Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

Anyone Can Cook - Comparing Web Design Companies That Claim They Do SEO with Actual Search Engine Marketing Firms That Really Do

Monday, August 15th, 2011

So during a recent meeting with a potential client, they brought up that their current web company, who both designed their new website and was doing “SEO” for them, was sending them annual SEO reports that detailed their progress in their ten chosen keywords.

Yes, you read that correctly. Annual reports.

Now, far be it from me to question the business practices of another company, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do anyways.

SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular work on a monthly basis. Things can change at a moments notice, with competitors making advances in the rankings, reliable sites that link to you no longer being reliable sites, and, of course, Google changing the game on you with little or no warning. Because of that, having an SEO company that’s focused on that and that spends their time not only working to help your site rank but also researching new methods to effectively use SEO is paramount. Which brings me to my main point.

Have you ever seen the movie “Ratatouille”? In the film the main character, a rat named Remy (voice of Patton Oswalt), has aspirations to become a chef, inspired in no small part by his hero Gusteau’s motto of “Anyone Can Cook.” While I’ll spare you a long drawn-out synopsis of the film, we come to realize that the spirit of Gusteau’s motto was that while not everybody could be a great chef, a great chef could be anybody (like a rat in this case).

These days it seems like every web design, development, and marketing company says that they do SEO. Now I’m sure that some of them have brought on the necessary staff to do a respectable job of SEO for their clients. I’m also sure, however, that many of them are fumbling their way through it and are doing their clients, who probably don’t know any better, a huge disservice by attempting to do SEO for the extra money when they don’t really know how.

When you’re looking for an SEO company, make sure to spend the time and make sure they actually know what they’re doing. Ask for references and case studies. See if anybody has complained about them on the internet. Talk to them and make sure they seem passionate about what they’re doing. Make sure you have a good personality fit with them. It’s better to take your time and find the right company for you instead of ending up with annual status reports. Remember that not everybody can be a great SEO, but a great SEO can come from anywhere.

Streamline Metrics is Looking to Hire an SEO Specialist in Richmond, Virginia

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

That’s right, Streamline Metrics is hiring! In order to accommodate our rapidly growing client base, we are looking to hire an SEO Specialist to join our team. Below is the official job description that we’ve posted across the web:

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SEO Specialist in Richmond, Virginia

A local search engine marketing company based in downtown Richmond, Virginia is looking to add an SEO Specialist to assist the SEO Manager in accommodating our rapidly growing client base. The ideal candidate should have the following capabilities:

• Demonstrate a clear understanding of the fundamentals of organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - what it is, why it is important, and how it is done (both on-site and off-site).
• Create, implement and manage custom strategies for increasing qualified organic search engine traffic, leads and/or sales for our clients.
• Conduct keyword/competitive research and analysis using various tools (Google AdWords Keyword Tool, SEOmoz, SEMRush, Wordtracker, etc.)
• Analyze websites and identify opportunities for improving on-site SEO (Title tags, Meta tags, ALT tags, file names, site architecture, etc.)
• Possess an advanced knowledge of HTML, CSS & JavaScript and a web editor with FTP capabilities such as Adobe Dreamweaver in order to add new content and implement on-site changes directly to a client’s website.
• Know how to correctly set up and test technical server configurations such as 301 redirects, HTTP server response codes, .htaccess, XML sitemaps, Robots.txt, etc.
• Research and identify opportunities for improving off-site SEO by increasing inbound links for clients in various industries.
• Have 2+ years experience using web analytics software such as Google Analytics to analyze website traffic and identify relevant performance metrics utilizing Custom Reporting and Advanced Segmentation features.
• Write monthly progress reports with recommendations for clients and effectively provide consultation to clients through email, phone calls and/or meetings.
• Stay on top of the latest trends in the search engine industry and adjust strategies accordingly.

Required Experience with the Following Tools

• Google Tools - Analytics, Webmaster Tools, AdWords Keyword Tool, Places
• Adobe Dreamweaver or other web editor
• Adobe Photoshop or other basic image editing software
• Microsoft Excel
• SEO Tools such as SEOmoz, SEMRush, Wordtracker, Raven Tools, etc.

