The downside is it takes time and effort to keep up with adding new content. But now with all of Google’s panda SEO craziness, a blog is more important than ever. Reason being, the Grand Master of search engines, Google, has made a tweak to their algorithm that penalizes thin, stale websites. And in their defense, I think this was a good move because it forces everyone to build better websites.

The basic idea behind a blog is that you add new content to your website on a regular basis, preferably weekly. Using this blog as an example, I post articles about SEO, websites, online marketing, etc. So whatever your business is, that’s what the articles would be about. If you’re a fitness instructor, your blog could be about healthy eating, weight loss, exercises, etc.

Now as I said before, the downside to blogging is the time and effort it takes. But you really can’t afford not to have a blog anymore. So what do you do? Outsource. I’ve found some great people on Elance. You can find someone that will write your blog articles for you. Someone with relevant experience and with pricing that fits your budget. They write you weekly articles and then you post them to your blog, or just hire someone to handle your blog full-service.

Folks, adding a blog to your website is very important now, and for the long term success of your website, I urge you to get the ball rolling!

And they just de-indexed over 10,000 domains from Build My Rank, a private blog network. Doing this not only put BMR out of business…but they also affected the income of many internet marketers and the assistants that help them like the content writers for example.

The overall negative effect of this move by Google is very far reaching. But in the end, even though I don’t agree with everything they do with SEO (they clearly favor big brands…JC Penny for example), it makes sense because their SERP is their baby and they are trying to protect it.

Is SEO dead? Absolutely not. This is business and business is ever changing. Take light bulbs for example. They are being replaced with energy efficient bulbs so GE has to now adapt. Google has just changed the rules of SEO and now we have to adapt.

So what are the new rules of SEO post panda?

1. Good, fresh content is very important. If you don’t have a blog on your site, add one.
2. Social media signals are important. If you aren’t on Facebook or Twitter, sign up.
3. A diverse source of backlinks are important. Variety is key including anchor text.
4. A strong, helpful website is important. Google wants to rank sites that provide value.

All of this shouldn’t be too shocking. Google’s job is to show searchers results that are actually a perfect fit for what they are searching for. So ultimately they only want to rank sites that are good…not thin, crappy and artificially-boosted sites.

SEO is changing. It’s time to bring your “A” game. Are you up for the challenge?

1. Picking the right keywords
2. Tweaking your website for the keywords
3. Building links to your website

But as you might have heard or seen, social media is playing a growing role in SEO.

Social media is already an awesome marketing vehicle by itself. It’s great for connecting with your audience in a low pressure environment, branding your products or services and driving traffic to your website. And it’s also now playing a bigger part in getting a website ranked in the search engines.

The search engines have admitted that they look at social signals when ranking websites. They look to see how active and “popular” a website is in Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and the metrics are factored into their ranking algorithm.

And now Google is experimenting with injecting Google+ content into the normal search engine results when you do a search and are signed into Google (assuming you have a Google+ profile).

So what I’m trying to convey here is that the line between SEO and social media is blurring. You can still get great results with SEO alone as I do for all my clients. But in the best case scenario, you should combine traditional SEO with social media marketing.

Social media takes a lot of time, however, so if you have to, just focus on 2 networks instead of all 3. In my personal opinion, Facebook is good if you sell products and Twitter is good if you sell services. And Google+ should be used by all companies because Google has a vested interest in the success of their social media network and they are the 800 pound gorilla!

SEO must always begin with mapping out the URLs you are optimizing with the corresponding keywords. You should look to optimize for about 3 keywords per URL. Sometimes 2 is a better fit and sometimes you can get away with 4.

There are a ton of keyword tools out there to help you with your research. Some free, some paid. Just do a Google search for keyword research tool and see which one works best for you.

So what you do is, per URL, write down what you think people would search for in Google to find that particular page. Do this for all your URLs. And then use these keywords as a starting point in your research. You’ll be amazed at what you think people are searching for versus what they are actually searching for. And all keyword tools will also make keyword recommendations based on your initial input.

