Here we take an indepth look and bring to light some hidden factors in what it takes to succeed in online marketing. These simple, yet often overlooked details can have a big impact in helping us accomplish our goals as online marketers.

Having content that goes viral can seem like pure luck, but there are a number of steps you can take to improve your chances. The following video should provide you with some helpful information to make your content spread like an out of control brush fire.

SEO Linking Tips and Video

We know from test and experience that different links pass much different values for SEO purposes. Sometimes you build links that immediately improve your rankings, while other links do nothing to alter your position. The value of a link varies according to different factors, including:

Internal vs. External Links and most importantly Authority and Trust of the Linking Domain. Other factors include the position of the link on the page and alt attributes vs. text links. These are just a few.

What happens when you build new links on old pages?

Understanding the Long Tail Search

What is Long Tail Search and How Does it Affect My Website Traffic

A brief explanation of the “Long Tail Search” simply states: lots of key phrases individually account for little traffic by themselves but collectively all those key phrases often could account for a huge amount of traffic.

While the primary keyword phrase for my site might be plumbing repair service and this phrase might drive most of the traffic to my site, I can greatly enhance the traffic to my site by naming my page “best service, lowest priced plumbing repair service company in the Glennwood residential community”. The more “minor” keywords I can link with my major search terms, the more likely my site will be found in a search. You never know for sure what people are going to search for. Google states that 20% of search terms each day have never been used before. There are no doubt trillions and trillions of possibilities.

You also may have notice that when you now search for a product or service in Google, Google tries to figure out what you are searching for and offers a “type ahead” word to try and match what they think you are looking for.

The following graphic from our friends at SEO Book, will explain this phenomenon.

Infographic by SEO Book

Very recently Google announced that they had released a new search update that could potentially impact over 30 percent of searches. Like so many recent revisions by Google they are attempting to give you the consumer a better chance of finding data that is fresh and relevant.

Atlanta SEO Tips | Fresh and Relevant Content

If I do a search for European debt crisis, I want that information to be relevant to what is happening right now. There should be some information about Greece and Italy, which is relevant to what is happening today. I don’t want to uncover some information about the debt crisis that occurred last year.

If I am researching search engine optimization strategies I don’t want to find blogs or forums about SEO that are dated 2008. A whole heck of a lot has happened in the world of SEO since 2008. Google has been made huge changes this year alone and if I’m researching SEO I want to find the latest info.

In order for your website to be taken seriously by the search engines, then you need to take the time to keep the content on your site fresh and relevant. Because we use the latest WordPress plug-in for site maps, your site map will have a timestamp which indicates the last time that page or post was updated. This should definitely help you in the Google rankings.

I have posted a video below from some experts which goes into this in much more detail and I hope you find it useful. Thanks for looking at our Atlanta SEO website.

In our recent post regarding the types of on the page SEO and off the page SEO we discussed the right things to do to improve your search engine rankings. In this article, we discuss the things that hurt or reduce your rankings in the search engines.

Atlanta Web Pros | SEO Tips | Content That Will Reduce Your Search Engine Ranking

Search engine violations

Search engine optimization that benefits your website is known as white hat marketing. SCO that does not follow these guidelines is known as Black cat marketing. A good SEO strategy will follow white hat techniques and along with good quality content will get you higher rankings in the search engines. Following black cat techniques is seen as a violation by the search engine’s and will punish your site with reduced rankings and in some cases even ban your site.

It is important that you understand the basic guidelines for Whitehead marketing so that the people you hire are the marketing that you perform for your site is deemed positive by the search engines. The below information should give you a better idea of some of the black cat marketing techniques. These are by no means all of them. Over the years marketers have tried many different techniques to fool the search engines. It is not nice to fool mother Google. She takes her search integrity very seriously.

1. Thin content – Your content should be useful, thoughtful, properly punctuated and use proper spelling and grammar.
2. Keyword stuffing – Do you excessively use the same terms over and over that you want to be found for? There is no reason to have the same keyword or keyword phrase on the page more than two or three times.
3. Hidden text – For example if you have a lot of white space on your page and then you use white colored text that only the search engines can see and your readers cannot.
4. Cloaking – Does your code direct search engines to one page while your content for the readers is shown on another page.
5. Paid links – There are websites that actually charge you for a link from them. Not a good idea; it is like paying for friends.
6. Link spam – Do you continually spam other blogs and forums solely for the purpose of creating a link to your own website?

In the early days of the internet, most companies put up a web site and were happy to receive additional business. They felt empowered, by being able to offer goods and services to a worldwide audience, and any business derived from online was seen as gravy.

After the dot com crash and the coming of the new millennium there have been many changes in the worldwide internet market. The emergence of new technologies and a new way of thinking have emerged and this new thought process has been termed Web 2.0. For companies to be successful online marketers today, they need to embrace the power of the web to harness collective intelligence, and business intelligence, through web reporting and analytics.

Companies like Amazon sell the same thing you can buy in any store at the mall, but they have become hugely successful because they harness the power of web 2.0. That is, they collect information, and turn that information into an analytical tool that continues to enthuse, enthrall and engage their customers. Today, information has more value than ever before – just look at Google and their hugely successful Google analytics program.

As the volume of information that you collect on your web site grows, you need powerful and flexible tools to uncover visitor preferences and share this data throughout your organization.

