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WordPress - Smackwagon Design

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Using Keyword strategy is vital to your beginning SEO strategy. The types of words you use and where you place them will have a large effect in where your link will reside when someone makes a search.

Head terms – are general terms such as “cheese” they tend to have massive traffic volume but are much harder to rank on.
Tail terms – are more specific terms such as “white goat cheese.” These terms may have less volume but are capable of ranking for.

• Each page should have a mix of some head and tail terms.
• Ranking on some tail terms is much better than not ranking at all for head terms.
• Every web page should only be focused on 1 or 2 keywords. Not doing so will optimize your pages in too many directions, decreasing your overall effectiveness and ranking potential.

Just because one search has more than an other does not mean it is better. A search query with small traffic but low competition is much better than a large query and maximum competition. anything with less than 75% competition is a good opportunity to target.

For example The keyword, “build a web site” has 110,000 sq/m. sq/m=seach query per month.
This Search query is extremely competitive. Trying to organically rank your web site within that search query would be almost impossible, until your website starts to have some serious internet presence.

Another issue to consider is some of the Head terms that have a massive amount of search querys are broad terms. Such as “Directory” Someone may be looking for a different type of directory than what your website is based around. So being more specific in this case is better, so that people will find the correct type of directory they are looking for.

Another thing to consider is that Google ranks web sites on how old they are and how much of a presence they currently have in the market. Since we are new, we can only compete in sub markets for keywords that get a smaller amount of searches. As we grow we can try to build rankings in some of the more difficult key-words. It is better to have a decent percentage of something small than a very small percentage of something big.

It is more important to get your web site ranked in a smaller more specific search query with around 10,000 or less searches per month. This way the competitiveness is not overwhelming and we can at least take a small portion of those searches.

Googles algorithm has been changing since its birth in 1995. In the beginning Keywords had a massive importance for what words your web-page would rank for. Meaning the algorithm was 90% based around what keywords you used in your web pages. As people caught on people began “spamming” certain words so that there page would specifically show up for that word. As the Algorithm began to advance through the earl 2000′s Googles algorithm has since become far more complex and can actually recognize content purposely trying to spam keywords to get in for a specific search.

PPC is the act of paying a search engine to temporarily put your listing in the top 3 positions for a particular search query. You pay can set a spending limit, and pay the Search engine on a per click basis.

Pay Per Clicks (PPC) - Is this the right thing to do?.... does it pay off? - Smackwagon Design

Every-time you search for “Books” and click on one of the top three links a business just paid Google to be in that top position. Some search queries are more valuable than others such as someone searching for “buy Books” may be willing to pay as much as $10 per click to Google for a potential sale. Another search query such as “create an art web site” is more specific and less lucrative, thus would be less valuable and may bid for 20 cents per click.

All of the prices are determined by an open market of bidding leaving the prices constantly changing. After creating an adwords account with Google on www.google.com/adwords you can research keywords that you think people would use to find your product or service. They also have a tool that allows you to see how many people searched for a particular keyword or phrase last month. Since other people are also bidding for particular searches, the ones that are more competitive will naturally cost more money to win. You can also set a spending limit for yourself, for example tell Google you would only like to spend $100 at 50 cents a click, once you get 200 clicks your link is removed, and your campaign ended.

You may have noticed after making a Google search that the top 3 links are highlighted these are the PPC links, and all other links below it are naturally ranked. This is why many people will always start clicking on the 4th link which is actuality the highest natually ranked website for that search. Google has recently done away with the difference in appearance between PPC and natural, but the same underlying concept and bid system is still there.

Creating a PPC campaign is simple to start but very hard to master. This subject is a little bit too indepth for this web site. If you are actaully interested in going on a campaign I would suggest picking up a book on this particular subject. Creating a campaign without having any knowledge in this area would be a foolish mistake, and could become very costly.

Social media optimization is the use of other networking web sites to promote your web site!

