Darling Online Marketing

4 Reasons Your Business Should Avoid SEO!

Posted on 30. Sep, 2011 by Chris Darling.

Are SEO consulting services are really worth the money they cost?  Well, if your business has website, then search engines should find it shouldn’t they?  

Search engines exist for to deliver their customers; the searchers, indexed results of web pages relevant to what they are looking for.  Those at the top are found to be most relevant to meeting the search query.   If they fail to do their job effectively, the searcher will not return and advertising dollars will disappear.  This fact alone has resulted in a huge industry called search engine optimization.  

But, does your website really need search engine optimization (SEO) in order to be found?  Maybe you don’t.  Here are four reasons you may want to pass on SEO services.

1. Avoid SEO If: You don’t mind being buried in the search results pages by your competitors.

   Search engines will eventually find your website regardless of your SEO. Of course, websites with effective SEO make it to the top of the list while everyone else gets pushed down to the bottom. Most people don’t go past the first couple of search engine results pages (SERPs) when they’re looking for a business.

2. Avoid SEO If: You have plenty of business and never have to worry about alienating half of the country’s population.  

   People can’t carry a phone book in their back pocket, but they do search for businesses using their mobile devices. Google estimates that by the end of 2011, 50 percent of all Americans will own a smart phone. All of these people are mobile web searchers. 

3. Avoid SEO If:  You don’t mind losing a potential referral customer because they can’t find you online during their initial evaluation.  

   Businesses use their websites as a way for people to tell others about them. Most people are more inclined to check out a business’s website before they call or visit. Many of the SEO elements that please search engines are also the same things that people find attractive about a website – which is why search engines rank websites with effective SEO so highly. 

4. Avoid SEO If:  Your site is like a non performing employee and you don’t mind dumping thousands of dollars into development to not show any improvement in your bottom line. 

   Businesses spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to have their websites designed. They also pay monthly hosting fees and often pay someone to maintain the website as well. Implementing high-quality SEO that draws people to your website only provides a better return on your investment and increases sales. 

In today’s digital age, SEO is a necessity.  Businesses can’t stay competitive without investing in SEO & online marketing. Simply having a website isn’t enough.   Businesses need a website that people can find easily.  

SEO is about more than just making it to page one of search though.  It includes your overall strategy to driving traffic to your website, helping it to stick around at the top of search, and converting new visitors to subscribers because your site is accessible, engaging, and providing your targeted market exactly what it is they are looking for:  the solution to their problems.

Please leave your comments and feedback below on this topic.  

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How to Capture Traffic From Search Results

Posted on 23. Sep, 2011 by Chris Darling.

When engaging in SEO or optimizing your site for search, think about the visitors or the people you want to reach.   Thinking of your visitor and the searcher will help you capture more traffic from search results.

As a site owner, it’s easy to get wrapped up with what you would like things to look like or say.  Sometimes you may think it’s not necessary to have a bit of contact information in a particular place because it might take away from the aesthetic appeal of the site.  Or, you might want to get creative with your navigation and layout.   Let’s not make things difficult for your visitor though. 

On the other side of the coin is a site owner that thinks in order to rank for a particular phrase, it needs to be everywhere possible on the page, in the title, in the headings, in almost every sentence, in the alt tag, and in your face!  To add insult to injury, the site owner may surround this phrase by other useless filler content.  Let’s not insult your visitor’s intelligence here.

There are quite a few variables in SEO that result in getting your pages, content, and site to show up higher in search results.  A typical checklist will usually only address the basics and you can find thousands of those types of checklists all over the web.   Beware of what you put your faith into though.  Most of that stuff is outdated or incredibly basic.

I found a great example on how to handle one  particular SEO tactic in a way that meets the human visitor’s need.   It describes how to write Meta tags so that you look way better in search results, increase that likelihood for a click through which all leads into your properly set up marketing funnel.

This is just one small thing I work to improve upon with my clients.  The Meta description and title tag are not something you will see on your web page.  But, when someone does a search in Google, Bing, or Yahoo, it is what will show up alongside every other web page or site that is also optimized for that search term.

