Posts Tagged ‘
Search Engine Optimization ’
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Creating a well designed website is no easy task. The first and most basic of all steps that must be taken to reach this goal is a plan of navigation. A plan of navigation will take into account what has worked for you in the past, and what you expect to work for you in the future. It will display your strengths, while strengthening your weaknesses. This can only be achieved by focusing on the most important of all phases of creating a website: RESEARCH!
Why is research so important?
Research is the tool by which you will examine the past to predict the future.
There are many reasons why a page may not be working for your company and not converting customers. If a page is not being visited, perhaps it is due to content that is not relevant to your market. It may also be that your choice of keywords may not be well defined, or even too obscure to draw attention. In this research phase you will examine the keywords you currently have against the keyword trends that others are searching. I suggest using Google’s keyword tool to find out what are the words that are popular and compare them to what you have in your site content. Ideally, you want to optimize your site to a traffic amount that your site can handle. If your trying to get into a niche market, perhaps the obscure keywords that only have a few hundred visitors may be good for you, but we suggest focusing on the “middle fruit” keywords with a few thousand to increase your odds. Once you find the keywords that you think may work well for your page, check them against your competitors. I find that keywordspy.com helps in this task. Here you can see what keywords your competitors are optimized for and what keywords they are competing for. If the competition is too high for you to compete effectively, begin your research again.
Once a keyword list has been compiled, you can begin creating your navigation. Navigation is important because it will be the major factor aside from your content keeping your visitors engaged. By creating an easy navigation structure, you will make each visit count by making it easy to go from page to page, allowing your visitors to get the information they came to seek in a much faster way. By increasing the speed to find information, the less likely your visitor is to abandon your site, in which you loose all odds of making that sale. In order to create this structure, you want to group your keywords by relevance. This means that the keywords “seo website development” and “seo site development” may be grouped together because 1. they both relate to the same subject and 2. because they are similar in language. By grouping the keywords by subject (context) you are making sure that the visitors to the page with these words are finding exactly what they are looking for. Don’t put irrelevant keywords that will only confuse people, so don’t try to optimize for “organic SEO” and “search engine marketing” on the same page. This is a common mistake that many people make specially on their home page. By grouping words by language similarity, you will be enforcing that your page is focused and you will increase your odds of being found as opposed to only optimizing for one word (we suggest no more than 3 keywords per page). Once you have a good solid list of grouped keywords, you will be on your way to creating a landing page structure and will allow your navigation to develop itself based on what people are searching for. Since each page will be unique, you will avoid duplicate content which can damage your page rank.
Once you are happy with your keyword list and the grouping you have developed, it is time to begin organizing your list into your navigation menu. You can organize the grouping to find out what will go into your about page, your service page, etc. You may also find that your research requires you to create new pages you didn’t have before. If it begins getting complicated, I suggest creating html flyout menus that will fly out when your mouse hovers above the button. For example: “website design company”, “seo firm”, and “sem company” may all fit into your services section and can easily fly out from when hovering out of your services button. By keeping the flyout menus in html, you will also help your site by creating keyword rich links that increase your odds of being found.
When creating a website, consider doing your research before anything, and use this information when creating your navigation menu. Having an optimized navigation will help your customers have a good experience because it will allow them to find what they were searching for in a fast and efficient way. It will also help your site rank well as you will have essentially created a landing page structure that will serve as an optimized site map. Follow these steps and you will begin to see a difference in your website’s usablility. Your visitors will appreciate it and you can begin to follow your progress. If you still need help in creating an optimized experience for your website, call a San Diego SEO company, Saba SEO at 1-866-937-1717.
