If you haven’t yet heard, Google is on a rampage to “clean up” the webspam created by overly aggressive SEO firms seeking to rank their clients by the use of what Google considers to be “Unnatural Links”.   Since February of 2012, Google has sent out over 700,000 warnings through Google Webmaster Tools notifying clients of problems with their link profile.

The Google Webmaster Tools notice occurs when a site is suspected of using link-building efforts that are considered spam.  These efforts can include directory submissions, article submissions, and blog and forum comment spam, and particularly links with excessive use of keyword based anchor text, or links from low quality or unrelated sites.

The balance of low-quality links versus high-quality links alerts the bot that you may be spamming. However, Google has not commented on what algorithm it uses to determine the penalty threshold.

The message that webmasters have been receiving in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts looks like this:

Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://website.com/

Date

-Chris

- Guest Post by Sara Lancaster of No.2 Pen - 

You bought the domain name, you have a website design you love, and you’ve hired a trusty SEO consultant. Now you’re missing just one thing: web content that’s search engine friendly.

While SEO-friendly web content development might sound scary, it doesn’t have to be. Search engine optimized content can be created in five steps.

Step One: Calibrate Keywords

The keyword phrases you choose in your content matters, a whole heck of a lot. Determine how your prospects search the web for your product or service, and then naturally incorporate those terms into your content by assigning two to three keyword phrases to each of your important pages.

Some say you need a keyword density of 2–5% per page, but there’s no hard data to support these recommendations. Instead of worrying about density, use those target terms in your content naturally.

Step Two: Know the SEO Content Development Basics

Keywords are fundamental to SEO content development, but they’re not the only part of your content that can make a big impact on SEO. You must also consider these SEO content basics:

• Use a minimum of 250 words on your most important pages, please.
• Headlines and sub-headlines are good for visitors who want to scan the copy and for telling the search engines what your page is about. Therefore, it’s good to include your keywords in your headline and sub-headings.
• Put your most important content at the beginning of your web page. Think like a journalist thinks and put the inverted pyramid to good use.
• Incorporate keyword-rich anchor text/links into all of your pages. Links serve as a roadmap for the user, and—guess what?—links tell search engines what a page is all about.

Step Three: Complement Your Content with Images and Video

The web is powerful because you can easily incorporate pictures and video into your content. Therefore, it’s a good idea to write your content with complementary images and video in mind. This is great for the user experience – it really drives home the message you want to send. After all, pictures and video are important pieces of SEO content, too.

Step Four: Get an Outsider to Help

Many people believe that search engines are becoming capable of determining how well content is written, the idea being that poorly written content results in a poor user experience. So put another way, search engines may penalize you for poor grammar, misspelled words, etc. At least some day.

It’s best to hire a professional web content writer to write and/or review your content for you or to ask a couple people outside your day-to-day operations to read through your web content and provide feedback.

Step Five: Check Your Analytics – Test Your Copy Like You Test Your Design

You need to be looking at engagement stats in your website analytics data. If your company blog has an article with a really high or really low bounce rate, try to figure out why. If your new sales page has better time-on-site stats than the page it replaced, good. If it doesn’t, time to switch things back…or at least re-work the content.

If you approach web content the way you do any other important aspect of your business, you’re guaranteed to find success. Good luck!

Sara Lancaster is the voice behind No. 2 Pen, a website content writing company. She specializes in helping businesses sound sharp on the web.

-Chris

When a site goes live on a new domain, or a new website design requires moving old pages to new URL’s, it is imperative that you use a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) to point all of the old pages to the new URL’s so that you don’t lose your existing page rankings and associated site traffic.

Since it can take up to 30 days for the search engines to recognize your new URL structure and appropriately update the SERP’s, time is of the essence.   An ecommerce site can lose thousands of dollars in just hours, so anything you can do to speed up the process is valuable.

For this reason, I like to write a little letter to the Big G and let them know we’ve moved some URL’s around.  This is best accomplished by posting the links on another site or blog that is regularly indexed,  in hopes that they will see all of the redirects as quickly as possible, and that the old links are followed by a spider to the new URL.

How to Tell Google About Your Redirected Pages:

The letter goes something like this:

Dear Google, please take a few minutes to re-index my existing pages that are occupying the front page of your search results.  These pages send an extraordinary amount of valuable traffic to our website and we do not want to lose any of this traffic.

