December 29, 2009
Since 2006 – 2007, many companies have recognized that search engine optimization is the key to making money online. As a Stamford, Connecticut based SEO consultant, we can show you the steps to take in order to rank high for your keywords online. We can also help you implement those steps, if your budget allows.
SEO Consultant – Search Engine Optimization
Successfully marketing your company’s products and services online is said to be a very complex process that involves a variety of tools and techniques, a process that can be accomplished in a variety of different ways.
This certainly is true. However, in the end, it really all boils down to one thing—getting (qualified) traffic to your website, period. If you really want to make serious profits, then your task is just this. You need to get the numbers of people visiting your website up.
As an SEO consultant, we’ve spent the past several years instructing clients and prospects in Stamford, Connecticut and throughout the country and even the world that search engine optimization is where the money is. And that the top rankings that result from optimization are where the sales are.
Most people now realize this. They certainly want to implement an effective search engine optimization campaign. But few do it correctly. This is true even among the so-called “expert” search engine optimization companies, and SEO consultants. Instead, they spend months and even years working hard, but getting next to nowhere.
In even worse case scenarios, they pay SEO companies obscene amounts of cash only to be frustrated by the results. If this sounds familiar to you, then learning and understanding the “details” may be your light at the end of the tunnel.
Getting top rankings for your desired keyword phrases is all about paying attention to details. Get just one of the details wrong and you can spin your wheels in the rankings for years.
What’s worse, the big search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN change the way they rank sites. This means you need continuous advice from an SEO consultant who is on top of the ranking processes now, and who will keep watch and vigilance for you to help adjust your campaign in the future. And you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg getting that advice.
We recognize this, and so when we work with a client over the long-term, we make sure that our pricing is affordable for that client.
The focus of our firm has always been search engine optimization. It’s our bread and butter. As an SEO consultant, our goal is to make sure you understand and implement the precise strategy and changes you need to make to your site get the rankings you desire.
If you are looking for something more comprehensive, we can easily create and carry out a full optimization plan for your company and website(s), regardless of what industry you are in, and regardless of what items or services you are selling.
To find out more about how an SEO consultant can create the right search engine optimization plan for your company, contact us today for a free, no obligation consultation.
December 16, 2009
As we reach the end of another year (another year that flew by way too fast) many local Connecticut businesses are beginning to think of redesigning their websites to keep up with the ever-changing new technology.
Maybe you are currently in the midst of a redesign yourself.
If so, then make sure the Connecticut Web Design Company you hire knows how to build your new website in a way that’s 100% search engine-friendly.
Also, you need to address a number of additional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactics before you delve too deeply in your website redesign.
You don’t want to lose your existing ranking, and you want to make sure you gain additional targeted search engine visitors when your new website goes live.
So, with this in mind, here are 5 solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) redesign tips your web design company may not know:
1. Correctly Coding Navigation Menus
Your website’s navigation links should be coded in a way that’s search engine friendly. For example, be sure all the navigational menus are coded with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Remember, CSS is visible to, and crawl-able by, the search engines. In addition, you want to make sure to avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation (CSS mouse-overs work fine though). Also make sure all of your content is reachable by hard-coded links. In other words, try not to force the user through any kind of search box menus, which are usually not search engine friendly. Remember, some DHTML and Flash menus are invisible to search engines, which may cause the pages linked within them to not receive the internal link popularity necessary to ensure placement.
2. Your Site Architecture Needs To Be SEO Friendly
During your redesign, be careful not to bury any high-ranking pages too deeply within your site. I’m talking about pages that were previously bringing in targeted search engine traffic. You need to ensure that all content containing more competitive keyword phrases (for example, product and service pages) is high up in your site hierarchy. What’s more, all content contained in a specific category should be cross-linked via some sort of sub-navigation within that section. Remember, search engines care deeply about how your pages are linked together. This helps them to determine exactly how significant the different elements of your website actually are. With this in mind, pages that are linked from every other page will be given more weight than those pages that are only linked from only a few others. This is considered a form of “internal link popularity,” or to put it in Google terms, “internal PageRank.”
3. Use Proper Categorization & Make Sure You Avoid Duplicate Content
People use search engines because they have questions about a certain topic, a problem they need to solve or a need for more information on a particular subject. With this in mind, the more ways you can “categorize” your content for the various target markets you serve, the better off you will be in converting traffic into prospects. So be sure that all of your high-level pages answer the potential searcher’s (your potential customers’) questions. Also, make sure that it’s clear that your products and services can solve their problem. This is important. In addition, you want to make sure that, regardless of how a visitor discovered a piece of content on your website, they always land on the same URL. This is to avoid PageRank splitting and duplicate content issues. Let me give you an example. If a certain product or service can be classified as both a product and a service, it makes sense that it might be listed under both categories. However, the page (URL) that the potential customer eventually lands on, regardless of which category they started in, should always be the same.
4. Be Careful When Installing A New CMS (Content Management System) And When Changing URLS
Sometimes, during a website redesign, URLs must be changed due to a new content management system being added or a back-end coding change. In this case, search engines may take some time to index the new URLs and give them the same weight they gave the previous URLs due to URL age factors. If this sounds familiar, then it’s important to “301-redirect” all old URLs to their relative counterpart within the newly designed website. This will pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones quickly, as well as ensure that site visitors don’t receive 404-not-found errors. This is always easier when the new URL name is similar to the old one, because you can use automated methods. If URLs absolutely must change completely (from the old URLs) and hand-redirects are required, then your developer should redirect all the top-level pages, as well as those that you’re sure receive keyword traffic from search engines. But, ideally, every URL should be redirected if at all possible.
