Quick Changes to Boost Your Search Rankings

It used to be true that you could add some key phrases to the code of your site and immediately see some quick results. Oh, how long ago that was. If only it were so easy, then the search results would be nearly irrelevant. Search engines use a very complex array of information to rank sites and no one knows them all. So, sorry, there is no quick trick to bounce you to the number one spot in search rankings and keep you there. However, there are definitely some relatively easy things that you can do to help ensure your success in the search engines.

1. Have a useful site. If your site is no good, then you can expect to never show up in the higher rankings. Social media plays a part in your ranking success, so people have to find your site relevant, current and useful for anyone to start talking about it.
2. Choose key phrases that are relevant to the content on your site. If people search for a celebrity and find information about computer printers, then your site is not going to be taken seriously by the search engines or people in general. Relevant keywords and phrases give the search engine valuable information about what type of content is on your site. It also helps people searching for you to find you. Keyword research is extremely important, because it can tell you what people are typing in to find you who aren’t finding you.
3. Publicize your developments. You can have the most user friendly, perfectly configured site on the internet, provide current information that is useful to your demographic, but it won’t matter if no one knows about it. Current publicity is not only press releases, but a trickle-down of communicating with the people and the people communicating with each other. Social media is incredibly powerful. You are dependent on people’s recommendations, sharing of links and opinion of you on social networks. You have to regularly announce blog updates, product developments and sometimes even other site’s articles or products to be a part of the community interested in your business.
4. On-page optimization is very important because it helps you rank in a lot of different ways. Your page content has to be relevant to the key phrase that you are optimizing for. Search engines do not look at graphics or flash shows that interest viewers, they look at the text and the actual content. Search engines even look to see if the text around your key phrase is relevant or not. They want to see through the code of the site if the title tag, section headings and image attributes are all relevant to the desired key phrase. If they are, then you may rank for that keyword or phrase.
5. Keep it up for a long time. Search engines may crawl your site many times before it will rank. Sites under a year old may not rank, but how they conduct themselves in that year can affect rankings, after the fact.


You must consistently uphold your promise to the search engine that you are a quality site, you offer relevant information, keep up with the public interest and update regularly. Don’t stop once you reach your goals or you could find yourself starting over. Search Engine Optimization companies specialize in handling all of this activity and making changes as the search engines evolve.


About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is a Project Manager for ArteWorks SEO, one of the top search engine marketing companies in the world. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she implements and manages comprehensive SEO strategies and serve as an organizational liaison among company executives, clients and colleagues.

Importance of Diligent Tagging

Tags and bookmarking clouds need to be well thought when you are promoting your site. Search engines are using social media as a source of ranking information in their algorithms. Using tags that directly relate to the information you are providing will help search engines see specifically what you are talking about, therefore exposing more users to your links and relevant information. You should also include generic, more general terms that relate to your area of expertise, if and only if they pertain to the article, video, podcast, etc. that you are posting.

Tagging in order of importance can help your tag cloud be indexed more easily. For example, if I was writing about cavities for a local dentist, my tag list would look something like this: cavities, cavity treatment, porcelain fillings, dentist Huntsville AL, Dr. Davis Huntsville AL

Notice how the tag line starts out with the information most specific to the article. Then, it goes on to include people that may be searching for a local dentist or for information about “Dr. Davis” in Huntsville, AL. Dr. Davis is totally fictional, by the way.

Do not use tags that use your keywords unless those keywords were mentioned in the article. Some people are tempted to get their favorite keywords out there as much as possible. But, it could seriously backfire unless the information you provide pertains to the keyword. Using a keyword specifically to bait people to your site link without providing information about that keyword, will only drive people away. It will even cause current customers or readers to lose their trust in you. In turn, it can affect your rankings.

The moral of the story is that you need to avoid black hat SEO companies that use keyword and tag stuffing as a way to show you quick results. The boost will be temporary at best and can cause you to fall lower than before you even hired them by turning your readers and customers away. Make your efforts genuine and organic. Organic SEO companies provide actual unique information that relates to your industry to help you get your name out there. This also helps people and search engines see you as a trusted source of information.