So what are you looking for in a keyword?

Targeted – the keyword must be obviously targeted to the URL you are optimizing. If someone searched for the keyword and found your page, would it be a good fit?

Not Competitive – do you have a huge marketing budget? Probably not. So don’t go after super competitive keywords because it will take a lot of money (and time) to compete.

Search Volume – the keyword must have search volume, meaning it actually gets searched for. The specific search volume you look for will vary based on your niche and business.

Cost Per Click – this isn’t a must, but a good thing to look for. Most keyword tools will tell you what the average cost per click is for a particular keyword in pay per click. Now SEO is the opposite of pay per click, but the idea is, if advertisers are paying good money — say more than $1 per click — then you have to assume the keyword is valuable.

So this is effective keyword research in a nutshell. Don’t skip this step in SEO. We do keyword research every time for every client because it’s super crucial.

Good luck!

If you are, congrats, and keep up whatever you are doing. If you aren’t, maybe you should consider professional SEO help. I know this blog post is going to seem self-serving, and I guess it is to an extent, but I know we can help you so my intent in writing this is good.

SEO is not easy. It used to be easier, but now the search engines are so complex and multi-dimensional, it takes a small business SEO service to stay on top of your rankings and traffic and ensure things are being taken care of to move in the right direction.

If you choose to tackle the SEO beast yourself, make sure you:

Blog. Search engines love fresh content. And the longtail traffic you will receive is awesome.
Track. Use Google Analytics or a similar service. You need to know how visitors are finding you.
Monitor. Use Google Webmaster Tools to monitor the “health” of your website.
Socialize. The search engines are now taking into consideration the social media popularity of your website.
Research. Keywords that is. Are you sure you’re targeting the right ones?
Build. Backlinks that is. They are SEO gold, but focus on quality over quantity.

We can help you get results so contact us if you’re curious and want to learn more. But regardless of the path you take, good luck in 2012. Stay positive, think positive and work hard!

This survey isn’t a shocker to us. Our SEO clients are small businesses and so we know it works well. Most businesses have websites, and there’s a very good chance your potential customers are online looking for your product or service. SEO gets your website in front of these people at a reasonable price and this usually results in a positive Return On Investment (ROI).

Think about it. Your a swimming pool installer in San Diego, for example, and you have a website. Without SEO, you’re probably getting very little traffic from potential customers. But the thing is, there are people in San Diego searching for a swimming pool company, but your website isn’t visible so it’s unlikely they know about you unless you’re a very popular brand.

But by hiring a good SEO company, they’ll optimize your website so you rank higher in the search engines and attract more targeted traffic. As a result, the visitors coming to your website are potential customers. If your site looks good and has the proper call to actions, it’s only a matter of time before you get leads.

And this is all done at a reasonable cost. We charge (on average) $300 to $500 per month. In the grand scheme of things, for most small business this isn’t a lot money considering the lifetime value of new customers that are generated as a result of SEO.

So the bottom line is that SEO gives you a lot of bang for your buck and that’s probably why it ranked #1 in this survey.

But this whole process is worthless if this targeted traffic doesn’t result in more leads or revenue. Afterall, if SEO brings an additional 1,000 visitors to your website each month, for example, but has no impact on leads or revenue, what’s the point?

We no longer take on new SEO clients if we strongly feel that their website needs to be redesigned. Afterall, we can help their website attract better visitors, but if their website is a poor experience, these new visitors won’t help and our relationship will be short lived.

We recently had a new client approach us and we convinced them they first needed a new site design (which they did!). So we redesigned their website and now we’re doing the SEO and things are looking good.

The ideal situation is to have a clean, professional and usable website with strong call-to-actions. And then combine this with monthly SEO.

And speaking of usability, here is a great blog post that will steer you in the right direction to creating an effective website that converts. Enjoy!

