Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

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Are Social Check-In Sites Like Foursquare Relevant to SEO?

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

There has been a lot of talk lately about how social check-in sites like Loopt, Gowalla, and the currently popular Foursquare can be used by businesses as a marketing tool, but do they bear any relevance for SEO? It appears that such moment-to-moment location sharing sites do have an effect on SERPs, and here’s why:

Google Appears to Love Foursquare

Foursquare User Pages Return 477,000 Results on GoogleOn Foursquare, each user has a profile page which is updated whenever he or she “checks in” at a location via a GPS enabled device. The location also has its own page, which is updated at every check-in. Many of these pages are indexed. A quick search for foursquare user profile pages on Google results in about 477,000 results. Venues clock in at just over 227,000. Here’s a quick overview of Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s indexing of three top check-in sites.

Google Bing Yahoo
Foursquare User Pages 477,000 134,000 127,000
Foursquare Venues 228,000 54,000 117,000
Loopt User Pages
Loopt Places 19,000 16,000 69,000
Gowalla User Pages 440 1,900 2,900
Gowalla Spots 6,000 10,000 29,000

I couldn’t find Loopt user pages at all, and Gowalla is preventing its users pages from being indexed via robots.txt. Clearly, Foursquare is the winner on pages indexed across the board, and those numbers are nothing to sneeze at. These numbers are probably also related to the high popularity of Foursquare when compared to the other sites. Of the three sites, note that only Loopt has keyword-rich URLs for its places, while both Foursquare and Gowalla have keyword-rich user page URLs.

Foursquare and Loopt Links Are All Followed

For that matter, so are Gowalla’s, but the low index rate suggests that doesn’t matter much. Visiting the venue and user pages reveals every single link is followed, including links to venues’ Web sites and users’ Facebook and Twitter profiles. The anchor text leaves something to be desired (with such rich phrases as “Twitter Feed” and “Link”), but something is better than nothing.

Foursquare Venue Page Seen with NoDoFollow

Address Listings on These Social Check-Ins May Help Boost Localized SEO

A business address appearing across check-in sites will improve location credibility, ultimately strengthening localized SEO. In addition, all three of these services access Google Maps. The points are added manually on a per-page basis rather than being submitted to Google; however, it is still possible that when the Googlebot crawls the page, it will see and associate the points with the location.

Loopt Places Address Listing

Foursquare and its peers clearly have potential to help businesses generate buzz around visiting their establishment, but it appears they have SEO implications as well. When building your SEO campaign, don’t forget to check in to Foursquare.

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The Relationship Between Code Validation and SEO

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Creating W3C valid websites should be the goal of every Web technician. Valid websites are consistent across browsers, forward compatible, and cleanly presented to both spiders and accessibility programs such as text-to-speech readers (the latter being a legal requirement in the UK). Valid sites are also less likely to break in mobile devices due to quirks of the particular mobile browser. The question many people are asking, however, is whether valid code matters to search engine rankings.

USASEOPros W3C Validation

Currently, Google does not seem to factor W3C valid code directly into its ranking algorithm; even Google’s pages themselves are not 100 percent valid. However, some speculate that this may change in the future as Google continually looks for more ways to determine a site’s credibility. When it comes to changes in the algorithm, it never hurts to be prepared.

Although validation itself does not appear to be an algorithmic factor, it can still affect a page’s rankings in indirect ways. Perhaps the most critical of these is that, while the majority of validation errors are not deadly, some can cause a site to be misunderstood or even skipped entirely by search engine robots. These dangerous errors can include incorrect doctype declaration, unescaped entities, and improperly closed HTML tags.

If a site is not skipped over completely, invalid code still has less of a chance to be understood in its proper context. Semantic design is becoming more important as search engine algorithms grow in intelligence. Take as one example Google Squared, Google’s newest attempt at intelligently displaying search result information. Rather than simply displaying pages matching keywords in a long list, the engine crawls pages to pull information suitable for display in a tabular format. Even for traditional search engines, however, more easily understood content has a greater likelihood of appearing in organic results.

W3C validation also encourages the proper use of tags like image alt attributes. Running a validation check on a site will quickly reveal omissions of these tags. Since using them properly can be important to SEO, this is one case when being W3C compliant could have a direct positive effect on rankings.

