Easily forgotten is one of the major factors in optimizing your website, Internal Link Structure. Gone is the day when “click here” was a satisfactory method to link to other pages. Today’s modern website will understand the value of both your file names, and your anchor text. Anchor text is the text that much like my previous example (”click here”) can be anything you want. It is the clickable text in your HTML document that allows you to go to another page. Several different links exist including, image links and text links. The most important of which are text links in the SEO world. Text links allow you to directly communicate with search engines by giving you the ability to describe what it is you are linking to. Image links do not allow this opportunity, so they rely on the alt attribute tag to describe an image. Although search engines will be able to read this alt tag, it is important to remember that text links using keyword friendly anchor texts will weigh more heavily in your favor.

Take the following example:

The link “San Diego SEO Company” works way better for SEO than this link “click here for a San Diego SEO Company.”

The first example clearly spells out what the page is about and what you can expect to see in the linked page. You would expect to find information about a San Diego SEO Company. Otherwise, search engines would see the second example as a non descriptive link, and will have a lower rank. Think of it this way…do you prefer to rank for the term “click here?” No.

Although we are always bombarded with reminders of how important it is to optimize our HTML code for our websites, it is often forgotten about the CSS. Style sheets can also be optimized to increase load speed, and to reduce file size. Although it has a smaller impact on your search engine results, having a site with fast loading css can help you to hold on to your visitors who normally have a 3 second attention span.

Did you know that your internet marketing and social media efforts are most effective during peak hours? If you are trying to catch attention and be seen, promote your company or brand during the time when you know that traffic on the internet is at its highest. This is typically during the workday, 9am to 5pm hours.

Getting your website indexed for the right keywords can be confusing. You may find that after all of your hard work, your site may rank for keywords you never meant to rank for, and the ones you wanted to rank for, are not ranking at all. There are a lot of reasons why this may be happening, but one of the most likely reasons for this is that you may have an unbalanced keyword density on any given page, or on the entire website.

Ranking on search engines is a science as much as it is an art form. You can see a lot of different methods one goes about in optimizing their website, but some always work better than others. One method may work better on one search engine than in another, but the general rules still apply: Optimization is a never ending struggle and a balanced keyword strategy works better than keyword stuffing.

We have all heard of keyword stuffing. Some may rely heavily on stuffing keywords in their keywords tag, while others heavily laden their site’s content with keywords, making their copy unreadable for human readers. Both of these methods will likely hurt your site’s ranks in the long run, (search engine may see your site as a spam site) and in many cases can hurt your brand. (for example:  your readers may read your website and think you do not have good grammar, which may mirror not so good service).

The key is in learning how to balance your keywords. Don’t overuse them as to turn away either crawlers or visitors, rather embrace the two in a well balanced, comprehensive strategy. Zealously changing your titles and headlines to try to gain a competitive advantage doesn’t work very well. The real key to ranking your website is to give it time.  If you have optimized your site and see no results, don’t be surprised. Results often take between two to three months. If you see no significant results, make sure your pages target one to three keywords each, make sure your copy is comprehensive, and sticks to the point. If you have checked all your bases, and you are still not getting results, you may need to develop an off page optimization strategy.

If you find yourself frustrated with your optimization efforts, it may be time to contact a professional optimization firm. Professional firms will have access to tools and tactics that you may not be able to use, or may not have the time to develop. Call Saba, a San Diego Web Design Company to help you understand what your competition is doing online, and how you can compete.

Search engines have been developed to work in the most efficient ways possible. They can quickly gain you access to information on just about any subject you want to learn about. This speed is only possible because of indexing. Indexing is a way that search engines know what your site is about. Google has deployed robots, otherwise known as crawlers throughout the worldwide web. They visit web servers to examine websites, including yours, to categorize it according to your website content. These crawlers will repeatedly visit your website throughout the year to update the index. Keeping the index up to date is within Google’s best interest if it wants to provide its visitors with relevant and up to date content.

The rate at which Google crawls a website is not a routine pattern, but rather has many determining factors, many of which are not known to those outside of Google’s development team. Larger, more popular and established sites such as news websites will be crawled several times a day, but smaller businesses will have to wait. It can take up to several weeks for Google to revisit your website, this means that changes that you make to your website today, will not reflect on Google’s search, until Google crawls your site and updates their index.  To find out when was the last time Google crawled your site, simply Google your entire URL. Once you find your link on the Results Page, look beneath it to find the “cached” link. Click it and you will see a snapshot of your website, with the date on which your site was last crawled. By routinely checking the results, you will be able to get a good estimate on how often Google is crawling your site. Use this information to schedule your next website update, product release, or exciting announcement. Doing so can help you see faster results and can help your visitors always find your website relevant to their search.