Google likes to see backlinks to your website from relevant, quality sources. I’ve found that even backlinks from non-relevant sources help a lot as long as the sources are quality. Spammy backlinks, while they might not get your website penalized, definitely don’t pass any value to your site so why waste your time?

So this leads me to the point of this blog post – another key factor with good backlinks is diversity. If you’re going to build 100 backlinks to your site, don’t get all 100 from the same source. Like a good investment portfolio, diversify!

Mix it up with:

• Blog commenting
• Social bookmarking
• Guest blogging
• Directory submissions
• Article marketing
• Industry backlinks
• Etc.

Assuming you’ve done your keyword research correctly, I promise you that if you focus on getting backlinks from quality sources and you get backlinks from a diverse pool of sources, you will get results with SEO.

• The title tag is important for SEO so don’t neglect it.
• Make sure you make your title tag keyword rich.
• Make sure the keywords you add are relevant and not competitive.

Search engines love content because it’s their job to give the searcher the content they are looking for. So along those lines, search engines love unique content because they don’t want all 10 results to be identical. That would be a poor user experience. And lastly, fresh content is important because the search engines want info that is current.

Golden SEO

A huge part of effective search engine optimization is picking the right keywords, optimizing your website for these keywords and then building backlinks. And then if you can add in unique content that is posted to your website on a regular basis, along with a social media strategy, you’re golden. Can you get results doing just the first 3 things? Absolutely. This is just the ideal SEO situation.

What’s The Best Way?

So what’s the best way to add fresh and unique content to your website? 100% hands down a blog (like what you’re reading right now). Simply attached a blog to your website and then add content to it on a regular basis, preferably 1-2 times per week. Figure out what people are searching for that is related to your product or service by doing keyword research and then write about those topics.

It’s Tough

It’s tough though because it takes time and it’s hard to keep up with it. But it can be done and it should be done. Or just find someone on Elance.com to outsource the writing to. Make sure the person is qualified and check to make sure their content is unique using Copyscape.com. Don’t go with the cheapest bidder though because it will be reflected in their writing.

Can’t Add a Blog?

If you don’t have a website that makes adding a blog easy, simply write articles and add them to your website. The reason a blog is so great is because it makes adding the content to your site so easy. But if you know how to add pages to your website, you don’t necessarily need a blog. Just make sure when you add the articles to your website, that you update the meta tags so they’re keyword rich. This goes for a blog too, but most blogs usually have SEO plugins that make this a bit more automated.

• You have to take social media seriously because it affects SEO.
• The best course of action is to work all the main social media networks.
• At the very least, install the AddThis code to your website.

1. Optimizing on page factors
2. Optimizing off page factors

Optimizing off page factors primarily means building links to your website. Optimizing on page factors is when you tweak certain sections of your actual website.

We’ll go over the on page factors that are worth paying attention to. You don’t need to do everything below to get results, but generally speaking, the more you do the better the results you’ll get with SEO.

When we’re giving our clients SEO help, sometimes only a couple from the list below are possible for various reasons, but we still get them results because off page factors play a bigger role right now. That being said, you still want to optimize as many on page factors as you can because every little bit helps. Plus, having a clean and optimized website is SEO best practice.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are part of the “head” section of your website and tell the search engines what each web page is about. The important ones to optimize are the title tag and the meta description.

Headlines

Headlines are great for usability because it helps your visitor digest your content. But it always helps with SEO too if you make your headlines keyword rich. The important ones to optimize are the H1 and H2 tags.

Optimize URLs

If you’re creating a new website or adding web pages to an existing website, it helps to optimize the web page URLs. This means adding your keywords for that particular web page to the URL. But don’t overdo it because then it becomes spammy.

Clean Code

Clean and compatible code is better than messy and bloated code that is full of errors. When the search engine robots come to your website to crawl your content, you want them to be able to travel through your website with no problems. Also, clean code helps with usability because the website load time is usually quicker and the website layout is usually compatible from browser to browser.

