Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Considerations

Most SEO professionals agree that these factors affect search engine rankings and are considered best practices. Instead of trying to trick the systems - Google has told us what we need to be doing - so we need to just do it!

SEO is Your Credit Score for your website.

Just adding a bunch of links to your site all at once helps your SEO as well as getting a bunch of hard inquiries into your credit all at once.  Having a new website with little traffic to it has a similar effect on your SEO as having a very young credit history and one single $400 credit card.

So it's important to constantly be working to improve your site over time.  Slow and steady wins the race.

A good credit score is based on an algorithm that takes into account several factors. Factors like average age of accounts, variety of credit types, good payment history and more. Signals that are hard to manipulate or fake.  SEO is also like this.. Instead of FICO, this algorithm is Google’s algorithm, which takes into account ever changing factors. Factors like quality and soundness of code, good diversity of link types, and social media signals, useful, full content, being added over time.

Producing good content, regularly, is like paying your bills on time.
Produce something your users actually want to consume. Establish yourself as an authority and deliver beefy nuggets of goodness your users will want to consume over and over.

Producing good content, regularly, helps keep your site in good standing. It tells the search engines (and your users) that you exist. 

Grow Your Score Over Time

1. Build a site that is unique, graphically pleasing, engaging and has sound code.
2. Create good content regularly
3. Share your content on social media, email, networking, and wherever else you can.
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 indefinitely.
5. Monitor your Tracking, Webmaster Tools, and Analytics

On-Page Checklist

1. Keyword(s) in title tag but not overused
2. Keyword(s) in meta description but not overused
3. Keyword(s) in the URL with the proper URL structure
4. Content is original and relevant to keyword(s)
5. Correct grammar and spelling
6. Rich content instead of just text
7. At least 400 words of text copy
8. Keywords are not over stuffed, and there are several variants
9. Text content reads well and not spammy
10. Images have alt= tags and are named with keywords in the filename
11. H1, H2, H3 tags are used correctly
12. Page loads fast
13. Site has XML sitemap installed (preferably linked up with Google Webmaster Tools)
14. Sitewide navigation has relevant anchor text
15. Internal linking is frequent & anchor text is diverse yet relevant
16. Orphaned pages are removed or redirected
17. No broken or dead links
18. Site is more than a few pages (larger the better)
19. Content is easy to share (social icons)
20. 301 redirect from domain.com to www.domain.com
21. Site is correctly viewed in IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome
22. Mobile Friendly Layout - your site's code must respond to whatever device is viewing it.
23. Robots.txt file uploaded

When The Lights Turn On

I was recently asked what it is I do.  Sometimes my short answer is web design.  Most folks understand what that is.  If they look at me funny, I often times will elaborate and say we build websites for companies.  They usually get it then.

Sometimes however I mention what we really do – which is Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short).  That usually gets me really weird looks – so I go on to say – in a nutshell we make people show up on Google at the top of the list when people are searching for products or services.  You can almost see the light bulb turn on in their face when they get it.

I was recently came across something I didn’t realize Google did which were patent searches.  I thought that was kind of interesting so I got to do some searches and searched on SEO.  I came up with a listing where someone had patented the process back in 2005.  It goes on to state:

The process of tuning a web site in order to maximize its ranking is known as Search Engine Optimization. 

Search Engine Optimization is traditionally a largely manual process, which can involve some or all of the following steps 1. Identifying the market served by the web site (market segmentation) . 2. Identifying competitors (competitive analysis) . 3 . Selecting an appropriate set of search keywords . 4. Designing or modifying the site to maximize its search engine "visibility" .

I thought that was a great explanation.  There are of course additional steps we know today that have to be done such as back linking, social media sharing, rank checking or measuring the results.  But what stuck with me was the phrase tuning a web site.

That is really what we do on a daily basis.  We take a web site and tune it like a race car to make it run fast (page load times), and optimize it for the search engines to they can speed to list our client’s pages in their search results.

While we will still “just build” a web site for clients once in a while, we know that just because we build it – doesn’t mean they will come.  SEO has to be part of a successfulweb site marketing plan.  Need a light bulb moment for your business?  Let us know – we can help.

One Of The Biggest Internet Mistakes You Can Make With Your Website

I have been working to promote various businesses online since 1998 in one form or another.  We have seen many different technical approaches to get people to your website over the years.  Some worked, some didn’t.  Some worked for a while and then over time became less effective.

Everything from Facebook marketing, banner ads, text links, to pay per click Google advertising; there are many methods that can generate results.  But what kind of results?

The only way to know for sure how well your Internet strategies are working is to track the results.  If you aren’t tracking you are throwing away money.   If your current website isn’t tracking where your visitors are coming from, which search terms they are typing in, or if they become a customer, you are guessing.  It is like throwing money at a wall hoping something sticks.

This means tracking everything.  If you have a radio station offering you a banner ad on their website as part of their media offering, then set up a landing page so it can be tracked.  You can know if they send you traffic or not.

We recommend businesses with 800#s use a different number for their website.  Many people will view your website, decide to do business with you, find your contact info and pick up the phone and call.  Without tracking in place how will you know which phone calls came in from your Internet efforts?

Your website tracking logs should show you the traffic coming from Google and what that visitor typed in to find your website.  This can greatly help you determine what is working and what isn’t.

