Vermont Design Works started a partnership with iMarket Solutions (www.iMarketSolutions.com) in the summer of 2010. Since then, iMarket and VDW have created over 30 websites with full online marketing, blog, content and social media services. Our Domination package is bringing companies with very little presence in the SERPs to the top of the Organic listings within a few months of launch. And these HVAC and Plumbing companies will stay on top because we add new fresh content to their websites, update their promotions, add testimonials, and manage their social media on a daily basis.
In March, our partnership allowed us to launch 16 new websites for iMarket Solutions customers. And now our post launch activities are starting. These websites will always be up to date with new content that the search engines and customers love.
One recent search in a town outside of Tampa revealed that our customers held 3 of the top 4 positions in the google organic listings for the highly coveted "air conditioning repair" keyword.
Our mission continues. April looks like it might be just as strong.
The basic philosophy is to combine excellent user friendly design, with search engine friendly programming, with extensive click, email, and phone call tracking. After that platform is created, add fresh new keyword targeted content at least once per week (iMarket Domination customers get 3 new keyword targeted blog posts per week). Track all the leads and results and modify the approach to maximize the cost per lead of the websites. Our sites generate customers at a cost per lead that is 90% lower than industry averages. And we are adding more than 10 new pages to the Google index per month. Each one of those pages is like a raffle ticket just waiting to be read by a prospective customer.
Our results are strong and we intend to keep it that way.
Showing posts with label Keywords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keywords. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Use Analytics to measure SEO effectiveness
Google Analytics is a free program which was based on the $500 per month Urchin Live web statistics program. None of our customers could afford this program. But when Google purchased Urchin, they offered their premium service to the world...for free.
While it does take some time to properly set up analytics, with basic HTML skills you could do it yourself. If not, it will take your web people about an hour to set it up right.
What analytics provides you as the site owner is insight into how web surfers are finding your site, what pages they are looking at, how long they spend on the site, what countries they are from, what screen resolution they are using, what internet speed they are using, what internet browser they are using, etc.
The question becomes how can you use Analytics to direct your SEO efforts. Today, we did exactly that for a real estate company. Using their analytics, we discovered that 2 out of their 6 top level navigation points accounted for less than 1/10th of 1% of all of their traffic. What they thought was their primary place to rpovide information to web visitors turned out to be the least visited. And after Property Search (which accounted for over 60% of the traffic), mortgage information was next most popular. And amazingly, all the mortgage information was buried in the 2nd level.
So we are using this information to move the mortgage information pages to the 1st level of navigation and burying the 2 very unused sections of the website. We will then optimize heavily for popular regional mortgage information keywords to capture additional traffic.
While it does take some time to properly set up analytics, with basic HTML skills you could do it yourself. If not, it will take your web people about an hour to set it up right.
What analytics provides you as the site owner is insight into how web surfers are finding your site, what pages they are looking at, how long they spend on the site, what countries they are from, what screen resolution they are using, what internet speed they are using, what internet browser they are using, etc.
The question becomes how can you use Analytics to direct your SEO efforts. Today, we did exactly that for a real estate company. Using their analytics, we discovered that 2 out of their 6 top level navigation points accounted for less than 1/10th of 1% of all of their traffic. What they thought was their primary place to rpovide information to web visitors turned out to be the least visited. And after Property Search (which accounted for over 60% of the traffic), mortgage information was next most popular. And amazingly, all the mortgage information was buried in the 2nd level.
So we are using this information to move the mortgage information pages to the 1st level of navigation and burying the 2 very unused sections of the website. We will then optimize heavily for popular regional mortgage information keywords to capture additional traffic.
Monday, September 1, 2008
What are Internal Links? - SEO Basics
Internal links are links primarily within the content area (body) of each page that link to other, oftentimes deeper, pages within the same site. Usually, Internal Links can weave into the web page copy in a logical manner that points the visitor to further or deeper information that would logically flow from the page they are already viewing.
Since most Search Engines including Google follow links to other pages, internal linking is a great way to provide users with logical next steps for accessing information from your site and to expose as many of your webpages to the search robots as possible.
Ok, so now you say "internal links provide good additional ways for users to access information they might like but...": Can you drive good web ranking or page rank from Internal Linking? What kind of juice is there with internal links?
