The Maine SEO Blog

Just the other day, a prospect said this to me.

And I got to thinking about it. She’s exactly right.

Every day, old websites, blogs, heck even social media profiles, are being optimized. Most, obviously, not all, new websites launched are optimized to a certain extent.

So while, for the moment, there are plenty of sites to optimize…it may not be like that forever.

Instead, content creation is king. Constantly putting out new, fresh content is the way things have been, and will continue to be, headed.

You’ll hear time and time again that Google loves fresh content. What’s fresher than a blog? Or social media? Or social bookmarking?

More and more, people look for small, sweet snippets of information: easily digestible and quickly answering whatever query they may have.

What’s the lesson for you?

If your website isn’t optimized, start there. Get that puppy search engine friendly.

If you don’t already have a blog…create one. Then answer questions you get all the time, whatever industry you may be in; include images and video. Make lists, how-to’s, even step-by-step guides.

If you’re not on any social media network, first find out where your audience is. Then get there! Start putting out fresh content – some self serving, but more importantly information your audience wants to know – whether it’s stats, local updates, or even a piece of witty humor.

Nicki Hicks
Optimization may be dying, but content is thriving

Photo by subcess

I realized how lately I’ve been writing a lot about topics that, while related to SEO, aren’t necessarily discussing what I would call more traditional optimizing techniques. The reason? It’s not just about SEO anymore.

Yes, you should optimize your site. But going are the days where that is enough. Not only is SEO an ongoing process, but so are other types of web marketing outlets – and those are exactly the places you need to invest your time in order to even hope to succeed in the search engines.

Video

Let’s not beat around the bush. It’s all about YouTube. Sure there are a ton of other video outlets, but YouTube is the best out there. With its easy-to-use interface, it also provides easy-to-embed options (AKA no code knowledge necessary).

Better yet, views from your site or blog add to the total views on YouTube. Why does that matter? The more views a video has, the higher it will rank in Google’s search – and with universal search, that’s just one more way to rank. Not to mention, it’s an easy way to optimize for smart phones.

Photos and Images

Can you say alt tags? Search engines can read, but they can’t see very well. So we have to help them out a little. But when you do it right, and create great keyword rich descriptions for them, images are another way to rank in the search engines.

Social Media

Pretty shortly, if you’re not using any sort of social media outlet for your business, you’re going to be behind the game. Not only is social media a great way to share links and increase buzz, but it also humanizes your business and can almost be used as a PR medium. Plus, while it would really only affect searches for your company name, your social media profiles typically rank extremely well.

Here are some of my quick guides to where you should be, why you should be there, and what to do once you’re there:

• Facebook: Why it’s for your business
• LinkedIn: How to leverage your account
• Twitter
  - A guide to get started
  - What you should tweet about for business

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is great way to make things go hot. While there’s no SEO power to sites like Digg, Sphinn, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc., the traffic you get from just being “sphunn”, “stumbled”, “dugg”, or the like is entirely worth it.

Nicki Hicks
How are you working toward better online visibility?

I don’t expect clients to entirely understand search engine optimization when they come to us – or really even know what it is at all. And in all honesty, that’s fine, because that’s why I have a job. (Thanks for that.) 

But, after reading this perhaps you’ll know a lot more and be that much the wiser when you talk to your Search Marketer.

1. How bad is it to use white on white and write in a bunch of keywords?

Umm really bad. Probably as bad as you can get actually. In the olden days (probably all of 10 – 12 years ago), you could possibly get away with stuffing keywords. Today? Not so much.

2. I know SEO is important, so I’m going to do it this once and get it done with It’s a one-step process, right?

Sorry, no such luck. We’ll talk about it a little more later, but with search moving toward other venues like social media, local reviews, RSS, blogging, and other modern forms of web marketing, there’s no way you can do it once and be done. SEO requires constant massaging and experimentation.

3. What are these meta-keywords I keep hearing about? Can you make me a huge list of them?

Well I could. But it probably wouldn’t do a whole lot.

The thing with meta-keywords is 1) only Yahoo uses them and 2) if you use too many, they’ll hurt you. So, what do I suggest? Using a small group of focused keywords for each page if you’re intent on using them. And remember – even though Yahoo uses them, they don’t have much weight at all.

