Posts Tagged ‘Search Engine Optimization’

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Internet Marketing Inc SEO Director Speaking At SMX Advanced

Posted by Myles Vives on April 29th, 2009

I’m speaking at SMX Advanced

I will be representing Internet Marketing Inc. at SMX Advanced in Seattle on June 2nd as a speaker on the Mobile Search panel.

SMX Advanced is a two day event taking place at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center from Tuesday, June 2 to Wednesday, June 3 in Seattle, Washington.

There will be a Meet & Greet party at the Odyssey Maritime Museum on Monday June 1st hosted by Microsoft who has timed the announcement of its new search engine KUMO later at the conference.

SMX Advanced in my opinion is the pinnacle of all major Internet marketing conferences as such if you could only attend one conference all year this should be the one, although PubCon would be a close second.

This conference has sold out each year and the last chance to get the early bird lowest pricing is on Friday May 1st by saving $200 at this SMX Advanced Registration page.

Please let me know if you will be attending the conference or in the Seattle area in early June by emailing me at mike AT internetmarketinginc DOT com

Related Blogs

Michael Martin- SEO Expert

Posted by Brandon on March 30th, 2009

Universal Search: Out with the Old, In with the New

Posted by Brent on March 18th, 2009

The days of simple on page optimization are over and have been for a while.  A year ago most search engine optimization strategies included the simple practices of basic site structure, seo copy written content, and building inbound links.  As Google continues to progress and make new updates to the algorithms, we must also adapt and develop new strategies that will keep us competitive.  A well-rounded approach is imperative which is why a good Internet marketing company can take on all aspects of search engine marketing and combine them to create a truly united front.

I tend to use the analogy of military combat when analyzing business and marketing situations.  For example, the reason a small special operations force that has superior training and works as a team will always defeat a larger force with mediocre training is becasue each person on the spec ops team works in complete synergy with one another.  In Internet marketing, it will no longer suffice to use one approach with a non-targeted strategy if you want to be competitive.  A comprehensive online marketing plan will ensure true optimization of all online assets and maximum exposure and conversions.

So what does all this mean?  What is Universal search?  What are digital assets?

Bascially, it means that optimizing all of a company’s digital assets is the best way to ensure good rankings as they apply to Google’s new “universal” search.  Universal search means that Google gives rankings to not only web pages anymore but also news results such as press releases, video content, images, local buiness results, etc.  Simply optimizing the pages of a website will not ensure that a site will rank as well as its competitiors.  Websites that use well rounded internet marketing strategies are getting traffic from other assets that appear in the search results pages.  For example, a company’s web page might not appear for a specific result but a SEO optimized press release might.  That press release if optimized properly would then have links back to the website which would drive trafic.  The same situation would apply for video content appearing in the results.  The vidoes if well optimized could then have links or calls to action noting the URL that people should follow. 

So are we taking about social media?

Basically, yes.  Social media is popular for many reasons other than viral marketing and online reputation management.  Social media can be a fantastic provider of inbound links which of course supports the ongoing organic search engine optimization campaign.  A good SEO company will optimize all a company’s digital assets to ensure the best possible ROI.

Where does conversion optimization come into play?

True conversion optimization is at the root of all online marketing strategies…or at least it should be.  Nobody wants to spend time and money implementing any marketing plan unless there is a strategy to ensure conversions and ROI.  Conversion optimization is more than just manipulating a web page to make the user do what you want.  All marketing strategies should be completely complimentary and support the same goals…that goes for offline and online components. 

Not so long ago, an SEO team would work independantly from a PPC team, and nobody would be communicating with the print team.  These days that is just poor marketing.  Everyone must be in constant communication with each other…that is, if you were to use different teams for each component.  The best practice for having a truly effective online marketing plan is to use the same team for all aspects and make sure that team knows how to coordinate with traditional media aspects as well.

Internal Linking for SEO

Posted by Brent on March 11th, 2009

A very important part of our SEO strategy is linking. The inbound links play an important role too but these are definitely not the only important links. Wikipedia defines an internal link as: a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same website or domain of the internet. Why not take it directly from the best source out there – Wikipedia the epitome of internal linking.

