When a small business owner sees a case study on the success a company like “Sprinkles” is experiencing with social media, the natural reaction is to prepare for a launch into social media hoping for the same results. The problem is that most small businesses don’t have the budget or the resources that larger companies have to participate in the full spectrum of social media sites, which number around 400.
The key then for success is to select the areas that can deliver the most benefits with a manageable expenditure of money and resources. The benefits include:
* Increasing rankings on search engine pages
* Finding new customers (or having them find you)
* Finding new business connections
* Having a platform to communicate with existing customers
* Having multiple platforms for customer reviews
For small businesses, especially with a local or regional market, focusing on social media sites that encourage reviews (like Yelp.com) is a great way to get started because they can raise your business’ profile in your market while not requiring a massive amount of work. Of the five benefits listed above, these review sites can deliver results in every area with the probable exception of finding business connections.
Better still, the bulk of the work can delegated to selected employees. These tasks can include monitoring the sites, responding to reviews, posting coupons, etc. Focusing on local social media is a task that can still consume time and energy so start small and build from there. Manage the process, don’t get overwhelmed, and the results will come.

There are always people looking to build a better mousetrap in SEO. The problem is that many of these mousetraps fall into the black hat category of SEO practices. Here are a couple of practices related to link building that game Google’s algorithm to influence the rankings on the search engine pages.

* Google bombing – Google bombing is very similar to spamdexing, which modifies html pages to push them higher in search engine results for specific keywords. Examples of Google bombs include the search term “more evil than Satan himself” linking to Microsoft’s homepage as the top result and the search term “miserable failure” linking to the official George W. Bush biography as the number one result.

* Google Bowling – Rather than attempt raise a company’s ranking through nefarious practices, Google bowling uses black hat SEO techniques to drop the ranking of another company’s listing. The practice centers on the launch of a negative linking campaign where links are bought for the targeted company. These inbound links can originate from any number of sites with poor reputations including “malicious software sites, porn sites, hate sites, and negative blogs and forums”.  The targeted company’s inbound links, from what Google defines as bad neighborhoods, ultimately tarnish the site and hurt its rankings on the search engine results pages. Companies using the Google bowling technique have even gone as far as reporting the targeted company to the search engines for their low quality links. Seeing that this practice was hurting innocent companies, Google made changes in its algorithms to combat this type of SEO campaign.

Another form of Google bombing takes place when links are put in numerous sites on the web by a number of people so it leads a particular keyphrase to a targeted site. This can lead to the site being overrun with hits which can crash the site. These are usually done more for wreaking havoc than for competitive purposes.

As mentioned, there is always a better mousetrap being built out there. That being said, having an occasional audit on your site can protect it from some of the practices described here. For more information, visit: SEO Company or call (866) 530 7703.

RSS, the acronym for “real simple syndication”, is an automatic feed which provides online content publishers the chance to stay in touch with their target audience on a regular basis.  When visitors arrive at a website with an RSS option, they can elect to subscribe to the feed. This provides the opportunity for the site owner to send out notifications of new content to these subscribers. These outbound communications can then keep them in regular contact with visitors who are already familiar with the site.

With studies showing that consumers usually visit a site multiple times before making a purchase, an RSS feed can encourage visits and speed the conversion process. RSS feeds carry other benefits as well including:

* Increasing the possibilities that your published content will be shared with new potential visitors.

* An RSS feed can improve search engine rankings

* An RSS feed can get content indexed at the search engines faster

* A feed can provide another means of driving traffic to a website

RSS feeds provide an automated marketing process that can drive both existing and new visitors back to your site. Listing with RSS feed directories can also serve to introduce your site to new visitors as many of these directories have huge daily traffic numbers.  By regularly publishing content which is then pushed out via an RSS feed a site owner can benefit from a consistent flow of traffic that is also free of charge.

