During the fifth session of the Social Networking Coffee Hour, we discussed how to build your social headquarters.

Be sure to ask your questions. We have a dedicated forum on the Holistic Visibility Facebook Page to answering your questions.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

During the fourth session of the Social Networking Coffee Hour, we discussed how to effectively manage multiple social networks through popular social aggregate tools.

Be sure to ask your questions. We have a dedicated forum on the Holistic Visibility Facebook Page to answering your questions.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

SEO professionals are known in some circles as the “used car dealers” of Internet Marketing. I’ve spoken with many businesses who feel like they’ve been taken for ride just trying to get a website, which is about 90% tangible. It stands to reason why so many are skeptical of a service that is 90% intangible.

What is SEO and Why is it Important?

SEO is a passion of ours at Holistic Visibility. Why you ask? Because having a website is pointless if you don’t get traffic. Using paid Search Marketing is one tactic to get the traffic necessary to make your website worthwhile, but even that is benefited by SEO being it brings down your average cost-per-click.

Also, if your site isn’t ranking well, you’ll not receive the traffic you should. We wrote last week about why poor search ranking is really bad for your business as every position lower than #1 drops your CTR by 30-35%.

Learning Who Can Really Help

When it comes to working with any SEO professional, whether it’s an outsourced firm or hiring someone in-house, you must be able to tell who knows what they’re talking about. If you’re not familiar with SEO, which most business owners aren’t, how are you supposed to tell who really knows their stuff? Here are some helpful hints:

• Look at that person’s own website and/or blog. Are they ranking well? Are they doing what they recommend you do? If they’re not “practicing what they preach”, then the next logical question is: do this person/firm have the necessary skills to execute the theory they’re selling?
• Does the person practice white hat SEO or black hat SEO? There is a big difference between these two, and your long-term ranking success with be impacted by this. If the person doesn’t know the difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO, then run the other way. If they don’t think black hat SEO is bad, get out of the line of fire. Make sure to check out our SEO Strategies post for more on why this is so important.
• What does the person/firm read to keep current? Ask the person who and what they read to keep current on trends in SEO. If they can’t tell you who or what they read on a regular basis, walk away. SEO is a constantly moving target and you’ll want a professional who cares enough about their clients to stay informed on the current trends. Some resource most SEO professionals rely on include: SEOMoz, Search Engine Land Blog, Google Webmaster Blog, and Matt Cutts’ blog. These are not the only resources, but surely a place most professionals at least recognize.
• Does the person/firm know the latest trends of Search Algorithms? SEOMoz does a biennial study on Search Engine Ranking Factors. You can always look at the factors yourself and compare what the SEO Professional is recommending to the results of the study. If you don’t understand the study, be sure to check out the Secrets of SEO series, which breaks down the results into “common English”.

Affordable SEO Services

SEO doesn’t have to break the bank, if you find the right partner. A good SEO firm will listen to what your business strategy and goals are, and then work with you to understand how your budget will impact your performance over time. If you don’t have a $5,000/month budget for SEO, that’s okay. However, you may not achieve top rank as quickly as someone who is investing more.

SEO has many tactics to get you ranked. The more tactics you can leverage the stronger your SEO strategy is and the better you’ll perform over time. Companies who primarily focus on 1 tactic (usually something automated that doesn’t take much knowledge or time) are the ones who are heavily impacted by changes to the search engine algorithms. Approach SEO like your investment portfolio, diversify as much as possible to see the best results both now and in the long-term.

Partner with an Honest SEO Company

If you’re looking for an SEO partner that knows what they’re doing and puts the success of their clients as a top priority, then contact us at Holistic Visibility. We have several methods to help you determine the best course of action to get your website performing more optimally and start increasing your bottom line.

What happens to my MobileMe website?

In short, it goes…POOF! Apple has confirmed hat iCloud will not support the website hosting feature that so many have depended on in MobileMe. A short time after iCloud goes live, MobileMe will completely shutdown and you will need to find other options for your website.

What will happen to the iWeb Application?

No one knows for sure. I have heard a lot of speculation that the application will be discontinued, but that story hasn’t been made official yet. Even if iWeb is discontinued, you will still be able to use the old application. You should, however, consider moving to a more appropriate website management tool such as a content management system (CMS). We recommend using WordPress or Joomla.

What can I do with my website and how much time do I have?

Move away from a MobileMe hosted website

Since MobileMe is being discontinued, the first step is to host your website somewhere else. We recommend using Host Gator as your website hosting provider. For detailed information on moving your MobileMe hosted website to a different host provider, see Apple’s documentation.

Consider a website redesign and getting onto a CMS

As a business, it’s important to have a professional website and to be able to easily manage it. Although, iWeb allows you to easily manage your website, it does so at great cost. Often, iWeb sites are slow to load or have little SEO value.

Since you are already making the swtich, considering redesigning your website entirely and getting onto a well known CMS tool such as WordPress or Joomla. These tools allow you just as easily maintain your website but without the downside of slow load times and lack of SEO value.

