July 12, 2010

Top Ten SEO Mistakes We See Connecticut Businesses Making

SEO is effective, but only when done properly. Avoid these top 10 mistakes to have the most success with your Search Engine Optimization:

Mistake #1: Targeting the wrong keywords. Make sure that you have keywords that users actually search for, not just ones that sound good.

Mistake #2: Ignoring Title tags. So many people leave their website title tag empty, which is NOT effective at all. It helps with optimization, but ultimately makes your page look complete with a title.

Mistake #3: Limiting accessibility. Having a Flash website is great. They’re fun, interactive, and they look pretty. However, not having an HTML alternative turns off search engines and visitors who have slower connections.

Mistake #4: Menus with JavaScript. Search engines don’t read JavaScript, so you should consider having links elsewhere or doing them in HTML so search engines can read them.

Mistake #5: Lack of maintenance. You can’t just put your site up and leave it forever. Just like a physical business, it needs to be updated, maintained, cleaned, and changed over time to be most effective.

Mistake #6: Meta tag overload. While meta tags are effective, spending too much focus on them will waste your time. They’re not as important as they once were, and will be much less critical than other parts of your site.

Mistake #7: Image-only headings. Images do make your site look good, but headlines will do much more for SEO than any graphic. Try putting images under headlines instead, to get the best of both worlds.

Mistake #8: Forgetting the URL. Your URL matters. You need to make sure that your URL speaks to your page content so that it can add to your SEO success. Consider something like www.dantheSEOprofessoinal.com instead of just www.danjenkins.com, for example.

Mistake #9: Spam via backlinks. So many people assume that more backlinks are better than less, but that spells trouble right away. Quality is far more important for your backlinks than quantity, and over-linking will rule you a spammer and get you kicked out of search engines.

Mistake #10: Lack of keywords. Just like having too many keywords, not having enough will kill your website’s SEO success. Focus on adding keywords wherever you can, with a standard of 1-2 keywords per 100 words. More will border on the line of spamming and less will not do your website justice.

These are the top 10 mistakes that we see Connecticut businesses—and indeed businesses throughout the U.S.—making when it comes to SEO. In order to keep yourself from making these mistakes, keep them in mind when doing your SEO for your or your client’s website.

To schedule a free consultation with Connecticut’s leading Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm, please visit www.AllAccessUnlimited.com or call our Stamford, CT headquarters directly at: 203-276-9812

Filed under: SEO, Search Engine Optimization — Tags: , , , , , , , , — admin @ 11:05 am

January 4, 2010

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Stamford, Connecticut

We are always happy to provide free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips and advice to local Stamford, Connecticut companies.

So in case anyone out there has any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re located in the heart of Stamford, Connecticut on Strawberry Hill Avenue.

Money is not everything to us, the appreciation we get when we know we’ve helped out another person or company can be just as rewarding.

For example, today we received a call from a local law firm. They recently got their web site created and up and running. Now they want to climb higher in Google’s rankings.

As we explained to them, this can appear to be a daunting task, especially for a new site. They wanted to know if there were some things that we recommend they should try first before calling a “big guns” company like us (big guns but with the big price tags).

So we came up with this list and emailed it to them:

  • Create a short list of keywords and phrases you would like to focus on. Don’t make the list longer than 10 words and phrases. In fact, the shorter the list the better (to start off). Keep in mind, these are the keywords that people are typing in Google to search for your products and services; the words for which you want your site to rank for.
  • Try to use those keywords and phrases in your content. Use them in the headings especially. Don’t overdo it.
  • Go though your entire web site and try to tag each image with one of your key words. But keep in mind that if you overdo this it’s considered a “black hat technique” that can result in your site getting banned by the search engines. Make sure the keyword is relevant to the photo. For example, if the photo depicts a “divorce attorney” in court then use that keyword for the photo. Use the ALT tag to do the tagging of your pictures.
  • Title your pages with your company name and a few of your key words/phrases. This is important because your title is what appears in the browser title bar. Don’t make it too long, but make it relevant. Relevance is more important than length.
  • Check your competition and see what they’re doing to rank for your keywords. Who is your competition? Type your keywords and phrases into Google to find out. Study their sites.
  • Create a page with a site map and post a link to the site map on your website. As an example, you can find a link to the site map page on the bottom of well-optimized websites.
  • Create a Google Ad Words account (optional). Do some keyword research, find out what your top competitors are doing, choose the amount you would like to spend and set it up. Check your results.
  • Get as many “inbound links” (links back to your web site) as possible. Are you or the people in your company members of any groups or organizations? If so, then email them a brief note explaining who you are and asking them to link back to you. If you can have them link some of your phrases to your site, even better. For example, if you are a Stamford, Connecticut Web Design Company, then make sure that the keywords are linked.)

These are just a few quick tips.

It’s always better to hire an expert SEO company, preferably a local company.

There are always lots of changes going on in the SEO industry, and a professional SEO company can help navigate the changes and can also do the most with your budget.

Filed under: Search Engine Optimization — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 6:16 pm

December 16, 2009

5 Key Website Redesign SEO Secrets Your Connecticut Web Design Company Should–But May Not–Know

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.

Filed under: Search Engine Optimization — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 10:42 pm
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