pages. In other words, lots of pointless links would do nothing to increase actual relevance.

What determines the position of a site in the search engines?

Each search engine uses different algorithms to determine page position, and these algorithms can change over time. However, two generalities can be made about search engine positioning:

1. A pages' word frequency is important, mainly in the page title and near the top of that page.
2. The number of links on a page is important, mainly from sites that are recognized as being relevant.

Of course, the question of what makes a site relevant, from a search engine perspective, is an interesting one. Different search engines address this issue differently.

Other significant criteria include:

• Text used in the meta tags DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS;
• Text used in links pointing to a page;
• The proximity of words in the text, for searches on phrases of two words or more;
• The size (and colour) of font used for text;
• The use of H1-H6 tags;
• Whether or not a page is the root page of a domain

What is a spider?

A Spider (also called a "crawler" or a "bot") is an actual program that visits a web page on websites, reads it, and uses hypertext links that placed on each page to discover and read a site's other pages.

Is there a way to speed up the spidering process?

Yes, there are several paid inclusion programs offered by various search engines, which speeds up the entire process. Generally, these programs offer a review of your web site in a timelier manner, often within a few days to one week. In some instances, however, paid inclusion can become very costly and may in fact be redundant since some databases are used for several search engines. The decision on which paid programs to use is primarily based on how your keyword search category's competitiveness is, as well as the time frame you're prepared to wait on being listed.

PPC

What if I have more than 1 website that I would like you to work on?

That is something that we can easily do for our clients. There is an administration fee included for each site and monthly cost that is based on the keywords that are chosen by you.

Sponsored Results? What does that mean?

Simply put, sponsored results means paid positioning. Your ad will appear in the top and/or right side of a search engine results page which is the "sponsored results section". Your website ad will always appear in the sponsored links on the first page when potential clients are searching for a particular keyword that is related to your site.

Can I have more than one keyword?

Definitely. We can monitor as many keyword phrases as deem necessary. There is only one system administration fee however; each keyword may vary in monthly cost.

How are keywords chosen?

Our knowledgeable representatives will work with you to choose the most effective keywords to attract your target market. We take pride in our Internet Marketing Specialists' abilities to be creative and think "outside the box" in order to help each individual client implement a successful Search Engine Marketing Campaign.

Do I pay every time someone clicks on my site?

At the individual clients' request, we do offer a pay-per-click service. However we do not include pay-per-click fees in our standard SEP service, this means that you get an unlimited number of clicks for a set monthly fee. Unlike many Search Engine Marketing and Pay per Click Management companies, we secure a top position without you having to worry about hidden fees or click fraud.

How do I know if the campaign is working and people are coming to my website?

We have implemented a round-the-clock monitoring system and our patent pending software tracks all impressions related to your keywords. You can contact your account manager at any time to obtain a traffic report.

If I want to add a phrase at a later date, do I need to pay another administration fee?

No. The system administration fee is a one-time fee. You may add additional words/phrases at any time once your account has been activated. At this point the only thing you pay for is the monthly fee associated with the keywords that you have chosen.

Social Media

What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

Social Media Marketing involves promoting content in various ways to social media users to attempt to increase website exposure and traffic. Social Media Marketing can involve anything from developing content which targets social media users, to building a network of other users, to requesting votes from others, to pretty much anything else involving getting votes and traffic from social media websites.

What is the difference between SMM and Social Media Optimization?

The term Social Media Optimization usually doesn't include promoting content through methods as requesting votes. Social Media Optimization involves creating just the right content and setting up a website so that it's friendly to social media users, but doesn't go so far to promote the content.

Can I submit my own content to social media sites?

Almost all social media sites let users submit their own content. The bigger issue here is the reaction from the social media site's audience as well as any unwritten rules that may exist. Digg users, for example, are known for not appreciating self submissions. StumbleUpon users often also look down on a person submitting or giving a "thumbs up" to their own content. Most small social media sites, including those that target a specific niche, have audiences which welcome self-submissions.

How many social media sites should I use?

While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of social media sites, it's simply impossible to use all of them. It's generally more effective to use a small number (between 2 to 5) actively, and if you want to have accounts at other sites that you use occasionally, that's fine. Since part of being a successful social media user involves building a profile and a reputation at that site, it's much more realistic to achieve this when you're only consistently using a small number of sites.

Should I vote for someone else's content when they send me a request?

Requesting votes is commonplace among social media users, and there's likely to be a time when you will want to request votes from others. Whether you request votes or vote for the suggestions of others is entirely your choice, but be sure to treat others as you would like to be treated. If you want others to vote for your requests, you should reciprocate. Naturally, you shouldn't vote for everything simply because someone asks. Part of building a strong profile involves submitting and voting for quality content, and not junk. When someone sends you a request for a vote, pay attention to the content and decide accordingly.

