Early this Monday morning news broke about hackers accessing Zappos and their affiliate site servers. User data and other sensitive information was compromised and emails were sent out to those that were effected.

“We are writing to let you know that there may have been illegal and unauthorized access to some of your customer account information on Zappos.com, including one or more of the following: your name, e-mail address, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, the last four digits of your credit card number (the standard information you find on receipts), and/or your cryptographically scrambled password (but not your actual password),” wrote Zappos and 6PM.com in a note to users.

Due to the attack, affected users have had their password reset as a security precaution. But the information that was stolen is now in the wind and there is no way to know what the affects of this data heist may have on the accounts accessed.

Unfortunately this story is nothing new to the online world. Login data is stolen on a regular basis from sites all across the internet. That’s why at SEO Services we take extra steps to keep all of our customers’ login data not only secure, but we also create unique passwords for each and every account that we setup. Whether it is a Google account or a minor social media media channel, all accounts have their own password so that if one of those passwords happens to be stolen it will not affect the integrity of the other accounts.

SEO Services is one of the elite search engine marketing companies specializing in organic search engine results. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, SEO Services has achieved incredible success in organic search engine results in numerous industries. We are committed to providing our customers the very best in search engine optimization services.

Last month we posted an alert that Google Plus is now open for businesses and since then thousands of pages have been created on Google’s new social network. With the huge interest in the new social network Google has been cranking out some updates to the Pages interface and last week they posted a blog post featuring the latest improvements to Google Pages.

First of all, there is now an ability to add up to 50 managers to your Page. Managers can publish posts, respond to comments, add photos, change profile information, and even add/remove other managers. This is particularly valuable to us as an online marketing firm because our clients can now add us as managers to their pages, which allows us to make changes, but still gives our clients full ownership of the Google+ Page.

Next, Google has added a way for Page owners and managers to get notifications about actions that take place on their pages. With this change, you’ll be able to customize the notifications for your business page separately from your personal profile, allowing you to choose the level of detail that’s most appropriate for you.

This last update is not as major as the others, but it is nice for vanity reasons at least. The bolded count number on your will now include both the page’s +1′s on Google+ and across the web as well as any people that have added you to a circle. Everybody loves to be popular and any way to get that +1 count higher is always welcome.

Give SEO Services a call today and we can help you better understand the role of social media in online marketing and SEO ranking.

As the year draws to a close, Google has posted the most popular search results of 2011. Sorting through the billions of searches there were 10 fastest rising global queries. In addition to providing the data, Google also presents the top rising searches in this beautiful YouTube video.

To give you some perspective on the top rising searches of 2011, let’s take a look at the percentage increase for each one:

1. Rebecca Black – >10,000% more searches.
2. Google Plus – 10,000% more searches.
3. Ryan Dunn – 10,000% more searches.
4. Casey Anthony – 2,680% more searches.
5. Battlefield 3 – 1,773% more searches.
6. iPhone 5 – 1,658% more searches.
7. Adele – 1,588% more searches.
8. 東京 電力 (TEPCO) -1,470% more searches.
9. Steve Jobs – 982% more searches.
10. iPad 2 – 939% more searches.

Taking a look at the list, it is impressive that Apple products holds two places in the top 10 considering that this top 10 list is not the total search volume of the year, it is the fastest rising searches. So that means even with the volume of searches already happening for iPhone 5 and iPad 2, the searches increased phenomenally higher from 2010 to 2011.

At SEO Services to take search very seriously and our know of the search engine optimization industry has put us at the top as one of the elite search engine marketing companies specializing in organic search engine results. We are committed to providing our customers the very best in search engine optimization services.

In a blog post about a month ago Google announced changes to its search algorithm that the company says will impact 35% of web searches. In areas where the “freshness” of the search results matter, like recent events, hot topics, current events, and breaking news items, the results will be weighted more heavily towards newer content.

A practical example of these changes is most easily understood for a search like “presidential election.” Rather than typing the election year you are looking for, Google will now give you the most up-to-date results at the top of the page.

The big news is that Google believes this change will impact 35% of all web searches! Although the majority of web searches do not include topics that require frequent updates, over a third will be directly affected by these changes. According to the Google blog post, the major areas of change will be in the following types of searches:

Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.

Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 5 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.

Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

Just when you think you’ve got a pulse on the Google search ranking factors, things change. At SEO Services we take a wide variety of tools to get your website to the top of Google and other search engines. Our SEO consulting services are designed to learn your business and create a marketing strategy to achieve top rankings above your competition.

In a blog post last week Google announced changes to its search algorithm that the company says will impact 35% of web searches. In areas where the “freshness” of the search results matter, like recent events, hot topics, current events, and breaking news items, the results will be weighted more heavily towards newer content.

A practical example of these changes are most easily understood for a search like “presidential election.” Rather than typing the election year you are looking for, Google will now give you the most up-to-date results at the top of the page.

The big news is that these changes will impact 35% of all web searches! Although the majority of web searches do not include topics that require frequent updates, over a third will be directly effected by these changes. According to the Google blog post, the major areas of change will be in the following types of searches:

• Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
• Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.
• Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

Just when you think you’ve got a pulse on the Google search ranking factors, things will change. That’s why at SEO Services, we have established a reputation as search engine experts. We learn your business, research your industry, and create a SEO strategy including a wide variety of methodologies like link building and social media marketing. Call us today for a free website analysis.

How’s your website performing on a day-to-day basis? Using these three groups of metrics you can measure the success of your website, track content consumption, and visitor engagement.

First let’s review four key metrics that will help you track the overall success of your website. Basically, these are the key factors that determine if you are making money through your online visitors or if they are typically leaving your website without purchasing anything.

