Sep 02

Two Lessons on Search Engine Optimization From Hurricane Irene

Arizona, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Search Engine Optimization, SEO No Comments »

It’s not often that we discuss natural disasters, or Mother Nature in general, in the course of talking about search engine optimization. Once in a while, however, life gives us situations that shed a little bit of light on the issues and predicaments we face in online marketing.

In fact, hurricane Irene was a prime example.

Although damage from the storm was by far and large less severe than it was predicted to be, it still caused major problems up and down the East Coast. And believe it or not, there are a few things we can draw from the experience that bear directly on your company’s SEO plan.

Here are two lessons on search engine optimization from hurricane Irene:

Things don’t always go where we expect them to. Although teams of meteorologists and experts plotted its course on an hourly basis, Hurricane Irene still ended up making landfall in a place where it wasn’t expected, and promptly took a direction no one predicted. As a result, several communities weren’t ready for the rain and wind they received.

What does this have to do with your website? Visitors aren’t always going to arrive on the pages you hope they will, or click through on the links you would like them to. For that reason, it’s important that every part of your business website be ready to sell. An important part of search engine optimization is converting traffic into customers, and you should be prepared to do that from any page you have.

You have to plan for the unexpected. This isn’t exactly new advice when it comes to online marketing, but it’s still needs to be mentioned once in a while. Because Google, Yahoo, and Bing can change their algorithms at any time, you never know when your current flow of traffic is going to be washed away.

Very frequently, minor adjustments to search engine algorithms work themselves out over time; once in a while they don’t. Either way, it’s a good idea to have other online marketing avenues in place. Relying solely on search engine optimization is fairly common, but it makes sense to be ready for any change in the weather, because you never know what can happen.

 

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Oct 13

Getting ready to launch new FryFab.com Website

Arizona, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Web Design No Comments »

The new website design for fryfab.com has been in the making for a month now and is almost ready to launch. We brought out all the stop for this website including a few things that have never been done before on any other websites that Epic Web Solutions has launched.

-Search Engine/Keyword Detection to display relevant content based on what the user typed into Google/Yahoo/Bing.

  • By detecting the keyword they have searched, we can show users targeted product images/text and increase conversions.
  • Learn more about what the user wants to see and display only converting images.

-Geolocation of users by IP address

  • Find out where the user is coming from and display testimonials from local business’s that they may recognize to increase brand recognition
  • Display discounts or promos based on location
  • Real time content delivery based on location

Combining these two techniques, we will be looking to increase conversions while also enhancing the user experience by only giving them content/sales/promos that are targeted to what they are looking for and their specific location.

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Oct 12

Arizona Websites/SEO Company Expands

Arizona, Phoenix, Scottsdale, SEO, Web Design No Comments »

That’s right, you heard it here. Epic Web Solutions, LLC is now moved into an office in the Scottsdale air park and looking to hire people to start handling day to day website tasks.

The move will bring more value, a more professional space and a partnership with Despins printing here in Scottsdale.

Sep 13

Analyzing Your Website Traffic to Understand User Experience

Arizona, HTML, Phoenix, Scottsdale, SEO, Website Design, Website Development No Comments »

Looking at your website traffic is something you should do on a regular basis so you can better understand how your visitors navigate through your site and why they do the things that they do. Things such as average page views, bounce rate, average time spent on site and top content are all things that should give insight on what your users like and what they don’t like. Since you are likely the owner or manager of the website you are running, you will never truly be able to simulate a user experience on your own simply because you know alot more about your product than your customers do. Below are a few things at when analyzing your traffic:

Bounce Rate:

Bounce rate is the % of times a user enters and leave on the same page. Depending on your industry and the nature of your website, this % will vary. Obviously the lower the better but to really understand why they are bouncing take a look at the average time spent on each page. Are they reading your information, getting what they need and then leaving (spending 2 minutes or more on your website), or are they coming and leaving fairly quickly? If they leave quickly than you need to most likely re-arrange things in a fashion that the user will see what they came for and get more information. If the user comes, stays for a little while and then leaves without requesting more information, than you need to either give them a little less information or give them reasons to navigate through the rest of your site a little. Soft sells or calls to action is high trafficked spots on your website will help. Using key areas in your website real estate to try and get the user to do something rather than using these spots for information purposes. Ask them to join your email list to get free information regarding what they came to your site for.

