On Page Optimization Can Be Simple…IF…

Chances are the content that’s already on your site is not bringing you many search engine benefits. So before you create more content,it makes sense to improve what you already have. Making small changes in all the right places doesn’t take long –and can actually double or even triple your website traffic.

Making small changes to existing content is great and wonderful,but note that this is a short and simple post that also helps my website’s rankings. Even my adding this short paragraph above to my SEO Business site helps create targeted content for my business!

So remember,good SEO practices don’t have to be hard or complicated.  They don’t even have to read like you are trying to manipulate the search engines by inserting your targeted keywords in the content a bunch of times. (Create content for humans first,then for search engines!)

October 9th,2011 | Tags:, | Category:Austin Search Engine Optimization | Comments are closed

Get More Customers Online

With the current economic crisis going on,everybody’s thinking about what type of investment to make or how they are going to take their business to the next level so that their business doesn’t get caught up in the economic slump as well.

Marketing is an important part of any business and the reason is simple. Proper marketing allows your business to get seen and heard. It’s a given fact that no matter how good or affordable your products and services are,people won’t buy them if they don’t know where to find them,let alone know that they even exist in the first place. Most marketing strategies don’t come cheap,especially if you want to reach out to a huge market. However,this isn’t the case when it comes to the internet. The internet is a really powerful tool that a lot of businesses fail to see the true potential. Most people surf the net every single day. In fact,consumers nowadays are a lot wiser but they’re also stubborn to a certain extent. They’re wiser because they take the time to do research about the products and services that they want to buy. They turn to the web to look for reviews about the things that they need to buy and the companies where they plan on buying them from. They’re stubborn to a certain extent because they want to get quick results when they look for something. This is how people behave when they use search engines such as Google,Yahoo,and Bing. 

Now,here’s something even more important that you need to know. When people look for something using search engines,they assume that the sites of companies that are found on the top of the search results are the best ones out there. They think that these companies are at the top of the search results because they offer something really good and something that people can rely on. This is where trust is initially established and this is something that people want to feel before they decide to buy something. People want to make sure that they’re not going to waste their hard-earned money on something that’s not worth it.

Your business may have the products and services that are the best in your industry,the only problem is that they lack exposure. You want your business to be at the top of people’s mind,but you know that the traditional yellow pages and newspaper ads just aren’t worth the huge sums they cost nowadays. That’s where Make Page One can help. We offer reliable internet marketing services that will give you and your business that steady boost of new customers without robbing you.

Here at Make Page One,we have helped businesses get more customers by helping them get in front of many more people on the internet. By helping you get ranked in the search engines,we increase the number of visitors to your website every single day. But we believe that in order for you to get more money out of your business,you need to turn visitors into actual customers by convincing them to actually buy whatever it is that you have to offer. We help you to get the conversions that you need by highlighting the positive aspects of your products and services.

Make Page One is almost like a limo service that will find your customers;brings them to your store;and delivers them right in front of your cash register with your products or services in hand.

Being on the first page of search results brings you business that would have gone to your competitors. Are you OK with being invisible? Let’s change that. Give us a call or fill out the form on the contact page.

 

September 26th,2011 | Tags:,,,,, | Category:Austin SEO | Comments are closed

Austin SEO Services

Would you like to increase the leads / sales generated from your website?

Would you like to be listed at the top of every major search engine such as Google,Yahoo! &Bing for multiple search phrases (keywords) relevant to your products / services?

Would you like an abundance of laser targeted high quality visitors to your website every day?

