Tampa Web Design & SEO Blog By Group 5 Web » SEO

5 Things You Should Know About SEO

group5 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:10:22 +0000

UNDERSTANDING SEO SEO starts with research. Picking the right keywords to target your market is key in search engine success. You want your site to pop up on all of the major search engines, you also want to be at the top of the search results for the words and phrases your customers are typing in to find the products and services you sell. By placing the right keywords in the right place on your site and applying other SEOinternet marketing best practices you are assured to get top rankings even in a competitive market. If your niche is a competitive one, it may take more than just the basics. That’s when we will apply advanced SEO tactics to ensure you get found in the top 30 listings. There are over 60 things that need to be done to each page in order to fully optimize it. After the on-site optimization is complete we start with an aggressive off-site marketing campaign or what we like to call push marketing. That’s where we push people to your web by applying proper SEO techniques.
CONTENT & COPY WRITING According to Google, “content is king”. It’s the single most important thing on your site. Writing copy in an SEO friendly way is important for the search engine and helps you get found at the top. However, no search engine has ever bought any thing from a website. That is why SEO copy writing is so important. You have to write for both the search engines and your visitors. Integrating your keywords where it makes sense is a skill that is not easily learned. Group 5 Web ensures your copy is not only well written, but also written in an SEO friendly way for online success. It is important to work closely with your copywriter to ensure your message is being conveyed correctly.
LINK BUILDING

If content is king then linking is queen. Links are how sites work together to promote one another. Google loves links. Links are how Google and other search engines determine the importance and relevance of your site. If another site is linking to you then that says to the search engines that what you have to say is important and must be relevant to the content on the site linking to you. Whether you are manually link building, blog commenting, directory link building, article marketing or using social media platforms, we can help you build a successful link building campaign that gives you the extra edge you need to make it to the top of the search engines.
SOCIAL MEDIASocial Networking is one of the biggest internet marketing tools you can take advantage of. With all the competition out there you have to be everywhere possible in order to have true success online. Social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, Twitter, Digg and more are vital ways of keeping in touch with your customer base. Just like you do traditional networking for your company, social media is the same thing but online. As you may know, people are more likely to do business with companies they know and are familiar with than ones who just try to sell their products. Social media sites solve this issue giving you a valuable connection to your customers wherever they are. Group 5 Web can set up and optimize your social media outlets to ensure long lasting search engine success.
BLOGGING Blogging creates content, content contains keywords, keywords bring traffic and traffic brings conversions. A lot of people think blogging takes a lot of work. This is a common misconception. Allow me to explain: if all you are doing to make money online is blogging then yes, it’s going to take a lot of work and dedication. But, if you have a website where you offer a product or service then a blog is a wonderful addition to your online success. You see Google likes to see you adding a page a week of new content to your website. A blog is the perfect way to do this. We recommend you use WordPress. Your best bet is to add your blog on your website. Don’t have it hosted separately. That way each new post is considered new content to Google and that will help to raise your search engine rankings.. (The reason I always reference Google is because they now hold over 80% of the search engine market) If you don’t know what to talk about your blog can host your newsletter, events, product reviews, specials and more. Just remember, don’t use selling tactics on your blog. Blogs are for information not selling. But don’t worry, if it’s too much for your to handle we’ll do the blogging while you take care of business.

Find out more about web design & Internet consulting Services in Tampa – Call Group 5 Web

Duplicate Content Killed by Cononical Tag

group5 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:36:03 +0000

Duplicate Content Problem Solved?

It has long been the bane of today’s internet that is absolutely inundated, even polluted with duplicate content. For many of us, business owners and internet users alike, this excess of information clutters and confuses our searches, making some of us actually pull out the Yellow Pages. Really, the Yellow Pages. For quite some time now, many website owners have been threshing out a solution to this annoying problem.

Search engines have always tried their best to index and display the original or “canonical” version of a URL. Of course, the Internet being the Internet, copies and excerpts abound. One could never be sure if one was working with the original document. Up until now web masters worried that when search engines found multiple versions of requested pages, the link credibility of the web masters would be diluted and they would lose rankings. Not ideal for anyone, really. We want our information uncensored; from the source. We demand our journalists site real sources, and we really hate wading through mountians of pages and pop-ups to find out why O.J. is back in jail.

Blessings upon us, only last week the major search engines announced that they have agreed upon a way to reduce duplicate content and make things easier for everyone. Like trademarking an invention, or signing a painting, original webpages will have the ability to claim their work. This solution… the new canonical tag!

Now a web masters can rest easier knowing that this tag will drastically reduce flagging for duplicate content.

Duplicate content comes in many different forms, one of the most popular being the use of multiple URLs pointing to the same page. This happens for lots of reasons. An online store may have various pages for multiple products sorted by different sizes, prices and so on. Another example could be a company’s affiliates using the codes at the end of the URL so they can track their own sales.

I always use “/?src=seoqueen” at the end of the URLs I’m linking to in order for the websites I’m linking to know I passed them a link. So now my website that had only 50 pages could now have 10 different URLs pointing to those pages I linked to; causing the search engine spiders to index 500 pages!

This can be a problem for a couple of reasons.

The spiders may crawl less of your pages. Because the spiders only use a limited amount of bandwidth the crawler may only be able to crawl 100 pages of your site in a visit. It would be ideal to have the spiders visit 100 unique pages, not 5 pages 5 times each.

Every link passes a percent of link juice to a page. If you have 10 different links that point to a page the link juice being passed to that page is now diluted. You want each of your pages to get full link credit so if a page has 10 URLs that point to it, then other sites can link to it 10 different ways. One link to each URL dilutes the value the page could have if all 10 links pointed to a single URL.

So how do we use the new canonical tag?

You simply add this tag to specify your preferred version of the url:

inside the section of the duplicate content URLs:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=dogcollars-dog&category=designercollars
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=dogcollars&trackingid=1234&sessionid=5678

and Google will understand that the duplicates all refer to the canonical URL: http://www.example.com/product.php?item=dog-collars. Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well.

Good luck and have fun adding the new canonical tag to your pages.

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The Importance of Understanding your Market

group5 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:15:55 +0000

I recently was given some market research for the Tampa Bay area. The research overviewed about 100 professions and businesses and the aproximate # of purchases to be made in each category in the Tampa Bay area this year.

A sampling of some of the cateogies

Business Type	Purchases Expected in one Year	% of Which Decision Was Made Based on the Internet
Banquet Facilities	35,993	41%
Bridal Wear	52,401	43%
Caterers	34,903	35%
Health Clinics	99,325	25%
Mortgages	151,199	34%
Movers	74,241	31%
Office Furniture & Equipment Sales	153,161	34%
Printers	149,226	29%
Tax Preparation	34,903	22%

How much of your business are you currently getting from the internet?

This data is a powerful tool in understanding if your particular market is influenced heavily by the internet as well as understanding the possibilities your business may have for expansion.

While I have taken an opportunity to highlight some of the internet heavy industires – I have market data across many industries as well as other media source statistics. If you are not aware of how users are searching for you in the marketplace – you need to be. Send me an email with the business sector you are interested in and I will make sure you get the information.

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