Archive for the ‘Websites’ Category

Help Others Find You: Increasing Your Organic SEO

By Erin Robinson

From reading Organic SEO, Why It Affects You, you learned about how Organic SEO works and why it is important for your website. Now the time has come to increase your Organic SEO ranking. Let’s dive in.

Use Google AdWords (or similar programs for other search engines):  This is a free tool that can look up the keywords you want to rank under in your industry. It will tell you how many people have searched for that particular word in the past month and how competitive the word is. If the word is 100% competitive, you may want to reconsider your strategy and go for words that are less competitive and more attainable.

Constantly update your content and keywords:  It is not enough to have great content or relevant keywords on your website when you first set it up.  You need to keep your content fresh and continually work the keywords into different areas of the site. When you update your site continually with relevant content, it helps the search engines to notice your site.  This is why blogs or new feeds are so great. It will benefit you to create a list of keywords ahead of time. However, do not work them into your site in a manner that is unnatural. If you plant them irrelevantly throughout your site, this will work against you. The search engines can tell.

Get Links to point to your website: The more websites that have links to your site, the more relevant your site looks to search engines. You can use directories, social media sites, strategic partners (if they’re willing to link to you). The more significant to your industry, the better. What doesn’t work is offering to place a link on your site in exchange for someone to link to yours (reciprocal link). The search engines can see through this and it can work against you especially if the reciprocal links are unnatural (completely different industries, or have nothing to do with each other).

Be as specific as possible:  When using keywords and phrases, you do not want to use general terms. For example, if you run a cookie business you do not want to use a broad term such as cookies. It will be a lot harder to rank over a highly competitive broad word. Use words like chocolate chip cookies or gluten free cookies. Make your key words specific and this will help you rank.

Have an SEO savvy designer to work on your website:  When building a new site, be sure that your web designer knows what backend items to build into your site to help with Organic SEO. Some of these items include Title tags, Meta tags, Meta descriptions. They should know where to plug your keywords into the backend of your site. If not, that’s a red flag.

Add Google/Yahoo Maps on your content page:  You can submit your address to the different search engines and that will help your rank as far as where your business is located.  If someone is searching in your area, you will be ranked higher.

As a final note, we caution that these are in no way fool proof strategies to get higher rankings on search engines.  Building Organic SEO takes time, hard work and patience.  There is a lot more involved then the little bit that we have shared. There are several companies that specialize in Organic Search Engine Optimization… you may want to hire one. Also know that the Google and Microsoft are very smart… and always changing the rules. They do this to ensure that relevance is king and spammers and other unethical web folks can’t cheat the system. 

Happy ranking!

Organic SEO, Why It Affects You!

By Erin Robinson

So… you have a website and it’s fabulous. But it doesn’t rank at all on the search engines. That can be a huge problem! If your website does not rank on the first page of the main product or service that you provide, then you are pretty much invisible. There are two main ways to rank at the top of the first page on a search engine: Paying for your placement (Search Engine Marketing), or through Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is Organic SEO?  By definition, Organic SEO is getting placed on search engines without paying for the placement.  This may sound simple, but you have to understand that Organic SEO is a science. It takes a lot time and effort on your part and in the end there are no guarantees.

How do search engines work? When Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines rank websites, they do so based on the relevance of the site. The different search engines use algorithms to “crawl” the billions of pages that exist on the web. The program that does the “crawling” is known as a robot, bot, or spider.  Then, when you perform a search, the various search engines will check their index to determine the most relevant search results and those are returned to you.

Why should I care? Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the main way that people do research to find products and services like yours. They can be your main lead generator and a way to get sales without cold calls, feet on the street or really any effort from you. It’s sales, leads and conversions without selling, networking or closing.

Next week we will continue this discussion give you tips and strategies on how to rank at the top with the second part of this 2-part series Help Others Find You:  Increasing Your Organic SEO.

Website 101

If you’re a business owner, then you know that you need to have a website.  That much is easy.  However, you must consider this… What does your web site say about your company?  Does it showcase who you are and what you do?  Or is it dull, lacking, and unworthy of a second visit?

Unfortunately, you can have the best product or service around and not be able to get people to come and spend any amount of time on your website.  You have an average of 3 to 4 seconds to get a potential clients’s attention when they land on your page!  That is all.  They quickly scan the page and if it does not grab them in those seconds, they are gone.  And so is your potential sale.

Consider this.  Your website is your online storefront.  If you had (or have) a brick and mortar location would it be outdated, lacking, and unprofessional?  When consumers visit a site and see outdated information, poor spelling and grammar and unfinished pages, it conveys to them that the business may not be up to the standard that they are looking for.  It does nothing to bolster the confidence of that potential client.  It makes you lose credibility instantly.

A professional, well written and frequently updated website can take a good company and make it spectacular.  Here are a few things to keep in mind about your company’s website:

1.  Have a compelling and attractive headline.  It is the first thing       visitors are going to see.  Make sure that is grabs their attention.

2.  Consider a landing page (Landing Where You Need To Be).  The whole purpose of a landing page is to gather information from potential clients.  A great way to do this is to offer something in exchange for their email address.  Subscriptions to your newsletter, a free quote, whitepaper, or a free webinar are just a few examples of what you can offer.

3.  Testimonials.  Nothing showcases how great you are than compliments from those that you serve.  Gather testimonials from your clients that illustrate what an amazing job you do!

4.  Be sure to update your site frequently.  Once a month is a good guideline.  You can change up the pages, add new pages or offer different products or services on your landing page.  The whole point is to keep it fresh. This also helps with your organic search engine optimization.

5.  Keep it personal and safe.  Your clients want to know you.  They want to feel that if they give you their information and their business, you are going to take care of them.  Use a safe, opt in form with a privacy policy (icontact is a good one to use) and be sure to put the “you” into your website.  It should be an extension of you to make your clients feel secure.

You have taken the time to build your business and your website.  Do not let a stale, unprofessional website ruin the progress that you have set in motion.  Make it fun, make it attractive, and keep it new.  It is one of the best marketing tools you have!