Small Buisness Web Sites

There are literally hundreds of SEO tasks that could be applied to your business web site. Your Website design team will ensure that the high profile tasks are considered during design and implementation. But How to Rate SEO tasks when some take more effort than others and if you have an older site, how do you rate the SEO task and invest in high return items? There are multiple approaches, however the standard approach of collecting ideas, requirements from all stakeholders and then ranking them based on an agreed set of priorities works well for most teams. You may have to convince managers who are not so SEO savvy and that is where it gets difficult.

How to Rate SEO tasks and Invest in High Return Work Items

The first task is to collect a list of all of the SEO tasks that your design team feels are needed. Next request input from stakeholders such as marketing, operations and customer support. Create a priority ranking scheme and rank all SEO tasks.

Your ranking scheme will be different the next company simply because there are different priorities within your company. Even departments will have different priorities than the design team etc.

Next an evaluation of what it will take to implement each task and what the expected gain will be once completed. Perhaps there are new products to be added to the website which will drive revenue. Perhaps there are new hires needed and human resources is really under the gun to acquire applicants. Maybe your older posts and pages need to be upgraded to reflect changing SEO guidelines. Which in turn will drive more traffic to your site.

Once you have completed the prioritization process, the next step is to estimate completion dates. Set targets and get on with the job. Note that management will want status reports on a regular basis. They want to know how well your team is doing on each SEO task. They will also want to be able to measure the results of any changes that are made. Measuring success is a key element of how to rate SEO tasks and invest in high return work items.

The best experts in the business every year try to identify the most important SEO Ranking Factors in the Future for webmasters, content writers, and advertising managers.  If you get it right, your site will be indexed on the 1st page of the search engine results. If you get it wrong, then you could be buried low on the SERP/s and never seen by your customers. There are however basic requirements that seem to stand the test of time and the ongoing changes that Google and other Search engines regularly make.

This is a very competitive industry on many different levels. We are all fighting to get on that first page of search results and then get picked by the reader. We are going to identify a few of the basics in this post that will withstand the test of time. As well as ongoing updates by the search engines.

SEO Ranking Factors in the Future

Relevant Content – find out what your customers are looking for and then make sure that the content is there to answer their questions.

Answer the Customers Questions – Show the customer where he or she can get the answer if you cannot answer it on your page. Give them alternatives and most of all do not point them to links pages that are unrelated.

Provide Value to the customer – value to the customer really depends on what they are looking for. Can they find the product they are looking for and can they order it seamlessly? Does the content answer a question? Does your website bring value to the customer’s life?

Mobile Adapted – The majority of searches are now being conducted using mobile devices. Your website must be readable. It must have all of the functionality your customer needs on a mobile device or tablet.

Website Response – slow website response time will cause your customers to move on to another page or SERP result.

Titles that Attract Readers

Even if you are on the first page there are still at least 20 other titles and paid advertisers for the customer to click on. Make your title compelling. Provide a snippet of what the customer is looking for to attract them so they click on the SERPs for your website.

While there are many more ranking factors that can determine a post’s eventual page rank, if you do not get the above right, then you may as well not bother. Focus on quality content that addresses the customer’s needs, do it quickly, and do it on a mobile device. If you can do these parts, then you have a running start of having an excellent website that attracts customers and sells the product.

Most business owners do not even know what SEO is or why they should pay for this service. Search engine optimization is something that should automatically be built into every page and post of a website and yet there are many web developers that focus on the glitz and grammar instead of making sure that you have rich content, original content, and content without spelling and grammatical mistakes. There are multiple levels of SEO factors to consider. If you are a business owner, you may be on a limited budget and wondering just how to go about determining if a developer is providing a well-designed site that is SEO’d. Avoid Overlooking Important SEO Factors.