Find Out When Was The Last Time Google Crawled Your Website

For more useful information subscribe to our feed or visit our website. Saba Inc: a San Diego SEO and San Diego Web Design Company.

Here at Saba, we help to promote the use of social media and web 2.0 technologies to help your business succeed. The use of social media technologies although comes at a risk. Once you have submitted information such as messages, posts, or tweets, it can be pretty difficult to take it back. Unless you delete your post seconds after you have posted it, chances are that someone will have read it by then, copied it, forwarded it, or tweeted about it. This means that once you hit the submit or send button, you are no longer in control. This can be a great opportunity for companies, allowing them to take advantage of viral marketing, but what do you do when a potentially embarrassing piece of information gets posted? Ideally, honesty is the best policy and explaining your error in full sincerity will help to maintain a personal reputation or company brand from getting dragged on the floor. In worst case scenarios, deleting your current account can be your only option. This may also be the best option to get rid of that old sophomoric account with all the embarrassing weekend party pictures of you and your friends before going to a job interview (yes, they check that stuff). Note, deleting your account will not get rid of those instances in which your info has already been copied and saved onto other servers, but will only delete the content on your account.

A new service has been made public called the Suicide Machine. This service has made it possible to delete your choice of social media account or all of your accounts with minimal time invested.  Those who may take advantage of this service are those who are tired of social media, and want to just get away, those suffering from cyber stalkers, those who’s page was meant to be temporary, those who’s page has been inactive, or those who want a fresh start. This service can also be used to be sure your account has been completely deleted not just unpublished, but used with caution. Deleting your network means that all of that hard work you put into finding those connections will be lost. Meaning that friends wont be able to connect with you, or your customers will have lost access to you. If your company brand stands on the premise that you are reliable and always there….your brand may also be hurt by such actions. Deleting your account is only preferable on the rarest occasions when all other options are unavailable.

Otherwise, deleting your online accounts manually can be a difficult task. Just figuring out how to do it, can be difficult, and once you figure it out, you will likely have to fill out a lengthy questionnaire and be put on a long list for scheduled deletion. Two weeks later, your account is unpublished, not deleted. If you happen to log in within those two weeks, your cancellation will be canceled. This is only true because social media websites are not in the business of deleting accounts. They strongly discourage it, so will make it difficult for the average user.

A Time Magazine article reports that facebook is not happy with the technology, and has asked the company to stop accessing their site. Although the suicide machine has only helped slightly over  1000 people, facebook sees the potential for losing its share of the marfket.

If you want to start fresh with a new Social Media, Web 2.0 strategy that works, let Saba give you a free evaluation of your current strategy, or brand. We will research to find out what’s the best way to approach your market online. Call us today 866.937.1717.

With Google’s threat to pull out of China, all eyes are on the unfolding drama to find out what the future of the internet will look like in that part of the world. Amidst accusations of cyber attacks by the company and claims of intellectual property theft, Google has threatened to abandon all operations in that county. Cyber espionage experts claim that these attacks must be state sponsored, in an attempt to catch up and pass their western rivals technologically and militarily. Backing these claims is the speed and consistency of the attacks. Which many say can only be possible with government backing. Currently, Google cites the hacking of various gmail accounts of Chinese Political Dissidents, but it is unclear what else Chinese Hackers may have stolen with the declaration of intellectual property theft. Obviously it must have been something big for Google to threaten to leave the fastest growing economy in the world. It must have been something to threaten Google’s global operations. Speculation may lead some to think that China may have accessed Google’s algorithm, or some of Googles up and coming innovative technologies. Whatever it was, it must be worth severing further business with China.

Many companies and governments are now waiting to see what happens next. Some of these spectators are supporting Google and are showing their support against nation sponsored cyber attacks. Although it has been alleged that China has been in the business of state sponsored cyber theft for a long time, it could just be that this time, they went too far and attacked a company large enough to stand up to them. It is unclear what kind of fallout may follow, but one thing for sure, China’s unchecked internet abuse will not continue without watchful eyes on the look out.

The future of the internet in China is unclear, their communist government discourages free thought and independance, but these are the building blocks upon which innovation is fostered. Without innovation, China will never meet their goals of being a cultural, political, and military leaders. All of which can explain China’s relentless efforts of online theft. They have to resort to stealing ideas because their government discourages new ideas from emerging.

