In order to help clarify the SEO process to our clients, we have put together a couple of short SEO primer videos designed to answer some of the most frequent SEO questions that come up. The following tutorial consists of the following:

• SEO Primer Intro
• Understanding Google Search Results
• 3 Pillars of SEO (On page, Content, Link Building)
• Keyword Research
• On Page Optimization

SEO Primer:

Understanding Google Search Results:

Keyword Research:

3 Pillars of SEO:

On Page SEO:

If you’re counting on your company’s internet presence to increase the potential revenue of your business, search engine ranking improvement will play a vital role on it’s visibility. This article will give you invaluable insight on how search engine rank optimization can guide your website to the top of the list for relevant organic search engine results.

What is Search Engine Ranking Improvement?

Search engine optimization and seo involves strategically planning the content of your website, both on the user side and in the backend coding, in accordance with complicated algorithms developed by some of the major search engines on the internet. In simpler terms, search engine ranking improvements give the web crawlers the content they need to put you in the top of the list for relevant search terms. This means maximum exposure for your business, making you easy to find for those seeking your product or service.

Search Engine Ranking Improvement Tactics

There are several search engine ranking improvement tactics that can be utilized for optimum results. The key factor in achieving a good search engine ranking is content and keyword relevance. The selected keywords should be strategically selected based on popular keyword searches that relate to what you have to offer.

Though, keywords hold a lot of weight in search engine ranking improvements, keyword placement and density are equally important. Here is a sample of how to get the most out of your keywords when optimizing your content for search engine ranking improvements.

1. If it’s within your control, try to use your most valuable keyword in your domain name. This will give your domain name some strength while making it easier for clients to find you.

2. Make your strongest keywords the first words in your page title

3. Be sure to include your keywords in the description of your meta tags. If possible, allow it to appear twice in the description; once in the very beginning, and once anywhere else within the description.

4. Use your keywords in your headers and be sure to only have one H1 header on each page. These headers hold the most weight in comparison to h2’s, h3’s and so on.

5. Instead of naming your graphics with generic names such as “image1.jpg”, give it a relevant name such as “joes-automotive-logo.jpg”.

6. Keep in mind that there are still people out there that browse with their graphics turned off. Be sure to use alt tags and name them in accordance with search engine ranking tactics.

7. Building a site map not only helps individuals navigate your website easier, but it also gives you great opportunities to add valuable links for search engine ranking improvements.

8. Use your keywords in your links and page names to increase your keyword density.

9. Search engine ranking spiders calculate the relevance of your website by the information that appears on it first. Be sure to put most of your search engine ranking improvements towards the top of your page. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can give you the freedom to place content where ever you wish while ensuring that the spiders only see what you want them to see first.

While this list is sure to get you on your way towards search engine ranking improvement success, there are other great strategies that we can use to get you to the top of the list. Give us a call to learn more about our search engine ranking improvements. Your company’s online success is our business!

Back on June 24th Ryan Naraine did a post on the ZDNet blog likening Apple’s bundling of additional software with their security updates as Badware Behavior. I had seen these updates and while I agreed at the time this was pretty questionable Apple at least had the courtesy to separate new software from the actual security update.

It appears that today Apple has reached a new low by actually bundling iTunes with their Quicktime update, forcing you to add iTunes to keep Quicktime up to date and secure.

This set off alarms as I don’t have nor do I want iTunes installed on my computer yet Apple seems to think I should.

Come on Apple, I’m just not cool enough to use an ‘i’ anything so please stop rubbing it in.

For those of you unfamiliar with this tool (http://www.mcdar.net/dance/index.php) it let you search each of Google’s data centers by IP address, letting you see how your rankings are across all the data centers. This can be very interesting to use when you’re working on an important ranking for an SEO or Reputation Management campaign.

Right now it shows that the account is suspended and we’re hoping they get their account reinstated as we really like this tool.

If anyone knows the owner of this site please have him get in touch with us, we’d be happy to host this tool for free for everyone to use. We’ve go plenty of servers so it won’t be a problem for us.

Recently the term zxbfwwr was the top search term on Google Trends. The guys who started this actually put a small site up at www.zxbfwwr.net but left the .com unregistered. I registered the domain right away and now that there are a lot of results for the term I’m going to see if the .com will have the strength to outrank the other 39,000 results in Google today.

We’ll have an update on Friday the 13th (oooohhh scary) and see how successful this test was.

Thanks a lot to PushON for making our Friday here. We’ve decided to cancel all work today (sorry clients) and play SEO Bullshit Bingo using a quick search for “search engine optimization” on YouTube as the bingo caller.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to how most well-known companies have failed to leverage the strengths of their online properties as part of a search engine optimization or brand association strategy. Go to any big name corporate website home page and you’ll almost always see a Page Rank of 7 or 8 out of 10, which is very high. It always amazes me how many large corporations waste the strength of their websites, due to poor optimization strategies.

McDonalds

You would think a company that sells so many hamburgers would come up on the first page when you do a search for hamburgers on Google. They do rank for hamburger but the page listed links to their training center, located on their corporate website. This goes to show that they could easily implement what I’m suggesting, they just don’t know to do it.

