Tip #1 to improve ranking of a website: Adhere to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the organization that oversees the standards for the internet and internet coding. Having code that meets W3C standards is considered to be a “sign of quality.” It is thought that having signs of quality on a website can help with rankings in the search engines. Therefore having fewer W3C validation errors means that your site could gain a higher Google website ranking.

To help meet W3C standards, follow best practices, such as formatting your site with CSS rather than HTML tables, avoiding using deprecated (outdated) code, and so forth.

Tip #2 to improve ranking of a website: Add a robots.txt file to the root domain

A robots.txt is a plain text file that tells the search engines where they are not allowed to go on a site. Having a robots.txt file, even a blank one, is considered to be a sign of quality. It shows that you acknowledge that search engines are allowed on your site and that they may have free access to it. Learn how to add a robots.txt file to your site.

Tip #3 to improve ranking of a website: Correct 404 errors on the site

This may seem like a small thing, but 404 errors (broken links or pages not found) do reflect upon the quality of the site, which has some bearing on website ranking. Correcting 404 errors shows that your site is up to date and is being maintained. We recommend that you routinely review the site for these errors and correct them whenever possible.

Tip #4 to improve ranking of a website: Create a search engine sitemap.xml file

Search engines love site maps, as they help them index sites more completely and efficiently. Having a standard site map page is a must, but you also want to have a site map written specifically for the search engines: a sitemap.xml file. This file contains every URL on your site and should be submitted to your Google Webmaster Tools account to increase your Google website ranking. Check out sites such as XML-Sitemaps.com to create your free sitemap.xml file.

Organic SEO tip #1: Examine on-page elements

On-page elements are the elements that affect organic search engine optimization that can be controlled by the designer or developer. Use the following checklist to help increase online sales leads to your website.

Title tags (the single most important on-page element). The title tag is like the headline of your advertisement in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The title tag should:

• Be unique and relevant to the page topic
• Contain keywords, a benefit statement and a call to action

Header tags (the second most important on-page element). Header tags (also called H tags) highlight important text for the search engines. H tags should:

• Be used on every page
• Highlight the main idea or headline (H1)
• Highlight secondary ideas or sub-headlines (H2)

Meta description tags. The meta description tag is like the body of your advertisement in the SERPs. The meta description tag should:

• Be unique and relevant to the page topic
• Be written succinctly in paragraph form
• Contain keywords, benefit statements and calls to action

Website basics. These basic elements are crucial for organic search engine optimization. Make sure your website includes all of these elements:

• Robots.txt file
• Site map
• Sitemap.xml file

Clean up basics. These all have some bearing on search engine rankings. Examine your website to see if you need to:

• Correct 404 errors
• Clean up HTML code
• Compress images
• Add ALT tags to images

Organic SEO tip #2: Examine off-page elements

Off-page elements are the elements that affect organic search engine optimization that cannot be controlled by the designer or developer. These include elements of a good link building campaign – the quality of your inbound links and the anchor text linking back to your website. When was the last time you freshened up your link building campaign?

Generating sales leads is easier when you use these proven SEO strategies to support your organic search engine optimization efforts!

Believe it or not, when I first began writing this post, I was surprised to learn that there are actually website owners who want to learn how to become invisible to Google. Why they would want to do that… well, their reasons are their own.

Most of us do want to improve web visibility in the Google index. But, just in case you don’t want to be visible (and we are really, really advising that you do want to be!), then here are the steps to become invisible:

How to become invisible, step 1:

Do not optimize your site with keywords.

Keywords are the key to success if you want to know how to be on top at Google. Therefore, if you don’t wish your site to be found, do not use any keywords in your site content that your potential customers might use to search for your products or services. Heck, don’t include them in your title or meta tags, either.

How to become invisible, step 2:

Duplicate the same content throughout your site.

The Google index loves unique content, so it can present meaningful results to its searchers. How to rank high on Google? Write unique content for each page. How not to rank high on Google? Repeat the same copy over and over again on your site.

How to become invisible, step 3:

Do not acquire any inbound links.

Links are second only to content when it comes to how to be on top at Google. Web visibility is greatly determined by how many quality, relevant links you have pointing at your site – links tell Google that you are important. Want to remain invisible in the Google index? Make sure no one is linking to you.

How to rank high on Google – or not

As of April 2009, there were over 230 million sites on the internet. Six million new websites were added in one month, between March and April. Web visibility is now more important than ever. If you don’t want to be invisible to Google, be sure to take the proper steps to ensure that your site can be seen.

Let’s say that you sell 20 products online, with each one falling into one of two categories: Product Type A and Product Type B. You’ve created a unique page for each of your products, which is terrific, but what’s the next step?

The next step is to create a landing page for Product Type A, with links to each of the ten products in this category, and a landing page for Product Type B, with links to each of the ten products in that category.

