Linked Up Design

In earlier articles I pointed out that one of the most important points of SEO is time! SEO work is something that takes time to get results. Far too many times I received calls from people that are looking to get their rankings up to #1 in Google and they want it right now. So I explain that it takes time to build up a site to a point where it can do so and they either hang up or don’t return my email or they become a client.

I have found some recent articles that you could say support my opening statement and here they are:

http://www.ijpweb.com/100-ways-help-build-traffic/

http://www.wilsonweb.com/articles/checklist.htm

http://netvestor.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-underestimated-methods-of-quality.html

http://www.prlog.org/

The last one is more a gift to you. This is a site that is an account for press releases as well as a good backlink to your site.

Just remember that anyone that guarantees that you will be #1 on any of the search engines out there is really a fool. A good SEO will go over how things work with doing SEO work on your site, how they will submit your site to the strongest search engines, set you up with local directories as well as directories with in your business arena, create site maps both for your site and ones that Google, Yahoo and Bing can read as well as setting up your business in the Social Media Marketing tools that will work for you.

I read a great article this morning about Google Caffeine. When I first saw this I thought that Starbucks and Google got together and made up a new drink for us web designers that would make it so we did not need to sleep any more so we can spend more of our time designing and less time sleeping! Well I was wrong about that.

Google Caffeine is a new search engine network that Google is going to be launching after the first of the year. I would suggest that you read the article yourself for more information about what Google is doing.

A few key points that I saw in this article that is very important for all of us. First was the point about when Google got started in 1998. One of their key ideas was to make it easier for small and medium sized companies to be able to be found in the search engines. At that point, the bigger companies with what seems like a bottomless pit of money for advertising were basically able to buy their way to the top which is still the same today but Google set up their search engine to rank sites based on their keywords, description, title, content, hits, etc, etc! One thing that Google did that made it easier for the big business to be able to jack up their page ranking was with back links. The more back links, the higher the ranking of a site. So of course companies popped up that made programs to build up back links and so the big companies were able to take over the rankings again.

Well Google Caffeine is going to try and change this by going back to the basics and start to rank sites based on the basics as well as how easily sites load to the browsers and now the amount of social bookmarks a site has. Well what is a social bookmark, this is your links to social media sites like, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg, etc. Basically Google has seen the light with regards to the latest web trend, our social media market which really has taken off over the last few years. Hell, you are reading this blog, aren’t you and I have a crap load of links to my and my clients sites so the proof is in the pudding here.

Unfortunately this concept of Google will be short lived. Social Media Marketing is a hot trend and if you take a good look at the multinational companies, you will see more and more on their sites, print and TV advertising “Follow us on:“.  These companies will start to co-op the social media market which will then give them the edge in the market again within a year or so. You will also see that the social media big boys will really be able to capitalize on this trend which means bigger buck in their pockets and less for the little guys out there. At least for now, all is good and those who are catching up to this social media marketing gravy train will be able to make a few bucks!!

Well it has been a few weeks now since I finished my site and I am starting to see some results with regards to the SEO work that I did on it. One of the main things that I have been working on is pushing up the sites ranking in my local area. This is being done more as an experiment to see if the higher SEO score is really paying off with regards to search engine rankings.

Well here are the results:

Google:

• First Page when you keyword search SEO Rockaway NJ
• First Page when you keyword search Search Engine Optimization Rockaway NJ
• First Page when you keyword search Website Design Rockaway NJ but this one is different and will explain later

Yahoo:

• First Page when you keyword search SEO Rockaway NJ
• First Page when you keyword search Search Engine Optimization Rockaway NJ
• First Page when you keyword search Web Design Rockaway NJ

Bing:

• First Page when you keyword search SEO Rockaway NJ
• First Page when you keyword search Search Engine Optimization Rockaway NJ
• First Page when you keyword search Web Design Rockaway NJ

I first want to stress that I really don’t see a whole lot of website design companies in this area so this is not like competing in Manhattan but I would still say that these are good results considering that it has only been a few weeks. What are the likeliness that someone is going to type these keywords, I really don’t know considering the size of this area but when I start to see some real results I will let you know.

Second thing here is the use of directories and their effectiveness with SEO. In the section on Google above, I mentioned that I would explain this and here are the results. There was a page one ranking but this ranking was part of the directory for the area through Google. What was done was I went to Google and did a search for local directories which lead to Google’s Local Business Center. Using my Google account I was able to set up my business in a local directory hence giving it the ranking mentioned about. Why do this? Other then the obvious reason that it put me on the first page, first line so to speak, it is also creating back links for the site. This is something that I am going to spend some time working with in the future and will be writing about it more later. From there I have found several other directories that are free out there on the internet that I have signed up for and place my site on to as well as my clients.

Again, this is a work in progress. SEO work takes months to bit because of the sheer size of the internet and the real results will be how many clients I get from my site. I also do not want to limit myself to the town I live in so future work will be done on directories for the County and the State.

I found a great tool to work with when it come to doing successful SEO work for your clients. Go on to Google and do a search for “Google Analytics“  and sign up for this right away. You will have to add the code before </body> tag in order for this to work but once you do you will have an invaluable tool that you can use to keep track of your or your clients websites.

Here are the highlights;

• Keep track of the amount of hit day, week, month and how long on the site.
• It breaks down traffic source showing specifically where the hits are coming from whether from other links (specifically which links) or organic (search engines).
• It breaks down whether the hits are coming from the USA, Canada and the other areas of the world.
• Shows the keywords that are drawing people to the site.
• A break down of which pages on the site are being looked at other then your home page. This is great because it shows you which sites you might want to make in to landing pages.
• It also shows the percentage of first visits to the site.

If you are a real stats geek like I am, this tool is a god send to work with. It really shows what is and is not working with your SEO work as well as planning out adword campaigns that will really give you the hits that you are looking for. Probably the best feature to this is the fact that you export this data is several format making life much easier.

Added bonus to this is that Google Key words has a great new beta site that allows you to pug in a website address which then gives you a break down of not only your keywords but also the keywords that are similar to your that you are using. I did this with one of my clients sites today and I found that several of my keywords are doing well. One of them had over 5 million hits but there where some that are getting over 100 million hits a month. Of course I add these to my clients keywords meta tag today so we will see.

A thing to remember whether you are doing this for yourself or for your clients, have this information is great for future business. It is a sold way to show your future clients what your work is doing to improve the number hits. Good luck