Choosing to hire an SEO company can be confusing with so many people claiming to be experts in this field. How do you know who is reliable? How do you get your money’s worth? How do you know you will get good search engine optimization results? There are plenty of SEO scammers! It’s a little like trying to get directions to where you want to go. Whether you know the way or never been to your destination, it can be uncertain and might even be a little scary!

Three steps for hiring the right SEO company include:

1. The first step to choosing a South Florida SEO company to manage your online presence is to identify your specific needs. Most companies offer a wide range of SEO services.  Some specialize in specific areas such as: conversions, management of pay-per-click campaigns, content creation, branding, link building, re-targeting and ongoing SEO services. You must identify your goals first. If you don’t know what is needed, that is OK. You can acquire this information, as you interact with different experts. Identifying your goal will allow you to analyze the success of your business partnership with a company and get the most from this business relationship.

2. Ask a South Florida SEO company if they offer a complimentary first consultation as a way to impress you with their abilities. This gives you an opportunity to find out what the company can do and get a feel for what the people are like and if you can work effectively with them. The company may need a few days to research your industry and review your website, if you already have one. If you are just starting your business, have some ideas of what you would like to achieve and what types of websites appeal to you. After your initial SEO consultation, the company should be able to provide you with a proposal outlining the services you need and the amount you will pay for those services. When meeting with different SEO companies, there is no need to disclose you are shopping around. The main question you want the  company to answer is whether they can successfully help you to reach your goals. Ask them if they have already had success with other companies in your industry. Many SEO companies will specialize with certain industries. If so, you can count on similar results. If the nature of your business means you have unique needs, choose an SEO company that have clients with business models that are similar to yours.

3. The best South Florida SEO company can share their experiences . Asking for stories provides you with greater insight into the company’s vision. Asking for references will only provide a certain amount of information. Much of that information is likely available on the company’s website or social media profiles. This is good information to have but you need to ask for more! Asking for stories, you will find out about the company’s best and worst client experiences and discover how they have dealt with various challenges.

Have you hired the right company yet? Identifying your goals, requesting free consultation and bids from multiple SEO companies, following up on references and listening to the company’s experiences will provide you with the tools you need to choose a reliable South Florida SEO company to work with your business!

There were many SEO changes in 2013. So what lies ahead for the future of SEO? What 2014 search engine ranking factors should we focus on? Here are a few SEO tips I recommend for 2014. More importantly, always be flexible in what changes Google might make in the future and what new search engine ranking factors can change from month to month!

• Social Media – It is not a surprise with the wide spread use of social media that getting your business involved with social media is very important this year. Google Plus and Youtube are both owned by Google so these websites are particularly important to Google searches. Successful companies should also be active in other networking site including: Facebook, Twitter,  Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Merchant Circle.
•  Mobile Sites – With the growing use of smart phones, more and more people are using the internet on their mobile phones. This brings up another key search engine ranking factor. Make sure your website is mobile compatible.
• Local Search – Google and other search engine sites continue to try and personalize your search results for your needs. This also means that when they know where you are located, they will try and bring up local search results to meet your specific needs. Hence, local search will continue to be important for your business.
• Links – Although the entire link building techniques have changed, in 2014, search engine ranking factors continue to find valuable trustworthy websites that link to your website will increase the authority of your website. Don’t link with just anyone, because that can only damage your reputation with search engines. Link with similar areas of business that you know that are good reputable companies.

Search Engine ranking factors in 2014 can be guaranteed to continue to evolve. Why? Because search engines are smart and technology continues to find better methods to produce better search results. Always be ready to adapt to new methods and continue to have your SEO monitored and maintained!

Many times a person might focus on one piece and wonder why their website doesn’t rank well in search results. But Google uses over 200 puzzle pieces! You need to look at the entire puzzle, not solely one piece your puzzle.

As an SEO firm, we look at the big picture of your website puzzle while adjusting small pieces. Sometimes, it’s only by looking at the big picture that you really know what little puzzle pieces need to be corrected. This can sometimes take awhile, hence using SEO is not a one time deal. It can take months to figure out the entire puzzle!

How is SEO like a puzzle? Let’s look at the different aspects of your website. Each piece of your website puzzle represents different components of search:

• structure
• meta tags
• navigation
• anchor text
• robots.txt file
• XML sitemap
• HTML sitemap
• mobile friendly
• authoritative links
• image optimization
• video optimization
• fresh unique content

Currently, the border of your website puzzle is what connects it all together with:

• Google+
• Google Local
• Google Authorship
• Interactive Social Media

Let’s imagine you are trying to put together a 200 piece puzzle. If you only have a few center pieces or a few border pieces, it can not be a masterpiece. You might be able to see what the puzzle looks like, but it still won’t be complete. All the pieces of the puzzle need to be in place in order to produce a perfect puzzle!

