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How Backlinking Will Help Your Business

May 24, 2011 By

What Is Backlinking And How It Can Help Your Business

Using SEO techniques to improve your page rank is the top way to get your business noticed. Backlinking is a very important part of search engine optimization – and, while it is time consuming work, backlinking tells Google how popular your business site is.

The more popular Google believes your site to be, the higher page rank you will have. I can hear you now – “Huh?  Run that by me again?”

Let’s break some things down into parts, so you’ll have a better understanding of what your SEO professional is talking about when he or she talks to you about improving your presence on the internet. Backlinks, also known as incoming links or inbound links, are links that come into your site. These are built into other sites, pages, articles, or blogs.

While you might occasionally get a backlink from a satisfied customer who is talking about what a great experience they had with your business…in THEIR blog, that is just not going to happen enough to make a difference to Google.

Remember, the internet is growing exponentially every day.

How do you get backlinks, if not by accident?

Your SEO professional builds them for you by using hyperlinks and  high quality, relevant anchor text on pages that link to your website.

Article Marketing is one way to build credible backlinks.

While you might be tempted to write all your articles yourself, and post them as they are on sites like……ezinearticles, ehow, or about.com, it is wisest to leave the article marketing to the pros.

Effective article marketing requires specific keywords as well as a specific percent of keyword density (2%-3%). While the articles about your business or product need to be useful and informative, they also need to be engineered properly.

Page Rank is Google’s way of telling consumers which sites are best. You want your business to rank well in several different searches related to the product or service you are offering.

Say you sell pre-owned cars in San Diego.

You want to rank well in searches like “pre owned cars san diego”, “used cars san diego”, “san diego used cars”, san diego pre owned autos” and so on. While these terms may seem ridiculously redundant to you, covering all the bases can help get your site a higher page rank.

SEO marketing professionals have the fine art of page rank down to a science – just one more reason you need to work with a professional if you’re not doing so already. Once effective backlinking has been put into place, your business will enjoy a higher Google page rank, and receive more internet traffic.

In turn, more potential customers will know you’re out there, and they will use your business simply because it was easy to find on the internet.

SEO Services Fort Wayne Indiana

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Top SEO Myths Debunked

March 8, 2011 By

SEO Myths Debunked

The internet may be called the “Information Superhighway” but that doesn’t always mean the information is correct!

This is especially true when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. Sometimes, the information may have been valid in the past but is no longer valid and sometimes… it was never valid to begin with.

Here are ten SEO myths and their corresponding “truths” :

1. It’s impossible to outrank a web page with a Google PageRank higher than your own.

While Google’s PageRank indicator may play a minor role in determining search engine placement, it’s not a critical factor.

If you conduct a few searches on Google you will find this to be true. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to find a page, with a lower Google PR, outranking a page with a higher one.

2. Having an XML Sitemap will boost your rankings in the SERPs.

It is wise to create an XML Sitemap but don’t expect to see any rank improvements. The sitemap is useful to the search engines and will help them crawl your site more efficiently but it won’t help you “leap frog” your competitors.

3. Including “meta keywords” will improve your SEO.

Most search engines disregard the “meta keyword” information altogether. While it can’t hurt to include a handful of relevant terms, it’s not time well spent.

4. It’s imperative to update your homepage frequently.

If changing your homepage content is good for your visitors and business model, then have at it. Otherwise, just leave it as is.

That’s not to say that your entire site should be stagnant but that there’s no evidence to conclude the necessity to update your homepage’s content on a regular basis.

5. Trading links with other webmasters is just as good as building quality “one way” links.

Trading links (aka Reciprocal linking) was something that worked a long time ago but it is no longer effective for improving one’s SEO rankings.

The only time that the trading of links makes any sense, is when both webmasters may benefit from the traffic that may come from the partner’s site.

6. SEO is a “set and forget” activity.

Most webmasters (and business owners) wished this were true but it’s simply not the case. Effective Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing activity and if you’re not going forward, you’ll find your rankings slip over time.

