And with Internet penetration at what feels like 100% of the population, even farmers and the organizations they belong to are feeling the need for Google love.

For the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association (AOBA), search engine optimization had become a clear necessity: Its members were already turning to other organizations for SEO and online marketing help. Offering these services could help increase the association’s value to its members and strengthen its membership base for the long term. In addition, ensuring its web properties ranked above other competing organizations and for-profit entities would help bolster and reinforce its position as the primary association for the industry.

Bill Edmunds, a veteran of association management, recently wrote about his experience working with SEO Advantage while part of the leadership at AOBA in an article titled A Race to the Top: Search Engine Optimization for Associations.

Recently published by the Tennessee Society of Association Directors, the article details the systematic process AOBA used to find the right SEO company. Edmunds also outlines the planned steps for optimization, including setup of a revenue generating product that could offer more value to members than what was currently available on the market. This new product is also designed to help cover the costs of implementation, so the costs of taking on a major SEO project don’t have to be passed along to members.

Read the article to and see how this association took on the high tech aspects of SEO without burdening themselves or their constituents: PDF of the article

Besides serving as a directory to draw in potential buyers, alpaca farmers will be able to employ our company’s expertise in SEO, web design and copywriting to build a website or maximize the value of an already existing one.

Our company is quite experienced in offering search enhanced directories for specific industries…besides alpacas, which we’ve worked with for nearly 10 years, we also offer these low cost marketing alternatives for the legal, real estate and medical industries.

This new AOBA directory is a giant leap forward in the development of our alpaca directory services, coupling the power of a national industry trade organization with cutting edge SEO and online marketing techniques.

The new AOBA/SEO directory offers very affordable options for burgeoning alpaca owners and breeders to advertise their stocks…ranchers can join AOBA (for a nominal fee), gain access to the site and choose a subscription level based on their needs – ranging from 10 listings per year for $160 up to 150 listings for $875 per year.

Besides a dedicated page directory listing that appears in the AOBA directory and major search engines like Google and Yahoo!, ranchers can also take advantage of affordable packages for building a dedicated website of their own.

Making the investments in a website can help alpaca owners and breeders grow their operations and generate additional revenues.

We invite you to take a look at our new alpaca directory at AOBAalpacas.com and see how search enhanced directories and web properties can help alpaca ranchers dominate their industry on the web.

Stone Reuning, president and founder of SEO Advantage, expects to be publishing articles bi-weekly on the site. His first, 9 Do’s and Don’ts for Building a Social Bookmarking Network was released on March 22^nd.

“It’s an honor to join the stellar lineup of authors already contributing regularly. I’m looking forward to providing unique Internet marketing articles centered around our methodology and knowledge base here at SEO Advantage,” says Reuning.

The company already maintains a SEO knowledge center on its site for clients and partners looking for ideas and trends in the SEO and online marketing industries. Reuning hopes to extend his team’s knowledge and ideas to a larger group of people through SearchEngineGuide.com.

Take a look at Stone’s bio on SearchEngineGuide.com and be on the lookout for good, original articles on SEO, site design, copywriting, social media and more.

(Don’t worry, we’re only taking the weekend off!)

We owe a debt of gratitude to these brave men and women for their service.

Without their sacrifice, it’s quite possible I wouldn’t be here today writing this post or a free and open Internet wouldn’t exist. In part, the sacrifice of past and current generations serving in the Armed Forces makes innovations like the Internet possible.

Veterans Day was originally known as Armistice Day – or the official conclusion of World War I. Since, it has morphed into a national holiday where we pay tribute to all of those who have honorably worn the uniform

Take a moment today to thank a veteran, attend a parade or service or simply take a moment of silence in recognition of those past served and currently serving in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.

If you’re considering hiring an online marketing company to help you with your blog, you’ll be guided through the whole process.

But if you’re looking to set up your blog on your own, you’ll need to first do some homework. Marketing consultant Kelly Watson has pulled together a great resource that answers all the small business blogging questions you can think of and more. I know, because I reviewed her blogging ebook and SEO Advantage contributed its expertise in a few places.