While this is good practice today, do not be alarmed when the next big search algorithm update totally ignores these items and decides to start pulling data from some other place within your site.  As I said, there are many variables to search and it tends to change frequently.   This is one reason to have a good SEO specialist working with you.

For now, writing title tags and descriptions for your visitor is good practice and will enhance how you stand out on the search results page and attract the click thru because you are a more obvious choice in the midst of all other results on the page.

Here is a screen shot from the article I have referenced on writing these title tags and descriptions:

Let’s get to the logistics here.  If you are using a WordPress built site and installed the tried and true All-In-One SEO plugin, then this is as easy as telling your Facebook friends on Friday that it is in fact Friday and you are so happy that it is Friday and if they didn’t know…..  Friday means the weekend is about to begin!  Please don’t do that by the way… it’s annoying.

Back to the topic at hand; on each page and post of your site, simply fill in the title and description fields of the All-In-One SEO plugin with the proper data.  The plugin even tells you how many characters are recommended along with how many you are using up.  It’s kind of a no brainer!

The more challenging part that takes more thought and research is coming up with what should go in those fields.

Start with your keyword research.  Keep to the idea of one main keyword phrase per page.  Work that one phrase into your title and into your description.  Make it readable, sensible, and actionable.  Ask yourself, what is this page about?  What is the shortest way to describe what is on this page that will make a searcher want to click through to learn more?

When you nail this down, the exact result of doing SEO for your visitor is that  you effectively capture more traffic from search results with a click through and convert that visitor to a new subscriber, follower, or customer.

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7 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Posted on 19. Aug, 2011 by Chris Darling.

This past week, I gave a presentation on 7 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website.  Even with just picking out 7 ways, it was a lot of information indeed.  There are dozens of methods you can use to increase website traffic.

7 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website:

1. Articles
2. Blogging
3. Videos
4. Podcasts
5. JV Partnerships and List Building
6. Social Media
7. SEO

Each of those methods could easily be broken down into other step by step processes taking hours to cover.  One thing I did not get to really illustrate during the presentation is how you can take one really good piece of information and funnel it through each of these 7 ways to drive traffic to your website so that you can actually save a little time.

Start with your great piece of information.  Let’s say you are a plumber and you have 10 things that you know plumbers are not telling people.  This example can apply to just about any industry.  If you are a Real Estate agent and you know there are 10 things that most agents will absolutely not make common knowledge to their clients.

First, create a great “foot in the door” free report that you can give away.

Then, take a couple of those secrets that people just don’t share and expand on them in an article.   At the end of the article, be sure to put an author box that tells people where they can go to learn more or to pick up your free report that tells all.

Then, write a short blog post about a couple other secrets.  Publish that post on your blog and include a link or sign up form at the end so your readers can subscribe to your list and receive the complete report.

Along with blogging, go to more well known blogger’s sites and engage in the conversations they are having that are relevant to what you do.  Contribute to that conversation and include a link back to where readers can learn more about you and receive that awesome free report you just wrote.

Then, take one of those great secrets and make a video about it.  Syndicate that video and promote that video.  Be sure your video tells people where to go for more information and how to get the entire free report that tells all about it!

Along with the video, convert it and distribute it to Podcasting directories.  That is pretty neat because people could download your content to their iPod and listen to you when they drive or workout!

Something super powerful is to build upon your referral marketing partner relationships and enter into a JV partnership.  Ask them to send out an email on your behalf.  They can give your free report to their subscribers!  If it is someone in a related field but not in direct competition they will be happy to do this since your free report is good information.  They will look good for giving it away and you will build up your subscription list of targeted followers.  Those new subscribers can then be directed to your website in the future to learn more about what you do.  As you build upon that relationship, you will make more sales for what you do.

All of these articles, videos, and podcasts can be shared and promoted on social media sites.  Re-purpose it and publish them on social content sharing sites.  Tweet, bookmark, vote, and share those links on social networking sites.

