November 25th, 2009
If you own a website based out of Asheville SEO is a technique you must use if you want to attract a lot of visitors to your site. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process that involves going through your website and adding in keyword phrases, tags, page titles, and more in order to convince search engine robots that your page should rank at the top for specific searches. Choosing the correct keywords can be a challenge in and of itself, as is deciding where to place them on your website.
One of the more difficult decisions to make is figuring out what your keywords for SEO will be. In Asheville, SEO keywords may include Asheville and North Carolina as your locations. However, if what your e-commerce website is selling isn’t necessarily based in Asheville, you may actually not need these as keywords. One or two keywords you will definitely want to incorporate into your website are words or phrases linked to your business. If you sell flowers, for example, you may want to include the words “flowers,” “florist,” and “flower shop” as keywords. You may have to actually modify your keywords a few months after you do SEO on your site if they don’t seem to be bringing in the amount of traffic you want.
Once you’ve got your keywords selected, it’s time to add them to your site. You can write new text for your website that includes these keywords, but be careful: you don’t want to use the keywords too often in your text. If you do, it will sound like you’ve written this text simply for search engine robots and not for people. If your text doesn’t sound natural when read, it may have too many keywords stuffed in it.
Tags: asheville, seo
Posted in Asheville SEO | No Comments »
November 17th, 2009
E-Commerce websites can make people a lot of money these days if done correctly. Many people buy and sell items online every day. However, if you start a brand new E-Commerce site, you’re going to have to build up traffic. Even if you’ve been operating an E-Commerce site for several years, it never hurts to bring in more visitors to your site. But how can you do this? One tactic is link building.
Link building can be done in several ways. The old concept of link building is finding other websites that are similar to yours and contacting their webmasters. These sites will post a link to your site in exchange for you linking to their site. It’s mutually beneficial for both parties most of the time. However, if you link to a site that doesn’t get much traffic, you may send them a lot of potential customers without getting many in return.
Another form of link building that is more popular today is getting link backs. This is done mainly using blogs. You post a blog that includes links to similar blogs and websites. These sites see traffic coming in from your blog and will often visit your blog in return. You may also use trackback and pingback options. Trackbacks can actually extract links and connect your site to these other sites.
Some people also go out, read other blogs and websites, and leave comments with links to their website. Sometimes, however, this is seen as spamming. These blogs may delete comments that aren’t specifically about their blogs or that contain links that appear to be spam. Be careful when doing this type of link building.
Tags: E-Commerce, Link Building
Posted in E-Commerce, Link Building | No Comments »
October 10th, 2009
Another vital set of information we collect and analyze to help determine our search engine optimization strategies for our clients are our keyword ranking reports. These reports are generated on a weekly basis automatically and give us information about the relative keyword performance of those terms that we’re tracking. On the most basic of levels, getting an idea of movement from month to month allows us to track the effects of the work we’ve done on where the webpages of our clients appear in user’s browsers when they search on Google, Yahoo! and MSN/Bing. The report is simply superficially informative: that is, it tells the reader where their site is from the top down, and its ranking movement over a period of time specified in the settings. It does not give information such as relative competitiveness of the keyword term, nor does it detail how many searches are executed for those keywords in a given period of time (we have other nifty tools for that data!).
However, what this report does inform us about is the potential to act upon heretofore untouched or underloved opportunities. If a particular permutation of an important keyword is ranked #13 (meaning top-middle of the second set of results on a normal 10-result search results page) in a specific cycle, and we have been concentrating efforts on the seed keyword it contains (ie, ‘information technology’ and ‘information technology management’ or ‘information technology consulting’), we can see where we need to focus our efforts to bolster those associated terms that very well may be more in tune with what the searching user/potential customer has in mind– and this translates into targeted traffic that has necessarily carries with it specific interest in what they’ve searched. That kind of targeted result to a targeted search is the best kind of breeding ground for sales and increased conversion rates.
We send these reports to those we work with on a cyclical basis to enable them to gauge the results that our efforts have yielded for themselves in terms of the search engine optimization services we provide and the economy and their sector of industry as a whole. We always are interested in addressing any and all concerns of our clients in terms of branding, marketing strategies (especially those that coincide with traditional print/airwave advertising as well), and their upcoming and underpromoted products and services among many other considerations. We also review the data collected by our reporting tools on a weekly (sometimes daily!) basis to further inform our decisionmaking processes as we move through each cycle.
As Search Placement’s Web Analyst, I find that working with and gaining understanding from the data we collect and utilize for our work is incredibly rewarding as a growing and educational experience– I look forward to meeting new clients and tackling new projects in new niches.
