2012 February - SEO Tampa FL

Archive for February 2012

How Google Webmaster Tool can help to improve your SEO

By admin on 02/29/2012
This entry is filed under Google, SEO, SEO Tampa and tagged Webmaster Tool.

There are a whole lot of SEO tools available online, the amount of data they can collect is incredible and if you are new to SEO it can be hard to decipher but a lot of it, especially the most important data, comes from Google itself.

Most of this data is indeed published free by Google and to get hold of it all you need is a Google Webmaster tools account: some of it you don’t even need that for.
Whether you are doing your own SEO or want to check on how well the company doing your SEO for you are getting on you may be best, to start off at least, with Google webmaster tools; Google add a lot more help and instruction than comes with most other products as well.

Google want you to have a good site that works well and is easy for both users and Google’s spiders to navigate and use: generally if you do this well you will be doing your on page optimisation well too so it makes sense to use Google’s help and tools.

Even using the most basic elements of Google Webmaster tools you can get a lot of useful information back, this includes checking which, if any, of your pages Google has actually indexed: those that aren’t indexed have no chance of showing up in results. From there you can check what errors Google might be finding on your site, these can be all sorts of things such as poor mark-up, navigation that Google’s spiders can’t understand and missing data.

Other interesting data for either tracking your SEO success, or that of anyone doing SEO services for you, includes looking at what search queries your site shows up for. If you have given your SEO provider a list of keywords make sure they are there or see if the keywords they came up with are being found on your site effectively.

You can also see who is linking to your site and which pages they are linking to. Link building is a vital part of SEO and you ideally need 100 links or more to rank well for most keywords. With this tool you can track both the links you or your SEO service provider have built as well as any organic links you have gained: this may be through using link bait if so identify which content has gained you links and create more along the same lines.

One of Google’s latest tools to be upgraded is the Google Webmaster Tools’ sitemap feature. This feature tells you how many sitemap URLs you have and checks them for any errors, this can be done not just with live sitemaps now but means you can submit sitemaps for testing before using them.

Google Webmaster tools also allow you to provide Google with your product feed: this meaning that whatever you sells shows up in Google Shopping search complete with prices: especially useful if you are the cheapest or have unique items, assuming people are looking for them.

Importance of titles and meta description for SEO

By admin on 02/23/2012
This entry is filed under Google, SEO.

There is it seems a lot of confusion amongst web site owners and people dabbling in occasional SEO as to the value of Titles and Meta Descriptions on their sites. Where many have become confused is where Google no longer use Meta Keywords, though Yahoo and Bing do to some extent.

Titles and Meta Descriptions though are very important to SEO and in two ways. Firstly Google will rank pages higher for a keyword found in the title and meta description, not much higher but a little higher as long as the titles and descriptions don’t seem spammy or stuffed with keywords. Basically Google are interested in showing relevant pages and they know that keywords within a page can be misleading but if they are found in a title and meta description this gives a better indication of what the page is about.

At the same time though the title and meta-description if given are shown in the search results usually in Google. Google will generally use your title and meta description for your result if they contain the keyword someone is searching for, otherwise they may use another snippet from your page though the title is less likely to change.

For you as a webmaster you want to get your site not just showing near the top in Google but want to maximize your chances of it getting clicked upon. As well as more traffic Google now consider your click rate to some extent and so it can improve your rankings for a specific keyword if your result gets clicked more often than those above you.

People generally don’t click blindly they look at titles and the description or snippet in Google results before clicking; they don’t always read it in full and often just look for the results that include the keyword they are looking for, which Google put in bold. So including your main keywords will help get more traffic but there are still a proportion of people who do read titles and descriptions fully so you need to write some information to get them to click, try to include your unique selling points or confirm what your site offers.

What’s Google AdWords and how it may help small businesses

By admin on 02/20/2012
This entry is filed under AdWords, Google, Small Business, Web Marketing.

Picture credit: Google

Most business owners have come across Google Adwords advertisements and may not have realized, others may realize that Adwords marketing is what you are seeing down the side and above the main Google results: with a yellow background labeled as ads.

If you have realized that this is what Adwords is you still may not understand how it works or what good value it is, Adwords is also accessible by any business no matter how big or small with no real minimum budget; in fact it is often possible to get vouchers when opening a new Google Adwords account, giving you often around $50-$75 of free AdWords marketing.

The Adwords system doesn’t just limit you to ads on Google either, you can also set it up so your ads appear on web pages with matching keywords, this is optional and you can stick with Google but it can bring in a lot more traffic, the websites of course earn money from this.

In either case, advertising on Google or on other websites, or both, you get very relevant traffic. On Google itself in the same way that websites show up in the main results to match keywords so do your ads. You bid on keywords and where your ad shows depends on how much you are willing to pay. How much each keyword is depends on how much competition there is, so for quite niche keywords you may pay mere cents yet still get highly relevant traffic. As for other websites you still compete for keywords and your ads match the keywords on the pages where your adverts appear. With both types of ad placement through Adwords you only pay anything when someone clicks your ad.