Overlooking Important SEO Factors

In addition to well-written content, here are a few factors to consider when designing and building a web site, whether it is done in-house or whether you subcontract the site to an outside firm:

• Excellent well-written content should be at the top of the list
• Use keywords that are important in your industry
• Original content, never copy others content
• Your pages should look great on desktops as well as mobile devices
• Test your website by searching for common keywords to determine the ranking
• Keep your web site current with up to date information
• Ask the questions – is this what your customers are looking for

Overlooking Important SEO Factors

While the above is certainly not an exhaustive list, they are some of the more important factors. In fact, most SEO experts will agree that there are over 200 potential factors. They can make a difference in terms of how search engines view your website. Also, the subsequent ranking that they give it. While you may not want to pay for an exhaustive list of tweaks to get it just right, you can focus on the important issues and still get decent results.

Content is king and many bloggers and website owners are looking for ways to simplify SEO for content marketing. They want to add a lot of content that will be picked up by the search engines and ranked well. If they can make some money at it as well then so much the better. In some cases, bloggers are writing content for the sole purpose to generate income. So it becomes even more important than their content meets all SEO requirements as well as relevant for the reader. Turns out that there is a process to follow for generating content. If you follow a scientific business-like process you have a much better chance of being successful. Focus on quality, interesting material for the reader. Try to make sure your content will withstand the test of time.

Simplify SEO for Content Marketing – Process

Generate Ideas – The hardest part is coming up with an idea for a website and the corresponding posts that will be written. Competition is a factor, understanding what people are searching for and what kind of advertising will be generated on your site by systems such as Google Adsense. Once you have the idea, use Google’s Adwords keyword tool to help you pick titles.

Generate Blog Titles – with the tool mentioned above, you may receive over 800 possible combinations of titles and keyword topics. Use a spreadsheet to rank them in terms of search volume, competition, adword cost, etc to prioritize the list. Now that you have a prioritized list the next step is to do some research.

Research Your Topics – know your topic. Remember that you are writing original quality content that readers will find valuable, interesting, and worth spending their time on. Note that it must be high quality both for your users as well as the search engines.

Write your Story – practice proper writing techniques. Introduce the topic, deliver the details, and summarize the results. Your readers should find value. Use a grammatical and spell check engine. Well written posts are critical. Follow standard English spelling and grammar.

SEO Adaptation – Next you need to adapt your story for SEO. There are hundreds of parameters, but tools like WordPress SEO can help with assessing each post to ensure that it meets the basic SEO requirements.

Promote Your Content – on social media, share it, tweet it, etc. The more your material is shared the greater the chance that readers are going to see something they like. They may place orders etc and generate income for all of your efforts.

SEO is all about making sure that your website and the content on it will rank well. Ensure that the search engines rank your page or pages high enough for your customers to actually be presented with your URL in the search results. There are hundreds of things that a webmaster needs to pay attention to. As they develop a website, there are Four Silly SEO Mistakes that play a large part in both ranking as well and attracting potential readers to your page. We will review these four areas and hopefully add to the success of your online experience.

Four Silly SEO Mistakes That We All Make

The title needs to match the content to give the reader some idea of what your page is all about. We have all been caught by this trap from time to time. A great sounding title that matches what we are looking for. When we get to the page the content has nothing to do with the content, in fact sometimes it is just bogus material. There are some sites, that I will never click on even though they somehow manage to rank high on the search results. Make sure the content matches the title and provides value to the reader.

Duplication of content sometimes occurs intentionally and sometimes by mistake. If the content sends the same message at least your customers will not be confused. But what if the information disagrees? Then what do you do? From a search engine perspective, you are trying to game the results. The search engines could even assign a penalty placing you way down in the search results. Your customers will never be presented with your pages unless they go to page 20 and beyond!

Poor internal linking or links that simply do not work are also something that the search engines frown on as well as it frustrates your readers and customers. Links that work are important. Links to pages that are consistent with the material being presented are valued by search engines and customers alike. Review all of your links from this perspective.

Social Links

Considering your Social Links, we are all encouraged to link to various social media, however, this can backfire if not done correctly. Your page may look great on your web site, but how does it look on a social media page. Is it still attractive, easy to navigate, etc? Many sites are becoming mobile-friendly. However, lots of testing needs to be done to make sure that your customers can actually read it online on their mobile phones.

