" 7 Top SEO Blog Posts For the Week.. How Important is Content For SEO ? "

Working at a Web Design company at Infinity Technologies, I come across a lot of interesting scenarios where SEO is not taken seriously,  or dismissed as not being necessary. So how are your products and company going to be found. Did you do any of the following  when researching making a purchase over $1000?

• Use the yellow pages
• Get on a plane to go to a trade show
• Responded to a print advertisement
• Responded to a direct mail advertisement
• Searched in Google or another search engine
• Asked a friend for advice, and they emailed you a URL as a response.

Invariably the last 2 are answered in the affirmative. Despite this many companies are still living in the past and are using outbound and interruption marketing, they will become dinosaurs unless they embrace the new  “permission marketing”  that affirms that the  the new goal of marketing is to “get found” by customers when they are looking, not “get in their face” when they are not looking.

Note: 98 % of  buyers start their purchasing process in search engines

Marketing is changing and companies and individuals that realise this are going to take a dominant position in their industry.

1. SEO Issues: Company Websites are Repeating the Same Mistakes ” Are we destined to repeat the same litany of items over and over? as mentioned in the Post in the Search Engine Land Blog. What is surprising is that I find this all the time.

1. ALT tags are empty (Translated: Images can’t be read by Google you need to put your keywords in the image description)…
2. URL is not friendly For SEO ( translated strange numbers and letters in the URL instead use key words ) …
3. Don’t use duplicate titles… (Don’t use more than one title on a page)…
4. Make sure the description is well written…
5. Be careful when using rich media… (online videos, podcasts and widgets), Theses have become more common online, the next challenge is finding the best way to optimize them for search engines. What to Do…. Optimize their Web pages where the video appears with keywords related to the content of that video.
6. Is there a good down-level experience? (Video) Text only, down-level experience for all functionality – if your site exists in an extreme AJAX, Flash or Silverlight form, you should also provide a down level experience that is more accessible. We recommend you deliver this experience at the same URL so you don’t create any duplicate content issues or increase the complexity of your site.

Note: The list is almost endless.

Also, check out a presentation on SEO For Developers: at ” Bings Community Blogs “ .

2. Are You on an SEO Honeymoon?

Search Engine Journal says the following, “Simple changes and fast results can be from things like:

• Title tag optimisation
• Semantically structuring the text on each page
• Dropping images for CSS and floating text
• Internal linking structures and anchor text optimisation
• Installing an analytics package (and analysing the results of course).
• Keyword research and analysis – site-wide and page-by-page
• Including a clear call-to-action

…so this whole SEO Honeymoon period is over-rated right?  Well, no, not really…great results are of course very achievable quite quickly, but they’re even greater if you can put a plan in place to maintain their growth, that’s all.”

So SEO is not a one off task it is a never ending journey… but with great potential. 

Are you suffering from a honeymoon hangover?  Put yourself down as an ‘Anon’ and share your thoughts below…

3. SEO Planning “What Content is Available That Will Assist the Plan for a Proper Search Engine Optimization Strategy

Lee Odden from this post on Top Rank Blog  adds to the argument that content is King

It says that “A big part of helping companies with Search Engine Optimization and content based marketing efforts is to assess the assets (content) available ( to add to the SEO dynamics). Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) involving multiple media, file types and distribution/search channels isn’t going to be efficient or effective unless there’s a firm grasp of a company’s available media and content production processes.”

4. ” On Being Findable ” Are You Easy To Find on The Web?”  This applies to you as a Personal Brand or your Company 

Mitch Joel at 6 Pixels Of Separation  talks about about “usability, functionality, design, back-end technology or search engine optimization? as being important.

It’s probably some or all of the above. Here are the six steps to start thinking about it differently right now:

1. Admit you have a problem.
2. Grab four people into a room and ask them what they would do about it. These could be employees, friends, your agency or hired guns.
3. Create a strategy that will have a twelve-month shelf-life. Make milestones for each week’s goals. Every goal should be around how you’re going to do something to make yourself more findable.
4. Figure out if Social Media can help you be more findable (hint: don’t go here first, if you don’t have a competent website to drive them to once they’ve engaged).
5. Execute, execute, execute. We’ve all seen countless organizations do numbers 1-4, but when it comes time to implement and do it, nothing gets done. Don’t be one of those stats. You know that old Nike chestnut: “just do it.”
6. Rinse and repeat. This is an iterative and ongoing process. It will take time and it will take even more time to always keep it moving forward”.

5. ” Top 11 Tools For Internet Marketing ” That Will Help Your SEO “  

Evan CarMichaels Blog reviews the Top 11 Tools for Internet Marketing and for a quick intro here are Three Tools to Tease

1. Domain Report Tool  – The Domain Report tool will check Google, Yahoo! Search and Live Search to see how many pages for each site are indexed in each engine. Pros: Tally & compare search engine indexing, Determine competitor search presence
2. BackTweets  – Search for links on Twitter.       Pros: Search Twitter for links to your site, See’s through compressed URL’s, Sort results by date or user
3. Backlink Checker Tool  – Enables webmasters to check their pagerank, monitor the PR of competitor’s backlinks, estimate a value of their site, and more.  Pros: Quickly oversee a site’s backlinks, Show which links have the ‘nofollow’ tag, List anchor text for incoming links as well as their PageRank

 6. ” A Dozen Dont’s For SEO “ a Post from Seomoz

Two to Tempt You

1. Don’t Create False Expectations
   Clients are just like everyone else – when you exceed their expectations, they love you. When you disappoint, they’re angry. Make it easy for yourself and don’t oversell. If anything, undersell your abilities to do great things and let them be surprised. It’s a hard thing to do, particularly in a competitive bidding environment, but humility and hard work often shine through in presentations and good clients will see that and honor it.
2. Don’t Ignore Analytics
   Website analytics, both visitor traffic and third party metrics, are important parts of SEO. When things are going well, even if best practices aren’t being followed, it can be wise to match up data and trends to see what’s made a real difference. Don’t undertake an SEO project unless you have at least the essential data points (this also comes in handy once changes have been implemented and your work starts to have an impact).

 7. “SEO – ” How to Maximize Your Site Traffic With Stumbleupon “

On this interesting post on the ”Burn SEO” it covers the importance of StumbleUpon on good SEO practices.

“Stumble upon is one of the great social media sharing sites available today. While it’s true that proper use of stumble upon can bring you great traffic, it can also be a huge time sink and provide little results or even get you banned if you don’t use it properly. In this article we will attempt to help you maximize your use of Stumble Upon so that you can get great traffic to your site with the least amount of effort.

The first thing you should evaluate when considering if Stumble Upon will be right for your needs is your goals. If you are looking to get lots of new business and convert visitors into qualified sales opportunities then chances are that Stumble Upon may not meet those needs directly.

I say directly because INDIRECTLY, Stumble Upon is able to provide valuable links to your business when used properly which can help with link popularity for your site and ultimately assist in your search engine optimization ranking results.”

Stumble Upon is great at bringing lots of traffic to your site. Many of those users will find your content useful and will therefore link back to it. This is where Stumble Upon shines above many of the other social media sites available today in our opinion.

I came upon this comment at Hobo-Web  ( One of the Top SEO Companies in the UK) which I think sums it up quite well:

“There is many ways to skin a cat of course, but this is how my SEO Company does it – and I’ve said before, we’re a “Content Focused SEO Agency“. We don’t build links to crap (not even s!&t links).

PS – How do you tell the world about your site? Twitter. Stumbleupon. Press Ads. Articles “. 

So keep adding “Great Unique Content” and “Promote It”

How important is content in your SEO?