Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Test With Confidence Using Campaign Drafts And Experiments

18 February 2016 by

Have you ever wanted to make changes to your AdWords campaigns, but wanted to understand whether those changes will help you reach your business goals? Over the next few weeks, we’re rolling out campaign drafts and experiments to help you test changes to your campaigns, easily measure results, and apply the changes that are working well for your business.

Use drafts to stage your changes

Drafts let you prepare and review multiple changes to an existing campaign before implementing them. For example, let’s say you want to increase mobile bids for ad groups with strong mobile conversion rates. You can create a draft of your campaign and set different mobile bid adjustments for those ad groups — without impacting your campaign. If you’re happy with the changes in your draft, you can apply them directly to your original campaign.

But how do you know if those mobile bid adjustments will help you reach your business goals?

Run an experiment

Experiments let you test changes to your campaigns in a controlled environment. Let’s say you want to see how your new mobile bid adjustments perform compared to your original settings. First, create a draft with your new mobile bid adjustments. Then, create an experiment from that draft to test those changes against your current bidding strategy. You decide how much traffic (and budget) to split between your experiment and the original campaign, and how long you’d like the experiment to run.

Measure your results

An essential part of running a successful experiment is understanding how your changes are impacting your business goals. For example, measuring the uplift in conversions can help you understand whether your new mobile bid adjustments are resulting in a better return on investment.

With campaign drafts and experiments, you can monitor results in two convenient ways to understand whether your experiment is driving the desired outcome:

  • Compare performance with the reporting scorecard. The performance scorecard has icons that highlight whether the experiment’s metrics are higher or lower than the original campaign, and whether or not the differences are statistically significant. 
  • Evaluate ad group level performance for deeper insights. Sometimes individual ad groups are responsible for significant shifts in overall campaign performance. Monitor ad group-level metrics to understand how each ad group is impacting your campaign. 

If you’re happy with the results of your experiment, you can quickly apply the changes from your experiment to your original campaign, or convert your experiment into a brand new campaign.

Testing with success

Customers like Red Ventures and The Honest Company are using campaign drafts and experiments to test and apply new campaign strategies at scale.

“Campaign drafts and experiments have revolutionized testing for our Fortune 500 clients. The tool streamlines the test creation, analysis, and implementation process. We can now launch more powerful tests in a fraction of the time that it took to manually duplicate campaigns and ad groups. The new scorecard allows you to confidently measure the impact of your tests and implement them in a single click if they’re successful.” – Jeremy Mayes, Vice President of Marketing, Red Ventures

“We have multiple conversion types with varying levels of customer lifetime value. Campaign drafts and experiments let us test new bidding strategies with a quarter of our campaign traffic, and the reporting scorecard let us easily measure the impact on the different types of conversion values. In the past, a test like this would require massive changes to the account. The new streamlined process lets us quickly test new bidding strategies until we find the one that best fits our complex business model.” – Josh Franklin, Search Account Manager, The Honest Company

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Event Marketing | Google Marketing | Local Marketing | SEO Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Web Marketing

6 Marketing Strategies To Drive Thanksgiving Sales

24 November 2015 by
6 Marketing Strategies To Drive Thanksgiving Sales

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the cornucopia of online marketing options available today. The truth is that a well thought-out and carefully implemented online marketing plan can open a business to a new stream of prospective customers, drive leads to a website and motivate increased sales. With that in mind, here are six search marketing strategies to be thankful for this Thanksgiving:

  1. Event Marketing: Whether your business is holding a holiday sale or sponsoring a major conference, there is no better way to attract attention than online event marketing. Target a potential audience online and get them excited about your event.
  2. Local Search: If your business caters to a particular geographic area, use local search strategies to become the big fish in your small pond. When customers in your target area search for a business or services similar to yours, your company should be at the top of their results.
  3. SEO Marketing: Search engine optimization (SEO) studies how search engines rank their results and implements strategies to maximize exposure through this means. SEO marketing encompasses blogs, newsletters, website copy and design, and social media to drive higher rankings and awareness.
  4. WordPress CMS: Efficiently manage your online content using WordPress CMS (Content Management System), which offers one convenient location for organizing web pages, blog content, and search marketing. WordPress Plugins allow you to easily extend the features and functionality of your blog or website. Thousands of customization options allow you to improve your search engine optimization, develop a client portal for private information, and add display features such as widgets or navigation bars.
  5. Google Marketing: There are many ways to use Google’s SEO tools to increase your online visibility. Your business can run Google ads which are only shown to people who are searching for exactly what your company offers. It’s a great way to get big budget results with small budget costs.
  6. Social Media: All of your prospects and customers are already using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms every day. Your company can utilize social media marketing to engage with them every time they are online and become part of the conversation.