As you continue to put together SEO variables and create your website, the picture becomes more clear. Once your SEO professional gets all the pieces of the puzzle, the borders help tie it together. Google adds the tape to the back of your website “puzzle” and knows how all of your profiles are connected…just like a finished 200 piece puzzle!

In SEO, the more pieces you put together the easier it is for Google and other search engines to know what you offer and get the right search traffic to your website. The larger and more unique content, (complicated puzzle pieces put together) the more valuable puzzle you’ll own! Have you opened up the box to your SEO puzzle?

Photo credit: jared / Foter.com / CC BY

Search engine ranking factors are constantly changing. What is new today becomes old tomorrow. Google’s recent algorithms this year, were aimed at getting rid of websites that spam the users. Social media is also changing how the game is played when it comes to SEO. The search engine ranking factors include social media and quality content.

Google authorship, introduced in 2012, helps people build an online brand as well as a reputation. Google authorship lets authors claim the content that they write. This is done by the authors who simply connect it to their Google account. Google looks at this very favorably.  Today it is important to take advantage of this snippet for search engine ranking factors!

Social media is also a great way to get your website noticed especially since social media is the way that people stay in touch and informed. You should always have a share button on your site so that any information can be shared with others. Word of mouth has always been a great way to advertise. You should also create your own accounts on social media sites and link it to your website. Google+ is the social media owned by Google. As you can imagine, today involvement with this site is crucial for your search engine ranking!

Another thing that has changed greatly with search engine ranking factors is that of backlinking. In the past backlinks could make your website rank higher even if the backlinks went to junk/spam websites. Today things are different. Backlinking is still important, but it is the quality of the backlinks and not the quantity. The backlinks that will help your site rise in the rankings are links from respected websites that Google considers of authority. One great way to do this is to guest blog on websites that are already established and use your authorship.

Multimedia has always been important. In this day and era, multimedia continues to grow and develop. Today websites like Vine and Youtube make it even more popular and important! Multimedia will also bring more visitors to your site. Adding pictures along with video is a great way to do this. You will want to have pictures since sometimes users don’t take the time to watch the video. Pictures and other great forms of graphics are available. You need to quickly grab peoples’ attention when they have so many website choices to choose from.

One newer important aspect of search engine ranking factors is the need to build websites for mobile users. With the advancement of the smart phone, this means if you want your site to be user friendly you have to have a mobile website. Many internet users are on the go and use their phone instead of a desktop computer to do things such as banking, researching products, online shopping, and accessing social media. You can see this evident all around you!

SEO is in a constant state of change. Search engine ranking factors help get rid of those who just want to place spammy websites on the internet. Who likes to search for something on the web to click on a junk website? I don’t think anyone does! As Google and other search engine ranking factors change, we hope it helps business owners creating valuable websites with high quality well worth it. Don’t you agree?

People who do not have much experience in SEO may first find the search engine ranking process mind-boggling! The following are some search engine ranking tips that may help you to improve your website for major search engines.

Structure is crucial
A good website structure is crucial to search engine spider bots. This is how the website is created. Don’t take this lightly. We use WordPress because it is search engine friendly and can have good structure. Organized pages generally tend to rank better in search engines than haphazardly designed ones.

Many times people believe the design is important. It can easily win the visitors’ trust and will earn you more links, but a good-looking website , in and of itself, is not what gets your website ranked well in search engines!

Diverse Optimization
Over-optimizing your website may backfire and can affect you search engine ranking negatively. Choose diversification in place of over-optimization. Including structured data on every single webpage also helps attract more traffic. The following optimization, strategic operations are essential to structured data:

• Authorship
• Business Information
• Events & Reviews
• Google+
• Facebook

On-page optimization
You can find on-page optimization resources and search engine ranking tips at many relevant forums and sites. Read them to gain a better knowledge of the process. You may also learning and getting some basic SEO training to gain an in-depth knowledge of the matter and to understand which search engine ranking tips will work best for you.

Link building
The importance of link-building and all search engine ranking tips will include a word about this. There is no end to link building for professionals. Many people think link building is dead. do not link with poor websites that are using inappropriate SEO methods or aren’t adding good content to their website. Try linking your website to professional websites which bear relevance to your subject. If this is done in the right manner, search engines will give your webpage better rankings. Know more about the importance assigned by Google to hyperlink names. Page rank is greatly influenced by the number of valuable links coming from other websites to your website!

