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What is a Video Micro Site?

Casa De SEO - Matt — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:43:00 GMT

The Video Micro-site is an economical solution for businesses or organizations that have a need to market products or educate viewers. Marketers will be able to quickly post a video and highlight a product while educators can present content and deliver accreditation 24 hours a day, seven days a week around the globe.

See the Blind Skateboards micro-site LIVE!!!

Truly smart business minds understand that campaigns require their own space and identity if they are to succeed. And when it comes to using the Web as your vehicle for such a campaign, the obvious solution is a Video Campaign Microsite.

These sites benefit from removing all the corporate clutter and irrelevant information that inhabits most business websites and generally gets in the way of an effective marketing presentation. Video Microsites are often implemented by means of a direct emaíl campaign or depending on the budget, magazine, television, or radio advertising. You can also channel corporate site traffic by means of a graphical home page link.

* New Product - Video Microsites
The launch of a new product or a seasonal line should be an event, and there is no better way to attract attention and generate public and media interest than to create a brand new website environment dedicated to that launch.

* Promotional - Video Microsites
A sale is just a sale, and today's sophisticated buyers have seen it all before, so unless you make a big event out of your promotion, all you'll end up doing is selling your regular customers the products they would have bought anyway but at a lower markup.

* How-To - Video Microsites
There is nothing more damaging to your brand or your bottom line than customers who hate you, and who tell their friends and colleagues. A surefire way to make people angry is to sell them something they can't figure out how to use properly, and a buried FAQ, or a complicated list of instructions in twelve languages and 9 point Times Roman is just not going to cut it. A how-to video site can show people how to use and get the most out of your products or services in a way they will understand and appreciate.

* Documentary - Video Microsites
Where the Video Mocusite takes an entertaining, humorous, and satirical approach to communicating your marketing message, Video Docusites takes a look at the history, longevity, innovation, and success of a company in order to build confidence, loyalty, and brand identity. Ford's Bold Moves Docusite was a good example of this kind of campaign.

* Demographic - Video Microsites
When a company has different campaigns for different demographic markets, it should present them separately to avoid confusion, mixed messages, and a dilution of the brand identity, image, and personality.

Microsites Help You Clarify The Message

Skateboarder apparel companies, for example, all have unique product lines that need to be promoted in a current, if not trendy, manner. Dumping such a campaign into your regular corporate Web environment gets in the way of achieving the campaign's marketing goals: the audience looking for new products and promotions is not interested in your Investor Relations or Career Opportunities, and likewise, the people looking for jobs and investment information aren't interested in your holiday specials. It doesn't matter how good your presentation is if you bury it so no one ever sees it. If website visitors can't find what they're looking for fairly quickly, they're gone.

Why should a Skateboarder apparel company use video at all? The answer is simple: there is just no better way to present how a clothing line and product look but how they are really used. This includes how it looks on a real person from all sides and angles, and when they move. Add a little voice-over description and you've got your little apparel show designed to move product whether online or in-store. Too many companies, especially e-commerce companies, still 'think print' even when they are using the Web as their main marketing communication vehicle.

I hope this article was once again found useful to you. For more information about this service or Search Engine Optimization please contact us.........

Regards,

Your Blogmaster Matt

Rioforma Media Group

How To Use Website Analytics

Casa De SEO - Matt — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:45:00 GMT

Ok, now that you have a website what is it doing for your business?

In today's global world, it's a widely-accepted fact that if you have a business card you should probably have a website. It doesn't matter what your company is selling - a website, however modest, has become a standard for credibility and first impressions.

So the real question is "what is your website doing for your business"? Most people get a certain "deer in the headlights" look in their eyes when I ask this question. To be fair, it's not a question we're used to hearing. But that's not all that's going on here.

Traditional advertising mediums - print, TV, radio, etc. are notoriously difficult to track. Sure, you'll know how often the phone is ringing or how many people come in with a coupon clipped from the Sunday paper, but what you don't know is how many people saw/heard your ad and whether they were interested, oblivious or, worse, annoyed.

Business owners are used to this. We all know we need to advertise - it's a necessary cost of doing business - so we buy that half-page ad in the Yellow Pages or the local newspaper, we sponsor an event or a little league team, we have a radio commercial written and we hope for the best. This has been a given in marketing since the beginning. But the web, and analytics, changed the game.

So how should you be using your web analytics to grow your audience, and your business, online? Track Everything!

With web analytics on your site you can track:

* Where your traffic is coming from by
       - The referring website and page
       - The search engine and keyword used

* Your website visitors by
       - Their location
       - Their operating system, browser and monitor
         resolution
       - Their network

* Visitor behavior and actions by
       - Duration of visit (time on site)
       - Pages per visit (number of pages viewed)
       - Bounce rate (percentage of users who viewed only
         one page before leaving)
       - Conversion rate (percentage of users who completed
         a preset task)

If you're planning on doing any kind of Internet marketing through search engines, email or advertising on other websites, information on your past and current traffic is crucial. Not to mention you'll want analytics in place so you can properly track the new traffic your promotions will, hopefully, bring in.