What I really want to know is why there isn’t a page titled, “The McDonalds Hamburger, First Among Hamburgers” showing the world how great their main product is. Doing so would give them a well targeted page promoting their product that will easily rank for the plural and singular versions of the word hamburger, which according to our keyword research tool both get a lot of traffic:

Before moving to the next example I wanted to invite comments on how Wendy’s is ranking for “hamburgers” as they don’t have the word hamburger anywhere in their page source:

Major Car Manufacturers

I was recently reading a post by Bill Imada on the Big Tent Blog at AdAge.com and he pointed out an ad in China for Subaru:

Chinese Headline: “Free and unrestrained; expect to exceed expectations in the New Year!”
Advertising Agency: AdAsia Communications, New York
Creative Director: Paul Ng
Account Supervisor: Julia Kang

The idea with this ad was to associate their brand with the emotional high of rebirth/reinvention, suggesting that this renewal can occur at the beginning of the New Year, and that this feeling is also captured by purchasing a Subaru. An esoteric, abstract idea at best, that clearly required hours of creative collaboration.

You would think that if the big car companies are putting resources into such far removed ideas as an ad strategy, that they would at least be putting equivalent resources into more direct media like search, where people are actively looking for information about these products in preparation of making a buying decision.

Based on these examples I’d say either the major car manufacturers aren’t very good at keyword research or they’re not really paying attention to search at all:

hybrid vehicles ~ Doesn’t turn up any major automakers in the natural search results. There are a few in the sponsored section, (Cadillac, Toyota, Saturn, Honda). I want to know why no one has “www.carcompany.com/hybrid-vehicles” listing all their hybrid options.

alternative fuel vehicles ~ Once again no one in the natural results and only Saturn in the sponsored.

hybrid suv ~ This actually brings up a few sites in the natural results:

• www.fordvehicles.com/environmental
• www.toyota.com/highlander
• www.gmc.com/yukonhybrid/index.jsp
• www.chevrolet.com/hybrid

All the pages ranking naturally for “hybrid suv” aren’t really targeted for that keyword, they’re more of product pages for one individual hybrid vehicle, rather then their full line of hybrid offerings. This again demonstrates that they have the strength to accomplish the desired results, they’re just not doing it.

These are just two dramatic demonstrations of the truly unlimited potential for utilizing SEO as part of the arsenal in brand association campaigns. Anything from activities to ideas to self identity related searches as well as related products or slang terms can be used as the basis of an online brand association strategy, the only limit is your creativity and ingenuity.

It looks like Amazon is pretty serious about very serious about getting a foothold in the music download business. They’ve just sent out an email to all the Amazon Associates offering a 20% commission off all music downloads:

Through December 31, 2007 Associates are eligible to earn 20% on all MP3 referrals (up to $1.50 per item). Beginning January 1, 2008 the referral fees will be 10%. There is no limit to the number of items on which referral fees are earned.

Expect to see all your favorite lyric and music related sites jumping on board with this program. With Amazon offering DRM free 256kps MP3 downloads for $.89-$.99 I can see them taking over a big piece of the online music pie. iTunes, the biggest player in the industry right now has already responded to Amazon’s entry by lowering the price of their DRM free downloads from $1.29 to $0.99.

I for one think this is a refreshing change, and I’m very happy to see some real competition in an industry that’s been largely dominated by Apple, and the iPod. As more people come to understand the raw deal they get when buying DRM restricted (see defective by design) files, they will start flocking to the retailer that gives the them some real freedom.

I’ve seen lots of posts over the years about how political campaigns should be using SEO principles as part of their overall effort. I’ve always agreed that would be a good idea if done tastefully and ethically, but dismissed the idea as those ideals are very rare in the political circles.

Now, with the Presidential Election fast approaching we’ve decided that we will offer our services specifically to political campaigns, with the stipulation that we will not do anything unethical or otherwise ’shady’.

So what can we search engine optimization actually do for political campaigns? Quite a bit!

Our main focus in these campaigns will be working to ranks our clients for keyword associated with big issues for the 2008 election. We already know the Iraq War, and the War on Terror will be a big part of this. Another hot button issue is Universal Health Care. Working with politicians to promote certain listings relevant to these searches can be a great way to increase the level of communication between the representatives, and the represented.

I’ll be giving updates about projects related to this post as we move forward. We’ve been in talks with some campaigns, and if all goes well we’ll have some interesting stories to tell.

Yes, you read that right. According to Google’s recently updated Webmaster’s Guidelines with regards to what Google calls “link schemes.”

Examples of link schemes can include:

Links intended to manipulate PageRank

Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web

Link exchange and reciprocal links schemes (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)

Buying or selling links

Now last time I checked swapping links with other websites predates Google. Hell, before we had search engines the only way you could find anything online was following links between sites, and a lot of those were reciprocal links, as that was the only way for website owners to bring in visitors to their sites. I can understand that some people use links to game Google’s results, instead of helping users find good content, but they are hardly the majority, and the outright banning of sites that exchange links is very heavy handed.

IMO Google is going to far here. They present a catch 22 where they recommend:

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?

It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest. In addition, submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

I don’t know about any of you, but I’ve never used DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory when looking for anything. Also, Yahoo sells links in their directory for $299 a year ($600 for adult sites). Is Google recommending I violate their guidelines in an attempt to follow their guidelines?