This is especially true as it pertains to link building. The search engines monitor your inbound links and if they find they find they are dwindling over time, they assume your page is losing its relevance.

7. Using Heading Tags is crucial to your SEO.

The use of Heading Tags (i.e. H1, H2, etc.) is useful to define your site’s content but don’t expect them to make marked improvements in your rankings.

8. Hiding a bunch of links on your pages is a good idea.

Google, and the other search engines, are incredibly smart and can spot the occurrence of “spammy links” quite easily.

Whether you’re using a teeny-tiny font size to display them, coloring them the same as your page background or using CSS to move them so far off the page they can’t be seen by visitors… the search engines know!

This practice is foolish and trust me on this — no good will come from it!

9. There is an optimum keyword density for your on-page content.

This may have been true in the past but it’s no longer relevant. It’s wise to ensure that your targeted keyword phrases appear somewhere on your page but don’t bother calculating the density percentages.

It’s much better to write content that will be found valuable by the humans reading your content than to concentrate writing for the robots.

10. Paying a firm to “register” your site with “hundreds of search engines” is a wise investment.

This type of offer may sound appealing, but it will do little, if anything, to improve your search engine rankings or generate meaningful website traffic.

As knowledge is power, this information will help you waste less time and money on outdated SEO tactics or those that never worked in the first place.

We can help with your professional SEO services needs. Call 1-866-910-4471 or 260-220-4830.

 

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How To Find Your Best Keywords Terms For Local Search

February 15, 2011 By

How To Find Your Best Keywords Terms For Local Search

Keywords are the key (no pun intended) to just about everything you will ever do to getting your business noticed on the web. Keywords affect your rankings on search engines, the effectiveness of your ad campaigns, the ease with which potential clients can locate your business etc. Therefore getting the best keywords for your local business is absolutely critical and is the number one step to implement before you do anything.

So how do you get the best keywords for your business?

This isn’t difficult to do.

It’s just a mixture of common sense and getting free help from keyword tools.

Common Sense – Best Keyword Selection

  • Take a piece paper and divide it into 2 columns. Name one column “WHERE” and the other column “WHAT”.
  • In the “where” column, list all the possible words related to the physical location of your business, what locations your business services its clients and where your clients come from. For example, list your street address, your town, your county and your state. You don’t really need to list your country because remember we are focusing on local search terms. If you have multiple business locations, list the branch names too.
  • In the “what” column, list all possible words related to the type of business products and services you sell and offer, including unique aspects of your business niche. For example, if you operate a sushi restaurant that offers karaoke and has an area where sports fans can watch live games, you would list words like sushi restaurant, Japanese restaurant, sports bar, karaoke etc.

Getting Help – Using Keyword Selection Tools

Now that you have two keyword lists that describe the where and what of your business, its time to get help from keyword tools that will tell you which keywords are more popular or more likely to be searched for. You want to know the best keywords to use.

For example, you would want to know which of two keywords is more important- sushi restaurant or Japanese restaurant. You can find this out by going to Google Adwords.

  • You simply type in the entire list of “where” keywords into the search box.
  • Tick the box called “ideas containing my search terms”
  • Click advanced options and choose your country. Click search. Your results will appear.
  • Now on the left hand side of the screen click the phrase box so that your results reflect only the specific phrases you keyed in. Your final results will appear.
  • If you click on the column titles “local monthly searches,” it will sort out the results from the highest volume to the lowest. Of course the phrases with the highest search volume are the most important keywords for your business.
  • Simply repeat this exercise with your “what” words.

In our example Japanese restaurant yields more results than the term sushi restaurant (165000 vs. 40500) so it is a better keyword to use. Scrolling down the list we pick up very important information about the phrase “Japanese restaurant in” which has 27100 searches. This shows us that we can append our best “where” keywords to this term too.

Combining the two lists will give you long-tail keywords such as “Japanese restaurant in Boston.”

This 2 step process will complete your keyword research, yielding two lists of powerful and popular keywords for your local business to use in all your web content. Even better is the fact that you can combine these two lists to create a longtail keyword list for even more specific and targeted search results.

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