Successful Houston SEO & website marketing firms like Directory One use search engine optimization as an effective strategy for promoting your business online. However, many of the technical terms and jargon used in Houston website marketing can be unfamiliar or confusing, making it difficult to grasp some of the key concepts of SEO. The folks at Directory One would like to help clarify the terms used in Houston SEO marketing. Here’s the second entry in our continuing glossary of common SEO terms and phrases:

B2B
Business to Business

BACKLINKS
Also known as “inbound links” – refers to links which point to a website.

BAD NEIGHBORHOOD
Excessive search engine spam by an individual or group of websites which can result in a search engine penalty

BANDWIDTH
The amount of data that can be transferred in a given amount of time.

BANNER AD
An advertising banner displayed on a site used to advertise another website or service.

BLACK HAT
SEO practices, like cloaking, that are forbidden under Google’s search engine rules. Black Hat practices can result in a search engine penalty.

BLOG
A blog is an online journal or diary posted by an individual or groups. Blogs usually feature opinions and news that is updated regularly. Most blogs allow visitors to post comments or ask questions.
BLOGGER
The person who writes a blog.

BOT
Abbreviation for robot. Also known as a spider, bots are the software programs that scan the web performing various tasks, such as indexing web pages for search .

BRANDING
The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers.

BROKEN LINK
A hyperlink which does not lead to the desired location.

Need more information? Houston Search Engine Optimization experts Directory One are here to can help you better understand the SEO terms and concepts that will allow you to successfully market your business or organization online. Many of these Houston Internet marketing tactics are as easy to implement as they are effective in increasing the traffic to your website. Contact Directory One today and let this leading Houston SEO Company show you how search engine optimization can help your business grow.

Houston SEO is critical to the success of promoting your business online, but many of the terms used in SEO can be unfamiliar or confusing to the uninformed. Houston Web Marketing Company Directory One would like to help you understand the terms and jargon used in SEO marketing. Here’s part one a glossary of common Houston SEO service terms and phrases:

Houston SEO Glossary All About the A’s

301 Redirect
301 redirects are often used by search engine marketers to redirect search engine spiders to a new webpage when an older one has been removed.

404
A server response code indicating that the requested page was “Not Found”

Above the Fold
Originally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper; in online marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling on a website.

Adjacency
Describes the relationship between words in a search engine or query.

AdSense
Google’s advertising network. Google AdSense is an excellent way for a website to earn money by displaying Google ads on their content pages.

AdWords
Adwords is Google’s CPC based text advertising – the paid ads that appear on their search engine result pages.

Affiliate
Click for sale – An individual or company that markets a merchant’s products or services and are paid only when an action occurs.

Affiliate Site
A site created for generating revenue from ads or links for companies or individuals the affiliate has a relationship with.

Age of Domain
Refers to the number of years a particular website has been on-line.

ALT Attribute
The ALT attribute is designed to provide information about an image or graphic in a text format that is easy to read for search engines.

ALT Tags
ALT tags are the text tags associated with a web page graphic, describing the image using good relevant keywords.

Analytics
Analytics refers to the detailed statistics about the visitors to a website, collected by viewing a servers log files or by placing code on your website.

Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the text that is used in a link. Anchor text is used by search engines as an important ranking factor.

Anchor Text Optimization
Anchor Text Optimization refers to the technique of placing keywords in the anchor text of your incoming links in order to rank better for those keywords.

Algorithm
As it relates to search engines, an algorithm is the set of rules that search engines use to rank the results of a search query.

Authority Site
A site that is deemed to be authoritative in a particular field or subject matter, or that is highly linked to and has a large amount of traffic. Links on Authority sites are desirable to link builders because of the value given to them by the search engines.

Next: “B” Glossary Terms.

Need more information? The Houston Search Engine Optimization professionals at Directory One are here to help you better understand the SEO terms and concepts that will help your business grow. Contact Directory One at (713) 465-0051 for more information about Houston SEO.

