Author: April Hall

Internet Copywriter

Happy Fourth of July!

It’s a time of fireworks, barbecues and patriotic songs as Americans celebrate our Independence. And we are an independent type of country, are we not? We are free from tyranny, free from despotic rule, free from dependency on foreign oil…. (Okay, so some things are really really hard to break free from!) One thing we are free from, however, is boring SEO content!

Everyone who works in SEO and internet copywriting knows that the ultimate goal of your site’s copy is to sell. But, does selling your products or services mean that you have to produce boring copy that’s chocked-full of industry jargon, accessible only to your professional contemporaries–or at least to readers who have Google on stand-by?

No way! Here’s a few simple suggestions for sprucing up your website content:

1. Use a bit of humor, when appropriate. Not every article or product description can be amusing, of course; but an unexpected line or two of humor is often appreciated by the reader who has spent the last two hours researching the newest colonoscopy procedures or funeral planning options (See how I just did that?!).
2. Never go long when going short will work just as well. Unlike college football quarterbacks, your goal as an SEO copywriter shouldn’t be to go as long as you can; sometimes it’s best to nickel and dime it. In other words, most internet readers want to get as much information as possible in a short amount of time. So try to pack shorter pieces of SEO copy with keyword rich, informative text.
3. Use current events to spur reader interest. Try using Google News or other cool tools to find current news stories in your area or industry. Not only are these timely stories more interesting, but they are also more likely to attract internet searchers.
4. Integrate attractive, relevant pictures into your text. Not only are pictures a great way to break up your writing into more manageable chunks, but they also help to give your content some real-world visuals.

As you spend your Fourth of July shooting off fireworks and grilling hot dogs, take the time to be thankful that good SEO writers have declared our own independence. Call it the Declaration of Independence from Boring SEO Writing… Call it Freedom from the Tyranny of Keyword Overusage… Whatever you choose to call it, I call it a whole lot more fun!

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Author: April Hall

Internet Copywriter

Time: No one every has enough of it and nobody has quite figured out a way to create more. In business, we are always looking for ways to make the best use of our time, making the biggest impact we can in the relatively short amount of we have of it.

For copywriters, there are two basic elements that will make our content successful: substance and time. Often, we in the SEO development business will spend an inordinate amount of our professional development learning ways to improve the substance of our writing–and don’t get me wrong, this is a very good thing! We absolutely must learn how to incorporate better keywords into our work, create pages that are useful to our readers and figure out how to give our readers the most information in the most concise manner possible. However, focusing on substance cannot be the totality of what we do as copywriters and SEO professionals. We have to also consider how time affects our website content.

In today’s information technology age, everyone already knows that time moves at an incredibly rapid pace. Computers are updated almost monthly and software seems to develop in tandem with the moon cycles…. There are also a few more aspects of time that content developers need to keep in mind as we create content for our clients:

• Need for breaking and unique news–Everyone wants to be the first to know the latest news and SEO development strategies. Sites such as the ever-current SEO Moz are great places to begin your search for new information about the web development industry. Of course, hitting up the Google information blogs is also essential if you want to stay on the cutting edge of industry news.
• Need to post content early in the day-Those of us who prefer to start our day around lunchtime, when our veins are filled with strong black coffee, may want to find another profession. The world of SEO content begins very early–and is usually geared towards the Eastern Time Zone; so if you prefer to begin working a bit later in the day, you will need to learn how to post in the wee hours of the morning in order to reach internet users who turn on their computers shortly after the rooster crows in Maine.
• Need for fresh content–This aspect of time is already well-known to content development professionals. You need to update the content of your websites regularly in order to remain at the top of the search engine results page. Check the content of your sites–if you haven’t posted anything in a few months, that’s simply too long.
• Need to use current events–Part of creating timely content comes from keeping up with the major current events in your area or sites’ particular industry. Check out one of the latest user tools from Google to discover a new way to stay up-to-date with world and local events.
• Need for content that will stand the test of time–This suggestion may seem counter-intuitive when placed up against my previous suggestion to keep your content fresh, but it’s actually not at all. You want to be known as a content developer who is very knowledgeable about your industry, which means that your advice and suggestions will be useful no matter how the technology changes. Of course, some of what you suggest may be tied to current industry applications, but truly useful content will never lose its power.