MakePageOne provides a complete solution for your Online Business need. Our SEO &Marketing Steps and the Activities to Rank You are:

  • 1. Keywords Research
  • 2. Competition Analysis
  • 3. Optimized Content Creation
  • 4. Keywords Optimization
  • 5. Back Link Creation/Link Building
  • 6. Manage Submission so Search Engines and Directories Find Your Site Naturally (much better than direct submissions)
  • 7. Submission to Article Directories
  • 8. Video Creation and Submission for SEO Purposes
  • 9. Video Creation for Marketing Purposes
  • 10. Social Media Profile Creation
  • 11. Citation Creation (helps rank locally)
  • 12. List Building / Email Marketing / Drip Campaign Managment
  • 13. Reputation Management

September 20th,2011 | Category:Austin SEO | Comments are closed

On-Page Ranking Factors

Here is a good synopsis of what to look for in your website to help it rank. This chart is actually old (2006) but little has changed for on-page factors in ranking as these are common sense things that work to help the search engines determine what your page is about.

 

1. Alleged POSITIVE ON-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors (38)
(Keeping in mind the converse,of course,that when violated,some of these factors
immediately jump into the NEGATIVE On-Page Ranking Factors domain.)

The term “Keyword”below refers to the “Keyword Phrase”,which can be one word or more.
Green rows confirmed by Google patent of Aug. 10,2006

Note -
Patent
Claim
#		Factor
#		POSITIVE
ON-Page SEO Factors		Brief Note
50-KEYWORDSGoogle patent - Topic extraction
For keyword selection,
try Google Ad Words –Google Trends
HOT1Keyword in URLFirst word is best,second is second best,etc.
HOT2Keyword in Domain nameSame as in page-name-with-hyphens
-Keywords – Header
HOT3Keyword in Title tagKeyword in Title tag –close to beginning
Title tag 10 –60 characters,no special characters.
-4Keyword in Description meta tagShows theme –less than 200 chars.
Google no longer “relies”upon this tag,but will often use it.
-5Keyword in Keyword metatagShows theme –less than 10 words.
Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not,it can be penalized for irrelevance.
No single word should appear more than twice.
If not,it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag,but others do.
-Keywords – Body
-6Keyword density in body text5 –20% –(all keywords/ total words)
Some report topic sensitivity –the keyword spamming threshold % varies with the topic.
-7Individual keyword density1 –6% –(each keyword/ total words)
HOT8Keyword in H1,H2 and H3Use Hx font style tags appropriately
-9Keyword font size“Strong is treated the same as bold,italic is treated the same as emphasis”. . . Matt Cutts July 2006
-10Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords)Directly adjacent is best
-11Keyword phrase orderDoes word order in the page match word order in the query?
Try to anticipate query,and match word order.
-12Keyword prominence (how early in page/tag)Can be important at top of page,in bold,in large font
-Keywords – Other
-13Keyword in alt textShould describe graphic –Do NOT fill with spam
(Was part of Google Florida OOP –tripped a threshold –may still be in effect to some degree as a red flag,when summed with all other on-page optimization –total page optimization score –TPOS).
-14Keyword in links to site pages (anchor text)Links out anchor text use keyword?
-NAVIGATION –INTERNAL LINKS
SITE15To internal pages- keywords?Link should contain keywords.
The filename “linked to”should contain the keywords.
Use hyphenated filenames,but not long ones –two or three hyphens only.
SITE16All Internal links valid?Validate all links to all pages on site.
Use a free link checker. I like this one.
SITE17Efficient –tree-like structureTRY FOR two clicks to any page –no page deeper than 4 clicks
SITE18Intra-site linkingAppropriate links between lower-level pages
54-NAVIGATION –OUTGOING LINKS
5519To external pages- keywords?Google patent - Link only to good sites. Do not link to link farms. CAREFUL –Links can and do go bad, resulting in site demotion. Unfortunately,you must devote the time necessary to police your outgoing links –they are your responsibility.
5620Outgoing link Anchor TextGoogle patent - Should be on topic,descriptive
61,6221Link stability over timeGoogle patent - Avoid “Link Churn”
-22All External links valid?Validate all links periodically.
-23Less than 100 links out totalGoogle says limit to 100,
but readily accepts 2-3 times that number. ref 2k
-121
(added)		Linking to AuthoritySome say this gives a boost -
Others say that is absurd. However,it certainly is the opposite of linking to trash,which WILL hurt you.
-OTHER ON-Page Factors
-24Domain Name Extension
Top Level Domain –TLD		.gov sites seem to be the highest status
.edu sites seem to be given a high status
.org sites seem to be given a high status
.com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/ crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google.
Perhaps one would do well with the new .info domain class.<update>–Nope. Spammers jumped all over it –no safe haven there. Not so much,now – .info sites can rank highly.
-25File SizeTry not to exceed 100K page size (however,some subject matter,such as this page,requires larger file sizes).
Smaller files are preferred <40K (lots of them).
-26Hyphens in URLPreferred method for indicating a space,where there can be no actual space
One or two= excellent for separating keywords (i.e., pet-smart,pets-mart)
Four or more= BAD,starts to look spammy
Ten = Spammer for sure,demotion probable?
6,7
12,13		27Freshness of PagesGoogle patent - Changes over time
Newer the better –if news,retail or auction!
Google likes fresh pages. So do I.
8,928Freshness –Amount of Content ChangeNew pages –Ratio of old pages to new pages
2729Freshness of LinksGoogle patent - May be good or bad
Excellent for high-trust sites
May not be so good for newer,low-trust sites
-30Frequency of UpdatesFrequent updates = frequent spidering = newer cache
-31Page ThemingPage exhibit theme? General consistency?
-32Keyword stemmingStem,stems,stemmed,stemmer,
stemming,stemmist,stemification
-33Applied SemanticsSynonyms,CIRCA white paper
-34LSILatent Semantic Indexing –Speculation,no proof
-35URL lengthKeep it minimized –use somewhat less than the 2,000 characters allowed by IE –less than 100 is good,less is even better
-OTHER ON-SITE Factors
536Site Size –Google likes big sitesLarger sites are presumed to be better funded, better organized,better constructed,and therefore better sites. Google likes LARGE sites,for various reasons,not all positive. This has resulted in the advent of machine-generated 10,000-page spam sites –size for the sake of size. Google has caught on and dumped millions of pages,or made them supplemental.
437Site AgeGoogle patent - Old is best. Old is Golden.
338Age of page vs. age of siteAge of page vs. age of other pages on site
Newer pages on an older site will get faster recognition.
-Note:For ALL the POSITIVE On-Page factors listed above,
PAGE RANK can OVERRIDE them all. So can Google-Bombing.