Keyword Density

Keyword density used to be more more important than it is now. You still want to make sure your content contains your keywords, but don’t stress out over how many times these keywords are repeated. Just make sure your keywords are naturally woven into the content of your web pages.

This can be done 2 ways:

1. Optimizing your website for local related keyword searches. For example, painter in morris county nj.
2. Optimizing your website for Google Places. Google Places is a way to get your business listed in Google.

Local Related Searches

For point #1, you want to use a keyword tool like Google’s free keyword tool for keyword research to find out what local keyword searches people are performing. Once you have your list, make sure your on page factors reflect the keywords you settled on.

If you’re a printer in Wayne, NJ for example, you might assume that people are searching for “printer wayne nj”, but that might not be the case. The searches could instead be coming from “new jersey printer” or “printer in morris county nj”.

Google’s keyword tool will tell you what people are actually searching for. This is a very important step because it’s pointless to optimize for keywords that don’t get searched for.

Also – this may seem obvious, you also want to make sure your website’s content talks about what what you do and the areas you service or sell to. This will naturally increase the level of local, targeted keyword rich content for the search engine spiders to find.

Lastly, make sure you spend lots of time on link building with a focus on using your main local keywords as the anchor text. Anchor text means the text of a link in a sentence that is clickable.

Google Places

For point #2, Google Places is a Google portal that helps companies promote their business online. They give you your own webpage where you can list your address, services, photos, etc.

The reason you want to submit your business to Google Places is because this data is fed into Google.com search results. So simply by submitting your business info and optimizing your listing, you can get free traffic from Google for some very targeted, local searches.

Lastly, two things that will help with the optimization of your Google Places listing are getting local citations and adding your address to the footer of your website.

Adding your address to the footer of your website makes it very easy for the search engines spiders to confirm where your business is located. It also helps you a bit in ranking for local keyword searches on Google.com simply because these types of searches (right now at least) are not very competitive.

Keyword research is crucial to SEO. The reason for this is because if you’re optimizing your website for the wrong keywords, you’re wasting time and money…and you won’t get the results you’re looking for.

SEO Foundation

Many SEO professionals optimize for the keywords they or their clients want to rank for. Makes sense, right? I do this too, but with a slight twist.

It’s great to rank 1st page for your desired keyword(s), but what really counts is getting targeted visitors to your website because without targeted traffic, your website doesn’t really exist.

Note: by targeted I mean people that are interested in your product or service. So if you’re a painter in New York City, a targeted visitor to you would be someone searching on Google for something like “nyc painter” or “painting company in nyc”.

So what I like to do for my clients is come up with 2-3 targeted keywords per webpage that lays down the foundation for SEO. These are usually keywords that aren’t too competitive so they have a good chance of ranking top 10 in the search engines.

But ultimately what I’m trying to do is help the search engines understand what the website is about because this usually results in an increase in targeted traffic. I also like to pick keywords that are slightly varied…but still targeted…so it broadens the SEO foundation.

The basic idea here is that with SEO you optimize for specific keywords, but this usually results in traffic from additional keywords that are relevant and also targeted. As a result, you’re expanding the source of quality traffic you receive from the search engines.

Based on my experience, by optimizing for the keyword “new jersey landscaper” you will most likely attract traffic naturally from someone searching for “NJ landscaping” or “landscaper in new jersey” even though your SEO was focused on “new jersey landscaper”

Summary

So now you know our strategy for choosing keywords that are targeted, varied and not too competitive. Doing this lays down the foundation for SEO so the search engines get a good idea of what your website is about. As a result, your website becomes a magnet for targeted keywords.

One last thing — for keyword research, check out the keyword tool from Google. It’s free and and very helpful!

What is Link Building?

Link building is when a website links to your website. They are basically funneling traffic from their website to your website.