We hope these four ideas help readers to understand how they can improve their web sites and their customer’s experience.

Developing a strategic content plan as part of your SEO responsibilities for a customer is actually much more complex than most people think. After all don’t you just have to have a couple of pages that talk about who your company is, the products and services they offer, and how to contact you? The answer is yes you need these things, but as most web masters for small and large companies know, you are just beginning to scratch the surface. In this post, we will list and discuss a few other topics that need to be thought about when a website is launched on behalf of a customer, or even yourself for that matter.

Strategic Content Plan – Areas to Focus On

• Company Description – one page
• Company Services and Product descriptions – many pages
• Contact information – one page
• Ordering information – one to several pages
• FAQ-Frequently asked questions – one page to many
• Customer reviews – one too many with approval?
• Images of Products – one too many

The above is definitely important and must be included. However, there are other areas that should be thought about that are aimed at helping the search engines decide how to rank you against other similar web sites. These can include:

• Linking to other websites
• Links from other websites
• Linking to customers, suppliers or even competitors
• Quality of content
• Length of pages in terms of text
• Image control and linking
• Tracking of customers on your site
• Chat room capability
• Content pages related to typical search terms
• Search phrases and links to your site
• Conversion rate tracking of visitors to paying customers

Some webmasters would suggest that there are well over a hundred variables that should be taken into account when developing a web site. Following the 80:20 rule, we believe that these are the major ones with the addition of one more.

Every page must offer useful content, informative and valuable content to the reader. Above all, you need to try to answer the question the reader is looking for. If you can do that you most likely will rank well and attract the kinds of customers you are looking for on your site.

Many websites are penalized by poor content management and linking strategies. There are a number of symptoms to look for to determine if you have been penalized by search engines.   Your website is at risk if your site has been penalized in the last year. Your ranking has declined or your traffic has declined then you might be suffering from one of the following three items:

Website at Risk – Poor content

We cannot emphasize the quality of the content of your website enough. If you have low-quality content, content that would be considered spamming, or content that is not useful to the reader then both the readers as well as the search engines will not be ranking your website very well. Write for the reader and try to answer the question that you believe the reader is searching for. Make it useful and informative. Make sure that the Content is unique and don’t use someone else’s content. You should also avoid duplication on your own website even if you wrote it. Some areas that are easily overlooked on websites is the content on the header page as well as the footer page. this could cause you some problems. keep the content new and exciting, refreshing old content, and keep it interesting and useful for the reader.

Website at Risk – Poor on-page optimization

Avoid packing your title and content full of keywords. This typically will get you penalized by search engines including Google. The easiest way to test whether you becoming spammy or not is by looking at the content, tag lines, etc., and ask yourself does this look spammy? Is it natural? Also, avoid linking content since it is frowned upon by search engines. Write for the users and readers of your content and don’t write for the search engines. You will be much better off in the long run.

Low-quality backlinks pointing to your website

Back links are particularly problematic for many website owners. Back links are links from other websites to your website which you have really no control over. However, if you have a lot of backlinks from other websites that are spammy, then it will bring your website down as well. Investigate tools that will help you within identifying back links and contact the webmasters to determine how you can have the back link removed. Alternatively, you can implement a no follow approach telling the search engines that those back links are not valid and should not be included in the analysis.

These three activities, when followed, will significantly improve your website optimization and ranking in search engine indexing. It takes a bit of work. Particularly with large sites so be prepared to put a lot of effort into this. From the get-go focus on quality content.

What permalink structure is the best for optimal SEO? In the opinion of most SEO experts, the permalink structure that is the best is “postname”. There are several reasons for this position. When you use your focus keyword for the post as part of the post name, it is then also listed in the SERP results pages. The search engines treat the post name as another SEO factor that contributes to the overall ranking. In addition, it is much easier for navigation by both readers and bloggers if the post name is being used.