When reviewing your analytics data look at the behavior and action metrics. For example, if the bounce rate of your website or a certain web page has a 75% rate, then what what does that tell you? Well, this is a pretty high bounce rate - you should at least be shooting to have a bounce rate lower than 50%. But does this tell you exactly what is wrong? Likewise, if you have secured advertising or a listing on another website, the number of visits coming in from that site only gives you part of the picture. Tying your bounce rate to a specific traffic source, on the other hand, can tell you a lot.

If a given traffic source is generating a bounce rate of 85% or more, for example, this indicates that users are not being satisfied. There are a few possibilities as to why:

* The users may not be well-qualified - or the site where
    you are listed or advertising might not have the best
    audience for your content/offer.

* The listing/ad may promise something that the entry
    page does not live up to (or, at least, the promise is
    difficult to locate once the user arrives at your site).

* Your site is simply not usable, is unattractive or
    unprofessional, causing users to leave immediately (and
    most don't come back)

* Your users are not connecting with your content/offer.

There are other possibilities, but you'll want to find the most likely answer here - and try to fix it. Then, using the same metrics (traffic source + bounce rate), you can see whether things improve moving forward.

Using metrics like these you can also get a sense of which advertisements are bringing you a return on your investment and which aren't. With goal tracking in Google Analytics, for example, a conversion rate is added to just about every traffic metric, including referring websites. If you're finding that a website is sending you plenty of traffic but none of it is converting, re-examine the referring website's audience, how your site is being presented and the user's experience when they click through.

Your website is more than a brochure or business card. It's an interactive tool for your users. The only true way to find out how they're using it (or not using it) is to get web analytics set up properly on your website.

And the best way to improve your website in the aim of building your business is to use the information your web analytics give you. If you aren't tracking everything, taking time on a regular basis to understand what the data reveals about your users and adjusting your efforts based on this information, you're missing an opportunity to optimize your advertising and get a better return on your budget.

Once again,

Good luck on your Search Engine Marketing Adventures.

Regards,

Matt - Your SEM Guro for the day............

Rioforma.com

Social Networking December 2008 Traffic Results

Casa De SEO - Matt — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:09:00 GMT

Social Networking Activity Dec. 2008

Across the Web, social networking websites grew by 13% in the United States from December 2007 to December 2008.

Below you will find the top social networking websites rankings tracked by COMSCORE for December 2008.

I know as a small business owner that LinkedIn has grow very quickly over the past year. As you can see, social networking is not just for kids anymore!

More to come later!

Regards,

Matt your SEO Blobmaster..............

What Is A Content Management System?

Casa De SEO - Matt — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 08:02:00 GMT

Content Management Systems AKA - (CMS)

Content Management Systems do what they sound like - they help you manage your content. Essentially, a CMS allows you to create/edit/delete your site pages without getting into the coding side of things. For larger sites, they also make organization easier. The content is largely stored in a site database, which lives on a web server, alleviating the need to back up hundreds of HTML files.

Ecommerce websites, for example, use content management systems 90% of the time.Blogs use them too.

While they may sound expensive and complicated, there are several full-featured content management systems available for free. Among the most notable are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Zen Cart and more. All these CMS systems are free to download/install at your web server, and have been developed by an open source community with ease of installation and use in mind.

If you're considering moving your site to a CMS or building a new site with one but aren't yet sure of the benefits, here's a quick list:

No need to be a coder
      While the setup process can get somewhat technical and customizing templates involves coding, in the long term working with a CMS means working with less HTML/CSS and server side scripting code. That means an easier time for content editors and authors. It means you don't need to rip your hair out figuring out which HTML tag wasn't closed properly. It means you don't need to know what an HTML tag is at all, in most cases. This saves you a ton of time and resources in the long term.

SEO is built right in
      SEO is a concern for every webmaster, and most content management systems include beneficial features in this regard. There are many available SEO plugins for WordPress, for example, that make for well-optimized title tags, URLs, links, etc. Once your CMS is producing search engine friendly pages there is little need to go back and "tweak" on-page optimization or play with file names. This allows you to focus on creating great content without worrying about your on-page SEO.

Little risk of losing/overwriting important files
      Since site content lives mostly in the database with a CMS, there isn't much risk of someone accidentally overwriting a recently-updated page or losing important files. Most site authors and editors can work from within the CMS and don't bother saving/uploading a file at all. This will save you many headaches. Just be sure to back up your database on a regular basis and before upgrading your CMS.

Website can be accessed and edited from any location
      Most content management systems are web-based - meaning they live entirely on your web server. The only thing required to access/edit your site in this case is a username/password to log in. This means you don't need to worry about being at your computer or carrying your site files with you when traveling. Adding/editing/deleting site pages is a simple as logging in and using the web-based back end to get it done - and site updates can be published live instantly with no need for FTP.

Updates don't require you to use a webmaster
      This alone can save most companies thousands of dollars a year. With a content management system you no longer need to call your web developer every time you need to correct a spelling error or add an event to a calendar. You can handle updates yourself or have someone in your office - maybe even an intern - make the change directly. The point is: it's easy. You no longer have to pay the developer's rate for simple updates, and you don't need to waste time communicating the changes via phone or email and settling invoices.

