Title tags, canonicalization, ALT text, long-tail keywords.  Search engine optimization may seem confusing and overly technical for the average marketer. The fact is, it can be quite technical, requiring specific knowledge and training. However, there are also many aspects to SEO that are not difficult to understand, nor difficult to do.

There are numerous resources available to learn SEO techniques. One of the best ones I’ve seen is this video presentation by Lee Odden with Top Rank Online Marketing. It’s the second lesson in Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University titled SEO Crash Course to Getting Found (GF102). The presentation is a bit lengthy so be sure to give yourself about an hour to go through it. But if you are interested in learning the basics of SEO, this is a great starting point with topics covered like keywords, link building, search friendly site structure and analytics.

Take a look and you’ll be ready to optimize your website for search.

SEO Crash Course to Get Found (GF102)

Photo by mimundo

Search engine optimization is a lot like the culinary profession.  There are experts in the field, with a growing reputation and a following for their art. There are five-star SEO’s, one-star SEO’s, and everything in between.

Just as famous chefs create spectacular meals, unmatched by the average cook, SEO’s work their magic on websites, rocketing pages to the top of search results.

The fact that you haven’t been a sous-chef in Paris doesn’t stop you from cooking a nice meal. Likewise, you shouldn’t be intimidated to tackle search engine optimization. Aspiring chefs like you turn to cookbooks for recipes, advice, and tips. Luckily, SEO has its very own “Joy of Cooking.” It’s Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. A very concise, non-technical manual that walks you through 13 things you can do to optimize your web pages, including best practices for each:

• Create unique, accurate page titles
• Make use of the “description” meta  tag
• Improve the structure of your URLs
• Make your site easier to navigate
• Offer quality content and services
• Write better anchor text
• Use heading tags appropriately
• Optimize your use of images
• Make effective use of robots.txt
• Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
• Promote your website in the right ways
• Make use of free webmaster tools
• Take advantage of web analytics services

The full Guide is available here on Google’s website. Download it, read it, and get cooking with these SEO techniques on your own web pages. You won’t be an instant search engine optimization expert, but you will enjoy the results.

Bon SEO!

When it comes to optimizing web content for search engines, there’s a lot to know, a lot to remember, and it’s always changing it seems. Wouldn’t it be great to have an SEO expert review your web content and tell you what keywords it is optimized for? And how to improve the search engine optimization of that copy? And then tell you if the improvements you made actually did improve the content’s SEO?

The folks at Scribe have built a tool that does all this and more — and put it right inside your WordPress admin site. But don’t worry if you don’t use WordPress, because in March they are launching a web-based version that is not tied to a specific platform.

There’s already been plenty written about Scribe. So I’m not going to repeat it here. But if you could use some expert SEO help with your web content, check out “Introducing Scribe: SEO Copywriting Made Simple” by Brian Clark (one of Scribe’s creators) for a great overview. And be sure to read “My Scribe SEO review” by Johnny B. Truant, who included a comprehensive video demonstration of Scribe in action. Finally, visit the Scribe website to seal the deal. Speaking of deals, there is a special introductory price that is available until Friday, February 25 at 6:00 p.m. Central Time. So better hurry and get Scribing right now!

Disclaimer:  I am not an affiliate of Scribe, so my links are free. But I have worked the past couple of years with Scribe’s development team. So I’m a little biased. But I also know firsthand the power of the technology. UPDATE: Okay, so Scribe launched its affiliate program and I signed up. The Scribe links are now an affiliate link.

Merry Christmas Yall!

Posted via email from Katy Barrilleaux | Optimized

Posted via email from Katy Barrilleaux | Optimized

Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all our Veterans, past and present, who served our country for us and generations to come! God bless you and God bless America!

Earlier today in a post about Bing’s announcement of a deal with Twitter and Facebook I wrote, “Look for Google to introduce its own social network data integration soon.” Little did I know soon would be today.

According to Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search, a new Google Labs app called Social Search will launch in the next few weeks. Social Search will add relevant updates and posts from your social network friends to the bottom of your search results page. How will Google know what networks you belong to and who your friends are? It’s in your Google Profile. As long as you have added your social networks to your Google Profile. Don’t have a Google Profile yet? Get one here.

Ms. Mayer also announced that like Bing, Google has signed an agreement with Twitter to display its real-time tweets in its search results.

Based on the two companies’ announcements, it sounds like there will be some differences in how Google and Bing will handle social posts. Google’s Profile integration means that it pulls only from within your network. Bing however, will pull from all public posts. Google will pull from all social networks that you add to your Google Profile. Bing on the other hand will only pull from Twitter and Facebook. To know more, we’ll have to wait until Google and Bing launch their new features.

Meanwhile, make sure you have accounts set up on all the popular social networks, develop your connections on those networks, and keep your keyword list close by as you post, tweet, blog, microblog and whatever else you do on the social net.