By no means does Internal Linking ensure that your website will be well ranked. What internal linking can assist with is guiding the search robots once they have visited your site. Once landing upon an individual page, the search robots will follow other links in the content area. So if your more popular, or better positioned web pages had internal links to deeper pages within your site or pages that get less attention from visitors, you are providing opportunities for these pages through Internal Linking.
Ok, now for some examples of our bad, good, better, best ranking system.
Bad
Linking to dozens of other internal pages from each page on your site with little thought or logical flow to the other pages. You already have (hopefully) a well thought out navigation structure and a site map built into your site so we don't recommend taking Internal Linking to this extreme. For example, on a mortgage company site, having internal links to every loan program offered (there are dozens of combinations) on every page would probably not pass the smell test with the search robots and it will drive the user insane. Why would a website visitor think that there was any difference in a applying for a mortgage in South Burlington, VT versus Burlington, VT? Having 2 separate links to these pages is purely for search engine purposes and could "turn off" a website visitor.
Essentially, you can't stuff internal links just to try and get a boost from the search engines. It lowers your integrity with website visitors and with the search engines.
Good
Providing a link or two within the site content where appropriate. if you reference a program or a webpage that is on your site, go ahead and set up a link to that page.
Better
Not only would you provide the link when mention content or pages that might be of further use to the visitor, you optimize the "anchor text" within each internal link to provide keyword juice to those pages.
Instead of "In order to check out our section on jumbo mortgages, click here: http://www.mortgagecompany.com/loan-programs/jumbo-mortgages", you would write the internal links smoothly within the flow of the sentence: "And from our South Burlington, VT office, you can learn more about our jumbo mortgage programs." The optimized "anchor text" for this link scores points for the jumbo mortgage page and still provides a clear path of action for the website visitor.
Best
To get the most from Internal Linking, work with your website content to make sure that you are able to add at least 3 internal links on every page and use optimized "anchor text" to point the way! (of course, by using keywords from your master keyword list). One part strategy and one part execution will combine to give you, your website visitors, and the search robots an optimized internal linking strategy that works.
Since most Search Engines including Google follow links to other pages, internal linking is a great way to provide users with logical next steps for accessing information from your site and to expose as many of your webpages to the search robots as possible.
Ok, so now you say "internal links provide good additional ways for users to access information they might like but...": Can you drive good web ranking or page rank from Internal Linking? What kind of juice is there with internal links?
By no means does Internal Linking ensure that your website will be well ranked. What internal linking can assist with is guiding the search robots once they have visited your site. Once landing upon an individual page, the search robots will follow other links in the content area. So if your more popular, or better positioned web pages had internal links to deeper pages within your site or pages that get less attention from visitors, you are providing opportunities for these pages through Internal Linking.
Ok, now for some examples of our bad, good, better, best ranking system.
Bad
Linking to dozens of other internal pages from each page on your site with little thought or logical flow to the other pages. You already have (hopefully) a well thought out navigation structure and a site map built into your site so we don't recommend taking Internal Linking to this extreme. For example, on a mortgage company site, having internal links to every loan program offered (there are dozens of combinations) on every page would probably not pass the smell test with the search robots and it will drive the user insane. Why would a website visitor think that there was any difference in a applying for a mortgage in South Burlington, VT versus Burlington, VT? Having 2 separate links to these pages is purely for search engine purposes and could "turn off" a website visitor.
Essentially, you can't stuff internal links just to try and get a boost from the search engines. It lowers your integrity with website visitors and with the search engines.
Good
Providing a link or two within the site content where appropriate. if you reference a program or a webpage that is on your site, go ahead and set up a link to that page.
Better
Not only would you provide the link when mention content or pages that might be of further use to the visitor, you optimize the "anchor text" within each internal link to provide keyword juice to those pages.
Instead of "In order to check out our section on jumbo mortgages, click here: http://www.mortgagecompany.com/loan-programs/jumbo-mortgages", you would write the internal links smoothly within the flow of the sentence: "And from our South Burlington, VT office, you can learn more about our jumbo mortgage programs." The optimized "anchor text" for this link scores points for the jumbo mortgage page and still provides a clear path of action for the website visitor.
