Ideate Media SEO Web Marketing Blog (2)

Posts Tagged ‘seo houston tx’

SEO Strategy: Where is that traffic hiding? Part 1- Be the king of your domain(s)

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Unless you want to jump right into search engine marketing and buy PPC advertisements to route traffic, you should consider looking for those hidden cache’s of traffic lurking around the Internet. One thing you have to be absolutely sure of, especially if you’re a new online business, is that you or your SEO specialists are using “white hat” techniques to improve your Internet ranking. We discussed white hat SEO and SEM techniques in an earlier post, so you should be aware of how that works.

Our personal recommendation for website businesses is to go the white hat route to avoid being flagged as a spambot, and to establish the same online business reputation as your physical business/product would have. In the range of allowable (and recommended) white hat techniques for finding hidden caches of website traffic are strategies like searching for and registering domain names that relate to your website.

Be the king of your domains! Find out all of the keyword variations on the spelling, misspelled versions, and look for what’s available with your name—.orgs, .coms…you name it. What it boils down to, as an SEO strategy is, if it could possibly, conceivably, even remotely, be construed as your website, head over to GoDaddy, buy it up and redirect it or link it to your actual web business. Otherwise, someone else will buy it and potentially charge you a lot of money to buy back your own name.

SEO Strategy: White hat v. black hat (Part 2)

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Continuing from our last post about white hat SEO technique is this little number about black hat search engine optimization. In search engine optimization terminology, black hat is the “dark side,” of SEO, using techniques outside of the recommended “best practices” of white hat techniques.

Although it may seem like sound search engine marketing strategy to focus solely on gaining rankings through manipulating the search engine crawlers, it is a very short-term and short-sighted way to build your website rankings. Black hat SEO tactics do not obey search engine rules, and typically involve techniques like keyword stuffing, invisible text and doorway pages. Another popular black hat tactic is spamdexing, or, spamming the search engine indexes with keyphrases that make the website content seem relevant to the machine.

You’ve seen spam pages before; they’re all links and flashing lights with no genuine content or navigability, and nothing that would draw a human user to the site. They may even trick you into clicking on other links with pop ups, videos and sound files. Generally speaking, there’s no known purpose to the website. The more your website business looks like a spambot, the more likely it is to get banned by the search engines, and associate your name online with spam. If you are trying to build a genuine online business reputation, these fast and illegal techniques will not do, but if you’re in search engine marketing and looking for a place to dump links and get click-throughs, then you might find yourself on the dark side.

SEM Strategy: S is for SEO Copywriting & Content (Our Favorite)

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

We’ve said it before, and because it’s our favorite of the SEO and SEM strategies we’ll continue to say it—when it comes to excellent search engine marketing strategy, nothing tops good, optimized content. Search engine marketing is built on good SEO analytics, and search engine optimization is based on finding the best keywords for your niche online market, and building valuable connections through excellent web content.

SEO copywriting can be done by experienced freelancers or members of your search engine marketing team. Ideally, they should know how to attract your target audience and have a concrete understanding of the keywording you want to see in the online business marketing for your website. You can add valuable Internet ranking points to your website through writing a content-rich and optimized blog for your website, linking to other related blogging sites to your niche market and creating reciprocal links with other relevant Internet marketing blog sites.

Additionally, you should have a website that is easy to navigate with good SEO content in the title, alt and H1 tags, and on the landing pages. Strong copywriting is part of the process of creating an easily understood site map, and increases the overall strength of your website performance and organic search results.

SEM Strategy: O is for Organic Search—The Basics of the Popularity Contest

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

In search engine marketing strategy land, organic search is the website business equivalent of being voted the prom king/queen in high school. Being the most popular, or one of the most popular kids in your niche market online is the entire purpose of SEO strategy for natural search.

The technical definition of natural search is the SEM technique of optimizing your website business’ design and content so whenever the relevant keywords are entered into search engines, your online business will rank higher. Organic search results show up in the non-paid listings, and the goal, of course, is to rank in the top 10 of the search engines popular in your location.

In order to get the organic search that increases your Internet ranking, you need to do in-depth keyword research and competitor analysis to figure out what words are bringing in the searches to your Internet business. After that, implement these keywords into your content, title tags and metadata. There’s a fine line between balancing content and keywords without looking like a spambot. Our suggestion is to hire a writer or SEO specialist who knows how to optimize content.

Finally, organize your website business! The site map should be logical, the navigation should be sensible and the links should work. Take the time to organize your website’s information so people can spend more time looking through your product or services and come back to your website, increasing its ranking and your popularity online.

SEM Strategy: K is for Keywords—Keyword Researching Outline

Friday, January 14th, 2011

A significant way to strengthen your website’s search results is by identifying the keywords that are bringing in the natural and organic search.

Generally speaking, it takes optimized content on your website about 45 days to get cached by the search engine robots, and about that much time for the new key word phrases to gain recognition in your target audience. You also want to make sure you’re using the correct keywording in your content and as part of your search engine marketing strategy. If, for example, the most popular blog post on your online business website has nothing to do with your company’s product or service, it is not going to help your website performance in any meaningful way.

A good strategy to implement for keyword research is to spend a lot of initial effort on the research and discovery. Brainstorm lists of keywords you believe fits your online marketing profile, and use a tool like Google AdWords to discover similar keywords in positions (locally and globally) you can rank for. Remember, for natural search, you don’t (and shouldn’t) use the top-ranking key word phrases, unless you’re a pretty big fish in that niche industry. Go for a mix of the mid-to-lower ranking words. We recommend ~1000hits/week as the absolute lowest you should go. The goal is to find words that rank, but aren’t overly used, to build your online presence.

As you implement this first batch of keywords, pay close attention to how this affects your website’s Internet rankings over the next few months. Some of the words will do better than others, and your SEO analytics should show which ones fail to rank. It’s a good idea to update your keyword register about once every 4-6 months to help improve your organic ranking.

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