If you are part of the online world, you would have heard a lot of talk about Google's algorithm changes called Penguin and Panda and, as a result, may have made changes to your website or those of your clients. However, if you are a small business owner, such as a carpet cleaner, hairdresser or plumber and search engine optimizsation is not something you think about an awful lot, all this talk probably means diddly squat (not a technical term).

To put it in plain terms, when it comes to Google, Panda and Penguin are not cute animals you find at the zoo, rather they were names given to major updates to how Google prioritized pages when someone does a search.

As the Internet changes and evolves, Google and other search engines update their algorithms (the way they rank search results) to help searchers find websites that provide a greater user experience.

In Google's official blog, it says their goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible.

Matt Cutts, Google's head of its Webspam team said: "we try to reward great websites which have a lot of useful and original content and our aim is to reflect what goes on in the real world. However, we can only know and judge by what is happening in the online world. You may have a fantastic business that has been established for many years and great reputation, but unless you reflect that in your website, search engines can't rank you above everybody else."

Small business owners are often intimidated by large businesses because they believe they can't compete in search engines when they don't have large budgets to employ the best SEO experts. While that may be true sometimes, it is not always the case. Large businesses often have a lot of red tape to get through and are not as dynamic to respond to new trends, so small businesses often have the advantage of being able to move fast and try out new marketing techniques.

Before you create a website or make changes to an existing one, you may find the following video How Search Works helpful.

One of the common misconceptions is that including one key element on your website will make a huge impact on the ranking of your website. As a result, many businesses buy lots of domain names, thinking that simply having a domain name with the selected keywords will guarantee them top positions. Others repeat their keywords in their website's copy over and over and over again, believing the more they repeat a particular word or phrase, the higher they will rank. This is simply not true.

When deciding which pages to display for a particular search term, Google asks more than 200 questions of each page before delivering the results.

Questions such as: Do the words appear in the title, website address, headings, copy of the website, image alt tags? Does the page include similar keywords related to the topic? Are other relevant websites linking to the site? Is the website quality or spammy? What Page Rank does the website have? and many more.

The exact algorithm is not known by anyone outside the Google team, however, Cutts has produced a number of great simple-to-understand videos, in which he answers questions about what Google looks for. You can find them on YouTube under 'GoogleWebmasterHelp.'

If you are a small business owner, here are the basic principles of search engine optimization.

1. Provide quality and original content on your website. Do not copy from others in the industry. Write your own information.

2. Include keywords or key phrases in each page's title, headings, copy, meta description as well as in alt tags of your images.

3. If possible include the keywords within the domain name or at least in the name of the page. For example, name your page like this: xyzcarpetcleaner.com/sofa-cleaning.htm instead of xyzcarpetcleaner.com/page123.htm.

4. Do not create your complete website with flash, becauss Google can't easily index it.

5. Make sure you have easy to follow navigation.

6. Ensure your website looks good on mobile devices.

7. Update your website regularly with fresh information.

8. Get as many links as possible from relevant websites back to yours. For example, if you are a marriage celebrant, getting links from other wedding suppliers is ideal, but getting a link from a plumber would not be relevant.

9. If you are a local business, add your website to Google Places.

10. Add credibility to your website by signing up for Google Authorship.

11. Get involved in social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Google now watches how much people interact with you on social networks.

If you are a small business owner, do not be intimidated by search engines. Talk to your website designer, who would be able to implement all the key elements into your website.

 

http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/22/understanding-the-search-engine-optimization-game/

 

Website design has become a lot more sophisticated in recent years. There are so many websites online now that the competition is getting stiffer by the day. Every edge you can give yourself means one step closer to winning the game. Web design concerns are increasingly more important and you can give yourself that added advantage by paying attention to just a few web design principles.

The following are short byte-sized tips and tricks I’ve picked up since my inception into Internet marketing. No doubt there’s something valuable for everyone to take away from this post, no matter what marketing strategies are being implemented.

Lacking a solid Web design strategy wastes money, loses clients, and can harm your business much more than if you had no website at all. But why?

Because, website design is not about “the design.”

All “website design” is not created equal … but this is the No. 1 related misconception adopted by small businesses on the Web.