Good keywords
The principal thing of effective keyword research is to find the right keywords which would convert into significant traffic. The most frequent mistake regarding keywords is to try to rank a single keyword at a time. One should, instead, look to rank a select number of long-tail keywords.

Value to your content
Your content must have value to avoid getting branded as scam. You can create value in different ways. Factors like, point of view, emotional response, and utility are important.

Depth of subject
Go deeper into the topic you are writing about. The relevance and length matters, but so does the depth of the piece. You will create more value to your content by deeper exploration of the topic. Unique and quality content will help you better your ranking and will get you more links.

Google’s bot spiders are known to scan your content regularly in an attempt to gauge the relevance of your topic to search queries. Paragraphs, visual images, and headings are regularly examined to understand your webpages.

 

I hope these search engine ranking tips help you! Google and other search engines are continually trying to improve their formula (algorithm) to produce the best search results for their users. Google states…

Google answers more than one billion questions from people around the globe…15% of the searches we see everyday we’ve never seen before.”

People tend to only look at the first page of search results and rarely, if ever, look past page three! Ranking well with your website is crucial if you want to gain traffic and sales for your business!

As a business owner, you should learn how to do onpage SEO for your website blogging articles. Onpage SEO will help you get higher rankings! You should familiarize yourself with them and begin using them as you add content to your site. Once you know how to do onpage SEO, you can get better rankings in search engines!

Optimize your website with onpage SEO with the following factors:

Write Unique Content
Never duplicate content on your own site or from another site. Every page needs to be unique! When duplicate content is used, the site may be penalized and possibly removed from search engines.

Add Meta Tags
The title and description you give your content can help to increase click through when search results are displayed. Make sure to use unique and good keywords.

Optimized Web Addresses
To make your web address readable and easier for search engines to identify the content, they should contain your keywords instead of numbers. Follow this example: website.com/category-name/product name instead of website.com?p=3412

Use Visual Content
When learning how to do onpage SEO, you will realize that visual content can be very helpful for search engines as well as to attract your readers. Examples of visual content include: video, graphics,  thumbnails and clickable buttons.

Use Page Markups
Page Markups (also known as rich snippets) include “extras” that will be seen in search results. These extra page markups can include:

• Breadcrumbs
• Events
• Music
• People
• Products
• Review ratings
• Reviews
• Videos

Interlink Web Pages
Knowing how to do onpage SEO means putting related content on the same pages or posts. This will increase the number of pages that each guest visits. For example, if you are writing about a product, add a clickable link to the page so your reader can view and purchase the product.

Add Categories for Blog Posts
Your home page should have different categories to make it easier for both search engines and visitors to navigate the site. Always add a category for each of your articles you write.

Add Social Media
Always have easy viewable social media buttons on your home page that link to your business profile/page. Allow each blog post to also be shared with your readers to help promote your website. Connecting your website to social media is valuable for search engines as well as your readers.

Search engines crawl websites as part of their ranking algorithm. On-page SEO accounts for about 25% of the overall total score. Although an SEO professional still has 75% off-page SEO work to accomplish, your task is still very important to the end results! Every business owner or web writer needs to know how to do onpage SEO. If your website information is incorrect or missing, search engines will ignore your website or it might not get ranked at all! Make sure you know how to do onpage SEO!

What is keyword research in SEO?

The importance of keywords cannot be overemphasized when considering SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The right keywords should be a priority when trying to get better search engine results. Without keyword research, you could very well be putting in wasted hours and effort not targeting the people searching for your product or service.  Keyword research will help you choose the best phrases people are searching. Insert them into your unique content, and search engines will index them according to those specific search terms!

Proper Keywords

Using only one word as a keyword may seem like a simple and straightforward approach.  But today, many people search specifically for what they want.  The more specific the keywords that you use, you’ll see fewer results but your chances of appearing will be better! Several searched keywords are called a “long-tail keyword.”  Effective keywords will have three or more words together!

For example, if you are a gardening enthusiast and feel you have worthwhile information and knowledge to share, using a simple keyword of “gardening” will not attract the readers you wish to attract. You must follow the trend of other and utilize keywords that narrow things down for searchers. Depending on the focus of your site, you could choose “gardening tools,” or “pruning tips,” or “long blooming annuals” and attract an audience with specific needs, to avoid being lost in a sea of basic gardening sites.

What is keyword research in SEO?

