Late in June, Google launched Google+, a service focused on the social/sharing aspect of the web and an attempt to grab some of Facebook’s market which currently claims over 750 million users. Google+ launched by invitation only to a limited audience, but within 4 weeks the service acquired 25 million users, a far cry from Facebook’s numbers but certainly impressive considering its immaturity. So why have website administrators rushed to add the Google+ icon to their pages? Read the rest of this entry »

With Google’s live “Instant Search” now fully integrated into search queries, local results are having more impact on what websites the user hits and ultimately what business the user may choose to patronize. If you haven’t optimized your business on the web you may be missing out on many opportunities. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been hesitant to start a Twitter page for any reason, don’t wait any longer. Get on it! Twitter, which was founded in 2006, has quickly risen to be the second most popular Website (Website Magazine Oct. 2010), just behind Facebook and just one step ahead of LinkedIn. You can open a Twitter account as either an individual or business (a process that is much easier than Facebook) and start tweeting in a matter of seconds. Read the rest of this entry »

External links to your site are one of the most important factors in getting ranked on Google. The first, of course, is content. If you don’t have good content other sites won’t link to you. If you do have good content, maximize its potential by finding out where the content would be useful. For example, if you wrote a great article about how to trim fruit trees, you could find a discussion forum about farming or gardening and post a link to your article. Read the rest of this entry »

Use of meta keywords for Google traffic died out somewhere in the late nineties when Google realized meta keywords were at times only being used by webmasters to get hits, with no regard for relevant content. The tactic is no longer useful for Google results. The company has stated they no longer look at meta keywords to determine a web page’s content. Google uses its own method of determining what a page is about, and may even ignore the meta description and instead create its own description. Read the rest of this entry »

External links and site content are the most important factors in how Google ranks a website. You may have heard the term “Content is King” in your SEO explorations. Well time and time again it has been proven good content is rewarded with more link-backs. The perfect situation for webmaster or blogger is to have external link-backs naturally occur. But those of us who cannot wait or have yet to receive any decent link-backs can take on the task ourselves. Here are a few ideas, by no means conclusive.

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Recent talk about DMOZ (The Open Directory Project) being a waste of time has been emerging on the web. It was once standard for search engine optimization and web marketing experts to submit sites to DMOZ.org to increase Google page rank. DMOZ was at one time a backup Google website directory because of its manually edited listings. However, while many optimizers have found their sites listed quickly on DMOZ many others have tried multiple times with no luck. Our experience here as been less than positive. Out of 10 sites submitted we are lucky to get one listed. Read the rest of this entry »

One thing you don’t want to overlook if you are looking to build traffic to your site is the relevance of image searches. When I recently looked up the traffic results of one client’s site, it was enlightening to find 2 of the top 5 queries with resulting hits were from Google image search. In fact, it turned out almost half of the top 20 quieries were from image search.

To be sure your images are being indexed, use Google Webmaster Tools and make sure “Image Search” is clicked on in the Settings. Be sure to also name your images appropriately. If you are displaying a picture of an organic apple, for example, name the graphic “organic apple” and not something like “pic2″. Seach engines cannot see your images, so they rely on either the file name or “Alt Tag.”

Do you have a sitemap for your website? If you don’t you should consider adding one. A sitemap can be a valuable map for search bots if for some reason your pages are too difficult or impossible to index. In addition, Google Webmaster tools allow you to submit a sitemap. Here is a link to the proper format for sitemaps.

“In short, SEO involves manipulating a particular website with a view to increasing its ranking in search engines’ results and so increasing its online traffic.” This ZDNet article gives an overview of SEO terminology and techniques. Check out the article.