Your online marketing plan needs to take advantage of the most effective marketing tactics, and know which to gracefully avoid. Contact Search Engine Pros at 800-605-4988 and find out how wecan help your business compete more effectively online.

Happy Thanksgiving from Search Engine Pros!

Thanksgiving Marketing Tips
Blog Marketing | Facebook Marketing | Google Marketing | Instagram Marketing | Linkedin Marketing | Local Marketing | National Marketing | SEO Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Web Marketing

How to Get the Most Out of the Internet Marketing Maze

12 March 2015 by
Inside The Maze

The way companies market their products and services has changed over the last decade. To keep up with competitors in your industry, you need to figure out how to use cost-effective online marketing methods.

To someone who is just looking at online marketing for the first time, it may appear to be an overwhelming and confusing maze. There are plenty of wrong turns you can make, many  of which lead to a scary place with your online marketing strategy. The good news is that the Internet marketing maze is something you can perfect over time.

Here are some simple ways to maximize your Internet marketing strategy. The Internet marketing campaign tips below will help build your online presence.

Consider the Bigger Picture

As you start to build your online marketing approach, it’s very important that you consider the bigger picture and your extended plans. This is vital because your entire online presence needs to be cohesive and symmetrical. If you lack cohesiveness between different parts of your online presence, you’ll have a very difficult time trying to maximize your efforts.

 

Keep in mind that to truly dominate the Internet marketing maze, you’ll want to gear your approach in a way that will accommodate Google search engine algorithms. In being search engine optimized, otherwise known as SEO, with Google, you’ll greatly increase the likelihood of your customers and prospective clients coming across your online networks.

So how does the bigger picture and SEO come together? It’s quite simple.

SEO is measured through a variety of factors. Some of the most important elements include:

» Keywords placed throughout the website

» The name of the website

» Name, address and phone number of the business

» Social media accounts

» How polished the website coding is

When you consider all of these factors, you can see why it’s very important that you avoid switching around the name of your business. The more that you consider the bigger picture and plan for the future, the easier of a time you’ll have when it comes to navigating through the Internet marketing maze.

See what others doing

See What Others Are Doing

Another great way to find out what you should do for your Internet marketing campaign is to look to others and see what they’re doing. This will work if you have competition in your niche market that is successfully implementing its own Internet marketing campaign.

Some of your competitors’ online marketing techniques to observe include:

» How their website looks and is presented

» Which online resources they use, ie. Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc.

» How they interact with their clients online

By seeing what works for your competition, you can narrow down the efforts that you effectively put in place for your own marketing approach. There is no time to waste when it comes to being a small business, so learning from the mistakes of your competition will help increase the likelihood of success.

Tailor Your Approach to Your Market

Keep in mind that every company is different. Even though it’s a great idea for you to look at your competition to see what they’re doing, that doesn’t mean  this should be something that you settle on. In other words, you may need to tailor your online networking approach to more directly market your clientele.

A prime example of this can be seen between two shoe companies. While both companies may borrow ideas from one another for most of their marketing techniques, the approach may change for Company A if they sell flip-flops, whereas Company B sells winter snow boots.

Another reason that you’ll want to tailor your approach for your specific market is because it will keep you and your audience more interested. Although you might come across, and want to share, a picture of a cute cat that has been shared a million times online, that doesn’t mean it’s something that your target market will take interest in. That’s why the companies that are most effective with the Internet marketing maze know exactly what it is that their audience wants to see. If you can do this, too, then you’ll notice much better results.

Track your results

Track Your Results

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make with their online marketing includes the failure to observe and track results. Some businesses will just put their market approach in place and assume that things will work. Even some companies that find success will fail to realize that they can change other parts of their approach to try to maximize things in the best way possible. The truth is that you will need to observe your efforts and track your results throughout the lifetime of your online marketing approach.

