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SEO
What Is Google’s Algorithm Change “Top Heavy” And What Does It Mean For Me?

What Is Top Heavy?

Top Heavy 2 is an adjustment to the original Top Heavy algorithm change that occurred in January 2012.  This change was in response to users constantly complaining about landing on web pages and not seeing any relevant content to what they searched for.  Above the fold refers to everything a user sees when they land on your website, the upper most region of the web page where most websites put their most important content.

In the past, SEOs would put lots of keyword dense content below the fold in hopes that they could get rankings by putting content the user most likely will not read below the fold, in essence, tricking Google into believing they have great content related to that query.

Why All The Recent Algorithm Changes?

Throughout 2012 Google has sent a strong and very clear message on search engine results; that is quality.  In previous years SEO was an additional service many development companies provide and just purchase links and markup the service.  A lot of companies made good money during this time period, meanwhile putting a bad mark on industry leaders that provide great on-page SEO, inbound marketing and ethical services that result in natural link acquisition that ultimately increase rankings and sustain rankings over a long period.

Google knew what was going on, and now seems as though they have finally had enough of people buying links, spinning content, stuffing content and overwhelming the user will content that isn’t readable.

 What Does This Mean For Me?

Fortunately, the recent algorithm changes focus entirely on user experience and quality.  If you are trying to give your customer the best experience on your website and have good intentions, you will continue to see your rankings move in an upward trend.  If you are trying to outsmart Google and manipulate the algorithm, you will most likely see short-term gains that will be followed with a significant drop and increase efforts in recovery.

If you keep your user in mind and try and create great content, great tools and a great product or service, you will ultimately get links naturally and see great results.  That being said, you still need great on-page SEO, rapid page load speed and a compliant website in order to see great results.

Where Do I go From Here?

In general, create exceptional content and built a strong community.  This is not an easy process, you have to become an authority in your industry so people will respect your content and see value in it.  When we say create exceptional content, we don’t just mean create a weekly blog post.

Find creative ways to not only promote your business, but also provide helpful resources and build interactive media to keep your users engaged.  Your content has to be purposeful and fulfill a need, people in general are becoming smarter on the web and don’t waste time with thin content, everything needs to have substance.  Oh yeah, and share everything!

by Christine Owens
1,935 Views0
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SEO
New Info-graphic For SEO Client

Using Info-graphics To Acquire Links

Titan Power is a data center design, build and maintenance company that we provide ongoing SEO services for.  We provide ongoing link building, content marketing and many other services to help increase their rankings for keyword phrases such as “UPS maintenance”.

As we all know now with the Penguin & Panda updates with Google, links are more important than ever (quality, natural links that is).  By producing this info-graphic for Titan Power, our goal is to acquire high quality industry specific links that will help increase their domain authority.

Design

Creating info-graphics takes time.  The reason that info-graphics are compelling and a great marketing/SEO tool is because its great content, looks nice and gives content providers FREE content.  You are doing these content providers a favor by giving them something to put on their website and talk about.  You know you have done a good job with your idea, data and design when industry specific communities respond well to the info-graphic and spreads naturally.  The subject matter needs to be one of the following:

  • Evergreen
  • Timely
  • Relevant
  • Controversial

We believed that this info-graphic that we produced with Titan Power is an Evergreen subject matter, meaning that it is always relevant because people unplanned outages for data centers is a common occurrence and many people are constantly doing research on it.

When designing these info-graphics,

 Deployment

Deployment is crucial.  If no one see’s your info-graphic, its useless.  During the design and development of the info-graphic, we reach out to publishers in the industry and let them know this is coming and test the waters to see if we have a good, solid idea.  It is also nice to get feedback from these industry publishers, because they have years of experience and know what is relevant in their industry.  One factor that can often be overlooked in deployment is social.  If you have social media accounts, use them.  Use twitter and hash tags to your advantage to get the content in front of the right people.  This will also help your social media campaign and show good social signals to your site.

Info-graphic Link Acquisition Analysis

Once the deployment has been completed and the dust has settled, we will look through Titan Power’s link profile to determine if this campaign was successful, find out where we either succeeded or failed and make improvements for the next one.  Each industry is different, and it is important too learn from the community and understand that their reception to your info-graphic will be different than yours and mine.  Always be open minded and make improvements to your campaign moving forward.

Below is the info-graphic for Titan Power


Source: Understanding Costs & Reasons For Data Center Outages

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HTML MySQL PHP
Interviewing Senior Level PHP Programmers

This post is intended to educate interviewers and interviewees on what I ask with my programming team to qualify candidates for hiring high level PHP developers.

