Client areaSEO Myths – Guaranteed Rankings
March 2nd, 2012 by admin
In the next of our SEO Myths series let’s look at one of the sales techniques used by some SEO companies to get you to sign with them. Guaranteed Rankings.
There are many companies out there who will offer guarantee rankings for your website if you use them for your SEO. This sounds promising, and like it makes a wise investment of your money. Let’s be honest who doesn’t want to know that they will definitely be number 1 in Google for their keywords in 6 months?
This kind of sales promise can lead to you ignoring genuine SEO companies who offer a service tailored both to your needs and to the changing search engine requirements in favour of the promise of a quick win.
However, is this a realistic promise and something which can be delivered? Quite frankly, no. Many of these companies will choose your keywords for you meaning that you may find yourself at number 1 in 3 months but not for the keywords you actually want to rank for, or for keywords which offer you the opportunity to generate leads and increase your sales.
Your SEO company should be focussed on getting you good rankings but also generating you news leads and sales via your website. They should also be looking at making sure that you are able to make the most of new developments and changes to the search engine algorithms.
With the advent of the Google Panda updates and the increasing importance of Social Media to your rankings it is more and more important to use a company who doesn’t do traditional SEO but instead takes a content-driven approach to optimising your website.
This kind of joined up approach to your search marketing will help to generate more visitors that a company who guarantees a number one ranking for a keyword which won’t drive you traffic.
The regular changes to the Google algorithm also affect the ability for your website to have a guaranteed ranking as any of the changes Google makes to its algorithm could affect your website and change a ranking, either by a small amount (dropping from 1 to 3) or by making some of your rankings disappear. This also means that a guarantee isn’t possible, as no one knows what these changes are going to be nor the exact contents of the Google algorithm.
Google themselves say that guaranteeing rankings is something to avoid stating in their guidelines about SEO that “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google”
So if you are approached by a company claiming to guarantee you a ranking in Google, be wary and don’t believe the hype. It will just cost you money.
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SEO for eCommerce (from Search Engine Journal – SUJAN PATEL)
March 2nd, 2012 by admin
eCommerce sites are some of the largest in the world. With thousands or even millions of products come thousands or millions of links, which means that implementing and managing a SEO strategy for an eCommerce site is extremely difficult and time consuming.
Having optimized content on product description pages is one of the most important SEO factors for eCommerce because they contain the most valuable content though out the entire site.
The product description page is where the customer finds pictures, product specifications, reviews, and pricing options to eventually make a buying decision.
Beware of duplicate content problems that may arise from other companies, who are selling the same product, using your product description content on their sites. If you allow other sites to sell your products make sure that there are multiple unique product descriptions and keywords that they can use. Finally, never use manufacturer product description because almost everyone uses it.
Using SEO friendly navigation and internal link networks are vital for search engine spiders to crawl your site, especially with eCommerce sites that have thousands or millions of products and links. Use the sidebar on the homepage to link category landing pages and make sure that the site map has an organized structure that lists all the main product categories. Internally linking product description pages together through “recommended product” links or “those who searched this also like this” links is an effective way to pass link juice throughout the site.
Another SEO practice that needs to be looked at is the use of long, crazy URLs. There are countless numbers of eCommerce sites that use URLs that do not use keywords and are not SEO friendly. For example, this fictitious site, http://www.myecommercestore.com/, uses a URL that looks something like this for a product page that sells military style cargo shorts, “http://myecommercestore.com/ – productid=9876/, when it should look something like this, “http://www.myecommercestore.com/ -military-cargo-shorts/. Using keywords in the URL will add benefit to SEO.
Internal Search Engines
Utilize the internal search engine to support SEO efforts. So many sites have beyond mediocre search engines where customers will search for product and nothing shows up. But, when navigating through the sites pages, that product is listed. eCommerce sites need to be able to produce search queries for product names, models, SKUs and relative items. Investing in powerful internal search engines is a necessity for a successful eCommerce site.
Unlike tracking external search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, which generally only list keywords for which you rank, internal search metrics provide you with much more valuable information. Internal search engines can help you understand which keywords customers are actually using which will help with targeted external SEO and PPC. This internal search data will also show which keywords are converting into sales and which keywords are causing people to leave the site.
User Experience
User experience is crucial to a successful eCommerce site. After looking through sites such as Amazon.com, Overstock.com and Newegg.com, there are a few user experience factors that these successful eCommerce sites have in common. In this fast paced world we all live in, no one wants to click through three pages of garbage to finally see the price of a product, thus, upfront pricing and product descriptions are necessary for conversions. Product sorting options are also great for a user, for example, showing highest or lowest priced items, best-selling items, newest items or relevant items at the top of the on-site search query.
One important factor for eCommerce sites and user experience is site speed and performance. Fast page loading times are clearly related to increased search traffic and improved conversion rates. Google has started considering site speed and page load time as a new organic search ranking factor. So, we can determine that faster sites are clearly correlated with increased search rankings and positive user experience.
