Advice My Clients Probably Won't Read » SEO

Better Search Results for SEO

admin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:10:37 +0000

Did you know that Google, and probably the other search engines, uses your web history (where you’ve been & what you’ve searched for) to tailor the results you see when you search.

That’s fine and probably useful for the general public, but for someone like me who is constantly checking where clients rank for particular terms, or for my clients who do that themselves, we don’t want “tailored” searches. We want as much of the unvarnished truth of rankings as we can get.

This page tells you how to make Google not do that any more:

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54048

I can think of times when it might be useful to let Google deliver more personalized results, but I think in general, I’d rather they not. I had noticed a while back that if I searched for something and my location in Google was shown as Austin, I would get slightly different results if I changed my location to Chicago. Makes it kind of tricky to do SEO for a company with clients all over the US, much less the world!

Why Ethical SEO is Best

admin — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:49:04 +0000

You know all those emails you get from folks who say they’ll get you to the top? (and who usually don’t include their phone number or company name)

Here’s a cautionary tale to consider:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=2

Unsolicted SEO emails

admin — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:12:51 +0000

Ever get an email like this?

I’ve helped hundreds of companies increase their traffic and I’d love to show you what my service can do for you. I don’t promise the world, I’m straight forward and to the point … I deliver rankings.

Did you ask for it? If not, it’s spam. Do you like spam? Do you like spammers? Do you like telemarketers? Or salesmen who come to your door uninvited?

If you answered no to all of the above, then just hit delete when you get something like that.

If you need SEO services, call me or do a search online for SEO experts. Then research the top 5. Do they have testimonials from people you can contact? Do they give their rates? Do they guarantee top3 results? (If so, be suspicious and/or prepared to pay an arm and a leg).

Do they explain the difference between SEO and SEM? The latter is Search Engine Marketing, i.e. sponsored links.

But whatever you do, don’t respond to the email. Responding to spam is what it keeps it coming to all of us.

Get networked

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:50:29 +0000

More and more lately, people are using social media to find information and products. If you’re interested in B2B sales in particular, I highly recommend LinkedIn. It’s a good way not only to get yourself “out there” but also to recommend products or services or people that you like–and to get recommendations as well.

It’s free to join and you can put as much info as you want in your profile. It differs from Facebook in that you don’t really post articles. It’s more like trading business cards or giving someone the card of a business you’ve used.

Give it a try and be sure to link to me!

SEO Results

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:39:46 +0000

Most of my customers only know me as a web host or the owner of Truly Texan, a juried directory of Texas companies and artisans. But my real expertise is in designing (or tweaking) websites to improve their ranking in Google and other search engines.

It kills me when I find that a client has been paying some SEO company to do what I do, but they’re charging them 5 or 6 times what I charge. It’s not that I’m cheap. It’s that these other companies are overpriced and/or charging for things that look like work but do you little or no real good.

I mean, will you really read a 20 page report each month that shows where you rank for every phrase remotely related to your website, even if no one would ever search for that phrase?

I don’t generate reports. If you want reports, I can certainly charge you an extra $150/month to produce them, but it won’t get your site any higher in the results.

My philosophy is that your money- and my time- is best spent trying to get you to #1 (a never-ending goal) for those phrases most likely to be searched for by people who actually want your type of service or product.

With that in mind, here’s what I sent my customers yesterday to illustrate the quality of my work.

On Jan 29, searching in Google for:

Texas gifts - 4 of my clients are in top 7
Paris tours small groups – my client is #1
mesquite furniture – 2 of my clients are in top 3
wedding keepsake gifts – my client is in top 3
Texas gift baskets - my client is in top 10
Texas speech writer - my client is #1
gourmet cooking classes – my client is in top 10
gourmet kitchen tools – my client is in top 5
furniture restoration Texas – client is #1
closet design Houston – my client is in top 10
murphy beds San antonio – my client is #3
custom closets Austin – my client is #1
Austin wedding coordinator – my client is #2
custom fireplace tools – my client is #1
wildflower t-shirts – my client’s in top 5
custom mesquite bed – my clients are #1, #2, #8 and #10
custom children’s furniture – my client is #3
top Austin realtors – my client is #2
Austin interior designers – my client is #7

I could go on and on, but that should give you an idea. If you want to learn more, please visit my web design site for all the details and to sign up

Getting to #1 on Google

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:30:09 +0000

I get calls from companies wanting to improve my ranking and get me to “#1 on Google” and I always wonder – how did they find me if I rank so poorly. But I just say no thank you and hang up. My clients get the same sort of calls and many of them ask my opinion.

Here it is:
Getting to #1 is simple. Pay enough for sponsored links and you’ll be #1 – at least until someone outbids you.

But what if you aren’t independently wealthy or you don’t have an unlimited advertising budget and the experience to bid on the right terms? The next best thing is to work on being #1 in the “natural results” which are all the sites below the “sponsored links.”

How do you do that? The easiest way is to hire me because that’s what I’ve been doing for 12 years. But if you want to do it yourself, the first thing to do is look at who’s #1 now. Examine their website. Right-click on their home page and view the source code to see what they have for their meta description.

Look at their navigation structure. Is it text links? How many pages in their site versus yours? How do they link to those pages, i.e. do they have a page called “t-shirts” or do they have multiple pages for their different kinds of t-shirts? The more pages on your site, the more opportunities to rank well for various search phrases.

The competition for top place is fierce and never-ending. And some industries are infinitely harder to “crack” than others because there are tens of thousands of companies selling the same sort of product. And I never promise to get someone to the top because most of my clients can’t afford what it would cost to make that happen.

So, I recommend realism. If you sell t-shirts, don’t even try to be #1 for “t-shirts”. Try to be #1 for the type of t-shirts you sell, such as “rock band t-shirts” or “vintage football t-shirts” or “bluebonnet t-shirts” or whatever.

And keep in mind that getting to the top doesn’t mean you’ll get the click-through. That’s where the text on the page and/or your meta description come in. When someone sees your listing, is the description below it interesting and to the point? Will it help close the deal by getting them to click through to your site?

Be concise in your meta description. Do not be concise in your product description on the actual web page. Put important points about your product or service in bullets so– if you’re lucky–your visitor will read them.

But below the bullets, more fully describe the product or service, using complete sentences. You can rarely have too many words on a page. Your visitors won’t read them all, but search engines will read at least the first 200. So make those words important and relevant to the product or service you’re trying to sell.

Finally, if someone says they can get you to #1 for your company name, just say thanks, no and hang up. If you’re a current client and I designed your website or you’re on a site management plan with me, and you aren’t in the top 3 for your company name, I’ll give you a free hour of work (an $80 value) to correct the problem (assuming your company name isn’t something utterly generic like “Gift Baskets”. If you aren’t my client, call your webmaster (or me) and tell them to fix the problem. It will cost you some money, but it should be worth it. If someone knows your company name, the least you should expect of your website is that it’s found when they enter the name in a search.