There are many arguments for creating W3C valid websites that have nothing to do with SEO, but there are also plenty of strictly SEO reasons to comply with current Web standards. While W3C invalid sites will not be immediately booted from major search engines, avoiding errors in coding can prevent errors in crawling, allow more intelligent indexing, and cause more of a site’s actual content to be indexed. When giving such care to every other detail of a site, it only makes sense for the SEO to pay attention to validation standards as well.

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USASEOPros Surpasses 6 Million Search Placements

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

After roughly half a decade in business, USASEOPros has reached a milestone by providing clients with over 6 million high ranking placements in search engines.

“This is a great achievement for our company,” said Steve Howe, Operations Manager for USASEOPros. “We work very hard to give our clients the best possible results, and this shows we’re doing it right.”

The Las Vegas-based online marketing and advertising company has been very satisfied with the results they’ve been getting, and they believe the continued success is partially due to their ability to adapt.

“The search engines are constantly changing how they decide to rank Web sites, and we make sure to change our strategies accordingly,” said Howe. “We’ve made major updates to our in-house content management system (CMS), and we make sure to keep an eye on what Google, Bing and others are doing.”

Instead of relying on a third-party CMS to create new Web sites, USASEOPros has a development team on staff that can make changes on the spot and update the system as needed. This allows the company to meet the needs of their clients in a much more efficient manner, said Howe.

“Over the last few months we’ve been able to speed up client sites by 95 percent, which is important since Google is beginning to put more weight on site speed,” said Howe. “Without a development team on staff there’s no way we’d be able to improve things as quickly as we do.”

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USA SEO Pros is a search engine optimization company and has been in business for over 5 years. With thousands of satisfied clients and a team of highly skilled professionals, USA SEO Pros has continued to grow and expand its business. Based in Las Vegas, Nev., the company has built itself into a leader in the online advertising and marketing field. USASEOPros.com currently holds over 6 million placements for its clients and uses its knowledge and expertise to continue to increase that number.

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Google Expands Personalized Search, SEOs Have Complaints

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Members of the SEO community are beginning to complain about Google’s recent announcement that they’re expanding personalized search so it works whether or not the user is logged in. This change to personalized search means SEO as we know it is completely destroyed. Google has managed to single-handedly ruin our industry with this one simple change. All of the research and strategies that have been effective for years will no longer work, and everyone who calls themselves an SEO should start looking for work in another industry, right?

For some reason, a lot of SEOs are drama queens who freak out every time Google decides to alter their search engine. This change to personalized search is definitely something to look into, but it’s not going to be the game changer many are making it out to be.

Personalzed Google Search

While some of the rankings in searches will be altered from user to user, the majority of results are still going to show up in relatively the same place. All you need to do is use the personalized search Google has for those who are logged in to see how results will be affected when the change takes place. After using personalized search for a while, it’s easy to see how Google alters results, and it isn’t all that much, especially when it’s a search the user hasn’t performed before.

This change to Google is more annoying to SEOs than detrimental. It’s going to be more of a hassle now to check baseline rankings for keywords, but it isn’t that big of deal. It’s also going to be annoying when dealing with the customers who don’t realize personalized search is turned on in their browser. Now that personalized search will be turned on in all browsers by default, SEOs can expect more clients to call in complaining about ranks, because the rankings on their computers have been messed up by them researching the competition.

From an SEO standpoint, no one should be too concerned with the changes that are coming out of Google right now. If you’re building strong sites, they’ll continue to show up in the SERPs. While SEOs are drama queens, they also have a great ability to adapt to whatever search engines throw at them. SEO isn’t going anywhere.

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An Internet Marketing Mistake Companies Can Learn From

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Major brands are beginning to jump on the social networking bandwagon, but it seems like some of them may have missed a couple of steps during the leap. While most brands can benefit from social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, there are other elements of online marketing that companies should be taking advantage of as well.

Let’s use Pizza Hut as an example. The company recently hired a full-time tweeter to manage the social media aspects of the brand. Focusing some energy on social media is fine, but after scratching the surface of Pizza Hut’s Internet marketing campaign, it’s easy to see that they should be spending some more energy on SEO.

Pizza Hut Pie

As sales continue to drop at Pizza Hut restaurants around the U.S., the company is using social media and value menu promotions to try and get sales back up. These strategies may increase sales a bit, but the company is missing a golden opportunity to increase sales through their Web site. The Pizza Hut Web site allows customers to sign up and order food to be delivered without calling the restaurant directly. If they focused more on SEO, they’d be able to drive more potential customers to their site and get them to order.