Change as necessary

Change As Necessary

As you track your results, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t for your online marketing campaign. For the things that work, consider keeping them in place to get the most results possible. However, you’ll want to change things that do not work in hopes of making them better. The more effective that you are with tweaking your system, the higher probability it is that you’ll have an inclusive Internet marketing approach that is successful.

If you’ve heard that marketing online is difficult, you aren’t totally off. But while it may be difficult to navigate your way through what seems like a hopeless maze, stay confident that there are certainly ways to be successful with enough hard work and effort. By following the tips mentioned here, you’ll be able to successfully start your approach at online marketing.

— Taylor Reaume is an e-Business coach and founder of Search Engine Pros. He can be contacted at taylor@thesearchenginepros.com, or 1.800.605.4988. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

Facebook Marketing | Google Marketing | SEO Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Web Marketing

Are You Wooing Your Customers this Valentine’s Day?

15 February 2013 by
Are You Wooing Your Customers this Valentine’s Day?

Valentine’s Day is one of our favorite holidays at The Search Engine Pros. V-Day presents a unique opportunity for businesses to get creative with their email and social media promotions.

Small efforts can pay off big

If you don’t have the time for a full scale digital marketing campaign, the simplest thing you can do is update your Facebook and Twitter status, and wish your followers  a Happy Valentine’s Day.  You may also wish to update your Facebook cover page to celebrate the spirit of this romantic day – keep the images eye-catching and use a call to action. Ditto for Twitter – a V-day Twitter header image and background, in combination with a compelling message about your offerings – can encourage followers to take the desired action.

Got V-day Marketing Automation?

For a more serious direct marketing approach, consider planning ahead.  All great marketing requires great planning.  But planning is not enough.  Nowawadays, you need the help of a good friend named ‘marketing automation’ to stay competitive.   Doing things manually is not cost effective and will likely land you in the therapists office.

How consistent is your marketing?

Businesses with automated email marketing systems stay front-and-center in customers’ and leads’ minds more easily than those that don’t. Email continues to be a powerful medium for customer engagement. So, if you have a V-day special offer, it makes sense to implement a drip email campaign that serves as a reminder of the big day, delivers useful information (how to woo your spouse/girlfriend) and follows up with your specials/promotions.

Something like this:

Last week of Jan – focus on V-day awareness, gift ideas, subtle sales message(s)

First week of Feb – launch your promotion, present incentives and make an impression

11th and 12th Feb – create a sense of urgency about gifts and continue with promotion

13th Feb – offer tips to those late to the V-day party on gift ideas or planning surprises for their partners

15th Feb – Solicit testimonials actively, encourage customers to share V-day stories, make this the highlight of your social media conversations; pictures and infographics can go on Pinterest, videos and articles on Google+, Twitter and Facebook.

An optimized press release is also a great way to get the message about your V-day specials across to your audience. Don’t overly promote; cushion your sales message with tips and advice. Keep it interesting and worthy of reading.

These tips will also come in handy come holiday time. Put on your thinking cap and make the most of your digital media campaigns!

Valentine's Day Marketing Ideas

All of us at The Search Engine Pros would like to extend a Happy Valentine’s Day for you and your sweetheart. We strive to offer the absolute best web strategy at the best prices with customer service that is unrivaled. Our business depends and grows based on word of mouth and we never forget that. Thank you again for all your past support and we look forward to serving you in the future.

Your Search Engine Pros Team

Google Marketing | Web Marketing

Google makes it easier to cast your ballot

5 September 2012 by
Google makes it easier to cast your ballot

The first presidential nominating convention, held in 1832, was meant to give Americans a voice in the selection of the presidential nominee. Fast forward to 2012 and these conventions still represent a major moment in American politics—and we’re helping the conventions reach a larger audience by being the official live stream provider and social networking platform for the Republican National Convention in Tampa and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. 


In conjunction with our on-the-ground efforts, we’re making a number of online tools available to help you get organized and informed as Election Day approaches. 


Get informed

Our Google Politics & Elections site enables you to see the latest Google News, YouTube videos, search and video trends, and Google+ content about the election in one place. You can also visit our live Elections Hub to watch the national political conventions, debates and even election night LIVE right from your mobile phone or laptop. 