The traffic you send us consists of people looking to buy the women’s sports apparel that we sell (primarily sports bras).  This traffic pays our bills, puts food on the table, and allows us to clothe our family.

Thank you for all the wonderful traffic you’ve sent over the years.  Can you please update the following URL’s in your index to the new corresponding pages.

The following pages have been moved to a new address:
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/fibymococoso.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/sportsbras1.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/plussizcomso.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/pants.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/bikeshorts.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/youtsiz5infi.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/5infitshorin.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/cheerleading.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/11infitshorb.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/paspbrainfic.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/coanlebydaco.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/safeq.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/rootpomforfa.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/rooterpoms.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/weighttraning.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/haspbra.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/sporbrainten.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/chcl.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/atun.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/jewelry.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/chmein3sipa.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/running.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/youtpom2colm.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/anprinsporbr.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/pepsprayalla.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/haspbradetof.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/adpomsolcol.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/newitzifrscc.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/ind.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/anprrabalobr.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/cospbrabydac.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/anlentigbyda.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/pibyjubasp.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/skwianprboyc.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/bodglidstopc.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/corfoottigin.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/smpaunforacw.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/sockshats.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/yomechbr.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/shap20padspo.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/yogaandpilates.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/shoepoms.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/cappanbydan.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/8inbikshor.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/socks.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/9inpowshorby.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/paspcopac.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/bobasocoboyc.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/bobameboycut.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/7coshbyda.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/ansocbybay.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/rgidolablso.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/youtpommet.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/minimegaphones.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/chmein3sipa.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/zeglboycutbr.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/scoreflipper.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/feedback.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/enlilafren.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/inchunshtopw.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/runnergirlwear.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/somehistory.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/closoutspec.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/13flchinstsi.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/lmechso.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/enwislim.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/volleyball.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/chweuncageby.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/basketball.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/softball.html
http://www.ladiesonlysports.com/tennis.html

I know that’s a lot of URL’s, but it’s a large site.   Thanks for your prompt attention to this matter, and once again, we appreciate your help in growing our business.

Best Regards,

Chris Gragg, Webmaster

There you have it.   One simple letter that will probably never be read by anyone at Google, except for GoogleBot, but that’s who you want to read it anyway.  He’ll take the message back to the leaders and make sure that the task gets accomplished in a timely manner.

If you have other 301 redirect techniques and would like to write a guest post for our blog, please contact us with the proposed topic and we’ll check it out.

-Chris

Delicious and Twitter CAN be used to Create “Followed” Links.

Social Bookmarking is one of the most popular link-building techniques around, and for good reason. The links from many social sites are “followed”, they allow you to control the anchor text of the link, and you get the added benefit of social promotion and the potential for your links to spread virally.

The primary drawback associated with the social bookmarking links in Delicious and Twitter is that they are not “followed” links.  This simply means that the links you post on these sites do not transfer link value or anchor text to the associated site.  I’ll show you how to get a followed link every time you post to Twitter or Delicious.

Delicious is probably the most popular social bookmarking site around.   It’s easy to use, integrates with your browser for easy access, and has the largest reach of any social bookmarking site.   It’s hard to find a social bookmarking site that has more reach and potential than Delicious.

Twitter is arguably the most popular social site around, rivaled only by Facebook.   It’s fun, interactive and has the potential to reach millions of customers, friends and others within your niche.   You can’t go anywhere without hearing about Twitter, so you definitely want to capitalize on this great social medium.

There is a very easy process that allows you to post social links on Delicious and Twitter, and get a secondary followed link on Mister-Wong at the same time.  This little technique will help you to save time creating links, and spreading the message on 3 sites at once.  This is no real trade secret, and I’m sure most people have already done this, but for the average business owner who wants to create some quick and easy links to their site, this is the fastest way to get it done.

So how do you use Delicious & Twitter to create followed links to your websites?

All it takes is the integration of your Delicious & Twitter accounts with your Mister-Wong account.   Here’s the process for setting it up:

1. Create a Mister-Wong account (if you don’t already have one)
2. Create a Delicious account and start bookmarking your sites with the anchor text, tags and notes that you want associated with the linked site.
3. Sync your Mister Wong account with your Delicious account so that all of your Delicious bookmarks are automatically imported into Mister-Wong.  Mister-Wong Delicious Import
4. Create a Twitter account (if you don’t already have one)
5. Sync your Mister Wong account with your Twitter profile so all of your links posted to Twitter will be automatically imported into your Mister-Wong account. Mister-Wong Twitter Import

This little technique will make it easy and painless to create a followed link from your Mister-Wong account, and transfer the link juice and anchor text to the linked site.