Pizza Hut has a respectable ranking for “pizza” on Google as the second result, but they are below Domino’s. It’s when you look into some other pizza keywords that you see Pizza Hut begin to seriously struggle. One of the highest search volume keywords for pizza is “pizza coupons”, which Pizza Hut isn’t on the first page for (although Domino’s is). If Pizza Hut is promoting a value menu, it’d make sense for them to focus on “pizza coupons” as a keyword to get traffic to their site from customers who are looking for good deals on pizza.

Pizza Keyword Search Volume

Another high-volume keyword Googlers type in is “pizza restaurants.” Common sense suggests that at least some people who type in this term are looking for a pizza place to order from. Unfortunately, Pizza Hut is nowhere to be found on the first page. Papa John’s the first result and Domino’s is in the sponsored links, but Pizza Hut doesn’t show up.

The situation is the same for the term “pizza pasta”, which is searched over 100,000 times a month in the U.S., but doesn’t include Pizza Hut on the front page of Google. This keyword seems like it would be particularly important, because Pizza Hut has been promoting their pasta dishes for some time now. It seems like, if you’re promoting pizza and pasta and “pizza pasta” is a term with a high search volume, it’d be important to rank for it (Domino’s seems to think so, they can at least be found in the sponsored links).

Each of the keywords above seems like it would be be a great opportunity to increase sales for Pizza Hut in the U.S., which is exactly what the company is struggling to do lately. Getting your brand out there with social media is great, but don’t forget about the other ways to gain brand exposure and increase sales with the Internet.

SEO is a powerful tool, and if Pizza Hut wants to increase sales they’ll need to learn that soon. It looks like some of their competitors have already figured that out.

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How to Find Affordable SEO Packages

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Affordable SEO

Search engine optimization can be a very effective way to market a business online, but it can also be expensive. With all of the different companies out there, how do you find affordable SEO packages that will work on the budget your company has? It might not be as difficult as you think, but there are some things to take into consideration to make sure you aren’t wasting money.

Don't Waste Money

Once you realize SEO is needed for your business, the first thing to find out is what kind of price range you can afford, and what is reasonable to expect. SEO companies can vary greatly in how much they’ll charge you, and it’s important to know what you’re spending before you decide to go with a company. Don’t assume you know what a company is going to charge you, make sure they let you know up front.

Another important area to look into is what they can offer your company. Are they going to promote your site through social media? Will they perform on-page optimization? link-building? There are many ways to optimize and promote and website, and it’s good to know how they plan to promote your company. Some companies give SEO a bad name by taking a client’s money and running without doing any work. SEOs that have examples or a demo to show you are more likely to do useful things that can benefit your company.

Website ROI

We offer a variety of different packages to our clients, and can meet the budget of almost any small business trying to find a way to be more successful online. We perform a variety of different tasks to make sure out clients get the results they’re looking for. If you’re interested in purchasing an SEO package, make sure to check us out.

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Social Media SEO: Using Engagement to Top the SERPs

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Social media is all the rage these days, with the debate on-going whether even CEOs should or should not use social media sites.

One thing is certain though: a presence within social media is a must for companies.

Using this presence to improve your SEO and boost your SERPs is another matter. Merely being an active Digg and Twitter user will not give you a first page placement on Google – but it can help.

Links are the main currency on the Web, and if you really want to see results on Google, Yahoo and Bing, you’ll need to build links to your site.

So how do you do that using social media? You engage.

social-media-starfish
Credit: DBarefoot

Believe it or not, the real strength with social media is the ability of a company to create an easily approachable identity. *Gasp! This means listening to what’s being said about your company and your industry – and even participating in the conversation.

Share your knowledge and understanding of your industry with your online community – whether it’s Twitter, Sphinn or Facebook (or all 3!) Providing quality information will lead to more conversations about your company, and more links leading to your site/blog.

Try sharing content that isn’t yours. Link love can be a reciprocal thing online. I personally don’t believe in swapping links or link buying, but that’s another discussion. Linking to a great blog article on another site will at least get the author’s attention and probably a visit to your site. I think that genuine links are of most value…when the reader believes there is significance to what you’re saying.

links

Accessibility is often the topic of debate in our office. Understand who your audience is. We could write about advanced HTML programming theory and the role its structure can play in SEO, but that would likely turn away many readers.