Despite the powerful benefits that are delivered by installing an RSS feed, the tool is generally underutilized across the web. Even when an RSS feed is installed, many website owners do not use it to its fullest potential. With the potential to build back links, increase visitors, drive sales, and improve page rankings, RSS feeds should be incorporated where ever possible. If you are regularly publishing content but aren’t using RSS feeds to their fullest extent, you are missing an opportunity that delivers benefits on many levels.

For a full assessment of how installing an RSS feed on your site can add money to your bottom line, visit: Website Marketing or call (866) 530 7703.

While the internet may be considered as a level playing field, the big boys are still the big boys and going head to head with them in an SEO campaign is a sure way to blow through your SEO budget without much to show for it. That being said, the great thing about the internet is that small companies don’t need to win a direct battle with a larger business to build their online presence, increase brand recognition, and drive higher quality traffic to their site.

Here are a few things small businesses and website owners can do to maximize a small SEO budget and make the most of their internet marketing efforts:

* Optimize for the locals – While a brand like Nordstrom is likely to be searched by its name, plenty of people use search terms which combine the desired item with a location. A vintage clothing store could then see search engine rankings for a term like “vintage clothing Newport Beach”. The search engines have expanded local search as well so make sure to claim and optimize your business on these as well.

* Get mobile – Smartphone users love sites like Foursquare and Gowalla and mobile SEO is the next wave so why not get on now. Not only are these sites a great way to stay in touch with existing customers, they’re a great way to have them promote your business with “bring a friend” promotions.

* Go with long tail keywords – Long tail keywords deliver less traffic than shorter search terms but the traffic that does arrive will be highly targeted and closer to making a purchase. Using a clothing store as an example, someone searching for a type of clothing, a brand, and a location is probably close to buying that item. A long tail keyword in this instance might look like “Hurley men’s board shorts Newport Beach”. That type of search signifies that the buyer has made a decision and is just trying to find out where the item can be found.

By picking your SEO battles you can win with search terms and strategies that drive targeted traffic that wants to buy your products/services. It can also be done on a small budget. For more on SEO on a budget, visit: Best SEO Companies or call (866) 530 7703.

The search engine optimization process typically does not produce results overnight but there are several actions you can take to speed things along. Here are some of the actions that can give your search engine optimization campaign a jumpstart:

* Submit a sitemap to the search engines – A sitemap is a file that lists the important pages on your site that you want indexed. This will get your site pages indexed faster than submitted your URL.

* Determine the pages that Google has indexed – You can determine this by entering “site: domain” in the Google search bar. For example, the proper entry would look like this – site:joesplumbing.com. Do not precede your domain name with http or www.  Google will return with all the pages that have been indexed, allowing you to add the ones that have been missed.

* If you have other domains, build links between them – The more relevant the sites are to each other, the better. Link building is a big part of SEO so building these links is a good thing.

* Build internal links within your site – Build links to the other pages within your site. This goes beyond the links on your home page and should include text based links on other pages wherever it makes sense.

* Add dashes between words for your file names – Google’s algorithm has a much easier time reading files when they are separated in this manner. An example would be joesplumbing.com/local-services-offered.

* Change up your anchor text when you submit content to article directories to build link juice – This makes your inbound links look natural and they’ll carry more weight with the search engines.

* Don’t ignore the ALT tags for images on your site – The search engines can’t read images but the alt tags provide the opportunity for some extra on page SEO.

* Secure Twitter and Facebook page names for your site – Even if you don’t use them immediately, they’ll be there once you’re ready to dive in to social media.

The sooner you start seeing results from your SEO efforts, the better. For more information on jumpstarting your SEO campaign, visit: Premier SEO Company or call (866) 530 7703.

When it was noticed that J.C Penney was outranking Samsonite’s website for the keyphrase “Samsonite carry-on luggage”, the New York Times started an investigation on how the retail store was ranked number one in Google for hundreds of other search terms as well. The retail store also held the number one ranking for other highly competitive terms like area rugs, bedding, furniture and more. Had J.C. Penney just run one of the best SEO campaigns ever? Or was it something much less than that?