Hope this is a helpful little nugget of information that will make link-building a little easier on the average business owner.   If you would like professional help with your link-building efforts, contact Denver SEO company HighPoint Search Marketing to handle this task for your, and many others.

-Chris

Pondering SEO in 2009

Last night I pondered the future of Search Engine Optimization, particularly the effects of Universal Search and it’s full implementation, and while some of these changes have already started to show, yet others have yet to be fully implemented.

I came up with a list of 5 primary attributes that I feel will be essential to SEO in 2009. If your site is struggling to rank and get visitors, implementing these items in your site may help it rise from the ashes.  Conversely, if your site is ranking well, but you continue to exclude them, you may lose your high ranking position, and it won’t take long.

Social Profiles and Activity -

• With the continuing evolution of the Internet, and increased adoption of web 2.0 functionality, social profiles and activity are going to take on a more important role in the eyes of a search engine.
• Interaction with others through social communities will allow businesses to create and manage their reputations online, as well as provide company info, and respond to customers inquiries and requests in a real time basis, thereby separating the companies that have adopted Social Media from those who simply provide their info in a one way, traditional fashion (think newspaper, or web 1.0).
• The people and companies that engage their customers through social media will have a more content rich online profile, and as a result, should achieve higher importance to the Search Engines.

Interactive sites will be essential

• Because of Universal Search, and the listing of media in the search results, text will no longer dominate the Search Engine Results Pages.
• All other forms of media will take on a more important role in the search engine results.  Because there are relatively fewer images, videos and music on the web (in relation to text documents), the search engines are hungry for all types of media, and those sites that integrate multimedia into their user experience will have a greater propensity for showing up in the SERP’s.
• Some of the items that webmasters will want to integrate into their site to create a more interactive user experience will include:
  • Pictures
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Maps
  • News
  • Blogs

Analytics Programs Become the True Measure of SEO Success

• Analytics will be the key to gauging your optimization efforts, and these are some of the factors that may become more important to your site’s rankings:
  • Bounce Rate – If you are using Google Analytics, it will be very easy for them to gauge your visitor interaction, and bounce rate may be one of the key factors used in determining your rankings.  If they are able to see that a visitor entered your site through a specific keyword, and your site has a higher bounce rate than other sites for the same keyword, your position in the SERP’s may be lowered.  The logic being that other sites keep more visitors for that keyword, so they must be providing better content.
  • Page Views – a second factor that would be very easy to judge (if you are using Google Analytics), would be the number of pages viewed on your site.  If a site visitor enters your site through a specific keyword, and continues to browse through your entire site, chances are they found compelling information that caused them to review your site’s content in depth.   If they only view one or two pages, they must not have found what they are looking for, and have left the site to seek another source.
  • Time on Site – If the above listed information is not available to the search engine, the overall determining factor may be the amount of time on the site.  Without an analytics program to give detailed information about the site interaction, the only variable that can be measured is if you enter a site through a search engine, and then return to the search engine to run another query.  While this is not an exact measurement, it can provide the search engines enough information to determine the average amount of time spent on your site.
  • Helpful? - It may be helpful for the search engines to have this information in some instances, but I feel that it would be far more beneficial to the webmaster, site owner and Search Engine Marketing Company to keep this data to themselves, thus avoiding any kind of penalty that may be implemented by Google if they don’t like what they see.

Local Search Becomes More Important

• Based on the increased efforts at Search “Personalization”, local search will become more important, and those seeking placement on a national or global scale will have to focus on local search methods to show up in an area outside of their local market.
• A user searching for flowers in Denver may find completely different results than a user in Seattle.  The national companies that ship throughout the country, or internationally, will have a new challenge to contend with, and may see a significant decrease in their traffic from other areas.
• More small businesses are going to be in the SEO arena, as more and more businesses close, leading to more sales conducted online = local search becomes more important.

Traditional optimization factors are still important

• Content is still king as it engages site visitors and improves site interaction – the difference now is that content includes items other than text – pictures, audio, video, etc…
• Links still matter, but social links are more important, and editorial links and internal link structure become more important, while the value of links from paid sources such as directories continues to diminish.
• Good site navigation leads to a more interactive experience, so having an easy to navigate site is essential to increasing user interaction and increasing the time a user spends on your website.
• Internal link structure still ensures that the bots crawl all the content and direct link equity to the important pages of a site.
• Links within multimedia content, like watermark links within video and image content start to carry value, similar to anchor text.