Unless you’re writing for industry insiders, remember that jargon is not your friend. Readers like learning (that’s why they’re reading), but they don’t like feeling in over their heads.

Have you heard of Squidoo? It’s a publishing platform and will let you create “lenses” about a particular topic. You’ll be able to share your knowledge and expertise and…. Yup – link to your homepage.

There are plenty of (good) ways to use social media to improve your link building, and consequently improve your SEO. What’s important is that you are doing it. You may just be a small to medium-sized business owner, but you need a voice in the conversation that is already going on.

By: Zack S.

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Finding Education for SEO and Online Marketing

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

degree-and-tassle

The rising cost of higher education coupled with an incredibly competitive job market means knowledge and experience is more important than ever.

But in the internet world – the world of search engine algorithms, trending topics and the blogosphere – things change very, very quickly.

Trying to get an education in online marketing or search engine optimization (at least in the traditional, college or university sense) is nearly pointless. By the time you’ve finished your degree, everything will have changed.

studying-hard

Heck, by the time you finish up a semester, everything you thought you knew about meta-keywords and dynamic link generation can have changed.

The idea for this blog post came from a great article posted back in May 2008. Titled “Top 5 College Majors for Internet Marketers”, author Gyutae Park talks about the lack of university support for internet marketing degrees – largely due to the fast changing nature of the industry.

Park picks five college degrees someone could look into if they’re interested in online marketing, and he’s spot on.

- Computer Science/Programming
- Business/Marketing
- Engineering/Math
- Writing
- Design

That set of degrees is really a highlight of what is needed to do solid SEO and online marketing – but who’s going to get all 5 degrees? SEO needs as much an eye for aesthetics and design as it does for proper canonicalization.

pagerank

I think many SEOs have felt their way through the emerging industry without any sort of formal education (with the exception of Matt Cutts’ videos, and events like SES and SMX).

The landscape may be changing though, as more and more universities are creating courses that target online marketing.

marketing-strategy

For example, Harvard now offers a course called Internet Marketing Strategies (MGMT E-6620) that focuses on “role of internet marketing in the overall marketing strategy of the organization as well as the need for careful integration between strategies executed in cyberspace and in the physical world.”

Similarly, the University of Southern California offers a couple of courses (MKT 425 and MKT 556) which target online marketing specifically.

And in our own backyard, the University of Nevada Las Vegas offers JOUR 333 – Interactive Media Design, and JOUR 450 – Media Technologies and Society. The latter focuses on the evolution of and “impact of computer technology and prospects for the future of mass communication technology”.

So we’re starting to see higher education chasing down emerging technologies and industry, but I think it will always be a catch-up game.

My advice to someone interested in search engine optimization and/or online marketing would be to get a degree in computer science and a minor in marketing. Writing is a must-have skill, and that will need to be picked up along the way, but I would argue it’s easier to learn on the fly than complex Web site programming.

Not all colleges and universities are going to offer all programs, and USC might not have the equivalent of UNLV’s JOUR 450. But you can make up for it with regular visits to industry leading events like the Search Marketing Expo (coming up in October in New York City).

**Update: After writing this post I came across this great list of case studies of social media in the classroom. Although not exactly SEO or online marketing, it’s good to see SM infiltrating education!

By: Zack S.

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USASEOPros Reaches 5 Million Placements

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Las Vegas, NV, August 13, 2009 – Internet advertising firm USASEOPros reached a new high today as it climbed above the 5 million first page placements mark.

In an industry that is dominated by statistics and numbers, the Las Vegas-based online marketing and ad company surprised even itself with the recent growth.

“I didn’t think we would have hit 5 million quite so quickly after April when we reached 4 (million),” said Steve Howe, the operations manager for USA SEO Pros. “The search engines are continuing to make changes and keep us on our toes, and the release of Bing certainly shook things up, but I’m thrilled we’re still doing so well.”

The search engine optimization industry has grown increasingly competitive over the years as the importance of search engine placement for businesses has reached the mainstream business conscious.

Howe said he thinks that search engine optimization is now being considered as an integral part of a business marketing and advertising plan.

“More and more we’re seeing start-up SEO companies flashing onto the scene, as well as small business owners tackling SEO on their own,” Howe said. “If they’ve got the time for it, great. But having a professional team working on optimizing a website is much more efficient and effective than going it alone.”