SEO website marketing strategies still include link building as an important element. The higher the number of relevant incoming links a site acquires, the better it ranks with the search engines. The higher a site ranks with the search engines, the more traffic a site receives.

Houston search engine optimization builds these links in many ways. One of the fastest and easiest ways to get others to link to your site is a method called link baiting. A site’s ranking is determined in a large part by how many links it can catch. To haul in a big catch you need some good bait. Link bait is content that is specifically designed to attract attention with the goal of encouraging others to link to your site.

There are many different types of content – news, humor, attacks on sacred cows – that can serve as bait. To achieve its objective, this content should educate, entertain or offend. Link bait is only successful when it stirs things up. Because of its viral nature, some link bait content can become a very powerful marketing tool.

Link baiting is only one many ways Houston SEO attracts incoming links to a site. To obtain the best results, a business needs to utilize all the link-building strategies in its Internet website marketing plan. Website marketing firms like Directory One offer link building services that increase a business’ rankings on the search engines, enabling them to reach more potential customers. For more information on how link building and other SEO website marketing techniques work, call Directory One at 713-465-0051.

Internet website marketing experts know that the right amount and type of keywords will enable your site to achieve the best rankings on the search engines. Keywords come in two types: primary keywords and secondary keywords. Primary keywords consist of the most popular words or phrases used for Internet searches. And while primary keywords are chosen to have the most impact when it comes to optimizing your web pages, the use of secondary keywords can be effective too, especially when it comes to ranking in local searches.

Secondary keywords are designed to support the primary keywords. For example, if “Automobile Repair” is your primary keyword phrase, secondary keywords might include “auto repair”, “automobile maintenance” or “automobile service and repair”. If your business mainly serves a local market – say Houston, Texas – then secondary keywords like “Automobile Repair in Houston” or “Houston Auto Repair” secondary keywords may be as important a factor as your primary keywords. Even though “Houston Automobile Repair” may not rank as high as “Automobile Repair”, this secondary keyword phrase will allow you to more accurately zero in on your target audience.

Secondary keywords allow for a more natural kind of content – content that doesn’t rely on repeating the same keyword phrases over and over again. They can both expand and narrow the reach of your content – allowing your site to attract visitors that know exactly what they’re looking for as well as browsers who aren’t sure exactly what they’re looking for.

Well-optimized content, whether it’s an article, blog entry or product description contains a healthy combination of primary keywords and secondary keywords.

To discover how using secondary keywords and other Houston web marketing strategies can direct visitors to your site and increase your online traffic, contact website marketing firm Directory One at directoryone.com or 713-465-0051. For the past fifteen years, the Houston SEO professionals at Directory One have been helping businesses big and small achieve their online marketing goals. Let these Houston search engine optimization professionals show you how secondary keywords can help your business rank number one with the search engines through Internet Website Marketing.

SEO website marketing must tend to the appropriate keyword density for your website. Keyword density refers to the percentage of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears in your content when compared to the total number of words in your content.

Keyword density isn’t about what keywords or keyword phrases you use, but when you use them and how often. If you use too few keywords then you won’t achieve your highest possible ranking on the search engines; use too many and you run the risk of being accused of keyword stuffing.

The optimum keyword density for primary keywords is 1 to 3 percent and 1 to 2 percent for secondary keywords. Website marketing firms use the formula (NKR / TKN) * 100 to determine the keyword density of content. NKR is the number of times your keyword is repeated within your specific content, divided by TKN, the total number of words in the content, multiplied by 100. The formula for determining the keyword phrase density is a slightly different: (NKR * NWP / TKN) * 100, with NWP representing number of words in your keyword phrase.

Proper levels of keyword density will allow your site to rank well with the search engines. For more information on keyword density and other SEO concepts that can help your business grow, contact Internet website marketing company Directory One at directoryone.com or 713-465-0051. The Houston search engine optimization experts at Directory One have been helping small, medium and large companies achieve their SEO website marketing goals for many years.

