Website Development – Let the Buyer be Aware

January 11, 2013 By + Leave a Comment

Are you considering building or redesigning a website for your business?  Is SEO part of the process?

This morning I was doing some preliminary website reviews for the students in my upcoming workshop and my head started to explode. Nearly every one of them was missing multiple factors that are critical to search engine optimization and should have been addressed when the website was designed.

Unfortunately most people don’t understand how critical the design of a website is as it relates to being found by the search engines.  It’s of no value to have a pretty website if no one can find it or use it.  Search Engine Optimization, the process of optimizing websites so they are found on Google, is critical to the success of any website and shouldn’t be an afterthought.

My colleague and fellow instructor, Sue Cooper, wrote a post that I had to revisit:  Web Development – you get what you pay for.  I think it’s become too easy for anyone to call themselves a web designer.  With all of the tools and workshops available almost anyone can learn how to build a website and position themselves as a designer.  What’s missing is a working knowledge of how to do search engine optimization among both business owners and web designers.

Not only that, it’s getting easier and easier to build a website yourself.  I did a search on “how to build a website” and got over 700,000 results in exactly .37 seconds.  Many people are drawn to the “simplicity” and “low cost” that are perceived to come along with a do it yourself website.  A search on “web design agency” yielded over 100,000,000 choices.  Holy buckets – how does one even know where to begin?

Top 6 SEO Website Design Mistakes:

  1. Poorly structured navigation – category structure is either missing or too complicated for a visitor to easily find what they are looking for.
  2. Over use of images – pictures are nice and add an aspect of visual interest, but without content the search engines won’t wind the page.
  3. Use of flash to display important content like menus and service listings – search engines can’t read flash, all of that great content gone to waste.
  4. Unoptimized page content – missing keywords in page titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, and sometimes even body copy.
  5.  No Analytics or Web Master tools installed – if you cant’ measure it, how do you know if it’s working?
  6. Duplicate content, particularly in title tags and meta descriptions – each page should have it’s own unique content.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Web Designers who make these mistakes are doing it intentionally, I truly believe that they don’t know that they should be taking SEO into consideration.  SEO has also changed a lot over the past few years, so websites that might have been ok a few years ago have fallen behind and it’s time for an update.

The search engine marketing workshops offered at the Search Engine Academy equip business owners with the knowledge needed to choose a direction for designing or redesigning a website.  If you’re a Web Designer, the knowledge will enable you to create a great experience for your clients.

What may seem like a simple and affordable solution, may end up costing you more than you bargained for in the long run. A website designed with SEO in mind is a website that is designed for success.

Check out the upcoming courses and make sure your website is everything you want it to be.

Until next time.

Cheers!

 

 

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Search Engine Academy Recommends Use of Fabulous Video at No Cost

November 21, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

Greetings Everyone,

By now you probably have noticed many of the brand new topics we have added to our hands-on Search Engine Academy Workshops.  In a minute, I’m going to give you some specific advice on how to use video and create your own full video productions that  I promise will wow your Web visitors, but it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. In fact it won’t cost you anything at all.

I’d like to write a few new posts on some of our very latest course upgrades which include topics that go well beyond SEO. We have many new sessions on things like understanding Google’s metrics, Web Analytics, Pursuasive Copywriting to compel you visitors to take action on your Web site, and great deal of new Social Media not to mention our new Google Day, where we spend the whole day discussing everything you need to know about Google in great detail. You can see the full list of course topics in this previous post.

But for our first post today, let’s talk about video a little bit. Our new expanded session in class covers “How to Optimize Video for Top Search Engine Rankings and we get into all of the important video to-do things from video formats to varoious video resources that you need to take advantage of.

Diamond ideas

Now let me just suggest a couple of things you can do that are pretty simple and best of all, they won’t cost you a penny.

Create Full Video Presentations that handle Powerpoints, Background Music and even allow you to narrate to your audience.

You might expect to pay quite a bit of money on equipment, but this system I’m telling you about will allow you to do all of this with no special cameras or equipment and even includes a library of music that is all free to use. Create impressive videos in just minutes with no muss, no fuss and you can easy embed them right on your Web site.

Are you ready to give it a try?

Great, then go to My.Brainshark.com  Watch a couple of the Demos, sign up for a free account and create your first video.

Now what happens if you should want some very specific video clips or backgrounds or something a little different?

You could go to Photolia.com which is not free, but they will sell you video clips, images or vector graphics at a very reasonable price and they do have a pretty powerful image search engine for finding exactly what you need.