Much to J.C. Penney’s chagrin, it was the latter and Google didn’t like it. The investigation revealed that J.C. Penney had engaged in a massive link buying campaign where thousands of websites carried links to the store’s dress section even though the pages where the links originated had nothing to with dresses. It’s unclear how a nuclear engineering site has any relevance to J.C. Penney’s dress section but that didn’t stop the inbound link with anchor text related to dresses. Other sites linking to the dress section covered topics including diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, and fishing.

The investigation also found that J.C. Penney had a doorway page and engaged in “anchor link keyword stuffing”, both of which are considered pure black hat SEO techniques. Not surprisingly, J.C. Penney denied any knowledge of the scheme and immediately fired their SEO company when the New York Times story was released. “J. C. Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links that you sent to us, as it is against our natural search policies,” Ms. Brossart wrote in an e-mail to the New York Times. She added, “We are working to have the links taken down.”

Google wasn’t buying J.C. Penney’s line and took what they call “manual action”. Within a couple of hours top listings for the black hat SEO’d terms had fallen to the sixth page and below, also known as “search Siberia”. The next phases in the drama will cover whether Google gave J.C. Penney preferential treatment because they are a huge advertiser with Google. Stay tuned.

Failed relationships between businesses and their SEO provider usually have a bunch of common traits between them. J.C. Penney’s recent SEO problems with their provider are a high profile example of SEO gone wrong that ends up damaging a company whether it’s innocent or not. Because SEO firms can make big bucks for delivering high rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs), there’s a huge motivation for them to push the boundaries of fair play either a little or a lot. If rankings are happening, it’s often the case of “don’t ask – don’t tell” regarding how exactly the high rankings are being achieved.

This is where J.C. Penney possibly got into trouble as it’s almost impossible that the rankings they were getting for generic keywords like “dresses” and hundreds of others were going unnoticed at the company. When the black hat scheme was uncovered J.C. Penney disavowed any knowledge of what was going on and fired their SEO provider but it didn’t matter. Google took “manual action” which immediately dropped top listings for hundreds of suspect keywords linking to J.C Penney site pages to the backwoods of Google search.

In other cases of failed relationships, the reason is related to a simple formula of spammy SEO techniques that end up hurting the customer and the SEO industry as a whole.

Here are three of them:

1) Splogging – First of all, you’ve got to love SEO lingo. Anyway, this practice consists of originating links on spam blogs which then connect to the businesses website. The splogs add no value and the links aren’t relevant so they don’t add much either.

2) Link farms owned by the SEO company – Link farms have been in Google’s cross hairs for a while so this practice has become even more dangerous. Even if some of the links are actually valid, breaking off the relationship with the SEO company will also terminate the links.

3) Comment spamming for page rank – This has become fairly common because it’s relatively easy to do but it’s also probably the most lame of the three “techniques” mentioned here because the spam is so easy to see and it reflects poorly on the business that the SEO company is supposed to be helping.

The Gervais Group cultivates relationship with its clients by delivering ethical and solid results. For more information, visit: Top SEO Company or call (866) 530 7703.

With all the time and effort spent on the SEO that drives traffic to a website, it only makes sense to maximize the conversion rate of the people that arrive. This requires many things, the most important being a fundamental knowledge in a specific aspect of selling; that of selling benefits instead of selling features. Boiled down to its most fundamental element a sale takes place because of what the product can do for the buyer (the benefit), not how it’s going the deliver that benefit (aka features).

What people are looking for, whether consciously or subconsciously, is how their life will improve if they buy a specific product. These life improvements can include:

* Making more money

* Having more time

* Feeling better about themselves

It is absolutely not about how these things are going to happen; conversions are only going to occur when the buyer is sure that these things are going to happen. It is critical in this to never assume that people are going to be able to figure out the benefits, one of the mistakes made in on page SEO. A person may figure out what some of the benefits are, but they will never be certain of them unless they are spelled out.