How can I use social media to build links?

There are basically two distinct ways to build links with social media.

1. Submitting your Content - By submitting your content you may be gaining a good inbound link from the social media site itself. However, some social media sites use "nofollow" tags on links to discourage spam submissions.
2. Link Building – Link building is the more effective of the two, and is done through social media to develop excellent content that creates a lot of buzz with social media and will encourage other bloggers and website owners to link to you. Social media sites are an excellent means added exposure that will lead to more links.

Why does traffic from social media websites convert poorly?

People using social media sites generally arrive at your site just because they want to see what content is hot or popular with other users of that social media site. In most cases they have no interest in buying products or clicking on ads, as that doesn't fit into why they're using the social media site to begin with. Attention span is another factor. Since social media sites provide such a high number of links and content, it's very easy for social media users to leave your site and move on to the next option.

Why is social media traffic worth my time if it converts poorly?

Social media is used for something other than selling your products. If that is your intent with social media then you are wasting your time and money. In general, social media is used for branding, exposure and name recognition. Social media costs nothing to upkeep and does a present benefit other thank the ones above. You can increase your search engine traffic with link building to your site and by using this leverage it will improve your SEO rankings as well.

Why is adding friends so important?

The whole point of social media sites is the "social" part of it. These sites allow you to build your network of "friends" or people you know or have met throughout your travels in life. The more friends you have, the more influence and input you have because you are exposed to that many more people.

How can a network help me with social media marketing?

People like to help people that they know and like. Therefore your friends will be more likely to pass your content on to others. You can also gain more votes via your friends which may lead to others casting votes for you too.

Are adding voting buttons/widgets to my site or blog smart?

They can be effective but keep in mind that they have to be used in moderation. Focus on the sites that you want to target the most and add buttons' to those sites. They become less effective the more you use them or can cause confusion with your visitors because they don't know what is important to you.

What are niche social media sites?

Digg is a site that includes various types of topics. A niche social media site covers one specific type of content category. These niche social media sites generally result in a specific target market, a smaller target but one that is generally interested in that topic.

Where do I start with social media?

The most important thing to remember is to be active. Many people think that as long as they post something every now and then, they are keeping up. This is not true. You have to be active everyday, post comments, add friends, vote for people and add content. This is extremely important to the upkeep of your social media site and its relevancy.

What should I expect traffic wise?

There is really no way to gauge how much traffic you can expect. Your site may get 10,000 visitors or none at all. Social media sites are usually capable of sending out to thousands of visitors, some smaller ones can send out to a few hundred. Keep in mind that pages which draw a lot of inbound links are more likely to rank higher in the search engines.

What amount of time should I spend on a social media site?

This is really up to you and depends on what you want to accomplish. If you are using social media mainly for entertainment then it really doesn't matter how much time you spend on them. If you are trying to promote a website, you should have a limit as to how much ti9me you spend. Don't sacrifice time spent on others tasks like content development due to social media sites. Generally at first the amount of time spent on a social media site maybe quite a bit due to set up and profile building. After that has been completed though, your will be able to cut back on the amount of time you spend on a social media site.

How do I keep up with all the different social media sites?

There are not enough hours in the day to keep up with all the social media sites. Your best bet is to find a few that work for you and you are interested in and set your focus on them. The results you receive will be much better when setting your focus and time on a few specific sites. Remember that you have to be active with these sites to keep them relevant.

Should I even bother with small social media sites?

Smaller social media sites usually focus on a niche market, so while you may have less exposure to an audience, it will be a highly targeted audience. You may also have more success with these sites because of the amount of competition, or lack there of. You have to know where to draw the line though. If you are only receiving 20 visitors and are on the first page, it's probably not worth you time and effort.

What can a social media consultant do for me?

These guys are the experts. They can assist you in developing an overall social media campaign for your site. They can help you decide what type of content is right to use on your site to reach your intended target market. They may even help you write your content so it is better suited for a social media site.

What is the link between Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing? Why are they mentioned together often?

Social Media Marketing is offered by many SEO experts for the main purpose of link building. Due to the fact that search engine rankings are very influenced by inbound links, leveraging your social media sites with your site will create that opportunity for link building.

I'm posting things everywhere and I'm still not getting any traffic, what's wrong?

This is usually because not all content should be submitted everywhere. You really have to take the time to develop good content and place it in the proper places. This is where a Social Media Marketing consultant can offer their expertise to you. By posting your content on a few choice spots you should achieve greater results.