You need to make decisions regarding the products and services that you are offering online, in relationship to the products and services (largely based on search engines) that your potential customers want and desire.

In this new and still emerging environment, web analytics constantly faces new challenges as new web technologies are developed. Information gathering material such as blogs, RSS, user-generated content and the use of qualitative analysis (surveys and such) are considered to be highly useful for marketers.

Our proprietary process tracks individual stats from search engines and keyword searches, onsite stats and telephone reporting. This process allows us to uncover the search engines and keywords that that lead to new customers and more sales.

Then we continue to improve and optimize the keyword focus of your Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns to develop the most efficient lead generation tool.

If you are a Small Business Owner you need to understand how Search Engines View and Rank Websites. Only then can you go forward with analyzing your site and methodically making improvements. Obviously, the better optimized  your pages, the higher they will rank, and the more visits you will receive.

Atlanta Web Pros | Website SEO Tips | Understanding Search Engines

There are two main parts to search engine optimization. These are on the page SEO and off the page SEO. Search engines will reward sites that have the right combination of ranking factors. Below is a list of the major items for on the page SEO. They are content, HTML, and architecture.

On the Page SEO

Content

1. Content quality – Getting quality content is the #1 key and it must be compelling in order to get your visitors to take action.  Get them on the site, then get them to take some action.
2. Well researched keywords* to find your content. This must be researched before you even write the content.
3. Actual words and phrases used where you would expect to find them.  Many people fail to do do this.
4. Bounce rate* –  how much time people spend on your site.
5. Freshness of quality – talking about hot topics. (Engaging and Useful Content)

HTML

1. Page titles – do HTML title tags contain the keywords on the page that you want to be found for.
2. Descriptions – do your meta description tags* reflect what the page is about?
3. Headers – do your headers* and subheads use relevant keywords

Architecture

1. Can search engines easily crawl your site – your site layout needs to be logical, and have a good site map*
2. Does your site load quickly – you need to be sure and optimize your graphics and images and not use really large files.
3. Are your page names relatively short and do they contain meaningful keywords for your page topics

Off the page SEO

Links

1. Link quality – these are links that come from high quality and trusted websites*
2. Text links – this refers to the content of the text that is linking to your site – using your relevant keywords
3. Link number – are there a lot of sites referring to your website?

Social

1. Reputation – are the links to your site from high quality social sites like Facebook?
2. Content sharing –  do a lot of your friends share your content on their social networks?
3. Trust – do the links and social sharing come from trusted authorities, i.e. quality websites?
4. History – has your website been around for a while operating in pretty much the same manner?

Personal

1. What country are you located in?
2. What city or local area are you located in?
3. Do you have regular visitors to your site?

If you are a small business owner and you are not the webmaster, then understanding these very important ranking factors will help you communicate with your webmaster or developer. Any developer should understand the importance of these concepts.

If you have a quality website that is a content management sytem then you will be likely doing much of this yourself.  If you have a blog, then you are going to want to go through these steps before you post
your content.

Keep in mind that no one but Google and the other Search Engines know how these factors are weighted. For example, Content may count for 60% of the on the page SEO, while architecture may count for 20%.

*Keywords – these are the words that you want your site to found for.  For example “auto repair”.

*Bounce Rate – A measure which determines how long visitors stay on your site.

*Description Tags – These are coded into your website and do not show on the page.  They tell the search engines what your page is about.

*Headers – These are the paragraph headings that describe what follows in the next paragraph of text.

*Sitemap – This is a file in your directory that Google can go to and see exactly how your site is structured. Every site should have a sitemap.  There are tools to generate these for your site automatically.

*Trusted Websites – These are generally pages with a high Google Page Rank. Page rank is Google’s measure of their subjective view of your site ranging from 0 (no rank) to 10 (highest rank).  More than 95% of the pages on the web have zero page rank. You can search for “Google page rank toolbar addon” for your browser or you can check any sites page rank by clicking here.

Website Design Tips Atlanta, GA

1. It should be obvious what your website is about within a few seconds of landing on your site. Take another closer looks at at your site and make sure that is readily apparent to anyone landing on your site by accident or other means, what your site is about.
2. The content should be scannable as opposed to long paragraphs. Use bullet points and headlines to grab attention.
3. Avoid the use of fancy fonts.
4. Do not require registration to your site unless it is absolutely necessary.
5. Never subscribe the website visitor to anything without their consent.
6. Avoid the use of flash if possible, except in very limited situations.
7. If you have audio files do not play the music automatically, let the user activate it.
8. Make sure there are contact forms or other means to contact you readily available on the front page to see.
9. Do not use gimmicks such as blinking text to grab people’s attention.
10. Do not use HTML tables for site structure. Today everyone uses cascading style sheets to layout  their sites.
11. If you are linking to PDF files then make sure you disclose that and put a link available to download the PDF reader.
12. Avoid flash intros to your website which forces readers to have to wait to see what your site is about.
13. Ensure that your website is readable in all the major browsers including Firefox, Internet Explorer,  Google Chrome and Safari.
14. Make sure you use alt tags on your images to ensure that people with disabilities can  know what your pictures are about.
15. Avoid pop-ups on your website. They are very annoying
16. Avoid long pages. People simply don’t want to do a lot of reading on the web. The information that is important and relevant should be in the top part of your website known as “above the fold”. When Google scans your site it ranks the information that is at the top of the page higher.