Category Archives: SEO Essentials

How does your website measure up in having quality HTML?
Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important aspects of web development, but many business websites are designed by developers who know little or nothing about SEO.
One important factor in SEO is to make sure that the coding of your HTML is done properly and a simple way to test it by going to the W3C Markup Validation website.
The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and provides guidelines on how HTML should be structured on your website.
There are other benefits other than SEO that you can achieve in making ... Read More

If you have been on the internet for more than a few months you may be aware that duplicate content is a big problem. We don’t always mean to create duplicate content, sometimes it is just a website configuration issue.
Let’s start by explaining what a canonical is. The rel=’canonical’ tag tells the search engines that the location of the page that this content is for is page XYZ. This allows you to have duplicate content pages on your site with different urls and not get hit with duplicate content issues. This does not mean that you should go and create ... Read More

Which Google Search Result Listing on the right would you click on first?

If you’re like most users, chances are that you selected the Best Chicago Pizza over the first listing even though it was listed second.
Why then would most users select the number two listing over the first listing?
Well because the listing of the Best Chicago Pizza listing was more informative and listed the benefits rather than the first listing who did not take the time to properly optimize their page title and description tag for their users and the search engines.
One of the first things that you need to ... Read More

You only have one chance to make a first impression so if your website does not instill a sense of trust with your visitors, your online business will never be successful.
Trust can is built by a number of small actions that you can implement of your entire website, here are 10 tips I would recommend.

Website Design – Make sure that your website looks professional and that it is relevant it is to the subject matter.
Clear Navigation -Make your website’s navigation is easy to follow to ensure that your visitors don’t get confused.  Anything that you want a customer to see ... Read More

Are you building a strong foundation in your Internet Marketing efforts by building a strong foundation doing the proper keyword research and a doing full audit of your competitors?
This past week I received a telephone call from a prospective client.
She explained that she had an outside agency develop her website a year ago who promised her that the site would be on the top of Google within months. As it is over a year and with no rankings anywhere she fired the agency and was looking for help.
She related that she wanted to be #1 for only one keyword and ... Read More

When we first started our tire pressure monitor business, I created our own website and knew absolutely nothing about any of it, recalls Carol Sprague. I picked up a free template and started typing. I worked on building the website for an entire month, and was very proud of it when I was done. It was one page.
I expected rave reviews from our manufacturer. What I got was a reply from the president saying we should get someone’s expert opinion on how to build a website. It was a real slap in the face.
Carol was heartbroken when we first ... Read More

You have spent months developing your new website having brainstorming sessions with upper management, your graphics artists, content developers and finally you’ve put this all together and right after your launch you realize no one is clicking on your special offers, your bounce rate is over 80% and your people are calling in complaints that they can’t figure out how to navigate your website.
Then the panic sets in, you realize that your baby is UGLY and you have created a landing page that SUCKS!
The reality in today’s interactive marketing is that we are bombarded with over 3000 marketing messages each ... Read More

I remember when I started out learning Search Engine Optimization back in 2001 and being confused with all the terms and jargon associated with SEO and Internet Marketing such as 301’s, .htacess and 404 pages.
Therefore I put together this handy Search Engine Optimization Term and Marketing Glossary that you can bookmark and use as a reference.
If there are terms you feel that I feel that I have missed, are unclear or are inaccurate please use the comment box at the bottom of this page.
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301 Redirect – A method to redirect a webpage on your website to another page on your ... Read More

Every business with an online presence should make Search Engine Optimization a top priority. At its most basic level SEO means utilizing techniques that will boost your rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages) so you will get more visitors to your website.
At the more advanced levels SEO will also include advanced keyword research, natural language processing and the architecture of your website and of course onsite and offsite link building.
If you’re new to all of this SEO stuff, here are ten SEO tips that can start you on your journey to having a successful online business;
1 – Keyword ... Read More

Google has recently updated their 2010 Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide which includes basic tips to make your website more accessible to the search engines and includes several new additions such as mobile search and why you shouldn’t cloak your website.
Their new section on mobile search shadows Google’s commitment to this market and provides tips on how to build a mobile friendly website and sitemap.
The larger portion of their guide provides a basic summary about On Page Search Engine Optimization and best practices all of which we go into much more detail during our Search Engine Optimization training classes such ... Read More