Register to vote 

To make it easy to navigate the rules and deadlines about registering to vote and how to vote by mail, we put together an online voter guide. We’ve also added a special section to make it easier for military and overseas voters to find information about their different rules and deadlines.


As we approach the final days of the election, we’ll continue to develop useful ways for voters and campaigns to engage one another around the important issues in 2012. 


We hope these tools will help you stay informed and participate in the election!

Google Marketing | Web Marketing

Google in Africa – It’s a hit

15 May 2012 by
Google in Africa – It’s a hit

Online Africa is developing even faster than the new highways of offline Africa. Undersea cables reaching Africa on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, plus innovative mobile-phone providers, have raised internet speeds and slashed prices. In some African markets, you can buy a daily dose of internet on a mobile phone for about the cost of a banana (ie, less than ten American cents). This burgeoning connectivity is making Africa faster, cleverer, and more transparent in almost everything that it does.

2012 05 15 10302300845

Google can take a lot of the credit. The American search-and-advertising colossus may even be the single biggest private-sector influence on Africa. It is not just that its internet-search and e-mail are transforming Africa. Take maps. Before Google, ordinary Africans struggled to find maps. Military and civilian mapping offices hoarded rolls of colonial-era relics and sold them at inflated prices. By contrast, Google encourages African developers to layer maps with ever more data. In Kenya 31,000 primary schools and 6,900 secondary schools are marked on Google maps. Satellite views even let users see if the schools have built promised new classrooms or water points. Similar initiatives let voters verify local voting figures at election time. Satellite views of traffic jams have also shamed some African cabinets into spending more on city infrastructure.

Google has also pepped up Africa’s media, enabling Africans to read each other’s newspapers. Google is improving translation software to bring more Africans who speak only local languages online. As well as English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, it offers Zulu, Afrikaans, Amharic and Swahili. Languages like Wolof, Hausa, Tswana and Somali are set to follow.

Let critics complain that Google is buying up enormous amounts of virgin digital land in Africa at virtually no cost. Within a couple of decades, without the regulatory oversight of the African Union or African governments, they say, Africa’s internet life will be almost entirely in hock to the Google giant. Even the company’s decision to go slow on seeking profits from Africa by offering cheap deals has been attacked by African would-be rivals, which say that such tactics are only extending Google’s unfair advantage.

Faster downloading speeds have helped make Google’s YouTube video-viewing more popular. Young urban Africans organise YouTube parties. The company is also trying to help African governments digitise information and make it freely available to their citizens. Many rulings in the higher courts of Ghana, for instance, are going online.

Google says its recent effort to best a rival South African firm, Mocality, was an embarrassing aberration. Google’s top man in Africa, Joe Mucheru, brushes aside fears of a monopoly. The company’s advertising model, he says, helps African business. “The more Google grows, the more the entire ecosystem grows.” He is especially keen on Google+, a service that seeks to provide an even more useful online community than Facebook.

Google Marketing | Web Marketing

Google Announces Bulk Management Tool For Google Places – Finally!

9 May 2012 by
Google Announces Bulk Management Tool For Google Places – Finally!

Manage multiple locations more easily with a new tool for Google Places

Businesses with multiple locations have a big task in front of them when trying to manage their online presence. How can they connect their customers with the locations closest to them? How can they make data changes to a group of their locations all at once? The challenges of managing multiple businesses in the real world can sometimes carry over online.

We’ve heard plenty of feedback about how you want to manage your listings on Google, which is why we’re excited today to announce an upgraded bulk listing management tool for Google Places for business.

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We’ve made many improvements and now enable the following actions:

  • Edit one or more of your listings’ data at once
  • Search through your listings, filtering by specific information or for listings with errors
  • Upload new listings using a data file or by adding them individually within the interface
  • Tell us how we can improve this new interface by clicking the “Give Feedback” link

Before you get started with the new bulk management tool, watch the video tutorial that’s relevant to you or visit our Help Center for more information:   


New user? Learn how to manage multiple locations. Already managing verified listings? Here’s what’s new.

Starting today, you’ll be routed to the new interface whenever you click to upload or edit a data file via the Places dashboard, or by visiting https://places.google.com/manage directly. You’ll still use the Places dashboard to see your listing analytics and to perform PIN verification on single locations. Remember that your updates will still take a few days to appear on Google Maps.