However, suppose I gave you the name of a resource that will allow you to download tons of video, motion graphics, animations special effects, motion backgrounds, Royalty free Music clips and sound effects with 7 Days of access at no charge? The video animations are extremely high quality video in categories like:

  • Time Lapse Photography
  • Aerial Footage
  • Motion Backgrounds
  • Animals and Nature
  • People
  • International Locations
  • US Cities and Locations
  • Slow Motion Effects
  • Plus many more

What they give you is 7 Days free access to download absolutely anything you want from their library of literally thousands of videos. Download whatever you like with 7 days of free access at Videoblocks.com.

Check our Search Engine Academy dates page for the next SEO certification training located around the globe.

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Google Adwords: Profit from Pay Per Click – Part 1

October 30, 2012 By + Leave a Comment

Google Adwords - Advertising ProgramAdwords, Pay Per Click, AdSense, Online Advertising, SEO, Social Media………..

The list of terms related to  internet marketing is never ending and trying to decide where to focus and how to get started gets more confusing every day. As usage of the internet grows so does our need for understanding the many and various ways of promoting our products and services online to the right audience through the right channel.

This is the first in a series of posts that will explore Google’s keyword driven paid advertising system.  Together we’ll learn what Adwords is, how to get started, what makes a good campaign, how to measure results, and more.

Advertising on Google may seem impractical for small businesses, public sector, and non-profit organizations; however if properly set up and managed, it can be a powerful tool for any size or type of organization.

A program such as Adwords opens up the opportunity to expand your reach far beyond traditional methods of paid advertising such as the Yellow Pages or direct marketing techniques like postcards, catalogs, and brochures. A well planned and executed Adwords account can be a cost effective method of driving sales or generating new leads.  Google Adwords is a keyword driven advertising program and its reach extends far beyond the Google results page.

Ads can also appear on the results pages of Google’s partners such as AOL, Earthlink, and Ask.com. In addition to the millions of ads served by Google and it’s partners -  there are hundreds of thousands of sites that serve Adwords ads on their pages as a part of the Adsense program.  Google pays website owners who are part of the Adsense platform to display Adwords on their sites.  And last but not least, Google displays Adwords results next to any email received in Gmail.

Search Engine results pages are divided into “sponsored links” and organic listings.  In other words links that are paid for and listings that surface on the results page naturally because of their relevance to the search term. If a searcher clicks on one of the the “sponsored links,” Google gets paid for the click, which is what the phrase “Pay Per Click” refers to.  All search engines and many other online marketing tools use the “Pay Per Click” model to drive traffic to websites.

Every time someone enters a word into the Google search box, they’re looking for an answer to a question or a solution to a problem. If Google is doing their job, the results page provides a list of relevant resources and matches the searcher with a solution in a fraction of the time it would have taken them to make a dozen phone calls or drive around town doing price comparisons.

I’ve always wanted to take a vacation in the Caribbean so I’ll use that as an example to demonstrate how the results display on Google. Of course it needs to be an affordable trip and I like packages so I don’t have to think about and coordinate all of the details, so I searched on “affordable Caribbean vacation packages.”

The results at the top and right hand side of the page that are highlighted in yellow represent the ads that were paid for and are a part of an Adwords campaign and the results that are displayed under the first three “sponsored links” are the organic results, or in other words the resources that Google’s algorithm found to be the most relevant to my search request.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I first started learning about how Google works, one of the biggest surprises was that relevance and quality are two of the most important, if not the most important words in Google’s universe.  I think a lot of people are under the impression that if you pay for an ad and you are willing to pay for the top position, it’s yours, however that’s not the case.

Relevance matters as much for a sponsored link as it does for a natural search result. After the initial shock wore off, I realized that it made perfect sense for Google to give priority to ads that are the most relevant.  After all they only get paid if someone clicks on the link and the only way it will be clicked on is if the ad is pertinent to the search term.  What makes an ad relevant goes way beyond the ad copy, but that’s another post and will be covered in the coming weeks.

Google Adwords can be a great tool for businesses of all sizes to drive traffic, generate sales, and acquire new customers.  In the next post we’ll cover how to get started with an Adwords Account.

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Why Is Keyword Research So Important for SEO and your Business?

October 12, 2012 By + 1 Comment

At the Search Engine Academy, whenever we teach an SEO class, the very first thing we cover is keyword research. We don’t talk about HTML. We don’t talk about how to do SEO. We don’t talk about Google Analytics.

Before we talk about anything else, we teach the students how to do keyword research.

I usually tell my students, “If you’re guessing at what keywords to optimize for, you’re probably wrong.”

Most of us who have businesses, are experts in our respective fields. That’s why we have a business. We know all the technical jargon and all the things that we do to make our services and products do what they’re supposed to do and stand out from our competitors. Because of that, it’s really easy to slip into the mistaken idea that we know exactly what our customers are searching for on the search engines like Google.