Development costs are cheaper for open source
      If you're looking to either migrate an existing site to a content management system or use one for a new site, you are likely to be looking at a cheaper project overall (depending on the level of customization). Most of the bells and whistles are built right into the system - so development becomes more a task of updating the look and feel of the CMS template than building from scratch. Of course, design is crucial - so if you're looking for a polished site design you'll still want to hire a solid designer/developer, but a simple and clean site design with moderate customization shouldn't break the bank. There are also some very nice "out of the box" templates and themes available for most open source content management systems, such as the feature-rich and attractive Thesis theme for WordPress.

Essentially, there are few downsides to using content management systems, and the open source options available are very attractive (especially the price tag). If you're considering any of the open source solutions mentioned in this article, there are a few considerations you'll want to have in mind. Namely, keep in mind that WordPress was designed to be a blogging platform and is therefor somewhat limited in flexibility (although for most sites WordPress is a solid solution - even when you don't need a blog). Drupal offers much more flexibility and power, but it tends to require a more extensive and costly set up phase. The Zen Cart in a perfect fit for those of you who want to do an eCommerce website with shopping cart capabilities.

Also keep in mind that not all content management systems are created equal. Some lesser-known content management systems have rampant issues in search engine visibility - such as including session IDs in all URLs - that can render your site entirely invisible to search engines or at least sub-par when it comes to on-page SEO. So make sure you do your research if SEO is going to be important to you.

For companies operating on something of a shoestring budget for web development, an open source content management solution is often not only an attractive solution but perhaps the only viable one to stay within a budget without sacrificing the quality of your site's infrastructure.

And to those for whom the thought of working with HTML code causes instant panic: rest assured - with the right CMS setup, you'll rarely need to see an HTML tag again.

Well Good Luck finding the right CMS for your project.

If you would affordable CMS program installation of one of the open-source programs above, please feel free to contact me at Rioforma.

Regards,

Your SEO Blogmaster Matt

Search Engine Traffic for June and July 2008

Casa De SEO - Matt — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:40:00 GMT

Below you will find the Search Engine Traffic for the major search engines for June and July of 2008:

Google's search traffic, still leads Yahoo by over 40% and Yahoo leads MSN by 11%,,,,,

Below you will find the Expanded Search Queries June and July of 2008:

Again Yahoo continues to grow............

More information after the first of the year....

Regards,

Matt

How to Build Online Prospects for Email Campaigns

Casa De SEO - Matt — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:19:00 GMT

Most online business owners believe that all you have to do is put a good-looking website up on the internet and the phone will start to ringing instantly with new clients. But internet leads and mailing list work best when you build a relationship between yourself and the online prospect.

The best way to do this is to create a document of interest that you know your visitors want, need or enjoy. A website that is offering something for free in return for their name and contact details. That way you can build the relationship with them over time and don’t have to win them over in the space of one website visit. But what should you offer them?

Offer – Key Information on a Related Topic to your business or Website

We will call this a spot-offer-article. This is usually a free report, a newsletter, a top ten tips sheet… something that is so interesting to your target market that they are prepared to give you their name and email contact details right there and then to get their hands on it.

The important characteristics of a spot-offer-article are:
•   It’s free
•   It can be delivered immediately
•   It’s relevant to your target market
•   It has a strong title
•   It’s only available in return for name and email address details

Example of a Spot-Offer-Article Ad on your website

What you are aiming to do with your spot-offer-article is to create a strong and immediate desire in your website visitors. Strong enough for them to give you their details on the spot and get their hands on your offer straight away.

So you must ask yourself, what does this online target market really want to know?

Often the best way to come up with targeted content is to think of the title first. You know that question that so often gets asked in surveys… ‘What’s your greatest challenge?’ The answers to that question regularly get turned into freebie offer titles.

So if your target market’s greatest challenge is: ‘How to make more income from home”, the article title becomes something like this: ‘Top 7 secrets of high-earning home businesses’. Then you write your top 7 tips. You don’t have to give everything away, but what you write must offer value. And so begins the relationship with another potential new client.

What’s the best format for a spot-offer-article?

Many online marketing professionals deliver a free weekly or monthly newsletter with additional tips as their spot-offer-article. Others send a free report or top ten tips list, I think you get the point that it cannot be lame nor have no value, good information is the key to return visitors and creating new clients.

In closing, the immediacy of a spot-offer-article is generally more appealing to an interested website visitor, so you will probably find that you get more sign-ups if you choose this format. On the other hand, a newsletter gives you the opportunity to build the relationship better by offering useful and interesting content on a more regular basis.
Good Luck!

Matt – Your SEO SEM GURU!!!!

SEO and SEM - What's the difference?

Casa De SEO - Matt — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:45:00 GMT

Search Engine marketing (SEM) is an 'instant gratification' advertising media. You can basically set up a Google Adwords campaign in half an hour - and often have your advertisements running within the hour. Try that with newspapers, TV or radio! You don't have to make any changes to your website structure or architecture. You don't have to know how your website is built. And best of all - you only pay when your advertisement is clicked on - not when it is shown.