We hope the new tool makes managing your business on Google Places much easier. We look forward to hearing your feedback and seeing your listings up on Google Maps!

Google Marketing | Web Marketing

How to do Google Research More Effectively

7 December 2011 by
How to do Google Research More Effectively

The Basic search help article covers all the most common issues, but sometimes you need a little bit more power. This document will highlight the more advanced features of Google Web Search. Have in mind though that even very advanced searchers, such as the members of the search group at Google, use these features less than 5% of the time. Basic simple search is often enough. As always, we use square brackets [ ] to denote queries, so [ to be or not to be ] is an example of a query; [ to be ] or [ not to be ] are two examples of queries.

* Phrase search (“”)
By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for [ “Alexander Bell” ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.

* Search within a specific website (site:)
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] will return pages about Iraq but only from nytimes.com. The simpler queries [ iraq nytimes.com ] or [ iraq New York Times ] will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the New York Times. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.

* Terms you want to exclude (-)
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words ‘anti-virus’ but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the – sign in front of all of them, for example [ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The – sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the ‘site:’ operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.

* Fill in the blanks (*)
The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google’s products (go to next page and next page — we have many products). The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

* Search exactly as is (+)
Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don’t really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don’t add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around the word will do the same thing.

* The OR operator
Google’s default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type ‘OR’ in ALL CAPS). For example, [ San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 ] will give you results about either one of these years, whereas [ San Francisco Giants 2004 2005 ] (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)

Exceptions

Search is rarely absolute. Search engines use a variety of techniques to imitate how people think and to approximate their behavior. As a result, most rules have exceptions. For example, the query [ for better or for worse ] will not be interpreted by Google as an OR query, but as a phrase that matches a (very popular) comic strip. Google will show calculator results for the query [ 34 * 87 ] rather than use the ‘Fill in the blanks’ operator. Both cases follow the obvious intent of the query. Here is a list of exceptions to some of the rules and guidelines that were mentioned in this and the Basic Search Help article:
Exceptions to ‘Every word matters’

* Words that are commonly used, like ‘the,’ ‘a,’ and ‘for,’ are usually ignored (these are called stop words). But there are even exceptions to this exception. The search [ the who ] likely refers to the band; the query [ who ] probably refers to the World Health Organization — Google will not ignore the word ‘the’ in the first query.

* Synonyms might replace some words in your original query. (Adding + before a word disables synonyms.)

* A particular word might not appear on a page in your results if there is sufficient other evidence that the page is relevant. The evidence might come from language analysis that Google has done or many other sources. For example, the query [ overhead view of the bellagio pool ] will give you nice overhead pictures from pages that do not include the word ‘overhead.’

Punctuation that is not ignored

* Punctuation in popular terms that have particular meanings, like [ C++ ] or [ C# ] (both are names of programming languages), are not ignored.
* The dollar sign ($) is used to indicate prices. [ Nikon 400 ] and [ Nikon $400 ] will give different results.
* The hyphen – is sometimes used as a signal that the two words around it are very strongly connected. (Unless there is no space after the – and a space before it, in which case it is a negative sign.)
* The underscore symbol _ is not ignored when it connects two words, e.g. [ quick_sort ].

Google Marketing | Web Marketing

An itemization of Google’s ranking factors

6 December 2011 by
An itemization of Google's ranking factors

Have you wondered why some sites are ranked so high on Google and why other sites are no where to be found? Over the last five or six years Google has been modifying their algorithm to research on page ( code ) and off page ( links ) factors which affect how web sites rank on their favored search engine. Here’s a list of the factors that Google investigates and a perspective that Google can take when researching a site :

Title Tags

  1. Keywords – the keywords in the title tag should represent the content on the page.
  2. Length – the title tag should be short and to the point.

Suggestions

  • When making a title tag ensure it is both unique and concise.
  • Try and keep the quantity of characters between sixty and eighty.
  • If you’ve a blog try and make the title tag the name of the blog entry rather than the name of your blog.
  • Don’t attempt to stuff too many keywords in your title tag.
  • Ensure that the title tag is readable and makes perfect sense to your internet site’s visitors.

URL

  1. URL structure – the URLs of a domain should be static with no extraneous characters.
  2. Keywords – URLs should contain keywords so long as they have relevancy to the content.

