Does Social Bookmarking Help SEO?

Posted: Monday, April 2nd, 2012 by | Filed under: , , , ,
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Social Bookmarking Sites

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to organize and manage their bookmarks of online resources. Social bookmarking for SEO companies is not only for organization, but a help with creating backlinks and increasing the visibility of the website across a number of platforms.

For SEO, social bookmarking sites are helpful in that every time you add a bookmark to a social bookmarking site, you create a backlink. Backlinks are one of the most important pieces to the SEO puzzle. Over time, by adding and building the number of backlinks to your website, you can help increase its PageRank and ranking in many search engines, especially Google.

Websites like Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg provide users with the option to “vote.” If your content is of good quality, voters can vote your link up, which can result in a good amount of traffic. Quality traffic to your website is very valuable and for many, can turn into potential leads. Read more …

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On Page SEO Factors

Posted: Saturday, March 3rd, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,
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Basic SEO practice usually starts with on-page SEO factors. When you begin an SEO campaign, there are different pieces of the puzzle you need to “solve” in order to get rolling. Although these important factors aren’t going to boost your ranking in a week, they will sure contribute to Google’s evaluation of your website as well enhancing your website overall. Here are some minor factors to consider when including on-page SEO in your website:

1. Title tags – You’ve most likely done your keyword research before you begin on-page SEO, but if not – now is the time to do it. Your title tags are displayed in two spots: on the top of your webpage, in the title bar of your web browser:

And in the headline of most search results in search engines:

Title tag optimization

Title tag optimization

These title tags will help users understand what your webpage is about and users are more likely to click on a search results with a defined title tag. Be sure to include those SEO keywords! Read more …

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Social Media Marketing Results

Posted: Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,
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Social media strategies

Social media strategies

Search engines are constantly changing and updating. Just research Google Panda and you’ll find out all about Google’s updates to its algorithm. Unfortunately, there’s no controlling Google, but there are ways to help your website prepare for these types of changes. For SEO, content is king. Search engines like content, especially keyword-rich content. Your webpages throughout your website should incorporate relevant keywords into the copy; this will help your ranking in search engines.

Now, with social media’s popularity, search engines have started using social signals, such as Facebook Likes, Tweets and +1s in their search results. Social media has changed the game since they produce such a large amount of information. Content is pouring out of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, among others.

Search engines look at social media sites for guidance and use them as part of their algorithms for search results. If your content is shared by a significant number of people, chances are that there must be something interesting about it. That said, Google will consider it when ranking its results for relevant searches.

Google and Bing now consider shared content when responding to searches. Tweets, Facebook Likes and other social media shared content appears in organic search when relevant. This all circles back to SEO experts and their concern over quality, keyword rich content. Read more …

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Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

Posted: Saturday, January 14th, 2012 by | Filed under: , ,
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White Hat SEO is what is considered legal/acceptable techniques to reach your search engine optimization goals. Black Hat SEO would be the illegal/unethical tricks used to cut corners and increase your site’s ranking on search engine results pages.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat

Black Hat

Examples of black hat SEO are link buying, keyword stuffing, and invisible text, to name a few. Link buying is exactly what it sounds like. Buying backlinks to your site so that you can increase your search engine ranking is unethical

The field of web marketing keeps evolving, and as search engines continue to improve on their algorithms to better meet the search needs of their users, the definition of what is white hat SEO and black hat SEO continues to change as well. Read more …

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Hit By Google Panda 2.5 Update?

Posted: Monday, November 21st, 2011 by | Filed under: , , ,

Google Panda 2.5 update made its way through their web universe this past October.  Google Panda is known as Google’s algorithm for determining which website to rank in the top of search engines based on specific searches. This particular update left SEO experts scrambling for answers.

It turns out that Google Panda’s new update is primarily focusing on quality websites. Google sees that there are too many spam and “junk” websites appearing at the top of search engines. In an effort to change the way Google ranks these sites, Google Panda (update) 2.5 is heavily focused on unique, lengthy, quality website content.

Aside from quality content, Google is also focusing on social interaction outside of websites. Web socialization is important in the internet world these days, so it’s important to interact outside of your website.

If your website was affected by the Panda update, there are a few things you can do: Read more …

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No Follow Links and SEO

Posted: Monday, October 24th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

When it comes to search engine optimization, links have the most influence on one’s ranking in search engine results pages. However, not all links are made the same.

Links that come from a website that already has a lot of quality backlinks are given more weight than links that come from a relatively unknown website with zero/few backlinks.

Links are also weighted differently depending on whether they are “do follow links” or “no follow links.” No follow links were created as a prevention method for spam links. A no follow link tells search engines to not give the link any weight. Thus, no follow links cannot directly improve SEO.

The rules of content marketing are constantly evolving. For example, a couple years ago, some folks thought that they had stumbled upon an SEO secret—LinkedIn. Not only was LinkedIn a trusted authority in Google but the website links in the LinkedIn profiles could also be customized to create unique anchor text that was SEO-friendly. For this reason, they believed that LinkedIn could offer juicy backlinks to their sites.

However, times changed, and LinkedIn decided to get rid of the do follow links on the LinkedIn profiles and replace them with 302 redirects. In addition, most of the public links on LinkedIn are no follow links, which means that posting in discussion forums won’t do much in terms of helping you improve your ranking. Although you can no longer rely on LinkedIn for those highly coveted do follow links, LinkedIn is still a great way to expand your network and further establish your brand, two things that will help your content marketing in the long run.

