People make the mistake all the time in judging the strength of a website by the number of links. It’s really of no surprise as the most common way to check the inbound links to a website is by doing an inbound link search on Yahoo Site explorer. This is done by typing into the yahoo search box:

link:www.mydomain.com

For the below examples I will use http://www.seo-services.com

Now while the link count shows 18,404 inbound links to my website… it is pretty much meaningless.  You can conceivably have 18,000 links all from one website if you had a site-wide link on a huge website.  In fact… focusing on your total link number can even trigger google penalties!  Say you did get a site-wide link with the exact anchor text on every page of an 18,000 page website, that would likely cause a red flag to Google as this is the definition of a google bomb.  You should expect a keyword penalty of the anchor text keyword you used for this, and if you’re lucky, you will just not receive the link credit for this spam.

The metric that really matters is the amount of linking root domains.

Now other similar metrics are Referring IP Addresses, and Class C Subnets… but they generally referring to the same thing.

Question: What is a linking root domain?

Answer:  An individual website that is linking to you.  Ex. http://google.com.  Now this would include all subdomains (http://gmail.google.com, http://webmastertools.google.com, http://www.google.com, http://google.com, etc).  Pretty much *google.com.

Now there are some great tools out there that you can use for free to get these valuable statistics.  My favorite are:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

and

http://www.majesticseo.com/

Now while the linking root domains/referring domains are not exact, they are a much better measure of the work a site owner has done in link building.  Obviously the total external links will be different from yahoo’s counts, as  seomoz and majestic do not have the index size as the major search engines (although they are still very big).

So forget about the total external links!  And don’t you dare bring up page rank.  Linking root domains is where it is at.

Big brands like JCPenny and Overstock know it’s something to be concerned about, but do you know why Google penalizes websites? We spend a lot of time discussing ways to get your website ranked higher on Google, but for this week’s blog post we’ll focus on why some websites are slapped by the big hand of Google.

First, let’s start with a quote straight from the search engine giant’s mouth:

“…certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index.”

This quick blurb found on Google’s Webmaster Tools help cites cloaking and purposely misleading search engines. A further guidelines can be found in a webmaster guidelines article. Want to get your website banned from Google? Simply use:

• Hidden text or hidden links
• Cloaking or sneaky redirects
• Automated queries sent to Google
• Loading pages with irrelevant keywords
• Pages/sites with duplicate content
• Sites with malicious behavior (phishing, viruses, ect.)
• Cookie cutter sites with little or no original content

Of course, now that you know these guidelines, you would never use these tactics, but in recent news JCPenny was penalized for violating these guidelines. The shock to JCPenny was that they had never condoned these blackhat practices, their online marketing company was the one to toe the line. In fact they were shocked to learn about the violation. “J. C. Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links that you sent to us, as it is against our natural search policies,” a spokeswoman for J. C. Penney, Darcie Brossart, stated in an email.

The take home message here is that your business can pay the price for sketchy SEO practices. Ask questions, investigate, and confront your SEO company about their policy on adhering to Google’s terms of service. Black hat methods can provide quick results, but the consequences are monumental.

A few months ago we created a table which discussed the best use of each social network. It focused on different aspects of marketing: reputation management, targeted marketing, news, coupons, ect. Today we’ve found an infographic that takes that same idea from a different approach. Instead of different marketing purposes, the graphic at visual.ly gives the social landscape for customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site, and SEO.

For today’s blog post we will focus on just a few prime social properties as labeled in the infographic linked above and whether they are best suited for all, none, or some of the four major marketing focuses. First let’s take a look at what social media websites might be best for customer communication.

Best for Customer Communication:

• Twitter – Use keyword searches to track what people are saying about your business.
• Facebook – Great for engaging people who like your brand or products.
• Youtube – Video is a powerful channel to quickly engage your customers.

