Link Building & It’s Importance in SEO

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.

Using IP Address Geo Location Technology with SEO

Using IP address Geo location is one way to possibly look at in improving your conversion rates through on page optimization. As things become more and more complex on the internet and users are given multiple ways to buy a particular product or service, you should give your best shot at converting EVERY user that comes to your website. By using IP address geo location, you can display content based on the users location. This method won’t double your conversion rate, but it will be a nice little to test to see if your product or service is more marketable if presented to users by their location.

Using the geographical data:

-Use the geographical data to produce a call to action or geographical based sale or deal.

-Funnel this user to an optimizated landing page for there location. Perform split testing to see if your users are attracted to there location (city, state or zip).

Don’t redirect users on your home page based on there location, Google may think you are cloaking and flag you, put you in there supplemental index or even ban you if they think it’s a malicious act. Simply change content or calls to action only!

How this applies to SEO:

The whole goal of SEO is really to get more traffic and convert that traffic. Anything that includes producing more online sales or conversions boils down to optimizing your website so that users buy your product or service or at least contact you about it. If you are able to taylor your website to each individual and display things in a way that it would apply to there location, situation or emotion you would. You need to take as much given information about your user and use it to your advantage. This also includes refering pages, referring search engines, keywords etc…

Thanks

Nick Julia

Phoenix Web Design CompanyPhoenix Website DesignScottsdale Website Design

Search Engine Optimization for Business Owners – FAQ’s

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.

Should you use WordPress for your Website?

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

SEO Tips for Business Owners

Are you a business owner that doesnt have a full time web or seo person? Here are some tips that can help you improve your rankings that you can do on your own.

1.) Get your vendors or customers to put a link on their point to your website.

Getting 1 way in bound links for relevant websites is very important and can make a big difference. Links should only be from relevant website and the link anchor text should closely match the keywords that you would like to rank well for. For example, if I wanted a customer to post a link back to my website, it might say “Website Design & SEO” and if you click the link it opens my home (epicwebaz.com).

2.) Update your website on a regular basis with fresh compelling content

Google an all major search engines don’t like old stale websites. Search engines love fresh content that isn’t found anywhere else on the internet. Don’t ever duplicate anyones content and always make sure that you are writing your own content. Copying content from other web pages is considered duplicate content and is an easy way to get penalized or even banned from the search engine. One way of of adding fresh content is setting up a blog (wordpress, joomla, etc..).

3.) Social media

Most all social media is free, so you should always take advantage of it. Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in etc… can be a valuable tool for most business’s i. Following basic marketing practices with these is essential.

  • Only post business related information
  • Offer deals or discounts to try and guage ROI from these services
  • Use common sense when utilizing these tools, everyone can see what your posting so keep it clean.

Also, checkout HootSuite.com, this tool will help you manage all your social media and integrate it into one dashboard.

4.) Use Google Analytics, it’s free and powerful

Google Analytics gives you valuable information about your website such as keyword traffic, referring websites, bounce rate, etc… This tool is free and fairly easy to setup, contact your webmaster and have them install a small piece of tracking code on each page you want to track and just sit back and wait. After a few days you can analyze your traffic and make changes to your content to target different visitors.

5.) Don’t use a lot of flash

Flash looks great, and if used in moderation can make a website really pop but is also a double edged sword. Search engines at this point in time can’t really index websites that are all flash because they contain no text. The basis of search engine algorithms is that they crawl every website on the internet, index the text and rank you based on certain factors in relation to that text. If there is no text to index, then you can’t rank for anything. If you have a full flash website, just make sure you have an html version made and modify your robots.txt file to exclude the flash version from being crawled. Having an HTML version is also handy for people with slower connections.

I will be adding more tips as I go, but here are a few free resources that can be used to help your website rank better. These are intended for anyone with basic computer/internet knowledge. If you would like a free SEO or website analysis please call me.

Thanks

Nick Julia

Office: 623-252-3584