How to go about adding Content

The most important thing to remember when adding SEO content to your website is to create relevant, well-written content that visitors will find useful.  Keyword-stuffed pages are a thing of the past, and if your pages are unreadable due to poor content or overuse of keyword phrases, visitors won’t stick around.  While it may be tempting to turn to $5/page SEO copywriters, you’ll most likely get what you pay for, and your best bet is to find someone with experience who charges a fair amount for content (anywhere from $20-$50).  Advertising content may be a little more expensive, but you can’t put a price on SEO copywriters who can turn visitors into customers or clients.

Do Your Keyword Research

Before anyone starts typing your content, make sure you can provide 2-3 longtail keyword phrases which the writer should be targeting.  By knowing these phrases prior to creating your SEO content, good writers are able to seamlessly include these phrases without creating awkward content. Specific phrases only need to be included 2-3 times within the content, and I’ve seen instances where phrases don’t appear at all…go figure.

Utilize Your Existing Site

The whole point of creating a new page for your site is to bring in traffic, and if search engines can’t find your page, you won’t get any traffic!  The best way to ensure search engines find your new, fantastically written page is to work on your internal linking structure, building links to your new page from other pages on your site.  When doing this, try to incorporate relevant anchor text.  Also, don’t forget to utilize your new page for internal linking as well, making sure to link out to other pages, thereby developing a rich web of pages.  If you have a sitemap, be sure to include your new page.

Geoffrey Hoesch is the owner of Dragonfly SEO, a SEO company in Maryland focusing on creating rich content and obtaining relevant links for clients.

Social Media is generally defined as media that encourages social interaction.  As the internet has become a large network of human interaction, it seems that social media would be the future.  However, as with the keywords META tag and other internet marketing strategies that have gone the way of the dodo, Social Media is easily manipulated, and is therefore likely to be questionable in the eyes of Google.  There are other issues, such as Twitter’s use of No Follow links, which, arguably, would add no link value to the site.  Another issue with many Social Media outlets are they are constantly changing, so any links obtained via Social Media will quickly be pushed aside by new material.

If you consider blogs Social Media, I believe they are a viable option, because blog articles can be used as link bait and provide valuable anchor text links to a site.

While I believe Social Media does have its place, and is a good way to stay in touch with clients or customers, I agree with this article, in that Social Media links will not replace old fashioned links any time soon.

Google recently updated their algorithm with Caffeine, a change that focuses on indexing more pages in real time, thereby increasing the amount of new material found by the Search Engine. According to Google, “Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered.”

What this means for SEO

As far as SEO is concerned, very little changes. The old adage that ‘content is king’ remains more true than ever. The Caffeine update makes it important that fresh content is added to blogs and websites, especially content that is relevant to current events. For most SEOs, this is a technique that has been known for a long time. The Google blog states, “Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex.”  Clearly, this statement signifies the need for dynamic, fresh websites that are well maintained and changing on a frequent basis.

Google’s Caffeine update brings relatively little change to SEO, because fresh content remains important.  Sites without blogs should seriously consider them, and sites with blogs should make sure they are updated on a regular basis.  Previously, it was a standard to change a website’s homepage content every six months or so, with the Caffeine update SEOs may want to change content more frequently.

What is Internal Linking?

Internal linking refers to links that direct website visitors to another page of your website.

Take this flagrant internal link as an example:  The following article is about the Google Wonder Wheel.

The term “Google Wonder Wheel” contains hypertext, and if clicked on you will be directed to another page within this blog.  Because the link directs you to a page within this blog, it is considered an internal link.

This is not the same as one way link building, which is a technique to gain external links – links from other websites to your website.

Internal linking is a great way to increase a page’s anchor text links, which tell search engines what your page is about and help increase that page’s ranking for specific terms.  In the previous example, ‘Google Wonder Wheel’ is the anchor text.

How is Internal Linking Beneficial?

Internal linking is designed to help website visitors easily navigate through your site, finding relevant information as they learn more about your product or services.  A well designed internal linking structure flows naturally so that relevant pages are linked to other relevant pages.