4. I just don’t have time for social media. Plus, I can get away without doing it.

Again, it’s really not an option any more. Soon, folks who haven’t hopped on the social media bandwagon are going to be struggling to catch up with the rest of the crowd.

So…create a LinkedIn account, get yourself on Facebook, and – if you’re feeling really socially frisky - join Twitter!

5. I’ve heard about this nofollow thing. Do I need to do that to all of my outgoing links?

Nofollowing links is sometimes a good strategy. But that doesn’t mean you should do it to every single outgoing link. 

Nor is it PageRank sculpting. To demonstrate that point, I like this short, sweet description by @Halfdeck.

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Allow me to preface this by saying: SEO is an art, not a science. So my recipe for title perfection needs to be experimented with – you will have different results with every industry. That said, titles are important. It can be argued they are the most important.

As always, start by figuring out what your customers are searching for. If you don’t optimize for the right words, then you really don’t have a shot at even being a choice on a search results page.

Keeping in mind what the page is about, here’s a hand-to-the-forehead thought: you’ll want to incorporate those keywords in the title. Now you sit down to write that fabulous title tag and wonder how long should it be? SEOs disagree about this, but: there is no correct length to a good title. Google allows for 65 characters to be shown in the SERPs and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not a big deal if the title is 65+ characters. My rule of thumb? The same as copy writing: as long as it takes to get the job done.

That said, don’t create such a long title that expands past the width of my browser (in a wide screened Mac, to boot). Along the same lines, please please PLEASE don’t stuff the title full of every synonym for your keywords that you can think of.

Alright, so what have we got now? A bunch of really great keywords. Now, put them together in a way that makes sense – something that accurately describes the page.

This next part is your choice: your company name. The thing is, as long as you have a fairly unique name, you’ll rank well for someone searching for your name. I tend to put it in every title just for good measure.

Finally, I put in the location. Obviously this would only apply for local businesses. The thing to remember is that local search is dependent on more than just the title; but having it here is absolutely helpful.

Last but not least, is the way it looks – and most people quite honestly may not think about it, but would you click on a ReSuLt tHaT LoOkEd lIkE ThIs? My personal preference is to capitalize the first letter of words that make sense – much as you would for a blog post title. Then separate major “sections” (in this case: keywords, company name, and location) with a mixture of colons, semicolons, hyphens, and vertical lines: whichever you prefer.

So, in the end we have something that looks like this:

Really Great Stupendous Clickable Exactly What I’m Looking For Phrase: My Company – Where I Am, USA

Nicki Hicks
Page Title Extraordinaire

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

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of teaching at my alma mater.  I spoke to the junior/senior college Ecommerce class about the wonder of SEO and Web Marketing.

One of the most interesting things about the class (for me), was the fact that students were actually excited about what I do.  I mean, I’m passionate about it…but that’s just me.  (Hi, I’m Nicki, and I’m a web geek. Hi Nickiiiii….)  They asked some really great questions, here are the paraphrased versions:

Q: If search changes so often, how do you keep up with it?
A: I spend about 2, sometimes 3 hours a day reading blogs, articles and twitter, as well as writing.  There are some blogs and forums that I especially like that I read everyday.

Q: Do you ever worry with our generation [Generation X] being so tech savvy, that people will soon be able to do what you do themselves?
A: No; because even though we’re more tech savvy, marketing – and search marketing in particular – may not be a company’s forte.  Hopefully, they’re already doing what they’re good at; and they still need us to do what we’re good at!

Q: Is it hard to sell clients on SEO?
A: Sometimes, especially since search marketing is so intangible – it’s not like a website – something that’s much more of a living, breathing thing.  But as we gain more and more experience and stats, it becomes easier and easier.  Also, that’s why we use measuring tools – like Google Analytics.

Here’s a video of the basic PowerPoint presentation:

Nicki Hicks
Just call me Ms. Hicks

Twilight of Stroudwater by Charles Frederick Kimball

I think one of the most difficult parts of doing keyword research is selling the client on it.  You start with the most scientific of processes: down and dirty keyword research, where you quite literally “figure out what people are searching for”.  Seems logical enough.

