Search Engine Optimization Eblog

Several reports I've come across lately have reinforced what today's online marketers already felt to be true: when the economy slows down, look for those marketing activities that will bring in a higher return with less cash outlay.

Enter search engine optimization. If you're not already optimizing your site and every page on it, there's no better time to start.

Why is SEO a good choice in a recession?

1. SEO costs less per qualified visitor than pay-per-click ads and it adds long-term value to your site.

2. Professional optimization can start showing the effects of traffic within a few months.

3. Optimization for the search engines can benefit desired on-site actions by your site visitors. Research shows that when consumers encounter the search terms they used to find your site actually used in the copy on your site, it helps them to feel more at ease about remaining on your site and can even increase conversion rates.

4. SEO is the most cost-effective way of establishing your company as an authority (or maintaining that status). It has been documented that people automatically attribute more trust and authoritative status to those with web sites that display high in the search results. Organic search results are perceived by users to be better indicators than the paid or sponsored ads which may also appear on the page.

5. SEO lets you focus on helping people find you when you they want your products/services, rather than force feeding it to them through advertising. In today's online environment, it pays more to be "findable" naturally than to plaster your ads everywhere, which is also more expensive.

I'm sure there are more reasons, but that's the gist of why SEO becomes a priority during an economic downturn or recession.

See how SEO Advantage is helping companies market strong even when the economy isn't at its best with graphic design, copywriting, and specialized SEO services.

I ended up on a local personal trainer's web site last night. She had a great story and I was intrigued by what she offered, even though I hadn't started out searching for a personal trainer. (Doesn't that happen all the time - you start out researching something and end up reading about completely unrelated topics as you go where the Web takes you!)

Well, I didn't take the step to "find out more" even though I'm probably at a stage in my life where I could use some help with setting up an exercise routine. Do you know why? Because she didn't ask me to.

Her site was nicely written with no typos or grammatical mistakes. But it was evident it was not prepared by someone who understood copywriting best practices, and therefore didn't understand how to guide her online readers to take action.

Incorporating some guidance for your readers can be as simple as interlinking site pages from your copy. When you mention a service area in your copy, for example, link to the page with details on that service so someone can click through to learn more at that exact point if they want. After all, who remembers at the bottom of a page what it was they wanted to know more about? You're putting the burden on your reader if you're expecting them to figure it out from your navigation menu only.

This also brings up another point - what options are you giving your readers at the bottom of your pages? This is a prime opportunity to point them towards taking the next step and contacting you or digging deeper to find out more about certain topics. Don't leave them hanging, guide them toward taking action!

A job in search engine marketing gives you flexibility and options that few other jobs can match. The latest issue of "Visibility" lists 11 reasons why you should consider a job in search engine marketing, and I can vouch for most of these myself.

1. The search industry is hot - Businesses have caught on that SEO and SEM are required marketing channels now.

2. One of only 4 jobs considered cutting edge - MSN Careers reports that search engine optimizer is ranked as one of only four jobs considered cutting edge by the world's largest specialized recruitment firm Robert Half International.

3. Pay is great - SEO and SEM consultants can expect salaries along these lines, depending on experience and the firm:

$30-45k - entry level SEO/SEM position
$50-75k - online account managers or SEO/SEM with 3-5 years experience
$70-120k - senior management level
$95-150k - SEM director
$100-315k - VP level

4. Degree not required - Most learn by doing and their results act as a means of proof of ability.

5. Learn all you need to know online - do your own research or get certified online

6. Run your own business easily - start with one person and very little overhead

7. The WOW factor - seeing those results after your hard work is very rewarding and impressive to others

8. Demand is growing - rarely a need for firms to advertise and little competition, as the industry has such high demand for skilled people.

9. Very cool industry - It's not geeky, in fact SEO/SEM is trendy.

10. Work from anywhere - communicate with clients and conduct your work via anywhere you can access the Internet.

11. High job satisfaction - You can choose how you prefer to work. In a company in a local office? Your own home-based business? The pay is good and you control your destiny...

What more could you want?

SEO Advantage is accepting applications for SEO/SEM positions. Apply now if you're looking to advance your career with an SEO/SEM job.

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How to make changings urls easy. Well the best way is to completely avoid free hosting services. Hosting costs are cheaper than ever. Who doesn't have 7 bucks to donate to a hobby site a month now-a-days? Ok ok to the tip... 1. Buy your new url, put up a temporary home page with some good content on it. 2. Point links to the new url from your current domain, blogs, directories and link partners. The more the better. 3. Wait for about 6 months. This will give the search engines time to take notice of the site and give it a page score or PageRank. 4. Make the transfer, and put up 301 redirects from your old urls to your new urls. If you are on a shared host that can't do a 301, use a

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.newurl.com/...">

Letting your new domain sit for 6 months and gain reputation with the engines will help you the most. There is a down time when you kill your old site and move everything to the new site. Even with 301 or meta refreshes pointing the way to the new urls it's not a magic wand for an instant new domain take over. Your new urls will have to start from scratch. The 6 months just decreases the down time you'll notice in the search engines.

This is mainly for windows hosted sites. On a windows server a call to Index.html INDEX.html or index.html will all be accepted if the file is named index.html on the server. This however can mess with your search engine rankings. Google generates a checksum number for each url. So the url with Index.html is going to have a different checksum number as index.html just because of the uppercased I.

So why does this matter? Well the checksum number is the key to bringing back the correct PageRank in the Google bar. It's also a unique identifier, like an id number that is assigned to a url. Since I and i are completely different to a computer then the checksum numbers will also be different. This can hurt your search results because it opens the door to duplicate pages & content on your domain. That's a big no no for consistant across the board rankings.

For best results in the search engines always link to your pages the same way. Be consistant, if you uppercase the first letter do it in all the links. But to make it easy just keep everything lowercase. That is the most universal way by far amoungst webmasters.

This is a real easy tip. You can use this to search inside of a specific site (as long as that sites internal pages are indexed in the search engines)

This is how you form your search query

site:www.sitename.com keyword

Here are a few examples:
Google: site:www.seo-advantage.com guarantee
Yahoo: site:www.seo-advantage.com guarantee
MSN: site:www.seo-advantage.com guarantee

Google Bowling attacks are a sneaky way to bring down a site in the Google search results. Spammers have found that if you link to a domain heavily without the www. the url will suffer greatly. Speculation that a duplicate penalty causes the fall and even Matt Cutts a Google Engineer has hinted that Google Bowling is a problem and should be reported. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bacon-polenta/

It’s quite easy to Secure your canonical domain using mod rewrite if you are on an Apache Server so here is our tip of the day. Just make all non www. versions of your domain name 301 redirect to the www. version of your domain and the problem is solved.

Add this to your .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /


	
#for ssl
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

	
#for non ssl
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]