Here are some of the reasons why internal linking is so important:

  • To insure that your website gets properly crawled these links make it easy for the search engines to crawl a website and this also makes sure that all pages can be correctly found and identified by the search engines.
  • Adding a text link builds the relevancy of a page to a specific keyword phrase. For instance tying the keyword chocolate chip cookie to a page that contains a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
  • Inner linking all pages on your website will increase the probability that these pages internal pages get ranked in the search engines and will increase the PageRank of an internal pages

Linking your pages makes sure that every page of your website is able to be found by the search engine spiders. Internal linking is very easy to do through a CMS editor so this is an easy step you can take to optimize your website. Internal Linking if done correctly can increase the number of pages that a search engine ranks your site for, it can also increase the number of keyword phrases that your website can rank for in the search engines.  Internal linking sets the proper foundation for a good orgain search engine optimization campaign.

Don’t blindly add links to each page!

There is a process that you need to follow when you are optimizing your website, so don’t just start adding links to all of your internal pages.

First and foremost: You need to add title tags, meta descriptions and meta keywords to each and every one of your pages. All of this information that you are adding to each page has to be specific to that particular page. For instance on a page talking about how to bake chocolate chip cookies you need to add metadata coherent to chocolate chip cookies and not about roasting chickens. Adding the correct meta data to each and every page will tell the search engines to rank that specific page about chocolate chip cookies for the keywords chocolate chip cookies. To build upon this and to validate this keyword to that specific page you want to create internal links from other pages to the chocolate chip cookie page. For example on the roasting chicken page you can have a paragraph about how chocolate chip cookies are a great dessert after such a great chicken meal. Here is where you will hyperlink this text “chocolate chip cookie” to the page about how to cook these. This gives a point or vote to this particular page for that particular keyword.

For the most part your homepage will target your most competitive keywords and phrases and your internal pages will focus on targeting less competitive phrases. When creating internal link on your homepage you will want to keep in mind which keywords you want to rank for first because the links on your homepage are seen as more relevant the closer you are to your homepage. Be careful to not overload all of your pages with internal linking and try to keep it to 3-4 per page.

Google Cares About Your Brand!

Posted by Brent on March 10th, 2009

Google just keeps getting smarter and smarter, don’t they?  Well, with there newest algorithm updates it is rumored that Google is making some judgements for rankings based on “brand”.  Naturally, the first question that come to mind is how Google defines a quality and trusted brand through the Internet.  I would assume that some of the factors include:

  • age of domain
  • number of mentions on the web (Web 2.0)
  • overall traffic (maybe)

Many of Google’s algorithm updates make sense but this one seems much more subjective.  The question then remains…how does a hard working company build a brand on the web if it doesn’t know what Google is really looking for.  The best answer to all this mystery is always to follow the best practices, stay on top of Google Guidelines, and keep your ear to the grindstone.  Providing users with great content and a valuable experience will always lay a good foundation for rankings.  Of course, you must have a good SEO company or search engine optimization consultant working with you to ensure best practices are followed. 

You will most certainly not be able to build your brand online for long term results if your site is not following at least the basic rules of SEO.  Often times, people wonder why their site isn’t ranking even after they have been working with an Internet marketing company for months.  There could be many reasons for this of course including the competitiveness of the key terms, ability of the SEO company, etc.  However, a good firm can look at a site for 30 seconds and see if the bascis are being performed.  It is sad to see companies  spending money on SEO when the firm implementing the campaign is either using black hat tactics…or no tactics at all.  Many firms out there play on the assumed ignorance of the client and just tell them to “stay the course”.  In the mean time they are doing virtually nothing to the website or performing any on page or off page SEO.

So my advice to any company out there seeking to improve orgainc rankings…make sure the company you hire knows what they are doing.  Make sure they are transparent about their methods and ask for references, past clients, and of course…look at how well their own site ranks.  If they do not even appear in the SERPs, you may want to think twice.

Matt Cutts- Tips on Google SEO

Posted by Brandon on March 7th, 2009

The World is Online- Is your Business?