Best
To get the most from Internal Linking, work with your website content to make sure that you are able to add at least 3 internal links on every page and use optimized "anchor text" to point the way! (of course, by using keywords from your master keyword list). One part strategy and one part execution will combine to give you, your website visitors, and the search robots an optimized internal linking strategy that works.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Search Engine Opitimzation Basics - Creating a Master Keyword Phrase List
How to build your keyword list?
Oftentimes, we talk with clients who absolutely know what keyword phrases that they want their website to be ranked for in the search engines.
This can be an awkward place to start with a new client. I am a firm believer that individual business owners, marketing folks, communications people, etc within an organization and industry know their marketplace better than we do as the web design, development, and optimization firm. However, we too often spend resources, time and money optimizing a website for keyword phrases that just don't get searched for by web surfers.
As a search engine optimziation firm, it becomes very easy for us to get good rankings for a keyword phrase that is not searched on very much. Clients love us because we meet and exceed their expectations. But we wish that we were focused on the best keyword phrases for a company based on search statistics which we as a firm have access to.
Using the client's keyword and keyword phrase list, we then create a "master keyword list" which contains all the keyword phrases that might be possibly and logically be combined for search engine purposes. A keyword phrase list based on a keyword list might contain: vermont web design, vermont programming, VT web development, vermont web page development, vt webpage development, etc...
But it is critical that you do not stop there. You then need to take that keyword phrase master list and make sure that people are in fact using those keyword phrases in the search engines. We do this "keyword analysis" for most clients and find out how many times each of the keyword phrases are searched in a given month. And then we use some of the keyword phrase search engine tools such as Word Tracker (Wordtracker Free Trial) to expand the master keyword phrase list to include keyword phrases that the compnay not have thought of and that do get searched on the major search engines.
Using these search counts, we can then pare down the master list to only include keyword phrases that have solid search traffic counts, and that are attainable (we are not going to go after the keyword "jumbo mortgage" for a local vermont mortgage company as it is too broad and too expensive to go after, but we will go after "vermont jumbo mortgage").
If you are having trouble generating your keyword list on your own, do some searching yourself and the sites that do rank well on the first 1 or 2 pages of Google. Use keyword phrases that you are sure would be used by your potential customers. Start simple like "vermont web design" in our case.
Then look at the "source code" for the page (most browsers, there is a View, Source combination to view the HTML coding for a page) and see what keyword phrases the page is built with (once the source code is opened, do a search for the word "keyword" and you should find the META tag for keywords. It is usally at the top of the page and very plain to see if the code is clean and tight). You can use your competitor's sites and sites that already rank well to target the keywords that will be helpful for your site.
After doing your keyword initial research, combine the keywords into keyword phrases that your potential visitors/customers would use to find your website.
There are many different ways to do this keyword analysis yourself or to use a service or a firm. If you use a service, just make sure that you know what you getting for the money and certainly double check their work using the tools i suggest through these articles.
If content is king...keyword phrases fill the king's coffers.
Oftentimes, we talk with clients who absolutely know what keyword phrases that they want their website to be ranked for in the search engines.
This can be an awkward place to start with a new client. I am a firm believer that individual business owners, marketing folks, communications people, etc within an organization and industry know their marketplace better than we do as the web design, development, and optimization firm. However, we too often spend resources, time and money optimizing a website for keyword phrases that just don't get searched for by web surfers.
As a search engine optimziation firm, it becomes very easy for us to get good rankings for a keyword phrase that is not searched on very much. Clients love us because we meet and exceed their expectations. But we wish that we were focused on the best keyword phrases for a company based on search statistics which we as a firm have access to.
But again, most companies know their industry better than their web design and development firm will.
Therefore, we always ask our clients to create what they consider their master keyword list (see my last post entitled "Keywords versus Keyword Phrases - how are they different?" for the difference between a keyword and a keyword phrase). First, we ask that they start with individual keywords (for example, vermont, web, page, design, development, programming, etc). Then we ask them to use these keywords to create keyword phrases based on those keywords.
Using the client's keyword and keyword phrase list, we then create a "master keyword list" which contains all the keyword phrases that might be possibly and logically be combined for search engine purposes. A keyword phrase list based on a keyword list might contain: vermont web design, vermont programming, VT web development, vermont web page development, vt webpage development, etc...