Do any of the rest of you have suggestions on how to make time work for the SEO industry rather than against it?

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Author: Thomson Chemmanoor
SEO Coordinator

The goal of every SEO is to build a site that ranks well with search engines. But building a website that ranks well with Google and other search engines has a great deal to do with how search bots see your website. With any type of SEO marketing, there are several factors that can negatively impact your ranking.

These following components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or Google rankings:

1. Server is inaccessible for search engine bots.
2. Duplicate of existing content within the site.
3. Outgoing links to low quality/spammy sites.
4. Duplicate Title/Meta tags on all pages.
5. Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming).
6. Broken or missing internal links
7. Wrong syntax in robots.txt file
8. Wrong 301 redirects
9. Characters in your web page URL
10. Sites entirely built in frames and Flash

These are only some of the major factors that impact search rankings negatively. As you can imagine, there’s a host of other issues, such as no-follow links, which also make websites less crawlable.

At this point you’re probably wondering “Well, what can I do to enhance my site’s crawlability?” For starters, you can manage your site in Google Webmaster Tools to identify some other crawling problems your website may have. Also, ensure that your content is readable. Avoid excessive use of Flash animations and javascript. Supplement visuals with sufficient textual content. If you decide to outsource your optimization needs, make sure you’re not dealing with a bad SEO company.

Finally, continue to immerse yourself in website content usability tips and other natural search engine optimization resources. The goal is to build a site that is easily accessible to users as well as search bots. And as the saying goes, build it and they will come.

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Author: April Hall

Internet Copywriter

What is the ultimate purpose of the internet? (Wow-I know that’s a loaded question that could take forever to answer!) For some, the internet is a source of information. For others, it’s a place to interact with friends, play games and enjoy the range of available entertainment. For many of us who work with SEO, however, we have one true purpose for ourselves and our clients: to make money. We want to sell as many of our products and services as we can, and this is done by attracting customers–not just visitors–to our sites.

But, how can we attract those ready-to-buy customers to our site, when there are so many other sites floating around out there? How can we make our businesses stand out and make it to the top of the search engine results page when there are such giants as About.com and Yahoo to content with? The answer is to make use of long tail keywords.

I first head the term “long tail keyword” a few months ago; and although I got the gist of what that term meant, I was still confused about exactly how to write content using them. Did it mean that I had to put the entire string of terms together, without any words in between? Did I have to use the long tail keyword in its entirety every time? Some quick conversations with SEO pros, along with some sample searches, led me to these conclusions:

• Long tail keywords are one of the most effective ways to draw unique visitors to your site
• You may break up these strings of words with minor prepositions without causing any major differences to your page’s searchability
• It is best to use long tail keywords in conjunction with shorter keywords on the same page
  

Long tail keywords are 3 to 4 word keyword phrases that are very specific to what you are selling. For example, rather than a t-shirt company writing content that targets “t-shirts”, they may choose to target the long tail keyword phrase “funny political t-shirts”. It seems like targeting such a specific keyword would reduce your number of site visitors and reduce your page views, doesn’t it? Well, this may be true, but there are three very good reasons to use long tail keywords anyway:

1. It makes writing SEO Content much easier. Any content writer is more easily able to write a page of content on “used hybrid cars gas mileage” than they are “used cars”. A more focused keyword content makes for sharper, more focused writing.
2. It makes it easier to target customers who are actually ready to buy. An internet searcher who is looking for “home security systems company houston” is much more likely to be to the point of actually buying a product than a searcher who simply types in “house alarms”. You may be reaching a smaller pool of searchers, but you are reaching those customers who are ready to close the sale.
3. It makes it more likely to reach the front page of search engine results. Using long tail keywords means that you will have fewer competitors trying to reach the front page of the search results, because fewer pages have targeted that string of keywords. Big-name sites usually dominate the search result pages of simple, broad searches; but smaller sites that have created properly targeted content stand a good chance of reaching their ideal customers.

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Author: Philip O’Hara

CEO, Directory One

I always wonder how many of my customers are successfully responding to sales leads.

