One of the biggest things that I always tell clients is that you need to clean your own yard before you can promote your yard. What do I mean by this, I mean that in order to be successful at SEO the website must be of high search engine quality.

There are 3 major components to a search engine:

• crawler
• index
• serving results

In order to be the best the website has to be accessible to the search engine crawlers. The better the website architecture and navigation the easier it is for a search engine spider to crawl and follow the content on a website. The number 1 factor for me in SEO is making sure that the website is built so that a search engine can get to it and easily move through it.

A lot of times when a site is struggling a lot in the search engines it could be perhaps that the website is telling the search engines to not crawl it if there is an error in the robots.txt file. Sometimes a website will have the navigation in images which is a huge red flag in not making the website as accessible as it could be.

Another important factor in SEO is the concept of accurately labeling files and properly using keywords in the correct tags on a page. For example putting the major keyword that you want a page to show up for in the beginning of a title tag is a basic task, yet it holds a lot of weight and can easily be overlooked. Images with keywords in their file name and in the alt tag are another way of accurately labeling, yet often get overlooked.

These top 2 factors of making a website accessible to search engine and accurately labeling files and tags are crucial and at the top of my most important factors of SEO. Here is an example of a page that has been optimized and where the keywords are located within the file names and tags:

Some of the most important places to have the keyword that you want to optimize a page for are:

• domain
• title tag
• meta description tag
• heading Tags, H1 especially
• image filenames
• alt tags with images
• throughout body content
• anchor text in hyperlinks

Domain: Having the keyword in the domain is a very important factor because these are files to a search engine and so it is best that the keyword be in there. It is better to have the keyword closer to the root of the domain as possible.

Title Tag: These are quick glimpses that a search engine looks at to quickly understand what the page is about. Having the keyword closer to beginning of the title tag is heavily recommended.

Description Tag: These tags have gone back and forth in how search engines look at them in as far as putting them into the algorithm. Right now in 2010 the algorithms are taking them into consideration. Google wants rich snippets and has provided a Rich Snippet Tool in their Webmaster Tools thus confirming that Google is putting more weight on descriptions. Having the keywords in the description helps users as Google bolds them and thus creating higher click throughs which plays a role in SEO.

Heading Tag: This is generally what the headline of a page is and the first thing that a user sees. Having the keyword in the Heading tags helps organize content for a search engine, however they play around with how much weight they put on heading tags. H1 tags carry more weight than H2 - H6 tags.

Image Filenames: Having the keywords in the filename of an image is highly recommended because users search through images all the time in search engines and you will want to get some traffic to your site through these searches. Plus it helps a search engine understand more about the image.

Alt Tag: Search engines cannot see images and therefore rely on the descriptive text that would surround the image like the filename and this alternative text tag. This brief description of what an image is along with keywords greatly helps a search engine.

Throughout Body Content: Having the keyword on a page in the content is just a thing that happens natural. I always say it is hard to talk about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without mentioning peanut butter and jelly at least once. Overstuffing the keyword in the text of the content is not advised as you only want to use the keyword to help a user understand the content. Keyword density is not something that search engines use to help them determine the importance of a page. A webpage that has a higher density does not necessarily make it more relevant.

Anchor Text in Hyperlinks: Search engines use hyperlinks to help them crawl around the web and they use these hyperlinks that connect webpage to webpage as a vote, thus the keyword phrase in the hyperlink is important. Make sure you use the correct keyword in the anchor text when you point it to another page. For example if I was creating a link to a page that was optimized for Blue Widgets then I would use blue widgets in the anchor text.

As I mentioned before there are several things that a search engine algorithm uses but these are the most important factors. Here is a pie chart that shows the components of Google’s Ranking Algorithm according to 72 top SEO professionals:

All images provided courtesy of SEOMoz.org

A lot of times building links is always thought of as a marketing strategy or a strategy that needs to be incorporated after the website is built. Companies that have had major success online are those who have built websites with products that have what I call a “built in link acquisition method”.

This means that when a user uses the website or a product on the website they will want to link back to the original website. So the question of the day is “why would a user want to link back to the website?” If you are building links to your website you will want to ask yourself this same question which is “are there website owners who benefit from linking to my website?”

Think of some of the greatest sites in the world and ask yourself if a user benefits from linking to them. YouTube has made it so people can embed YouTube videos on their sites. This makes it so there is now a link back to YouTube.com, the same goes with several other video sites. Twitter and Facebook do the same thing because people want to link back to their profiles. Widgetbox makes it so when users embed their widgets then the user also is linking back to widgetbox.com. Scribd does the same thing when they make it possible for users to make slideshows and embed them on their sites thus linking back to scribd.com.

