Proper search engine optimization (SEO) is a key aspect of every web marketing strategy (or it should be) but many times optimizing a website is seen as an afterthought to design when a company is trying to revamp its website. When it comes to designing a website that will be optimized from the get-go, it is essential that your company’s marketing team be involved from conceptualization straight through to launch. Why is this? Well that’s where we come to of  part 1 our biggest website redesign mistake with regards to SEO.

Part 1: Leaving your website’s SEO until the website is already designed.

For some reason, a lot of people seem to believe that SEO is a process that should begin once a website is already up and running, when this is in fact that opposite of what should really be taking place. Would you go on a trip before you pack? Would you wait until you were sunburnt before applying sunscreen? Well, maybe you would, but I think we can both agree it would be a poor decision. The same goes for trying to implement SEO once your website has alrady been designed and built.

When your SEO is done properly, it helps you to determine the type of content that should be present on your site to help it rank well in search engines from the time it launches onwards, and, realistically, you shouldn’t be designing a website if you don’t know what content will be on it, right? Now, we’re not saying that you should design your website specifically around the keywords you’ve determined it will be easier to rank for during keyword research. What we’re saying is that determining how  your customers find you and what they are looking for on websites in your industry is an important step in determining what content will be present on your website, and, depending on what kind of content your site needs to appeal to your target audience, your design will probably change to reflect that. This might sound like a relatively straight forward idea, you might even think this is a no-brainer, but you have no idea how many times we’ve seen companies come to us looking for some SEO consulting help, only for us to realize that they’ve built their entire website without once taking SEO into consideration. They have essentially built their website on a weak foundation. In addition, there is always the danger that if your website designer has no experience with SEO, then they won’t have designed or built your site in such a way that you can implement optimization tactics successfully without paying them for further development.

Part 2: Having your design firm do your SEO for you.

In an ever diversifying web design market there are many design firms that have marketing consultants or even designers with a strong SEO background on their teams who can successfully implement your SEO strategy. What I mean by this isn't that a design firm can't implement an SEO strategy for you, Marqui for instance designs and builds sites, but we also have a full consulting team to ensure that your website is SEO ready from the beginning, and we can even do your SEO continually for you if that’s what you want. What I'm saying is that since your SEO should be an ongoing process, it's important that it doesn't end with your site being launched. Whether your website design team has the experience or not, having them implement your SEO for you is only the beginning and it’s important that your internal web team knows that, which is one of the main reasons we suggest having marketing involved from the start of your redesign project.


Image by Freek Van Den Bergh on Flickr

What is Google Caffeine?

Caffeine is Google’s new system for web indexing (see the announcement on Google’s Blog here). Google started testing Caffeine in August 2009, and the final product was finally released on June 8th, 2010 and is now being used for all Google searches. According to Google, Caffeine provides “50% fresher results for web searches than [their] previous index” and it is the largest collection of web content they have ever offered. Caffeine allows Google to update their search index much faster so that as new information is found, it is immediately updated within their index so that, “You can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.”

So How Does it Work?

Google’s old index consisted of multiple layers, some of which were updated faster than others (this updating could sometimes take a couple of weeks). This process meant that content wasn’t added to Google’s search index until a layer was updated, so there was a significant delay between content being published and the content actually appearing in the search results.

Caffeine on the other hand, analyzes the web in small portions continuously so that instead of having to refresh an entire layer, Google can just add new pages directly to the search index as they are published, which means that the published content will appear in Google’s search index faster than ever before.

Some Quick Facts About Caffeine According to Google:

• Every second Caffeine processes thousands of pages in parallel (if this were a pile of paper, it would grow three miles taller every second)
• The new Caffeine index takes up to 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database
• Caffeine adds hundreds of thousands of gigabytes of data per day

What Does Caffeine Mean for Your Search Engine Optimization?

No one can really say for sure what affects Caffeine will have on a website’s rankings since the new indexing system is still so new, but quite a few SEO experts are already coming out with their theories. While this new indexing system isn’t a change of Google's ranking algorithms (meaning that Caffeine won’t change how  Google ranks your page) it could, and most likely will, still have an effect on your site’s SEO. Updates and changes like this make it obvious that it is crucial to have an effective content management strategy and system in place. While we don't know the exact effects that Caffeine will have, using tools like a content management system  and having a good content creation and management infrastructure in place can help to mitigate the negative effects that could be caused by the new indexing system.