All of this content should be created and completely optimized for search engines.  When done correctly, it will increase how often your content is found on highly traveled sites which will drive more traffic to your site.

Implementing SEO on each piece of content increases the ability for it to be found in search engines.  The other thing is each piece of content includes a link back to your website.  Those links in conjunction with proper SEO on your site will help your website appear higher in search results for the keywords you are targeting.

One great piece of content can be repurposed and used in 7 different ways to drive traffic to your website.  Once you get the hang of this, create another piece of content.   Remember, SEO and driving traffic to your website is not a one-time gig.  This is stuff you must do on a consistent basis to continue to build up traffic to your website.  When you use the SEO methods effectively with every single thing you publish on the Internet, you will continue to build upon your results while everyone else is still scratching their head trying to figure out what to do and actually get started doing it!

Please leave your comments and feedback below on this topic.  

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Warning! Don’t Ignore SEO

Posted on 11. Aug, 2011 by Chris Darling.

Yes, there are a lot of online marketing techniques that you could be taking advantage of.  And, the whole social media craze has sidetracked more than one local business from getting to where they need to go online while others hopped on the wagon and are realizing some success.

But, search is not going anywhere anytime soon.  It is only evolving to include social signals rather than be completely replaced by the main social media sites.

Here are some statistically driven reasons why you should not ignore SEO.

1. 42% of men  and 39% of women online report using search engines on a DAILY basis. 
2. Google currently holds 73% of the market share in search with Bing and Yahoo following up with 23%.
3. Google serves up more people’s search queries everyday than McDonalds can serve up burgers.
4. According to the 2010 Nielson Report, 74% of consumers online turn to search engines for deciding on what local business to buy stuff from.
5. The 2010 Forrester Report claims that 21% of all marketing budgets will eventually be allocated to interactive marketing methods by 2014.  Translation: It’s getting more competitive out there every day!
6. 80% of people surveyed typically research products and services online first before going out into their local community to actually purchase.
7. The traffic value of the #1 spot in Google = 42.13% of search volume clicks here. (Top part of “Be the Obvious Choice” Zone)
8. Traffic value of #2 spot in Google = 11.90%
9. Traffic value of #3 spot in Google = 8.5% (Bottom of the “Be the Obvious Choice” Zone)
10. The rest…. Just getting by…

Who wants to get into what I like to call the Be The Obvious Choice zone?

Successful SEO will get you into the top 3 of search results for your targeted keyword terms.  Continuous and sustainable SEO work will keep you there long term making it more difficult for  your competitor to bump you down.

Check out this Infographic where I pulled some of these stats from:

Click to Enlarge
Go-Globe.com
View Other Infographics

Please leave your comments and feedback below on this topic.  If you have other questions you would like answers to, send me a quick email or comment below.

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How will Google and the Panda Update Value My Website Knowledgebase?

Posted on 04. Aug, 2011 by Chris Darling.

I had a great question come in from a valued reader, Jaap, this week:  Regarding the Panda update:  ”If I have a knowledge-base with over 50 articles or whitepapers from various sources, how will Google value this?  Is it duplicate content?  Will my rankings drop?”  Thanks Jaap for the question.  

A Little Panda Background

Google has been rolling out fairly regular updates that are collectively referred to as the Panda update.  Originally, they called it the Farmer update to convey that it was meant to rid the index of content farms and link farms that add no real value to Google’s main customer; the searcher.

Now, it is referred to as Panda to be named after the brilliant individual working for Google that developed a scalable machine learning algorithm.

The goal of Panda and really Google as a search engine is to allow a website viewed as “high quality” to rise in the rankings while other lower quality sites sink lower in the rankings to pages that no one dares to visit if not banned from the index completely.

A common tactic of lower quality sites includes scraping higher quality sites for content to post on their site.    Call it laziness or call it “gaming” the system, what happened was low quality sites with scraped content would rank higher over authoritative sites just to make a buck or two from their ads on their sites.  The consequences of this filtered over to the ideal Google customer (the searcher) that would get annoyed with having to click through layers and layers of pages and navigation just to find what they were looking for. 