This chart is from:http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm

May 22nd,2011 | Category:Austin SEO | Comments are closed

Details On How Google’s New Panda Update Can Affect Your Website

The Details On How Google’s New Panda Update Can Affect Your Website

On April 13,Google released another piece of information about its Panda Update and eventually released the update. This caused a lot of people to get stirred up and scared. Most internet marketers got confused about how they’re going to go about their SEO campaigns. Numerous questions are lingering in the minds of search engine optimizers. How is this update going to affect us? Are the same tools and strategies still going to be effective to achieve good rankings?

As they say,change is constant. The worst thing that you can do in the midst of this new controversial update is to freeze your campaigns. and put things on hold. On this page we will be looking at what has changed and how we can continue to be effective with our SEO campaigns.

So What’s This New Update All About? The Google Panda Update

The Panda Update,which is also referred to as the Farmer Update is said to be one of the largest algorithm changes that Google has made within the past 8 years. This update has affected more than 16% of all search engine queries that have been seen lately. Websites that seem to have been affected the most include price comparison sites,article sites,and web 2.0 type properties.  A few years ago,around 2008,sites like Ezine Articles,GoArticles,Blogger,Blogspot,Squidoo,and Hubpages used to be Google’s favorites. Getting posts on these sites to make page one on Google only took a few days and a little bit of backlink building. But now they seemed to have taken a seat in the back of the bus.

