The Maine SEO Blog

Mobile searches are becoming the norm, not the exception.  Optimizing for mobile as well as computer browsers is becoming a necessity, not a choice.  So what can you do to increase your mobile visibility?

1. Install Google Webmaster Tools. They’ll be able to tell you right off the bat whether or not your site can be accessed via smart phones.



2. Optimize for Local Search. Now that GPS is replacing the need to have physical map books, and most of us can no longer function without it (myself included), it’s crucial to be found.



3. Have easy-to-access contact information. Always include your contact information both on your site (in the footer is the cleanest place) and in your meta-description so that mobile searchers can click to either email or call you directly from the SERP!



4. Upload your videos to YouTube. Sometimes, smart phones have trouble indexing and loading large sites that don’t already have a specially equipped smart phone counterpart. By uploading a YouTube video, you guarantee that your site can be accessed via mobile devices; plus be found on YouTube!



5. Create an App. Apps are expensive to develop.  However, they get your name out there the second they’re created!

Nicki Hicks
I’m not craving pizza or anything

You’ll have to excuse me, I have a little Paula Cole stuck in my head…

I feel like I’m constantly talking about the art of keywords and keyword research, but never about where keywords should actually go.  So, put your keywords in the…

Page

• Title – put the best of the best here. Changing the title is the easiest way to increase your on-page search visibility.  It’s both at the top of the page (up near your maximize/minimize/close buttons) and the link to the page on the Search Engine Results.  Include your location if your business is local.
• Header – synonyms/alternative words used in the title – you really don’t want to use the term “cheap hotel” over and over on a page.  You could mix it up with “Affordable Inns” (if that’s what people are searching for, that is).
• Copy – duh. I can not emphasize enough that copy should both incorporate keywords, while also balancing your company’s tone and making the page informative.
• Navigation – make the links in the nav short, sweet, and keyword rich!
• Links – “Click here” really isn’t going to cut it. Incorporate keywords in the anchor text – as those words have a little more search power than regular words on the page.

Code

• Meta-description – or the “search engine description”.  It should be a good synopsis of the page, incorporating those keywords, as well as your location and contact information.
• Meta-keywords – Yahoo is the only one that pays attention to these, and it doesn’t hurt to use them.  Just be sure to keep it to 10 or 15 keywords and phrases, all specific to that particular page.
• Alt Tags - image descriptions can be a great way to acquire traffic from image searchers.

Web Marketing

• Blogging and Article Marketing – As every blogpost and article is a new page, it’s a great way to focus on a niche audience or a hot topic.  You can further optimize with categories and tags too.
• Video – Optimizing for video is becoming more important with universal search – YouTube offers great options for optimizing your videos.

Nicki Hicks
Maine SEO

Optimizing websites for search engines is a full time job.  (Lucky for me.)  But if you can’t hire someone to do SEO for you right now, have no worries!  There are things you could be doing yourself!

The secret?  Balance.  It’s all about the balance between pleasing your two types of visitors: search engines and humans.

Create a clean site with a good, intuitive site architecture.

Building your site on a Content Management System (CMS) is a sure fire way to do this.

The benefit for search engines: They can easily crawl the clean code CMSs create.
The benefit for people: CMS’s site architecture is intuitive and easy to navigate through.

Give everyone something great to read.

Write clean, crisp, and here’s the hard part – helpful – content; all the while giving each page a specific keyword focus.

For search engines: Using the right keywords in the right places helps search engines identify what your page is about, which in turn affects your rankings for those keywords.
For people: Your site’s content should help people – whether you’re helping them understand a topic (like how to optimize their website, for instance) or understand a product you’re selling.  They search to find an answer – you want to be the resource that provides the answer.

Acquire links.

There are a ton of link building strategies out there; you have to decide which way a) you’re comfortable with and b) matches your company’s value proposition.

For search engines: Links = trust. The more quality incoming links your site has, the more trust search engines have for your site.
For people: Coming to your website from linking site is just another way for you to acquire traffic.

Don’t neglect other Web marketing strategies.

I’m the first one to tell you about how important SEO is and that everyone should be doing it. BUT, doing SEO doesn’t mean forgetting about other strategies, like: email marketing, blogging, video and image optimization, and social media.

For search engines: Blogging  an have a huge impact on search engine visibility – as each blogpost is a new opportunity to rank at the search engines.  Likewise, social media is important as Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles can rank!  With the advent of universal search, videos (namely YouTube) and images are a huge opportunity as well.
For people: Email marketing is still a very popular Web marketing strategy – keeping your customers (potential AND current) in the know.  Blogging and social media provide a newer form of marketing – marketing not only your business, but yourself.

As always, I could suggest any number of strategies for any given business.  These are these general points to remember – using a balanced, cohesive strategy.

Nicki Hicks
It’s all a balancing act

Online trends are changing constantly, just look at the new Google Insights for Search to find that out.  What’s especially interesting about Insights is their “rising searches” element – showing you what the “hot” new searches are.

While performing a single keyword analysis and optimizing a site is great (and i obviously highly recommend doing it), it’s also important to constantly optimize your site.  SEO is an ongoing process.

Change for the sake of “hot” keywords

There is a “myth” in the SEO world that says copy which is constantly updated and changed will rank higher, simply because Google’s spiders have to crawl the site more often.  Whether this is true or not isn’t the point.  There is no reason to change copy just for the sake of change.  That being said, copy can and should be updated and molded over time to follow keyword trends.

For example, if I own a business where I breed and sell Labrador Retrievers, and today the hot keywords are for yellow labs and black labradors.  (NOTE: I have not done the research, and in fact, have no idea if people are searching for those words.)  But in a month or two, I find people are search for labrador retrievers, I might add the word “retriever(s)” into my title tags and copy a few more times.

The key, as always, is to make your changes naturally, without stuffing keywords.

Change for experiment’s sake

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: while we have an idea of what causes high rankings, we’ll never know for sure.  That’s why experimentation is helpful.

In my dog selling business, I might optimize something (say, my title tags) for my geographic location.  Then, a few months later, maybe I’ll optimize for the fact that we have every color labrador (yellow, chocolate, and black).  Or perhaps, I will update my robots.txt file, adding my contact page.  Then, I could also add a new page about how to train puppies, because I found in my keyword research that “How to Train Your New Puppy” was a hot keyword phrase (again, I have not done the actual research).

What’s the point?

The point is that you need to constantly be optimizing and follow keyword trends.  Continuously looking for opportunities for backlinks is also important, but a topic for another time…

Also, remember site changes take time to be recognized by spiders.  It can take up to six weeks for Google to update their index, and even longer for rankings to change accordingly.

Nicki Hicks
Yes, Labs are my favorite