For now, the best way to see how Caffeine will affect your rankings is to test it and monitor how you perform in Google search results. If you want to do a comparison of how your site ranks in old Google and new Google you should try the site “Compare Google Caffeine” which provides the search results for both indexing systems and can give you an idea of how your site is affected.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is an enormous tragedy that is affecting millions and for British Petroleum (BP), the company responsible for the spill, it is a brand reputation disaster. While there are many ways that a company can protect their brand reputation and do some serious damage control, BP decided to take a surprising approach. They purchased all available keywords connected with the oil spill on search engines like Google, and Yahoo so that the first result  that appears in these search engines directs people looking for information to BP's official website. For instance, when someone searched a term like "gulf oil spill" the results came back looking something like this:

So what was BP's reasoning behind this? According to a spokesperson for the company, they purchased these terms in order to “make the information on the spill more accessible to the public.” 

Since implementing this strategy BP has come under some harsh criticism for their tactics, and many critics feel that their choice was unethical. Many search engine marketers are questioning whether trying to control what the public finds when they search for information on the oil spill is just a reputation damage control tactic, rather than a way to inform the public about the oil spill itself, especially since many non-technical web users may not realize the difference between paid listings and actual organic news results. 

As of this morning, the ads seem to have been taken down (see below). Does this mean that BP has decided they no longer want to “make the information on the spill more accessible” or are they merely crumbling under the pressure they are receiving for their questionable methods?

No matter what their reasons for buying the ads in the first place (or taking them down) it seems pretty obvious that their latest venture has done little or nothing to improve the public’s opinion of their brand. 

Personally, we think that BP should start taking the advice of their fake BP PR Twitter account which has already garnered over 100,000 followers.

If you'd like to read some articles on this subject we suggest you look at the resources below:

Fox News - BP Manipulating Search Results on Google, Critics Accuse 

ABC News - BP Buys 'Oil' Search Terms to Redirect Users to Official Company Website

By now, pretty much everyone who has a website knows that search engine optimization (SEO) is important. Search engines account for the majority of website traffic and using SEO properly can help you ensure a solid return on your website efforts. There are a lot of factors involved in creating a SEO strategy that can help your new website rank higher in search results.

So—where do you start?

Target your keywords.

The first step to any successful SEO strategy is to define the keywords which you want your website to rank for in search engines. Try to pick words based on relevance, traffic volume and achievability.  There are some great free tools to help you pick your keywords, we suggest you try Free Wordtracker, and Google Adwords because they are feature-rich and not to complicated for beginners. If you want to learn more about targeting keywords take a look at one of our webinars on SEO.

Okay, so now you’ve chosen your keywords, what are the next essential elements to your SEO?

• Title Tags. Title tags tell search engines what your webpage is about. It is important that your title tags are descriptive of your webpage, use your keywords and follow a consistent format.
• Headings. A heading is an H1, H2, or H3 tag which is placed within your website’s HTML and helps search engines: denote page structure, define which information on the page is most important, define what is in the content of each section on a page, and builds relevance for your keywords.

• Meta Descriptions. Meta descriptions set the blurb in the search engine results and act as a kind of “teaser” for your visitors. It’s best to keep the description to 155-160 characters and to put your keyword in and especially to make sure that it accurately describes the content of your page.

• Alt Tags. An alt tag tells a search engine what your pictures are about. This is helpful for SEO, and is important for the accessibility of your site. For your visitors with a disability, or those that use screen readers, alt tags are an essential way for them to interact with the content on your page. 
• Keyword Density. Keyword density is the number of times a keyword occurs on the a webpage in proportion with the other words on the page. This is an important step in your SEO strategy because it helps you build relevance around your keywords, it re-affirms that what you say in your headings and title tags is actually what your page content is about. In general, it's best to keep your keyword to about 2-7% of any given page’s content.

• Anchor text. Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink and it tells search engines what the next page is about. This is an important way to improve your clickthrough rates (informing a user about what’s on the next page encourages confidence for them to click).

We know it seems complicated, but SEO is an important way to ensure that your website redesign is successful. If you redesign your site, but don’t put any SEO tactics to work, it is unlikely that you’ll see much of ROI for your website and don't forget, one of the best ways to tell if your new SEO strategy is working, is to measure the results. Two free tools we recommend for this are Google Webmaster tools. If you want to learn more about how to measure the success of your SEO take a look at our post on “Getting Started with Web Analytics.”

