How Search (SEO) is Changing

A shift in search = a shift in SEO. There’s a new component to search engine optimization (SEO) that can’t be ignored – Social Media. In some form or another, Search Engines are now including content from social networks with traditional search results.

The good news is; the same traditional SEO methodology applies to socially produced content. If optimized properly, content produced on social networks like Facebook and Twitter will show in the same search results as your website or blog.

Watch the SEOmoz video below for additional information:

Guide to Hiring an SEO that Can Actually Rank

A good SEO is worth every penny. Getting a website to rank on competitive keyphrases is a very difficult task which requires an ongoing effort from an experienced SEO. If your business depends on the web, ranking well for keyphrases that potential customers will use to find you is crucial to your ROI.

Everyone claims to be an SEO these days. Web design/development companies and consultants are hastily adding it to their service roster, despite having any real clue as to what SEO really is. Marketing and Brand Management agencies have done the same, adopting a technology they know little about. That leaves the SEOs themselves… the consultants and companies fully devoted to SEO, PPC and Social Marketing. Many of which, drop the ball on keyphrase targeting, monitoring and reporting. SEO is so much more than just marketing. It requires a fundamental understanding of the technology that powers the web.

How To Tell if an SEO Knows

1. The GOLDEN RULE. Google them. You are hiring someone to get your website to rank well after all. If you can’t find them online, don’t expect to rank well by employing their services. Be wary of SEOs that show up in the sponsored portion of the search results; these include the box-like results that show at the top and to the right of typical search results. These are paid advertisements. Meaning, the SEO is merely paying for their site to be displayed versus it actually ranking well in the ‘organic’ search results. An SEO that pays to rank is not an SEO at all.
   Example searches; your city name plus the words SEO or Internet Marketing i.e. “boise internet marketing” or “seo boise”. All things considered, if an SEO can’t rank well with their own website, I wouldn’t even worry about applying the following rules.
2. Portfolio Availability. Many new SEOs smell the money, and subsequently have very little experience at providing optimization services. A good SEO will have a robust portfolio of clients readily available online. If you are unsure, e-mail them a request for references, success stories and a link to their LinkedIn profile.
3. Under the Hood Optimization. SEOs should know how to optimize code along with content. They need to be able to write sitemap.xml and robots.txt files, analyze website structure, naming conventions, RSS/XML feeds and optimize CMS code to boot. A technical understanding of how search engines work will definitely give any SEO an edge. Many SEOs are reformed traditional marketers and brand managers that typically lack this technology-based skill set. Hat Tip: If the SEO in question uses a blog, click on one of their pages (not a post), other than the homepage. If there is a time stamp on the page you can almost bet that the SEO is technically clueless.
4. Backlinks. Backlinks. Backlinks. Your potential SEO better be good at this. Very good. This off-page SEO tactic is aimed at acquiring 1-way, incoming links to your website. Good, ‘quality’ backlinks from reputable, well-ranked and authority sources not only represent votes of confidence for your site in the eyes of the search engines, but they also can increase overall levels of exposure by ranking well themselves. For example, my Twitter profile has at times out-ranked my website when people search for “seo boise”. Same goes for individual content items, like a well-optimized YouTube video, blog post, Squidoo and press release. If an SEO doesn’t have many ‘quality’ backlinks for their own website or blog, they probably didn’t pass the golden rule anyway (see #1). Without ‘quality’ backlinks, you might as well kiss good rankings goodbye.
5. Competing Clients. If an SEO has 2 or more clients that have directly competing search terms, then the SEO greatly benefits by allowing said clients to compete with each other. A good SEO will turn away a potential client if direct search term competition exists. Ask your potential SEO about this, especially if they fail rule 2.
6. Who Does What. You will also want to inquire about who actually performs the SEO, and make sure it’s not being outsourced to India, unless you’re OK with that.

Use the 6 rules above to help thin the crowd when searching for an SEO that is knowledgeable in their field. If you are interested in SEO Boise (.com) Internet Marketing consulting services please click here to contact us.

SEO Boise (.com) is owned and operated by Jtree.net, a Boise, Idaho based SEO, PPC and Social Internet Marketing consulting firm that has provided services to over 50 companies and agencies over the last 10 years.

40 Stellar WordPress SEO Tips

40 Must-Know WordPress SEO Tips : Rank Better in Search Engines and Social Networks

If you use WordPress, then optimizing (SEO) it for search engines and social media networks is one of your top priorities. This batch of 40 WordPress SEO tips comes from famed WordPress developer and SEO guru Joost de Valk (link below).

Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties with the Canonical Link Element

Duplicate Content Can Pinch Your SEO Efforts

Not only can duplicated content make it difficult for search engines to index your web pages properly, but it can lead to penalties that could dramatically effect a website’s ability to rank well for targeted keyphrases in the major search engines.

As websites grow-up, the potential for duplicate content increases. Sites that contain a lot of content might have a variety of different URLs that all reference the same location. This issue can often impact smaller websites that show up in search engine results with and without the ‘www’ in front of the corresponding URL.

An Open Standard Solution Supported by Google – Yahoo! – and Microsoft

Even though Google Webmaster Tools has an option to select the ‘www’ preference for the URLs of your website, a tactic with more control that is acceptable for other search engines was needed. The canonical link element was developed to help search engines determine the preferred URL to be used for your website.

When linking to pages of your site or blog, utilize the canonical link element in the header portion of your links.

Here’s the canonical link element in action:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/page.html"/>

This tells the search engines that the prefferred URL is http://example.com/page.html (note: without the ‘www’). Where canonical = preferred.

Additional Information

Video clip of Google’s Matt Cutts explaining the link element…

10 Magnanimous SEO Tips

Optimizing your website or blog for search engines (SEO) can be a daunting task. Over the years I’ve provided Search Engine Optimization services to a variety of businesses, large and small. While it would be mind numbing to compile a list of everything that need or could be done in regard to optimizing a site for search engines, I have come across some tips that are more notable than others.

10 Magnanimous SEO Tips

1. Black hat strategies are hit and miss, not to mention loaded with potential risk. Even if you know what you are doing.
2. Grey hat strategies are often questionable. However, knowing about Black and Grey hat strategy strengths and weaknesses will drastically improve your optimization capabilities. It’s important to note that a White hat tactic can be classified Black just as easy as the other way around. It’s all relative to current search engine ranking criteria.
3. Links with the “nofollow” tag attribute are only useless in terms of backlink credit from Google; many other search engines ignore this tag.
4. Focus on individual web pages versus the entire site; the bulk majority of your traffic will typically be derived from just a few pages.
5. In regard to focusing on keyphrases; keep it short, but sweet. Duplicating keywords/phrases and targeting a bunch will do more harm than good. Think of it more like creating a ‘theme’ for a web page that targets a particular set of words or phrases.
6. Search engines typically have 1,000 results (100 pages) that are returned after a search is performed, despite the number of results that are displayed immediately after preforming a search. The top 5 positions get the most traffic, and most searchers do not often go past the 2nd page of results.
7. Ideally, you want to optimize a site for search engines before it has been designed/developed. This will allow for maximization of SEO potential.
8. A backlink from the Yahoo! Link Directory and DMOZ is worth more than approximately 100-200 backlinks from typical free submission directories.
9. SEO audits and analysis must always come first. Targeting is VERY important.
10. Using Google Webmaster Tools to submit xml sitemaps can speed up re-indexing time. This is also where you can find out if your website has incurred any penalties.

Always remember – content is king, and ‘don’t be evil’. You’d be surprised at how good the Search Engines treat websites and blogs that follow these two simple principles.