One of the keys to getting higher conversions on a site is to entice your visitors to read your copy and start moving into the sales process. Highlighting benefits in the headline and early on in the text can hook readers so that they will be interested enough to continue reading. The thing to remember is that visitors arrive at any given sight with a “What’s in it for me?” attitude. By highlighting the benefits up front you are telling them exactly what’s in it for them.

The next key to on page SEO that converts is having a call to action. Do not assume that your copy is so convincing that visitors are going to convert en masse. Instead, make it very clear for your buyers the next action they have to take to enjoy the benefits of your product/service.

SEO that converts sells on benefits not features. For more information regarding SEO that converts, visit: SEO Marketing Company or call (866) 530 7703.

Google’s Panda/Farmer algorithm change has reverberated across the web as site owners scramble to determine whether they’re going see their traffic dwindle to a trickle. To make this determination, the first step is to locate precisely where the problem is coming from as well as figuring out what’s causing the problem. There are two aspects of this analysis; the first being the study of the hard numbers and the second being the evaluation of them

If your site went dead in the water on February 24th, it’s likely that the Panda/Farmer algorithm change is directly involved. It is helpful to remember, however, that traffic can fluctuate based on countless factors so it makes sense to ascertain the problem before trying to fix it.

Here is a checklist to help determine the cause of a reduction in traffic:

1) Check to see when your drop in traffic started. As mentioned, if February 24th is the day, Panda/Farmer is most likely involved but that doesn’t mean your work is finished. If the decline started on any other date it may not be related to the algorithm change at all.

2) See where your traffic is coming from. If your traffic has decreased on channels outside of organic search from Google there may be multiple issues or something else entirely. You could have broken links on your site or it could be returning errors.

3) Check to see where your paid advertising is positioned and whether the traffic numbers have remained consistent.

4) If you were getting high traffic numbers from a link on another site, check to see if it is still active and working.

5) Check to see which pages on your site are still performing as well as those that aren’t. It may not be the total of your site that is underperforming, it could be that you have pages that that are problematic on an individual basis.

It may be tempting to focus completely on Google’s algorithm revision but there are a variety of other issues that could be occurring as well. For a complete traffic analysis of your website, visit: SEO Company or call (866) 530 7703.

The rather mundane topic of inbound links has been in the SEO headlines lately, not because of their benefits but because of the big names that have been using them improperly. JC Penney, Overstock, and Forbes have all been penalized for a variety practices intended to manipulate rankings at search engines like Google.

What these episodes provide is opportunity to learn what and what not to do at someone else’s expense. The expenses, at least for these three companies, are penalties that have taken listings that were on top of search engine results pages and relegated them so far back that they have essentially disappeared. The disappearance of these listings will cost these companies dearly with Overstock.com probably paying the highest price due to its internet only presence.

The “How not to Build Inbound Links” list also includes a couple practices that these companies didn’t engage in but can damage your SEO efforts all the same. Here’s the list:

* Buying links – This sums up what the three companies mentioned did to get themselves in trouble. JC Penney bought links seemingly from anyone that would sell them while Overstock bought links by offering discounts on merchandise.

* Figuring that ignorance is bliss while your SEO company is building links – JC Penney fired their SEO company and disavowed any knowledge in the scheme but Google still whacked them. Instead, have your SEO company delineate how they’re going to build your links.

* Setting up campaigns to put spammy comments on blogs and forums – These schemes can be seen from a mile away by moderators and forum participants and Google doesn’t like them either.
* Enlisting link farms – These may be cheap and tempting but they’ll also land you in hot water.

It’s entirely possible that building inbound links has become even more important both as an SEO strategy as well as in the search engine algorithms that determine page rankings. While it may be human nature to seek shortcuts, we’ve all seen what getting caught trying to take one can do to an internet business. Like the rest of SEO work, link building takes time but can deliver significant rewards as well.
For more on link building, visit: SEO Company or call (866) 530 7703.