Let me illustrate an example of search results pre-Panda and post-Panda.  Last Fall, if you were suffering from Cyberchondria and tried to diagnose yourself online, you would have been inundated with content scraped from authoritative sources and presented to you on sites that were not so trustworthy.  These sites were heavy with ads and the user experience was frustrating to say the least. 

Now, that same search is more likely to return more reputable websites.  It is more likely to return the sites that are the originator of that content.  These sites may include a government site, a well known health care site, or another research based or authoritative website.  So, now you can get a more accurate diagnosis online.  In my personal experience, this was an improvement because I use to always end up with Lupus whenever Google-ing my symptoms.  It’s possible to get a more accurate self diagnosis today.  But, seriously, you should see a real doctor if you are having troubles. 

The Panda update implemented a machine learning ability that is succeeding in evaluating the quality of a website based on more than just metrics that anyone can access and manipulate through “gaming” the system. 

In doing this, Google put many on notice for duplicate content and even “thin” content problems on their websites.  This term “duplicate content” is everywhere in relation to the Panda update but the update really goes so much deeper. 

Many webmasters are working diligently to create original content on their site to avoid penalties.  But now, even original content in not enough in light of this rather sophisticated machine learning algorithm update called Panda.

Now to the original question

How may Google value a knowledgebase of republished articles and whitepapers on your site?  Will Google devalue your site?

I cannot say for certain since I do not work for Google and do not have inside information however, when studying what Google has to say on the matter and what well respected research based SEO sites like SEOmoz say I can come to the following conclusions.  If you are compiling a knowledgebase of articles and whitepapers from various sources and not handling this correctly, Google’s machine learning abilities will de-value your site eventually.  They will eventually treat it as duplicate content and the rankings of your website as a whole will drop.

How do you handle this correctly?

First, if an article or whitepaper has already been published on the originator’s website, from an ethical standpoint, you must give them proper credit.  From a technical standpoint, the pages where those articles and whitepapers rest should have the “noindex” tag.  This means, you tell Google to not crawl or index the page in question.

If you want to use this content to contribute to your audience’s user experience while still indexing a page, the best way to handle it would be to draft a completely unique and value added abstract of that article or whitepaper and show your user where to find the original which would ideally be on the originator’s website.  Again, if it is on your website and you have permission to publish it, give proper credit but still add the “noindex” tag to the page.

For more answers on the factors that Google considers when determining the quality of a website please see:  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html

Basically, focus on creating the highest quality site you can.  If your site is to be a resource for others, that’s great but an aggregator of articles and whitepapers is simply not enough as the web and search practices evolve.  It is important to consider the design and user experience along with the typical metrics.  What is it that will best serve your audience on your site?

If your goal is to build authority and ranking in search for a particular topic, it is important to build content and create a user experience that is congruent with what an authority site would look like for that topic.

Please leave your comments and feedback below on this topic.  If you have other questions you would like answers to, send me a quick email or comment below.

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How to Get Better SEO Results After Altering Title Tags and Images

Posted on 29. Jul, 2011 by Chris Darling.

Once you have adjusted your title tags and added <alt> tags to your images, it is time to get into some more on page SEO changes.  Get more information on SEO Delaware and improve your visibility.

The content on your page should be formatted into small chunks.  White space is your friend on the web!

While formatting it, be sure to have just one <h1> tag on your page and have your main keyword phrase in there.  Use other heading tags like, <h2> and <h3> to format the page further.  Remember writing an outline in high school?  Put your main ideas into the headings.

Use bold and italic formatting here and there to help important words stand out.  Now, here is a key thing to remember, your keyword phrase should appear at least once in bold or itatlics on the page.  But, the other important words I am talking about are those that your reader will latch onto as they skim your page.  So, refrain from making “blue widgets” bold dozens of times on your site.   Your reader will be annoyed because most likely they are looking for what a blue widget can DO for thme by now and they have no time to waste.

