Many companies have gone through the expensive process of having a website designed or updated only to discover that the new website can’t be found in the search results. To prevent this costly misstep, we recommend that SEO services be included as a component of any website development project.

Where web designers focus on the creative effort of designing a website that is attractive and making your products a services appeal to buyers. The SEO persons focus is on what it takes to make a website appeal to the search algorithms and understand how to prevent loss of rank when an existing site is replaced.

Where does SEO fit in the design process?

Before you design, Audit.

A Website Audit will evaluate competitors’ sites and your site to determine what is and isn’t working. The Audit will explore the most important words in your industry and develop a strategy and structure to provide the best exposure for those terms to the search engines.

Prior to Launch, Tune.

A pre-launch optimization pass should be made to tune title tags, page titles, page names, and meta-descriptions. This will boost relevancy for your content, improving how your content appears in search results and improve your click through rate (CTR).

Incoming links to your pages should be evaluated and then redirects created that will focus those links on the most appropriate new pages. This will assure that any existing page rank isn’t lost on content that can no longer be found.

Analytics should be installed on the news site. Using the same tracking code as the previous site will make it easy to evaluate the effects of the changes and compare the old site to the new site, month over month and year over year.

When you Launch, Notify.

A new sitemap should be created to be sure search engines can find all your new content. Google should be notified if your domain name is changing and Google Webmaster tools settings made to configure any URL preferences, and set the primary county, if you are not marketing worldwide.

After Launch – Follow up, Maintain, and Tweak.

If you are using a content management system (CMS), it should be kept up date with the latest revisions to reduce the likelihood of being hacked. Google Analytics should be reviewed to measure the effectiveness of paid and organic marketing efforts. Content that converts may merit off-site marketing and content that doesn’t convert re-evaluated.

Google’s Webmaster Tools should be checked routinely to evaluate the effectiveness of the effort. Done correctly, missing page (404) errors should be minimal and errors should fall off dramatically as cached content is flushed from the page cache of the popular search engines.

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I was surprised in February of 2010 to see that SEO had become mainstream enough to be the subject of a Dilbert strip. Scott Adams continues here, not only confirming how mainstream SEO has become, but also acknowledging that there is a dark “black hat” side to this industry.

…an easy road to go down, until those chickens come home to roost.

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I routinely provide SEO audits as a part of my services and a common situation that I encounter is the use of PDF files as webpages. While linking to a PDF within normal navigation is a in general a bad practice, when an unsuspecting searcher
clicks into PDF content directly from a search result it creates several undesirable situations.

1. Jolting – When someone clicks an unidentified link to a PDF, there is a jolting effect on the user. It can create that moment of ‘oh crud, did I just click on SPAM, or is this ad popping up or ??.
2. Slow Load Times – If someone clicks into PDF content directly from a search result, they may experience extended download times and leave before reaching the
   content.
3. No Navigation – If someone clicks into PDF content directly from a search result, there is no navigation to the rest of your website. So if it the content of the PDF is generating traffic to your site, there are no links to Home, About us, or
   Contact pages.
4. No Tracking – You cannot install tracking codes in a PDF, so If someone clicks into PDF content directly from a search result, you have no way to identify how often it occurring or track the source of visits to PDF pages.

Best Practices:

• Never use a PDF as a primary sources of information on your website.
• If a PDF is needed, link and identify the PDF as a “print version” of the material so the user can anticipate the lag to download and display the document.
• Place PDF files in a /pdf folder, and include a disallow flag in your Robot.txt file to keep that content out of the search
  results.

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Great report on ranking factors. Biggest surprise is the influence facebook continues to have, even with much of its data blocked from Google. I think moving forward, slide 49 may be the most important indicator of where our efforts need to be.

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There’s a great Google Webmaster Help thread about a sketchy SEO firm. You know firms like this, ones that promise “first place in Google search results guaranteed”.

Ok there are dozens (hundreds?) of firms that promise results like this. The problem is that these sketchy “black hat” SEO tactics can work for a while. Truthfully, you may see great results from these shysters for six months or so until you trip an circuit breaker in the algorithm and your website disappears from the Search Results entirely.

Anyone making grand promises or quick results should be avoided. Going down this path is like gambling, the allure of a getting a quick and easy return can suck you in, but ultimately the results can be devastating.

The Google Webmaster Help thread is particularly entertaining, because one of these sketchy companies gets outed by Google’s spam master, Matt Cutts. Barry Swartz of Search Engine Roundtable covers the discussion here.

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Optimizing your site for search can be a daunting task.  Here is a list of eight things you can do to help your content rank better in Search Results.

1. Optimize the Structure of Your Site (Information Architecture)
   Clearly communicate the organization of your site through navigation, breadcrumbs, and file path.
2. Organize Your Content
   Display whatever you are promoting by category and cross-link to related categories to support searches for category, location, country of origin, brand, etc.
3. Use Relevant Page Titles
   Use title tags and page names that match page titles and contain key search terms.
4. Create Meta Descriptions
   Meta descriptions are displayed in search results and search terms are emboldened in the listing. To promote your content, carefully word meta-descriptions to contain key phrases and entice the reader to click.
5. Organize Your Copy
   Every page on your site should be viewed as a potential entry point for your site. Summarizing the topic at the top of the page not only helps the searcher determine that they have come to the right place, but also help search engines understand the focus of the page and pushes key phrases to the top of the page.
6. Fatten Your Content
   Expand content to cover topics from different points of view. Discuss topics from the perspective of how it will benefit the user, how it will save money for the financial buyer, and list specifications for technical buyer. This will enable your content to rank for a broader range of phrases and appeal to more types of buyers.
7. Grow Your Incoming Links.
   Registering with Google Places is critical for local businesses, but adding your company to industry directories helps provide support for location, industry, and category related phrases. Grow relevant links to your site by participating in discussions on industry blogs and forums.
8. Create an Ad Campaign
   No site performs well for all search terms. Even a modest ad campaign can help you fill the gaps in your content and can be used identify additional phrases that drive business to your site.

SEO Huntsville Search Optimization, SEO Huntsville

Google has just released a new SEO starter guide. The new guide is more complete, has more examples, and covers wider range of issues, including mobile content and images. I highly recommend that anyone who is launching or reworking a website review this document before you start.

> Google SEO Starter Guide

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On July 14, 2010, I will discuss how to maintain Pagerank when you update or launch a new website with the North Alabama Web Developers group.

In this meet-up we’ll discuss Google webmaster tools, Google analytics, sitemaps, and using redirects to map content with the .htaccess file (emphasis will be on Apache/Linux hosting). Please visit the meet-up site for details and sign-up.

http://www.meetup.com/web-99/calendar/13878846/

Slides from this discussion are here:
Maintain Pagerank when you Launch a New Website

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