The other type of tracking you should consider is how well you rank on the various search engines.  This should be checked at least every month to determine how well your site is performing.  Your competition can squish your website over time if you aren’t on top of this.  Search engine ranking reports show how well your web site optimization is working.

At TNT Production Group we don’t ask our clients to take our word on how well their sites are doing.  We provide complete tracking and ranking information to them so they know exactly what they are paying for.  If your current web provider isn’t doing this for you, ask them why.

Have questions on how to track?  Contact us today, we can help!

Using Blogs For Social Media Marketing In Business

Blogs are another social media service that posts information out to the public in short story or news article type format.  Blogs can be a part of a website, or be their own entirely.  You can allow visitors to post their thoughts and comments - so it comes with an interactive element as well.

Blogs make sense for business and their website marketing efforts. Here's why. First off, you can set up blogs in multiple places for free and direct links back to your website. So instead of having one website trying to get your message out - you have several which can be listed in search engine results. These back links from your blogs also help with your main web site rankings because other websites think yours is important.

The down side is their value can become stale quickly. You must commit to updating and posting content on a regular basis or don't bother even starting one.

A blog's informal approach makes them more inviting to visit than a corporate website at times. Blogs like other social properties should constantly refer (think link to) the business's website. Taking a product or service you showcase on your website, write an informative article about how it has enhanced other customer's lives with example. This is yet another way to soft sell or educate your customer base without being in their face trying to sell them something.

If savvy business owners would spend a small portion of time they spend on Facebook and create one web page or even a blog entry, it would greatly enhance their search engine rankings and the number of website visitors they get.

In the end - everything you do helps - just some efforts pay off better than others.  At TNT Production Group we can help outline a sucessful approach to your Internet marketing and make it happen.

Should Business Facebook or Not?

Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US. 

As of June 2011 Facebook had 750 Million users and counting.  The main increase in social media has been Facebook. It currently is ranked as the number one social networking site.

Approximately 100 million users access this site through their mobile phone alone.  I have heard numbers that stated if Facebook was a country it would be the third largest in the world.  Wow...

In an effort to upset Facebook's dominance, Google launched Google+ in the summer of 2011.  It remains to be seen where this will end up, but I suspect we will see Facebook go the way of MySpace.  It may be there - but it won't be as important  in a couple of years.

The other consideration is that a company can't expect people to be receptive to a marketing message in and of itself.  There has to be a reason for them to want to engage your company.  Think about how you felt when you were hit up by a family member or friend with the latest multi-level marketing program by some nutrition company?  Try posting your products on your Facebook page and listen for the clicks as people un-friend you.

Now there are cases when services like Facebook absolutely make sense for business.  Some actual businesses I have seen this actually work are:

• Radio Stations - latest contests, breaking news
• Churches - prayer requests, weekly schedules
• Restaurants - daily specials
• Clubs & Organizations - events
• Business To Business Vendors - latest tools and trends

I have yet to see a local service or product based business really work Facebook successfully however.  Think about the local plumber with a Facebook page.  Does anyone really want to subscribe to the latest breaking plumbing news?  It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Facebook and other social properties are not a substitute for a good website design where you can present more information and convert visitors into customers.

The biggest concern I have seen recently is business websites pushing people from their website to their Facebook page.  The whole idea for a business website should be obtaining new customers.  Get your web visitor to email or contact form you, or find your phone number to call.  If you send them away from your main website to your Facebook page, what does that say about your business? 

Ask yourself the following questions.  How many Facebook pages have you seen appear on Google when you have searched for a service or product?  How often have you used Facebook to search for a product or service?  How serious do you take anything you find on Facebook?

See what I mean.... most of the world will still revert back to Google to find a product or service.  So unless you are entertainment star or a business that Facebook fits, it's ok to have a page, I just wouldn't spend a lot of time on it.

Social Media - Is It For My Business?

So just what is social media?  It's basically online services like Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Youtube, Google+ and others.  Each of these services offer interactive ways to communicate with friends, customers, and people you don't even know from around the world.  Should it be part of your web design for your business?

A process called  "building social authority" is where social media becomes effective for business. But this can be a rough one.  One of the main concepts in social media is that you cannot completely control your message but you can participate in the "conversation" expecting that you can somehow influence the conversation.  This can be good or bad for a business.

Many companies use social media to create a buzz.  This buzz can sometimes help normal business websites get noticed by search engines.  I envision Google and others thinking "this must be important because everyone is talking about it.".  So it may increase how important the search engines think your website is.

At TNT Production Group we do search engine optimization (making websites show up on search engines),  anything we can legally do to boost our client's websites is on our mind.  But we have found through much testing, you can waste a lot of time and get nothing for your efforts if you aren't careful.

In the online world, someone doing marketing in a company must honestly convince people of their genuine intentions, knowledge, and expertise in a specific area or industry by providing valuable and accurate information on an ongoing basis without an obvious marketing slant.   If this can be done relationships – begin to develop naturally. This person or organization becomes a thought leader and value provider - setting themselves up as a trusted "advisor" instead of marketer.  This is easier said than done.

While I will leave my concern for our society and how it uses social media for another article, social media is a force to engage in when it makes sense.  But does it make sense for every business?  We will be looking at various social media properties in future articles.