Obviously, your page is about blue widgets.  The search engines already determined that for your visitor.  So, don’t go insulting your readers intelligence and smack their eyeballs with a dozen “blue widgets” phrases!

While formatting the content, include related phrases in hyperlinks to other pages.  This helps your rader find more relevant resources.  The search engines crawl that content and make note of your hyperlinks.  Some, they follow and crawl the pages the links lead to. 

Once your content is formatted nicely to please search engines and humans, go to other pages of your site and link to this newly formatted page you have been working on.  When you link to it, use the targeted keyword phrase in the link or anchor text.

Do this for all of your pages on your website.  When you add in a back link building program, you will get much better results from it.  

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What Does Technical SEO do for Your Site?

Posted on 27. Jul, 2011 by Chris Darling.

I’m a bit of a technical SEO professional.  That is someone that really focuses on the code, page elements, content, site structure, navigation, and search maps.

It can be difficult to convey the importance of these things to the owner of service based businesses that I love to serve.  First we have to get over the misunderstandings related to what SEO does for your business website.  Then, we have to be prepared and exercise a little patience in order to see the sustainable results.

As I work so diligently on a client’s technical SEO (on and off their site), I also help them address some marketing fundamentals.  Those fundamentals come down to getting your website visitor to email you, call you or walk in your door so they can see how awesome you are and buy your stuff.

The technical SEO is what gets my client found in the top spots of search which is what I fondly refer to as the Be the Obvious Choice Zone.  With the majority of the traffic clicking through on one of the top 3 spots, getting there is an important component to Be the Obvious Choice. 

Then, I help my clients make sure that their website is set up so that it’s easy and desirable for their visitor to become a new contact.  Because before you can land a new big paying contract, you need to make the contact.

Sadly, there are many people with websites online that make their visitor work far too hard to contact them. 

Technical SEO mixed with online marketing fundamentals can make up a powerful strategy.  It is important to implement an SEO campaign along with other marketing strategies.  While I do have one client where their sole source of new business is from organic search, this is out of the norm. 

Fundamental marketing also includes consistently maintaining a few strategies.  For some this may include natural search and Pay-Per -Click while for others this may look like print ads and natural search.

The longer you effectively implement technical SEO with other online marketing strategies, the more impressive the results.  What do the results look like?

1. Increase in website traffic.
2. Increase in web search generated inquiries in your email inbox or via phone.
3. Increase in foot traffic if you maintain a physical store front.
4. (Funny but true) You will also see an increase in boutique SEO shops contacting you to sell you their services.

Let us know what you are doing to improve on your technical SEO and overall online marketing strategy.

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SEO Content On and Off Your Site

Posted on 26. Jul, 2011 by Chris Darling.

SEO content is an article, blog post, product description or review, infographic, image or video.  These pieces of content can be on your site, reside on someone else’s site, or both.

What makes it SEO content?

• The titles, descriptions, and keywords used to describe it.
• Something about it attracts links naturally from other places on the web.
• Search engines can easily crawl the content and get what they need from it to determine where it fits in its index or if it should even be included.

SEO Content on your site is best when it is compelling, giving your audience a reason to consume it.  When writing content for your site always ask yourself; who is my audience and what do they want to know about?

Many of the big dogs and gurus in SEO and Online Marketing world would be (and are) bored to tears with my website.  But see, they are not my audience.  My audience includes owners of small to medium sized service based businesses that are still trying to fully grasp how to use the Internet to market their business.

Much of my content comes from stuffing tons of information into one side of my head, the kinds of information that generally makes my audience glaze over in confusion and bewilderment.  Then, as my technical mind with its quirky sense of humor processes that information, I try to output it into SEO content my audience finds useful or even sometime mildly entertaining.  (I am still working on that part!)

Exceptional SEO content placed on the World Wide Web and not on your site serves 2 purposes:

• Provides you a quality one-way in-bound link to your site (woohoo!).
• Delivers targeted traffic to your site.

Not so exceptional content will usually just provide a one-way in-bound link… still a good “woohoo”!