Those are just a few of the ideas I have about the direction search engine optimization will take in 2009. There are many more options, and some of those may not become valid, but it’s already apparent that including more engaging content and creating a broad online profile will be important to a website’s overall importance in the eyes of the search engines.

I welcome any comments or ideas about this subject, and look forward to a follow up article in 2010 to gauge how accurate my observations are.

-Chris

#25 Organic SEO Firm in the U.S.

HighPoint Search Marketing was recently voted the #25 SEO company in the United States for February of 2009.   This is the first time we have been ranked for our Organic Search Engine Optimization efforts, and we are very proud of this accomplishment.

As is our nature, our goal is to continue moving up the rankings in the coming months.  But for the time being we are very happy to be recognized for our work.

To see the rankings follow this link Top 30 Organic Search Engine Optimization Firms in the U.S.

-Chris

HighPoint’s President Chris Gragg will be doing a 30 minute radio interview on Castle Rock Radio on Wednesday January 21st at 3PM MST.

Big Fat Radio Show on Castle Rock Radio.com

Chris has been asked to give a 30 minute interview to discuss Search Engine Optimization with 20 year radio veteran Sean Rima on the Big Fat Radio Show.  The interview will be unscripted, but topics will include: Search Engine Optimization and how it can help a business Manage their brand on the Internet, how SEO can get you ranked ahead of your competition on the major search engines, drive more visitors to your website and increase overall Internet leads and sales.

The Big Fat Radio Show has an audience of approximately 55,000 listeners globally, so we consider this to be a great opportunity to expand our reach and explain Search Engine Optimization to businesses that might not otherwise know or understand the topic.

Chris will be announcing an upcoming webinar and will be giving away Starbucks gift cards, along with discounted SEO packages to listeners of the show.

Join us and learn a little more about Search Engine Optimization!

The following link will take you to the show – http://www.castlerockradio.com/pages/page.asp?page_id=51984

-Chris

Google

This article, from Google’s Webmaster blog, discusses some of the key things to look for when hiring an SEO company.   This is an endorsement for quality SEO providers, and points out some of the negatives to look for in a bad SEO firm.

This is a good article for anyone who is considering hiring an SEO provider and offers some pointers on what to look for when evaluating an SEO company.

To read the full article follow this link > http://tinyurl.com/5whsw5

-Chris

Google recently released an SEO starter guide on the webmaster central blog.  Good info from the source.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide

Makes you think that Google really DOES want you to SEO your site, don’t they.  Great idea, since this makes their job easier and puts more on the site owner to get themselves listed.

-Chris

Grow Your Business Online

I recently spent far too long with a friend, engaging in an in-depth conversation about SEO, and after several unsuccessful attempts to explain what it is we do, he finally shut me down and asked me to give him the basics, no fluff.  How do I get more visitors to my website and get more leads online?

Make it easy, just give me a few steps… OK  here are a few things you can do to start promoting your brand online.  Thus the list below.

So after thinking about the conversation, and how hard it can be to explain what SEO’s do, I decided it would be a good topic for a basic article on how you can get more visitors to your website.  Easy for anyone to understand, I think…

Since everyone else writes Top 10 lists, I thought I would throw in one more for fun, and make it a Top 11.  Enjoy!

Here are 11 steps that you can take to help improve your website’s ranking in the search engines.

