A Look at On-Page Search Engine Optimization and What It Means for Your Business

Website Analysis

Conducting a thorough analysis of your website and its search-engine friendly features includes taking a look at the code imbedded in your pages. Since search spiders cannot recognize or decipher Flash or JavaScript, the more you use them, the less search-engine friendly your website becomes. Incorporate both Flash and JavaScript sparingly.

URLs should be short and include the primary keyword for the page. Even if you don’t feel up to the task, it is important to use canonical URLs to specify the best URL for search engines to use in an authoritative manner. A well-constructed site map is also essential for search engine friendliness.

Maintenance

Once your initial website is up, it is essential to maintain its existence. What does this mean for you? Either you, or a company that provides SEO services, must continually keep your website up to speed with your on-page SEO efforts, tweaking and improving your site in order to obtain high ranking on the search engine page results.

Testing and Measuring

Testing and measuring the results of your SEO efforts is just as critical as maintaining your website’s on-page search engine optimization. Your page rank is clearly the most visible indication of this. 

To learn more about how we can help you use Search Engine Optimization to grow your revenue in a tough economy, contact us at (916) 933-7414 or Lou@wsiMarketBuilders.com.

A Look at On-Page Search Engine Optimization and What It Means for Your Business

Creating search-engine friendly Web pages is critical if you want to achieve high ranking on search results pages, or SERPS. A lot of factors go into on-page search engine optimization, and it is important to attend to each one of these. Increasing the traffic to your website means that you increase the potential for sales. Hence, the need for exceptional on-page SEO exists if you want your business to be successful.

A Bit about Content Optimization

Content optimization involves keywords, language, link density, uniqueness, and quantity. Take the time to conduct competitive research in order to identify essential keywords and strategies for content.
Base your keyword selection and inclusion upon your research. Place your keywords naturally throughout your content. Overstuffing keywords does not increase your page ranking, so you should avoid it whenever possible.

The language of each page needs to be relevant to your targeted audience. If more than one country is being targeted, you might have a need for localized sites.

While links to outside pages is often desirable, you want to avoid looking like a link farm. Balance your links with quality content and split them up onto additional pages if necessary to avoid having a single page emerge as a link directory.

The uniqueness of your content is critical to your website. Yes, it does get boring to repeatedly hear the phrase unique content. However, unique content gets noticed by search engines, enhancing your site’s ranking and the chances that your content also gets noticed by potential customers.

Well-written content will receive more traffic than poorly written content. This aspect of your Web page is especially important considering the social networking aspect of Google Plus One, Facebook, and Twitter.

The quantity or amount of content that is included on your site is always important. The key here is to remember that quality truly is better than quantity. Pages of similar content should be condensed, deleted, or combined to avoid repetitive text.

In our next post, we will continue to discuss more on-page SEO factors.  To learn more about how we can help you use Search Engine Optimization to row your revenue in a tough economy, contact us at (916) 933-7414 or Lou@wsiMarketBuilders.com.

All too often, low-quality websites pushing poor content have repeatedly appeared on the first couple of pages for search results. This isn’t what people want, no matter what they are using the Internet to do. Despite the fact that people can simply click off the website, the experience typically leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those individuals who have the misfortune to click on a low-quality website.

 

Where do so many websites manage to obtain poorly written or useless content to put up? Typically, website owners purchase inexpensive content, steal content, or use content that has already been published on the Web.

 

Sometimes a company copies content from other websites and places it on its own site. Duplicate content is not highly valued. In some cases, the content is obtained illegally without the permission of the owner, a clear case of copyright infringement.

 

In other cases, the content is obtained from a content farm, a company that employs a workforce of many writers who churn out dozens of articles each week or month for a paltry sum. Typically, the content offers limited usefulness, since it is often written in haste or with little research.

 

A company may purchase quality content that has previously been posted on another site. Even though the information is valuable or informative, it is duplicate content that offers less value than unique, high quality content.

 

To gain a top position for your long tail keywords on the search engine results pages, always start with high quality, relevant, and interesting content written for your target market.  You can’t go wrong. Contact Us to learn more about how we can help you gain top search engine rankings and grow your revenue, even in a tough economy.

For any business with an online presence, utilizing quality content to garner a top spot in search results is incredibly important. Since search rankings are influenced by the quality of the content included on a website, relevant content helps to drive traffic to your website. 

 

High quality content comes in a variety of forms including seasonal and evergreen. Both types have their value. One facet that quality content shares no matter its longevity is that it offers relevant, valuable information to those individuals who are seeking it. High quality content is unique, informative, and accurate, offering readers a valuable source that may have them coming back to a website for more.

 

In an effort to reduce the number of low-quality content websites from appearing on the first page of search results, recent changes have been made to Google’s algorithm used to identify relevant content and determine search engine rankings. This fact now magnifies the importance of providing quality content on a website. With the popularity of linking to strong content increasing along social media avenues, the importance of providing high quality content that offers valuable information on your website is going to increase.

 

People searching the Internet today want search results that are relevant to their needs. They want the kind of answers to their questions they can find without having to visit a long list of websites in order to find them. Therefore, websites providing quality content are going to be the winners in the long run.

 

Small businesses looking to expand their customer base would do well to provide useful content on their websites on a regular basis. The presence of quality content can reduce a website’s bounce rate, a critical factor when it comes to promoting/selling goods and services. The inclusion of quality content that is updated on a regular basis increases the average time on site. Without that kind of activity, your business is going to struggle with success.

Click here to learn more about our Search Engine Optimization services and Content Writing services that will get you top search engine rankings, or contact us today at Lou@wsiMarketBuilders.com or (916) 933-7414.

Google has been historically secretive about sharing information with the SEO community, webmasters, and the public about their algorithm, and approaches to evaluating quality sites and determining ranking priority.  However, a recent blog post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog has changed that, with Google providing some interesting and valuable information and insights regarding how to design and optimize high quality websites, especially targeting those sites negatively impacted by the recent Panda update.

In the post, they suggest that webmasters continue "to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals". They also suggest that with roughly 500 planed updates to the algorithm this year, webmasters and SEOs should not "fixate" on any one release, like Panda, as other releases may in fact be the cause of changes in rankings of a website.

Google's stated goal is to help searchers find high quality sites by reducing the rankings of sites with low quality content.  In the post they provide 23 questions for webmasters and SEOs to ask about their site to help them focus on providing quality content on their site for visitors.  While they don't divulge any actual ranking signals from their algorithms in the post, the intent is to enable us to "step into Google's mindset" and provide some guidance to us all about how they are looking at the issue of quality sites and low quality content.  The 23 questions are: 

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

In the post, Google stresses that the focus should be on quality content, rather than fixating on Google's ranking algorithms.  They also point out that  "low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content."

 All in all, this unique blog post from Google is a step in the direction of openness and we look forward to future posts that provide useful guidance to webmasters and SEOs.  Contact us to learn more about the Google Panda Update and how it can update your Search Engine Optimization efforts.