Tags: business website design, optimized navigation, organic seo, professional website design, san diego ecommerce, San Diego internet marketing, san diego internet marketing company, san diego online marketing, san diego search engine marketing, San Diego SEO, san diego seo company, san diego web design companies, Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization san diego, seo website design, web design in san diego, web designer in san diego, web designer san diego, web designers san diego, web site design san diego, website designer san diego, website navigation, website optimization
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Monday, August 10th, 2009
In a fight to the finish, who would win in the epic battle of Design vs SEO. This question comes up time and time again. I have had to face this question myself several times. As a passionate designer, my heart races to defend design as the most important of all assets in our website creation toolbox. As an SEO expert, my brain kicks in to say, “what good is design if nobody sees it?” This battle rages on as one’s idea of aesthetics may contradict SEO best practices, and how a website with bad design may make the most searchable of sites unpleasant to read, leading to high bounce rates. Often, a designer may provide a website for a client, only to find that after 6 months, no traffic has been generated. After an SEO expert comes to review the site, he may easily find that the site will need to be redesigned to rank. This is a nightmare that companies have had to face for far too long. In an effort to understand this battle, we will examine the strengths of the two competitors.
Design: Design has existed for a long time. Ask a creationist and he will tell you that God himself is a designer. Humans have been designing since we first picked up a stick and drew in the sand or placed an image on a cave wall. It has since then developed into a language of its own capable of speaking millions of words without saying anything at all. It is capable of drawing on emotions, and it is able to encourage the viewer to take action. Good design can add up to more than the sum of its parts, meaning that it can tell an entire story just by the relationship between images. This has innumerable applications in the business world and is used everyday by advertisers to draw people online or to the stores. Advertising without design is just radio.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization is a protocol by which a website will find a competitive advantage over its competitors by filling in all of the possible cracks of a website with useful information that may make the site easy to find. Good SEO techniques involves good research and can easily allow a small company to compete with larger, more established organizations. SEO is the method by which one can spread their message and the way in which one is found by those searching. SEO also allows for greater networking possibilities and can add legitimacy to a company by making them a resource to the market or a authority figure to searchers. It is a valuable tool that becomes more and more necessary to companies every day.
The division and competition between the two studies continues to grow as very few designers are taught the fundamentals of good SEO. The nuances of effective SEO based design strategies are therefore left behind when a designer begins a project, making it hard to optimize in the future and costing the company thousands of dollars in a re-design. We strongly suggest that when you begin a website, you ask your designer if they are familiar with SEO strategies and if they are capable of designing a website that can be optimized. If they do not, then you should probably look elsewhere. In order to get a website that will benefit your company, here are a few technicalities that your designer should know, so ask them:
1. Why are CSS layouts are more search friendly than html tables?
2. Why should my page be designed in a Z or F pattern of hierarchy?
3. Why should my website load fast and how will you accomplish this?
4. Why should my navigation should be streamlined?
5. Are you familiar with my company brand?
6. Why does each page need to have unique and original html content?
7. How easy will it be to edit my website?
Although there are other factors to consider, the way your designer answers these relatively simple questions should be a good indicator of how prepared they are at providing you a website that is both well designed an easy to optimize. After all, these should be simple questions to answer if they are even minutely experienced with SEO friendly design. Otherwise, they may provide a great looking site, that will do you no good.
This competition of titans continues to grow as people continue to debate which is better. Rather, at Saba SEO, we encourage one to view the two as a married couple. This couple may have its occasional fights, but once the disagreements are settled, the two emerge stronger than ever in a solid union. Similarly, in any successful website, you cannot have one without the other. This is why our web design team is versed in both design and SEO, this way, design can continue with SEO efforts in mind, avoiding future conflict of interest between the two. It also allows us to provide a service at a lower price as we begin with SEO research before we even start designing a site, making the entire process quick, affordable, and easy to edit.
If you are ready to go with a professional San Diego Web Design Company, contact Saba SEO today at 1-866-937-1717. We optimize new and existing websites for top results on all major search engines.