Average Page Views:

If you have a low average page views number than your content probably needs to be re written or moved around. Try possibly taking a survey of some sort seeing what your current customers are most interested in about your service, or why they use you or your product. Take this information and structure it in a way that the users can navigate through your site and not get all the information they need on one page but enough to keep them interested throughout the whole site. As you see this improve, start implementing calls to action in certain spots as well.

Search Engine Traffic vs Direct Traffic:

This is a little more advanced but one way to try and increase conversion is showing different content based on the source of the traffic. People who are coming directly to your site usually (not always) were referred by someone or have a little more information than usual about your product or service. Possibly think about making the conversion funnel for these visitors a little shorter as they probably don’t need as much information, they just need a little nudge to contact you. Search engine traffic is usually visitors that know what they need or want, just looking for a person to buy it from. Present yourself in a fashion that will showcase your product, it’s features and how it will solve your customer’s problem and then give them a call to action on why they should contact you, buy the product or get more information.

There are ways to detect this in your code and doing it safely. Don’t redirect them to certain pages as if done incorrectly Google may flag you for cloaking. Simply make your page dynamic in a way that you can display information that is more beneficial to the user based on the information you have gathered about the source and other details.

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Sep 05

Link Building & It’s Importance in SEO

Arizona, Phoenix, Scottsdale, SEO, Web Design No Comments »

Link building (especially on Google) is probably the most important aspect of SEO right now. As Google moves towards making links a big part of their algorithm, link building becomes more and more important as a daily SEO activity. The days of ranking well on Google for having just a well on page optimized website are over. Everybody knows that content is king, title tags are important, proper use of header tags is good and link anchor text always helps, but now the shift is to in bound links. Quality, relevant, 1 way in bound links from high page rank sites with good anchor text is the one thing that can take your average ranking site right to the top of the first page.

Quality Links:

Links of the same relevancy that aren’t spammy. The higher the page rank the better. The fewer the links on the page that is linking to you the better. This is because for every site that a page links to, it’s passing on a little piece of its page rank to each of those sites. The more site that are linked to, the less page rank each site will get because of sharing with the other sites.

Rate at Which Links are Acquired:

Don’t do all your link building in one day, or even one week, Spread it out! Unless you are writing exceptional content on a daily basis and people are linking to it because it’s highly informative and completely original, don’t build links at a rapid pace. Then again, don’t build slowly, but google knows if you are building to fast and won’t give you as much credit or possibly penalize you if you get carried away.

Method of Acquiring Links:

Directory submission is always a topic in SEO. When I submit sites to directories, I check a couple things before I submit. Things such as page rank, type of sites they allow and the overall feeling I get when I look at the directory. If the directory has a zero page rank value and has adult or spammy sites in their directory a usually won’t submit. I do this for two reasons, if the web directory has no page rank, google may or may not trust the directory and all the sites in it. Usually if google assigns a page rank > 1 to something there is usually a certain standard of content or information. This isn’t always the case, but a good starting point. Also, if there are spammy sites or adult sites in the directory I usually won’t submit as this may look to google as a bad thing.

Next there is article submissions which really I think only works correctly when you write good article that are informative and not copied. Finally theirs blogging or high quality content creating on your actual site, which I think is the best way. This way may take the longest to see the fruits of your labor (unless you are promoting your content through viral methods) but it sure does pay off. The kind of links is one way in bound links from pages that have relevant content to yours, high page rank and the anchor text is similar to the keywords or phrases you are targeting. Preferably these in bound links would appear in paragraphs or text that is related to your topic as well.

For Search Engine Optimization or other web design services, you can contact me directly.

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Jun 07

Is a Keyword Dense Domain Name Important in SEO?