DG MediaMind’s Innovation Team descended upon Las Vegas for the annual technology gadget overload that is CES. This year’s show had a record-breaking exhibit space of 1.92 million square feet and over 150,000 folks attended. Out of all of the insanity, we spotted some exciting new trends that will shape the way we live in the not-too-distant future.

One of the chief concerns we have as website owners is how to drive traffic to our websites. Without knowing how to get more traffic, how else will we get more leads, make more sales and continue to make money online?

There are a number of ways to get more traffic, so I’ve collected this list of my favorite traffic-generation techniques. I’ve tried to organize them into the following categories:

Content & Article Marketing
SEO & Search Engine Marketing
Video Marketing & Podcasting
Email Marketing & Syndication
Advertising & PPC
Public Relations & Spreading the Word
Social Media & Bookmarking

Today we focus on SEO & Search Engine Marketing. Look for more to come!

Brands that regard their websites as a primary revenue source have three distinct priorities: give customers an optimal experience, create loyalty and convert potentially passive browsers into active buyers.

It’s not a coincidence that experience and loyalty precede sales in this short priority list; the relationship between exceptional customer experiences and revenue growth is fairly direct. The better your website speaks to your visitors, the more loyal they will become and the more sales you will generate.

The good news is that customers can (and should) be very active in the optimization process. Through their clicks, page views, bounces, reviews and purchases, our online customers are offering us helpful feedback about their online experiences, in real time.

So what can you do with all this data?

Consumer tech is weirder than ever. From interactive digital credit cards to "smart" forks, we went inside CES to find the innovations that will have the biggest impact on marketers.

CES innovation No. 1: The next generation of digital credit cards
How smart is your wallet? If you’re looking for a new brand engagement opportunity, get ready for a breakthrough in digital credit cards. With the introduction of the Dynamics "ePlate" device, consumers can push a button on the card itself to choose what reward they want a particular payment to go toward. Users can also choose whether to pay cash or pay with redeemed points through the physical card. And a version of the card also features security-hidden card numbers. Available on any existing VISA or MasterCard account, this innovation puts the control at the fingertips of the user. And it’s free for brands to participate.

One of the chief concerns we have as website owners is how to drive traffic to our websites. Without knowing how to get more traffic, how else will we get more leads, make more sales and continue to make money online?

There are a number of ways to get more traffic, so I’ve collected this list of my favorite traffic-generation techniques. I’ve tried to organize them into the following categories:

Content & Article Marketing
SEO & Search Engine Marketing
Video Marketing & Podcasting
Email Marketing & Syndication
Advertising & PPC
Public Relations & Spreading the Word
Social Media & Bookmarking

Today we focus on Content & Article Marketing.  Look for more to come!

Recruitment firms Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group have released 2013 Salary Guides this month that identify SEO/SEM specialists and social media specialists as two of the hottest technology jobs for 2013.

Both positions offer strong starting salaries in both the U.S. and Canada, with income ranges that have increased in the past 12 months due to continual high demand for experienced candidates.

According to The Creative Group, the growth of online, mobile and social media content has created strong demand for professionals with a range of interactive skills, including user experience designers, mobile developers and online community managers. Marketing professionals with experience using social media measurement and client relationship management tools, for example, are highly sought after.

Whether you are creating your first website or wanting to improve an existing one, use this checklist to ensure the success of your business online.

1. Domain Name

Register a domain name that has keywords related to your business. Even if your business name is John Smith & Sons, registering a domain name with just the name is not going to help your business from a search engine point of view. Try including some keywords, for example: Johnsmithplumbing.com or yourcityplumbing.com. You can always register additional domain names with your business name or product names to protect your brand and identity but, for the main domain name, make sure you have some keywords included. This will help with search engine optimization later on.

2012 was a year of changes in the world of SEO. Google came out with several algorithm updates that basically rocked the whole search engine system. With updates such as Panda and Penguin, the once easy way of getting a site ranked at the top of Google became a tough game of chess, where highly refined strategies and not short-lived tactics are the winning elements.

In 2013, with the rumors of Google launching a Penguin 2.0 update in our midst, it becomes quite critical to design and implement a link building strategy that won’t hurt your website’s search standing should this rumor inevitably come to pass. I say inevitably simply because it seems real enough that Matt Cutts and his team would follow up on their previous algo updates with a few more just to lock down their new rankings system and to mess with our minds a little bit more. Well, let’s show those nerds from Google a thing or two by coming up with a strategy that is at least two or three steps ahead of them.