For example, this is an example of this webpage linking to the homepage of Website Booster Shot: SEO service. You’ll notice when you click on the bold text, it brings you to www.websiteboostershot.com. This is how link building works…you get other webmasters to add a link to your website on their website.

Also, the bold copy that contains the link is called anchor text. You want to make sure the anchor text of the websites linking to you is as keywords rich as possible. Sometimes you can’t control it, but when you can, make sure you link to your website with a keyword you are trying to rank for.

For example, the example above using “Website Booster Shot” is good. But using “click here” would have been bad. Well, not bad because it’s still a link…but the link wouldn’t be as effective as it could be.

The search engines see links as “votes” for your website. Reason being, if you’re linking to a particular website, it must be good, right?

How do you Build Links?

First off, you should put more focus on obtaining one way links. This means that other websites link to your website, but you don’t link back to their websites. Back in the day, reciprocal links (they link to you and you link to them) were very popular, but these types of links aren’t as effective anymore. That being said, it’s important to diversify your link building so getting some reciprocal links definitely isn’t a bad thing.

The best type of link you can get is a one way link from a website that is relevant to yours and one that links to your website using a relevant anchor text. We call this the triangle of link building relevancy. So if you have a dog training website, for example, a good link to get would be from a website about dogs…and the link from their website to your website would say something like “dog training advice”.

Keep in mind that a link from a non-relevant website will still help with SEO, but the above scenario is the ideal link building process.

There are several strategies for building links that we use for our clients and we’ll discuss them all here. There are black hat ways to build links (bad) and there are white hat ways (good). You should obviously try to get as close to white hat as possible.

Black hat SEO is when you use tactics to trick the search engines in ranking your website higher than it should. For example, buying thousands of links to your website from unrelated websites for the sole purpose of increasing your search engine rankings.

White hat SEO techniques for building links to your website include:

• blog commenting
• blogging
• article marketing
• directory submissions
• social bookmarking
• internal linking

Summary

Link building is crucial for SEO so it’s super important you incorporate it into your website marketing strategy. You need to increase your link popularity by getting one way links to your website from relevant, white hat sources with keyword rich anchor text.

• Your website has to be indexed by Google in order to rank in Google.
• The easiest and quickest way to get a new website indexed is through social bookmarking.
• We recommend using the free version of IMautomator to build social bookmarks.

• Social bookmarking is a good source of links for your website.
• It’s important to rotate through different bookmark titles and descriptions.
• We recommend using a service like Social Maximizer to build these links.

• Effective link building comes down to 3 components being relevant.
• The 3 components are the webpage carrying the link, the anchor text used and the webpage being linked to.
• All 3 components should be about the same topic.

• Pinging is something you do to get the search engines to visit your website.
• You should ping your website on a regular basis.
• If you’re using WordPress, pinging is done automatically when you add new content.
• Pingler is a pinging service we recommend.

• Effective search engine optimization begins with keyword research.
• Use Google’s free keyword tool to help you brainstorm possible keywords.
• Optimize for keywords that get searched for and aren’t too competitive.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/seo-must-start-with-keyword-research/feed/ 0 http://www.websiteboostershot.com/effective-directory-submissions-with-directory-vault/ http://www.websiteboostershot.com/effective-directory-submissions-with-directory-vault/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 04:49:08 +0000 Ryan Cote http://www.websiteboostershot.com/?p=199 Directory submissions to free directories should be part of your website SEO strategy. One service for this that we recommend is called Directory Vault. Watch the video below to learn more.



Main Takeaways:
• Directories are a collection of websites that are categorized.
• Submitting your website to free directories will help build links.
• Directory Vault is a directory submission service we recommend.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/effective-directory-submissions-with-directory-vault/feed/ 0 http://www.websiteboostershot.com/keyword-density-and-seo/ http://www.websiteboostershot.com/keyword-density-and-seo/#comments Tue, 02 Nov 2010 03:18:47 +0000 Ryan Cote http://www.websiteboostershot.com/?p=164 Keyword density used to be a factor in any SEO service, but now that the search engines are smarter, does it really matter anymore? Watch the video below to learn more.