Bonus Qualifications

• Backend programming experience such as PHP, MySQL, ASP, .NET
• Experience with installing and customizing platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Expression Engine, etc.
• Copywriting experience to write content such as blog posts and articles for various clients
• Experience with Google AdWords or other Pay Per Click platforms
• Experience with Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, etc
• Experience with Conversion Rate Optimization - A/B split testing, multivariate testing, landing page optimization, etc.
• Have access to other websites and resources that could be leveraged for link building

More Details
This is a part-time position but could quickly turn into a full-time position if we find the right person. The position requires you to be on-site in our office in downtown Richmond, Virginia. The office environment is relaxed so you’ll fit right in if you prefer to wear jeans and a t-shirt instead of a suit and tie.

To Apply
Please send us your resume and salary requirements along with three examples of successful campaigns where you have improved rankings and increased organic traffic on three different websites for the targeted keywords. We are looking to fill this position by July 1st so time is of the essence.

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We are very excited about bringing on a new member to the Streamline team. If you have any questions or comments about this position, please email us at jobs@streamlinemetrics.com or hit us up on Twitter at @streamline.

View this SEO Specialist job description on:

Authentic Jobs - http://www.authenticjobs.com/jobs/8887/seo-specialist

SEOmoz - http://www.seomoz.org/marketplace/jobs/view/2096

Craigslist - http://richmond.craigslist.org/mar/2444623881.html

Yahoo! Shuts Down GeoCities & Blows SEO Opportunities Worth Millions

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Yahoo! purchased the popular free web hosting service GeoCities in 1999 for $3.57 Billion dollars in stock. And on October 26, 2009, Yahoo! shut down GeoCities for good. Any website on GeoCities that was not transferred to a new web host by Monday is gone forever. Granted, most sites built on GeoCities were festering eyesores and for the most part nobody will lose sleep over its demise, but Yahoo! really screwed the pooch on handling the closing when it comes to SEO.

Let me explain.

As of October 28, 2009, there are 7.45 Million GeoCities URLs still indexed in Google. Go ahead, click that link and try to visit one of the sites listed. For example, Dr. Doo Wopp’s site “all about me and my love of the doo wopp sound” at http://www.geocities.com/doowopp21/ is no longer available and redirects to a Yahoo! 404 page. Multiply that one site times 7.45 Million and we’re dealing with a huge number of sites that will simply vanish.

I just did a search on SEMRush to find out the popular keywords for which GeoCities URLs rank in the Top 20 in Google for, and it came back an astounding 686,270 different keywords that generate an estimated 11,947,000 visitors from Google each month. It’s hard to fathom a website that got nearly 12 million visitors a month from Google alone will disappear.

For example, one of the keywords reported by SEMRush is the keyword “sayings.” According to the Google AdWords Keyword tool, this keyword gets over 1.2 Million searches a month.

Currently, the GeoCities website at www.geocities.com/heartland/lane/2470/lslists.htm ranks 4th in Google for a keyword that gets 1.2 million searches a month. Once Google re-indexes that site and is served a 404 error page, that site will be removed from the index.

At the very least, you would think Yahoo! would put forward some effort to preserve their search engine rankings and most of that traffic, right? Apparently that isn’t the case. Since Yahoo! is simply forwarding the GeoCities URLs to 404 or 410 permanent error pages instead of redirecting the sites with SEO friendly 301 redirects, the search engines will eventually drop all of the missing URLs from their indexes and Yahoo! will lose out on all of the invaluable search engine rankings and traffic that has amassed over the years. It baffles me that a company as big as Yahoo!, not to mention a major search engine, would make these decisions without keeping SEO in mind.

UPDATE - LocalSEOGuide.com made a similar post called Yahoo Flushes GeoCities, PageRank & Million$ Down The Drain. Check it out!

Google Caught Manually Changing Search Results for The White House

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

I caught this tweet from RustyBrick this morning: “Amazing, Google changes search results for White House http://bit.ly/1BuL80.”  The link points to an article on SERoundtable.com which explains how Google has appeared to have “made a change” to push a certain page on www.whitehouse.gov show up at the top of the search results for a specific query. What is even more striking is that the original poster mentioned that Bing already served the “correct” page, and Google apparently rushed to fix it.

This is significant because Google has had a longstanding philosophy of  “no manual intervention.”  Below is an excerpt straight from the Official Google Blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/introduction-to-google-ranking.html.

No discussion of Google’s ranking would be complete without asking the common - but misguided! - question: “Does Google manually edit its results?” Let me just answer that with our third philosophy: no manual intervention. In our view, the web is built by people. You are the ones creating pages and linking to pages. We are using all this human contribution through our algorithms. The final ordering of the results is decided by our algorithms using the contributions of the greater Internet community, not manually by us. We believe that the subjective judgment of any individual is, well … subjective, and information distilled by our algorithms from the vast amount of human knowledge encoded in the web pages and their links is better than individual subjectivity.