The Google algorithm is always changing with tweaks so subtle that they’re usually noticed only by the small slice of site owners that they affect. By comparison, the recent algorithm changes, dubbed Panda/Farmer, was as subtle as a neutron bomb dropped on a major city. While Google stated that the new revision would eliminate what they consider low quality sites, specifically those that copy content from other sites, also caught in the crosshairs were some of biggest assemblers of content on the web including content stalwarts such as EzineArticles, HubPages, and Mahalo.

Google’s description of low quality sites they were targeting stated, “sites that contain content copied from other sites” which is pretty much the backbone of all of these sites. Adding to the pain is that these sites are used by thousands of individuals, SEO companies and agencies as an outlet for website related content.

The immediate effect of the revision was that EzineArticles and other major article directories dropped significantly in Google’s rankings; in addition to Squidoo and Hubpages, sites like eHow.com and About.com also saw material changes in their rankings and traffic numbers. Fitting the description of content farms, the sites were hammered hard by Google’s penalties.

Does this mean that article marketing on these sites is no longer a viable strategy? If you’ve been putting out marginally spammy and minimalist content the changes are going to make it much tougher for it to rank at the search engines. With directories scrambling to abide by Google’s new set of rules, they will be scrubbing lower quality and spammy articles. Where the algorithm presents an opportunity is for quality content that exists on blogs and websites. These pages now have a much better chance of ranking higher because Google will give more credence to original site and blog content than that on the directory sites. This is actually a complete reversal of Google’s methodology prior to Panda/Farmer.

It remains to be seen how the directories will fare in the long run but it appears that Google is ready to reward original content that adds value for searchers. The key now is to play aggressively while staying within the new rules. For more information, visit Internet Marketing News or call (866) 530 7703.

Google recently made what many estimate is the biggest change ever to the algorithm it uses to rank search results. Google’s algorithm changes are usually subtle or are targeted at a narrow slice of search engine results but this change reverberated across the web. The change was felt immediately in the SEO world as the page rankings of web properties rose or dropped depending on whether they were in the crosshairs of the change or not.

Google has come under growing criticism for producing results that were either low in quality or missed the mark completely. “Our goal is simple: to give users the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible,” said Gabriel Stricker, Google spokesman. “This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content — both good and bad — comes online all the time. Recently we’ve heard from our users that they want to see fewer low quality sites in our results.”

Changes in traffic and search engine results indicate that Google’s algorithm changes are directed at “content farms”, which provide content based on trending topics. Websites such as Demand Media, AOL, Mahalo and the Huffington Post have been criticized for gaming Google’s algorithm using manipulative SEO tactics for high search engine rankings. Mahalo has already laid off 10% of its work force due to a steep drop in traffic at the site.

Studies have repeatedly shown how important a first page presence is on Google’s search results but the rankings on that page matter as well. Just dropping from the first spot on a search page to second place can reduce traffic by up to two-thirds. A fall from the top spot to one below the fold can result in a traffic drop of over 90%. According to the Online Publishers Association, these algorithm–related ranking changes could affect $1 billion in annual revenues.

Navigating Google’s ranking algorithm has always been a bit of a guessing game but the recent changes have starkly demonstrated the price of being unprepared. To see how your SEO efforts stack up in this brave new world, visit Gervais Group at: SEO Marketing Company or call (866) 530 7703.

Google’s recent algorithm change, which targeted “content farms” like EzineArticles.com and Mahalo, has drastically reduced the traffic to these sites causing a scramble to recover lost rankings. EzineArticles CEO Chris Knight posted a blog on the site about how the Google algorithm change had affected traffic as well as what actions Ezine was going to take to get back in the good graces of Google.

“While we adamantly disagree with anyone who places the ‘Content Farm’ label on EzineArticles.com, we were not immune to this algorithm change,” said Knight. “Traffic was down 11.5% on Thursday and over 35% on Friday. In our life-to-date, this is the single most significant reduction in market trust we’ve experienced from Google.”

