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.

Is Trading Links Beneficial?

If you own a web site, you may get offers from other sites to trade links. This is essentially a link swap, where you put a link to their site somewhere on your page and they will put a link to your site on their page.

Building links around the web pointing to your site can be helpful in the search engine rankings and getting links on other pages can get new visitors coming to your site, but is there a downside? Well, it kind of depends.

Link trading can be beneficial to you. It is most beneficial if the site you are getting your link on is a reputable site that relates to your industry. If you do some research and figure out that the site is a good site to "advertise" on, then there are a couple of other things to consider.

Be picky about where they are going to put this link. If it is on the bottom of a page that does not have anything to do with you, then it will not be helpful at all, to the visitors or the search engines. If you will be on a page that is rarely visited, then it will not help. If you will be in a long list of other links or if there are already too many links on the page, then it may not help you either. Search engines and users are looking for links that are extremely relevant to the content on the page. So, make sure that you approve of the context and content that your link will be associated with.

If you do decide that this is a good site, they are going to relevantly use your link and it would actually be an "honor", so to speak, to be on this page and site, then there is the other side of things to consider before you jump into it. You will need to put a link for the other site on your page. Is linking to them going to look unnatural with your content? Would the link look relevant to your visitors? Would you be willing for your visitors to leave your page when they click on this link?

Linking to other sites is tricky. Sometimes you do want to be associated with other sites, or you want to give someone else credit for some information that you are using on your site. But, you have to be willing to lose your visitors when they stumble upon this link. Sometimes it's not worth it. It just depends on the nature of your site. Plus, you are putting your site's reputation with visitors and search engines in their hands by linking to them from your site.

Consider all of these things before you decide to jump on the link trading bandwagon. If you are just uneasy with the idea but you are still interested in social marketing, which has become very important in the search engines, then contact a search engine marketing company about link building in the social world of the web.

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.

SEO for 2009

Search engines have really been leaning towards localizing their rankings and considering social media to make each user's experience a more personal one. This basically means that you may not see the same results as someone else for many searches, depending on your location. You can also depend on user feedback driven results in the rankings.

Something else to expect for 2009 is the emergence of other media such as mobile, video, podcasts and images. Is your site ready to rank?

SEO is a constantly evolving industry in which SEO professionals are forced to keep up with the marketing demands of the search engines. SEO’s are no longer simply optimizing a web page for a certain phrase. They are now moving into more specific areas such as videos, blogs, mobile media and images. This makes SEO companies valuable assets to those who utilize their services, ensuring that their web sites can keep up with the changing rank criteria.

These changes are turning SEO firms into web marketing providers. SEO companies are really trying to create a reputation for your site online. Building this reputation with actual users is going to help you come up higher in the universal rankings, and more importantly, come up more often with localized individuals that may actually benefit from visiting your site. These types of results not only give you high visibility, but also place you where you need to be to popularize your site for social media efforts.

Organic SEO firms have always been interested in building your online reputation, seeking long-term results and staying away from underhanded methods just to get a quick ranking boost. Now that the search engines have evolved, the organic method of SEO is really paying off. Search engines are giving results based on your outreach, your popularity and the quality of the information that you are providing.
Building your reputation as an expert in your field with all types of users can take some time. Mobile marketing, informative video, podcasts, imaging and social blogging are soon to be basic categories of SEO. Many of us have already been utilizing or venturing into these areas in anticipation of these changes. Companies that are in on the ground floor of such progressions are going to have a better stronghold on their field of competitors, making SEO a more important facet in your web marketing plan than ever before.

Real results can take time so getting started early is your best bet. Mobile and social media are becoming the norm in qualifying sites for rankings, and you need to be ready. Visibility in the social world of online media can really take a while, even years, and search engines weigh it heavily. Some search engines have even been created to only give socially motivated results, and they are becoming more and more popular. Make sure you are getting good representation in all these areas when choosing your search engine marketing company.

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.

Are Search Engines Going Social?

Search Engine Optimization companies have been focusing a lot of effort towards social media marketing. There are already lots of social sites out there where people can search for popularity-controlled results. These sites allow the masses to rank and comment on their favorite sites and articles. SEO companies use these sites to increase their clients’ sites’ visibility on the search engine results page.


One example of the social media explosion Me.dium Search released by Yahoo. Me.dium basically gives you a search basing results on the real-time activity of the searching masses. Basically, you get results based on what everyone else is looking at and ranking. SEO companies are constantly changing their strategies and practices to keep up with the ever-changing world of search engine marketing, so they are ready to step it up as the search engines have already started to lean more in the social direction.


SEO companies already heavily weigh your online social reputation when coming up with a marketing strategy. Social media efforts can help create a network of inbound links to your site, thus improving socially charged rankings on the big search engines. As social media sites become more and more powerful influencers in the major search engines, your efforts in SEO can really begin to escalate to a new level.


Powerful social media domains such as Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and YouTube have proven to be great forums for launching ideas, getting votes and showing up in the rankings. These along with other social sites give us a platform for reputation management services and social marketing efforts.


Social innovations still to come will ensure that SEO continues to evolve. Search engine results will be targeted to a more defined group of visitors and therefore create more personalized results for the public. Social media is a part of your advertising and marketing approach that you and your search engine marketing company soon won’t be able to ignore.

What Is Social Media and Does My Site Need It?

Social media refers to an electronic means for people to share your information. People visiting your site or blog can make comments, e-mail links to their friends, or post information on their personal blogs linking to your site. All of these things help to build your social media reputation.
Social media is also referred to as social networking. As more and more people comment about you or pass your site around, you build a reputation online. Search engines weigh the opinions of others heavily when giving you your ranking. This is the main reason that social networking has become such an iatrical part of Search Engine Optimization.
Social media is not just comments on your blog. Social media can consist of video, pictures, reviews, articles or any other form of electronic communication. Blogs and other user driven forums, such as discussion boards, FAQ’s and comment sections of your own web site can help build your social media reputation.
Google does not care what you say about yourself. Actual users must be able to find your content and then it needs to be interesting or informative enough for them to want to pass it on or link back to it in some way. Social bookmarking is an effective tool when optimizing your site. Including links to social bookmarking sites on your blog or discussion forum can help you to encourage your users to spread the word, so to speak. Once bookmarked, you will suddenly become more visible to people looking for information on the subject that you are discussing. This should hopefully drive more web traffic to your site.
When your social efforts start to pay off, then you have a stronghold over search engines. Blogs and other user driven media are heavily weighted by the search engines and this side of search engine optimization should not be ignored. Developing a social reputation can take some time. You can help it along by utilizing a blog or other social media outlet.
The more varied your social media network the better. Make sure that all of your forums are relevant, especially if they are linking back to your site. The higher the quality, the higher the rankings can get. This is something that you should really spend the time and money to make sure that your site is getting all of the exposure that it needs to compete in today’s SEO market.