PHP SECTION

Question #1:

We draw the following URL on a while board and have the candidate identify each part of the URL.  Keep in mind, we start very BASIC to get them comfortable white boarding and then slowly get more difficult.

https://www.example.com/jams/jellies/13

We ask them to identify the SSL piece of the URL, the domain name, the model, view, controller and action.  For any senior level developer, if you ask them what MVC stands for and they say anything other than model, view, controller….you should be wary.

 Question #2:

We ask the candidate to write a function that passes two variables and returns a string.  Again, this is very basic and if they are unable to do this, or take more than 5 minutes to do so you may not be dealing with a senior level developer.

Question #3:

Setup a class called Jams that inherits Jellies.

Question #4:

Please define in your terms what refactoring means?

Question #5:

Write a getter and a setter method that takes in a number with a  decimal and outputs a number without a decimal.

Question #6 (fizz buzz test):

Using php code (not looking for exact syntax) please do the following:

Write a script that echo’s the #’s 1 – 100.

For #’s that are a multiple of 3, print fizz instead of the number

For #’s that are a multiple of 5, print buzz instead of the number

For #’s that are a multiple of 3 and 5, print fizzbuzz instead of the number

This question will give you an in depth look into there problem solving skills, reasoning and there approach to coding while not in front of there computer.

HTML/CSS SECTION:

Question #1:

We draw a basic layout of a website that has a container div centered on a page, a header, navigation, content and footer div inside the container and have the candidate code the layout in html and css on the whiteboard.  We realize there is lots of ways to code layouts, we are just looking to make sure they understand cross browser compliance, standards and aren’t using tables.

Question #2:

What is the proper way to write a break tag that will validate in transitional doc type.

JQUERY/AJAX

Question #1:

Write a basic jquery selector.  Also write a small block of jquery that adds two numbers together and appends the result to a div called total.

Question #2:

Define AJAX and how you have used it in a web application.

GENERAL QUESTIONS:

We then ask them what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are.  Depending on how they answer this question we have the white board something tailored to there strength and white board something tailored to there weakness….to see how weak they are and how strong they are according to us.

This all generally takes about an hour with limited amounts of wasted time.  We are looking for programmers that can program from scratch (not looking for exact syntax but more for deficient/clean decision making.

 

 

 

by Christine Owens
3,394 Views0
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Web Design
Our Efficient & Effective Website Design Process

Website design is a constantly evolving term.  Five years ago I would tell you that a web designer is someone who can create a layout for a website and utilize brand guidelines to create the look and feel for a website.

Today, a website designer has to truly understand the functionality of the website that they are designing.  Website designers have to develop the interactivity and user experience of the site.  No longer does a website designer just design a layout, they are the brainchild of the overall functionality, user experience and have to understand how to direct the user through the website in an easy to use way that seems intuitive.
Website Design Scottsdale

At Epic Web Solutions, our design process takes a simple and effective approach to website design.  Although we encourage our clients to be in the driver seat, our experience and expertise is what guide the process along by setting priorities and the overall goal and purpose of the website.

It may sound simple, but the early discussions prior to the website design set the foundation for the entire design process.  We have to truly understand our clients’ products and/or services before we can begin the design.

We break out our design process into seven simple phases, they are below (see slideshare for more detail):

Phase 1: Initiate

Initiate the design process by sending our client a design questionnaire that will not only help our designer from a creative standpoint, but help our client to really think about all the elements that go along with a website.  This tool has been effective of the last several years because it encourages our clients to get involved and think of creative ways to use the website to send their message and promote their products and/or services.

Phase 2: Wireframe

Once our clients have completed the design questionnaire and have developed thoughts about what the purpose of the website is, we conduct a meeting that goes over the design questionnaire and begin to wireframe.  Each website we develop has a different purpose, and needs to be treated accordingly.  Wire framing helps the client and designer visualize the bones of the website.  This phase gets our client and the lead designer on the same page and develops a good starting point for design.

Phase 3: Initial Home Page Designs

Our designers will provide several home page concepts that are based on the business requirements, goal, purpose and other elements that the client has provided.  During this process our project manager will review the concepts at certain milestones to make sure that the requirements and overall functionality is on track with the company.