SEO content outside of your site is also best when compelling.  Your site is just an island.  It is a lonely unheard of island in the vast Internet Ocean.  But you know you have something great and totally awesome to tell the world, if only they knew you were there.

Would you like this describe you?  You write this most amazing and impressive article and include descriptive images.  This article is super good and provides a lot of value to your audience.  It is sure to help solve some problems.  Then, you publish that article on HubPages.  HubPages is like the main land.  They’ve got all kinds of civilization going on and plenty of traffic consisting of people interested in what you have to say.

To keep a long scenario short, what happens is your compelling content on HubPages gets so much attention that not only does the link to your website turn to a “do follow” link but all of a sudden you get lots of traffic to your site.  This is just one example of how to use SEO content on the Internet to market your business.  This can be a scenario for you.

Leave a comment below with another great example of how to use SEO content to market your business.  

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WordPress SEO: What can it Do For You?

Posted on 22. Jul, 2011 by Chris Darling.

One of the reasons the terms WordPress and SEO are often found together is because  right out of the box, a WordPress site is more search friendly than most other “out of the box” solutions.

Search friendly means that the code is generally clean and easy for search engines to crawl.  Since it evolved from a blogging platform, it has nifty little features built in that will automatically ping the crawlers out ther telling them, “Hey, I’ve got something new here.  Come check it out!”

WordPress also automatically takes care of an RSS for you.  RSS is Really Simple Syndication.  Another nifty feature that helps spread your content across the web.

But, here is where some people are misled or where they go wrong with WordPress.  It is in not putting the correct information into the proper field for the SEO plugin or not knowing what the heck a plugin is in the first place!

A plugin is a bit of code written specifically to fulfill a feature the WordPress “out of the box” installation does not provide.  Some professional themes come with SEO plugins already integrated.  If the theme you are using does not, I recommend the simple and easy to use All-In-One SEO plugin.

Okay, whether you use the professional theme’s built in plugin or you add the All-In-One SEO plugin, the concept is the same.  You need to fill in the proper fields.  Those fields include the title and the Meta description.  Be sure each page and post is unique to avoid duplicate content issues.

There are a number of other features to maximize on when using WordPress SEO tools.  Here are some other things you will want to be sure and configure correctly.

• Set the permalinks to something that is user friendly, keeps the URLs short, and uses the keywords.  I generally check the custom box and include /%postname%/ in the field.
• Add in the Google XML Sitemap.
• Know ALL of the keywords you are targeting.
• Use the YARPP plugin that will help lead your readers to related posts.

Getting all of those things in place will take your “out of the box” WordPress SEO installation to the next level and actually increase you chances at getting found for keywords you are targeting.

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Traffic Generation vs SEO

Posted on 21. Jul, 2011 by Chris Darling.

Traffic generation and SEO are sort of dependent upon each other yet quite different.  Activities completed for the sole purpose to drive traffic to your website are best implemented when all content is optimized for the search engines.

SEO or search engine optimization activities are more highly specialized.  Effectively applying SEO requires first a deeper understanding of it.  

 SEO activities include (not limited to):

• Keyword research
• Competitive analysis
• Back link profile analysis
• Comprehensive SEO analysis
• Building citations (local businesses)
• Building links (all businesses)
• On-page SEO that resolves coding, navigation, information arhictecture, keyword targeting, URL strings and conventions, accessibility, etc.

Traffic generation activities include (not limited to):

• Content syndication in the form of articles, videos, podcasts, whitepapers, press releases, blogging, email marketing, JV partnerships, etc.
• Social media engagement, sharing, and participation.
• Email marketing from massive list building.

All items are best accomplished with a thorough understanding on how SEO works.  All of the content pumped out to the web should be optimized for search.  That way, it can not only get indexed and give you a good link back to your site but it can attract attention from interested parties and drive traffic to your site for more information.

When your website or the target for all that traffic is optimized, the two meet up like opposite pillars of an expansive bridge to deliver you high volumes of targeted traffic constantly.

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