For more tips please cut and paste the following urls to your browser address bar:
The 5 hats of Website Development
http://sabaseo.com/blog/the-5-hats-of-website-development/
Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
http://sabaseo.com/blog/search-engine-optimization-with-saba/
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Monday, August 10th, 2009
Good SEO depends on good principals that when followed correctly will tell any search engine what a site is about. HTML sets a presendence by allowing a website to communicate properly with a search engine through the use of url, title, headings, keywords, description, and content. If all of these are optimized, you do not need to focus on only optimizing for one search engine because they all read the same data. If you optimize specifically for Yahoo, you may hurt your optimization efforts for Google for example. The best way to do it is to practice good organic SEO with proper keyword research, then access each search engine’s webmaster tools. This will allow you to add a site map, links, etc. Optimize for search engines this way, rather than editing your onsite codes to gain favorability with a specific one. Since search engines have a lot of competitive secrecy and they change their algorithm regularly, optimizing for a specific search engine is like shooting blindly, what works today may not work tomorrow.
Tags: business website design, organic seo, professional website design, san diego ecommerce, San Diego internet marketing, san diego internet marketing company, san diego online marketing, san diego search engine marketing, San Diego SEO, san diego seo company, san diego web design companies, Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization san diego, seo best practices, seo company, seo website design, web design in san diego, web designer in san diego, web designer san diego, web designers san diego, web site design san diego, website designer san diego
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Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
Have you labored long hours optimizing a site, waited a few weeks and got no results? It can be caused by multiple factors some of which may include over-optimization, lack of search engine indexing, and the page being to new to be considered as a relevant site for good search engine ranking. Once these possibilities are examined and adjusted, and you still get no results, consider your host. When was the last time you checked up on your neighbors?
Hosting companies will often host several URL addresses and don’t always discriminate on the quality of website on their database. Your website will often be placed next to black listed sites that are known for their black hat spamming practices. In their attempt to maintain their service as relevant as possible, search engines may also penalize you for living next to these deviant sites. They will actually see you as more likely to be another spam site. Lucky for us there are tools we can use to find out exactly who is living next to us so we can avoid search engine penalties.
http://www.majesticseo.com/research/neighbourhood-checker.php
This tool will allow you to find out who else is being hosted next to you and who they link to. With the use of this tool, you can find out if the neighbor next door is a predator, and you will now know to take serious action by moving far far away to a different hosting account.
Search Engines can also penalize you for your associations. If you have a lot of incoming links from spam sites, you will not necessarily be penalized because search engines understand that you yourself may be a victim of spam. Yet if you have just one outbound link to a spam site, your ranking may drop significantly. By adding a link to a known bad site, you are endorsing their bad behaviors and will be considered as a possible spam site. Even if you link to a reputable site that itself has bad links, you may still be penalized. Testing all of your links is important and if you can find just one bad link, your efforts will have been worthwhile. Luckily, there are a few tools available to test the links on your site and the links on those sites that you link to. I recommend the bad neighborhood link tool available at:
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com
This tool will help you find those links that can be hurting your reputation, your ranking, and your bottom line. Once you have entered your URL, sit back and let the tool do its work. You will be able to see where the weaknesses in your site exist so that you can later fix them. You may just be surprised at what you find.
As a San Diego SEO Company, we understand that every little thing makes a difference. That is why we make an effort to provide you with valuable real world information that can help your site. We work hard to provide you with as much insight to the SEO world as possible so that you can learn to trust our abilities and our committment to your success. If you have a site that you feel may be getting black listed and is not increasing in ranking despite your efforts, call SABA today for an indepth analysis.
Tags: finding bad links, improving search engine ranking, link building, Search Engine Optimization
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Thursday, June 25th, 2009
The internet, It is the bridge that connects and engages people and cultures from around the world. It continues to grow as more and more people are able to access from their homes via satellite and broadband technologies. Due to the nature of its design, computer technology and the internet are meant to be visually engaging. Our brains see the rays of light projecting from the screen and convert the signals into the images we see in front of us. According to a 2004 study by the World Health Organization an estimated 161 million (about 2.6% of the world population) were stricken with some sort of visual impairment. Although it may be a small number compared to the visually gifted, it is a significant amount of people in the world who have trouble accessing information via the internet.