So whats the downside of SEM? Well - you pay whenever your advertisement is clicked on. You 'Pay Per Click' (PPC) - and will keep paying per click for all your traffic. You'll even pay for clicks by your competitors. The issue of 'click fraud' is a growing problem - and although every major PPC system claims to have ways of detecting click fraud - its out there.

Search Engine Optimization is a longer term approach, and encompasses many 'best practice' web design standards. There are often no payments required to the search engines, as the major search engine spiders (robots) visit your site for free (i.e. Google, and Yahoo), add it to their index, and rank it for relevancy against mathematical parameters. Good content, targeting well searched phrases, built to the 4 pillars of accessible web design (and built to conform to the published rules) - often win in the search engine rankings.

Regards,

Matt at Rioforma Consulting

SEO the Video On Your Website

Casa De SEO - Matt — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:20:00 GMT

Most of us know that a site that's well configured for search engine access is a major part of getting high traffic levels. However, you might not have thought about optimizing your video as well as the rest of your site. Since multimedia content is becoming a much more popular way of distributing information, correct video search engine optimization is important.

For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis.

Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file.

Only after you produce well optimized content should you contact the search engines and submit your video. This places you in the queue of web crawlers, and means you'll be indexed more quickly and more often than if you hadn't bothered to submit. The more regularly your content is crawled, the better your chance of rating well on search results.

Index your site on other engines than Google or YouTube. They can spread your video to other search engines you may not have thought of. For instance, indexing your site on Blinkx will cause it to show up on Ask and MSN, among others.

One important part of your strategy should be a series of related videos. When a viewer sees a video online that he or she likes, there's a good likelihood that this viewer will look for others like them. While a single great video will be popular and welcomed, you'll do even better if it's part of a series.

Use an embedded video player, too. Many viewers will be more inclined to view your submission if it's part of your site or blog than if they had to go to your video hosting service to see it. However, you should avoid players that use only Flash. Don't use pop-up players, which annoy more people than they amuse, and will actually cause you to lose views.

The more views you get, the more likely you are to be picked up by other sites, linked to, and rank well on video searches. You can even customize embedded video players to display playlists related to your company, and adjust the layout, and other information.

Create traffic by placing a video search box on your site. This adds unique content and boosts ad revenue. Make sure that you create a video of the appropriate length for your audience, and that you're looking for the right response.

You can use analytics to find out how long a customer stays on your video page, which will tell you if your video is too long. You can also use analytics to tell you which of your videos get the best response. Once you know this, you'll be able to decide which content should be linked first on your home page.

Remember that no webcrawler has ever bought a product or a service. If you're a local business using video to advertise, clicks are a lot less important than calls. Include a call to action with your contact information as part of your video - thumbnails are an excellent way to do this. You can use YouTube to create thumbnails at the quarter, half, and three-quarter marks. Making sure that you have both a local listing and a video listing on Google's Search Engine Results Page also increases your likelihood of getting visits.

You may also wish to make sure that your videos are high enough quality for and in the right format for television. Google TV is very affordable, and lets you create closely targeted video.

Don't use Active X controls and export all files as swf format. Use Google Video sitemaps to help with navigation, and build a separate page for each video, rather than hosting many videos on the same page. Use a simple text title and description, and optimize that page as you would any other. Then, link to it from the index page.

Descriptions and titles need to be consistent across all your sites, and file names should descriptive and make sense to the viewer. Remember that Different communities require different approaches. Prominent keywords can help on many sites. However, while keyword rich content will help videos hosted on your site be noticed by Blinkx or Truveo, it won't help on YouTube.

You'll need to get the attention of the community in general. Video responses to popular, related videos can help get others to visit your contribution. Your content will appear in close proximity to videos that are already popular. Make sure you include an active URL in the description of your video, and end the video with a mention of the link. Annotations can help you link to other YouTube videos. Be sure to allow comments!

Don't tag with irrelevant search terms, no matter how popular they might be. Remember that you need to appeal to real people, rather than just optimizing blindly. While you might turn up early in a search with good optimization, an unappealing video will cause people to pass you by. If you know what kind of content your audience prefers, you'll be able to create the right video marketing plan for your business or organization.

Video search engine optimization is an important part of any video marketing strategy. If you're planning to market your business or organization using multimedia content, creating it correctly and surrounding it with the right keywords and other information can help it be noticed. Before you submit a video, make sure it's optimized.

Thanks to Randy Zlobec, president of RZ Concepts for this article.

Webpage Hits vs. Page Views - Explained

Casa De SEO - Matt — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:12:00 GMT

iWhat is the difference between page views and hits within my website analytics?

It has come to my attention that many people do not understand the difference between a website “HIT” vs. a website “Page View”. Everyday your website will receive both hits and page views. What do millions of hits per month versus thousands of page views mean when you look at your traffic logs? It's all about the graphics on a webpage vs the user viewering the page.

Here’s some information you should understand before we proceed:

1. 1 graphic/image equals 1 hit

2. 1 webpage equals 1 page view

3. A page view is sometimes referred to as a request. This is because you are requesting a page be loaded when you click on a website or any of the sub pages.

4. Loading means the webpage appears on your browser.

5. The terms visit or visitors have no precise meaning unless the site is tracking its users. The term page view is the basic agreed upon standard

Information about a website's traffic is kept in the log file, a kind of general record. For more direct identification of the user , many websites use cookies. Similar to knowing what apartment house someone lives in, but not the specific apartment.