Your SEO company should put a lot of effort into your keyword research. This will give you the best chance of finding out how users are trying to find you. Some terms may prove to be too competitive for your time frame or budget. You can discover which keywords are being searched for without producing results and dominate these searches. These keywords will translate into ideas and tags that will help people and search engines find you more often.

Social media efforts need to be sincere and may take a little longer to catch on than some other “tricks of the trade”. But, the results can be really long lasting and can put your investment in SEO to work for you. Remember that rank criteria are always changing. In general, the criteria trends toward real results. Rankings are becoming more and more like a true picture of what people find interesting and trustworthy, as opposed to yesteryear when they only produced results for pages that mentioned your keyphrase over and over again.

Search engines are very intuitive and can figure out if your information is current, useful, respected and popular. Doing the proper research for topics and keywords is ultra important. This information can be used to properly tag your articles and so forth, thus producing the long-lasting, dependable results that search engines and users are drooling for.

About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is a Project Manager for ArteWorks SEO, one of the top search engine marketing companies in the world. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she implements and manages comprehensive SEO strategies and serve as an organizational liaison among company executives, clients and colleagues.

Should Twitter be Part of Your SEO Strategy?

Twitter is still a very young site, but its growth as a social network catalyst and its effective uses as a marketing tool cannot be ignored. Twitter acts as streaming search engine, allowing you to find the latest news about the topic you’re interested in. Of course, Twitter has its advertising spammers, but mostly you’ll find recommendations for information that includes user comments and other valuable links to the subject you’re looking for.

Twitter has taken social media by storm. As you may know, social efforts on behalf of your site can be almost as important as your content when it comes to rankings. For example, you may have a top-notch design, proper keyword placement and the most user-friendly site in the business. But if people aren’t talking about you, sharing your links and promoting you on social networking sites, you could be dead in the water.

This is what organic SEO’s have been talking about for years. Hallelujah! The world is finally catching up. You can’t just cram in keywords, spread your links around the web and expect to see lasting results. You have to tediously and carefully place your links where they can be shared, commented on and seen.

Think like a user. If you enter a phrase into a search engine and get results, what do you assume the top results are showing you? Is it the most keyword rich site? Probably not the first thing on a users mind. Users have come to expect that the top rankers are the most popular as well as the most relevant to their search. So, as a business owner, shouldn’t you be focusing on making your site not only look good and function properly, but also on making your site popular?

You can’t force it down people’s throats and you can’t make it all happen with Twitter. But, you can provide useful, interesting, current information about your field, prompting users to popularize your site for you. Twitter is only one of the tools that your SEO company uses to help you accomplish this.

Popularization through social media can take some time to increase your search engine rankings. The upside is that the results can last a lot longer than the occasional promotion or print ad. Furthermore, investing in search engine marketing will help sustain your site’s popularity through economic downfalls that can zap your advertising budget. Would you rather pay for a temporary ad or actually gain a fan base that can weather the storm in hard times?

About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is a Project Manager for ArteWorks SEO, one of the top search engine marketing companies in the world. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she implements and manages comprehensive SEO strategies and serve as an organizational liaison among company executives, clients and colleagues.

What Exactly is Social Media? SMO Basics

Social media is a new frontier and many business owners are discovering a need to understand it. If you have found yourself swimming in an ocean of marketing and search engine optimization jargon trying to figure it out, then you will probably benefit from this easy-to-understand tutorial.

Definition: Social media is referred to as "word of mouth" advertising. Although it isn't the actual "mouth" we're talking about, it basically is defined as what people are saying about you online or through mobile and hand-held devices.

What Social Media Does: Social discussions between actual human beings integrate you across boundaries of video, blogs, bookmarking, images, communities, etc. As people talk about you, discuss you, send links to your site or your blog, bookmark you and follow you, you become more and more "popular".

Why is Social Media Important for Search Engine Optimization?: Search engines highly value this popularity because it represents not how much you paid for your advertising, but how much current, quality, information you are providing. For example, if you never updated or provided any new information, then people would soon have nothing to talk about. So, by ranking you based on social media findings, search engines can keep their results fresh and relevant, reflecting the opinions of the users.

