Eyeflow Internet Marketing

Protecting Your Site From Google Updates

Prudence Shank — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:57:37 +0000

As you may know, Google is constantly making updates to its search algorithm. In fact, these updates occur many times each month, but they don’t typically affect a large number of searches. When they do release an update that is going to affect a lot of searches – typically 5% or more – they give the update a name. The most recent update called “Penguin” was rolled out on April 24th.
Here is a list of the main things this update is for:

1. Aggressive exact-match keyword usage in links.

A common misconception in the SEO industry is that you should only optimize your site for a small number of highly searched keywords. This couldn’t be further from the truth and this update fights against that exact technique. Google looks favorably on sites that have a diverse link profile with many different keyword phrases. This is why your SEO campaign should optimize your site for a wide variety of keyword phrases rather than just a few.

2. Low-quality link spam.

Most low-cost SEO firms build many links using software, paying for links or by placing links in blog comments on irrelevant websites. The reason they do this is it that these techniques typically get quick results that don’t cost much. The truth is the results don’t last long and clients end up back to where they started or worse. This is why you should only build links to your site from relevant pages within your industry. You nor your SEO company should never pay for a link as this is against Google’s guidelines. You should only link from and to websites where the link relationship makes sense.

3. Aggressive on-page keyword usage

The Penguin update is also going t affect people who over-optimize for specific keyword phrases. Your wording should look and feel natural and you shouldn’t repeat the same words or phrases over and over again. Keywords should be present in Title Tags, H1 Tags and content, but not excessively. If you aren’t sure, have a neutral third party read your page. If they think it sounds funny or repetitive, you’ve probably been too aggressive.

Have you been hit by this update?

If you believe your site may have been hit by this update please contact us today about our Penguin SEO Report. Where we analyze your website for 15 factors that could cause your site to be penalized.

Learn More About the Penguin Update

Understanding Pay Per Click Advertising

Prudence Shank — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:52:26 +0000

Understanding how Pay Per Click advertising works and how to put it to effective use for your company, can mean a huge difference to your bottom line. If someone is at a search engine such as Google, and they type a search keyword or phrase into the search box, pages come up for them to browse. However, on the far right of those search results are the paid search ads. Such ads are also found on just about every website in existence.

The key to the success of such a campaign rests, of course, in your keyword and phrase selection, so your PPC ad pops up in places where, hopefully, your potential customers are. After you have your selection of words and/or phrases, you then bid an amount of money you will pay to secure that word or phrase. How high up in a search you rank depends on the amount of money you are willing to spend per click. The more you are willing to pay for that keyword, the more exposure you are likely to get.

Perhaps the most common mistake made by businesses is that they tend to try and bid too high for a particular word and end up in some manner of destructive bidding contest with their competitors. Pay attention to what you have budgeted for your Pay Per Click campaign so you do not overspend. It is easy to do.

Another common pitfall that causes a low ROI with Pay Per Click advertising, is when potential customers are sent to the company’s home page. People are not going to hunt around your home page looking for what they came for. They will simply leave. Create a dedicated page for them to land on and make sure that what you offered in the ad is right there in front of them. If you don’t make it easy for them to buy, your competition surely will.

There is much more to consider when creating a Pay Per Click ad campaign, so do your homework and bring in an expert if you have to. Your bottom line may depend on it.

Successful Strategies for Search Engine Marketing

Prudence Shank — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:16:46 +0000

In the never-ending battle for market share in general, and new customers in particular, most businesses are venturing out into social media marketing as a way to not only attract new customers, but to effectively target those people who are interested in what you are selling.

When putting together a social media marketing campaign, it is critical to, not only understand the medium, but to understand what motivates potential customers to take action. Yes, what you have to sell is critical to you but you have to make it critical to your customer, also.

Content is Still King

The never-ending cliché that “content is king” is never more true than it is out in the social media world. People are reading and clicking more than ever before, but quality content continues to be in short supply. An effective and highly successful social media marketing campaign absolutely lives or dies by the quality of its content.

Avoid Spam

Another key is to avoid spam. It annoys people who have no interest in what you’re selling and, more importantly, you are wasting effort and resources throwing your message away on people who will never buy what you are selling.

How Often to Post?

How often you should post has also become a major consideration in any sustained social media marketing campaign. Recent market research has revealed that those companies that post on a daily basis have higher traffic counts coming through to their sites than those who post less frequently. The current standard for daily posts seems to be in the three-to-five-times range, especially on Facebook. Your potential target customers are logging on at all times of the day and if you just posted one thing in the morning, the night owls are likely to miss it or ignore it. Stay fresh and keep it coming.

It’s not About You

Avoid your ego. No one really cares about you. They only care about how you are going to solve a problem they have, or how your product or service is going to make them feel good. So, tell them how your product or service will improve their lives and watch your traffic jump.

A social media marketing campaign takes great planning and great effort. Budget the staff or outsource to an expert firm but remember that the customers are there; you just have to make them care and make them click.

The Growth of Internet Marketing

Prudence Shank — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:52:08 +0000

Fifteen years ago, advertisers were still scratching their heads regarding how to harness the power of the internet to introduce new customers to products and to drive traffic to websites. Fast-forward to today, and targeted social media marketing, and internet marketing SEO techniques, are absolutely essential to the longevity of a company and the ability of a brand to gain widespread consumer recognition. Through the use of targeted ads, key-wording, meta-tagging, and other SEO techniques, it is now possible, more than ever before, to put a product or brand directly in the visual path of potential consumers, multiple times per day.

Pay per click services can also be a cost effective way for a company to reach a wider client base. By placing highly specific ads in front of those consumers who are actively searching for the products or services the company provides, the chance that traffic to a company’s site will increase, grows exponentially. As consumers click on the targeted advertisements, the company pays a minimal fee for the click. This fee is easily recouped when the consumer ultimately purchases something from the company. Though, internet advertising practices continue to expand and change, one thing remains very clear: the internet is an incredible advertising tool, and its ability to reach new consumers is endless.

Google Bans 800,000 AdWords Advertisers

Prudence Shank — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:34:11 +0000

Google announced in a March 2012 video that it had closed the accounts of approximately 800,000 advertisers in 2011. It also reported that more than 130 million advertisements were removed from its AdWords system. Google took these measures as part of its ongoing campaign to eliminate ads for spyware, scams and illegal products.

The top search engine recently adopted a stricter approach to illegal advertisements. Rather than simply deleting individual ads, Google bans advertisers when they violate the advertising rules. This policy ensures that violators cannot easily resubmit such ads with different words or other minor changes.Google uses a variety of methods to identify problematic ads. It runs computer software that automatically detects suspicious promotions. An employee inspects the advertisements before taking action. It also manually screens new ads for policy violations. The company allows Internet users to report questionable advertisements as well.

Google suspends some illegal ads before they appear in its sponsored search results. Others survive the initial approval process, but they are removed after further scrutiny. Some advertisers complain of inexplicable account suspensions. When so many accounts are deleted in a single year, it stands to reason that a few mistakes may occur.

Banning Advertisers An Ongoing Process

This is not the first time Google has deleted large numbers of advertiser accounts. It canceled about 30,000 accounts in December 2010, according to The Register. Although this caused Google to lose one out of every 20 advertisers, it did not appear to harm the company’s profitability. The deletion rate more than doubled in 2011.

Google appears to have a variety of reasons for cracking down on these advertisers. If people begin to associate Google’s ads with scams and spyware, they will be less likely to look at the advertisements or click on them. Such ads also harm Google’s image and the reputations of other websites that display the ads.

Google may be concerned about government fines as well. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2011 that the top search engine was fined for showing illegal ads from Internet pharmacies in Canada. These companies broke the law by selling prescription medications to Americans. The U.S. government accused Google of knowingly accepting the ads.

With an average of 91 advertisers losing their accounts every hour, AdWords users need to carefully consider the types of advertisements that they submit to Google. Third-party software and affiliate programs should be thoroughly screened for viruses, deceptive language and illegal activities.

Watch the video

Grow Your Sales with Pay Per Click

Prudence Shank — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:09:21 +0000

A pay per click (PPC) marketing campaign is one way to drive traffic to your online business and increase revenue. Making money with an online business requires an effective marketing strategy. The competition is fierce and placing free classified ads online isn’t always enough to increase website traffic. Growing a successful online business requires multiple marketing strategies, and you might have to invest in advertisement. Pay per click marketing is a key and cost-effective way to reach a broad audience and maximize your sales.

PPC is a simple marketing program in which you pay an agency each time someone clicks on your website ad. Investing in a pay per click program helps push your website to the first pages of the search engines and increases your global presence on the web. Imagine ranking higher on the search engines or perhaps showing up as #1 on Google search results. A greater presence can significantly increase your website traffic. And as more people learn about your product or service, your business sales are likely to increase.

PPC campaigns are based on your marketing budget. You determine how much you want to spend, and the marketing agency will run your ads until you’ve exhausted your budget. You don’t have to worry about overspending or getting hit with a large advertising bill.

Creating a Custom 404 Error Page

Prudence Shank — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:42:30 +0000

Whenever a web server is unable to locate a requested page, it returns a 404 error. These errors are often caused by users who input wrong addresses, but a site redesign can also result in a lot of incoming links that point to nonexistent pages. A visitor who arrives at a 404 page is highly likely to bounce, or immediately leave the website, because default error pages cause users to disengage from the content. That means a custom 404 page can be a perfect opportunity to reengage a portion of the readership, which can pull those valuable users back into the content of a site. Default 404 pages have changed very little over the years. Web servers provide bare bones 404 pages, and some browsers also include default error pages that are a little more helpful. These error pages are just designed to convey basic information, which means they do an extremely poor job of retaining users. Over the years, most people have become accustomed to simply closing their browser windows whenever a 404 error shows up.

Make a User Friendly 404 Page

It’s a common misconception that 404 pages actually have to contain the number 404. Error codes are useful to administrators, but strings of incomprehensible numbers aren’t helpful to actual users. Instead of plastering an enormous 404 code across the screen, a friendlier error page should convey that same information in everyday language.

Another way to make a 404 page more user friendly is to remove any kind of reporting feature. That type of reporting can be automated, and forcing users to manually report broken links is an example of lazy design. Instead of presenting users with a search box and report form, an effective 404 page needs to reengage them with the site content.

The best way for a 404 page to retain readers is to integrate it with the rest of the site design. This type of 404 page should have a similar look and feel to the rest of the site, so it needs to include all of the typical navigation features. Instead of providing the user with an incomprehensible error message and a search box, a 404 page can also provide a list of related content, recently updated pages, or other popular items.

Customize Your 404 for Your Audience

There are a lot of different ways to handle a customized 404 page, and the best method depends on the particular audience. Some businesses use their 404 pages to inject a little humor into corporate sites that are otherwise dry and lifeless. Since error pages can include images, rich media, and other types of content, customized 404 pages have very few limitations.

Optimizing On-Page Elements of a Website

Clint Horner — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:33:02 +0000

By optimizing on-page elements of a website, we provide the structure for a successful SEO campaign. Search engines do not see web pages as we do. They don’t see nicely formatted text and graphics, but instead they see only the source code. How this source code is formatted can have a significant effect on how highly a website will rank in search results.

URL Structure:
A website’s URL structure should be kept as simple as possible. The website’s content should be organized so that URLs are constructed logically. URLs should be kept short and when possible, should include keywords. Keyword phrases in URLs should be separated with hyphens.

Titles:
One of the most important elements for keyword placement is the tag. The title of each page on a website should be unique and descriptive of the information found on the page. Keywords or phrases should be included within the first few words of the title and the title should ideally be around 60-70 characters in length. Meta Descriptions: Meta Descriptions are an important place to include keywords because of the ‘bolding’ that shows up in search results. Search engines match a user’s search query to corresponding words in a meta description, and this can indicate to searchers which sites are the best match for what they need. Keywords in the meta descriptions can therefore increase click through to a website when a page shows in a search engine’s search results for a particular keyword query. Canonical Tags: A canonical tag allows you to tell search engines which version of a URL is the preferred when you have multiple pages displaying very similar content. The most common use for this tag is when you have a page where you’re listing products. You may allow your users to sort those products by date or price and from a search engine’s point of view those are two different pages even though it’s the same content just ordered differently. By using the canonical tag you can consolidate your efforts into one page rather than diluting it across 2 or more. Headers (H1/H2/H3): Header tags are used to break up content on a webpage and provide an outline for both readers and search engines. Search engines read heading tags top to bottom and left to right. Headers should be organized in a hierarchy with the H1 appearing above the content. This H1 should be relevant to the content on the page. The H2/H3 tags can follow with keywords related to the H1. Body Text: Having unique and intriguing content is a very important part of SEO efforts. The first sentence in the body text and the first words in each sentence are the most important. We can also use bold and italics to raise the importance of keywords in the text. Keep in mind that overusing keywords can cause search engines to penalize your site. Keywords should appear 2 to 3 times on short pages, and 4 to 6 on longer ones. It is also good practice to use different variations of the keyword or phrase. Images: Every image should have an Alt Tag. An Alt Tag is where we describe an image so that search engines can understand what the image is. They can’t “see” the picture like you and I do, they can only “read” the Alt Tag. Without the Alt Tag, search engines would not be able to determine how an image is relevant. We also suggest including keywords in the filename of the image, as well. XML Sitemap: An XML Sitemap is a list of the pages on a website that are accessible to crawlers and users. An XML Sitemap should be submitted to the major search engines to give them an outline of your websites hierarchy. We want to be sure that this sitemap is constantly being called up to the search engines. </article> <article> <h1>Eyeflow CEO Speaks at Vegas Conference</h1> Amber — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:55:00 +0000 Eyeflow is spreading the word about SEO best practices for 2012 all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada. Phil Laboon, Eyeflow’s CEO, presented last weekend at Guardian Protection’s 2012 Dealer Convention. This convention gives Guardian dealers the opportunity to get helpful business tips from Guardian leaders and partners like us. Friday morning March 30th, Phil Laboon gave a rundown of some of the latest changes in the SEO industry as well as specific strategies they could implement to improve their own online performance. These topics generated a lot of questions from the audience which Phil answered in great detail. Educating others about proper SEO techniques is important to us because we know there’s a lot of scam artists out there who give SEO a bad name. We’ve been in the business since 2001 and have helped hundreds of websites perform better in search engines. We even built our own business using the same methods we perform on our clients websites. We know if you do things the right way the results you’ll get from SEO can be unbelievable. If you would like to <a href="http://www.eyeflow.com/learn/">learn more about SEO</a>, but can’t make a trip out to Vegas, make sure to stay tuned for information concerning upcoming Pittsburgh SEO Group meetings. Have a specific topic you would like covered? Let us know! </article> <article> <h1>Utilizing Mobile Social Networks for Local Marketing</h1> Prudence Shank — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:12:37 +0000 Mobile social networks such as Yelp and Foursquare can be powerful <a href="http://www.eyeflow.com/services/social-media/http://" target="_blank">social media marketing</a> tools for small businesses. If you are a retailer or restaurant owner, Yelp can be an especially powerful tool. Business owners can set up a business account at no cost that will give you access to reviews, let you answer questions about your business, track the number of Yelp users that view your business page and announce special promotions. Foursquare is a great place for <a href="http://www.eyeflow.com/services/local-marketing/" target="_blank">local marketing</a> opportunities, where you advertise promotions to customers who are actually in the vicinity of your business. You can also upload photos, your business website URL and other personal information to personalize the small business site. It’s a great idea to ask customers, friends and family to visit the site and write reviews. Encourage reviews with promotions or discounts to grow the site. And be sure to read the reviews. Listen to the observations for ideas on how to grow and improve your business. These interactions are a great means of getting to know your customers and finding out what they really think. </article> </main></body></html>