The number of graphics displayed on the webpage equals the number of hits. The display of the webpage is a constant number. Number of hits equals number of graphics plus 1 hit for the page.

For example:

1 graphic + 1 webpage ( 1 hit + 1 page view ) = 2 hits
10 graphics + 1 webpage (10 hits + 1 page view) = 11 hits
100 graphics + 1 webpage ( 100 hits + 1 page view ) = 101 hits
1000 graphics + 1 webpage (1000 hits + 1 page view ) = 1001 hits
10,000 graphics + 1 webpage (10,000 hits + 1 page view) = 10,001 hits
100,000 graphics + 1 webpage (100,000 hits + 1 page view) = 100,001 hits

I hope this helps everyone understand why the hit count is so great vs. the page views.

Regards,

Matt your SEO Blogmaster

SEO Consultant for Rioforma.com

Alexa Rank Comparison Tool

Casa De SEO - Matt — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:13:00 GMT

The Alexa Traffic History Graph allows you to create a traffic history graph for any site. Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users.

What is Traffic Rank?
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users. It is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site's current rank with its rank from three months ago.

What is Reach?
Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. Alexa expresses reach as the number of users per million. The three-month changes are determined by comparing a site's current reach with its values from three month ago.

Please use the FREE Alexa Rank Checker below to view your ranking changes.


	Alexa Rank Comparison Tool © SEO Chat™ Domains Enter a one or more domain names (domain.com or www.domain.com) up to 10 domains. Width Width of the chart Height Height of the chart Graph Type Select Alexa Graph Type Daily Reach Rank Time Span Select Time Span 3 Months 6 Months 1 Year 2 Year Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

Regards,

Matt the Blogmaster

FREE SEO Website Review

Link Building - How Too

Casa De SEO - Matt — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:03:00 GMT

There are many ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. That said,, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of rankings well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a less reputable page.

If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you're already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won't be of much use in competitive fields. Buying Text Links, if you haven't heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

1) Create and issuing press releases with a link back to your site

2) Submitting to reputable business directories such as DMOZ

3) Start participating on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas

4) Ask clients with web sites, if they would add your link to their "partners" section

5) Participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature

6) Get involved in social media and bookmarking websites

Regards,

SEO Blogmaster Matt

Local Search SEO Help

Casa De SEO - Matt — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:55:00 GMT

Hello all,

A friend of mine sent me this article and I thought it was perfect for the website!!!! Now on with the show.

Many brick and mortar companies that are catering to their local clientele find it hard to SEO for local markets despite targeting the best keywords. Quite naturally this is not a surprising matter as many of them, although efficient in running their off line businesses, typically stumble over two critical blocks.

Stumbling Blocks and SEO for Local Markets

When local businesses set to do SEO for local markets, many of them invariably ignore the need to think rationally because they are advised by SEO experts to target the big three search engine users and sometimes get confused and tackle this feat on a global level resulting in global traffic. The direct fall out of this step is exposing your business offers, products or services to the world at large only to dilute all other local online SEO efforts. If your product is not global you are in trouble.

So here is the stumbling block number one.

1. Not using localized target keywords, however good they are, will leave your new websites way down the SERP's locally. Actual localized keywords you should be targeting in which will bring you a steady stream of natural traffic.

The second block where you might probably stumble, especially if you are new to web and optimization is wrongfully assuming internet marketing techniques as something radically different and for removed from the earthly- worldly affairs that we all do by trial and errors over and again. The crux of the matter here is SEO for local markets is only a small part of larger marketing exercises, with certain twists, to get exposure with local locations.

Here is the second stumbling point in SEO for local markets.

2. SEO for local markets is not a marketing technique but a sophisticated local technique of optimizing websites on a local basis. Obviously, the one who knows the pulse of the market is not the SEO expert but can contribute his knowledge to SEO expert.

So, What Is Actually SEO For Local Markets?

Let me dash you through steps involved in SEO for local markets in short.

1. Localize your target keywords. This includes prefixing or suffixing local terms, names, and names of areas, cities or zip codes with target keywords. Example: "remodeling contractors Orange County", not "remodeling contractors".

2. Submit to local search engines (find one, if you don't know already), directories and web based yellow pages.

3. Display your mailing address with street address, zip code and complete. Once your site is indexed, these words gain prominence as a part of content.

4. Submit to local listing sections of Yahoo and DMOZ which is in addition to generalized listing.

5. Don't leave out general SEO techniques because you want to SEO for local markets which the power of link building which can be done globally as there might not be enough local sites to beat you competition.

6. Get on the local maps of Google, Yahoo, as this generally puts you on front of the local search engines.

7. Exchange links and banners with local businesses as the local traffic exchange will bring you new business. Avoid changing banners or links with competitors but exchange them with businesses that will complement you. Verify their traffic so it's an almost even exchange.

Dominating local SEO can be done fairly easily, you just have to either hire a professional with a proven track record or take time to learn local SEO. The main concern is to be patient as it takes at least 3 months to start seeing results.

Thanks Michael for the use of the article.