At $29 and well over 60 pages PLUS tutorials to help you actually set up your small business blog, The Small Business Blogging Blueprint is a resource that will serve you well. In fact, author Kelly Watson is even including in that price all future updates, so you never have to worry about the info becoming outdated.

Learn more about the ebook here.

Scheduled for Wednesday, October 14, 2009, from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EDT, the webinar will feature how to boost product sales through enriched product data feeds and other retailer-tested tips, as well as several new innovations merchants can draw on. Guest speakers from Google, Inc. will join CI to present upcoming Google enhancements that retailers can leverage for the 2009 holiday season.

Google offers merchants many tools to help drive shoppers to online and local stores, including a few new enhancements about to be introduced just in time for the holiday shopping season. Guest speakers Vivek Tata, Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Sarah Beritzhoff, Strategic Partner Manager, of Google, Inc., will join CI’s Larry Weeks, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing Consulting, and Rob Streeter, Sr. Manager Partner Development, to discuss ways merchants can better leverage Google for a more profitable 2009 holiday shopping season.

CI will share tips with merchants on ways to maximize product performance and increase sales from various Google properties, as well as share success stories from current retailer customers.

A foundational element often overlooked when advertising on Google is the provision of content rich, high-quality data feeds, since Google’s powerful database leverages data feeds to render the merchants’ products to the right consumer at the right time. Attendees can expect to learn more about this essential element and its role in successful campaigns, as well as a host of other ways to improve sales performance.

Attendees can register here

Without any other sites linking to your site, you will only get you so far in the rankings. But which is better, a higher number of links or the quality of those links?

This is a question that may stump some novice SEO engineers. They may have a landing page, article or blog they’re trying to get ranked for certain keywords and have a lot of different web sites linking to it. However, another web page is dominating top rankings and you can’t seem to quite match or surpass it.

Why is that? What does that page have that mine doesn’t?

Below is a quick video from Rand Fish at SEOMoz that explains the reasons why this would occur and what you can do about it.

First, links from web pages with higher PageRank are much more valuable than links from pages with lower PageRank.

Like we recently outlined in our feature post about PageRank and its importance in marketing your small business online, sites with higher PageRank carry more weight in the search engines. It’s believed PageRank is calculated using a logarithmic scale so the difference between a PageRank of 4-5 versus a PageRank of 2-3 is roughly five to ten times.

Links from pages in the top hierarchy of a website are much better than ones from pages deep within a site

It’s always better to get a link from either another site’s homepage or landing page – no more than about two to three pages from the homepage (i.e. category or landing page) in the site’s hierarchy. First of all, these pages will have higher PageRank. Second of all, visitors to the site will find the link to your site much easier.

It all adds up to a more powerful link than one from say a blog post or generic page with a bunch of links on it.

Most importantly perhaps, sites with higher trust and authority provide more link juice for rankings

Links from sites of well known brands, media outlets or institutes are much more valuable – it definitely will not take near as many links from these to get your search engine rankings to the top. It kind of goes back to the whole PageRank thing since one of the ways to identify authority and trust in the eyes of the search engines is through a site’s PageRank.

So how do I find websites and pages whose links will benefit my website’s rankings the most?

If you’re doing manual link building and come across a website you think would be helpful and possible for you to get a link from, you can use tools like Top Pages and Link Intersect from SEOMoz to find out a page’s PageRank and other important characteristics mentioned above.

Or, consult and work with a premier SEO firm like SEO Advantage who can find all of the avenues to boost your site’s rankings, bring in more site visitors and maximize revenues.

Doing this kind of research first and then getting a small number of links from a select group of websites will prove much more beneficial in getting your webpage’s rankings from say page 2 to the top 5 or 3 results in a search engine query for your keywords than just getting a bunch of links from different low level sites.  

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Link Quality vs. Quantity from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

While there are a variety of responses to this question, only 12% of respondents say it is a good idea.