Do it before time runs out

Apple states that you have until June 30, 2012 to transition your website off of MobileMe. That’s less than one year! Of course, that is assuming you had an active MobileMe account as of June 6, 2011.

You can find more information about the MobileMe to iCloud transition on Apple’s website.

Old school theory stated if you are on the first page, especially if you’re in the first 3-5 results, you are doing well and you don’t need to worry about trying to increase your search ranking any further. However, this is old theory and has been debunked by a recent study by Slingshot SEO.

In this study it was found that websites who place #1 in search enjoy a CTR (click through rate) of 18.2%, meaning 18.2% of the time their website was displayed in a search, it was clicked on. That CTR drops exponentially as you go down the page.

SERP and CTR is negatively exponential

There Can Be Only One #1

What kind of effort are you putting into achieving that #1 spot? Sure, you may rank #1 for your brand, but are you ranking well for more competitive search terms your target market is likely using? If you already are #1, what does your conversion rate look like for the traffic you’re getting?

Face it, holding the #1 position is great, but if it doesn’t translate into increased revenue, it doesn’t really matter. So anyone seeking to build business online must use a balanced approach to achieve success.

The “Golden Rules” of Internet Marketing

While there are no “tricks” or “secrets” to effective Internet Marketing, there are some things you’ll want to consider as you start trying to achieve that #1 spot in search rankings:

1. Does your site (or landing page) allow people to easily contact you? You should have your phone number and other forms of contact information easily available.
2. Does your site have a clear call-to-action? If not, you’ll lose people because they don’t know what to do.
3. Is your site easily navigable? If not, you’ll lose people because they can’t find what they’re looking for.
4. Is your site social friendly? This is important so people can share your product and/or brand when they’ve found something they like.

Additionally, as you build out your website and write content, keep the following in mind:

1. Search engines aim to give the user the content they want, so provide that content.
2. Great web copy is designed to give value, solve a problem, or fulfill a need, with more and more emphasis being given to the first. The more you make it about the user, the more effective it will be.
3. Use language that is slightly below what you consider your target market. This isn’t because your market acks intelligence, but because 98% of web traffic merely skims the content online, so make it easy for people to get what they need from you website.

If you need more help getting your website ready to convert people, or need a professional search engine optimization expert to help you achieve high search rankings, drop us a line or give us a call at (800) 592-3105. We’re always more than happy to help small businesses succeed.

If you like what you’ve read here, be sure to “Like” us on Facebook as well.

Importance of Social to SEO is increasing

If you’ve read much of what we’ve written, you know we love Social Media. There is a lot being written right now about effectively leveraging social media for search engine optimization. However, is there really much factual support for social impacting search?

The Reality of Social SEO

At the time of the 2011 SEOMoz Search Engine Ranking Factors Study, social signals were not looked at as having a significant impact of SEO. This doesn’t mean it isn’t important, but simply that social currently does not significantly impact search ranking.

So if it doesn’t impact search, why is social so important? When it comes to marketing your business, people spreading your message is extremely important…these people are called brand advocated. Social signals look at how many times people have linked to your site through social interaction (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).

The key to social signals is giving people a social friendly site. Being social friendly, in part, means giving visitors social buttons on your site so they can easily share your content. Next it means giving people content they want to share. These are two of the biggest keys to a social friendly site.

But Wait…The Future of SEO

While we’re talking about search engine optimization, let’s discuss the predictions of what’s to come. This year we’ve seen the beginning of social integration with search with Bing integrating Facebook “likes” into their algorithm and Google is also not far from integrating Google +1 in their algorithm.

Part of the study SEOMoz conducted this year was asking experts what they saw as becoming more important factors in the future of search; 80-90% of the experts surveyed felt social signals were going to play a larger role down the road. These will be both page and domain level social signals, meaning links to both your home page as well as other pages on your site.

Future SEO Factor Predictions

With this forecast from nearly 112 SEO experts, it’s important not to ignore social moving forward. If you haven’t started learning about how social marketing impacts your business, be sure to check out the Social Networking Coffee Hour. We spend an hour once a month teaching and answering questions about social marketing.

If you need to explore how ready your site is for the future of search, contact the Holistic Visibility team. We’ll be happy to review your site with you and help you determine how to be ready when the search engines put greater importance on social signals.

This is no different with SEO. Content determines what your site is relevant for, but links get that content to the top of search engines; it’s the supporting Queen.

In fact, according to the SEOMoz 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors Study, links account for about 42% of the algorithm search engines use to determine placement. Knowing this means website owners cannot ignore getting links back to their site if they want to achieve quality placement for non-branded keywords.

Link Building 101

While some so-called SEO experts develop programs that “make it easy” to build links, effective link building strategy is never as easy as buying an automated software. These usually send spam requests to website owners, or attempt to leave spam comments on blogs. Both of these seldom result in quality links actually being built. Let’s look at some other link building strategies:

Search Engine and Directory Listing Links – These are some of the easiest links to get, and can also be some of the most powerful. Submitting to sites like Google, Bing, and DMOZ, just to name a few, alerts the search engines you are online, and starts building links back.