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SEO Keyword Strategy

Posted: Monday, October 10th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

A lot of factors go into search engine optimization, including the design of your website. Check out the following checklist to see if your website needs a few touch-ups to get the most SEO benefits. Are you making sure that you’re…

1) Using the best SEO keywords on your web pages?

2) Using keyword-rich title tags?

3) Minimizing your reliance on Flash?

4) Optimizing your homepage for web marketing purposes?

Let’s talk about the first checkpoint. All SEO companies will tell you that keyword research is a crucial preliminary step towards improving your search engine ranking. However, a lot of times people that are new to internet marketing get distracted by the immediate data offered by keyword analysis tools.

For example, say you just opened your own boutique store and are interested in working content marketing into your business plan. If you care about improving your SEO, then using a keyword analysis tool is definitely a step in the right direction. However, the tool itself is only half of the equation. You, or the SEO company that you hire, make up the other half. Tools such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool can provide you with lots of useful information about your competition as well as how many global/local searches are made for those keywords. But it is up to you (or your SEO) to figure out what keywords to type in and analyze. If you type in “jewelry boutique shop,” you’ll find interesting data about the competition for that keyword, but it won’t be very helpful to you because 1) the competition for that keyword is very high, making it unlikely that you’ll be able to rank on the first page in a semi-timely manner, and 2) you’re better off targeting other keywords that are more likely to lead to conversion. After all, someone searching for “gold custom bracelet milburne, NJ” is probably more likely to convert and make a purchase than someone who looks up “jewelry boutique shop.” The point of SEO is not to attract more traffic to your site for traffic’s sake. The point is to drive in the right type of traffic that will lead to conversion and more revenue for your business. Read more …

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SEO for HTML5

Posted: Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

If you’re a web designer, most likely you’ve heard about the latest HTML, HTML5. Not only is it an upgrade to HTML and web design features, but it’s beneficial for search engine optimization (SEO) also! There are enough problem SEO companies run into as it is, but hopefully some common problems can be resolved with HTML5.

Large websites, and most commonly, ecommerce sites have a lot of WebPages built in. It’s hard for Google and other search engines to distinguish the pages from one another. With similar content and products listed on the WebPages, SEO companies run into duplicate content issues. Google will see your pages as “the same” because of the similarities. Adding sequential links and HTML code to your pages will help Google understand that your pages differ.

HTML5 will also help Google and other search engines interpret our websites and WebPages a lot quicker and easier. With new tags to help organize the website content, web designers will be able to sort the HTML easier allowing Google to interpret it easier. There will be new tags and a wide variety of them to help sort out elements. Read more …

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Local Marketing for Cosmetic Spas

Posted: Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

We’ve already talked about the importance of having a website for your cosmetic, medical health spa business, but in order for your website to be effective towards your local market, you should consider local SEO. Building a local SEO campaign around your business will help you reach your customers and potential customer through web searches.

One of the first steps in any SEO campaign is to research target keywords. For any type of spa, depending on the services you offer, you can build your campaign around the most popular and most searched for topics. Let’s use Botox for example. If your spa offers Botox, most likely you have some information about the services on your website. For local customers to find your business and website, you should incorporate geography into your web copy.

Search engines crawl through millions of websites daily and try to find the most relevant content for the search. Local SEO helps you target the area in which you service and builds your ranking based on searches. If your cosmetic spa in NJ has built an SEO campaign using local SEO, you can target your local customers. When a search is conducted for “Botox northern NJ,” your spa should appear in search results. Based on the specifics and the towns you want to cover, the same keywords can be incorporated. Use specific towns around the specific services you want to focus on.

Using social networking and local SEO together can also optimize your website. Many customers are on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter looking for information and opinions. Having your spa participating in discussions will also bring attention to your business. By using these platforms as a web marketing effort, you can build your online presence and overall business presence while promoting your spa to your local customers (and beyond!)

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How to Choose a Keyword for a Dermatologist Website

Posted: Saturday, September 17th, 2011 by | Filed under: , ,

Dermatology is an industry that offers a number of services, such as Botox, chemical peels, acne treatment, skin resurfacing and many others. All of these dermatology procedures are especially popular in New Jersey. When working on designing a website and implementing SEO into the content throughout the site, it’s important to do extensive keyword research. So, how do you choose keywords for a dermatologist?

Beyond the obvious, keywords referred to as local SEO keywords; include a geographical keyword/tag in the phrase. For example: “chemical peels northern NJ” would be a common phrase searched for in search engines. What’s important for businesses like dermatology is to dig deeper and use specifics. Local SEO is very important for any local business and geography is a large portion of what’s use by search engines to yield results. Combine general keywords, such as acne treatment, eczema, and others with a city, county, region, state or town.

When writing content for a website, you don’t want to go too big that search engines can’t distinguish which services you offer and which areas you service. Local SEO involves a lot of time and effort. As a dermatologist, it’s important to identify what areas are strongest for your business and what services you want to target. Focus on the top ten or top five and then go from there. Once you’ve decided on those, you can rank them on importance and begin the process. Read more …

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