Search Engine Optimization
Welcome MetroMom Online Success TeleSummit Visitors!
If you found your way here from the MetroMom Telesummit going on now, I would like to thank you for dropping by! If you are here because you found us, please stay around too! I mentioned a few things to you such as the video talking about the “Canonical Issues”, this is to your right.
I also talked about the post with the blog tips, and SEO tips, well here it is. Please take time on my blog to view the variety of tips you will get on search engine marketing.
As suggested in my handout and my interview with Kim, please sign up for my blog feed to keep up on the latest tips for Search Engine Marketing.
Additionally, if you want incredible social media tips, sign up for my Social Media Blog.
Don’t Forget Kim DeYoung has some powerful offerings you will want to choose from below.
In addition to this blog, I own several websites dealing with internet & social media marketing. I also belong to several social media sites, and networks and would love to become your friend and follower!
Quick Power Points For Writing Blog Post’s
Some of you out there are already experienced writers, and employ great SEO techniques within your articles, so these tips will just help emphasize the need to continue, or may be new thoughts. Oh, I also assume you are using Wordpress…..I “Heart” WP…
Obviously these are just guidelines, you can adjust to them as you wish, but I have found great success with my clients with these power points!
Do you have some additional tips? I and our readers would love to hear them, please leave a comment with your tips!
Content writing tips
- 300-400 word posts.
- Apply 2-3% keyword density level (For every 100 words, use key phrases 2 -3 times)
- Hyper-link keywords/phrases (Anchor text) and then link them to pages in main site (if you have one), or other blog posts, including deep level pages. Try to avoid if at all possible hyper-linking the phrase “Click Here” but rather use targeted words, and underline them in your post, people accept the underline as a linked word.
Hotel Reservations Down? Attack The Internet & Social Media!
In a down economy, virtually every business I know of is hurting.
One sector that is especially feeling the punch is the hotel, vacation arena. I know this because one of my clients is a hotel, The Islander Inn in Ocean Isle Beach, NC.
With hotel bookings down this year anywhere between 20%-80%, it is critical to attack the internet, and that is exactly what we are doing for them.
What works? What does not work? Well, let me show you a couple of things we have done that is working so far.
User Generated Content:
Clearly in the coming years, you will see consumer decisions influenced by what others have said, via reviews, or user generated comments. All the local search engines have some form of "review" element which has been proven to effect the ranking algorithm, both in local results, and general search results (For a “How to guide” on local search, here is a free whitepaper). Thus, it is important to encourage guests of your hotel to leave a comment. (Hopefully positive) Below is a screenshot of the results for the phrase "hotels ocean isle beach, nc" As you can see, they could pump up their reviews a bit. Perhaps down the road I will give tips on how to get people to review your site.
We Are In a Recession, So Build Your Brand On The Internet Now!
During the great depression in the 1930’s, you may think that businesses did not spend money on marketing, but you would be wrong. The truth is that according to research I did, many businesses actually boomed, why? Because they expanded their marketing!
History has shown that during past recessions, many businesses took an aggressive approach at marketing, and building their brand during a economic downturn, and they are the ones that flourished, and were very profitable during these times.
How about our current recession? What can you do to remain profitable? Build your brand on the Internet!
I have been doing this with a couple of my newest clients, and I will show you what I have been doing to help them remain atop the search engine rankings, leveraging them to have huge advantage on the Internet when the recession ends.
Take for example my client, Accurate Termite Control Company in Irvine, California. They have had a good presence on the Internet already in southern Cal, but there is much more room for improvement, and potential to take up more space in the search results (over time). So here is what we did.
SEO
First – We performed competitive, and keyword research and narrowed in on additional “home run” phrases and “long tail” phrases, and used these in their meta & content information. Phrases like “Irvine, Ca Pest control” “termite inspectors Irvine, Ca” and “termite control Irvine.” Obviously this will take time to see results, as we are still customizing their tags.
Blog
Next – We set up a blog for them which will not only help with cross linking, but Accurate Termite Control can become a “voice” in southern California for pest advice in Orange County, and Irvine California. This blog will also contribute to branding their name, especially when people begin going there to get candid advice on pest control, in addition it will help set them apart from their competitors. Oh, guess what, they will eventually take another spot on the search engine results page!
Press Release
Next – We created a press release announcing this new “Accurate Termite Control blog“. Again, a press release is vital for exposure, newsworthy events, as well as overtime takes yet another spot on the SERP’s if properly written, and archived. Again, branding!
Squidoo
Next - We created a profile on Squidoo. These are a tremendous help with branding, because you can essentially build a page advertising your company, services, and these pages are fantastic in the SERP’s. For example we made sure it had original content, and had all the ‘money’ phrases were included, “Termite and pest control, Irvine” etc. In addition, you can feed your blog there, create a poll, and yes…..you can eventually take another spot in the SERP’s!