A classic example is that a lot of web design companies take our class, either for their own business or to provide SEO services for their clients. The first thing web designers typically look for in the keyword research tools are keywords around “web design” or “web designer”. They’re always disappointed when they can’t come up with a good, high scoring keyword phrase.

It may be true that their customers are looking for “web designers”, but often the competition for these types of phrases is so high, that it’s impossible to rank well for them.

Criteria for Good Keyword Phrases

When we do keyword research for our clients or ourselves, we want key phrases that fulfill three basic criteria:

  • They have a lot of searches
  • They have low competition on the search engines
  • They must be relevant to your business

The keyword phrases can be used in your website copy (for organic results on the search engine results pages or SERP) or even used in your paid placement (like pay per click) advertising.

I recently ran across the following example of a keyword phrase that doesn’t have anything to do with the business.

It seems that a lot of people are typing into Google: “Where is my social security check” wondering when they’ll get their check in the mail. One of the top positions in the paid placements is a company that does website security checks. They have nothing to do with social security. I can just imagine the conversations their customer support staff are having every time the phone rings: “No, I’m sorry sir, we don’t know where your check is. We do website security checks.” “What’s that?”

This company has not done their research and is wasting not only money on clicks from people who don’t want their services, they’re wasting valuable employee time on the phone answering these questions over and over again.

Some simple changes in their ad keywords would fix this and stop wasting money.

Management Told Me So

The other classic mistake I hear about is that the marketing department was told by the company’s executive staff what keyword phrases to optimize for or advertise with.

There is no forethought or research into what their customers actually want. Management just “knows” what the customers want or maybe they had a meeting and brainstormed some ideas. This is a great start, but should not be the end.

It’s crucial to do the research to see what your customers really type into Google before even considering SEO or what content to write or what Adwords to create.

If you’re jumping to conclusions or your management is “telling” you what to optimize or advertise with, consider doing the keyword research first and find out what your customers really want. John Alexander has several excellent articles about keyword research.

Put the time in, and I guarantee you’ll be surprised by what you find out.

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SEO Training: the Way to “Hire for Character, Train for Skill”

March 2, 2012 By + 2 Comments

SEO training is a topic that my friend Bill V. knows absolutely nothing about.  But as a facilitator with The Alternative Board he knows business and what works.  One of the adages he always hammered into my head was “hire for character, train for skill.”  I’ve been thinking of that adage a lot lately in pondering the value that the professional SEO training offered by the Search Engine Academy has for businesses.   And it was on my mind when I stumbled across this blog post on the Harvard Business Review website by business author Bill Taylor that dealt with precisely that subject.

southwest airlines logo

Southwest Airlines Finds the Right People for the Job. Do you?

What made Taylor’s observations especially meaningful to me was the corporate example he fastened on: Southwest Airlines.  And no, the example had nothing to do with how Southwest Airlines handles search engine optimization.  Instead it has to do with the principle that Southwest Airlines relies on: hiring for the right attitude.

As anyone who has done much hiring and firing can understand, finding the right candidate for the job is a challenging task.  First you have to sort through the obviously unqualified candidates.  Then you have to determine if the skills of the apparently qualified candidates really measure up.  At the same time you’re asking yourself, “how well with this person integrate with our corporate culture and mission?”

Alas, can I see a show of hands of HR directors out there who have hired based on skills and experience and found that the new hire is lazy, unaccountable, surly, ungrateful, uncommunicative, or immediately looking for the next great opportunity – with one of your competitors?  Let me see, I think just about all hands went up.  I know mine did (ok, I’ll include small business owners like me along with HR people, since we have the same challenge).

Southwest did it the other way around and succeeded in spades.  I like this quote from the article:

When it comes to flight attendants or baggage handlers, Phelps and her colleagues prefer to recruit, say, teachers or waiters or police officers (and often do) than grizzled airline veterans.”

This fits nicely with the situation you might have looking for someone to manage your SEO department.  In the first place, SEO knowledge is difficult to assess, especially if you only know “enough to be dangerous” yourself.  Secondly, and regrettably, SEO tends to attract people who are lured by the idea of quick and easy money online.

The solution: look first for the right candidate based on who well they fit with you and your organization and then invest (modestly) in the training necessary to bring them up to speed in SEO.  There are a number of ways to do this, and Search Engine Academy offers an excellent program that will take a person with basic Internet skills from 0-60 in just 5 days.  And at the end of the course we certify the student’s knowledge to make sure he or she assimilated what they were taught and we also offer a 6-month mentoring program that helps the student apply what they’ve learned to their “real world” business situation.

So hire that outstanding person who’s weak on SEO.  And then send them to one of our certification SEO training workshops.  My buddy Bill V. will be proud of you.

Search Engine Academy offers professional-level SEO training and certification.  Check out our latest schedule of workshops.

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