Adwords marketing is low risk and you can set your daily budget, you can track which keywords are bringing in traffic leading to sales or other most wanted responses even and ditch those keywords that aren’t performing.

As Tampa businesses see recovery SEO is key to growth

By admin on 02/14/2012
This entry is filed under SEO, SEO Tampa, Tampa SEO and tagged Tampa. | 1 Comment

The government may be keen to help big businesses get back on their feet but the economy recovers from the bottom up and all eyes should be on what small and medium sized business think of the economic climate and the year ahead.

Recent surveys by Research Now looking at small and medium sized businesses are encouraging: 55% say they have already recovered or that they expect to recover within 6 months. This number rises to 62% for those businesses of between 20-99 employees.

Important though is how businesses spend their money and this will impact on the rest of the economy, these small businesses employ much of the country’s workforce but may struggle to take on more people due to the costs involved and the need to spend spare money on marketing to ensure that demand improves. This may lead some businesses to be stuck with the choices of either being able to find more work but not be able to fulfill it or taking on staff and not having enough work for them.

There is one main way businesses are overcoming this in Tampa, SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is a great way for small businesses to target highly relevant traffic online to get them to their websites: and hopefully from there make a sale or get them to call or visit a business.

67% of small and medium sized businesses in fact plan to improve their web presence including SEO. For business in Tampa SEO is a way to make sure that what they do spend on marketing attracts only relevant local people, meaning they spend less for as many sales and therefore have more profit to spend on other parts of their business, including taking on staff.

For many businesses in Tampa SEO is used alongside Social Media: another great way to get relevant traffic either to your website or to communicate with them directly on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. 57% of small and medium sized businesses in fact plan to use social media during 2012.

While for some businesses in Tampa SEO is used as well as traditional marketing others find they can reach the same people for less money using the technique. By finding the keywords that people are searching with in Tampa, SEO can be used to place those keywords on to a website: so that in Google and other search engines the keyword matches and means the site is shown in results. By then using SEO techniques including link building and on page optimization the ranking or position of a site in search engine results can also be improved by convincing search engines that a website is good quality and relevant.

Further analysis of traffic on a website can make the already efficient spending on SEO even more effective, by looking at which traffic who originally searched for which keywords are the most likely to buy from a website, or perform some other valuable action such as sending an enquiry, efforts can be focused on the most profitable keywords.

Does Pagerank sculpting help your site? No

By admin on 02/08/2012
This entry is filed under Affordable SEO Company, Google, SEO Tampa.

Picture credit: Wikipedia

For many years people working in SEO have struggled to understand how the no-follow tag for links was viewed by Google, most people understand that it does stop the flow of Pagerank to other sites but many have assumed that therefore it keeps back Pagerank and helps more flow to other pages, including pages on the same site and other partner sites and sister sites.

Matt Cutts of Google though has categorically stated that Google doesn’t pass extra Pagerank to a page because another link is no-follow: the Pagerank is still worked out based on how many links regardless of how many, if any, are no-follow.

This has now been the case for some years but many still need to update their sites; many site owners have tried to direct Pagerank to certain pages on their site, or sculpt Pagerank in such a way that a site generates Pagerank internally: this is not possible, certainly not through using no-follow links and still not through loops within a site. Matt Cutts has also confirmed that Google uses a decay factor on Pagerank as it is passed, chances are there are also other algorithms to stop sites being able to generate Pagerank internally, or else everyone would do it.

Google want no-follow to only be used for its original purpose, to say ‘I don’t endorse this site’, they therefore don’t want people using this on their own pages or on all external links. So how should no-follow links be used? From an SEO point of view you need to consider who you link to with a do-follow, if you link to too many spam and poor quality sites you will get penalized by Google and they will start ignoring all of your links, including internal links. On the other hand linking to the right sites can actually boost your sites, Google see linking to other high quality, high Pagerank sites with do-follow links as a sign that you may have a good quality site as well.

It is worth considering this then for SEO purposes especially if your site has a lot of user generated content, many blog owners and other site owners have all links in comments set to no-follow; if you have time to check your comments though before they are published you may be better to manually edit them and either don’t publish content including poor quality links or make them no-follow manually.

Should you then make an effort to include as many do-follow links to high pagerank sites as possible for SEO? Well to an extent, of course high quality content on your own site is still most important for SEO but putting in do-follow links to relevant useful sites when possible may be a good idea.

All internal links should be do-follow as well, there is no advantage to be gained by making them no follow and does it really make any kind of sense to be saying to Google of any of your own pages ‘I don’t endorse this page’?

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SEO Tampa FL

How Google Webmaster Tool can help to improve your SEO

Importance of titles and meta description for SEO

What’s Google AdWords and how it may help small businesses

As Tampa businesses see recovery SEO is key to growth

Does Pagerank sculpting help your site? No

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