Internal linking also serves to pass ‘link juice’ from one page to another.  Link juice refers abstractly to the amount of external links coming into your site and the ‘power’ of these links.  Links from pages with higher page ranks are considered to have more link juice.  Although it is an arbitrary term, meaning no definite value can be assigned to a pages ‘link juice’, it can be explained in the following equation:  Link Juice / # of links = amount of link juice passed through links.  For example:

Lets say a page has an arbitrary link juice amount of 100

If that page has 10 links:  100 / 10 = 10

10 ‘points’ of link juice will be passed to each page

If that page has 100 links: 100/100 = 1

1 point of link juice will be passed to each page

The trick to internal linking is developing a specific architecture for your site.  I prefer a 3 tiered system.

Tier 1:  Your index page – the main page of your site, which should have the most link juice.

Tier 2:  Pages optimized for competitive keyword phrases.

Tier 3:  Pages optimized for less-competitive keyword phrases.

Most pages should link to your Tier 1 page.  Tier 1 pages should link to Tier 2 pages.  Tier 2 pages should link to Tier 1, 2, and 3 pages.  Tier 3 pages should link to Tier 1, 2, and 3 pages.

Juicing a Page

If you’d like to have a page indexed or you’d like to stress a particular keyword phrase, you should link a page directly from Tier 1.  The trick is to limit the amount of links leaving your main page, so that you retain the most amount of link juice.

I recommend linking out to no more than 5 web pages per page (this does not include link bars that are part of your site’s template.  It’s a good idea to limit the number of links to 3 initially, so that you can link to new web pages as your site continues to grow.

Geoffrey Hoesch is a owner of Dragonfly SEO, a Baltimore SEO company.

Wonder wheel is a tool that helps users discovery new keyword phrases that don’t necessarily contain the root keywords.  These phrases do not always appear in the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool,  so this tool is more than a rehashing of an existing one.

To access Wonder Wheel conduct a keyword phrase search on Google and then click ‘Show Options’, located just below the search window.  This will open a new window with a list of resources, one of which is ‘Wonder Wheel’.  Clicking on this option will open a ‘wheel’ which contains your primary keyword phrase and branches out to similar keyword phrases.

The advantage of this tool is that it reveals phrases that you may not have considered.   A search for ‘car dealer’ will reveal results for ‘car dealership’, a phrase you may not have considered.  The cool thing about the Wonder Wheel is its depth, by clicking on different phrases new wheels appear, each wheel with its own branch of keyword phrases, so the process is endless.

The post through which I discovered this tool is located here.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

-  Geoff Hoesch is the owner of Dragonfly SEO, a Maryland SEO company.

I know many SEOs  ignore Page Rank (PR), and I often do as well, but it definitely has an effect on the quality of links and link power.   I’ll take a PR 6 link over a PR 0 link any day, and even those SEOs who say that page rank doesn’t matter would probably do the same.   If anything, Page Rank is a measure of a page’s quality, and in that respect it should be considered.

Getting back to the topic…I noticed that the low ranking links were coming from homepages.  Taking this into consideration, the location of the link appears to be the greatest factor in its value.  Links appearing on homepages (even those with 0 Page Rank) seem much more effective than those appearing elsewhere.  The lesson of this is to consider Page Rank lightly, try to get homepage links, and consider the quality and relevance of a page before getting caught up in its PR.

For one client’s competitor’s website in particular I have seen dramatic increases in ranking due solely to reciprocal linking.  Having monitored their link progression over the past few months using link diagnosis, I am certain that they are obtaining most if not all their links from reciprocal links.  These reciprocals all have relevant anchor text and most of them appear on the homepage of the reciprocating site.

It should be noted that the reciprocals are from homepage to homepage and, while the links at the bottom of the competitor’s homepage look like complete crap, they seem to be effective.  I can only imagine that they are proposing link exchanges with other companies in the industry (they are a limo company) and promising a homepage link.

While I only offer link exchanges as a last resort, this is certainly something to consider, and it looks like link exchanges haven’t quite become obsolete.