Suggestions

  • Remove any extraneous characters from your URL strings ( %$?.. )
  • Try and add keywords in the URL strings but ensure that they represent the webpage.
  • Make your URLs end with a .html or .htm extension or seem to be a subdirectory ( about.html or / about ).

Meta Outline Tag

  1. Keywords – the keywords in the meta outline tag should represent the content of the page.
  2. Length – the meta outline should be short and to the point.
  3. Unique – each page should have a singular meta outline.

Suggestions

  • Make the outline a total sentence so it is simple to read and understand.
  • Try to not make the meta outline tag longer then 120 characters.
  • Don’t use the same meta outline tag through your internet site, each page should have a different tag. Many times it’s best to just place the 1st 1 or 2 sentences from the content into the meta outline tag.
  • If at all possible, use only a pair of keywords in your meta outline and try and place them towards the start.

Headings

  1. Text type – sites should use H1, H2, and H3 tags
  2. Keywords – the keywords in the heading tags should represent the content of the page.

Suggestions

  • Use H1-H3 tags over H4 or lower tags.
  • If you place a keyword in your heading tag, ensure that keyword is also in the content or at least related to the content of the page.
  • Make headings short and to the point.

Content

  1. Keywords – there should already be keywords in the content if content is written for your visitors. There should also be variations in the keywords ( apple, apples ) as well as further related keywords ( apple, fruit ) inside the content.
  2. Prominence – the earlier the keywords appear in the content the more probable the content is related to these keywords.
  3. Font – Words in the content that are bigger, bolder or italicized are sometimes considered more vital.
  4. User – The content should be written for visitors.
  5. Links – links inside the content should be related to the content.
  6. Freshness – content that is updated more often could be more helpful to searchers.
  7. Uniqueness – content that’s unique and original will often rank higher then unoriginal content.
  8. Quantity – sites having a just a couple of pages of quality content.
  9. Themes – The content on an internet site should be based primarily on similar subjects or “themes”.
  10. Keyword density – the keyword density of an internet site should be similar on context to other related sites.

Recommendations

  • Always write content for the user first and then the search engines.
  • Attempt to place keywords across the content, also ensure that keywords are related to one another and the content on the page.
  • Place links in your content to related web sites as well as related conteont on your own internet site.
  • Try and add content on an once a day basis.
  • Don’t fret about word density, if the content is on “apples” then you may naturally mention “apples” multiple times in the content.
  • Writing on related subjects will show that your site is related to that subject and other keywords related to that subject.
  • Content should be unique, try not use content that is also on other websites.
  • Use bold and italicized styled text when it sounds right for the readers, don’t just do it for the search engines.

Alt Tags

1. Photographs – all pictures should have alt tags.

2 . Keywords – words in the alt tags should be applicable to the image.

3 . Length – alt tags should be short and to the point.

Ideas

  • Place alt tags on all photographs so you can improve the accessibility of your web site.
  • You can place keywords in your alt tags as long as they describe the image.
  • Confirm your pictures are links when it is smart,eg for a company trademark.
  • Don’t stuff alt tags with keywords.
  • Length of alt tags can change, but usually the shorter the better.

Internal Links

  1. Keywords – links that contain keywords should be related to the webpage they point to.
  2. Titles – links should have titles that represent the anchor text of the link ( tool tip ).
  3. Illustration – link text should represent the linked page.

Ideas

  1. You can place keywords in the anchor text of internal links but it is best to make sure they have relevancy to visitors.
  2. Don’t stuff your anchor text with tons of keywords.
  3. Keep the anchor text representative of the page you are linking to.
  4. Make the titles ( tool tip ) on each link the same as the anchor text.

Indexing

  1. Links – by crawling all the links, all the pages of that internet site should be discovered and indexed.
  2. Sitemap – a sitemap should contain links to imperative pages within a sitwebe.

Ideas

  • Link in your content to other pages within your internet site this can help Google index your pages.
  • Make a sitemap that links to all or, as a minimum, the imperative pages on your website.