This internal linking strategy will accomplish two goals:

• make it easier for human site visitors to find the products they need
• make it easier for the search engine spiders to index the content and return these URLs in response to relevant search queries

The goals of SEO copywriting are to draw targeted traffic to your web site and to make it easy for site visitors to make their purchases.

So, when deciding how to create a landing page for your site – let’s say for the Product Type A page, as an example – consider this basic formula:

• Organic SEO tip # 1: Use strong, category-level keyphrases about type A products in your title tag, main headlines, and text in the opening and closing paragraphs of your landing page
• Organic SEO tip # 2: Provide a compelling overview of your relevant type A products in your opening paragraph, describing general benefits to the end users
• Organic SEO tip # 3: In the middle part of the page, link to each one of the relevant type A products, providing site visitors with a brief description of the benefits of these products
• Organic SEO tip # 4: End this page with a persuasive paragraph that summarizes why site visitors need type A products now

Here are some landing page examples from The Search Guru site and from our clients:

• SEO services
• Skateboard protective gear
• Cosmetic dentistry

Contact The Search Guru for your organic landing page SEO copywriting services today!

Or, talk to us about specialized SEO copywriting training so that you can discover more about how to create a landing page for your company’s web site – or you can order the e-book that’s jam packed with SEO tips and strategies, The Search Guru’s Practical Guide to Successful Organic Search Engine Marketing.

That’s right, a video. According to a study conducted earlier this year by The Forrester Blog, posting an online video can increase your site’s chances of reaching that golden first page of search engine results by 50 percent for keywords that produce video search results. In other words, a YouTube video is 50 times more likely to rank for a certain keyphrase than a page containing that keyphrase on your site.

That’s a pretty amazing statistic. But now that Google’s Universal Search is in full swing, the SERPs are chock full of blended search engine results – a mixture of pages, videos, news, books and more from Google’s standard and specialized, or “vertical,” search results.

Optimize your online video to achieve maximum search engine results.

Simply posting a YouTube video for Google rank increase is not enough – you must optimize that video for the keyphrases you want to rank highly for in the search results. Not surprisingly, most videos are not optimized for the search engines, which means your well-optimized YouTube video has a good chance of making it to the top of the SERPs.

Follow these key optimization tips:

• Add keyphrases to your YouTube video filename, title, description and tags.
• Post the video on YouTube, then embed it into your own site. The more views the online video gets, the better chance of it ranking higher in the search results.
• The embedded video should be on a page with text that is relevant to the topic of the video, to help Google figure out what the video is about.
• Create a video library on your site using Google Video Sitemap.

Create and post your optimized video for Google rank increase today, sit back, and watch your site rise in the search engine results.

The email read:

Thanks for your time. Once again this is guaranteed first page placement in the sponsored links on GOOGLE 24/7 in The US at flat rate pricing.
There is a onetime set up fee of $79.95. There are NO Contracts. Keep in mind once this placement is sold I cannot sell them to anyone else. I can get you online the same day.

A client had forwarded me this email he had received. He wanted to know if it could be this easy. Could there really be some search engine ranking cheats that would allow his site to appear at #1 for any word for the low, low price of $79.95? Certainly sounded a lot easier then all this content work and this link building drudgery.

I explained that this was a classic search marketing scam.

Consider the question “how does Google rank pages?”

If there really were Google cheats, if Google really did allow people to simply buy the #1 position, do you honestly think that any would be left available? Do you think that a company would need to resort to cold calling and spam in order to sell this form of “expert sponsored link management?”

How does Google rank pages? By the merit of the content on a site and the links into a site. And they have to, because otherwise they would lose integrity and respect and, more importantly, searchers.

But I see “Sponsored Links” on Google search pages

The Sponsored Links you see are not Google cheats nor are they a search marketing scam. They are Google’s PPC ads which anyone can bid on for free through AdWords. You don’t need to pay for setup nor do you pay a flat fee for the #1 position. You don’t need expert sponsored link management; you need expert pay per click management.

Like all things, search engine ranking cheats follow the old adage of “if it sounds too good to be true…” Ranking in Google takes time, knowledge and work. While it is not fast, it will work for you in the long term.

Have you come across a search marketing scam? Tell us about it.

When was the last time you did a search for your company’s brand on Google? You are fairly certain that you come up number one, but who is sitting in positions two through ten? Complaints against stores online are on the rise. Does an online brand lose a customer when the search result below its listing is a complaint?

You are right. It’s not fair. You are a great company.

It may not seem fair that great companies have to invest in online brand protection. You might think that brand monitoring and protection is something only bad companies have to do. But the fact is that no matter how great a company you are, you can’t make everybody happy. Rightly or wrongly, people post complaints against stores online all the time. These complaints will come up when someone searches for your company’s name.

Innovations in brand protection are making it easier.