Houston SEO Google Analytics

Houston SEO Google Analytics Metrics

Houston SEO knows that since every site has different characteristics depending on the purpose it serves, it is hard to make across-the-board evaluations for every site on the web. However, Houston web marketing encourages you to tend to the following best practices in Google Analytics.

The metrics that you see in an Analytics report displays data collected from Google for all site visitors that have JavaScript enabled on their computers and do not block cookies. Thus, this data is inherently skewed to underreport site metrics. Furthermore, if someone has set up the Analytics to block an IP address, all visits from that IP address will be left out of the report as well. While the Analytics report is not accurate to the number value, it is very useful for determining visitor trending as well as overall site health and performance. The value of the data collected in an Analytics report comes through dividing the collected information to gain insight into the way visitors interact with and travel through your site.

There will always be slight fluctuation in the metrics. Keep an eye on the rate of change per month. Site performance should be steadily increasing. If site performance is not steadily increasing, there could be many reasons for this. Recent site or optimization changes affect performance. It can take around six months for optimization changes to start showing results through the site visits. Other reasons for fluctuation in per month performance can be attributed to anything from an extra weekend in the month (business sites receive much fewer visits on weekends or holidays), a change in payperclick phrases (higher converting phrases that may cost more), seasonal business changes, or a change in the way visitors are entering and moving through the site. If you are concerned about the fluctuation of your site visits per month, a better comparison to understand the state of your site would be to compare the visits for the same time period over different years. These reports will eliminate seasonal variation and reflect optimization changes.

Houston SEO Interprets Your Analytics Report

A few things to check for to determine site health include the bounce rate. The bounce rate describes visitors that enter your site and leave in less than a minute. These visitors were either not looking for the type of site that you have, or they entered the site and immediately left because they found what they were looking for right away – such as a phone number. The average bounce rate for sites is 70%. Anything lower than that is fantastic. This means that the search engines, payperclick, and referring sites are sending many people to your site who are actually looking for your services. You can find these metrics in the Traffic Sources section of Google Analytics. To get a lower bounce rate, you may consider tailoring your optimization to the keywords that are generating higher conversions.

Other reports that I like to look at to determine site health include the number of pages the average visitor to your site see, and how long they spend on the site. The top content and landing (entrance) pages should be index or product description pages. Don’t be scared of the report that says “exit pages.” Every one who enters the site must at some point leave it, and an exit doesn’t indicate that they have lost interest even if they have not converted. Ideally you will see the contact page as one of the top exit pages.

The keywords report contains the words people actually typed into their search engine boxes to enter your site through. This reflects the way visitors entered your site, and these words should be relevant to your content. Keep in mind that your site appeared on many other searches under many other keywords, and those are the keywords people clicked through. These keywords should be different from the ones that the site is optimized for, but only slightly. The keywords the site is optimized for are the ones that your Houston search engine optimization company is telling search engines to categorize your site under. The Google Analytics keywords come from search click-throughs.

Keep in mind that there are many different types of visitors. Ideally for the business, all visitors would be ordering boxes. However, in reality there are visitors who order your services, visitors who are just there to look or learn, and visitors who stumbled upon the page and leave immediately. The visitors to pay closest attention to are the ones who travel to the contact page, and the ones who did not bounce off of the page. You should set up advanced segments and custom reports in Google Analytics that track the landing, content, and exit pages of this relevant traffic. From these reports, you can make changes to the site and optimization to generate more conversions from visitors.

If you have any questions about Google Analytics reports, contact Houston Internet Marketing Company Directory One at (713)465-0051.

Houston SEO

Houston SEO What Is Link Building

Houston SEO experts know that an important part of optimization is link building. Link building used to only mean internal and inbound links. Internal links are links from one page on a site to another page on the same site. These links are usually in the form of text links, and the text they link through should contain the primary Houston Search Engine Optimization keywords for the site.