These types of sites are definitely link acquisition sites in that there is a linking strategy built into the product, thus this was designed by nature before the products were launched and the websites were built. They made their sites and products Cool to link to and millions of users continue to want to link to them.

As a website owner you have to constantly think about not only how your website helps users, but how them linking to your website could help them to. While not all sites can compete with the websites mentioned in this article, you can take their philosophies and apply them to your own link marketing strategy.

Foursquare is what some would call the talk of the town and could soon be a household name along with Twitter and Facebook. Right now Foursquare is in its infancy and the majority of the users are also Twitter users. Foursquare is a new concept in social media, social marketing, a friend finder, a social city guide and a game all in one.

I see Foursquare changing the ways on how some local businesses will promote their business online and how this may effect local seo. The simple way to describe Foursquare is that users can check-in and tell Foursquare where they are and the places they visit. They can leave feedback on local businesses and the more times they check-in users receive points which can then turn into badges. Foursquare is continually improving the way in which users can be rewarded.

The system works with several mobile applications on iphone, blackberry, palm, android and others. Users can use their mobile phones to check-in and if that place is not listed on the network then they can add it.

As a local business owner you can choose to reward those that check-in to your business on a frequent basis. This is the online way of saying “You visit my business a lot, and I will reward you so tell everyone else” idea. Sign your business up for Foursquare specials.

Foursquare will be a great way to promote what specials you are running and you will also be able to choose what locations you would like to run them at. Some of the ways that I think businesses will be using Foursquare more in the future is by:

Location Based Promotions
With the use of Foursquare you will be able to see how many times people are checking in to your business location or around your business location along with when they are checking in. This is going to be some good analytics I feel in the future.

Loyal Customer Rewards
Businesses know that not all customers are equal as they all have their customers who come and say “I will take the usual.” Foursquare will also be a good way to promote rewards to those who continually check in to your business. When a customer checks into your business their friends can see that and so your “Usuals” will be a great marketing tool, so reward them.

Shared Promotions
With the ability of the users of Foursquare to see where their friends are checking in and what offers are being promoted by that business, there will be a lot of promotions that are given by local businesses that will get passed on through their users friends network.

As with all new technology and ideas there will be some bugs and feedback that the Foursquare team will have to take into consideration and fix, but as a local business owner you will want to keep watch on this new phenomenon called Foursquare.

SEO is a strategy that needs to be incorporated into every business, it is not just a one time tactic that can be performed. SEO is more than just putting some keywords in title tags and submitting the site to some directories. SEO encompasses everything from proper site architecture, accessible coding, the internal and external linking strategy, understanding how to make content worth linking to, content syndication, social media and more.

SEO starts before the site has a look and feel to it. There needs to be proper keyword research, market analysis, and a competitive analysis performed in order to best understand the geographic regions, seasonality of market and the trend of the market. When this work is performed a more comprehensive SEO strategy can be incorporated as the site will have proper file structure and link structure.

An effective SEO strategy always works best when it is coupled alongside a strategic marketing plan. SEO is a long term commitment and some business owners who do not understand marketing may feel like they are pouring their money into a marketing channel that does not show immediate results.

That could not be any further from the truth, when a proper SEO strategy is employed the investment will always bring back results. I always tell clients that performing SEO is all about building a company’s reputation and authority online and that when building any company that will stand the test of time and be looked at as a credible company it takes time.

The #1 thing to remember is that it does take work to build a company’s reputation whether it be offline or online. Rome was built brick by brick and SEO is no different in that you have to build the foundation and then the seo strategy grows with all aspects compounding on each other.

The best thing a company can do is make their company alive instead of DEAD. Most companies online are dead meaning they build a website and hope that traffic will come in as soon as they put up the site and life will be great. NEWSFLASH! That is not how companies build either offline or in the online world. In order for a company to grow and have an effective SEO strategy they need to have a site that is alive and constantly growing and moving. Think of the most important and influential online companies in the world right now:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Microsoft
• Youtube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• and more like them

What do all of these companies have in common? They continue to grow and give value to the web every single day. The owners of all of these companies did not hope on a Sheer Luck marketing strategy meaning that when people come to the site it is Sheer Luck.