Saba is a San Diego SEO Company dedicated to bringing you great ideas for improving your website and getting it found online. In order to schedule a free consulation or to get a free website analysis call us today at 858.937.1717.

There exists many aspects of Search Engine Optimization that can be utilized to rank higher on search engines. Unfortunately, there will exist those websites that no matter how much they are optimized, will never rank on the first page of search engines, and/or will not be working towards attracting new customers. These websites are perfect candidates for web redesign services. When redesigning a website, it is important to plan ahead of time before the design process begins to find out what the primary goals of the new design will be. Is the design process going to focus on attracting new customers or will it focus on catering to existing clients? After the goals have been set, you can begin the process of redesigning your site.

If your goals are to rank higher, you want to consider the benefits and disadvantages of different types of designs and embedded material and how it will effect your SEO. Certain “best practices” strategies can be used in creating a good SEO friendly site. One of the most effective strategies is in CSS programming. Using CSS to set up your website layout will effectively separate your HTML from each element’s style (CSS). This will make it a lot faster for Search Engines to be able to index your content because they are essentially skipping the additional code that defines the look of a site. At Saba SEO, we pride ourselves of using CSS programming whenever possible instead of resorting to convenient tables for your page’s layout. If you need a website design that is consistent and easy to edit, you may also want to consider building a website template and creating a dynamic content library. A template and library items will allow you to easily make changes to repeating parts of your site without having to make the same changes over and over to each page.

You may also want to subscribe to website design best practice standards to ensure your site meets the proven criteria for easy customer conversion, and lead generation. Upon reaching a website, it is natural for a visitor’s sight to begin on the top left hand side of a website and begin reading left or down from there in an “F” or “Z” pattern. By organizing your webpage material accordingly, you can make certain aspects of your site more prominent. A “free consultation” button on the lower right hand of the page will not be as visible as a button which falls within this “Z” or “F” pattern. Many visitors also avoid scrolling through a page, choosing to keep their cursor closer to the top of the window. For this reason, it is also recommended that all of the web pages’ important content fall above the fold (bottom of the visible page before scrolling down).

Each page of a website should also incorporate some sort of “call to action,” which will serve as an incentive to your visitors to take action. Perhaps it is to sign up for your company newsletter, or it can be a lead generating form. Either way, you want these things to be prominent so that they are not skipped. It was not uncommon in the past that these “calls to action” were mostly reserved for the website’s home page, but with “Landing Page Optimization” (a way to make each page in a website unique and draw visitors) it is possible to have your interior pages act like small catching nets, acting like mini home pages. For this reason, a call to action must be included in every page to ensure that all of your visitors are given the option of taking action. Otherwise, you will only gain leads from those pages displayig the call to action.

Other good practices also include clear navigation, and targeted content. If a visitor cannot find their way around your site or links lead to irrelevant information, your site will suffer from a high bounce rate. This means that visitors may come to your site, and quickly leave. You can avoid this by making a visit to your site a pleasant experience.

If you are in the position of gaining a competative advantage by choosing a website redesign, call us today to schedule a free consultation. 866.937.1717

There exists hundreds of thousands of different fonts, and the list continues to grow each day. Out of this pool of fonts, there exists the right font for your website. Choosing the right font is not as easy as it sounds, and it’s not a matter of just picking fonts from a list. A lot of thought has to go into choosing the right font based on the studies of typographers past. These faceless artists have worked hard designing type, and have established styles. Just like art, type has a history which continues to evolve. Studying type of generations past can help us to choose the right types of fonts for the work at hand…our website. This blog is a short introduction to type, and will hopefully help you in your selection.

Fonts can be placed in several different categories that have developed through time.

Font Styles Through the Centuries

Generally speaking, old style was the first determined style  that developed, whose earliest influence was the handheld chisel. Ancient typographers used chisels to carve words into stone at an angle. Out of this method, the traditional serif was born, which helped finish off the stone carved letterforms. Today it is argued that the serif helps readers eye flow from one word to the other, in ancient times it is likely that it allowed the artist’s chisel a smooth transition from one shape to the next.  If a modern artist wanted to evoke a sense of antiquity, or stability, or timelessness, a old style font such Bembo, Garamond, or Trajan would work best. These fonts were created with the influence of ancient stone writing and hand written letterforms of the midieval period. They are among the oldest recognized designs in type ranging from about the 1400-1500’s. By this time, artists also began experimenting and lowercase letters slowly began to emerge.