What does SEO do for Social Media? : Going through an organic search engine optimization company is a consistent way to keep up with social media demands. They should offer a huge range of services to keep your company in the eye of users that follow blogs and bookmark them, use discussion boards and forums, making you more visible to the internet community.

Why can't I just blog and be done? : Social media is beginning to include podcasts, video, images and mobile or hand-held device communications. SEO companies are evolving as the search engines do to keep you up to date with what's important. You also need your postings and your site to be search engine friendly. SEO's are aware of all the details and do extensive work beyond blogging. Concentration is put into social news, opinions, bookmarking, networking and blogging.

The bottom line is that Social Marketing utilizes the virtual community to make your site more popular with the search engines. If the search engines are weighing it heavily, then you should too. Your reputation can take a long time to build, so getting started with a competent search engine marketing company early in the game can help you to become more and more popular over time.

About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is a Project Manager for ArteWorks SEO, one of the top search engine marketing companies in the world. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she implements and manages comprehensive SEO strategies and serve as an organizational liaison among company executives, clients and colleagues.

The Importance of Good Keyword Research

Good keyword research is the foundation for any SEO campaign. When you are looking for a good SEO company, avoid "guaranteed results" or companies that ask you what keywords you would like your site optimized for. If you are not working on the right keywords, then your whole campaign can be a huge waste of time and money.
Some companies have been known to guarantee certain rankings. Well, that can be pretty easy to accomplish if they optimize your site for a keyword that has no competition. You can end up spending a lot of money on nothing.

Keyword research should be a major part of the campaign. If someone asks you to choose your own, then you should turn and run the other way. Don’t get me wrong, you should be able to give your suggestions. After all, no one knows your business better than you. Your SEO company should work with you on determining whether or not your potential keyphrases will give you the best bang for your buck. Research generally starts with your suggestions and then grows from there.

The goal of good keyphrases is to generate traffic for your site. There may be some broad keyphrases that you need to optimize for, but there are likely some more specific keyphrases that will bring higher quality traffic to you. It’s all about the quality, not necessarily the quantity of viewers that you are going for here.

For example, let's say that your site sells appliances. You may want to optimize for the term "appliances" which could very well bring a lot of traffic to your site. But, you'll be getting everyone in the world looking for warranty information, inquiring about selling appliances themselves, looking for repairmen, or looking for parts. This type of traffic can be heavy and look great on results reports, but how much of this traffic actually turns into sales? Probably not much. If your SEO company does their job right, then you should end up with more specific keywords to compliment the broader ones. Your list may include "appliances", but it may also include "appliance distributor", "appliance Dallas" or "wholesale appliances".

The proper research is necessary before you can determine which keywords are actually being searched for by real people. Your SEO company should be looking for high volume searches on keywords related to your site that have been ignored by your competition. In other words, you may be able to find a niche that other companies have not yet discovered. Research on your competition’s keywords should be done as well. This is called "competitive intelligence" and not too many companies out there take the time to go this far. You need to do everything that the competition is doing, and then some, to make a real difference in your rankings.

About the Author: Stacy Pessoney is a Project Manager for ArteWorks SEO, one of the top search engine marketing companies in the world. A graduate of the University of Alabama, she implements and manages comprehensive SEO strategies and serve as an organizational liaison among company executives, clients and colleagues.