Track The Success of Your Website
1. Visits – The number of visitors to your website is the most basic metric of success. If you are already use search engine optimization to drive traffic to your website, the number of visits is an important success metric to measure.
2. Goals – The number of people that actually purchase something, fill out a form, or call a phone number is the true measure of success for a website.
3. Revenue – For e-commerce websites, each purchase or goal completion can be assigned a specific monetary value, which is a critical factor of success.
4. Goal Conversion Rate – Digging deeper, the percentage of visitors per conversion will tell you if the majority of your visitors are purchasing something or if they eventually leave the site.

Next, these three metrics will help you determine if the content on your website is interesting and/or informative to your visitors. Each metric is a gauge of how much your visitors are actually reading your website.

Track Content Consumption
1. Pageviews – If this number is under or close to 2 per visit, then it is a strong indication that your visitors are not finding your content to be interesting.
2. Average Time on Site – Each time someone opens your website the amount of time of that visit is measured. The longer amount of time they spend on your website, the stronger the indication that they are reading and interacting with your content.
3. Bounce Rate – This is the only number you want to see as low as possible. This metric states the percentage of people that immediately leave or close your website as soon as they land on it.

These final metrics are distinctly different from the content consumption metrics because they are definite ways to determine how much your visitors are interacting with your content. Other than reading your website content, an important goal is to get your visitors to share what they learn.

Track Visitor Engagement
1. Pages per Visit – This metric is very closely tied to the previously mentioned metric “average time on site.” The difference is that this metric tells how many times the visitors clicked on the links and viewed a new webpage. The more pages per visit indicates that your content is very engaging and informative.
2. Unique Social Actions – If your visitors really like what they read and find it to be very valuable, they will share it in a variety of ways. It is important to track these social interactions through social media buttons placed on your website.

SEO Services uses a wide variety of SEM services to insure that your website is ranked at the top of search engines and that your visitors are actively engaged with your website content.

Social media sites like YouTube might have started out as simply a way to share different forms of pictures, video, and text, but in the past few years social sites have been great platforms for gathering information about your customers and visitors. In this blog we’ll discuss the value of using the free YouTube Insights tracker, which is built directly into the YouTube admin panel.

Views

In the “views” tab users can track the history of the their videos’ views. More specifically, they can better understand the popularity of their video over time. While you may only sell products in the US, YouTube Insight can provide regional view stats. For example, you can track the popularity of each individual video in any country around the world. You might be surprised to see the interest from Asia or Europe. Also, you can view the popularity of your video on a state by state basis to discover which state in the US plays your videos the most.

Discovery

The next question is where all of these views came from, and that’s where the discovery tab comes in. Analyze each of your videos and find out how most users are finding your videos. This is a particularly important tab if you are using YouTube advertising, where you can really appreciate the large volume of viewers brought in through video ads.

Demographics

Next, we move to the break down of the viewers themselves. This tab will give details on age and gender. This data may or may not surprise you based on your products typical demographic. However, one thing that most people are surprised by is that YouTube is not a bunch of teenagers and young 20′s, it’s a very diverse mix of many age groups.

Community

The next tab helps you better understand what people are saying about your videos. Of course, all comments posted on your video are public, but this view is a quick way to get an analysis of comments over time and what the most frequent words used.

Hot Spots

Finally, the last section focuses on the ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video. The higher the graph, the hotter your video: fewer viewers are leaving your video and they may also be rewinding to watch that point in the video again. Audience attention is an overall measure of your video’s ability to retain its audience. This graph will help you make better videos in the future.

SEO Services is one of the elite search engine marketing companies specializing in organic search engine results. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, SEO Services has achieved incredible success in organic search engine results in numerous industries. We are committed to providing our customers the very best in search engine optimization services.

How do you know when a particular strategy, theory, or idea has gone from a good idea to something that’s widely accepted as a standard or fact? Well, how about a major news source devoting an entire discussion to the topic and giving advice on how it is done properly. Well, that’s exactly what telegraph.co.uk did last Thursday on their website.

“Being equipped with astute SEO knowledge can help business website owners increase their level of online visibility while also consolidating their original rankings in the search engine results pages.”

Here’s their top 10 tip list from The Telegraph:

In a recent article posted on seomoz.org, an SEO company set out to answer the question, “How many visitors can we expect, if we rank [x] for [y] keyword?” Using an extensive data gathering process (documented in the article) they were able to determine an estimated click-through rate based on a website’s ranking on a search result page.

Speaking directly to the quality of their data in the calculation, they stated that they are “confident in the validity of this CTR data as a baseline model, since the data was generated using more than 170,000 actual user visits across 324 keywords over a 6-month period.”

The Results
Below is a visual representation of the data gathered.

In summary:

• 18% CTR for number 1 rank.
• 10% CTR for number 2 rank.
• 7% CTR for number 3 rank.
• Rankings from fourth position and lower will receive 4.8% CTR or less.

Another interesting figure derived from the data is as follows:

• The percentage of users who click on an organic result in the top 10 is 52.32%.

This bit of data confirms that most search engine users will quickly glance through the top search page results and if they don’t find what they are looking for, they will perform a different search before clicking on a result.

In conclusion, using the click-through rates given above, you can determine the volume of traffic your website could receive if you attained a ranking of 10 or better. Simply determine the volume of traffic for any particular keyword and multiply that number by the click-through percentage we’ve stated above. As you can see, the potential volume of traffic from achieving top ranking on Google and other search engines is very high.

SEO Services is one of the elite search engine marketing companies specializing in organic search engine results. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, SEO Services has achieved incredible success in organic search engine results in numerous industries. We are committed to providing our customers the very best in search engine optimization and link building services.

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.