1. HTML Content - Make sure that your site has HTML content on all pages.  Search engines read html text and scan it for specific keywords.  Well written articles that describe your product, service and / or unique advantages will define your business in the eyes of the search engines and help them to index your site for their search results.
2. Sitemap – A Sitemap is one easy way to make sure that the search engines are looking at every page of your website.  It is simply a page that lists all of the other pages of your website, and hyperlinks to every page.  The search bots follow those links, ensuring that every page of your website gets reviewed on each visit.  You can submit an XML Sitemap to Google, and this is probably the most effective method, but having an HTML Sitemap on your site is also a good idea.
3. Links - Build an internal link structure that includes one link on each page that directs to the next page or category.  The goal is to have links that follow from one page to the next so that all pages are crawled.  External links provide relevance, while inbound links improve your authority on a topic.  In bound links are by far the most important aspect of your search engine placement.  Some will come naturally from your content and related sites, other’s have to be built.  There are far more ways to build inbound links than I am going to discuss in this brief article, but if you are want to learn more about link-building, check out Aaron Wall’s article 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website. This is a great article!
4. Meta Descriptions and Keywords – Make sure that your Title Tags accurately describe your products and services, and Keywords are listed in the title.  This is important because it shows up in the search results, and it is one of the areas that search bots look when searching for keywords.  Meta Descriptions tell the search engines what your site is about, and describe your products and services.  They should be written for your audience, and not stuffed with keywords.  If your keywords fit naturally within your description, include one or two, but don’t stuff keywords in your description.  Meta Keywords are used as a secondary method of describing your products.  Feel free to include all of your keywords in the Meta Keywords, they are not read by humans.  One recommended strategy is to use different variations of the keywords used in your Title
5. Submit Your Site to Directories- Submitting to directories is like entering your site in the phone book. It categorizes your product and lists you for others to find.  One quality, free directory is DMOZ This is the open directory project, which lists sites that are submitted by the public, business owners and others.   Because it is an open directory, all content submitted is reviewed by editors, and if it fits the category and is a quality site, it gets listed.  It is free to list your site here, and counts as a quality inbound link.  Link count matters, but so does the quality of the link.
6. Create a Blog – Not just to have one, but to have one that really works.  A Blog is a great way to keep your customers / visitors coming back to your site, in an unobtrusive way.  Readers can subscribe to your RSS feeds, and receive your new blog posts when they happen. Blogs are also great for SEO.  Their ever changing content gives the search engines more and more info to index, and establish your authority on a subject, as well as giving you an opportunity to build links to your site.
7. Announce Yourself – Marketing on the internet is not just an isolated channel.  It should be a part of your overall marketing strategy, and should build upon your other marketing efforts.  Announcing important events through traditional Public Relations channels is a good way to get additional traffic to your website, and as more people visit, the possibility of them linking to your site increases.  PR companies such as PRWeb are great for distributing your content and making it known.
8. Join your local Chamber of Commerce – this is a great way to leverage your networks and find additional business.  The SEO benefits are also appreciable.  When you join the Chamber of Commerce, they will usually link to your website.   This is a valuable link as the C.O.C. is an authority on business, and your anchor text can be whatever you choose.  Another great benefit is that the other Chamber members will usually be willing to exchange or give you free links from their website.
9. Start a newsletter - Newsletters offer you the opportunity to engage your customers in an inobtrusive way, and keep them up to date on the important events and news that is going on at your company.  They also allow you to collect email addresses, track subscriptions and viewership.   If you run your newsletters through one of the main electronic newsletter marketing companies, you can also use the newsletters to build content and links that are directed to your site.
10. Leverage existing relationships – If you are an established business, you will surely have contacts within your industry – suppliers, partners and vendors.  Contact them and ask for a link to your website.  Most will be happy to give you a link, and if you have already linked to them, they may go an extra step and write some additional info about your business, or discuss your partnership.  Reciprocal links are not as valuable as one-way, incoming links, but they don’t hurt if they are from a relevant authority.
11. Use Social Media – Social media sources are a good way to inform people of your site and your business, and allow you one more opportunity to leverage existing relationships, or build new one’s.  Joining groups of like-minded individuals with similar businesses will keep you in the loop and may even bring new business your way.  The only negative is that once your information is released, it is subject to thr scrutiny and redstribution of the public.  In my opinion, the positives far outweigh the negatives.  Some popular social sites include: LinkedIn, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, MySpace, and many other smaller sites that cater to specific niches.  If you don’t already have a profile somewhere, take some time to build one and see who you know.  You’ll be surprised at the connections you can make.

Those are 11 steps that you can take to improve your website rankings.  They take time, as do most things with SEO, but the key is to be consistent and continue to work on building your brand, networking and growing awareness of your products.  If you have the patience to work on an SEO project, and stay at it, you will see results over time.

If you feel like this is way over your head and you would rather spend your time running the business, then contact an SEO Company and see what they can do to help you.  Search Engine Optimization is like cooking, anyone can do it, but not everyone is a chef!  Sometimes it’s better left in the hands of a professional.

However, if you feel like you’re up to the challenge and you have the time to see it through, it is definitely worth the effort, so go give it a try!

-Chris