Main Takeaways:
• Keyword density is not a major factor anymore for SEO.
• Make sure your main keyword phrases is included in your copy, but don’t overdo it.
• Use Google’s keyword tool to make sure your webpage is on target.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/keyword-density-and-seo/feed/ 0 http://www.websiteboostershot.com/effective-article-marketing-with-isnare/ http://www.websiteboostershot.com/effective-article-marketing-with-isnare/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:10:21 +0000 Ryan Cote http://www.websiteboostershot.com/?p=140 Article marketing should definitely be part of your link building and website SEO. One affordable resource we recommend for effective article marketing is called Isnare. Watch the video below to learn more.



Main Takeaways:
• You should be using article marketing to build links to your website.
• Isnare is a great resource for article marketing.
• Article marketing builds your reputation, traffic and links to your website.
• Make sure you include a link to your website in the bio box of every article you write.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/effective-article-marketing-with-isnare/feed/ 0 http://www.websiteboostershot.com/the-benefit-of-getting-local-citations/ http://www.websiteboostershot.com/the-benefit-of-getting-local-citations/#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 18:11:08 +0000 Ryan Cote http://www.websiteboostershot.com/?p=76 Getting listed in the local search results is an important part of small business SEO, and local citations play a role in how well you rank. Watch the video below to learn more.



Main Takeaways:
• The local search results of Google is important if you have a local presence.
• Getting local citations plays a role in how well you rank in the local search results.
• Get Listed is a great place to start for getting citations.
• White Spark has a good (and free) tool to help you find your competitor’s citation sources.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/the-benefit-of-getting-local-citations/feed/ 0 http://www.websiteboostershot.com/optimizing-h1-h2-tags/ http://www.websiteboostershot.com/optimizing-h1-h2-tags/#comments Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:16:16 +0000 Ryan Cote http://www.websiteboostershot.com/?p=66 Optimizing your H1 and/or H2 tags on your website will help a little bit with SEO optimization, and when it comes to search engine optimization, every little bit helps. Watch the video below to learn more.



Main Takeaways:
• Use and optimize H1 and/or H2 tags on your website.
• Make sure your keyword phrase(s) is inside the tag.
• Don’t keyword stuff! Keep it simple.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/optimizing-h1-h2-tags/feed/ 0 http://www.websiteboostershot.com/blog-commenting-to-build-links/ http://www.websiteboostershot.com/blog-commenting-to-build-links/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:23:11 +0000 Ryan Cote http://www.websiteboostershot.com/?p=41 Your SEO program should be generating links from a wide variety of sources including blog commenting. Watch the video below to learn more.



Main Takeaways:
• Blog commenting should play a role in your link building efforts, but not a big role.
• Blog commenting builds links to your website and funnels traffic to your site as well.
• Use this search query on Google to find blogs to comment on: main keyword phrase “leave a comment”
• Use a keyword rich name when you leave a comment and mix it up.
• Your comment should show that you actually read the post you’re commenting on.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/blog-commenting-to-build-links/feed/ 0 http://www.websiteboostershot.com/optimizing-your-title-tag/ http://www.websiteboostershot.com/optimizing-your-title-tag/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2010 03:08:39 +0000 Ryan Cote http://www.websiteboostershot.com/?p=23 Optimizing your title tag is a very simple but very important part of any search engine optimization service. Watch the video below to learn more.



Main Takeaways:
• The title tag is valuable SEO real estate on your website.
• Your title tag should contain your main keyword phrase(s) for that particular page.
• Don’t use “Home” or your company name as your homepage’s title tag!
• Each page of your website should have a different title tag.

 

]]> http://www.websiteboostershot.com/optimizing-your-title-tag/feed/ 0