External Links

  1. Authority – if an authority site links to another web site, then that other web site will be considered valuable to folks.
  2. Keywords – if there are keywords in the anchor text of a link then it is standard for Google to think about the internet site should be ranked for those keywords.
  3. Age – the longer a link stays live on an internet site, the more valuable the link is.
  4. Importance – if a site links to you and another site, both sites, or at least webpages, should be related to the same subject.
  5. Quantity – the more outbound links on a page, the less weight each link will have.
  6. Extension – sites with vital extensions like .edu and .gov are thought to be to link to more valuable sites.
  7. Freshness – if a site has outbound links and updates often, then even the old outbound links are thought to be valuable.
  8. Link count – if a large amount of web sites link to one site, then that one web site is regarded helpful to folk.
  9. Linking web sites – links from related web sites are better then links from non-related sites.
  10. DMOZ – web sites that are in DMOZ and link out to other internet sites are regarded as to link to good sites.
  11. Placement – links inside a site’s content is regarded better then links in the footer of a site.

Suggestions

  • Try to get links from authority web sites.
  • Don’t take part in link exchanges to build up your link recognition.
  • Try to not purchase all page links.
  • Don’t go for links from high PageRank web sites ; instead go for links from related websites.
  • Links from directories like DMOZ and Yahoo Directory can not just help with search engine rankings but can also drive traffic.
  • Use the new social websites like MySpace, digg, del.icio.us, and YouTube to build link popularity.
  • If you are going to buy text links try and keep them live so long as possible. The older the link, the better.
  • Links from .edu or .gov web sites will sometimes carry more weight and larger benefit.
  • Keep away from web sites and blogs that link out to non-related internet sites or that may appear spammy.

Code

  1. Size – the dimensions of the code on a domain should be streamlined, the less KB it takes up, the better.
  2. Clean – sites that are using web standards and have clean code customarily load up quicker for users.

Suggestions

  • Use CSS to make your page size smaller.
  • Use CSS to help improve the cleanliness of your code.

Site

  1. Site Age – older sites are regarded as more topical then newer sites.
  2. Visit Length – often the longer folks stay on an internet site the great the likelihood that the site is helpful to them.
  3. Sandbox – sites in the Google sandbox are typically not as topical compared to older internet sites.
  4. 301 redirect – internet sites should do a 301 redirect from “yourdomain.com” to “www.yourdomain.com” or vice versa, depending on the circumstance.

Suggestions

  • Attempt to register your domain name for more then one year.
  • Employ a 301 permanent redirect so that your internet site would appear as one internet site rather than 2 separate web sites. ( www and the non-www are looked as two sites unless your do a redirect from one to the other )
  • Try to increase at a natural rate ; growing too quickly may put you in the Google sandbox.

The following are some factors that Google may look at in a negative way :

  1. Visibility – web sites with invisible text might be attempting to trick Google.
  2. Two. Over optimization – sites that are excessively optimized might not be important for any keyword phrases.
  3. Keyword stuffing – web sites with too many keywords stuffed into the content could be making an attempt to trick Google.
  4. Reciprocal links – web sites that link between one another too many times could be attempting to cheat.
  5. Cloaking – sites that show Google a different page then what the spectator sees typically get banned.
  6. Anchor text – if all of the sites linking to a site have the same anchor text, those links may not be considered natural.
  7. Entrance pages – if tons of one page sites full of keywords are linking to another web site, the ranking of that website can be influenced adversely.
  8. Frames – it is hard for Google to move and index a site with frames, making it harder to rank that internet site.
  9. Flash – it is tough to read / crawl internet sites made totally in flash that may make it harder to rank Flash web sites.
  10. All page links – if tons of internet sites link to another web site on each one of their pages then the text links might have been bought, which is scowled on by Google.
  11. 301 redirects – sites that have tons of other web sites redirecting into them might be trying to extend their link count to rank high, so Google may penalise these internet sites.

These are a lot of the factors that Google might look at when determining the ranking of a site. Every factor has a different weight and the weights are consistently changing to provide searchers with extra topical results. As Matt Cutts discussed to Om Malik, Google “used to crawl the web once a month, and now we update everything in 2 to 3 days”. This shows that it’s important to make certain you account for as many of the ranking factors as practicable, particularly if you’d like to get ranked. One thing to notice is if you are taking these elements above and check them to how a blog is set up, blogs are in line with the majority of these factors, particularly when it comes to a few of the most important factors like the freshness of content.

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