old Style vs transitional

Transitional Fonts developed after the old style in the period of enlightenment, where challenges to old thoughts and tradition were common, and are recorded in the history of the type. Transitional fonts are typically recognized by their shorter or thinner serif, the increased uniform thickness of  stroke, and their increased symmetry. This began the slow reduction of influence typographers got from the handwritten forms of medieval times and was a transition for the complete elimination of human influence from later styles. Fonts from this area include Times, Baskerville, and Caslon. They too evoke a sense of tradition, but also take a step away from it in a slow regression of human style. Italic letters were also developed around this time to help distinguish shapes and to help create hierarchy between letters. The formality of these  letter forms make them perfect for modern business and school writing. These may be good choices for a modern designer looking for a corporate look, that would make their website carry a feeling of history, yet not tied to it. This style of font gives a sense of flexibility, which a corporate company may be interested in portraying.

transitional vs block

Block Serif or Slab Serif fonts were developed along with continued developments in print and technology. The creation of the printing press developed a market for thicker fonts that would allow for easy legibility in a large point size. They are characterized by their square serifs, block shapes, lack of stroke modulation and have a mechanical look. This type of type design is a clear cut from all humanist letterforms and can be best understood by studying the backdrop in history at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Fonts that emerged from this era include Rockwell, Courier, and Clarendon. These fonts can be easily used by a modern designer to create a design that evokes the principles of industry that existed throughout the 1800’s including firm confidence and boldness.

block vs sans serif

San Serif or Gothic Typefaces began to emerge in ancient times but were not widely adopted into print until soon after the emergence of block serif fonts. They are in effect a reflection of the thought during the Industrial Revolution, when mathematical efficiency was prized and human’s imperfect nature was not. The serif of previous styles was the last part of type design that beared any human influence, removing it was a bold step away from humanist style, removing it was to remove the fallable. Smooth, even strokes and symmetry became the standard and san serif was born.  San Serif fonts were quickly adopted as headline fonts but have increasingly found their way into text copy, despite arguments against them. Fonts which have emerged from this style include Century Gothic, Futura, Helvetica, and Arial. If a modern designer wishes to create an art piece that has a modern feel, San Serif is the way to go.

Decorative fonts Have little value for professional designers. They are a modern take on classic letterforms often so abstract that their legibility is questionable. Their usefulness is limited to headline sized text and can often be so emblazoned with decoration that thier purpose is limited to a specific design. What purpose is this I speak of?…The purpose of legibility. Type was meant to be read, and classic fonts that have lasted century are those that have allowed readers to easily read its shapes and figures to distinguish meaning. A highly decorative font will cause a loss of legibility so they are never good choices. Most often these fonts can be found for free online simply because they have no value. Avoid their use and you will begin to notice a growing sense of typographic professionalism as you notice the great amount of flexibility classic typefaces allow you when used creatively.

The use of san serif fonts for modern applications continues to grow as modern low resolution screens cannot capture the neuances of delicate serifs, specially at smaller sizes. San serif fonts have therefore made themselves the font of our current century, and their use has continued to grow. Although San Serif Fonts have better web applications than serif fonts, they too have neuances that cannot be captured on screen. In short, they have not been designed specifically for the web. They are widely used because their shape holds more true  on screen than serif fonts, but neither will give you better legibility than fonts designed for online viewing. Fonts such as Verdana or Georgia should be considered when choosing a font specifically for the web. These are amongst the most modern fonts available and have been designed specifically for on screen viewing. Their shape holds true with size and shape better than any other font designed  for print. A designer creating a website for the elderly or the hard of seeing may want to consider these fonts for their online design. Likewise, a font designed specifically for the internet should not be used for print material, as their purpose is not being honored. A font designed for online viewing will never give you the printed results a design made for print will give. Therefore be wise in selecting your font.

This is not to say that you cannot use any font for your website. You can use any font, but if you use an abstract font that not many people use, or a font that to others may be unavailable, your purpose in your design may be lost because someone on the opposite side of the country may not have the same font so they will be seeing a substituted font in its place. This is most common in headline fonts, where you may feel that the font Impact for example may be a great choice, as it offers great weight and draws a lot of attention. If a visitor to your site does not have the font uploaded on their computer, they will see whatever similar font you have set as an alternate. What if you didn’t set an alternate? Than their system might substitute any default font, or may not display anything at all. A way you can avoid this problem is to make your font into a graphic. This will allow any visitor to see the type in the way you intended them to see it. This will help your design stay true to its original form, but you loose a great deal of potential SEO (Search Engine Optimization) opportunities. Headlines hold a lot of weight for search engines and they use it to know what your website is about. If all of your headline text is in graphic form, your website will not easily rank on  search engines, and your competitors will gain from your loss.