Inbound links are usually text links from blogs, deep links in directories, and inbound links from other sites. In the past, SEO strategies encouraged the accumulation of many links. However, a good Houston SEO Company knows that quality links matter more than quantity. Inbound links should be carefully selected from niche directories that drive relevant traffic to your site, as well as directories and sites that have a high Page Rank.

Remember that as of the Panda Update last February, link building has changed a great deal. Inbound links do not carry quite as much weight as they used to. Google did factor social media use into the algorithm. Social media ends up overlapping with link building, because social media creates inbound links to a site. These social media inbound links also relate to trustworthiness of the site, site activity, and popularity on the Internet. Cumulatively, link building and social media can make up about 24% of site traffic.

Local map listings are also very important, as are citations. Local map listings are the Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yelp listings that detail your business address and site. Many people use these directories to find local businesses, and the results will show immediately in Google Analytics. Customers review the business here on the local map listings through Citations.

Google recently changed the way citations from different domain names show up on Google organic searches. Citations used to appear cumulatively and greatly affect the order of map listings, however now you must click through to the reviewing domain to read full reviews. Google did this because of legal issues with the referred to sites. Citations are still very important. However, right now Citations posted directly to Google may be more relevant to SEO than ones posted to, say, Urbanspoon or Yelp.

Houston SEO How to Check Your Inbound Links

Houston search engine optimization checks inbound links at www.yahoo.com. In the search toolbar, type “link:www.yoursite.com” and hit Enter. A list pops up of all the links related to the domain name you entered. To see only the inbound links from link building, and to exclude inbound links from your own site, select Show Inlinks: “Except from this domain” at the right side of the navigation bar at the top of the page. The remaining links are all of the inbound links to your site.

While you’re on this site, it’s a good idea to check the links from your top competitors for organic search engine results. Finding and acquiring the same quality inbound links as your competitors is a great way to improve your organic search engine results and find relevant niche directories to your business.

You will probably find that many of the top competitors in Houston search engine optimization have bought links in the Yahoo Directory, Business.com Directory, or are listed in Dmoz – the best directory on the web. To keep up with these competitors, I would highly recommend that you also join those directories. They will help drive relevant traffic to your site. To learn more about link building and Houston web marketing, contact Directory One at (713) 465-0051 for Houston SEO services.

A good SEO website marketing company can provide many services that will bring more visitors to your site and improve your rankings in the search engines. Search engine optimization allows you to target a specific audience that’s searching for health services in your particular field of expertise.  This is particularly important if you’re a health care business like a single doctor practice or small clinic that depends upon local patients for the majority of its business.

Some of the ways Search Engine Optimization can direct future patients to your site include search engine analytics, link building, targeted SEO keywords and phrases, fresh, engaging SEO content (articles, blogs and videos)and overall website design.

Even in a city with a population as large as Houston, standing out from the rest of the health care provider crowd isn’t that difficult.  Houston internet marketing firm Directory One has helped many Houston health care providers increase patient traffic and revenue through successful SEO marketing techniques. Call 713-789-0074 for more information on how Houston SEO experts Directory One can help your health care business prosper.  You keep the patients healthy and let Directory One keeps your business healthy.

Houston SEO Social Bookmarking

Houston Search Engine Optimization How to Create Social Bookmarks

Houston SEO Services know that social bookmarking helps your site rank on SERPs. Social bookmarking is when you save bookmarks to a third party site. The best part about social bookmarking is that once you save the bookmarks to your profile, you can access them from any computer that is connected to the Internet. No longer will you be limited to a single browser or machine! You can also add tags to your bookmarks, and make them private to your profile or public for all users to see. Of course, public bookmarks are best suited to Houston web marketing. These public social bookmarks can be shared by and with other profiles on the social bookmarking site.

Houston SEO Social Bookmarking Services

Houston Internet Marketing uses several different services to create social bookmarks. Here are a few of the most popular services:
1. Digg
2. Del.icio.us
3. StumbleUpon
4. Reddit
5. Squidoo

My personal favorite social bookmarking service is Del.icio.us. Go to the Del.icio.us homepage. Here you can create a Del.icio.us account with your Yahoo! Account, or create one from scratch. Fill in the information and follow the directions to create the account. You can even import existing bookmarks from your browser, or multiple browsers, and finally get them all organized in one place!