Regards,

Matt your SEO Blogmaster

About the Author: Michael S. Francis the author is a seasoned local SEO expert. Michael S. Francis is the owner of www.seovida.com

How to Build More Website Content

Casa De SEO - Matt — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:09:00 GMT

Ask your partners and wholesalers for content

If you have a product-based website, your suppliers can be a terrific source of content. For example, if you are a reseller of hand woven rugs, ask your manufacturer’s permission reprint promotional material that details the weaving and hooking the rugs. This content or copy is usually well written by a professional copywriter and has been loaded with pertinent keywords. Additionally, it is usually supplied in digital format so that adding to content to the website is so easy. Also add some product photos along-side the content to help keep the attention of the visitors. Before long, your website will begin to rank higher for handmade rugs, hand woven rugs braided rugs, rag rugs, and hooked rugs.

Just add more related words to your website

The reason this is a great "secret" is because everyone wins. This is my favorite method of doing adding content to a website. First you must understand that there are other authorities and experts in a given field or related industry who are often seeking collateral exposure, which you can provide them. Your job is find an article published online that contains content related to your industry and ask for permission to "reprint" it on your site. The trick is to identify “complimentary, not competing materials”.

For example, if you are a realtor. There are numerous associated trades that go hand in hand with selling homes (i.e. home appraisals, financing, title companies etc.). So search the web for a really good article that has something useful to say about the associated subject. If you are a regionally based business, it would be even better if you can find something from the site of another local business. When you find it, send a gracious email requesting permission to reprint their article on your site. Mention how helpful and informative their article is and how valuable it will be to your site's visitors. Naturally you will give appropriate credit to the author as well as a link back to their site. This provides them with additional credibility and exposure, as well as a nice reciprocal link. So… what if they ignore your request, or even say no? Just keep looking. The beauty of this process is that the information is readily available. Trust me, it won't take long before someone says yes. All you have to do is a little surfing and a little sweet-talking.

Creating or finding content for your site is not rocket science. Think about it. Every product or service solves a problem for the consumer. Identify that problem, and in theory, you're an expert on it. So, write about what you know, or find related content that someone else has already written. Just get those words on your site. By doing your homework, providing pertinent content, and supplying your customers with a wealth of resources, you are building not only business, but also relationships. And there's only one word for that -- success!

Regards,

SEO Blogmaster - Matt

How to Kill Your Page Rankings

Casa De SEO - Matt — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:52:00 GMT

Hello faithful patrons,

So sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've just been crushed with business. With that said, every week I get some prospect who tells me that they are going to use some fantastic technique to boost their websites rank or popularity within the search engines. The conversation always starts out something like this, quote "I only need you to help me market my website, my cousin showed me how to SEO my website using keywords and by building other websites to double my traffic."

What they are really saying is they have no clue what they are doing and just because the great "Google Gods" have indexed a page or two they are now SEO experts........ So to make sure you all end up to be real SEO experts please do not use any of the techniques listed below!

Keyword Stuffing:

One major "no-no" in meta-tags is stuffing as many keywords as possible into your meta tags and website with the sole intent of boosting your ranking in the search engines as opposed to creating quality content. Another common stuffing and "black-hat" technique entails creating keywords that match the background color of your web page, with the intent of hiding it from the human eye, but still allowing search engine robots to index them.

Although once popular, keyword spamming techniques can have a severe negative impact for your website. If the web indexing robots are able to detect keyword spamming, your site may be penalized with a lower ranking, or simply be removed from their index.

Doorway Pages:

Auto generated pages that are produced only for search engines to index and have no other value to the site. Doorway creation software can create hundreds of additional pages for your site in very little time, with the intent of having many pages for web robots to index. Auto created doorway pages are looked at as spam and if detected by the search engine spiders, your site will be penalized or be removed from their database.

In some instances a website such as full on flash website may not have any choice but to create a limited number anchor pages/ doorway pages since their entire site is in a format that can not be spidered. Care should be taken in how this is rolled out.

Baiting:

Also known as cloaking. Is the use of custom scripts that detect when a particular spider is crawling/visiting your website, and auto loads preset meta tags and or content built specifically for that spider and is different content then that which actual users will see. This technique is considered search engine spam and can have a severe negative impact for your website ranking.

Duplicating Web-Pages:

Another big "no-no" is creating multiple identical webpages or websites with identical content but different domain names. Essentially an advanced version of doorway pages. Often the websites are database driven and share the same database. Although once popular and still done by some , if web indexing robots detect duplicate sites, then both websites may be removed from their index.

Closing Thoughts:

If you find a new hot "magic" technique for getting that #1 ranking, chances are it is a form of spam. If you get caught spamming the search engines you will likely damage your ranking or be removed from their database! The top search engine companies have some of the best minds in the business who's full time job it is to continually make their search engine better. One of the ways this is done is by improving the relevancy and quality of the database by removing sites that spam their databases. Remember most search engines such as Google have a place where people can report sites they think are spamming the search engine. As rule of thumb, if you find a technique that attempts to artificially boost your ranking in the engines by circumventing or exploiting an algorithm that the search engines use, then it is SPAM.

What is the Code to Text Ratio of your Website?