Your keywords must fit the content of your site. A knowledge of your audience can help you determine what “long-tailed keywords” will work, leading searchers to your website.  In addition, your keywords can’t simply reach out to engage searchers; they must also accurately describe what you have to offer. Keywords with a narrower parameter will get fewer hits on the internet, but those users who are searching for specific needs will find it on your website!

Consider the individual who is searching for information on how to rewire an antique lamp. The keywords of “rewiring antique lamp” will probably be more useful to him than a website labeled “antique lamps.” A site with the more generic description could lead a hopeful learner to a site that describes old lamps, with no advice on how to repair them. Consider how this will attract searchers!

Keyword Density

Once you have determined the best keyword(s) to employ, you must decide how often to use them on your website. If you have a site that is loaded with keywords, you have a strong keyword density.  Google’s recent algorithms have penalized websites for too much density. Too many keywords may also create text that sounds forced and unnatural. Many times there are consequences for “keyword stuffing” that may be as harsh as being taken out of search engine results. Keywords need to be naturally used within your unique content.

Conclusion

Optimize keyword research through vigilance, trial and error. You need to find out which words and phrases result in positive results and which ones get little or no results. Make sure to write unique content with your keyword research! Careful analysis of keywords, good grammar and spelling will make your work more noticeable and attract the best readers!

Have you ever asked this question?

Why do I need a website for my business?”

If you are a business owner and have done well for the last 10 years, you might never have bothered getting a website for your business. So, how do we respond to this question? Here is our answer…

The reason you want a website for your business involves the same decision you make to market your business with coupons, giving out business cards or placing ads in newspapers; to gain potential customers, increase sales and grow your business!

Here are five reasons why you need a website for your business:

1. You can be “open” 24 hours a day!
2. You can get ahead of your competitors through search engine optimization.
3. You own your website vs solely using social media sites. (They can eliminate your content anytime!)
4. You can have several “stores”  (websites) and have more opportunities to be in search results.
5. Millions of people are searching and shopping on the internet instead of using local stores.

If you have finally decided to create a  website for your business, here are five basic internet marketing musts!

1. Create a website with a SEO foundation.
2. As a business, join popular social media websites such as: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, and Google+.
3. If you have an a physical storefront, add it to local directories such as Google local or Yahoo local.
4. Ask clients to review your business on review websites such as Merchant Circle, Linkedin and Yelp.
5. Measure your progress by using search engine analytics.

In this 21st century, there has been an explosion in social media, reviewing products online and getting the latest news updates!  Don’t you think it’s time your businesss is found in users’ search results?

The popularity of keywords and the concept how society uses them every day was evident when Tom and I ate at TGI Friday’s. We love the Brownie Obsession and ordered it. What happened in a nutshell? We read the description and thought we would get drizzling Ghirardelli sauce on top of our brownie . Why did we think that? Because of the keyword phrase we focused on when we read the description.

A warm brownie made with Ghirardelli chocolate-fudge sauce. Topped with vanilla ice cream, caramel and pecans.”

Literally, the sauce was IN the brownie, not on top of it!  But since we love Ghirardelli chocolate, the popularity of the keywords (brand) connected to us and we chose to order it. (Ching-ching $ to Friday’s!)

In society, you see people marketing their product in stores as well as drawing readers to books, etc…  Using words with popular adjectives describing the keyword  is common to see. That is the same principle with the popularity of keywords that you should use on your website or blog post.

Commonly called long tail keywords, a keyword phrase has three to five words in the phrase. A website page needs to refine search terms to the web page, as well as when the searcher is looking for something rather specific. Long tail keywords will narrow in on a market that might be smaller than normal, but the people searching for this product/service  have a greater potential for a conversion then does one simple word.

For example, let’s say you are a Realtor and sell condos.  You want to make unique keywords for every blog post you write. You wouldn’t use the keyword “condo” each time. You might write a simple keyword phrase like “condo for sale.”  Better yet, you could narrow in to the people searching for more!  Here are some better examples of longtail keywords you could use. Remember: each of your web pages and posts need unique tags.

~ South Florida condo for sale
~ Coral Springs, FL lakefront condo
~Viewpoint of Margate condominium for sale

Note how I describe a condo. By location, by different factors and specific associations. If I am a Realtor  I will draw the people I really want vs. someone searching to rent a condo, or buy a condo in Colorado!

By integrating long tail search keywords, you are much more likely to draw targeted traffic to your website.”

The popularity of choosing keywords for marketing in business and on your website is an important aspect!  You want to get customers into your doorway, to your website, in addition to optimizing your website pages for search engines.  If you own a blogging website, apply this concept to your writing concepts and get started today!