As little as a few years ago, most companies gave little thought to brand monitoring and protection. After all, does an online brand matter when most of your business is offline? But that has all changed. Even if most of your business comes from offline, chances are that your customers are researching your company online.

Innovations in brand protection mean that you can now find firms that specialize in online brand monitoring and protection. These firms will monitor search engines for complaints against stores online and report any issues back to you so that you can address them quickly. These firms can also suggest strategies for proactive online brand protection to help push those negative results down so they won’t appear when someone searches for your company.

Brand monitoring and protection is a necessity in today’s connected world.

With the innovations in brand protection online, you have no excuse not to invest in online brand protection. Does an online brand matter? You bet it does. It is your job to make sure the complaints against stores online do not hurt your bottom line.

Remember that famous phrase from the movie Field of Dreams? “If you build it, they will come.” From an SEO web development perspective, this could not be further from the truth. The line would have to be, “If you build it to be SEO friendly, they will come.”

So, just how do you build an SEO friendly website? Here we will cover a few of the basics that are essential for developing an effective SEO website.

Your site does not need Flash to be flashy.

Simply put, Flash looks cool, but Flash is not your friend for website optimization. Search engines cannot see or index Flash content, so it is a bad idea to build an entire website in Flash. So bad, in fact, that this practice is commonly known as “SEO suicide.”

Avoid using Flash in your navigational menus as well. Many of the same Flash menu effects can now be accomplished with CSS and XHTML. The best SEO friendly sites are simple, clean, and employ the “less is more” principle of design.

Content is king for website optimization.

When it comes to content, more is definitely more. An SEO friendly website needs fresh, regular content added to attract both visitors and the search engines. Your content should be relevant to your visitors, unique, and keyword-rich.

Keywords are key in SEO web development.

Content is only important if it includes keywords that your target audience will be searching for; otherwise, how will they find your site?

Keywords should be included not only in your site’s content, but also in your URLs and your title, description and keyword meta tags. Keyword research, the process of determining what keywords to use, is one of the most important, and sometimes underestimated, aspects of SEO web development. Check out this excellent guide to keyword research to help jump start your website optimization.

Achieve search engine friendly web design with CSS.

CSS (cascading style sheets) is an important tool in creating search engine friendly web design. CSS streamlines the amount of code needed to produce a page, resulting in a quicker page load time. And unlike designing with traditional html and tables, you have the freedom to put the most important part of your page, the content, at the top of the code, so the search engines will find it faster and easier.

Use alternate text for all images when building your SEO website.

The search engines can’t see your images, so it is most important that you include “alt text” for all of your images, using keywords whenever possible.

Developing a search engine friendly web design simply requires a common sense approach.

Taking a little extra time to craft your SEO website will be well worth it in the end. Your extra effort will pay off when the website that you’ve so carefully designed not only looks good, but also shows up on those first few results pages of the search engines!

Right about now, if you own a bed and breakfast, you’re pretty busy. You’ve got delicious food to cook, rooms to prep and guests to entertain – and that’s great. Just don’t forget to invest in yourself and your company – which includes polishing up your website to increase targeted traffic and reservations.

Free SEO advice from The Search Guru

This past summer, we partnered with the Holmes County Lodging Council to share how owners of Ohio bed and breakfast inns can use SEO techniques to grow their businesses. One important technique is to use niche – or long tail – keyphrases on your website.

For example:

• More than 1,100 people search for “bed and breakfast” every day, but nearly 25,000,000 sites have that phrase in their web text.
• If you narrow down your keyphrase to “ohio bed and breakfast” as just one example, only 76,700 websites contain this phrase, with 17 people searching every day and
• If you narrow it down even further to “Ohio bed and breakfast Jacuzzi room,” only 3 other websites contain that text – with 5 people looking for that phrase, every single day.

Sure, the traffic goes down considerably, but so do the competing websites – and, even more importantly, your services are being described perfectly, which means more satisfied customers and referrals being sent your way.

Keep reading to enjoy more free SEO advice – and be sure to email us your questions and comments!

Double check your search engine directory submission before clicking the “submit” button. You may be missing out on key opportunities!

Here’s some free SEO advice:

Each directory is unique and one size does not fit all. So, before you submit a search engine directory submission, check to see if:

• the company name can be included in the description,
• promotional language can be included (order today or buy now),
• all of the text appears on a main page,
• contact information is permitted and the
• maximum amount of characters that appear on the match the guidelines.

Read the editorial guidelines and check the directory descriptions currently on the site, especially in the category that you’re selecting. What can you learn from them?

Three more professional SEO directory submission tips!

It’s important that each description:

• differs from the other directory descriptions for your company; if descriptions are too similar, the search engine spiders may perceive this as spam and penalize your site
• takes full advantage of the characters allowed for a particular site, using different combinations of keyphrases and is
• optimized for prime keyphrases.

What professional SEO questions do you have? Post them below and watch this blog for professional SEO directory descriptions, part 2.