Thanks to Breakthroughs in Adaptive Technology Software, blind and visually impaired people can access web pages, having their computers read the content for them. The technologies rely on a website’s code, reading through the code’s titles and descriptive tags to tell the visitor where the mouse is, and on top of what it hovers. Through considerate coding, one can program a site that is Adaptive Technology Friendly while in the process, optimizing the site for search engine compatibility. As time goes by and technology advances it is fair to assume a greater amount of the visually impaired population will be gaining access to the internet. The incorporation of good SEO techniques will allow these people to gain access like never before. They will be able to log in and become engaged participants. Companies who have taken the needs of the disabled and incorporate good SEO practices will be the ones who succeed and continue to grow online. They will also gain valuable access to this market that had previously been unaccessible.
Good SEO benefits everyone, enriching our web experience, and allowing us to find what we are looking for easily. SABA strongly urges you to consider optimizing your site to not only increase revenue and brand value, but to make the internet a better place. We can provide a successful strategy that can open doors for your company. Call us today to speak with one of our representatiaves to find out how.
Tags: Search Engine Optimization, SEO for the visually impaired
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Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Did you know that all together 85% of buyers use the Internet in one way or another during the purchase process?
 Nielsen Survey The Internet is quickly replacing print media, the Yellow Pages, and traditional advertising. The consumer is shying away from passive media ads in favor of targeted searches on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing to find the products and services they need. Luckily, expert SEO consultants know how to make targeted searches work.
One of the reasons that buyers like the internet so much is because they feel they are in control. The average consumer appreciates being able to compare prices and customize their order without having to step out to many different stores in what would otherwise be a lengthy, time consuming process. These customers will likely search for a key phrase, look at the first few pages, then if they haven’t found what they look for, they will conduct a new search with related terms until they find what they are looking for. Sound familiar? It is the same trend throughout every search engine, and the companies that rank higher in each of these terms will be the benefactor. This is an obvious truth. What most don’t know is that there is a way to increase your ranking and have your company represented on these top pages without having to submit your site to directories or start an expensive pay per click Adwords campaign. SEO It is an effective way to organically increase your ranking without having to do any external optimization. Most leads are made through organic optimization. Only after this has been applied and examined, can one take the next step of external optimization and pay per click campaigns. These also will need a targeted strategy to avoid a loss of time and money. Contact a qualified SEO consultant to help you get started.
Tags: Internet Marketing San Diego, San Diego SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Seo San Digo
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Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a fairly new practice that was born out of the search engine culture dominating the world wide web. Most people now use the internet and search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing to find what they want. Websites appearing first on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) will most likely be the ones to get the customer. In order to be amongst the elite, websites must be properly optimized in order to raise in ranks.
Search Engines have a mathematical algorithm by which they rate websites. By understanding the rating process, one can properly optimize a site in order to fit the search engine best practices criteria for a top ranked site. These practices include proper page structure, content building, and proper programming. It also involves the incorporation of specified keywords throughout each web page.
Before one begins building a website, it is always a good idea to have an effective keyword strategy. It provides a basis for which to build the content and structure for a web page. It also makes for easier content editing in the future. A keyword list must be compiled, grouped, organized, and constantly revised to find out what your target market is searching for. This keyword list will help you understand your customers, their trends and help guide the marketing strategy. It can also make the difference between having a website that converts viewers into customers and a website that does not. Trust a qualified SABA professional to help you build your list as it is the most important step in the optimization process.
By making each page unique and keyword targeted, we effectively make each page an optimized landing page. This increases the odds of being found because a search engine doesn’t only look for the home page. If each page is targeted, the viewer has probably found exactly what they were looking for and it will lower the chance of a bounce (quickly leaving the site without spending time reviewing it). This can only be achieved by making the content relevant to the keywords.
Proper keyword building will lead to a good SEO strategy. A good SEO strategy increases the chances of being found by a potential customer. The purpose is not just to drive traffic to your site, but to drive the right type of person to your site.
Tags: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
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