Once you’ve logged in to your new social bookmarking account, follow the directions to add the “Bookmark on Delicious” link to your browser quick links. You can click this link from any page to quickly create a bookmark within your delicious account. Test it out by clicking the link now. A bookmark to this page should pop up. The “Title” is what will appear within your bookmarks to describe the site. “Tags” is where you should write words that relate to the site content. For example, for the Directory One Blog you could write “houston search engine optimization marketing seo sem blog.” All of these words are great tags to describe the content of this blog. After you create the tags you want to describe the page, hit “Save.”
A list of your tags will always be on the right side of your delicious bookmarks page. You can click these links to view all the sites you have bookmarked for each category.

Above the list of your tags is a list of four blue links. Click on “Save a new bookmark” to list a new URL. “Create public profile” manages the way you appear to the public. “Bulk edit” allows you to add tags, manage, and delete multiple sites in your bookmarks. “Browse these bookmarks” is especially useful when you visit other people in your network. When you click this link, delicious minimizes to a navigation toolbar at the top of your web page. Click the left and right arrows to browse through someone’s bookmarks.

One of the best features of social bookmarking is finding out what other people are bookmarking. Check out my social bookmarks here. To add me to your network, on the top right of my profile page, under the Search bar, is a blue link that says “Add to my Network.” Go ahead and click this link. Take some time to browse through my links and feel free to bookmark the ones that are useful to you. Please send me a message to let me know what you think.

For more information about social bookmarking, SEO web design, Houston Internet marketing and Houston search engine optimization, contact Houston SEO Company Directory One at (713) 465-0051.

Cute As An Asynchronous +1 Button

New Asynchronous +1 Button for Houston SEO

At this Houston Search Engine Optimization Company, we believe in staying on top of new developments in the industry. Google recently announced a few changes to the new +1 button. Now the button renders 3x faster on web sites! If you are a Houston web developer, you don’t even have to do anything to implement this change. The change is active on all sites that have the Google +1 button installed on them.

The other +1 button announcement Google made today is the introduction of a new asynchronous snippet for the button! If you are a Houston web designer who uses Google Analytics to measure site metrics you probably remember when Google introduced the asynchronous Analytics code, which replaced the slower Urchin code. In asynchronous codes the browser downloads the button at the same time as the site loads. This is great for site speed. Unfortunately, if you already have the +1 button installed on your site this means you will need to change the code on every page of your site.

To Install the +1 Button for Houston SEO:

If you don’t have the +1 button installed on your site, read on to find out how to install Google +1 with the asynchronous code. Installing the code is a two-part process. One snip of code goes where you want the +1 button to render, and the other snip goes after the last plusone tag. Copy and paste the following code into your site (minus the exclamation marks, so the HTML works):

1. This tag goes where you want the +1 button to render:
< !g:plusone>
You can actually install one of four versions of the previous code, depending on the size of the +1 button that you would like to see on your site. The other three versions look like this:
< !g:plusone size=”small”>
< !g:plusone size=”medium”>
< !g:plusone size=”tall”>

2. This tag goes after the last plusone tag:
< !script type="text/javascript">
(function() {
var po = document.createElement(‘script’); po.type = ‘text/javascript’; po.async = true;
po.src = ‘https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();

If you don’t know about the relevance of the Google +1 button, read our Houston Search Engine Marketing blog entry about it! In short, this button helps Google determine your SERPs by reinforcing site authority. The +1 button’s metrics appear in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, which is a fairly clear indicator that Google is serious about developing this button and integrating it in depth into SEO and SEM.

Since the +1 button has not been in use for very long, we can probably expect additional changes in the near future as Google works out additional hiccups in the beta phase. Contact our Houston SEO Company Directory One at (713) 465-0051 for more information.