What Permalink Structure is the Best for Optimal SEO

When WordPress is initially installed, the default used for permalinks is a numeric, which really contributes nothing for SERP results. Before adding any new posts, change the permalink setting to “postname”. Click on settings and then click on permalinks. Select the postname setting and all new posts and new pages from that point forward will use the “postname” in the URL structure.

If you have already written a few posts with a numeric as a permalink, your webmaster should add 301 redirects to direct the old post to the new post using the postname convention.

Most bloggers don’t give this issue much thought. However, it is one more factor in SEO optimization to consider, and once implemented no more changes are needed.

Always select post names that are 5 to 6 words in length, avoid using stop words and use your focus keyword in the post name so that is also reflected in the permalink. As always write excellent original content that is related to the post name to ensure your readers and visitors can find the information they are looking for.

Finally, we do not recommend the use of dates as part of your post name permalink. Using a date tells the reader how old your post is. They may tend to click on newer posts and bypass yours. Even though the content is up to date and current.

For a lot more SEO related information, click here.

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Throughout our posts, we have emphasized that the content on websites must be great content, interesting to readers, answers their questions, and generally solves their problems. After all, they have initiated a search to find the answer to some questions that they have and they do not want to be bothered by poor content and content that does not address their needs. This is the objective that the search engines have set for themselves. They want to meet the customer’s demands and present the best possible results to their customers each and every time. Search engines employ search and indexing algorithms that are complex, to say the least. They are kept very top-secret for the most part by Google, Bing, and Yahoo as well as others. Inconsistent URL Structures can make it difficult for search engines to do their jobs.

Webmasters are tasked with keeping their content up-to-date and meaningful for their customers. They also try to make sure that they place well on the search results. After all, if you cannot be found then no one is going to read your web page, blog, etc.

Inconsistent URL Structures

One attribute that we believe the search engines value is consistent URL structures. In other words, they see the same URLs each time they visit and index a site. They also see new content being added. Many webmasters will look at old content that is no longer relevant for whatever reason. They may simply delete that page. This action can be interpreted as Inconsistent URL Structures and cause the search engines to rank a site lower in search results.

Instead, webmasters would be better off updating the content of the page. They should make it more relevant to today’s issues and needs of the consumer etc and retain these older URLs. It spells longevity, commitment to content, and commitment to ensuring that a website’s information remains relevant.

This is part of the SEO activity that many webmasters need to address. We will be discussing further issues like this one in upcoming posts.

Many websites were penalized by Google Penguin and other algorithm releases from Google. If you are one of them don’t despair, just get ready to put in some hard work. Be patient as long as you are following the guidelines publicized by Google. Website Recovery From Google Penguin will consume a lot of time. The holy grail of websites is that you must have high-quality content. It must be attractive, informative, and useful to your readers.

This is the first requirement. It is a must-have if you are going to be in this business for any length of time. There are other areas to focus on as well that we will cover in this short article. However, rest assured that this is a complex subject and requires much more discussion. We will focus on what we consider to be the basics of SEO recovery. But do not even bother with these other issues unless you have focused on quality content first.

Website Recovery From Google Penguin

Every time that Google comes out with a new release there are many steps for an SEO website administrator to consider. The first task is to try to asses what the impacts will be on the industry and specifically your website. Many online blogs are dedicated to this subject. It is worthwhile to spend a few hours getting a feel for what the SEO community is suggesting. You may need to adapt your website in order to comply with these changes. This is really the first order of business to avoid your site being indexed and penalized as a result.

Once you feel that all of the steps have been taken to adapt your website to whatever Google has changed in terms of SERP. The next step is to continue optimizing your site to improve the quality of your site. In terms of content, in terms of quality links to other quality sites, and terminate poor quality links where you are able to. You may have to contact other webmasters to request them to remove links so that you can improve your overall link strategy.

Whenever you touch a page, take a few moments to review that page. Update it from the perspective of checking current information to ensure it is accurate and up to date, in grammar, and also spelling. If your company has changed services, products, or policies, for example, this is the time to also make sure that your pages are not only up to date, but they also meet Google’s guidelines for SERP. This is an opportunity to improve your web site every time you touch a page.