Posted in General, Google, Keyword Research, SEO Tools, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
July 1st, 2009
There are a tremendous number of factors at play in determining the success and health of a website, particularly if that website is the web presence of a retailer or organization with something to sell. As entrepreneurs, we want our businesses to perform the best that they can, and we are generally willing to do what it takes to improve in any areas we find in need of bolstering. An incredibly important aspect of being able to make a determination as to what areas in your search engine optimization campaign could benefit the most from is harnessing and understanding data collected from various sources that relates to your website: traffic flow, back link status, and keyword ranking status being three primary cyclical reporting methods that can be analyzed and put to good use to boost organic search engine rankings. This post will be primarily concerned with traffic flow (as it relates to organic search engine placement), with subsequent posts to follow detailing the other major reporting types and how they benefit the clients we’re associated with.
Our experience working with web analytics and diagnosis tools such as Google Analytics and Google Webmasters allows us to make informed decisions regarding the choice of resource allocation in a given cycle that yield the best possible results for the keywords we are focusing on together. These reporting tools allow us to see data such as where the flow of traffic is coming from; organic search engines, pay-per-click advertising, direct traffic, referrals, and so forth. In addition, one of the features of this report allows us to see which keywords have been driving that traffic to the website in question and we can then bolster efforts thereon– or spot a ripe opportunity to pick! The reports generated by these tools also allow us to gauge the results our efforts have borne during that cycle and the one(s) preceding it (although it should be noted that some of the effects of our organic search engine optimization methods are exhibited not only in the short, but also medium and long-term) relative to traffic flow overall.
We use another set of analytical tools to help intially determine what will best improve search engine rankings when we get started with new clients, but for month to month focii and performance tracking web analytics tools are where it’s at. Thankfully both the web and these tools have become robust enough in recent years to glean accurate impressions from relatively complete data sets (for example, compare Google Analytics/Omniture/WebTrends web data to a Nielsen TV survey in terms of accurately capturing the whole) that allow us to gain actionable insights that ultimately strengthen our clients’ projects.
The caveat, of course, is that truly informed decisions cannot be based on one set of data alone. In the near future, I’ll write about some of the other tools we use to track results over time and enhance search engine ranking performance for those we work with– check back soon!
Posted in General, Google, Keyword Research, SEO Tools, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
June 24th, 2009
Between March 18 and May 7 over 16,000 people from 46 countries took a moment to vote for their favorite beer city in the USA. When the dust settled only two cities were left standing, although maybe a little bit wobbly. The poll which was conducted by beer guru Charlie Papazian ended up calling the contest a tie on May 8 awarding the happy title to one east coast city, Asheville, NC and one west coast city Portland, OR.
As a resident of Asheville I am so happy to see our city get this acknowledgement. I can remember an interview I once did with the owners of Pisgah Brewing Company, when I asked the question, “why Asheville?” I was told “because Asheville is the most beer drinkingest city in the country.” It says quite a bit that Asheville was held up with a city eight times its size. As I write this Buncombe County, where Asheville is situated, is home to 7 breweries and we have 2 more currently in the works. That gives us more breweries per capita than even Portland, OR.
I myself am a great lover of our local beer scene. Heading over to Pisgah Brewing Co. on a Thursday for a Pisgah Pale Ale is one of my favorite times during the week, going to chill out after work at the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Co. with a Shiva IPA and the great regular crowd is hard to beat, and my fiance Kati, who isn’t really a big beer drinker, could never turn down a Gaelic Ale from Highlands Brewing Co. Our local beer and breweries are just a fundamental part of the Asheville culture, it is one of those things that makes Asheville Asheville. Not to long ago an NPR journalist named Asheville the “happiest city in the nation” and now we have “beer city”, I am willing to bet there is some sort of connection there.
Tags: asheville, asheville beer city
Posted in Asheville SEO, General | No Comments »
June 22nd, 2009
Something that any small business with ears to hear is bombarded with these days is that you must take part in social media. Over and over again these words are sounded, leading many business owners to start exploring sites like Twitter and Facebook, of course once they have set up their profiles and found all of their ex-girlfriends from high-school they usually start to stagnate, not really knowing what to do or where to go from there. And although there is gigantic value to really working tools like Twitter and Facebook many business owners overlook what should be your first step in leveraging social media which is creating a company blog.
A blog for your business can serve you well in many ways, not least of which is that you and your employees will be able to easily add new content, thus updating your website often. And because your blog is focused on your services it will be easy to generate content that organically targets your desired keywords and phrases. Search engines love fresh content, especially content that is pertinent to the subject of your site. My favorite analogy is that search engines are the bees of the Internet and your blog is a sweet sweet flower, the more you add content to your blog the more those bees will return and naturally the more they will spread your marketing seed all across the web. There is nothing to loose by taking advantage of this enourmasely powerful marketing tool.
Tags: Blogging, seo, social marketing, social media, Social Networking
Posted in Asheville SEO, Blogging, General, SEO Tools, Social Networking | No Comments »
June 17th, 2009
Google has recently shown off an amazing new product out of it’s labs: Google Wave. The hour-plus long demo is actually captivating the whole time through, in part because of the exciting new methods of streamlining and optimizing of so many communications protocols and technologies. It may be a long watch, but I heartily recommend the viewing for anyone that is interested in where the web is going relative to where it has come from in terms of mass user adopted messaging and communications standards of today and the recent past.