Casa De SEO - Matt — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:14:00 GMT

Many search engines such as Google base their search results upon relevancy to the content provided. So basically if the page isn’t relevant, it won’t appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

If your web page contains too much HTML code, that could prevent a search engine spider from crawling the page in its entirety. Some search engine crawlers will check the amount of code there is on a page and compare it to the amount of text as part of its algorithm. If the page is too big, the spider may only be allowed to capture portions of the page, leaving out possible vital and relevant content.

Basically the more code you have on a page, the less search engine spiders will be able to pick up on the important language in your text for rankings purposes.

A good Rule of Thuml for Text to Code Ratios:

0-10 % - Consider adding more content or revamping your code.

11-24 % - Content is moderate, but always room to improve.

25+ % - Generally good, but don't over do it.

Things to do to increase your Text to Code Ratios:

Minimal Text on a Page
Placement of large amounts of Javascript on the page
Placement of CSS on the page
Table on Table development

Store Javascript in external file son your server and simply call for it in your code. There is not real need to place most Javascript directly on the page, save space and file it externally.
Create smooth tableless CSS pages. These are great pages from an optimization standpoint. First they create a better code to text ratio, and second they give the spiders a clear path through the entire page for indexing. Tables should only be used for tabular data.
Place all CSS in external CSS files. This makes is easier as you develop anyway, so you can simply call the entire CSS instead of rewriting it.

There are tools across the internet that can tell you what your code to text ratio is like the one below.


	Code to Text Ratio Tool © SEO Chat™ URL Valid URL to check Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

A rule of thumb should be - "the higher the ratio number, the better".

We thank Collins Internet for use of their article:
Portions of this article have come from "Collins Internet Website Solutions"

http://www.collinsinternet.com

Thanks again - your input is always welcome!

Regards,

Matt your SEO Blog Master!!!!

How to Check What Pages on Your Website Have Been indexed

Casa De SEO - Matt — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:46:00 GMT

Can the Search Engines Index the Pages and Content on Your Website?

Probably the biggest surprise to most people is that search engines are unable to either navigate or read most of the content on their website. If the search engine can't read your copy (text), then it's not surprising that you're not getting the rankings or traffic to your website that you aspire to.

The only thing a search engine can read is words. Sites that are dynamic, or created in other technology platforms such as Flash or Java, often cannot be read by the search engines. Even if they can read the content on your site, many times search engine cannot navigate your website properly because there are no specific links or sitemap to tell the proper sequence of pages or where to go next.

Want to see what Google is indexing on your website? Go to Google and type in: site:www.yourdomainname.com .

This will show you the title and description of the pages of your website that the search engines have indexed. If they are all the same or they don't have a title or description listed, chances are very good that your site is invisible to your target market. Make sure you have basic meta-tags and content of 100 to 500 words per-page preferably in straight HTML.....

Have a great day....

Matt your SEO expert and blogmaster.....

Search Engine Statistics for Dec. 2008

Casa De SEO - Matt — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:19:00 GMT

Below you will find some interesting statistics for Search Engine traffic and keywords searches for December, 2008.

Top Search Engine Traffic - Dec. 2008

Top Shopping & Classifieds Search Terms for Dec., 2008

Top Wedding related searches for Dec., 2008

Top Fashion related searches for Dec., 2008

For more information about search engine statistics go to hitwise.com

Regards,

Matt - Your SEO Blogmaster..........

What are Google Sitelinks?

Casa De SEO - Matt — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:46:00 GMT

Hello fellow Bloggers and Happy new year!

Sorry for the delay but I have about 5 SEO and SEM projects going right now. So it looks like 2008, is starting off as a great year for me. With that said, let's get on with a great question one of my clients asked me today.

The question was this:

When you do a search on Google, sometimes you see some of the search results with additions links to pages within that website.

What is this? Can you pay for this service? Or how do you optimize for it?

Here's my response and a little information as to what this is.

Sitelinks are extra links that appear below some search results in Google. They serve as shortcuts to help users quickly navigate to the important pages on your site.

Selecting pages to appear as sitelinks is a completely automated process. Our algorithms parse the structure and content of websites and identify pages that provide fast navigation and relevant information for the user's query. Since our algorithms consider several factors to generate sitelinks, not all websites have them.

Now, Google's Webmaster Tools let you view potential sitelinks for your site and block the ones you don't want to appear in Google search results. Because sitelinks are extremely useful in helping users navigate your site, we don't typically recommend blocking them. However, occasionally you might want to exclude a page from your sitelinks, for example: a page that has become outdated or unavailable, or a page that contains information you don't want emphasized to users. Once you block a page, it won't appear as a sitelink for 90 days unless you choose to unblock it sooner. It may take a week or so to remove a page from your sitelinks, but we are working on making this process faster.

To view and manage your sitelinks, go to the Webmaster Tools Dashboard and click the site you want. In the left menu click Links, then click Sitelinks.

To summerize,

The links shown below some sites in the Google search results, called sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Google's systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.
Google only shows sitelinks for results "when they" think they'll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn't allow Google's algorithms to find good sitelinks, or Google doesn't think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user's query, they won't show them.

