Avoid Proprietary Website Management Systems
You should avoid “proprietary” content management systems. Content management systems are, in theory, easy-to-use, online website editors that allow website owners to easily make changes to their site by logging onto an online control panel.
Several marketing and web development companies have content management systems that are exclusive to their service. If things do not work out between your firm and the company, you have to start all over because they are not giving you their management system to take to a new web host.
Make sure your content management is like ours; compatible with most web hosting companies around the world. In fact, our system is compatible with any Linux based hosting that offers PHP and a mySQL database – that is 99% of them.
Usually, widely compatible software is easier to use than proprietary software. With its popularity comes user input. From that, programmers can make changes to make the user experience easier. A proprietary application can only grow when the owning company wants to pay for upgrades, which generally means new features are slow to arrive.
Ask your web service provider if your content management system is portable; meaning capable of being moved to a new host. Knowing this information will help you plan for your future website needs.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
Google Blog Search
Everybody online knows about the Google search engine for web searches, but do you know they also offer additional search engines? Google News displays news from media sources from around the world. Google Image Search displays relevant pictures. Google Shopping compares prices on items. And Google Blog Search, well, searches for blogs.
If you have a blog on your website, you should submit it to Google Blog Search.
First, locate your feed URL. Generally, toward the bottom of the blog page you will see a link that says “syndicate” or an orange button that says RSS, ATOM, or XML. If you see any of those items, click on it.
Second, take your feed URL (generally yourwebsite.com/blog/feed) to http://blogsearch.google.com/ping. After a week, your blogs should appear in Google Blog Search. Most popular blogging platforms like WordPress, will offer you the option of automatically “pinging” Google Blog Search every time you update your blog. Doing this will automate the blog search submission and keep your Google Blog Search listings up-to-date.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
Redundancy Can Work Against SEO
A big mistake that many businesses make with their website content is wording it as if they were introducing themselves at a business meeting. The stale, “We specialize in widgets and whatnots,” just does not work when you are trying to convert your web traffic to new business.
Your website’s content is important for search engines and your visitors. Make it too keyphrase oriented and your visitors will get irritated by the redundancy. Also, if you don’t use inclusive language, your website is going to sound like a mundane commercial.
Here are a couple examples. We will assume that you are in the business of making blue widgets. Blue widgets solve everybody’s problems thus “blue widget” is your primary keyphrase. What better company to provide blue widgets than Widgitech?
Redundant Content – All of us at Widgitech believe that there is not a better blue widget solution then the Widgitech blue widget. These days, everybody needs a blue widget. Blue widgets make modern civilization possible. Nobody makes a better blue widget than the blue widget enthusiast at Widgitech… your blue widget specialist.
Notice that they go a little overboard with the talk of “blue widgets.”
SEO Visitor Friendly Content – Blue widgets are what make modern civilization possible. We understand that. For years, Widgitech has put quality and innovation at the core of our company to make sure that the Widgitech blue widget is the last blue widget you will every buy.
In both examples, we use the keyword a few times. However, the second statement puts the keyphrase in a less redundant manner. It is safe to say that the second version is both visitor friendly and SEO friendly, and would also look appropriate on a printed brochure. The first one would not.
Be descriptive with your content and do not be afraid to periodically use your keyphrases. However, keep your content interesting and maintain a balance. Doing so will impress your visitors as well as the search engines.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
A Simple Sitemap Takes Your Search Engine Marketing a Long Way
One of the oldest search engine optimization tools around is actually one of the few that is still effective. Sitemaps have been around as long as the Internet has been commercially available.
Basically, a standard sitemap is just a page that links to all of the pages on your website in a neatly categorized form. By having a sitemap, the search engines are able to immediately get a list of all the pages they need to index within your site.
By making this process easy on the search engines, you ensure getting your entire page properly indexed. Visit Adviatech’s sitemap page as an example at http://www.adviatech.com/sitemap/.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
Internet Explorer 6 – Abandoning the Browsasaurus
Internet Explorer 6 is the thorn in the design and programming community that keeps getting sharper. In spite of its constant glitches, website design distortions and a series of other problems, nearly 15% of web surfers (according to w3.org) are still using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).
The web browser was originally released in 2001, which means there is a good chance that car in your driveway is newer than the web browser you are using to surf websites in 2009. The problem that IE6 causes for designers, programmers and the search engine optimization community is its lack of support for style sheets and other widely used design and programming elements.
By having to design and program for 15% of your potential market, developers are forced to use programming hacks to make items display in IE6. This can often cause errors in your code that are unavoidable unless you wish to sacrifice browser compatibility for IE6 users.