Some “Don’t Do’s”For The Panda Update

After looking closely at the ads,backlinks,duplicate content,anchor texts,and meta information of a lot of sites. I have noticed what I feel are the prohibitions that Google is taking aim at.

1.   Dated materials,low quality articles,and pages that made use of black strategies on like keyword stuffing can also cause negative effects on a site. Because of this,it is important that you check all of the pages of your site. This is the perfect time for you to clean up your site. If you have any of the pages that I have mentioned above,then it’s time that you take them off. In addition,you should also use 301 redirects to your new posts. Among the different pages that you have on your site,those with duplicate content are the ones that you should really remove.

2.   Duplicate content can simply kill your website rankings,so you should never resort to this kind of thing just because you’re too lazy to write high quality posts. Sites that had a large batch of duplicate on them plummeted down while those with original articles flourished well so if you have duplicate content on one of your pages,take it off now. Make a 301 redirect from the page that has duplicate content towards your most prevalent article. Keep in mind that duplicate content is bad but syndication is not.

3.    Ads appear to cause negative effects on rankings. Most of the sites that had great negative effects on their rankings were those that had a huge bunch of banner ads,AdSense Ads,and others. If you want to stick on to high rankings,you should limit the number of ads that you place on your site. And,if you saw a major dip in your rankings,it is highly suggested that you take off all of your ads until you get back your usually volume of traffic. This no no doesn’t seem to apply on affiliate ads that are placed on the body of articles unless you go overboard with these as well.

4.   Excessive outbound links can also kill your site’s ranking. You should avoid placing a lot of outbound links on your website. This was really evident on price comparison sites as well as coupon code sites. Because of the large number of outbound links that these kinds of sites had on their pages that were pointing to other websites,they were negatively affected to a huge extent. In addition,most of these sites had a lot of broken links.

There are a lot of good reasons for duplicate on a website. Some internet marketers are using printer friendly versions while others go for text only versions of articles. Both of these varieties contain the same content but are situated on different URLs. If you’re faced with this kind of situation,here’s how JohnMu from Google suggests you deal with it.

For instance,if you have the exact same content on:

a.    http://www.yourdomain.com/page.php?id=14

b.    http://yourdomain.com/panda-update.php

And then if your robots.txt file has:user-agent:*disallow:/*?,this would prevent Google from crawling URL a. However,doing this kind of thing will also prevent Google from knowing that these two URLs have the same content. In case links going to URL a. are found,they might still get indexed but they won’t get crawled. Because of this,they might end up as unknown URLs. On the other hand,if URL A is allowed to get crawled,then Google’s systems will get the chance to know that both of the URLs above have the same content. This in turn will allow it to forward information and context about one of the URLs to the version that has been indexed. Moreover,you can utilize different canonicalization strategies so that you can ascertain that Google indexes the version that your prefer.

5.    Backlinks that come from only the same source are also a huge no no to the Panda Update. If you experienced has drastic negative effects because of this update and you don’t have outbound links,duplicate content,etc. Then,there’s a huge chance that you’ve been affected because most of your sources for backlinks have been gravely affected. For example,if you only rely on Hubpages for your site’s backlinks,then you will surely notice a drop in your primary domain’s rankings. This is because some of the backlinks from Hubpages have lost their link juice. It’s really never a good idea to get all of your links from only one source. You should always use a variety of SEO techniques instead of just focusing on backlinks from articles and web 2.0 websites. A site looks a lot prettier to Google if it has a wide base of backlinks that come from different sources such as social bookmarking,RSS,directory submissions,pinging,and many others. Through this,you can get a secured position in the SERPs.

Google Rewards Great Effort!

As we all know,Google rewards websites that offer a good experience to its users. Based on this,you should know that when you write new posts on your site or when you contemplate on how you’re going to lay out the pages of your site,you should always consider or keep your target market in mind. A site that offers a good experience to its visitors is one that doesn’t focus on ads. Your site should be easy to navigate;it shouldn’t have broken links;and it shouldn’t contain outdated materials because Google uses these things as indicators of a low-quality site.