Then comes the tough part: How can I use “Brangelina” in a sentence? (Just kidding, but if you notice, I totally just did it.)

In all seriousness, the hard part – the artistic part – is the writing.  SEOs can do all sorts of techy (read: geeky) and Google-approved code work and link building  to make your website rank well for specific keywords.  But at the end of the day, it’s the content that is king!

It’s the content that’s the art form: using the words people are looking for and magically interweaving them into copy in a way that makes sense to bots and, now here’s the tricky part, human beings.  No wonder copywriters make so much money.

Nicki Hicks
Wish I Could Paint Like That

Thanks to Barry Schwartz and Keri Morgret from Search Engine Roundtable for taking the time to live blog many of the SMX West sessions!  Here are a few of my notes from Thursday, Day 3…

Ask the Link Builders

(Archived version on SE Roundtable)

• How to stay whitehat when link building:
  - Stay away from things that go against SE guidelines; don’t be obvious
  - Follow Matt Cutts’ blog and only do things he would suggest
  - Have great content
• Personnel involved need to know the niche area, social network(s) in area, research fees involved, etc.
• Good to have in-house link building – good, quality links take time to develop (difficult to have a bronze, silver, gold package for link building)
• Stay away from people who guarantee a certain number of links
• Link building = relationship building
• StrongestLinks.com, DirectoryCritic.com, ISEDB.com – other directories besides the “dreaded” DMOZ
• Niche directories are better
• Panel’s favorite link building tools?
  - Aaron Wall’s suite of tools
  - Linkdomain operator at Yahoo
• Link building forums:
  - Webmaster World
  - Aaron Wall – private forum
  - Digital Point

Ask the SEOs

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)
(Ask the SEOs from SMX East)

• If reDEVELOPING, submit your old URLs and spiders will see your 301 redirects
• keywords in URLs aren’t THAT important – don’t consider renaming everything after the fact
• Use dashes not underscores in URLs
• Title tags are about readability

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Thanks to Barry Schwartz and Keri Morgret from Search Engine Roundtable for taking the time to live blog many of the SMX West sessions!  Here are a few of my notes from Tuesday, Day 1…

Technical SEO Issues for Developers

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• Disallow certain forms from being crawled (like Contact Us page)
• Use Webmaster Tools
• Need both human and XML sitemaps
• Canonicalization (www vs. non-www issues) fix: stay the same throughout the site; the fix when someone links to the wrong version: redirect it
• Meta/title tags: HAVE them, CHANGE them
• Be simple.  Use static HTML, meaningful page titles, clear anchor text, don’t link to spam.
• Brevity is GOOD for URL’s, make them simple, stable, and scream COPY ME!
• Improve crawler discovery by leveraging robots.txt (use only if fully understood, validate with Google), sitemap, and metatags
• Use Yahoo Site Exploreer and Google cache to see what’s indexed
• Use easy-to-crawl and search friendly URLs, keep titles and content close to the top
• iFrames = good for gadgets, bad for homepage
• Eye tracking software results: put your BEST keywords FIRST in the title tag (people read them first, and don’t always read all the way to the right)
• Absolute URLs = BETTER

Up Close with Google Maps & Local

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)

• Google Local data from:
  1. Google Local Business Center
  2. 3rd party providers
  3. General web crawl
• Submit/verify your site at: infoUSA, Localeze, Yahoo, Best of the Web, OpenList, CityVoter, InsiderPages, SuperPages
• Search for “your city and blog” for good blogs in your area
• Factors that influence Local rankings:
  1. Proximity to city
  2. Reviews, number of reviews, positive reviews
  3. Overall SEO health of site
  4. Keyword relevancy
• Make sure your address is on your homepage, contact us page, etc.
• If you have multiple locations, submit them ALL to local sites; you still only need ONE website
• No permanent address? Use a PO Box.
• Claim listings with ALL applicable categories
• Add videos!!
• Track calls for free:
  - Pretend to start a Google AdWords account
  - Go to Audio Campaign page
  - Get free phone number
  - Track calls!
• Large companies with multiple locations: create landing pages for geographic locations
• One speaker encourages customers to follow up with work done with local reviews with Visa coupon incentives for next services
• Remember – you CAN report Google Maps spam! (They welcome it!)

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