Creatively designed Rich Snippets, while not necessarily increasing search rankings, improves the presentation of pages in the search results, increases click though rates and increases the user experience. For example, which search result would you rather click on: One that lists your search topic and a review or one that includes reviews, availability, price and a photo? That’s a rhetorical question.
Social Media should not be overlooked. Google does take Likes, Shares and Retweets into consideration when determining search rankings. Adding Facebook Like, Share and Twitter Tweet buttons to the product description pages will allow users to link to the site through social media. Interacting with your customers in social media is an amazing way to increase brand awareness and conversions.
SEO for eCommerce is highly competitive and constantly evolving. Innovating and learning from others to better understand the search engines and consumer behavior is critical to the success of any eCommerce site.
View original post here: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-for-ecommerce/40596/
Five SEO Tactics You Can Do Right Now
November 25th, 2010 by admin
Is your website search engine optimized? Have you done everything you can to make sure your site is found at the top of the search results? Here are five SEO tactics we use to help our clients rise to the top of the search engines for their chosen niche.
SEO Tactic #1: Define Keywords
Everything on your website is about your keywords. What is the site about? What do you offer? It’s important that you identify what people are searching for, not what you call something. It’s also important to identify niche keywords, not the biggest, most generic keyword you can find. If you sell handmade stone jewelry, that should be your keyword, not “jewelry,” otherwise you’re competing with every jewelry store in the US, and you’ll never win.
SEO Tactic #2: Use Meta Tags
Once you know your keywords, use them in your Title, Description, and Keywords meta tags. This tells the search engines what your site, page, or blog post is about. They can then index and rank the pages appropriately.
SEO Tactic #3: Optimize Headlines
Your headline is slightly different from your Title meta tag. It’s what your visitor sees, so it’s important to not only use the appropriate keywords, but write a headline that will generate readers’ interest. Headlines like that include numbers or lists, as well as an action the reader can take — like “Five SEO Tactics You Can Do Right Now” — are more likely to earn readers than headlines like “Basic SEO for Your Website.” On a web page, make sure your keywords are sprinkled in H1 and H2 tags, but used effectively, not crammed in to be seen as search engine spammers.
SEO Tactic #4: Use an SEO Plugin On Your Blog
If you’re a WordPress user, there are several free SEO plugins available for your blog. We like the SEO Platinum Pack for a plug in, because it gives us the ability to easily add meta tags, as well as do on-page analysis of our optimization. We’ve also been hearing about Yoast and All In One SEO as possible plugins. Regardless of which one you choose, make sure it will let you add additional meta tag data.
SEO Tactic #5: Create backlinks
Backlinks are links from other sites that go back to your own (hence the name). They tell the search engines that your site is important — the more backlinks, the more important your site is. The more important it is, the higher it will rank. For best results, find backlinks on pages that have a high Google PageRank. Use a tool like WebRank Toolbar, or the Google Toolbar, to identify those pages.
We recommend you follow the 30/70 rule of SEO tactics: 30% of your time and energy should be devoted to the first four onsite tactics, while the remaining 70% should be devoted to creating backlinks.
While there are more tactics, these are the most basic one anyone can use in optimizing their website for search engine ranking. Keep watching this site for more information on more SEO tactics for your website or blog.
Is SEO/SEM at a crossroads?
September 20th, 2010 by admin
Based on the latest study from the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), found that more than half of advertisers (56%) and agencies (62%) say that Google keywords have become more expensive over the last year.
So this begs the question, if the keywords have gotten more expensive, do business keep pouring budget into the keywords for branding and visibility or do they redirect portions of the budget to other areas?
We would enjoy hearing your thoughts.
GBSEO in WSJ, OMG!
July 3rd, 2010 by admin
When the Wall Street Journal was looking for companies that had interesting stories in regards to how they came up with their name, they called Green Banana SEO.
So how does a Search Engine Optimization firm land on a list of companies that have great stories behind their name? Great question..and we have an answer!
We we first started marketing our unique pay per performance services, we found that a lot of companies we talked to knew they needed and wanted SEO, but did not know exactly what it was or how it worked. Instead of bludgeoning potential customers with potentially confusing concepts, we broke it down to a very simple analogy using a fruit store analogy.
Kevin (one of our co-founders) started drawing illustrations of a website home page littered with different types of fruit using pens of all colors. He explained why it’s difficult to get a specific fruit ranked on Page one of Google from a page that is saturated with multiple keywords. He wanted to show how a banana could get a better ranking with our firm’s methods, but without a yellow pen, he had to use a green one instead, from there a staple of the presentation was using a green pen for the banana for emphasis. So naturally when it came time to name the company we figured it was a no brainer to go with what our customers understood. To read more of the article you can visit the Wall Street Journal