Waves can serve to replace traditional emails in that they allow users participating in the Wave to reply to the message sent by a familiar thread-like response system. Waves can also replace instant messaging chat dialogs in that responses and changes made to the wave can be seen in real time. Waves support embedded video, images, widgets, and more– they can be collaboratively edited like documents and by proxy can be easily adapted for wiki-like use as well as blogging and live blogging. In the demo, users subscribed to the blog on which the Wave was published could respond as the blogger was blogging! This obviously holds great potential value for business efficiency not only in meetings and the dissemination of information across an organizational body, but also in planning, coordination, and implementation of data driven perogatives– especially once the spreadsheet collaboration capabilities go live shortly after public release.
Another fascinating aspect of Google Wave that particularly relates to Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Services is that it can be used interactively and extensibly with existing social networking technologies, such as Twitter. A Wave and a Tweet can work synchronously in a manner that produces a ‘Twave’, a thread-like conversation comprised of both contributions to the Wave, the Twitter page of the participants, and any and all Twitter clients involved.
What will be interesting to see is exactly to what degree users embrace this new avenue for communication and collaboration. From what can be seen in the demo even the fledgling iterations showcased seem to make exciting use of the strengths inherent to Google Wave, and given that the code is open-sourced, we’ll be getting our hands on even more implementations of the exciting new Wave technology. Will end users abandon their comfortable emailing/messaging/blogging/Twittering clients in light of the unified and concentrated communicative capabilities of a more robust and established Google Wave? Time will tell…
Posted in Blogging, General, Google, SEO Tools, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
June 9th, 2009
Every now and then something comes along to shake up the world of search and search marketing. Microsoft has just launched a new service that they hope will be one of those big things to shake up searching, and they call it Bing.
Bing is not a normal search engine– instead, it bills itself as a ‘decision engine’. What this means is that instead of searching for a general keyword or key phrase and getting info from any number of angles as they might relate to that keyword or phrase, a user might type in a keyword that they have a query about in order to find out the answer (not just general information surrounding the term). This means everything from ‘Fitness’ returning results for calorie calculations and workout routines because it intuits the user wants fitness advice to ‘LAX to LaGuardia’ returning online booking options and itineraries for flights from LA to NYC.
How exactly SEO and Organic Search Placement factor into the results presented by this new ‘decision engine’ will be fascinating to develop understanding with, and it can be assured that the search community at large (not just us here at Search Placement!) will be diligently reverse-engineering the results of thousands of searches to gain such familiarity– and how it can be put to use for our clients.
What will also be interesting to observe will be the marketshare Bing stakes out for itself as a niche ‘decision engine’ in the world of Google’s hegemony and the type of searching users have gotten used to. As it stands, Bing is outpacing Yahoo! in terms of search volume; however, some of that flow can be attributed to the ‘new and shiny’ effect that loses its lustre in relatively short order. Will Bing hang on in the #2 spot? Microsoft surely hopes so, and we’ll see for ourselves over the next few months.
Posted in E-Commerce, General, MSN | No Comments »
March 5th, 2009
Marketing in a recession is do or die for most businesses. While many stop, smart marketers just get more picky. Having been direct marketing & internet marketing for 10+ years I’ve come to realize a few things. The need for marketing services don’t dissipate when recessions hit, business owners just stop throwing money at the ones that don’t work.
Having previously worked at a firm that did direct marketing for mortgage banks I’ve seen this first hand. When interest rates were low and the housing market was booming, all kinds of mortgage banks would see success with our marketing efforts. Many banks would throw money at any possible marketing campaigns o see what sticks. However, when interest rates would rise, banks with bad loan programs and no niche would go out of business or stop marketing all together while our more successful clients spent even more on marketing campaigns that worked.
Having been in the search marketing industry for 4 years now I’ve seen the same thing with this recession. Many of our previously successful clients that sold low quality or non niche products have put a hold on their marketing spend. While our clients that provide quality products or services are only spending more.
Successful business owners and marketers are putting more effort into evaluating marketing campaign results, analytic and conversions. We have seen many of our successful clients cut their PPCbudgets in half while increasing SEO and social media marketing.
This trend isn’t limited to us, this recent study shows how most businesses allocate their online marketing dollars and what will change in the future.
Search marketing is forcasted to grow over the years, possibly reaching as much as 24 billion in 2013. This is a significant jump from the 12 billion in 08. SEO expenditures will grow from 1.5 billion in 09 to as high as 3.85 billion in 2013 while pay per click is forecasted to grow from 7.7 billion in 08 to 14.7 billion in 2013.
Posted in General, Pay Per Click (PPC) | No Comments »