Here are several link building rules and tips to keep in mind for your 2013 link building program:

Social Media and SEO used to be considered two separate things. SEO helped people find you on search. Social Media helped you better engage them. SEO purists believed that one had no real impact on the other. This is no longer the case.

Social networking now influences search results to a fairly significant extent. It draws traffic to a website and the more traffic it brings, the bigger the impact on the website’s search rank. But the topic of this article looks at another aspect of this dynamic relationship between SEO and Social Media – the fact that people are now using the search function of their preferred Social Networks to find a business.

In the following article I provide a few tips on how to optimize your online businesses presence for Social Media search:

Every day we work at it: toiling away on our social media networks, doing what we can to reach our customers and broaden our client base. Twitter is one of the simplest platforms to use when reaching out to people, but you may not be tweeting to your best advantage. So, what can you do to make sure that people actually want to read your tweets and can get the most out of them?

Here are ten things that you should be doing with your tweets in order to make them stand out. The only way to reach out and grab the attention of your followers (and that of future ones) is to have some interesting things to say!

Over the past few years, my website has ranked pretty high in for some great keywords but, I’ve noticed recently, my search engine ranks have started slipping. My theory for this occurrence is my articles and posts from a few years ago were seen as out-dated and no longer counted (although I could be wrong on this).

To counter this, I started building links through forum posts, articles, guest blogging and video posting. Keen to see if my efforts were paying off, I tried to figure out if my backlink count was increasing. My first stop was Google, where I used the [link:www.mywebsite.com.au] command and found a very disappointing result – only 23 backlinks.

“Are you kidding me?” I thought.

Online traffic increased 71 percent this year over 2011 with the top 500 retail sites receiving more than 181 million U.S. visits, according to Internet traffic-watcher Experian.

Retail traffic increased 46 percent on Thanksgiving Day versus the day before, Experian found.

Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, BestBuy and Sears were the top five sites this year with all sites seeing substantial growth on Thanksgiving Day versus the previous day.

Amazon.com was the No. 1 retail site on Thanksgiving Day with more than 25 million online visits in the U.S. This does not factor in mobile traffic.

Wal-Mart followed close behind with 24.6 million U.S. visits.

Social media marketing is important; enough has been said on the matter. Executing that marketing, however, is a more nuanced affair. It isn’t simply a matter of “doing it” – there has to be a clear goal in mind with an overarching ethos and objectives that align with that.

It might sound haughty, especially compared to actual real-life social interaction. But compare “making friends” with “business networking.” One is done casually and on a whim, the other is far more determined and precise.

The problem is, despite the social nature of social media marketing, too many approaches are just about making friends. Let’s address that misconception.

There’s a lot of talk lately of Google having finally killed SEO through their Panda and Penguin algorithms, which continue to ensnare more and more websites with every new update.

So is SEO Really (Finally) Dead?

When you look at some of the Google organic traffic losses that companies have faced since the very first Panda algo (aka Google Farmer) hit in February 2011, you might certainly think so.

Analytics data showing losses of over 50% of Google organic traffic is not uncommon for afflicted websites:

See Search Overview chart

And traffic that used to increase over time, suddenly took a huge dip:

See Visitors Overview chart

These patterns certainly make it look as if SEO could be dead.

Ever heard of “search engine poisoning”? Yeah, the term was new to me too, but once I discovered what it meant, I became seriously disturbed.

In a nutshell, search engine poisoning (SEP) occurs when spammers and hackers rank websites in the search results to steer users to malware. Many of these malicious redirects point searchers to spam and viruses, but some are even more dangerous than that.

More and more, spammers are using SEP in an attempt to gain sensitive credit card info from unwitting consumers. This is a particularly vicious form of black hat SEO – the very worst kind, in fact. Some of these spammers rank rouge websites in Google or Bing listings, and once users land on the page, fake antivirus software is used to extract credit card info.

Do you have the time to come up with content for your social media status updates? What do you do when it is Thursday, you need those important updates and you have just drawn a complete blank? Remember, social media relies on content: the creation, posting and sharing of it.

How can you come up with unique status updates people want to read?

Here are five ideas you can use: