Posts Tagged ‘Local SEO’

Writing SEO Optimized Blog Titles and Posts for Fun and Profit

Monday, August 6th, 2012

Making Great Blog Titles for SEO Requirements

Webmasters and copywriters are constantly facing one particular problem – how to create and publish content that is helpful for human users and at the same time complies with SEO requirements including optimized blog titles. No wonder that the majority of copywriters and web content creators hate SEO since often it hampers the process of content creating. Writing texts which are helpful for users is not enough these days. It is possible that you have the best blog or site in a particular niche; however, it makes no sense unless it gets traffic. In other words, in compliance with SEO rules will bury any site, keeping it out of Google 100 (as known, to get a sufficient amount of traffic it is important to rank in TOP-20). And Great Blog Titles are a overlooked and easy way to improve Google ranking performance. A great resource for more information about optimizing blog titles is here

SEO and Good Blog Content Are a Match Made In Heaven

SEO rules concern any blog posts and their parts, including titles. Yes, by writing non-optimized titles in terms of SEO, copywriters may decrease website’s chances of getting high search engine rankings. A title is an extremely important part of a blog post. Firstly, it grabs attention of potential visitors and customers and well as plays a great SEO role. Search engines use titles and keywords contained in titles to rank sites. Besides, a site title is what you see in search engines results.

Although a title is the shortest part of a blog post, it is imperative to follow certain title writing rules and norms. As already said above, a title has a dual role, i.e. helps both visitors and search engines. Listed below are 5 hot tips on how to write SEO optimized blog titles.

1. Write short blog titles.

Of course, we do not mean 1-2 words here. The best title length is about 60-70 characters. Writing longer titles is not recommended for two reasons. Firstly, search engines like Google cut down longer titles anyway. Secondly, long titles are more difficult to read for visitors. Thus, a long title is ineffective both in terms of SEO and readability. Just check the number of characters before posting the text. Of course, sometimes it is difficult to create a short and catchy title, so, think of the ways to convey the key idea with several words.

2. Identify your keywords for Google.

Perhaps, all experts would agree that using primary keywords in titles is a must. So, make sure you have primary keywords in the title. Moreover, it is recommended to use them at the beginning of the title or in the middle to help search engines index the new webpage and give Google a clue on what primary keywords for the webpage are. For instance, if you have a title consisting of 6 words, make sure the first ones are your keywords. Of course, it is imperative to avoid keyword stuffing since this will not only negatively affect readability of the title, but also may cause sanctions from Google (which are crazy these days, especially after Panda and Penguin). You are probably well-acquainted with these recent updates. Make sure to use relevant keywords!

3. Write descriptive and “catchy” titles.

Well, forget about SEO for a while and focus on creating quality content for website visitors. Blog titles should be informative and descriptive. In other words, having read the title, visitors should have an idea on what the blog post is all about. A title should grab attention and be compelling to read on. At the same time, do not fool your readers. Yes, you may write a title that will look like a newspaper screamer, i.e. truly sensational. However, when visitors find out that the blog post itself does not contain promised info or tips, they will hardly return to our blog.

4. Write original titles (No Cheating… Google will know!).

This may sound obvious for lots of webmasters and copywriters; however, duplicate content is a common problem. Make sure you create unique titles for each blog post. Sure, sometimes, involuntarily, we create duplicate contents. At the same time, it is possible to use online plagiarism detection tools to make sure the content is 100% original. As known, search engines may penalize sites for posting duplicate contents. Falling into Google’s disgrace might take a few minutes, while even experienced webmasters may need months to get the site back to top 10. So, be particularly careful with uniqueness of titles, since such mistakes can be too costly.

5. Writing for search engines is writing for people (No duh!).

Perhaps, you have met bloggers who claim they write for people, not search engines. However, it should be said that writing for search engines is writing for people since if you comply with the above mentioned rules. There is nothing wrong in creating short, catchy titles that contain targeted keywords. Why not take advantage of own or somebody else’s SEO experience and write titles that your visitors and search engines will like. You may like it or not, but we all play by these Google Panda rules. The aim of all search engines is to deliver helpful and relevant search results.

More Resources:

Want to learn more? Need help with your blogs? We can assist you!

Tags: blog, Google Optimized Websites, Local SEO, search engine optimization, SEO, SEO optimization
Posted in Local SEO, SEO, Website Copywriting | 25 Comments »

Top 5 Reasons Why Proprietary Websites are Bad News for You

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Proprietary Websites

Proprietary websites are everywhere; they offer cheap website designs and often, cheap hosting as well. However, there are free or open source options that provide much better benefits. There are a multitude of issues that come with this type of website platform – our top 5 are below:

Limited Design & Branding Options
No Ownership or Flexibility
No SEO Options
No Search Engine Respect
No Support

1. Limited Design & Branding Options

You are limited to the color palates, lay out templates, and widgets that they have available.

There are thousands of websites out there – and probably hundreds of businesses that do something similar to yours. So how do you stand out? Being online is important – including social media (but we’ve gone over that before); however, it doesn’t help to distinguish yourself when your website looks like everyone else’s. Your business is unique in some way, shape or form – show that to your clients!

2. No Ownership or Flexibility

You do not own your proprietary website – the creator does. If you want to move your site or use a different designer, you have to start from scratch. This is frustrating and costly as the services you have already paid for basically disappear and are wasted. You cannot take it with you when you leave – and if something happens to the business that created your proprietary website – you lose everything.

3. No SEO Options

Most websites are being created so people (clients or customers) can find them and buy the service or product you sell. The way a website is found by most people is through searching. We enter keywords or terms we think apply to our topic and a list of relevant websites is returned to us. These keywords or terms are coded into the back end of every webpage. Without them, your website can only be found by someone who has the exact address – so they already know you and your website.

These proprietary websites often have no way for you to set up your SEO (search engine optimization), which means no one will find your website unless you tell them how to get there. No searches will return your company and your website is pretty much useless for bringing in new clients.

4. No Search Engine Respect

If, by some miracle, your proprietary website has a special upgrade or ‘pro plan’ that will give you SEO options (for a price), you need to know one last thing: Search Engines can tell who built your website, and they don’t love proprietary site builders. If your search engine doesn’t respect your website, you are not likely to end up at the top of your target client’s search results; which means unhappiness for your business rather than increased sales and a bright new outlook on the future growth of your company and cash flow.

5. No Support

Let’s face it – things go wrong- and when they do, a great portion of our satisfaction with a service is the ability of the offender to make it right again. Most of these proprietary websites have clunky forms, round-a-bout ways to contact them, or no human response whatsoever. When your company reputation or your personal one depends on how you respond, you need to know that you have fast, reliable support available. This is usually not the case with a proprietary website – if you can find a way to contact them, they are not usually very efficient and an emergency on your part does not an emergency on their part make.

Our Recommendations

We have been designing and developing websites for many years – and we have learned that open source platforms are the most user-friendly, wholly owned, SEO ready, massively supported and unique option for websites today.

Platforms like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal make creating a customized, branded experience for your customers a simple, straight forward, and effective process for your business.

Call us today at 775-322-3663 to learn more about how Integris Marketing can help your website work for you!

Tags: Branding, content management system, Design, Hosting, internet marketing, Local SEO, Marketing, Reno SEO, Reno SEO Expert, Reno Social Media, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engines, SEO, SEO optimization, Social Media, web design, WordPress
Posted in Local SEO, SEO, web design, Website Copywriting, Website Design, WordPress | 23 Comments »

Is In-bound Linking Necessary?

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

Inbound linking or backlinks alert search engines to the popularity of your website or blog post. The more popular your site (more inbound links), the higher your ranking on search engine results pages.

Not All Links are Equal

There are many websites out there and whom you link from can affect the way a search engine looks at you and your content. Make sure you are being linked through websites that will help, not harm, your reputation (and your ranking).

Beneficial Links

High quality links are beneficial for any website. They link from relevant content on one website to relevant content on your website. The more often this sort of endorsement happens from trusted sites to yours, the better your websites rank.

Harmful Links

Harmful linking happens when irrelevant or “spammy” websites are linking to your relevant non-spammy website. These links can cause search engines to lower your ranking as a sort of “guilt by association”. This is partially to keep link spammers away from well meaning searches for real content. It is also why when you set up outbound links on your site that you keep them to relevant websites – otherwise, you are hurting that sites ranking – which they won’t take kindly.

Getting the Right Links

Getting the right links can increase traffic to your website (sometimes in a major way), which can increase sales or exposure and awareness at the least. If you aren’t link savvy, don’t worry, we can help!

We can train you to build your own relevant, high-quality inbound links, if you want to do it yourself, or we can build the links for you (we know you have lots going on). All our services are customized to your business needs and resources – we will work within your budget, too.

We also have some free tools to help you get started! We are available by phone as well at 775-322-3663.

Tags: blog, internet marketing, Local SEO, Reno SEO, Reno SEO Expert, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engines, SEO, SEO optimization
Posted in SEO | 26 Comments »

Social Media – In or Out?

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

You have probably heard before, how important it is to brand your company and build authority through social media. However, some businesses are not ready or able to commit the kind of time and personnel it takes to manage a full-force online marketing campaign for their brand. There are also some barriers to internally managing these platforms; according to Towers Watson research, the main factors which prevent organizations from being able to implement needed solutions are:

Limited Knowledge of Social Media
Lack of IT Support or Technical Capability
Limited Staff/Resources to Implement
Restrictions imposed by The Company’s Legal Department
Lack of CEO or Senior Management Support
Lack of Metrics to Measure Impact

This is where out sourcing can help your brand reach its online marketing goals. At Integris Marketing, we are external experts with expertise in managing social media for business purposes. We know how powerful these platforms can be, but we also know that they must be customized to work well for your brand.

Our extensive social media knowledge and technical experience will ensure that we are able to advise you on the platform that will work best for you and your brand. Our resources are very flexible, which allows us to reallocate resources to projects as needed. We start every project off by looking at the current data for your brand, then crafting a plan that we can implement with your full support.

Some of the areas of social media that we can assist you with, include: Blogging (enhances all website content and drives internet search traffic by improving SEO); Social Bookmarking and News (can also dramatically increase website traffic by improving SEO); Social Networking (i.e. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn); Visual and Audio Social Networking (i.e. YouTube, podcasts, and photo-sharing); or even Building your own Social Network. Any posts we create for your brand will be subject to your approval in order to avoid any issues with legality and to maintain the tone that makes your brand unique.

To get started with your brand’s social media presence using a data-driven professional process, call us at (775) 322-3663 or (800) 233-0239, or contact us with your inquiry.

Tags: Branding, http www youtube, internet marketing, Local SEO, Marketing, Reno, reno marketing, Reno SEO Expert, Reno Social Media, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Local SEO, Online Advertising In Reno, Online Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Update Your Website Frequently the Easy Way

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Relevance in Search Results

When you use a search engine, like Google, you are looking for the match to the keywords you type in that are most relevant. This means they may have a local aspect if you are searching for restaraunts or movie theatres, as well as a date. Most of the time when we search for something, we want the most up to date results. If we are asking about information on movie times, we want them in a chronological order – with the most recent events first.

The Google Algorithm

Google is not only aware of this need, but they have worked out several updates to their algorithm that will impact the results returned based on the data stored about the pages – including dates. So what does this mean and why do you care?

A Common Problem

Here at Integris Marketing, we have several inquiries each week about how to show up at the top of the search engine results page. There are several things that can help, but we found this blog from Entrepreneur.com that covers an online strategy which we often promote ourselves as a continuing solution for keeping your website up to date and in the recent search engine results – a blog.

The Solution

Having a blog ensures that your website will be considered ‘updated’ each time you create and publish a post. This won’t solve all your problems, because it is important to have highly searched and relevant keywords set up in the meta fields for each of your website pages, but that is simple SEO and is fairly static. The solution with blogs is that Google will notice that you are updating and posting new information on your site, and as the blog describes, those that are not posting new content on their website will be left off the search engine results pages more and more in the future.

Additional Benefits of Blogging

This will not only give you the benefits of updating your website each time you post something, but it can also increase the engagement of your audience. You want to gain more customers, but with a good blog you can also build brand loyal customers, who trust you for pertinent information. Blogging can be easy and is often free, depending on the platform you use, so don’t delay – start your blog today!

If you would like customized help with setting up a blog and even finding content for your blog, please contact us today at 775.322.3663 or toll free at 1.800.233.0239!

LINK: http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220662 blog post about increased need for blogs on websites in order to be found by search engines

Tags: blog, internet marketing, Local SEO, reno marketing, Reno SEO, Reno SEO Expert, Reno Social Media, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO, SEO optimization, WordPress
Posted in In-Bound Links, Online Marketing, Social Media, Website Copywriting, WordPress | 22 Comments »

In-Bound Link Building Tips to Help Local (Reno) SEO

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

The Basics for In-Bound Link-Building

Easy enough. It just takes time & planning to manage your approach.

In-Bound Link Building is Important for SEO Success. Whether Your Business is Local (Reno), Regional or International, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing use this seemingly simple search engine ranking parameter as an indication your website’s relative popularity. This in turn influences the search engines decision in rating your relevance for search queries and ultimately affects your search engine ranking or opportunities for first page display.

In-Bound Link Bottom Line: If you don’t have inbound links and your competitors do, then to put it bluntly, you will not rank as well as them. (Want to learn about the top Search Engine Ranking Factors… t hen go here >)

Here Are 2 Things To NOT Do For Building In-Bound Links

It all makes sense if you think about it or understand the industry and the sophistication of Search Engine ranking algorhythms (Here is a link to an older March 2007 article but the thrust is a solid foundational concept for this).

It really boils down to 2 things of what not to do for inbound link building:

Don’t Use Link Farms (See This Wikipedia Page for more information about Link Farms). According to Google, “a site that participates in a link farm may have its search rankings penalized”, and “Links from related sites carry more weight than those from irrelevant sites”.
Try not to use Off-Topic Links (Relevant On-Topic Links build credibility in the eyes of Search Engines… And yes, they do know.)

Six Basic Strategies for In-Bound Link Building

Anyone and everyone with a website should make some effort to include these 6 Link Building strategies if you are serious about top performance for Search Engine Ranking.

Make More Content! – Search Engines need content in order to deliver relevant and current results to search queries. Better results from search engines mean more people will use them. This in turn makes them a better platform for advertising dollars (This is America after all). The bottom line is search engines need the new content just as much as you need to generate it, distribute it and have it link back to you. The solution is to write articles, publish them online (on a relevant blog site or an ezine or article website – There are tons of them out there such as articlebase.com).
Social Media – Serious about in-bound links? Then get serious about social media. There are lots of ways to leverage this. If you don’t know how, take a class, talk to some social media guru, or just dive in. Be conscious of the appropriate linking patterns and partners out there and be careful you don’t spend too much time doing this. It can be a real time sink. Think of it as something to adopt over time and that you will keep up with. It is better to do a little dribble consistently then do a lot and then burn out and drop off the map… especially as far as Search Engines are concerned.
Relevant Online Directories – Online Directories are a great place for links. That’s what they are for… listing websites. Some are free and some are pay. Do what you can to get in them and have a budget (time and $$$) that makes sense for you. Here are the biggies: DMOZ (can take a while to get listed), Yahoo (Expensive). Some other well known online directories include: Business.com, BestOfTheWeb.com, GoGuides.com and MassiveLinks.com. There are many others that have narrow niche appeal. The best approach is to identify the best ranked ones and then submit your listing to them. Rinse and repeat.
Online Video – First a quick question… Do you know what the worlds second most used search engine is? If you guessed YouTube you guessed right. So Videos can get you inbound links, visibility and some brand or service awareness. If you get it right it can even go “viral”! There are tons of video sites out there (YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo to name a few). If you do video then distribute them to different sources and watch and compare results and see which ones work best for you. And be sure to have some fun along the way. (Note: Professional Video production can be quite costly. You need to balance quality and budget to get the most bang for your video buck. And don’t forget, there is always the webcam on your local computer approach if you are on a shoestring.)
Online Classifieds – Yep, this often overlooked little gem will get you inbound links. Think CraigsList.org or any of the other online classifieds (some are free and some are pay). And who knows.. besides the link you get, maybe someone will buy what you are selling!
Online Press Releases – Huh? That’s right.. you can distribute your own online press releases. (But I recommend hitting your local news outlets first so they can get the “scoop” before it hits the big ol’ web. It’s a professional courtesy thing.) This is a great way to get in-bound links. You can use the paid versions such as as PRweb.com or go for the free ones such as PRlog.com. As with all things online there are lots of options so be sure to compare apples to apples when it comes to getting your press release sent out online.

Hope that helps! This is the basic approach that we offer clients as starting points for their in-bound link building campaign. And if you want to share a reciprocal link with us, just send us a note or give us a call, and we will see what we can do!

Tags: classified advertising, google search, inbound link, internet marketing, internet search engines, link building, link farm, Local SEO, Marketing, Reno, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engines, SEO, web search engine
Posted in In-Bound Links, Local SEO, Online Marketing, PR, Reno Marketing Meanderings, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized, Website Copywriting | 24 Comments »

WordPress Blog Design-Help Your Reno (Local) SEO

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

Hey Reno Businesses… Want a Cool WordPress Blog Design?

Who doesn’t… but what you need to know is that having a “cool blog design” is no longer enough.

An Optimized WordPress Blog Design needs to capture visitors, show value, sell products or services, capture leads and keep up with the latest web technologies.

In the old days of the web… having a website… any website, whether a traditional static website filled with words, or a site of pretty pictures or even Flash animations was enough. It had the “wow” factor… All just because you had the site.

No more… Websites have become a very sophisticated platforms that are an important part of the promotional and marketing effort. The artifacts of yesteryear, such as the notoriously expensive, sales-rep hyped, and ineffective Yellow Page Ads or other less-than-targeted marketing vehicles and publications are becoming increasingly less effective. This is especially true for businesses who are forward thinking in their promotional approach, or have more sophisticated audiences they need to communicate with.

What’s the solution? First let’s look at what a website needs to do and fast-forward to today’s website demands before we decide.

A website needs to be able to be found by people who are searching for your product or service (Think Search Engine Optimized or Local SEO)
Once they see your listing on Google (Hopefully first the page of Google or other search engine) it needs to be somewhat compelling in order for people to click on the link
The website needs to be inviting once they get there and give them relevant options for interaction, sales or sign-ups
Convey a sense of credibility and sophistication
Provide a comfortable experience that delivers value
Has ways for you to engage and track visitors

A tall order for any website no matter how big your budget is. Once you start considering the cost of website design, maintenance, updating and modification, content generation, software upgrades and you have the potential for a hornet’s nest of expense, complexity and less than optimal results.

Enter the Humble WordPress Blogging Platform

The coolest, least expensive, most powerful, and highly customizable blog design platform that any business could hope for.

WordPress levels the playing field of the World Wide Web. The technology that WordPress uses, used to cost 10’s of thousands of dollars. But thanks to the WordPress and the Open Source community that supports it, WordPress has made the old expensive web paradigm a thing of the past. The powerful technology that is built into WordPress is free! And the plug-ins that support it… they are free too or are offered at a very low or modest cost.

A well executed WordPress Blog Design is the answer for what small businesses need to succeed on the web whether the need is superior design, uber-optimized SEO, or super-charged local search engine optimization.

In short, a well executed and well designed WordPress Blog embodies what the internet was designed for… optimized search engine results through relevant content generation.

If you need more information about how a WordPress Blog Design can help your business, you can give us a call (775.322.3663). But watch out, we love WordPress, so don’t be surprised if we talk your ear off.

Tags: Blog Design, blog software, content management system, cool blog, Local SEO, Reno, Reno SEO, search engine, selling products, SEO, SEO optimization, web design, web technology, WordPress, wordpress blog, Wordpress blog design
Posted in Blog Design, Local SEO, SEO, Uncategorized, web design, WordPress | 3 Comments »