Arizona, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Search Engine Optimization, SEO No Comments »

When launching your SEO campaign, if you have the choice of the domain then buying a keyword dense domain is important but not going to prevent you from being #1 if you dont have it.

For example, search the 1 word search phrase “foreclosure” and see what domain shows up first.

Foreclosure.com

Now, that’s not showing #1 just because of the domain name, but it’s sure is helping. Now, to show you that it isn’t the be all end all to have your desired keywords in your domain name, search the phrase “Arizona Website Design.”

PrimeView.com

When it comes to purchasing your domain, if you can get a keyword dense one than that is 1 step forward in the right direction. SEO isn’t just one good thing to get you to the top, it’s a combination of a bunch of small things to make 1 good big thing. Obviously some aspects are more important than others, but usually not 1 single thing will get you to the top.

Thanks

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Jun 05

Search Engine Optimization for Business Owners – FAQ’s

Arizona, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Search Engine Optimization, SEO No Comments »

I am compiling a list of questions that I get from business owners on a regular basis when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). These are questions that I get most frequently when talking with my clients or prospective clients about SEO.

1.) What is SEO, how does it work.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engines use website crawlers to crawl all the website on the internet and index the text that is crawled from each site. This text (including links, tags, etc…) get run through the search engines ranking algorithm and are assigned a rank based on this information. The ranking algorithm is made up of several (hundreds) of factors that measure your site and assign a weight to each item. The combination of doing all these things correctly will help you rank the best. Some of the most known factors are:

-Title Tag

-Header Tag Usage

-In/Outbound links

-Keyword Density

-Domain Age

2.) How do you know the algorithm?

Nobody has a guide or manual to any search engines algorithm accept for the team who developed/maintains it. Search Engines such as Google & Yahoo don’t openly divulge the secrets that make up there algorithms. Search engine algorithms change on such a frequent basis that it requires a lot of studying and staying up to date to keep up with these changes. Anyone can learn the basic fundamentals of the algorithms by buying a book or searching the internet. Experience is usually what separates to go optimizers from the bad.

3.) Can I rank #1 on Google over night?

Promising #1 rankings is a dead giveaway that the person promising those rankings either doesn’t know what they are talking about or is just trying to get your money. #1 rankings over night don’t exist using white hat (accepted SEO practices). If you wanted to rank #1 for the phrase “custom made gold zippers in Phoenix, Arizona” then maby you could rank pretty high fairly quickly since it’s likely not a very competitive search phrase and no one else is optimizing for it. Bottom line, ranking on the first page on Google really isnt possible using accepted SEO techniques overnight.

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May 10

Should you use WordPress for your Website?

Arizona, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Web Design, Website Design, Wordpress No Comments »

Alot of my customers are asking about wordpress and I just wanted to write a quick post about the advantages and disadvantages of using WordPress.

Advantages of using WordPress:

-With a little bit of web knowledge and know how, you can customize the content and look of the site yourself, no webmaster needed.

-Automates alot of the busy work associated with the website.

-Plugins are available to do thing that otherwise would have cost alot more money (SEO, Contact Forms, etc…).

-it’s usually cheaper than making a website from scratch depending on how complicated the layout is.

-Automatically submits to search engines!!

Disadvantages of using WordPress:

-Your website isn’t truly custom unless you develop a custom skin for it.

-Some things that you want to do with the site may be unobtainable due the nature of wordpress and your technical ability.

-You can almost always tell a site is built with wordpress which sometimes confuses users when identifying with websites.

I would recommend WordPress to individuals or business’s who meet the following criteria:

-Smaller website budget.

-Want to edit the content themselves and not have to use a webmaster for those type of edits.

-Don’t mind the possibility of seeing other websites on the internet that may look similar to yours.

Overall, WordPress is a somewhat complex program to setup if you don’t have any previous web or database knowledge, but once setup and running it’s easy to learn and fairly straight forward to customize. If you are looking for a custom wordpress website or need a free quote, give us a call and we will give you a free estimate that same day.
Thanks

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