Best for Brand Exposure:

• Twitter – Powerful way to interact with current and new customers to push your brand.
• Facebook – Pages are great for brand exposure.
• LinkedIn – Effective for personal branding as well as an organization’s “people” power.
• YouTube – A very powerful branding tool. And it can be embedded anywhere.
• Digg – Opportunities are huge, especially for promoting objective coverage of your brand.

Best for Traffic to your Site:

• Digg – Known as the “Digg Effect,” this site and send huge amounts of traffic if content goes viral.
• StumbleUpon – A great platform for a wide range of people to see and promote your content.

Best for SEO:

• Flickr – Heavily indexed by search engines. Also helps for image ranking in Google Images.
• YouTube – Videos typically rank very highly and any links in the description are very good for SEO.
• Digg – Great source of quality SEO links. A standard in article submission.
• StumbleUpon – Front page tag is great for ranking as well as the profile pages.
• Delicious – Bookmarking your site through this site can lead to great links back to your url.

Social media marketing offers a wide range of benefits for your business. Visit SEO Services for more information about our online marketing services.

We’ve discussed, in my different ways, how to make sure your website shows up at the top of the major search engines. The millions of searches happening at any given time is proof enough that having your website at the top of Google or Bing is worth the effort. A growing field of interest is specialized online services that acquire a large volume of visitors, but often falls under the radar because the amount of traffic is eclipsed by Google.

Apart from your search engine listing, can people find your business using the wide variety of online directories? The following websites are important online resources to verify that your business is being represented correctly. All of these websites offer free registration so that you can make edits to your business listing. Some of these websites also offer paid features, but that is completely optional.

Social Media Listings
This are an important part of your online listings because most people will encounter these while they are using their smart phone to look for local businesses.

• Facebook Places – www.facebook.com/places
• Foursquare – www.foursquare.com
• Gowalla – www.gowalla.com
• Yelp – www.yelp.com
• Loopt.com – www.loopt.com

Search Engine Business Listings
This is completely different from your search engine ranking. Major search engines have now created online listings that are focused on localized results. These result often include a phone number and address.

• Google Places for Business – www.google.com/placesforbusiness
• Yahoo! Local – local.yahoo.com
• Local Listing Center – www.bing.com/businessportal

Online Directories
These websites are the digital representation of the old phone book. The paper phone book has just about died out, but these online listings are a great way to make sure you show up first in the search results.

• Yellow Pages – www.yellowpages.com
• ThinkLocal – www.thinklocal.com
• LocalPages – www.localpages.com

There are many resources that can lead to your website’s search ranking. If you are interested in getting to the top of the search results, check out our link building services. At SEO Services we create a marketing strategy to achieve top rankings above your competition.

Business owners are a busy, multitasking breed of people. Creative ways to reach new customers is always of interest. So it’s likely you’ve heard someone say something like this: “A guy I know uses [Twitter/Facebook/Linked] and gets tons of business from it all the time.”

It’s true that social media platforms are widely popular and used by a very wide spectrum of people, but does that mean it’s a foolproof way to acquire business leads and harvest new contacts? In a recent blog from the online invoicing professionals at Freshbooks, they discuss why gaining new clients through social media marketing isn’t as easy as it sounds.

In the blog post, they cite many different business owners that have experience using social platforms to sale their products and services. In a nutshell, “many entrepreneurs have reported being successful in finding new clients through social media platforms. The bad news is that these results are not instantaneous, may never happen, and may not even be easily measurable even if it does happen.”

The blog post goes on to discuss specific results gained from a social campaign by several business owners. The conclusion is that social media marketing is a great tool to use in marketing a business and making it successful. There is no better way to communicate quickly to a specific audience. However, unlike other marketing methods, social media is not a vending machine of leads in which you can post updates and expect the business to start rolling in. Social networks, specifically Twitter and Facebook, are populated by people that are not looking to purchase something or searching for an answer to a solution at the moment they see your business’s update. For that reason, the marketing success rate in social media is much lower than other marketing channels. The good news is that social media does provide a wonderful platform to help your business communicate it’s authority in a specific industry. And when a prospect does come around that would prefer to subscribe to your social channels they will continue to receive updates from your business, which keeps your brand first and foremost in their thoughts.