Phase 4: Revision Process

Once the home page design concepts are presented to our client, we set aside a time to meet and go over the elements of the website design and our designers explain the process and why they chose that direction.  During this review, our clients are able to interject and elaborate on concepts to help the designer with direction.  In many cases our clients like concepts from multiple designs.  At this point, the project manager and design team go over the request changes and determine the best way to incorporate the new information and feedback into the design, while maintaining the overall goal and purpose.

Phase 5: Final Home Page Revisions

After some back and forth with the home page concepts, we determine a final list of changes and wrap up the home page concept.  During this time, we go over functionality and how the user will interact with the website.  Once our client signs off on the design, we being to build out the sub page layouts.

Phase 6: Sub page Design

We have discovered that the most efficient way to complete the design process is to design the subpage after the home page has been approved.  This way we can carry the home page design and concept throughout the entire website in the appropriate way.  During this phase, we go through the same revision process.

Phase 7: Final Review

Once the home page and sub page have been finalized by our design team, we provide a final design review.  This meeting is to tighten and loose ends and ensure that the design meets all the brand and business requirements as well as conveys the message that our client is trying convey through their website.

by Christine Owens
1,767 Views0
SEO
The SEO game has changed

Google has sent a message thus far in 2012 in regards to web spam and over optimization.  We knew the old strategies of buying links and posting on directories was a dying strategy, but the one thing that has now come as a surprise is anchor text.Scottsdale SEO

In our previous link building campaigns and link bait strategies, we used to encourage heavy keyword dense anchor text.  Since April, the more keyword dense links that show up in our link profile, the ranking for that keyword phrase goes down, not up.

We did a lot of research and trials on some of our testing sites and found that links with non-keyword dense anchor text were increasing rankings of those sites, while keyword dense anchor text was not increasing, and in some cases decreasing in rankings.

We soon realized that this makes perfect sense.  SEOs were used to getting keyword dense anchor text links, because it worked.  When we put our feet in Google’s shoes it just started to make sense.  We asked ourselves “What is Google trying to accomplish with these updates?” and “What are they going to do in the future?”

The answers were so clear; Google is trying to stop over optimization and old tactics of acquiring low value links with non-natural anchor text.  The most natural links are the ones that are either talking about the brand or informing the read to click here, because of the action of going to that company’s website.

Needless to say, we have learned a lot so far in 2012 and have changed our strategies from what is working and how do we see continual growth for our clients right now, to understanding Google and how they are trying to show good natural results and truly understand the direction of future algorithm changes so that we can provide a long-term well established brand on the web for our clients with strong, well-balanced organic rankings.

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Arizona Scottsdale Search Engine Optimization Web Hosting Website Design
Why Hire An Arizona SEO Writing Company?

If you manage a website and a business to go with it, chances are that you will be or perhaps already have been looking for a way to boost the traffic to your website. In order for you to get more business, you will need to have a greater online presence. There are many ways that you can boost the traffic to your website so that you will hopefully have a boost in business. There are many different online marketing techniques that will help your business come out on top and ahead of the competition. If you are looking for some good online marketing strategies, you may want to consider hiring an Arizona SEO writing company. There are many benefits that you might just experience when you have someone do the writing for you.

One of the benefits of hiring an Arizona SEO writing company is that you will not have to worry about writing the articles yourself. If you are the owner of the company and have to run everything, you probably do not want one more thing to do and one more thing to stress you out. A professional Arizona SEO writing company might be just what you need. As long as you find a really great writing company, you can just hire them to write your articles and will know that they are perfect and ready for your use when you get them back. Professional writers are trained on how to write a good SEO article that will get results. You will not have to stress over whether or not you have written the article correctly or if you have good enough content in it. You can just leave it to someone who does it for a living and can do what you do best with your business!

Another benefit of hiring an Arizona SEO writing company is that the traffic to your website should increase in a matter of months, with the increased chance that your success will also rise. When someone does an online search, the search engine will look for content that has the searched-for word (or words) in it and will put those at the head of the search. The more relevant the articles, the more they will be pulled up at the top of the search. When your website is at the head of the search, people will be more likely to click on your link. Most people think that the first or second references are the best, even if they aren’t in reality. Also, many people will not look past the first, sometimes second page of results. If you are in the beginning selections of search results your website will get more hits. As your website gets more hits, the search engines will pull it up more during similar searches. The process will continue until you are at the top of your business!

If you are looking for a great way to increase your online presence, SEO writing might be the key. There are many benefits that come when you hire Arizona SEO writers to help you out with marketing your website correctly. As you market your site, it will gain in popularity and your business should begin to do better than before.

by Christine Owens
1,651 Views0

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