Last month, I shared with you Bing’s plan to launch its Bing and Ping beta feature (Search Results to Go Social with bing), which allows for social sharing of select search results in bing, like movie times. The featue has since been released to beta users, extending at least some search results into the social networks.

Today, Microsoft announced it has signed an agreement with Facebook and Twitter to integrate status updates from these two social powerhouses’ users into its search results. Mashable has details and some screen shots in REVEALED: Details of Bing’s Twitter Search.

Ka-bang! Just like that social media’s status updates will contribute to search engine results. Soon companies who have resisted joining the social conversation will be compelled to join in…or risk losing control over valuable SERP real estate given to Twitter and Facebook status updates. Likewise, I expect more companies will more aggressively monitor social conversations with free tools like Google Alerts (website) or even subscriber applications.

To keep this in perspective, it is just bing…for now. Bing only represents about 9% of the searches conducted monthly on search engines. The trend for real-time search though is growing. Look for Google to introduce its own social network data integration soon. Then social media will officially be a viable search engine optimization technique for companies.

Branding 101 says to establish your company brand and then be consistent. Place your brand everywhere and under no circumstances should you change that brand. Use specific PMS colors to print on slick stock and different PMS shades on uncoated stock. The RGB values and hex codes are specified. Maintain a clearance distance of x space around the logo. Never change the size relationship between the mark and the text. And never, ever, under any circumstances, or risk your own personal safety, alter the logo. It’s sacred!

Then along comes Google who proceeds to turn this Branding 101 rule on its head. Visitors to google.com sometimes see a creative interpretation of the Google logo, based on the date. Like today’s logo celebrating the birth of H. G. Wells. A mouse over explains the topic and a click on the logo takes you to a Google search of that topic.

New designs may be related to a holiday like New Year’s or St. Patrick’s Day. It may be an event like the Olympics. It may even be to celebrate the birth of a famous author, or artist, or inventor. Do any of these look familiar?

Google will customize its holiday logos specifically for certain countries, only displaying in that country. Most Americans have never seen these logos.

Why would Google practice such blatant blasphemy of it’s company brand? Two reasons come to mind. First, it gives people something to talk about on the web…builds some Google buzz. Secondly, it gives people a reason to go to the Google search page occasionally…to see the creative logo. Otherwise, with the integration of search into web browsers and websites, there in not much of a reason to ever visit google.com! I also think Google does it because it’s fun and it supports their company culture and brand of being different and “going outside the lines.” It’s a brilliant example of the old adage, “There’s an exception to every rule.”

Google archives all of the logos on its website so don’t worry if you missed the recent “crop circles” logo or the “unexplained phenomenon” logo that you heard all the buzz about.  You’ll find all of them dating back to the very beginning of Google. What is “Burning Man Festival” anyway?

Oh, and if you find one that you really like and wish was your default Google logo, there is a new greasemonkey script for Firefox that will enable you to pick your favorite Google logo to display by default.

To see all of Google’s holiday logos, visit the company’s website, but remember to never, ever, ever alter your company brand. Unless you are Google or you have a strategic reason for doing so.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) all started with websites. Then came blogs, followed by press releases, maps, and profiles. And before we knew it, SEO was about more than just having a company website. With the recent explosion of community-driven sites like Youtube, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn to name a few, more and more companies and brands have jumped into social media to connect with their customers AND to increase their website traffic.

Word comes from a post on the Google Help Forum for Google Docs last week that in about two weeks there will be yet another “medium” added to the search index: Google Docs. All Google Docs that are published publicly to the web and that are linked to from a website that is crawled by the search engines will also be crawled by the search engines.

This will provide yet another resource to gain organic search engine rankings. And a non-technical one at that! What we don’t know is how the results will be displayed on the search engine results page (SERP). Will they be intermingled with all of the other web pages in the greater index? My suspicion is that the Google Docs will be treated as a group of results similar to the way Google handles maps, news, videos, and profiles on page one. But we’ll just have to wait until Google implements this change to know for sure.

In the meantime, get your Google Docs account set up if you haven’t already. Get your word documents optimized, uploaded to Google Docs, published to the web, and linked to on a website. I see a lot of opportunities, including:

• press releases
• company overview
• executive bios
• white papers
• product sheets
• and more!

If you’re already using Google Docs and have documents that you don’t want indexed, be sure to change the settings on those documents:

• Go to the ‘Share tab’
• For documents and spreadsheets, choose ‘Publish as web page’. For presentations choose ‘Publish/embed’
• Click on the button that says ‘Stop publishing’

As Halloween approaches, be on the lookout for spiders crawling your Google Docs. It’s no trick; it’s an SEO treat!

Posted via email from Katy Barrilleaux | Optimized