At SEO Services we manage and execute social media marketing campaigns that serve the needs of the entire business.

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to get your website to the top of search engines? Many SEO companies make promises about getting websites ranked to the top of Google, but the delivery isn’t as simple as you think. Search Engine Land has a periodic table of SEO ranking factors that gives a great example of the complicated tasks involved in getting websites ranked highly on popular search engines.

The image above is difficult to read because it is sized down so it will fit on our blog. If you want to see the full image, click the link in the first paragraph of the blog post.

For today’s discussion we will focus on just one column of the periodic table of SEO ranking factors, the “on the page content” column. The reason we are focusing on this section is because it is the most easily understood section for laymen who are not SEO experts. Basically the column lays out how to create quality content that search engines look for when they are ranking websites.

On The Page SEO Ranking Factors:

• Quality – Are pages well written and have substantial quality content?
• Research – Have you researched the keywords people may use to find your content?
• Words – Do pages use words and phrases you hope they’ll be found for?
• Engage – Do visitors spend time reading or do they bounce away quickly?
• Fresh – Are pages fresh and about hot topics?

These are just 5 of 30 different ranking factors cited in the periodic table. Your website’s content is the most critical factor in SEO, but content only makes up 17% of the factoring puzzle. Other factors like link building and site architecture are much more complicated and can not be completed as easily as changing the text on your website. At SEO Services we focus on all 30 SEO ranking aspects assuring that your website achieves the best possible ranking on Google and other popular search engines. Call us at 800-604-1985 today to schedule your free site evaluation.

Are you testing the waters of SEO, but unsure if your website would benefit? We’ve got a few simple questions that address the benefits of marketing your business using search engine optimization.

Can Search Engines Read Your Website?
Search engines can only read things that are able to highlighted on your website. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but we warned you in the title of the blog that this is a simple test. If your keywords are inside of an image or a video, Google and other search engines can not index this information. Therefore your website is not going to show up when people search for solutions within your industry. The next section broadens further on this topic.

What Are Search Engines Reading?
If you are using images or Flash media for your products or services, it’s likely Google is only reading the least important aspects of your website. This is a huge disadvantage because the keywords that your website rank for will be things that have nothing to do with your industry. For example, you might have text fine print at the bottom of your services page, but because google can not read anything expect for that fine print, that is what will actually show up on search engines. That’s the last thing you want your indexed for, because it is likely the limitation of what you can provide. Imagine someone searching on Google and seeing your website with the description underneath it stating “services require a $500 deposit.” Not only does that description not give them any idea about your actual services, but it gives them a reason not to click on your link.

Is Your Website an Island?
Building a website, no matter how good it looks, isn’t enough. You’ve got to have incoming links to your website, the same way you have to build roads to your building or nobody will ever show up. Another way to think of it is that Google is a hungry machine driving up and down the roads of the internet. If you don’t have any incoming sources, the search engines will pass you by, not to mention the potential traffic that the big hungry Google machine brings with it.

What is Your New/Returning Visitor Ratio?
Finally, this little test is often an eye opener for most people, but it is a great reality check. Open up your website’s analytics program. This is the program that tracks your visitors, where they come from and what they do while they are on your website. Look for a comparison between your new visitors and your returning visitors. If you see that the majority of your visitors are returning to your website, it is an indication that you are not driving new traffic to your website. Ideally a better statistic is a more evenly matched ratio of new to returning visitors, as shown in the image to the right.

Optimizing your website for search engines drives customers straight to your website. You don’t pay per visitor and when you hire SEO Services as your organic website marketing company, there’s nothing left to do except sit back and watch the traffic come in.

A few years ago, search engine optimization (SEO) was all about quantity over quality. Formally, having the right kind of keywords, quality content, and links coming to your website was just about all there was to it. Those were the simple days. Today those factors are still important, but the system is much more complex. Major search engines have learned how to filter through all the junk and find the websites that actually provide great content. One of those ways is through social networks. In a previous blog post we discussed Twitter and Facebook’s influence in SEO. So the important question is: “What’s your business’s social networking score?”

There are many ways to determine your current social standing, but for today’s blog post we will focus on Twitter. Using the website twittergrader.com, business owners can quickly determine their social standing on the popular micro blogging network. The score is based on several factors including your followers, number of tweets, and how long you have been on Twitter.

If you don’t take your social networks seriously, it’s likely the score you see won’t be very flattering. It takes a lot of time to generate conversation and community using Twitter. The value of creating a loyal following on Twitter is simple to understand, but even more importantly (at least for SEO) is that attention generates commentary, articles, and conversation. Every mention, Facebook like, and retweet helps rank organically while simultaneously adding to authority.

At SEO Services we manage and execute social media marketing campaigns that serve the needs of the entire business.

Social networks are extremely diverse. There are accounts focused on just about everything from puppies to healthcare. As a business, your social accounts should reflect the professional standard by which you conduct business. For that reason you can not expect to setup professional social networks the same way that you create personal accounts. There is a distinct difference between professional and personal in the social media marketing realm and it starts with how the account is setup from the beginning. We’ve got a few standards that will help keep your social accounts looking professional even on a relaxed social network.

Uniformity
Your business should have an identity and your social avatars should reflect that in its colors, backgrounds, and images. Your company logo should be the standard avatar, not your company products. Don’t confuse your subscribers by referring to yourself in different ways. Use the same logo and primary colors for all of your social networks.

Golden Rule
Do not misuse an open network to achieve your marketing goals. Treat others as would expect to be treated yourself. The number of followers or subscribers is not a goal. Social networks are designed for communication. Social spam is just as unacceptable as email spam. Do not use automated processes to follow, friend, or interact with people on social networks. There is nothing professional about a robot interacting with your customers.

Respectful
Each update on a social network requires a small amount of time for your subscribers to read. Respect their time. Don’t post updates that aren’t useful, informative, or entertaining. There are many ways to provide quality updates, but it’s always better to err on the side of moderation.

Timely Responses
Social accounts never expire. There will always been people viewing and responding to you. For that reason, you can not afford to let those social networks go unchecked. No one expects immediate responses, but an unmaintained account will accrue comments and questions that only reflect an unresponsive, uncaring company.

Social media marketing is a great way for a business to create buzz about their company and inspire loyalty with followers. At SEO Services we manage and execute social media campaigns that serve the needs of the entire business.

There is very few marketing platforms that have the same power of video marketing. A website with text and images will not hold the attention of visitors as well as a well produced video. But there are many more reasons to create a marketing video other than it grabbing your visitors’ attention.

1. Viewing Potential
More than 13 million hours of video were uploaded and there were over 700 billion playbacks in 2010! The potential viewership is astronomical. The best part is that the traffic to YouTube is very diverse. In fact, the main viewing audience is 18 to 54 years old.

2. Make Complex Products Simple
Using a video businesses can take a complicated service or product and make it understandable. A video is always preferable to reading text. Capture your viewer’s attention for a short video and you can communicate much more information than you’d be able to throw at them with text.

3. Video Made Easy
The popularity of YouTube is in it’s ease of use. A video can be shared and embedded directly on any webpage without any special coding knowledge. Finding an affordable video solution and getting it installed on your website is difficult.

4. Organic Ranking
Many people don’t know that Google owns YouTube. Because of that partnership, YouTube videos often show up right next to search results. Create a video that discusses a specific topic or keyword and you will have a much easier time ranking highly on search engines for that keyword because the competition is less saturated for videos.

At SEO Services we can provide an online marketing strategy that includes organic ranking and video marketing. We coupled with our link building process you will see results faster than you ever expected!