I am curious to see Google’s response to this. I am sure they will say something along the lines of “we didn’t directly change the SERPs manually, but we tweaked our algorithm to get the desired result.” Either way, incidents like these can definitely shake the trust of Google’s loyal userbase.

How to Redirect PDF Files with PHP, ASP or .htaccess for SEO

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

This is the follow up to my previous post “SEO for PDFs - Optimizing PDF Files for Search Engines” in which I recommended NOT using PDF files whenever possible. In this post, I will explain how to go go about redirecting PDF files with .htaccess, PHP and ASP.

301 Redirects
When it comes to SEO, the best redirect to use is a 301 permanent redirect. This is because search engines still have trouble handling 302 temporary redirects. And don’t even think about using a Meta Tag Refresh redirect or a redirect generated by a client-side language such as JavaScript if you care about search engine optimization.

.htaccess 301 Redirect
This is the easiest and most straightforward option to use, but it’s only available on a Linux server. Simply add the line below to your .htaccess file.

Redirect 301 /oldfile.pdf http://www.example.com/newpage.html

PHP 301 Redirect
This is also normally a pretty easy way to redirect pages by adding a couple lines of PHP on each page you want to redirect.  But since PHP code cannot actually be inserted into the PDF file, we have to treat it a bit differently. Follow the steps below:

1. Rename oldfile.pdf file to filename2.pdf.
2. Create a new directory named “oldfile.pdf” in the same directory that the PDF is in.
3. Add an index.php file in the new oldfile.pdf directory.
4. Add the following PHP code to the top of the index.php file:

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.example.com/new-page-to-redirect-to.php" );
?>


Now when the search engines access http://www.example.com/oldfile.pdf they will actually be served the http://www.example.com/oldfile.pdf/index.php file which contains the 301 redirect to the new page.

ASP 301 Redirect
This is very similar to the steps for the PHP 301 redirect above, but this is websites that are hosted on Windows servers and use ASP.

1. Rename oldfile.pdf file to filename2.pdf.
2. Create a new directory named “oldfile.pdf” in the same directory that the PDF is in.
3. Add an index.asp file in the new oldfile.pdf directory.
4. Add the following ASP code to the top of the index.asp file:

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.example.com/new-page-to-redirect-to.asp"
%>

Now when the search engines access http://www.example.com/oldfile.pdf they will actually be served the http://www.example.com/oldfile.pdf/index.asp file which contains the 301 redirect to the new page.

I just realized I haven’t explained how to identify PDFs which are already ranking in the search engine results and thus are prime candidates for redirecting, so I’ll do that in another follow up post shortly!

SEO for PDFs - Optimizing PDF Files for Search Engines

Monday, September 21st, 2009

There has long been a myth that “search engines can’t read PDFs” so it is better to put all content on an indexable HTML page. This may have been true a few years ago, but nowadays most of the major search engines have no trouble crawling and indexing PDF files. There are several fantastic guides out there about how to optimize a PDF for the search engines, such as this one from 2007 on Search Engine Land.

However, even though I just clearly stated that search engines can crawl and index PDF files, I still recommend putting text-rich content on an HTML page over a PDF file (whenever possible) for a few reasons:

1. No website navigation in PDFs. More often than not, the PDF does not maintain the same look and feel of the website, let alone provide any navigational elements. While it is true that PDFs can include clickable links, the vast majority of them do not have the site’s global navigation, and thus users will be left with nowhere to go but back to the search results.

2. Not able to track user behavior on PDFs. Sure, we can analyze server log files to see how many times a PDF file has been accessed, but we are not able to track visitors with JavaScript based tools such as Google Analytics. Accurate tracking is absolutely essential to the success of any online marketing campaign.

3. Users may not be expecting PDFs. This may be just me, but I personally hate clicking through a search result and not immediately viewing a web page, but rather waiting for my browser to unfreeze while Adobe Acrobat takes its sweet time launching to load a PDF file. By the time the PDF is finally loaded, oftentimes I am already regretting that I clicked to view it while directing my cursor to the Back button.

There are some cases in which PDFs should remain as PDFs, such as brochures and other print material, but articles and technical papers certainly can be converted to HTML pages. I will follow up shortly with another post on how to go about doing so.