To play it safe with your SEO rankings. I suggest sticking to a list of commonly used, browser safe fonts. Using these fonts will increase the likelihood your visitors are seeing exactly what you intend them to see.

• Arial
• Georgia
• Times New Roman
• Verdana
• Trebuchet
• Courier
• Tahoma
• Helvetica

If you still intend on using specialty fonts for certain places such as your banners or other graphics, then make sure your type is a graphic image (jpeg, png, gif) and then insert it into your website. Good SEO knowledge suggests you save your keyword rich titles for non graphic type, but if you must use graphic type, remember to add your alternate text tag in order to still be able to communicate with search engines. Actual text carries more weight than alt text, so avoid this practice whenever possible, and make as much text in your website into editable html text to increase your Search Engine Rankings.

Elements of Typographic Style

If you want to read more into the subject of type. I suggest trying out “The Bible of Typography”: The Elements of Typographic Style,  a book by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. This book will tell you everything you need to know about typography. Be ready to take notes, it’s quite a read.

At Saba SEO in San Diego we try to provide useful information to business owners throughout the United States on how to create better websites. Our goal is to help your business grow online. With the decrease of print advertisements, purchases are being made online at an exponential rate. Be sure your company is taking advantage of this swell by allowing us to create a custom web design or by allowing us to optimize your existing site. Countless of clients agree that our services have helped to maximize online profitability. It all starts with a free website evaluation by our team. We will tell you exactly where your website can improve and we back it up with statistical data. Call us today to get started 866-937-1717.

I cannot stress the importance of checking each and every comment and their links before accepting them on your website. Spammers are tricky and will often post comments that look, and sound genuine. You may think they really took the time to read and analyze your post. But beware, sometimes these posts will be paired with a link that can hurt your ranking. If just one of your blog comments carries a link to a reported spam website, your ranks can be significantly hurt, specially in a highly competitive market. Worst case scenario is that you too may be flagged as a spam site too for your involvement. Even though your intentions are not to be a spammer, by acknowledging them, and accepting their links on your site, you too will suffer the consequences. Remember that removing yourself from a spam list is a lot harder than getting on it in the first place. So please, practice your due diligence and make sure to check each and every link first before accepting them.

A good way to check a site for spam content is to open the link in a new window, read a few sentences to see if the web page looks genuine. If you are suspicious or if you have a single doubt, don’t accept the comment or edit it to delete the link. Sometimes you will have to wait a few minutes until you begin to see the true nature of a site. It often happens that a site will look genuine, but after a while, you begin seeing the pop-ups begin to appear. A site with pop-up ads should raise a red flag that the site may be a spam site. I also check the internal structure of a website. It has happened in the past that I will check the link that redirects me to a genuine looking site, but when clicking on the links in the navigation menu, each link goes to the same page. This raised a red flag, so after further inspecting the site, and doing a background check on the url, the site was listed as a severe spam site.

Spammers are finding ways to get around the protections that we have deployed against them. Just like advances in guns have led to advances in bullet proofing, we too must remain on guard and protect our websites. I suggest to routinely check the links on your site using the backlink check tool found here.

I hear a lot of people say that they are unsure of how to deal with reporting spam. Some fear of spammer backlash, fearing that a spammer may personally identify a website and attack it in retaliation for their report. Although I believe it may be possible, and I do believe there may have been a few victims of this type of attack, the alternative is a loss of valuable time for you–if  in case you have to check a large amount of links manually each day–as may be the case with more established blogs. In this case I would suggest trying out a spam filter. If your blog is hosted by a services such as word press, installing a spam filter will be easy to do. Otherwise, you may have your work cut out for you, but it should be worth your time. Using a spam filter will allow you to avoid reporting any spam, while still taking advantage of avoiding spam links on your site. You will still need to stay weary as new spammers are born each day, and they may get past your filters. If repeat offenders continue attacking your site, feel free to report them. They will likely be attacking several other sites too and will likely be expecting to be cited sooner or later anyways.

We hope this information is useful to you in your search for an optimized, high ranking website. Any other questions can be addressed here, or email us for more info. San Diego business owners, please visit our San Diego Web Design page and our  San Diego SEO Homepage for more information.