But it is critical that you do not stop there. You then need to take that keyword phrase master list and make sure that people are in fact using those keyword phrases in the search engines. We do this "keyword analysis" for most clients and find out how many times each of the keyword phrases are searched in a given month. And then we use some of the keyword phrase search engine tools such as Word Tracker (Wordtracker Free Trial) to expand the master keyword phrase list to include keyword phrases that the compnay not have thought of and that do get searched on the major search engines.
Using these search counts, we can then pare down the master list to only include keyword phrases that have solid search traffic counts, and that are attainable (we are not going to go after the keyword "jumbo mortgage" for a local vermont mortgage company as it is too broad and too expensive to go after, but we will go after "vermont jumbo mortgage").
If you are having trouble generating your keyword list on your own, do some searching yourself and the sites that do rank well on the first 1 or 2 pages of Google. Use keyword phrases that you are sure would be used by your potential customers. Start simple like "vermont web design" in our case.
Then look at the "source code" for the page (most browsers, there is a View, Source combination to view the HTML coding for a page) and see what keyword phrases the page is built with (once the source code is opened, do a search for the word "keyword" and you should find the META tag for keywords. It is usally at the top of the page and very plain to see if the code is clean and tight). You can use your competitor's sites and sites that already rank well to target the keywords that will be helpful for your site.
After doing your keyword initial research, combine the keywords into keyword phrases that your potential visitors/customers would use to find your website.
There are many different ways to do this keyword analysis yourself or to use a service or a firm. If you use a service, just make sure that you know what you getting for the money and certainly double check their work using the tools i suggest through these articles.
If content is king...keyword phrases fill the king's coffers.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Keywords versus Keyword Phrases - how are they different?
Keywords and keyword phrases can be a tricky subject. There is a bad habit in the search engine optimization and web development industry in general about using keyword and keyword phrases inappropriately.
To make a point clear: I myself have had a tendency to use "keyword" and "keyword phrase" phrase interchangeably. I try not to but it still happens. I will try to make it very clear when it is important to realize the difference between the two.
But for most part, your keyword list is really your keyword phrase list. For example, Vermont Design Works keywords, technically, are: design, development, vermont, seo, winooski, burlington, graphic, etc.
Keyword phrases are multi word phrases derived from a keyword list but target more appropriately the words that a searcher will actually type into a search engine. I don't necessarily want my company website up on page 1 in Google for the keyword "vermont". That is not my market. But the keyword phrase "vermont web design", I very much want (and we are #1 for this keyword).
One might ask: "why wouldn't you want to be on the first page for the keyword 'design'?" Good question, I might respond...
While design as a single word keyword phrase is searched on quite a bit, the niche it defines is not narrow enough for me to want to expend energy to capture. It is too broad, too unfocused for me to allocate any resources towards getting ranked for it in Google.
In summary, I consider Keywords as individual keywords which will make up the individual words in your master list of keyword phrases.
A subtle but important distinction in terminology for what is considered the heart of search engine optimization (SEO). Make sure to start any SEO campaign, take the time to establish the targeted keyword phrase list that will generate high quality, good return on investment (ROI), website visitors (future customers).
To make a point clear: I myself have had a tendency to use "keyword" and "keyword phrase" phrase interchangeably. I try not to but it still happens. I will try to make it very clear when it is important to realize the difference between the two.
But for most part, your keyword list is really your keyword phrase list. For example, Vermont Design Works keywords, technically, are: design, development, vermont, seo, winooski, burlington, graphic, etc.
Keyword phrases are multi word phrases derived from a keyword list but target more appropriately the words that a searcher will actually type into a search engine. I don't necessarily want my company website up on page 1 in Google for the keyword "vermont". That is not my market. But the keyword phrase "vermont web design", I very much want (and we are #1 for this keyword).
One might ask: "why wouldn't you want to be on the first page for the keyword 'design'?" Good question, I might respond...
While design as a single word keyword phrase is searched on quite a bit, the niche it defines is not narrow enough for me to want to expend energy to capture. It is too broad, too unfocused for me to allocate any resources towards getting ranked for it in Google.
In summary, I consider Keywords as individual keywords which will make up the individual words in your master list of keyword phrases.
A subtle but important distinction in terminology for what is considered the heart of search engine optimization (SEO). Make sure to start any SEO campaign, take the time to establish the targeted keyword phrase list that will generate high quality, good return on investment (ROI), website visitors (future customers).
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