Posted by Brandon on February 10th, 2009

I was watching A Rod on the news morning admitting his steroid use and it got me wondering how this news would have been different 10 years ago. 10 years ago when the Internet was a baby, this news would have been released and people would read it in the paper that day. Now just this morning it was reported that over 200,000 blogs already had commments about the story and over 200,000 people already voted about their thoughts on the story on ESPN’s website. Twitter was rampant with people commenting on the story. Our world has completely gone online. My question to our readers today is, “Is your business online?”

The average marketing budget is now pushing close to 40% online for many large companies however some industries are still lagging behind. Some old school companies still think they will get more out of one $100,000 weekend ad in the paper than they will in an entire year online. Wake Up People! Print is Dead! Regular Advertising is Dead! The world is online.

If you are not running a full scale Internet Marketing campaign for your company and performing search engine optimization, you are missing out. I spoke to a massive company yesterday with thousands of clients and been around for 50 years and they have never once even tried email marketing. How does this happen?

Companies get stuck in their ways and they are afraid of change. What worked 10 years ago will not work anymore. CEO’s need to wake up and start placing more of their advertising budgets online. It is 2009, not 1999 and I am sick of it people not embracing online.

I urge all companies to consult a top Internet Marketing Company such as Internet Marketing Inc and start thinking about new ways to promote their company and their products and services.

Well Rounded SEO – More Important Than Ever

Posted by Brent on January 30th, 2009

Many people out there think SEO is just about getting to the first page of Google and simply entails putting keywords in meta tags.  Search engine optimization is an art and science with a huge learning curve for both client and professional SEO consultant.  Many times clients are confused why an SEO company is making design recommendations or suggesting copywriting changes.  Sometimes an SEO company will suggest a complete redevelopment of a site and will not touch it until that happens.  These are very difficult things for a client to hear, especially if they have a site that is visited frequently (which means they probably have a fairly high opinion of their site).

With the new emerging trends and search engine algorithms, SEO will not be just about rankings anymore (this being a common misconception).  It will be about the end results such as traffic and more importantly, conversions.  A conversion could be some kind of registration, a newsletter sign up, an online sale, etc.  Whatever your business goals are, your online marketing tools need to be a means to that end.

A truly well-rounded Internet marketing company will offer all of the important aspects of SEO which really does involve additonal strategy such as web design, development, information architecture, URL rewriting, and copy writing.  Depending on the site, there might be months of work needed to be done simply to prepare a site for proper search engine optimization.  As I mentioned above, sometimes a tough reality is faced by a client when they are told their website needs a complete overhaul before SEO can start.  In the long run though, only a healthy platform with good well-rounded SEO strategy applied will yield lasting results.

The goals behind SEO should no longer be focused simply on first page rankings for the top keywords associated with the campaign.  The business goals for the client need to be set first, then you can reverse engineer the Internet marketing strategy to support all those goals.  As Google rolls out personal and universal search functions, we all will start getting slightly different results for the same searches based on our own prefernces and user behavior.  That said, number one rankings will not matter as much as overall user experince, the value your site offers, and how it helps your business grow.  Getting rankings is only one small step towards true business development.

We have all run searches and clicked on some of the first page results only to find a less than appealing website with poor navigation and site architecture.  Nevertheless, the site is right there on page one.  Maybe some good SEO principles have been applied but maybe not.  However, the online consumer/user is continually becoming more sophisticated.  For a company to have a sub-par online rpresence will do then no good.  Businesses need a site that can not only be found, but that offers the best possible value in accordance with their business.  The site must also be design to transform traffic into fuel for reaching the business goals.  Obviously, if it is an e-commerce site, then it should sell products.  If it is an advertising site, then it should generate leads for the advertisers.  You get the idea.

All of the concepts mentioned above are part of a comprehensie well-rounded search engine optimization/Internet marketing campaign.  If you have a business in need of transforming your online presence, there is no better time to get started.  It doesn’t happen over night so invest the time and resources now!

Internet Marketing Inc- Outside Sales Team- Jeffrey Greco

Posted by Brandon on January 29th, 2009

Watch the video for more information and join our team

Functional Specifications Document- Ceci Harkins Video Blog

Posted by Ceci on January 29th, 2009

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