5. Custom HTML Elements
It’s critical that your new website’s content management system allows you to create custom descriptions for titles, metas, headers, URLs, and alt attributes for images. So if you’re purchasing a Content Management System like Joomla, then make sure it has fields for custom title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, etc. Keep in mind there shouldn’t be a limit to the number of characters allowed in these fields, because every page may need a different number of words and characters.
And there you have it.
Now, if you’re already working with a competent and highly-trained Connecticut web design company, the head engineers and/or programmers for your project should already know these quick tips.
If you’re not sure, then please feel free to cut and paste this list and email it over to them.
However, don’t be surprised if your developer isn’t happy to receive some of these tips. Some companies just don’t put as much effort into ensuring a state-of-the-art website as others.
Don’t be afraid to speak up. At the end of the day, it’s your website and you’re paying them to create the site in a way that will make you the most money possible. Let your developer know up-front that these things are non-negotiable. If they tell you that they can’t do any of the above, start looking around for a new Web Design Company.
Keep in mind that even with the pros there will always be a few unexpected bugs to work out when your site goes live. However, you should never be scared of losing your search engine visitors, as long as the Web Design Company you hire knows what they’re doing.
December 10, 2009
We’re going to get a bit psychological today.
No, not Freud or Jung psychological (—even though it’s mission-critical for you as a marketer to read and understand what these genius thinkers have to say about the unconscious mind).
No, today we’ll just go far enough to give you a quick tip that can help you get more clicks on your links, whether those links are in your email, on your website or at the end of the articles you post online.
Most marketers already know this, and you’ll hear them say it all the time:
Consumers LOVE to buy stuff, but they hate being sold to!
It’s a cold hard fact. No one knows exactly why this is, and it seems to apply more strongly in the West than anywhere else in the world.
Think back to the last time you bought a car. You knew the salesman was making a commission.
You didn’t hate him for it because, after all, we all have to make a living, right?
But it definitely didn’t make you feel good that a few thousand dollars of your hard earned money was going right into this man’s pocket just for being “lucky enough” to help you out that day (or, so we often think  ).
Now you may not be selling anyone a car. But if you are trying to sell something online, you definitely have an agenda. And in order for you to carry out this agenda, you need to get people to click on your links.
Let’s say you’re sending out an email to your list in order to sell an affiliate product, or your putting an affiliate link in your blog post.
Nothing screams “I want to sell you something” like a blatant link that looks something like this:
http/saleproduct.com/affiliate=30283H3
Most people today who see this know exactly what it means. And for them it’s a major turn off, so major that it can squash your conversion rate.
Why? Because right off the bat, a massive amount of people will dismiss your message outright, because it’s so blatantly obvious that you are trying to sell them something.
Now, what you need to do is to hide or “cloak” that link.
The main reason for hiding or “cloaking” your links is to make your links more enticing for people to click on.
Give them something like this:
http://allaccessunlimited.com/thiscanhelpyou
Our tests show that using a link like this will consistently double your click through rate, and thus your commissions.
By creating your own customized links, you’ll be doing a better job at creating curiosity, branding your promotions, and unconsciously earning the trust of your prospects.
And this, in turn, will dramatically increase your conversion rates.
Do your own tests and let us know what the outcome is!
December 8, 2009
What is the definition of networking? It may be different than you think.
We’ve been saying this for years: No matter who you are, learning to proactively network and impress others by expressing your interest in them will always take you far.
This lesson hit home for us yesterday. Some of us attended a one-day online marketing seminar down in Manhattan in New York City.
Topics covered were Website Design best practices, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Pay Per Click Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing and Viral Marketing.
While at the seminar, we were rubbing elbows with other attendees. We noticed something pretty interesting. Most of the people we were meeting were from Fairfield County, Connecticut. And many were clearly trying to network.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a great idea. Today’s friendly greeting and handshake may be tomorrow’s referral. But many were going about it in a backward kind of way.
Let me explain.
These Connecticut business owners kept introducing themselves and their companies—but they were doing it in such a way as if they truly believed that other people at the seminar cared about them.
One could even hear faint echoes of a one-size-fits-all elevator pitch when they spoke.
Do you do this? If so, then we think you’re networking incorrectly!
For us, the definition of networking is to be interested in others, period.
The reality is that people you meet at these kinds of events really don’t care about you; they care much more about themselves.
You see, when they meet you, they’re not really thinking or wondering to themselves, “Who is this person?” but rather, “What can this person do for ME?”
Generally, people hire or buy from people they know, like and trust. Also, people generally like people who are interested in them.
So, with this in mind, a much more effective way to network would be to focus on the person you meet, instead of focusing on yourself. For example, say things like:
What do YOU need?
Do YOU find yourself needing more x, y, and z?
I would like to hear more about *YOUR* company and goals for the immediate future.
Your target market often complains of X, Y, Z. In order to address this, we can help you by….
Do you see the difference? Instead of coming across like, “Hi, do you need my services?” Begin your conversation with any one of the following, “What can I do for you? Who would you like to meet? What resources have you been looking for that you can’t find?”
Especially when you’re networking, be interested in other people this way, and they will surely start to find you interesting as well.
Remember, the number one factor in COMMUNICATING is LISTENING!
No matter who you are, learning to proactively network and impress others with your interest in them will always take you far. This is the definition of networking.
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