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Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
PPC vs. SEO
Kyle Ashby | April 12th, 2010
Welcome Wpromoter Kyle Ashby to the blog! This is his first of what we hope to be many guest posts. Bravo! It is not an unfamiliar dilemma. Marketing budgets are limited, and efficiency is key. You’ve realized utilizing search engines is a great way to grow your business. But where do you spend your limited budget? There is the ol’ reliable pay-per-click (PPC) versus the new hotshot search engine optimization (SEO). The best way to find out which avenue is best for you is to TEST. Test running PPC and SEO alone, and test running PPC and SEO together. Performing these tests can take months of time, money, and analysis, and you’ll likely come out with some good information on which you can base decisions regarding your next move. But if you don’t have the time and money for months of testing, you should consider the ups and downs of both off the bat and try to make a decision that way. PPC The benefits of PPC revolve around control. You are in charge, from conception to click. Firstly, you decide exactly what search terms, aka ‘keywords,’ you want to advertise under. Speaking of keywords, a huge benefit of PPC is the ability to advertise under nearly unlimited keywords, giving your campaign a very broad reach (no to be confused with ‘broad match’). PPC also allows you to determine the point of entry to your website for each ad you place with customized links. In short, users see what you Continue reading…
Tags: how to choose PPC or SEO, PPC, SEO, SEO vs PPC
Posted in Business, Internet News, PPC, SEO | 4 Comments
Case Study – Yoga Direct
Christian Vuong | April 5th, 2010
The largest direct importer and manufacturer of quality Yoga equipment in the US, YogaDirect’s brand was well established online, but the majority of its organic search traffic was a result of branded keyword searches. In short, YogaDirect.com was failing to attract 1st time visitors and losing out on valuable market share. Challenges Attracting 1st-time visitors meant YogaDirect needed to rank for non-branded and product-related keywords, but the highly saturated nature of the yoga niche coupled with YogaDirect’s young age in relation to its competitors meant they would have to work twice as hard. Strategy After performing a comprehensive audit of the client’s site, we devised a comprehensive SEO strategy focused on optimizing the site for popular yoga-related keywords and branding YogaDirect as a niche authority. We optimized the site for non-branded keywords with content To improve YogaDirect’s organic ranking for yoga, Pilates, and fitness-related keywords, we prescribed the addition of a healthy dose of unique content to the site. We also added content targeting category and product-specific keywords to respective pages, and optimized all content with H1 and H2 tags. We added unique Meta title tags and descriptions to each page To draw in more users, we optimized YogaDirect’s Meta title tags to target long tail and product-specific keywords and help identify unique pages. We also developed more compelling page descriptions and added calls-to-action to generate more clicks. We improved the URL naming strategy with more descriptive URLs To give YogaDirect even more ranking juice, we organized their URL structure Continue reading…
My Notes From SMX West 2010 (Part Two)
John Vantine | March 10th, 2010
This is my 2nd post about the presentations that I attended at SMX West. If you didn’t see the first one, check it out here. There’s nothing better than getting your hands dirty with some advanced technical SEO stuff first thing in the morning, right? Those were my exact thoughts as I sat in the expo hall on Wednesday morning, dreary eyed with hot caffeinated beverage in hand. Without further ado… Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues Adam Audette (Audette Media) was the first one to speak. Adam spoke about SEO site audits, and reminded us that they should be a collaborative process. SEO Site Audits When multiple people are involved in a site audit, it can get confusing. It’s very important that everyone involved is on the same page; otherwise, you may find that you are giving your client conflicting advice/suggestions in the site audit. For this reason, he suggested the use of a project management tool like Basecamp. Everyone does site audit’s differently, but they should all include the same core elements. Adam identified these as being… On-Site: Domain(s), navigation, sections and categories, pages, and media (images/video/etc) Off-Site: Backlinks (quantity, quality, frequency), social media signals, cache dates/crawl frequency/indexed pages, and toolbar pagerank After identifying the core elements of an SEO site audit, he said that the “big 4 factors” are URLs, site architecture and navigation, deep pages (pagerank dispersion), and site latency. Gabe Gayheart (Razorfish) took the stage next, and continued the discussion on site audits. Gabe recommended that you Continue reading…