Google will continuously refine their algorithm in order to get rid of sites that don’t offer a good experience to their users. So,if you’re using white hat SEO strategies,make sure that you vary up your link sources and produce quality content. In this way,you don’t have to worry about losing your online business in a really short period of time just because of this update.

If you lost a huge amount of your traffic because of Google’s Panda Update,you shouldn’t panic. The good side to this is that you weren’t affected by Yahoo or Bing,which means that you will still have good sources of traffic for your site while you’re still recovering. This goes to show that you should also vary your SEO methods. Don’t just focus on Google and leave Bing in the backburner. If you do this,then you’re giving up approximately 30% of the online industry’s traffic. In addition,you’re also placing all of your eggs in one basket.

In order to restore your site’s Google ranking,set up a Google Webmaster Tools account and dig through the pages of your site. Make all of the necessary changes based on what I have discussed above. After you finish weeding out all of the negative characteristics of your site,it’s time for you to look at the positive aspects of the Panda Update and apply those onto your site.

Taking Advantage Of The Panda Update

Like any other algorithm change that Google makes,it makes it a zero sum game. This means that some website are going to go down the rankings while others are going to take their place. Through this,we can evaluate what Google doesn’t like which allows us to take a closer look at what they like.

Recently,the sites that had the largest improvements in rankings include media sites especially video sites,social media sites,news sites,sharing sites,and blogs.

Let’s have a look at the positive ranking factors of the Panda Update.

1.    Unique Content

I think the reason for this is already very apparent. You should always create unique and high quality content.

2.    Video Content

People really enjoy video a lot. Because of this,video content has experienced a huge spike. Adding videos to your site will not only boost your rankings but as well as your sales.

3.    Social Media

Google uses social media and sharing as indicators that you have good content on your site. Using software like Ping Kaching that allows you to easily submit your content to social networking sites,is a good idea. These types of software often allow you to update your Twitter,Facebook,Tumblr,Yahoo Buzz,Google Buzz accounts,and many others. This is an excellent way for you to prove to Google that you have really good content without having to kill yourself during the process. Syncing your social media profiles to your site is also a good thing to do.

4.    Posting Blog Posts On A Regular Basis

Having fresh content on your site on a regular basis is vital. When you make new posts on your site,be sure to distribute their links to different social bookmarking and social media websites.

5.    Article Length

Sites with articles that are composed of 300 or more words are doing way better than those that have articles made of 200 words or less. Make sure that you always hit that 300-word length when you make posts for your site. Google seems to consider shorter articles to be low quality.

6.    Domain Age

According to a research study,domain age plays a large role in ranking factors. However,it wouldn’t be a wise decision to switch your business to a new aged domain just because of this single reason. But,if on the other hand,you have plans of putting up a new business,then you should have no reason not to choose an aged domain.

Syndication And Duplicate Content

A lot of people are confused about these two things. Some think that they are the same thing but they’re not. Syndication can really help your site go up the rankings while duplicate content can push it downwards. Syndication allows you to spread your content to different websites. This is a good thing. A perfect example of this would be press releases. A singe press release can be distributed to different websites without getting axed by Google. They all have the same content but they’re not regarded as something negative. Duplicate content that’s posted on two different URLs on your site on the other hand,can cause some serious damage on your rankings.

Learning is a continuous process. This principle is also true in the online industry so if you encounter new updates and changes in algorithm,don’t resort to panicking. Instead,take a look at the options and setup a game plan that will allow you to continue to move forward towards success.

Find out more how you can take advantage of the new Panda update by contacting us at MakePageOne.com. (Fill out the form on this page or drop me an email at  dan@makepageone.com)  We can take a look at your website and come up with a game plan for you to dominate your competition on the web.

April 15th,2011 | Tags:,,, | Category:Austin Search Engine Optimization | Comments are closed
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