Additionally, submission may include paid directories, like Yahoo! Business Directory or Business.com (depending on your industry and target market). These can be low as $30/year or as much as $300+/year. Make sure to know what’s going to be best for your business before paying for inclusion in any directory.

Professional and Business Associations – If you’re accredited by the Better Business Bureau, or are a member of a Chamber of Commerce, or any other professional or business association, be sure to get a link from the directory listing to your website. These again are generally looked at as high-quality links.

Social Networks – If you’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social network, be sure to link your profile to your website. These will not only provide good-quality links back to your site, it will also direct your connections to your site. This is just good networking strategy.

Parts of the Link

When it comes to building links you need to optimize your links just like you do your content. The more relevant your link is to your targeted keyword, the better it will perform in search results. Here are two areas to pay specific attention to:

Anchor Text – Anchor text refers to the words you use to create your link. In the link Small Business Website Development, “Small Business Website Development” is the anchor text. You want to make sure some of your links leverage the keywords you’re targeting. Generally aiming for 30-50% of your links leveraging your targeted keyword(s) is a good strategy, more than that can actually negatively impact your search results.

Target Page – This is the page your links point to. You want to make sure you’re building “deep links”, or links that point to pages of your site other than the home page. In the link above, the target page is http://www.holisticvisibility.com/websites. Again, aiming for about 30% of your links pointing to a page other than your home page is generally a good strategy (more is better if you can manage it).

If you’re ready to take your site to the top, but don’t want to learn how to mix the art and science of effective Search Engine Optimization, contact the Holistic Visibility team. We’d be happy to spend 10-20 minutes looking at your site with you and offer suggestions on how to improve your performance in search engines.

According to the SEOMoz 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors Study, content accounts for roughly 26% of the search algorithm. While it seems that a quarter of the algorithm isn’t much, especially compared to the 42% links play in the algorithm, without proper content the other factors are a moot point. The content on your site is the signal Search Engines use to determine relevance to the search term where you want greater presence.

How is Content Ranked?

Keyword Factors From 2011 SEOMoz Study

Content is currently ranked on several factors. One of the most common is your keywords being used in the content itself. Then you have appropriate placement in HTML tags throughout the page, using the keywords in bolds, and so forth.

This is the same kind of stuff SEO experts have been using for several years. However, keyword density, placement, proximity and prominence are no longer enough. As part of the 2011 study, SEOMoz took a look at what experts foresee becoming more important in the future. One of those factors is the perceived value to the site/page’s visitors.

With this in mind, it is evident the kind of content on your page must actually meet marketing standards. This standard is not a secret but is simply that it converts the people who visit your page, where conversion is your goal action (buy your product, give you a call, proceed to another page, fill out a form, etc). It appears that Google will put more importance on visitors recommending your content to others through social integration like Google +1, which means the content on the page must be valuable to your visitor.

Achieving the Content Eutopia

When you start writing for your audience that means you’re giving them something valuable. Great marketing copy not only helps someone experience the pain you’re trying to solve, but also applies a little ointment and relief.

When writing web copy this means you’re providing something of value. This can be entertaining or educational, but it must be valuable. With this value your visitors will share your content (e.g., your site), which will help increase your search ranking.

From an optimization perspective, this means writing with the right intent in the content while also keeping an eye on the traditional factors on content optimization.

If you’re ready to take your website to the next level and draw organic traffic by leveraging current search engine optimization strategies, contact the Holistic Visibility team. We’ll happily look at your website with you and help you understand what the next steps are.

SEO Is Not Really a Secret, It’s a Science

How to gain visibility isn’t really a secret, but it’s a science mixed with a little art, and it’s relatively easy to learn the science…at least in terms of information being available. SEOMoz released last month their biennial study on the factors that impact search placement. Over the next several blog posts we’re going to unpack some of what that study showed, and we’ll show you how to better perform in the search engines.

You need to learn more. If you actually want to do well, you’ll need to learn more about what we’re going to discuss. This can be done by reading books like SEO Warrior or by reading through the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

Ranking Factors according to 2011 SEOMoz Study

Two Most Important SEO Factors

According to the 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factor Study conducted by SEOMoz, the two most important factors to effective search engine placement are your content (including keyword placement) and links. These two general factors account for many smaller factors we’ll discuss in future posts, but collectively account for roughly 68% of the search algorithm…or what makes you appear in Google’s results for the keywords you’re targeting.

In the coming posts we’ll discuss some of the impacts your content has on search placement, how to better utilize your website to be more search effective, and what you can do to increase your placement.

If you’re eager and can’t wait, contact the Holistic Visibility team to discuss what we can do to help you get more traffic and conversions through an effective web presence.

At this Social Networking Coffee Hour, we discussed how to measure your social media marketing’s effectiveness. We strongly believe that what gets measured, gets improved.

Be sure to ask your questions. We have a dedicated forum on the Holistic Visibility Facebook Page to answering your questions.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.