We just finished this week's web marketing webinar on SEO and we received some great feedback and quite a few  questions. We were unable to get to all the questions during the course of the webinar so for those of you who didn't get your question answered, we've chosen the most frequently asked to answer below:

1. How long should your meta description be? A meta description should ideally be between 155-160 characters in length.
2. How does having a blog help with SEO? Blogging is a great way to aid your SEO efforts because it is based on frequently updated content. Blogging on a regular basis encourages inbound links and the large amount of relevant or niche content created means you're able to target more keywords at once.
3. If my H1, H2 and H3 tags are in the CSS style sheet are they still being picked up by search engines? The answer to that is yes, you can style your headings however you would like as long as the still appear in your website's HTML.
4. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing website elements in order to achieve higher rankings on major search engines. SEO provides an inexpensive long term solution for increased traffic to your website which can ultimately be converted to sales. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)  on the other hand, is broader than SEO. It includes SEO and other areas to improve a site's visibility in search engines' results pages, like paid listings and paid inclusions.
5. What role does social media play in SEO? Social media is an important way to promote inbound links to your site through content syndication.
   

If you want to see the whole webinar, you can view it in our resource section now.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the best opportunities that companies have to generate high quality leads for their sales teams. Unfortunately, many organizations are committing one (or many) of these common mistakes without even realizing it.

1. Not using keywords that are relevant to your target audience. Many marketers, when choosing keywords, make the mistake of optimizing their website based on keywords they think are important, and not looking at keywords from their customers’ perspective. Your website visitors are the ones searching for your site; make sure your website is optimized for the keywords they will be using.
2. Content isn’t reachable by search engines. Sometimes websites rank poorly because their content can’t be crawled by search engines. This often happens when websites focus on design elements, rather than website usability. For instance, we often find websites that use flash for navigation elements a method that search engines can't read, which makes it difficult for search engines to index elements and pages of  your website.
3. Not keeping your content fresh. Continually adding new content, gives both search engines, and potential customers a reason to return to your website. Having a business blog is a great way to do this. A company blog can help to ensure you are generating fresh content on a regular basis and can help with your long-tail SEO strategy as well. 
4. Making search engines happy before your customers. While it is important to have your relevant keywords prominent in the body copy of each page, don’t let your overall message suffer as a result. Having overly high keyword density (often called keyword stuffing) on your pages can make your copy seem mechanical and can discourage readers who are looking for interesting, compelling content. 
5. Not optimizing your content and anchor text with keywords. Remember, the way people find your site is by search for keywords and phrases that are relevant to them. You need to be sure you’re optimizing your website with title tags, headings, paragraph titles, body copy, anchor text for links and image alt text that have your keywords in them. 
6. Not monitoring popular content. Tracking the interactions that your visitors have with your content is a crucial aspect of a SEO-friendly content strategy because it can give you insight into which content is searched and found most frequently. When you use this information it can help you to adjust your optimization methods for the best results.
7. Using generic URLs. If you’re using a web content management system (WCMS), it should give you the capability to create SEO-friendly URLs that include the keywords which you’ve determined are relevant to your web page. If your WCMS is automatically generating URLs then you are missing out on a great SEO opportunity.
8. Ignoring meta tags. While meta tags may not hold the same relevance that they once did in the SEO industry, they are still an important aspect of your strategy because they inform web crawlers about the content of your web page.

If you want to learn more about how you can improve your current SEO strategies, attend our upcoming webinar, "The Marketer's Guide to SEO Success," on Thursday May 27th at 10:30 am Pacific. You can register for the webinar here.

We got some great feedback from our last search engine optimization (SEO) webinar, "Live Website Assessment" so we decided to present another webinar on SEO basics and bring Jeff Hall, one of our marketing consultants back to present again.

The webinar, "The Marketer's Guide to SEO Success" will be held on May 27th at 10:30 am Pacific / 1:30 pm Eastern and will cover:

• How to target the right keywords for your website
• What on-page SEO essentials will increase your search engine visibility
• Marqui's approach to quality link building
• How to measure the success of your SEO

Hopefully we'll see everyone who enjoyed our last webinar on this topic there, and anyone else who wants to hear us share our thoughts on the essentials of SEO.

You can register for the webinar here.