But these 18 or so individuals who answered in the affirmative to this question are nowhere to be found on the accompanying WebMasterWorld discussion thread.

The search engine professionals discussing this question on the thread generally dismissed the idea for a variety of reasons…some even implied dishonest SEOs will flaunt their rankings by PhotoShopping (hopefully that’s a word!!) their site’s information into a page 1 search engine results page.

Aside from just plain dishonesty to make a quick buck, there are other more practical business reasons not to promote page 1 rankings.

First of all, rankings can fluctuate. As one SEO on the discussion board said, “What the GoogleGod giveth, the GoogleGod taketh away.” And they fluctuate for a variety of reasons – geographic location, time of day and other factors play into rankings. If you make this claim and then someone searches for your keywords only to find your site on page 2 or 3, your credibility will certainly suffer.

Flaunting our ranking achievements isn’t our style here at SEO Advantage. We agree with many of our SEO colleagues on the discussion board that it isn’t good business practice to make statements like that.

While high rankings are something to be proud of, it isn’t the whole enchilada…site architecture, copy and other elements have to be there for high rankings to make a meaningful impact in sales conversions and the bottom line.

Here are Gaby’s answers, revealing some great professional insights. Enjoy!

Maria: What does your job entail?

Gaby: Keeping all our sites and clients’ websites up to date and working properly.
Posting any necessary edits, making sure the code is up to the current standards, and also that the visuals are appropriate and eye-catching.

For new projects, I research competitors and the requirements for the site, then build and test, starting with a creative concept that I work on usually with a copywriter at SEO Advantage.

Maria: Walk me through your day.

I start checking emails, because this is the way I receive all the tasks.
Then I prioritize and start tackling one at a time!

Maria: How do you feel your role as a graphic designer enhances SEO Advantage’s or any other company’s website?

Gaby: SEO is mostly based on content and the architecture of the site. But let’s face it, no one likes an “ugly” site. I feel that if the content is presented in the best possible way, the user is more likely to spend more time browsing on the site. Graphics and photographs make content more memorable and help prospects better understand the content. In this way, graphic design supports the goals of the web site by engaging the prospect once the SEO brings the traffic to the site.

Plus, nowadays, designers should also be responsible for site usability and standards compliance. This means I have to make sure that the design and functionality works across browsers and that navigation through the site is clear and the actions we want a site visitor to take are supported by the design and layout elements.

[Ed. note: I love this about Gaby! Many designers I've worked with in the past are focused on making your site "pretty" but give no thought to usability. Gaby has a very good sense of how to direct traffic through "paths" on the site and where emphasis needs to be to achieve the business goals of the site.]

Maria: What is your favorite book? Song?

Gaby: There are too many books I like. Fortunately, some of the tasks I perform allow me to listen to audiobboks!

Maria: Do you work from home? If so, do you find it difficult?

Gaby: I do work from home in a sort of “virtual workplace”. Our teams use online tools to communicate and coordinate. I really like it, but it requires a lot of discipline. And sometimes it gets lonely. It does have a lot of advantages, but I think it’s not for everyone.

Maria: What computer software do you swear by to help create your best work?

Gaby: Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver.

Maria: Where do you get your inspiration for creative content? If not creative, then where do you get your inspiration to create designs that produce traffic to the site being created?

Gaby: I find inspiration online just browsing other sites. I also notice things in magazines that can give me ideas, but really, inspiration is everywhere. As a graphic designer, I naturally notice how shapes and colors are used no matter what I’m looking at.

Maria: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Gaby: Still in this field. This is something I love. I would definitely be designing, but you may see me building a bigger design group for SEO Advantage employing other designers who can help with production, while I focus more on the creative aspect.

Maria: What is your personal motto, referring to your work style?

Gaby: “Everything can be done. Some things just take a bit more time.”

Maria: If you have one word to describe your personality and work style, what would it be?

Gaby: It would be hard in one word…

I think whoever likes graphic design is really lucky – it’s the kind of job that doesn’t feel like a job, and most times gives you the flexibility to work from home or any place you like!