Online Reputation Management

Your online identity can be very important. So what do you do if your reputation in the search engines gets tainted? Many people have run into this problem. Whether it is the result of slander or a lawsuit, someone’s opinion or a professional mistake, a bad reputation following you around online can be a battle that you end up fighting for years.
If you have found yourself in this situation, then you should probably hire an SEO firm that specializes in Reputation Management. An SEO company is in a unique position to analyze your problem. They can offer sensible solutions to build your reputation back to where you think it should be. They have all of the resources to help fight the problem. They will analyze and track the progress of the project along the way. Then you may choose to keep the project going on a maintenance level.
Some reputations can be easier to fix than others. If you simply have some bad customer reviews or something of the sort, then it may not take too long to repair the damage. However, if there is a lawsuit or other problem that is dictated on a government or education web site, then it can take a more significant amount of analysis and work to help you. This is because government and education web sites generally have such a good reputation with the search engines. Any site that ranks highly can be more costly and time consuming to combat.
Reputation Management can be used for companies or other entities, not just individuals. Companies that start out with a bad reputation can take a lot longer to repair. If you started out in good standing, then the time and money that it takes to bring your reputation back up to a reputable level can be a lot less.
If there is bad press about you or your company online, then it can take a while to push it down far enough in the SERP’s that it is no longer noticed. Reputation Management is something that you may have to continue even after your bad press rankings are down. This is because the damaging information about you could work its way back to the top over time. This is especially true if the information hurting you is widespread or included on a highly ranked site.
Be sure that the company you hire handles your situation with tact and diligence. Be patient, as these things can take time. Get on board with a solid plan and don’t be afraid to ask questions along the way. The investment you make in your future could really pay off.

SEO for Beginners: Don’t get taken to the Cleaners

Misconceptions abound in the realm of search engine optimization, due in part to the fact that the industry is unregulated and widely misconstrued. Like the discipline of medicine or law, there are SEOs who remain firmly dedicated to providing genuine, ethical services, and there are inevitably those seeking to make a quick buck capitalizing on the naiveté of others. Gaining a practical understanding of what to expect from search engine optimization can help you make a better long term investment in your website by avoiding SEO firms that fall into the latter group.

True search engine optimization encompasses more than the presence of key phrases on your home page. It even extends beyond Meta tags, inbound links and quality content. To be included in search engine result pages, a site must exude the essence of what search engines and users alike are seeking—authoritative, intuitive, valuable and informative, meanwhile adhering to World Wide Web best practices and current navigability protocols. Effective search engine optimization involves at minimum ensuring that search engine spiders are able to fully index each page of a site and that they can identify the major theme or subject associated with each—signified by the inclusion of the most relevant key phrases. Some site owners are under the delusion that Google has some sort of obligation to find and deliver their site to users. Google, like other search engines and site owners, aims to deliver a top quality user experience, and that includes indexing and providing access to reputable web pages relevant to the topics for which its users are searching. In implementing an SEO strategy to improve a site’s search engine visibility, remember: you are the one who wants your site to appear in the search results generated by Google, not the other way around. Search engine visibility requires that a web page first and foremost be up to the quality standards the engines prefer, and that means having a navigable site structure and original, updated content. Websites should be structured such that they are navigable by search engines while preserving an emphasis on providing a positive user experience. Some code and content modifications to better comply with search engine preferences may be helpful to maximize a site’s search engine appeal.

Another misguided perception that will inevitably lead to disappointment is the expectation of instant gratification from search engine optimization efforts. Even with the benefits of having regularly updated, fresh content, establishing a site as a leader takes time, particularly if it has been launched in recent months. SEO involves a longer time investment to achieve results as compared to pay per click and other forms of advertising that provide fairly immediate exposure. In purchasing a television spot to promote your products, you are purchasing a concrete block of time during which to convey your message to your audience. But establishing your website as a premiere resource in your industry is not such a cut and dry undertaking. Search engine optimization is an art and a science influenced by many factors, and making a few simple changes to a site is not enough to affect significant improvement in search engine visibility. Many pertinent issues must be evaluated in determining the best course of action for a particular site, and the issues to be addressed vary from site to site.

It is important for site owners seeking SEO services to understand that the practice of search engine optimization is one characterized by constant change. Firms providing SEO services must remain actively engaged with a network of industry experts and stay up to date on changes in order to achieve and maintain results. In selecting an SEO firm, be wary of any company promising to boost rankings by making a few quick site modifications or pledging to “SEO” your site in one shot. Guaranteed top search engine placement and other over the top promises should signal a red flag. As the adage goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

About the Author: Pamela Westbrook is a Project Manager for a premiere search engine optimization firm based in Austin, Texas. Pamela is a graduate of the University of Alabama Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration with a degree in Consumer and Industrial Marketing. For more information about search marketing and PPC management, please visit http://www.arteworks.biz