“Google has a lot of smart PhD types working on this problem that I believe is not over by a long-shot. Reason: If you do a query for popular terms that we formerly ranked very high with, instead of an EzineArticles result, you may find low-quality sites that deliver even lower value to the user than our own members’ content! This is frustrating for sure,” he added.

Here is his short list of planned actions at EzineArticles:

* Cutting back on the acceptance of article submissions by over 10%

* The site will not accept article submissions done through a WordPress Plugin. This is intended to eliminate duplication of content between blogs on WordPress and articles at Ezines

* Cutting back on the number of advertisements per page.

* Increasing the minimum article word count from 250 to 400.

* EzineArticles promised to removing articles considered “thin and spammy”. By implication, this is an admission that they were approving “thin and spammy” articles so maybe a change was due here.

What remains to be seen is whether EzineArticles will be changing their policy on NoFollow and DoFollow links. The site currently allows for DoFollow links and indicated that it might change to NoFollow but it appears that any change in that area will come at a later date, if at all. A large population of writers at EzineArticles posts there because of its DoFollow links, so a change there could push some of their best writers to other sites.

Gervais Group LLC – SEO and Internet Marketing News by Gervais Group (Atlanta Premier SEO Company)

Flash is, well, flashy and can do some really cool things while making a site look great. Bouncing balls, puzzles, golf etc. can be fun to goof off with when surfing around the web. A lot of CEO’s who see these tricky sites think that that their site, which doesn’t offer some entertainment, is kind of missing the boat. “Maybe our site should be flashy like theirs” goes the thought process.

Here’s why saying no to that temptation still makes sense:

* People aren’t coming to your business site to be entertained. People who spend money on the web are looking for information, pricing, research, etc. on solutions of some sort. During this quest, they’re usually not in a game playing or watching animation mode.

*  Flash can be more of a distraction than anything else. If you’ve only got a couple of seconds to capture a visitor who is seeking information on a product or service do you think that a game or a pretty film clip is going keep them around?

* If you’re going to try to capture visitors with these methods ask yourself this, “What happens if they return?” Will you need to have a new thing going on when they come back? Chances are your visitors aren’t going to be interested the first time around let alone the second time. You’re actually kind of in no man’s land here as your limited flash offering can’t compete against the game and entertainment oriented sites while alienating the visitors who arrive in a strictly business mindset.

* Not all browsers are flash enabled. If you’ve seen the little boxes where a picture or something else would logically be, you know how bad that looks.

* Many flash-based sites use only one URL for the entire site. In addition to the SEO problems that causes, it inhibits bookmarking and neutralizes most web analytics programs.

* Lastly, flash is still invisible to most search engines so it’s not going to SEO well.

Flash offers an option which is basically a question of form over function. It may look great but it’s not going to work very well. For more information on building websites that achieve their objectives, visit Gervais Group online or call (866) 530 7703.

Search engine optimization evolves both gradually and suddenly as witnessed by Google’s recent Panda/Farmer update. Expect the following changes to continue into the rest of 2011 and beyond.

* Pay per Click (PPC) will get more expensive – Competition in the bidding process for PPC placement is rising as more businesses shift away from traditional advertising methods to online efforts. Combined with the well established trend showing that searchers click on and give more credence to organic search results, it may be time to re-evaluate the return on investment for any existing PPC campaigns.

* Search engines are transferring their love from content farms to social media – While they probably resent the content farm title, EzineArticles, Hubspot, and the like were the primary target of Google’s Panda/Farmer update and saw traffic drop off a cliff. Meanwhile, the major search engines are doing everything they can to show results that originate from social media sites. Even if you don’t plan to fully engage on these sites, you should have a monitoring system in place to see what is being said about topics relating to your business.

* Local search via smart phones will accelerate – If you’re not optimizing for local search, start now. The trend is entrenched in traditional search and is expected to ramp up faster as smart phones expand their slice of the mobile phone pie chart.
Consider these trends as you move forward with your SEO efforts. As always, vary your marketing strategy between multiple fronts because you never know where the next algorithm changes are going to be targeted.