If you want to improve your online rankings, bookmark your blog and your website. Here is a list of the bookmarks that we use for our clients:

 

blinklist.com	clipmarks.com	faves.com	linkagogo.com
propeller.com	spurl.net	bibsonomy.org	clipfire.com
del.icio.us	furl.net	memori.ru	simpy.com

On Friday we shot 24 videos about digital branding and online marketing. They are currently in the editing booth…

 

Here’s why we did it:

1. Video is a VERY good way to get high rankings on Google and other search engines.
2. Video is a very good way to promote your company… it’s interactive, it helps you connect with people on a personal level, it’s a better way to tell your story.
3. Video is hard to produce (or at least semi-difficult)… this means not EVERY company out there is going to have a bunch of videos - so, it’s a very good way to differentiate yourself.

Why 24 videos?

The first 20 videos will be distributed on various listing sites…i.e. youtube, podcast directories, vimeo, etc. They will be titled with different key words - so when someone looks for “digital branding” online, the appropriate video will come up and then direct them to our website. The 20 videos each highlights a caveat of our service so that people can learn more about what we do and more about online marketing in general.

 

The last 4 videos are for:

• Video 1: Goes on our landing page or squeeze page where we will be offering a free report about digital branding.
• Video 2: Is a “thank you” video that will pop up after they have signed up for our list.
• Video 3: Is a short video that asks them to go to our website to get the free report (this is tacked on to the end of each of the 20 videos).
• Video 4: Is a longer video that goes out in our email communications and is put on our site - detailing our story and how we can assist businesses with marketing.

 The whole point of all of this is to quickly build up our email list and to help people learn more about digital branding and online marketing.

 

We are going to launch the campaign in about a week - I’ll let you know how it goes!

 

Best,

 

Laura (laura@virtualmg.com)

There are a lot of people out there selling a wide variety of search engine optimization (SEO) approaches to improve the search results and move your website to a favorable position on Google and other search engines. Many of these approaches are time- and labor-intensive, and as a result they can be quite costly. Some are sold as if the provider has some magic dust or proprietary approach. Some might actually get you blacklisted by Google. A key part of making your website search engine friendly can be boiled down to one word: content.

 

Sure, you need to build your site “right,” and conform to the specific expectations that users and search engines have of well-built sites. Most commonly, that means following Google’s best practices, which includes the following three key points related to content:

 

“Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.”

 

“Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.”

 

“Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.”

 

Another point often emphasized is to have text links to every page on your site, not just graphics. The text links will be more effective if they describe what is being linked to, and don’t just say “click here.” A number of links to a document using the same phrase in the anchor text of each leads to Google associating that phrase with the page.

 

Google best linking practices include using links to highlight relevant words and phrases, using links to move readers between web pages on your site, and using an appropriate number of links, rather than over-linking, so that useful, relevant links stand out.

 

It is also important to make sure each page on your site has a descriptive title tag.

 

Keyword density also influences where Google ranks your page. For example, if your keyword appears just once on a page with 1,000 words of content, it will rank lower than if that same keyword appears four times on a page with the same total number of words.

 

However, resist the temptation to keep just a few words on a page, since search engines rank pages that are in excess of a certain size higher in the results. Likewise, key words have to appear in proper context, as search engines recognize words and phrases dumped into a random sequence that does not make sense.

 

If you form sentences with the words and phrases, it can help boost your search engine ranking. You may have to hold your nose as a writer and ignore some of the approaches you use when you are working to create good writing for purposes other than the web. Instead of using alternatives for something in your writing, like pronouns, use the phrase each time. It takes a careful balance of improving keyword density without making your page downright unpleasant to read, but the reward will be improved search engine results related to the key word or phrase.

 

Tools

There are a number of tools available on the web that track and analyze how search terms are used. Spacky (www.spacky.com) is a free tool that lets you type in a search term. It then gives you a list of related terms and their estimated monthly search volumes.

 

Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) is a subscription-based service (a free trail is available) that was created in 1997 to track what people are searching for on the web. Site owners and marketers can identify keywords and phrases being used by search engine users that are also relevant to a particular business or industry. It can also show how many competing sites are using specific key words and phrases, and identify the words and phrases that have the potential to attract the most traffic.

 

Wordtracker updates its database of more than 330 million search terms on a weekly basis. It collects search terms from Dogpile and Metacrawler. It also has some outstanding articles on how to research keywords and phrases and develop content.

 

Both of these tools can show you how much search traffic you are likely to tap into by using particular search terms. They can also demonstrate for you just how much competition you are likely to encounter as you compete for eyeballs on the web. Best of all, they can reveal hidden gems that you and others might not be aware of.

 

The most obvious search terms are used often to find information, and appear on millions of sites. However, if you think creatively, you can create variations on those obvious terms that will help you land search engine traffic because not everyone searches by the most obvious terms, and not everyone goes to the trouble to include other, related terms as part of their site content.

 

Asking for trouble with content

There are a lot of fly-by-night groups out there promising to improve your search engine ranking, especially when it comes to Google search results. They talk about loopholes in Google’s system, or hacks they can use to exploit the way Google ranks sites. Don’t listen to them – you are more likely to get your site blacklisted than to land at the top of the search engine results. Things to be wary of when it comes to site content include:

 

Don’t duplicate!

Using the same content on multiple pages in an effort to get page views will get you into hot water with Google. A site developer creating a site to provide information on many breeds of dogs learned this the hard way. As a place holder, they put the same content onto many pages until they could generate breed-specific content for each. Google indexed the site before the new content was posted, discovered the duplicate content, and the site disappeared from Google’s search results.

 

This can be a problem in a couple of other key instances, as well. First, if a spam site steals and duplicates your content, it can harm your search engine results and traffic. Fortunately, Google allows you to report these instances so you don’t become an innocent victim. Second, you might be tempted to buy ready-made content or articles – which might be a fine idea, or it might cause you problems with Google if the same article has been purchased and used on many other sites.

 

However, you may want to offer your content or articles you write for re-publication or syndication, as long as the sites they are used on are legitimate sites, and not spam sites or link farms.

 

Don’t plagiarize!

While it might be tempting, don’t plagiarize – steal – content from somewhere else. You will get caught. Tools like Copyscape (www.copyscape.com) do the work for users to find where content has been lifted wholesale and without permission. Even a quick Google search on a unique phrase or string of words will reveal word thieves.

 

Other content-related tricks that will cause you Google trouble include:

• Using keywords that don’t relate to your content
• Hiding text by matching the font color to the background color
• Adding extra title tags

 

In Summary

The secret when it comes to search engine results is that there really is no secret. By building a site to industry standards, and creatively developing content that adheres to best practice guidelines and also speaks to the audience you wish to reach, you will appeal to the search engines and those searching for information. The search engine results and traffic will follow as a matter of course.

Anyone who is familiar with Search Engine Optimization knows it can take 9 to 18 months to get your site ranked on Google. It is a long, slow process.

 

But there is a way around this - it’s called athority sites. An authority site is a site that is highly popular and therefore indexed by Google a lot (like every few minutes). Non-authority sites (like that new website you just reserved the domain name for) are indexed every three weeks or so… that’s why it takes forever for an ordinary site to get good rankings.

 

Here’s an example about how to use authority sites: let’s say you are promoting a new product for Christmas and you don’t have the time (or the inclination) to wait around for months and months for your product to rank when someone searches for “cool Christmas widget.” So - instead you post a ton of articles on authority sites like Squidoo and HubPages. This gets your articles ranked high on the search engines and gets traffic to your site.

 

If you have more questions about getting ranked or SEO, feel free to email me at laura(at)virtualmg.com.