Social Media Optimization also known as SMO, is using websites such as…

• Delicious.com
• sphinn.com
• stumbleupon.com – Website Tagging
• utopicstudios.com – art directory
• squidoo.com – Articles
• youtube.com – Videos
• myspace.com
• facebook.com
• Ning.com – Create a network
• linkedin.com – Business contacts
• Musolist.com.- Music related
• Purevolume.com – Music Profiles
• Ilike.com
• fancorps.com
• buzznet.com

Personally, I think SMO is a FULL Time Job! Updating multiple web sites while updating your own? This tends to become a full time job. There is a web site out there that allows you to control many of the different SMO sites simultaneously but I forget the name of it off the top of my head.

Generally speaking, people that use a lot of SMO are established entities that have the personal and financing to create and update them.

SEO- Are you trying to sell me "Blue Skies"? - Smackwagon Design

When you type in a search into Google also known as a “search query” Google does not search the internet and bring back listings at that instant. Instead Google has every web site pre indexed for every single search query possible. This means that before someone even searches for your web site Google has already ranked and positioned your web sites link for a particular most relative search. Google decides which web sites and content are most relative and thus rank at the top for each individual search, these are called “natural rankings”.

The sister to natural rankings is pay per click also known as PPC, google allows you to pay to get one of the top 3 positions for a particular search.

Understanding how google reads these web sites and ranks them is the art of understanding SEO. It changes daily! What worked yesterday does not work today. How does it work? Google references these millions of web sites with the use of “bots,” also known as Googebots. These bots will visit a web site and read the all of “Content” that exists on the page. Once the information is indexed it is processed with a complicated algorithm that decides what content is the best fit for a particular search query. Below are some tips to help.

1. Make sure all website pages are indexed, and spiders are able to crawl the pages easily.
2. Creating original content that no one has used before is critical in the eyes of Search engines. Quality and relevance of the content to the goals of the website is crucial.
3. Avoid duplicate content.
4. Avoid writing content solely for the purposes of SEO ranking.
5. Proper keyword density is important, it is important to have a decent amount of the word, but overkill can actually hurt you.
6. Each page should only be optimized for 1 or 2 keywords.
7. Try not to inadvertently repeat non-keywords by accident.
8. Spiders cannot read words within pictures.
9. Try to add “Latent Semantic Content” meaning; if we our key word is Old Spice, also talk about cologne, and deodorant. Be come the resource of the topic!
10. Forum is critical to creating, rich and fresh user content.
11. Search engines cannot read, drop down menus or Flash unless you use XML or other Technologies.

We have seen a pattern forming over the few years where we will be contacted by a potential client with a story such as, “I paid over $5000 four months ago to have my e-commerce site built and it’s still not up and the designers won’t fix it!”. I’m not a big fan of stories like this. For one, this means that this potential client has already spent their budget having something created that didn’t actually meet their needs – meaning that they do not have the budget to pay the going rate for having the site done properly. But the more disturbing aspect is when I have a look at what has already been built and find out that the ecommerce website is really nothing more than OsCommerce.

Os-Commerce - Open Source Code - Smackwagon Design

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with OsCommerce, it is a FREE shopping cart solution built by many different programmers to be offered as “open-source“. It’s fine if a client really has a bare-bones budget because hey, it’s free. When we use a free solution such as OsCommerce, what we charge the client for is simply installing, customizing the template design, and setting up initial categories, shipping, etc. Unless you are programming or installing many additional complex modules to interact with the base cart, I really can not fathom why a job using OsCommerce would cost $5000 or more. To me, this screams of shady business practices.

I’ve said this in a number of other articles, that I believe honesty is always the best policy. If you are using any sort of pre-developed software (whether it’s free or if you are paying for it), do not fool your client into believing that they are receiving 100% custom work. (Developers Try Not to Reinvent the Wheel!) I find that even when using software, there are aspects that are custom (usually the design), but we make clear in our estimates and contracts which is which and what the client is actually paying for.

Designers and programmers are always on the look out for things that can help them while doing a job, everything from free scripts to stock photos to the latest software. As a designer or programmer, you have to judge for yourself what works best for you and what would benefit your client the most. I find the clients are much more comfortable working with you when they know exactly what you are doing for them and what they paying for and it’s simply more ethical to let a client know when you are using a free or pre-built solution or something custom.

Remember its a relationship you are building!