Google is always a good example in knowing how to do SEO. Look at their business model and the way the site is structured. The urls are all friendly for all of the different departments and they use good anchor text in their links, and oh yeah they continue to grow every day. If you use Google as an example of how you should grow a company online then you will be in good shape.

Some companies feel that they can do their own seo, depending on the complexity of the seo process. SEO can be very basic and it can also be very advanced. It is always advised to use a professional SEO who can implement sound strategies on the website for the best results. In conclusion every company should treat an SEO campaign as an essential element within the company model and should be implemented before the website is even built.

What is a Title Tag?

A title tag is a quick description of what a page document is about. Typically these tags will have 70 characters or less. Title tags show up in the head section of a page document. Here is what the code looks like for title tags.

There are some key points to remember in what is the most optimal way to format the title tag.

Optimal Format

Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Company
or
Brand Company - Primary Keyword, Secondary Keyword

In a study that was performed, 37 professional SEO’s were asked how important is having the keyword you want to optimize the page for be at the beginning of the title. Here are the results of that study:

When you are writing your titles you can use commas, pipes, hyphens or other types of punctuation. Search engines can crawl the punctuation, what is important to them is what the document is being labeled as. The easiest way to think of titles for a web page is the same way that you label folders that go into a filing cabinet.

The title tag will typically show up in 3 different places:

The Browser

The Search Engine Results Page

External Websites

Out of the 3 places that title tags will show browsers are not very important as users do not look at them in there browser to get a feeling of what the page is about because they are already on the page. Search engine results pages are very important because the search engine will bold the keywords that have been typed in thus helping in higher click throughs. Google bolds the keywords to always make it easier for users.

In external websites a lot of people who do social bookmarking will generally just bookmark the page and it will take the title tag of the page to use when people want to bookmark that page thus making the title tag now the anchor text for the link which is huge for improving link popularity.

Things to avoid in title tags:

• choosing words and phrases that have no relation to the page
• stuffing unneeded keywords
• using really long titles that are unhelpful to users
• using default titles like Home Page or Untitled
• using the same title across all pages

Overall you want to be conscious of what you are doing with your title tags and make sure you keep them to 70 characters or less and have your primary keywords in there towards the beginning. I then recommend that you do use some form of branding as well. In Google’s search engine optimization pdf they say to make sure to accurately describe the focus on that particular page. Each page title should be unique and as accurate as possible.

The game is changing in the seo world and there are a lot of new things that search engines are looking for. One of the things that has stood its ground throughout all of the changes is syndicating content. Content syndication has been important in the past but it is now increasing in speed as you can syndicate content on more platforms than just your website.

Digital Asset Optimization is the art of optimizing any type of content that can be syndicated on any type of platform ie. blogs, video sites, photo sites, podcast sites, social sites and more. You can publish all types of content to the web and contribute to the conversation, however if it can be posted it can be optimized.

When performing seo for your company you will want to take inventory of your content and see if it is properly optimized. Anything that can be searched can be optimized and do not think for a second that Google is the only place you can search for things. I search for tutorials and things on Youtube all of the time or Squidoo.

There is a lot of great content online that is not optimized the best it could be because people do not take 2 seconds and think before labeling something or uploading something “How are people going to search for this?” Digital Asset Optimization is the art of using all of your content to your advantage and using it as leverage.

In the offline world I hear that “Knowledge is Power” well in the online world “Content is Power”. Think about it, the sites that normally do the best and that are the most popular have more content and continue to grow in content. Content syndication is alive and well and using your companies content to your advantage is a necessity in today’s world, not just a thing to do on the side.

All images provided by toprankblog.com

There have been some major changes in Google this last year as they have launched Social Search, Search Wiki, Personalized Search and Real Time Search. These are some obvious changes they have made along with the announcement that they are doing an overhaul on their algorithm which they have not done since 2006 called Google Caffeine.

A lot of these changes point to one thing and that is that Google is looking more at social content to rank for real time search and that the social arena of the web is something of interest to them. On Tuesday they launched another social networking application which is in Gmail called Google Buzz. Google is showing that they are desperate in getting into the social arena online and due to them making a lot of changes we are going to see the social graph start to affect search engine rankings.

With this it is very important that your company has viral content that people want to share with their family, friends, coworker and associates. So what do people like to share online? According to a recent study put out by the New York Times people like to send positive intellectually challenging topics. People like to share inspiring articles that invoke emotion and there was a notice that people like to share science related articles.

One thing you will want to do is to look at your website’s content and ask yourself, “Is this content something that people would want to bookmark, email, or share in their social accounts?” When you ask yourself this question you will be not only doing a good copywriting favor, but also a good SEO favor.