At the moment, sitelinks are completely automated. We're always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, but there can be no guarantee that your indexed page or pages will have these additional sitelinks. Also not that sitelinks are usually associated with heavier traffic-sites.

Have a great day!

Regards,

Matt your SEO blogmaster.............

What is Keyword Density

Casa De SEO - Matt — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:26:00 GMT

What is Keyword Density

What is keyword density? Well it’s the percentage of times a particular keyword or phrase shows up in relation to the overall amount of text on that page. Example: if your webpage about SEO has 100 words on it overall, and your top keyword that you wish to rank on is the keyword "SEO" and it appears 5 times on this page. Then the keyword density for SEO would be a 5% weighting on that page. It’s also important that your top keywords on your webpage are also included in your meta-tags. Care should be taken with keyword density as it can greatly effect your website ranking especially on high-competitive keywords and phrases. Keyword density relates directly to text on your webpage, because text is content and content is always king as far as search engines are concerned!

Why is Keyword Density important to search engines

Text is important because the robots (aka: spiders , web crawlers) the search engines send out to index your site are really only able to use text information from your site in their databases. The robots index your website looking for text, and once it finds it...by downloading your page and parsing out the html to retrieve useful text. It sends the information back to the search engine database where it is stored and made searchable. The text words that were found on your site are associated with your webpage url inside this database. (Parsing is sometimes done on the engine side in order to free up the spider for more spidering...it really depends on how the engineers developed their system, but you get the idea of how data is being handled)

Key words in the search engine database are broken out across a tree format as a form of storing them in the database and are assigned a pointer back to a stored URL, and the URL is assigned a weighting as to the number of times this word appeared on that particular page (along with many other factors that make-up the score of the algorithm).

When an incoming search is made, the engine walks its tree to find the appropriate word and the URL's that the keyword is pointing to (pointer as mentioned above). All URL's associated with this keyword are gathered together and sorted as to which order they will appear. Pages that the engine determine are more relevant receive a higher ranking. Often this result is cached for rapid look up the next time...particularity because the sorting of the data tends to be a tremendous over head for search engines. Now this may not be the exact way all the search engines handle their data, but it does show what can and does happen in the world of search engines. Each engine has its own twist on the variable, but they all have the same issues such as: getting data, storing data, making it searchable at high speed.

Beware text is not always text

We have seen many web designers create images with text placed above or below the image in the picture. Essentially this is creating a picture of a product that has a nice write-up about the product below it. (This is done many times because many shopping carts do not allow for different style fonts for titles and descriptions or have some funky template format that forces many web developers to attach/embed text in an image) The problem is the text is not actual text, but really just text embedded into the .jpg or .gif image. Now a websites visitor may have no problem at reading this information but a web crawling spider only recognizes the image file and has nothing to index, as it cannot pull the embedded text from the picture. There are some things you can do to help the spiders with the images such as including Alt-Tags but we will save that blog entry for another time.

Good luck working on your keyword density percentages!!!

Matt - your SEO blogmaster

Understanding Link Building

Casa De SEO - Matt — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:59:00 GMT

What is link popularity?

Well it is best explained like this, it’s the number of links pointing back to your site, with the idea that the greater number of links means the more popular your website is. Search engines are known to increase ranking based upon link popularity.

It should be said, that the major engines (Google especially) are no longer only looking for the sheer number of links pointing back to your website, but focus more on the quality (page rank) and relevancy (related subject matter) of those links pointing back to you.

Link exchange isn't just about generating better search engine ranking, it is about generating sales through cross marketing your website through others that are in your industry. If you just run amok and try to exchange links with everyone and anyone, you'll do nothing to but waste your time! The same thing goes If you submit your site to thousands of FFA sites (free for all link pages) then you are really wasting your time! (plus you can plan on a ton-of spam after you submit your website to them)

Focus on Cross-Segment Marketing:

So does this mean you need exchange links with a competitor? Not really, for example; you may sell “Home-Made Texas Style BBQ Sauce” on your website, and you know of another website that sells Barbecues. Well your both in the same industry but you don't compete head to head, but you do share a similar client base. In this case it’s a good fit for both websites to swap links. It should again be noted that this type of linking “will not lead to higher search engine ranking but it will help both website convert more lead and possible increase product sales. These reciprocal links do not boost your page rank because for every link you receive you are also linking out of your website. (this search engine algorithms was based upon the thinking that “if you have the content on your website” you would link internally and not externally)

Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate marketing programs offer a sales commission for successful leads that are generated to or from your link partner. There sometimes nothing better than a financial benefit to encourage the link exchanging, But affiliate marketing is no guarantee to make easy money with your affiliate partner links. First you have to find the partners, second you have to have something they are willing to promote on their website and then you have the first part of the puzzle solved.

For the second part, you must make sure your link page is easy to navigate and well enough organized so that the link page you offer can be found by users to your site. Don’t forget, you want to make sure that the link page is indexable by the search engine spiders.

Closing Thoughts:

When asking other websites to become linking partners, think cross selling, remember your prospective link partner is interested in selling more, so explain to them the benefits they will receive by cross selling both of your products and services. Link exchange is in many ways about relationship building.

Regards,

Matt your local SEO blogmaster .....