Recently, I began optimizing a website for a local yoga studio, essentially starting from scratch.  While my client is aware that SEO can take time, one of the first items on my list of things to do was to add his site to Google maps, and after a few days of being listed on Google maps he’s already brought in some clients.

A simple task and a beneficial one, all websites should be listed with Google Maps as soon as possible.

Geoff Hoesch is owner of Dragonfly SEO, a Baltimore SEO company.

I filled in the new URLs and was finished…

After about a month I became concerned because my sites were not ranking as highly as they should (the search engines didn’t appear to be picking up the old links).  Realizing that the problem may lie in my manner of redirect, I decided to perform a .htaccess redirect, which is the time-tested way to 301 redirect.

After a few weeks, my sites jumped in the rankings and soon I was back where I used to be.   The lesson:  always do a .htaccess redirect.

To do an htaccess redirect, create a new notepad file and enter the following information:

For homepage redirect:

redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com

For subpage redirect:

redirect 301 /subpage.htm http://www.newdomain.com

Save the file as .htaccess and upload it into the main directory of your website, check to make sure it works, and you’re done.

Geoff Hoesch is the owner of Dragonfly SEO, a Maryland SEO Company.

Marketing isn’t about letting as many people as possible know about your business, it’s about letting the right people know about your business.  How you market and to whom you market make all the difference in the world.

If you were trying to sell skateboards you probably wouldn’t run advertisements during an episode of Golden Girls, which is a show primarily watched by older audiences. In this case, your marketing would be much better targeted if you were to air advertisements during cartoons, because children and teenagers are generally the ones interested in learning to skateboard.  Target marketing increases efficiency and decreases advertising costs.

Target marketing for SEO is similar in that it attempts to concentrate of specific segments of the marketplace, mainly those who are interested in your product or services.  And, while SEO is a unique type of target marketing, it provides similar opportunities.

1.  Know that not everyone is interested in purchasing your product or service, and that’s okay.

2.  Know that people purchase products for three reasons: To satisfy basic needs, to solve problems, and to make themselves feel good.  Figure out what your product or service provides before beginning your SEO target marketing campaign.

3.  Find the right keyword phrases.  SEO target marketing allows you to hone in on very specific keyword searches, and finding the right phrases is extremely important.  If you run a paint supply store in Dallas, Texas, you should target your keyword search to your local area, because that’s where your target market is going to be coming from.  SEO copy optimized for ‘paint supply store’ will turn up far fewer customers than copy targeted for the phrase ‘paint supply store Dallas’.  You may get fewer visitors to your site with a locally, but this is a good SEO strategy that will attract more of the right kind of visitors (local ones, in this case).

4.  Don’t get caught up in trying to attract the most visitors to your site…SEO target marketing is concerned with attracting the right visitors to your site, even if there are less of them.

5.  Write copy targeted for your intended audience.  If your selling skateboards, don’t write in language that only a college professor will understand.

6.  Many misled search engine optimizers spend hours obtaining as many links as possible in order to increase inbound links.  While inbound links are important to SEO, you should be concerned only with obtaining relevant inbound links from sources your target market will visit.

7.  Know your audience.  Conduct research if you have to.  How much does your audience make per year?  Where do they hang out on the internet (Facebook, Myspace, Forums, Youtube)?  Spend some time doing the things your target market does in order to understand how they think and what interests them.

8.  An intelligent search engine placement service varies its marketing methods, placing some resources in Pay Per Click, others in Social Media Marketing, and others in standard search engine optimization techniques such as link building and SEO copy writing.

9.  Research your competition.  SEO target marketing is also concerned with figuring out what the other guy is up to.  Utilize Yahoo’s Site Explorer to determine where your competition is getting their links, and determine whether or not you too should target these locations.

10.  Check the effectiveness of your SEO target marketing.  Utilizing an analytics program (such as the free tool provided by Google) monitor your visitors and your conversions.  An effectively targeted campaign should have less than a 55% bounce rate for visitor traffic.

**Please contact us with any questions regarding SEO target marketing.  We specialize in Maryland SEO services.