Good SEO and internet marketing campaigns may successfully send potential clients their way, but because of the way their offices handle the calls, the lead is dropped. Do they even answer the call at all? Is their receptionist starting with the information gathering process, and is this information then relayed to someone who can close that lead as soon as possible? It may be hard to believe, but a few simple steps at the beginning of the sales process can be the fastest way to increase your sales.

If you answer the phone every time it rings, you can identify and handle the problem accounts more quickly; you also stand a better chance of earning new customers more quickly, as well. When a potential customer calls an SEO company, they want easy access to technical support. They really don’t want to leave a number and wait for a callback. Turning on the answering service should be the absolute last resort for a successful company that uses SEO.

How can you improve your telephone customer service?

1. Hire a competent, courteous receptionist. No matter how large or small your company, it is imperative to make the investment in a quality receptionist. Make sure this staff member is knowledgeable about how to take down lead information, and is also clear about how to refer leads to the appropriate sales professional.
2. Establish a clear process for following up on leads. Whether you use professional salesforce software or prefer to see a clear paper trail, make sure everyone who has contact with customers knows the process for dealing with leads. This means that companies need to understand the importance of quality employee training and continuing professional education.
3. Provide exemplary customer service from day one. You want leads to turn into sales, and sales into longstanding customer relationships, which means your customers need to know your company values them–from the initial phone call and throughout the life of the SEO customer account. Providing a clear path for customer and and technical support, and encourage your clients to contact you with any questions or suggestions they have.

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Author : Thomson Chemmanoor
SEO Coordinator

As an SEO specialist, I interact with several people in our field from time to time. Some of them seem to have mastered effective SEO practice, but most show no interest in understanding safe optimization techniques that will stand the test of time. I’m completely baffled that such mediocrity can exist and it makes me angry that the average person may not be able to uncover it. Well, not anymore.

If you’re paying an SEO firm for quality service, you deserve nothing less. Here are 10 signs that you may be dealing with a bad SEO company.

1) Doing SEO after the site is designed - Most website owners think the site needs the web design finished first and then you do the SEO later on. But, actually it should be the opposite. Before building the website, SEO should be done first.

2) Does your site have a custom “404 error” page? A “404″ is an error message you get when you follow a link to a web page that doesn’t exist. This is especially important from the search engines point of view.

3) Does your site have a robots.txt file? A robots.txt file provides restrictions to crawlers or search engine bots that crawl the website. Since these bots are automated, and before they check the pages of a website, they check to see if a robots.txt file exists that prevents them from accessing certain pages which you restrict from indexing.

4) Duplicate content - If your site has duplicate content within the site like duplicate Meta tags in the title and description, then whoever did your SEO - wasn’t optimizing properly.

5) XML Sitemap installation - Sitemap protocol is a way to allow and inform search engines that your website URLs is ready for crawling. This XML site map file includes a list of URLs of your site. It is also a way to include information about your website pages when it was updated and any changes that have been made.

6) Using Paid Links - Links should be natural and should stand the test of time. Paid links are temporary and once you stop paying for it, the links are gone. A good link is one which is gained naturally when a website editor puts the link on the site. So if the company that is doing SEO buys links to gain immediate search ranking, they are not doing a good job.

7) Doing Reciprocal Link Exchange programs - If you find your website has a link exchange program with a page full of links pointing to other websites, then the person doing your SEO did not do proper link-building.

8 ) Sneaky Redirects or Doorway Pages - This is a black hat technique where the idea is to create a single page for the user and a different version of the page to the user. If your SEO partner is using this technique on your site it is going to get your site banned on search engines since they dislike these techniques.

9) Text Link - Each page of your site should be reachable through a text link. If it is not done, the person who did SEO on your site doesn’t have any idea of what he is doing. This helps search engine bots to crawl through those text links easily and index those pages. Change the link buttons or JS into text links.

10) Over Optimization - If your site is over optimized like repeating the keywords more than two to three times inside the Meta tags H1 Tags, and having a high keyword density instead of a moderate density and not using the long tail keywords inside the content. Also Spamming the ALT tags for images with keyword stuffing is considered a bad SEO technique.

The bottom-line is that if your site has the above signs, it is not going to help your ranking very well and chances are that it won’t even come up on search engine results.

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