FaceBook & Video
We are currently creating a FaceBook profile, and a viral video. I will post these soon too.
Web Site Reviews At Our Wilmington Meetup!
I am pretty excited about our second SEO/SEM Meetup group being held tonight, December 4th, in my hometown of Wilmington, NC. This Meetup will be focusing on reviewing 3 locally owned web sites listed below.
By combining several years of Internet marketing experience as well as web design experience, the review panel hopes to give these site owners some valuable advice to help get them traffic, and improve overall looks of their web site. Here are the 3 sites we will review;
1- www.coastal-mail.com
2- www.urbanbabygear.com
3- www.crossfitcoastal.com
Do you have any advice for these sites? I would love to hear from you..
Who will be on the review panel?
Richard Perry – Akira Media, Web designer in Wilmington,NC
Megan Criss – Wilmington SEO, Search Engine Optimization Company
Jayson Conway – Internet Marketing
Ty Downing – Perspective Internet Marketing, Wilmington, NC
Hopefully we will post some pictures of the evenings event!
Design Coding Rap – Big Mo Throws Down The Truth!
I have this video in my “fun” category, however I thought I would give this a little more lime-light, Big Mo, the poetic prophet, AKA “The SEO Rapper” raps about best practices for designing a website, with a SEO twist. He is totally dead on with his points too. Big Mo is off the Hizzy, Ma-nizzy…
Internet Marketing MeetUp Group In Wilmington Now!
I am pleased to finally say there is a Wilmington, NC Search Engine Optimization (SEO) MeetUp group now in the Port City!
My Favorite Wordpress Plugins
The other day I was asked what are my favorite plugins for Wordpress, especially for SEO. Well, although I posted this on another site, I thought I would also post it here. These are among my favorites for now, I am sure more will come out. Plugins are always evolving, just like the internet! Enjoy…
For SEO & Fun I recommend (And Use):
Cross Linker – Allows keywords to automatically hyperlink to other
sites (Anchor text to your other sites)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cross-linker/
SEO All in one pack – Allows easy editing of meta info, permalink
edits…..This is to me a critical plugin.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
Sociable Plugin – By far the best plugin for social network sharing,
email and print buttons.
http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/
Comment Relish – Send an e-mail message to users who comment on your
website who have never commented before. The message dispatched to the
user is defined within the plugin’s preferences.
http://www.justinshattuck.com/comment-relish/
Dagon Site Map – **Important..This is by far the easiest to install
site map.
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-word…
Feedburner Feedsmith – Access your original WordPress feeds and
redirects them to your FeedBurner feed
http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/topic.py?topic=13252
SEO friendly Images – Automatically updates all images with proper ALT
and TITLE attributes
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/seo-friendly-images
Real Estate Internet Marketing – Is It Wise Today?
Absolutely. With the nation struggling in real estate sales, please real estate people, please do not roll over and abandon marketing efforts. With online searching increasing 25-26% every year, now is the time to look to the internet more than ever before.
Well then, what opportunities are there to bulk up your web presence? Below I list several websites, and measurable products you really need to consider to keep a step ahead of your competitors. Take special note of the first one, blogs! I read an interesting article that talks about the wisdom of starting a real estate blog. In this article, it refers to a CNN article that gave stats that show leads and sales increased as a result of real estate blogs.
Ok, so lets get with the tips, and sites to advertise on. (Keep in mind this is a partial list, I will add to this as time goes by)
- Blogs
- Google, Yahoo, MSN pay per click campaigns
- Google Base
- Bargain
- oodle
- trulia
- edgeio
- Livedeal
- HomePages
- Homesandland
- Realty.com
Top 20 Ways To Optimize Your Videos For Search Engines
Here you go…….
- Optimize your website first, prepare your site for video, and make it easy for spiders to crawl pages your video/videos live.
- Make sure your target audience responds to web videos.
- Perform keyword research for the type of video you will produce
- When adding your keywords, make sure to include keywords such as “video” or “videos” in the mix.
- Get a game plan! Create a business model for your videos, and discern what type of viral content strategies you will employ.
- Will they be funny, corky, entertaining?
- Personal experiences, testimonials, opinions, emotional crying like Tim does?
- How-to, Educational, training, announcements, news?
- Promotions, contest, demonstration of products, benefits vs. features, freebies?
- Showcase your top selling product if you have an e-commerce website.
- Keep your videos between 30 seconds to 3 minutes max. Anymore and you will bore them.
- Find out or predict when there will be groundbreaking news, or other industry news, and produce a video about that in advance, or time the release.
- Optimize your video files – Do not use total flash videos, these are still hard for search engines to index. Use AVI, Windows Media, .mov, or MPEG-4 file compressions.