Tags: cctlds, content delivery, css sprites, link building, page speed, SEO, site audits, SMX West
Posted in Google, Internet News, SEO, Technology | 5 Comments
Anchor Text Test: Making The Most Of A Link Opportunity
John Vantine | February 22nd, 2010
Link building may not be rocket science, but it can be difficult. It’s not always easy to find “authority” sites in your niche that are willing to link to you – and when you find someone with a relevant site/blog who is willing, the link may not be on your terms. Likewise, while guest posting is a great way to build links, best practices change frequently and it can be tough to keep up. Despite these inconsistencies, however, one factor remains that contributes greatly to any link building initiative and that factor is anchor text. The importance of anchor text when link building When link building, anchor text is key. Ideally, anchor text should take the form of keywords for which you want your site to rank. However, since other sites will invariably link to you, it can be difficult to control how these links are anchored. Say, for example, you run an online snowboarding store… We’ll call it snowstuff.com. You want your store to rank well for relevant terms in your niche – terms like “snowboards” – and the way people link to you matters. Ideally, you’d have links from many “authority” sites in your niche and most of them would use the anchor text “snowboards.” Unfortunately, however, some people who link to you may use some other less-than-desirable anchor text, like “snowstuff.com,” or even “click here,” neither of which help your site rank for important keywords. You may try to convince them to change the anchor text, but Continue reading…
Tags: anchor text, Backlinks, guest posts, link efficiency, link opportunities, SEO
Posted in SEO | 13 Comments
8 Reasons To (Re)start The Company Blog
Christian Vuong | February 11th, 2010
So you’ve given it a go in the past with the company blog, got the CEO’s buy-in, people actively blogging and even a little community going. But somewhere along that road the blogging initiative got pushed back and now is off the radar. For some companies, ranking well organically is not a problem and they can rank well without any active blogging or content additions. But for most web sites, this is not the case. Here’s 8 reasons why you should really consider starting up a company blog or restarting it in 2010. 1) Google loves content. Let me say that again, Google all of the search engines love content. By creating new and valuable content for the search engines, you generally increase the chances of your web site ranking better and for a larger variety of keywords. If you are in a news or breaking news type of industry, you should also look more into Query Deserves Freshness, a component of Google’s algorithm where new or updated pages receive a little extra boost in their rankings. And on a side note, did you know Google also index blogs quicker than a normal site? 2) Create and control the official company voice. A blog makes it that much easier to get in front of customers. Start small with the blog post a week and stick to that schedule. Once that is consistent, start expanding out and looking for weekly features and themes that your readers can look forward to (i.e. Continue reading…
Tues News: 1/26 (Funny Edition)
Michael Block | January 26th, 2010
Whenever I talk about my job as a search engine marketeer, I often am met with blank looks. It’s not because I’m a rocket scientist and the language I’m using is too difficult for mere mortals to comprehend. It’s also not because I’m a giant bore (I hope!). My guess is that a lot of people just don’t know very much about SEM and, therefore, find it boring. But it’s not all so banal! Sometimes, marketing, even in the search engines, is hilarious! This week, in the Tues News, I will show you exactly what I mean with three funny links to brighten up your wintry afternoon. Let’s get going! This first link is one of my favorites in quite a while. Danny Sullivan, the Big Cheese at SearchEngineLand, is one of the smartest guys in our industry, especially for SEO. I’ve even written about him before in the Tues News. Anyway, he had some sage SEO advice for Bill Gates this week that I found to be really funny. Bill’s blog isn’t getting any love in Google but, perhaps more embarrassing, it’s getting even less love from Bing, a Microsoft property! It just goes to show you that all the money in the world won’t buy you a blog that search engines care about. [SearchEngineLLand] Who doesn’t love web comics? I know I do! In fact, I read about six ongoing web comics on a daily basis (during my free time, not during work, of course). One of the Continue reading…
Tags: apple, Bing, Google, Internet News, SEO, social marketing, Twitter, Viral Marketing, web comics
Posted in Tues News | 4 Comments
