Web SEO Specialists

Reputation Management

Seo Expert — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:29:20 +0000

Reputation Management is the process of tracking and improving your online reputation (the opinions expressed by individuals and other websites). Generally, Reputation Management invovles the process of providing and improving positive search results on the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo!). Reputation Management is usually more extensive and time consuming than standard SEO, because Reputation Management requires promoting multiple pages/sites concurrently, to ensure those pages appear above more negative or unfavorable pages/sites.

Reputation is generally wrapped around character, what an individual, organization, society or state is known for, and it may be good, bad or ugly. This reputation that you are known for may not be real, but perception is the rule online.

Reputation is different from image or branding for the fact that the earlier can be created and the former is an identity that evolves. Reputation management is neither public relation nor data collecting nor advertisement management. It deals with the root cause of a problem, offers solutions, set processes in motion and monitors progress towards these solutions. For the effective management of reputation, the SEO Expert uses a process called R.I.P.E (Repair, Improve, Polish, or Eliminate).

Web SEO Specialists understands your online reputation is important to you and your company. We thoroughly research positive information about you and your company, and promote this to improve the online opinion of you, your company, and your products.

Give Web SEO Specialists a call today for a free consultation and Reputation Management report to find out how you rank in the major search engines. Whether you feel you have a good online reputation, want to build your online reputation, or want to improve an existing reputation, we can help you.

SEO Secrets Your Web Designer Isn’t Telling You

Seo Expert — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:08:43 +0000

What if I asked “What position in the major search engines does your site appear in for your target search terms?” Or how about “Does each page of your site have tailored Title and META Tags?”

If you would answer “No” or “I don’t know” to any of these questions, you would be amongst the 60% of web site owners whose web sites are missing out on traffic because they are not designed for search engine compatibility. Has your web designer optimized YOUR site for your target keywords? Have they made sure it is visible in Google and the other major search engines? More than likely, you don’t know because they haven’t told you. Ask them today!

But what exactly is search engine optimization? Simply explained, it is the technique of attaining a high ranking in search engines and directories via changes to your site code to make it more search engine compatible.

In my experience, web designers keep a lot of secrets. One of the biggest is that they have no clue about what makes a web site compatible with search engines. Another is that they like to build expensive, flashy sites and so convince their clients that an attractive web site never uses a lot of text.

So your web designer may have included target keywords and phrases in your Title tag and META tags (in the HTML code of your site). They may even have explained to you that these are very important references that search engines use when ranking web sites for search relevancy. I’ve met many a web designer who claimed that this was all it took to optimize a web site.

But did you know that you need to tailor your Title and META tags for each page of your site? Did you know that optimizing your site meta tags is only a tiny fraction of the job? Did you know that search engines actually need to find target keywords within the visible body text on your site pages in order to find it a relevant match for related search queries? Did you know that they also need to find those same keywords and phrases used within the text links that help people navigate your pages?

It’s true. For search engines to rank your site highly for particular words or phrases that you would expect potential visitors to type in, each individual page of your site MUST be built with those words and phrases in mind.

For example, if you are a Miami florist, you should have logical search phrases such as “flowers”, “Miami florists”, “bouquets Miami” and even target search terms such as “Miami weddings”, “Valentine’s Day gifts” etc integrated in your title and meta tags, as well as in the visible text of your site. Better still, build and optimize a page for each product or service that you offer. That way, if anyone types in those phrases in a search engine, your site is more likely to appear higher in the search results.

Can you honestly say your web designer has built your site with your target search terms in mind? If not, it might be time to schedule an appointment with them.

So why wasn’t your site optimized for search engines when it was built? Depending on who developed your site and how it was built, you’ll find a million different reasons for this. Many web developers believe it is the site marketer’s job to ensure the site is found in search engines and vice versa. Most don’t bother checking that your site is found in the important search engines, assuming you or your marketing department will do it. Or perhaps it wasn’t discussed in your original development budget.

Not many web design firms know how or have time to optimize a site successfully, no matter what they tell you. They might feel it is outside their core business, or they might believe it is not part of the “design process”. Consequently, your site can be launched for many months without the search engines having any idea it exists.

Some web development firms don’t include even the most basic META tags in your site code when building it. Or those that do include META tags without close consultation with you, resulting in the wrong search terms used and poor performance. This is quite typical! Remember that search engine optimization requires both client interaction and constant monitoring to be successful.