Here are some resources that will help you understand this new realm of how social affects the web:

• Rand Fishkin does a great video on How Search Is Changing
• New York Times Viral Content Study

• The first thing you will want to do is simply go to the homepage of the site and view it as a user would. This will help you identify if the site has good usability and catches your attention. If it does not then that can hurt SEO because you want people to stay on the site.
• Next you will want to look at the url and make sure that it stayed the same and did not do a redirect to another url. If it does redirect then you can have some issues with the amount of link juice that makes it to the page. You will want to type in the url with WWW and non WWW to determine if there is a preferred domain.
• You will want to take a look at the title tag of the homepage which will show up in the top of the browser. This will give you a quick idea of what the page is telling search engines that it is about and wants to be found for.
• The next thing you will want to do is to simply type in the url into a search engine, I advise Google, and see if that page is the #1 result. If it is not then it is not looked at as the authority and may have some indexing issues.
• You can also use the site command as well which will help you see how the pages are being indexed. Type site:www.domain.com into Google and you will see the titles, descriptions, and urls of the pages on the site. This will help you see if this is how the site should be indexed in the search engine. This is one of the fastest ways to see if a site is optimized to an extent.
• You can also see the status of the site in Google by using the Site Status Wizard.
• Global Navigation - The site architecture of a site is crucial for SEO, you want to check if the navigation tabs are links or images. You want them to be links, not images. To do this simply hover your mouse over the navigation and right click your mouse. If it says anything having to do with image like copy image or copy image location or view image then the navigation needs to be fixed.
• You will want to do a quick check of how the site looks like to search engines. To do this you will want to use a lynx browser or you can use another tool called SEO-Browser.
• You will want to do a quick link analysis check because link popularity is very important to search engine algorithms. To do this there are several tools to use however a good one to use is Open Site Explorer.

While there are a lot more things that you have to look at when doing a comprehensive SEO and website analysis these tasks are designed to uncover big problems that may exist that need to be fixed. The most important thing is making sure that the site can be accessible, crawled, indexed and ranked by search engines. To learn more on how to identify potential problems with your site you can look at Google 101

Why would this type of a commercial mean anything to internet marketers and SEO’s in particular? The whole point in the commercial is showing people how to use Google and how to be a smarter searcher and user of a search engine. One thing that I did not see in the commercial was Google showing people the sponsored links section and clicking on those links as well.

As time has gone by users have become much more intelligent in how to use the web and more particular how to search for things that they want in a quick manner. As time has gone by more and more users of search engines do not click as much on the sponsored links sections.

I feel that this commercial put out by Google was an excellent commercial for SEO companies because we can easily tell business owners that their business must be in Google in the organic rankings. Google is teaching people to go to them and find everything that they need and that is exactly what people are doing, going to Google to find what they need.

I did not see any phone book commercials, radio commercials, billboard commercials, print ad commercials or any other type of marketing channel that would tell a business owner and consumers how to find solutions to their problems. A lot of the commercials were heavily focused on sending people to the web to find more information, not the coupon in the back of a phone book.

I felt Google did a great job in their commercial as they showed their Google Maps section in how to find a business fast, the local business results in the web search section, how to find a flight schedule, how to translate something and more. This was an excellent demo in how to use Google and get everything you want and at the same time helped SEO’s talk to more business owners in the power of using Google to help their business.

If you were marketing a college website and were wanting a quick way to look up some information on who the competing colleges were and get some intelligent data on them in a hurry then Google Squared will help you do that.

The best thing I like about Google Squared is the spreadsheet form, I already use excel spreadsheets to do some keyword research and other analyzing because it is easy to see things next to each other and keep things nice and organized. While some queries do not bring back any results like when I search for SEO I only get two results when there should be a lot more than that.

I know there are several reputable SEO companies across the United States and then each state has several that are not well known throughout the country. As time goes on I believe this tool will get better at aggregating information as good as the Google web search function does.

For SEO’s looking at competitors is a standard practice so we know how to get an indicator of how the market is and how much work it will be to take the company we are marketing to page 1 and then on to the #1 listing. While Google Squared does not show you the competitors rankings it does give you good information about them, like right off of the bat you could get a detailed list of descriptions about the companies and their websites within two seconds.

One thing to keep in mind is that Google Squared might not have some good information on a topic and so you will see some blank boxes. Google Squared is not the absolute best tool to use for competitive research however it can be used to get some quick data on other companies.