Major websites are soon planning to no longer support Internet Explorer 6 which means, if you are still using this eight-year-old browsasaurus, favorite websites such as YouTube will no longer be accessible (read that full story at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/youtube-will-be-next-to-kiss-ie6-support-goodbye/).
Fortunately, you have some simple options to help solve the IE6 programming plague.
Internet Explorer 7 or 8 – A simple upgrade one or two versions higher will fix most of the bugs associated with IE6. A free visit to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/Internet-explorer/default.aspx and 10 minutes will remedy the problem.
Firefox – You can also join the 47% of the web that uses Firefox as their primary web browser. With a series of add-ons, weekly updates and an opensource (free) development community backing it, this is (in our opinion) the best way to see the web. Give it a try at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/.
Google Chrome – Google’s web browser, Chrome, has made a big dent in the web browser market compared to older Internet Explorer foes Safari and Opera. Claiming 7% of market share, Google Chrome offers some unique browser features and a nice cool interface. Windows users can download it at http://www.google.com/chrome and Mac users can join an anxious waiting list at http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/mac.html.
The end result of upgrading your browser will lead to a world wide web full of clean pretty code that does not need IE6 hacks and patches; and for you, a better more secure web browsing experience.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
Syndicating Links for Search Engine Optimization
To get to the first page of Google and other search engines, you need links to your website. That is to say, you know other websites to link to yours without you linking back to them. By now, most people looking into search engine optimization have heard that.
What is the best way to do that? Content and syndication. When an article is written about your company and posted into blogs that syndicate into Google Blog Search, article directories, how-to’s, etc, then it becomes available for the public to use.
As your content is used in other blogs, websites, and syndicated using RSS (really simple syndication) feeds, your link is syndicated with it; thus, rapidly building your inbound links.
While Google discourages link exchanges, they always encourage the development of new quality (heavy emphasis on quality) content.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
Filtering Search Engine Traffic on Your Website
A major concern for many regionally focused website owners (such as attorneys) is limiting the traffic to fit their niche. For example, a divorce attorney that specializes in high profile cases can’t optimize his website for “high net worth divorce lawyer.” Such a term probably gets very little traffic.
The solution is optimizing wide and filtering out your traffic with your website’s content. So in the above case, the attorney should optimize for their local region and just the term “divorce,” then make use of their website’s styling, content and wording to filter out the smaller cases in which they don’t specialize.
This is effective for most industries as well. Optimize wide then filter the unwanted traffic with your website.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
The Annoying Side of the Web – Stop the Noise
Continuing with our series on the “Annoying Side of the Web,” this week’s topic is noise. Remember the early days of the Internet when you could embed background music? You would visit a website and a little ragtime tune would pop up.
It may have been neat at the time, but nowadays more visitors than not find background music to be annoying. If you feel the need to make your site a multimedia experience, perhaps you can work with your designer to integrate soft button rollover sound effects or something less intruding.
Minor sound effects can add a little flavor to a website (when done with great moderation) but if you have background music that doesn’t fit your visitors’ moods, you could be asking for a quick click away from your online presence.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
The Annoying Side of the Web – Matching Text with Background
Over the next few weeks we are going to point out some irritating features found on certain websites. This week, it’s all about colors.
Do you know why black ink is still printed on white/off white paper even though colored printing is cheaply accessible? Because it’s easy to read. When you pick up a book, the text easily lifts off the page and allows you to focus on the words without effort. So if you are printing red text on a black background or white text on a soft gray background on your website, you are making your visitors work harder to understand your content.
Color is great for websites, but it should be included in graphics, page borders and other enhancing elements of the site; however when it comes to text, nothing is more refreshing than black and white.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
Thinking Local for Search Engine Optimization May Yield Greater Results
When laying out your search engine marketing plan, you should first decide whether you want to attract the whole world, the whole country or your neighborhood. Thinking too big at first may actually give you less traffic.
Just as an example, we will use a Florida divorce attorney who has offices all across the state. The keyword “Florida divorce lawyer” gets (according to Adwords) 3,600 inquiries each month.
However, let’s look at the major metro areas and combine their numbers.
Jacksonville divorce lawyer – 880
Orlando divorce lawyer – 1,000
Tampa divorce lawyer – 1,300
Miami divorce lawyer – 870
If this hypothetical law firm had offices in these four cities in Florida and optimized individually, they would have exposure to 4,050 searches, all of which coming from relevant users that were in those respective cities. However, with Florida divorce lawyer, those 3,600 users may or may not be searching in the city with the supported office.
By focusing on local cities, you will be exposing your business to a more relevant audience as well as a bigger collective audience.
To learn more about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, contact SEO company, Adviatech.com at 1.800.728.5306.