Remember, search engine users generally only explore the first 10 or 20 search results. If you site isn’t in the top 20, you won’t be found, it’s as simple as that. Always include search engine optimization into your marketing budget or your site could be as effective as a billboard at the end of a dead end street.

Our Approach to SEO Success

Seo Expert — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:27:02 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Approach

Our search engine optimization approach is a flexible process. As new SEO techniques and ideas emerge we add them to our process at logical points so, while the basis of the methodology stays the same, tasks are being added and modified as the SEO landscape changes.

Keyword Research & Placement

Whether your site has been around a while or doesn’t even exist yet, the same techniques apply for getting your site highly ranked in the search engines. One of the most important steps is the first one – determining what words and phrases searchers use to find your products and services. There’s no point in being highly ranked for “rubber baby buggy bumpers” when you own a technology consulting firm. It’s important to research what terms apply to your business and determine variations of those terms. Once this is done, factor in the competition (number of results for the term) to narrow the field and help determine what terms you should go after.

Website Optimization

Your keywords and phrases influence the way the copy should be written on each page of your site. They also need to appear in the page’s code in certain ways to make sure the search engines index your page for the correct keywords. If your site already exists, placing the page elements and making slight copy modifications will mean all the difference the next time your site is spidered by the search engines. If your site is being built from the ground up, the content and page elements can be developed as the site is being built so your site is search engine friendly when it launches.

Link Building Campaign

One of the current techniques for measuring a site’s popularity – that Google is especially keen on – is linking. One-way, inbound links are considered the most valuable as they signal that a site is willing to send it’s users to your site. Reciprocal links with complimentary sites are also good because they target the same type of users. Say you run an online kitchen appliance store and you exchange links with a recipe site (meaning your site has a link to them and they provide a link on their site to you) you are both appealing to cooking enthusiasts. The links help drive traffic between the sites. A successful link building campaign will give you many inroads to your site and help boost your site’s popularity and search engine ranking.

Press Releases and article submissions are an ongoing part of most campaigns. We edit and submit a limited number of your press releases as part of our costs. We also edit your articles and submit them to dozens of online libraries. Press Releases and articles are a great way to accrue more one-way inbound links.

Every campaign starts with an aggressive directory submission process. We manually submit your site to hundreds of quality directories that have page rank and relevancy in Google and other search engines. These directories are not Free For All link farms, but valued general and niche directories.

Monthly SEO Updates

Search engines change their algorithms and methods for determining page rank often. It is important to monitor results on keywords to make sure your site is still doing well. Being passive will not maintain or increase your ranking on the results pages – being active and making modifications on a regular basis will. Determining new keywords and phrases to go after is also key to reaching additional searchers. Web SEO Specialists believes monthly maintenance of search engine optimization is an investment that will pay off in the short term and over time.

Please contact us with any questions you may have. As always, we give free advice and free initial consultations.

Why Has Google Banned My Site?

Seo Expert — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:46:09 +0000

Banned by Google

Why has Google banned my website?

Usually there is no warning for being banned by Google except for the steady drop of sales and visitors to your site. Many site owners and SEO companies are left with little information as to why they were removed. While there are many reasons why a site has been banned, here are a few of the more common reasons. If your site has been banned contact your SEO company or give The SEO Expert a call to help you get back on the right track to high Google rankings.

1. Robots and Meta Tags

The first and simplest solution many be that your robot.txt file has been changed to prevent search engines from entering your site. Or your meta tags could be directing the search engine robots to exclude your site. While this would be highly unlikely, it is best to rule this out. So check your robot.txt file (if you have one) and your meta tags. Unless you want your site hidden, you should never read this in your meta tags:
. If you see this, you are blocking your site from Google.

You can also ban your own site by having a robots.txt with the wrong code. Two examples of robots.txt code are below.

This example allows all robots to visit all files because the wildcard “*” specifies all robots.

User-agent: *

Disallow:

This example keeps all robots out:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

You can find more information about robot.txt at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt

2. Cloaking

Wikipedia explains cloaking as:

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the users’ browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed.

If your website or web pages are set up to display different information for a search engine spider versus a real person, then you are cloaking. Cloaking delivers one version of a page to an Internet user and a different version to a search engine. The cloaked page is packed with keyword and terms that the site wants to be highly rank for so, in essence, they are cheating. There are good reasons for cloaking as well, such as targeted advertising, but if you are trying to manipulate your rankings you should put an end to this immediately.

3. Duplicate Content or Websites

If Google finds multiple web pages have the same content they may penalize each website for this. It is possible someone may have copied your content and Google banned you even though it was your original content that was taken. Make sure no other site is using your content. You can do this by performing a Google search using some of your text with quotation marks (“) around it. If you do find someone is using your original copy, visit Google’s Infringement Notification for Web Search and all other products: http://www.google.com/dmca.html.

4. Hidden Text and/or Links

How can text been hidden? Well, there are a number of ways – some more sneaky than others. Essentially, it is considered hidden if the text or link is invisible to the website visitor but can be seen by search engine spiders. In the past, this was done quite often, such as making your text white on a white background or using cascading style sheets (CSS) to hide your text, but search engines can easily spot this today so it is best to avoid it altogether.

5. Keyword Spam and Keyword Stuffing

Have you ever seen a web page with a very awkwardly written first paragraph where a certain word or phrase is repeated? Here’s an example:

“We sell the iphones and ipods. If you like iphones and ipods we can help with the best iphones and ipods.”

Care to guess which keywords are being targeted? This is keyword spamming or stuffing but it is just the tip of the SEO iceberg. This is just the content on the page, there is probably keyword stuffing happening in the code: in the meta tags, invisible text, alt tags, title tags and comment tags. etc. If the word or phrase is repeated too often Google will place a filter to reduce the site’s rankings or simply ban the site.
Keyword density can be tricky but, as a general rule, Web SEO Specialists tries to have 1% to 5% of all text on a page to be our targeted keywords. You must ultimately for the reader, not the search engine. The keywords must flow naturally with the text of the page.

Increasingly, search engines (including Google), are including algorithms for natural (or Semantic) language detection. This algorithms improve search engine effectiveness by attempting to “understand” what the page is about.

6. Redirect Pages

Sneaky redirection pages are set up in groups from 5 to hundreds. They all target similar and related keywords or phrases. Usually, the only links on these pages are links to other pages in the same family creating a false sense of related linking.

These pages don’t necessarily contain content that any human would be interested in. These pages may show up high in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS), but when you click on one of these pages from the SERPS, you will be redirected to another page. In other words, the page you click to see is not the page you actually get to read.

The redirect can be automatic, done with a meta refresh command or through other means such as a the mouse moving while on the redirect page.

7. Buying Links

While buying links may not get you banned, they can certainly hurt your page rank. Google has measures in place to put your site in limbo for 6-8 months (known as the “sandbox effect“). Many sites that sell links are being devalued by Google, making an investment in this strategy a waste of money and time. Ultimately, stay away from buying links to increase your ranking.

8. Linking to Bad Websites

Link campaigns are good thing when done correctly; they are a necessity in today’s SEO world. But linking to bad websites is a sure way to lose your rank in Google. If you aren’t careful about who you are linking to, you can easily disappear overnight. While you may be ethical and do everything right, linking to someone who isn’t can be considered guilt by association.

Always verify your links to other sites. Make sure they have page rank in Google and are indexed by Google. Try searching for their URL to see if they are indexed. Avoid linking to any sites that use spamming techniques to increase their search engine rankings. Regularly checking outbound links from your site and removing any offenders is a good idea.

A few site types to avoid:

* Adult sites

* Free-for-all link farms

* Gambling sites

What does Google say?

“Don’t deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users,” Google lists some bullet points on avoiding being banned.

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don’t send automated queries to Google.
Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.
Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

How to get back into Google

Log into Google Webmaster Tools (if you have not done so, you will need to register your site). On the main account page, you will find a link at the bottom of the page to “Submit a reinclusuion request” which takes you here – https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/reinclusion?hl=en

From there you get to check boxes that let you admit guilt, acknowledge modification, agree not to do it again, and even a box to explain yourself.

You don’t have to contact Google but it can’t hurt. They will eventually spider your site again and see that you have cleaned up your website. You may have to wait a few months for Google to re-index your site so be patient, and don’t tinker with your website too much unless dictated by your site’s products or content needs.

The worst case scenario is to start a new site. Sometimes this can be necessary but only in the most extreme cases.

Need Help Getting Listed in Google?

We pride ourselves on being an ethical SEO company. We do things the right way, by following the guidelines and rules. There is no easy shortcut to high rankings in Google or any other search engine.

We welcome any questions and are always willing to share information with clients and perspective clients. Give Web SEO Specialists a call today for a free consultation and search engine report to find out where you rank in the major search engines. Whether you feel you have been banned or just want to show up higher in Google’s search engine results, we can help you.