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USA SEO Pros is an affordable SEO firm and has been in business for over 4 years. With thousands of satisfied clients and team of highly skilled professionals, USA SEO Pros has continued to grow and expand its business. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company has built itself into a leader in the online advertising and marketing field. USASEOPros.com currently holds over 5 million placements for its clients and uses its knowledge and expertise to continue to grow that number.

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Measuring Success and Popularity by the Number of Attacks

Monday, August 10th, 2009

angry-woman-733632

What is the only thing worse than people talking badly about your business/blog/employees/product/services?

Having no one talking about them!

This is the “you’re nobody until you’re somebody” concept, and frankly, no one discusses nobodies.

Like most businesses/blogs/etc, you probably have your share of both positive and negative feedback. And if you don’t have ANY feedback…then you aren’t being noticed!

The internet has always been a place for people to opine about whatever is on their mind. Sites like Twitter make it even easier for people to put in their two cents worth.

Whether anyone cares to listen is another story, but that doesn’t stop a good portion of the nearly 1.6 billion global internet users from writing articles, commenting on blogs and creating Photoshop images.

But the sad fact is that unless someone is attacking your name or bashing on your blog post, you simply don’t have enough exposure!

No one likes to read negative comments about your theories on SEO and brand management, or what Jon and Kate are up to lately. That being said though – I’d rather see SOMEONE commenting than nothing at all.

[Let me preface this next part by saying neither I, nor USASEOPros necessarily agrees or disagrees with any particular comment or opinion that we are sharing below. All of the examples are from individuals/sites that we respect and follow daily.]

Let’s look at some of the most influential people and successful Web sites on the internet…

…starting with TechCrunch.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a site that is so simultaneously loved and despised by its viewers.

arrington-techcrunch

Comments like the one above are common on just about every post. And it isn’t just founder Michael Arrington who is (at times) reviled. MG Siegler of TechCrunch recently had a relatively public spat with “Rock Cookie Bottom” who created a musical jingle for the Bing search engine.

At least there’s something that Rock Cookie Bottom can take away from this: he received a LOT of exposure from TechCrunch’s articles and opinions.

Then there is the SEO-force-to-be-reckoned-with Graywolf (Michael Gray).

Certainly no stranger to controversy, and never one to back down from an opinion, Graywolf is often either attacking, or being attacked on any given day.

His post about Sarah Lacy (again, from TechCrunch) and what Graywolf believes to be sponsored posts generated quite a bit of discussion from both sides of the fence.

graywolf-techcrunch

Graywolf has made quite a name for himself in the SEO industry simply because he is fearless in the face of attacks, and I have yet to see him back down – even from sometime-friend-sometime-enemy Lisa Barone.

Lisa is another example of someone who won’t back down from an attack, and uses her blog on Outspoken Media to share some very strong opinions about SEO and online marketing.

Some of it is controversial, and some of it is spot on, but it’s all designed to nurture conversation and force thought.

Then you’ve got Randfish (Rand Fishkin) of SEOmoz. He has posted some great articles about the industry, but he’s also been attacked. This article on SEORefugee highlighted some actions by Rand that seemed to the author to be irresponsible and unprofessional.

We’ll stay out of that argument, but it does go to show the importance of actually being SOMEONE. If Rand wasn’t Rand and wasn’t an integral part of the industry-respected SEOmoz, Skitzzo wouldn’t have had an article to write. No one cares what mommy-blogger #9017 has to say about Passion Parties – until #9017 actually is read by people!

A blog/business/Web site/etc requires a lot of work. Getting noticed, and KEEPING the attention of your readers and/or clients can be a challenge.

Controversy is a great way to snag readers and will almost guarantee a comment or two. Negative commenting or disagreeing isn’t always a bad thing. Hopefully you can stir up a conversation and keep some of the readers that visit because of the hot topic.

That’s how Lisa Barone grabbed me as a reader with her article on Links and Sex (GREAT title!)….and she’s kept me as a reader with thought provoking articles like the Power of the Unexpected.

Be someone that others are going to talk about. Be thought-provoking and discuss topics working talking about. Maybe even be a bit controversial. But more than anything…be yourself. I admire Michael and Lisa if for no other reason than they are who they are and they won’t conform just because someone else doesn’t like it!

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