3 Primary SEO Metrics

There are various metrics which contribute, such as relevant titles, canonicalization, server settings, site age, exposure, citation and others, but we are referring to the more immediate elements under your control that you can contribute to daily that can make a difference.

Content Relevance:

Content relevance thresholds are the first phase in overcoming the barrier to entry. Sites that occupy top ranking positions have earned the authority based on the sites local and global co-occurrence of keywords and related content.

This content should be based on competitive market analysis and nodes of relevance that are present in the market. Coupled with keyword modifiers, you can take base level phrases and align them with alternative “search savvy” phrases to increase traffic and engagement levels.

These alternative variations are often less competitive than the more searched root phrases, but can yield significant traffic in a fraction of the time and then “stem” into other related mid-tail and long-tail keyword variations.

For a definition of root phrase think of the keyword “lawyer” for mid-tail “personal injury lawyer” for a long-tail variation a phrase like “affordable personal injury lawyer in ______” and adding a city or state would suffice.

Each of the keyword variations has a threshold of how many pages are competing for the top 10 positions in the search engine’s index. More competitive keywords require more time, content, links and coherent site architecture to dial-in a top ranking. Also, the more links and / or content you have the easier it is to sculpt rankings based on keywords that represent the most value for your business.

It is this content that anchors the body of content or preferred landing pages in the SERPs, based on the coherence and continuity that is reflected in trends, synonyms and / or themed keywords from within a market or niche.

Each page functions like a piece in a puzzle and contributes to a websites on page relevance score and authority within a niche, segment or market. If no clear champion exists, then it is easy to occupy multiple nodes of relevance (much like Wikipedia) by using the citation of peer review (others linking to a site) as well as reinforcing topical relevance at every opportunity from using keyword-rich internal links.

Having a higher relevance score allows you to (1) use PPC to augment traffic and (2) rank organically through unifying the content (using internal links) to provide supportive rankings to other themed pages while ranking for specific / designated keywords for each page.

Although we prefer to keep things organic for higher ROI, each has its place (organic positioning or paid advertising) in the grand scheme of online marketing.

Keyword Rich Anchor Text:

On page optimization and content relevance need to be combined with internal linking. These keyword-rich anchors should be based on solid keyword research and also built into the site architecture via the main site navigation, the url / naming conventions and as inbound links from other sites.

Based on how pages are internally linked designates which pages are returned in the SERPs for specific keyword queries.  Links from other sites (deep links if they link to pages other than the homepage) are responsible for adding significant weight to the page through a metric known as peer review.

The more sites that link to a page or a website with a cluster of keywords represented by the on page content equivalents score a higher degree of relevance than websites who ignore these metrics and (a) do not use relevant internal links or (b) gain inbound links from outside sources to the website to increase relevance score.

Despite the various discrepancies in a unified body of SEO logic (based on collective and / or personal experience), we can only speak from our own experience. In this capacity, we have found that once a site acquires a degree of authority via page rank, backlinks or age, the internal links can pass along that ranking factor just as external links from other sites are used to rank web pages.

In this vein, there is very little difference between how internal and or external links are calculated from the standpoint of search engines. Both contribute to a websites inherent ranking factors and should be encouraged to support the pages ideal keyword variations the page is intended to rank for.

Keyword Research and Site Architecture:

While these are not the last, but rather the first metrics a site owner should address and the content and internal links are supplemental to it, it is the last on our list to discuss. This is the starting point – “the alpha” point for market domination and where many ranking battles are fought and won from the perspective of the more subtle aspects of SEO.

The trends in the market, both seasonal and otherwise can be found through competitive research analysis and vertical market analysis. Based on that analysis, upper management can determine which keywords and / or phrases yield the most lucrative traffic for your offering.

The premise of SEO is to take this actionable intelligence and then integrate it into a solid game plan which mirrors the on page and off page needs through a thread of continuity. The more this continuity is reinforced naturally from various metrics from both within the site and from outside the site, the more referential integrity spawns as a result.

This integrity translates as relevance and authority (which is the real purpose of optimization). SEO is not designed to compete with others, but rather streamline the continuity and coherence of your own content to (a) elicit the regard of others within the space and (b) provide structure for search engines to access, interpret and score than content so they it may refer other users to it as a result of the signals amplified through the unification of best practices that are conducive to the search engines design.

Search engines are social barometers designed to serve useful and authoritative content to those in need or searching for that content based on the keyword variations they use in query space, i.e. the search box.

This means that the more relevant the nodes of relevance are (using titles, url naming conventions, meta data, internal links and inbound links from other sites), the higher a page and / or pages within a site can rank for the keywords they were intended to.

By removing inconsistencies through manual revisions or using a CMS to automate best practices (such as tagging, internal linking based on keyword occurrence, etc.), you can let the template and content management system work on your behalf while your content team focuses on creating relevant content extracted from high level keyword intelligence.

This convergence of relevant content, traffic, user engagement and relevance are the crowning achievement of a well orchestrated SEO campaign which uses all of the moving parts to convey a unified purpose.

                          

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I Have Design, Now What?

Now that you have successfully created a call-to-action that transforms casual visitors into active participants, you should turn your focus to the third element of sales conversion: killer sales copy.

3) Informative, enticing and compelling sales copy is, in my opinion, the most important element of marketing. If I had to pick one thing to show up on someone’s screen when they visit my site, it would be sales copy. That is the one element that is either going to convince them to continue clicking through or to click off. The right sales copy has the potential to compensate for a horrible design or lack of call-to-action. Newspapers don’t underestimate the power of the written word and neither should you!

The first thing to concentrate on when you write your sales copy is remember to sell. If you know anyone who works in retail, then you know that there is a definite art in selling. It certainly takes the right kind of salesperson to convince you that the brightly colored comfort clog that resembles a smurf’s shoe (also known as a Croc) actually makes you look cool.

But that salesperson probably wasn’t telling you how the pink Croc brings out your eyes and makes you look taller. Fortunately, consumers are not that gullible.

Instead, the salesperson probably explained to the consumer how the design of the Croc was engineered to help with back pain and to ease the tension created in the spine from walking on concrete. They probably touched on the cushion-like material and how it eases the pain in one’s foot. One thing is for sure: they did not rely on its stylish fashion to turn this oddly named shoe into a must-have trend of the moment.

What is the lesson learned here? The consumer never wants to be sold. Instead, the consumer wants to be related to. The benefit that your Web site has over a store front is that you probably have a good idea of what kind of audience visits your Web site. The employees in a store have to take a guess as to what kind of person you are and, hence, what kind of items to sell you.

Your sales pitch starts there, at determining your target audience. Once you know who you are talking to, start selling your products/services by stating the facts, not fluff! I ask simple questions before I get started:

1. What is your company slogan/motto?
2. What makes your products/services the best?
3. What makes your company the better than others?
4. What are your most frequently asked questions?

The answers to all these questions should be in your sales copy. The bottom line is that consumers want to hear why they should put money down for a purchase. How will it make my life easier or better? Give the facts.

After you sell your product or service, sell your company. What sets you apart from the others? Do you have free shipping? Do you ship on the same day? Do you offer warranties or guarantees? How is your customer service? Have you won awards?

Remember that selling your product is not enough if there are other vendors that sell the same product as you. Your consumers want to know why they should buy from you and not the other guy.

The most important factor to remember is to give the facts! The finesse comes into play by making the facts sound amazingly enticing. Treat every fact as a sales point and a huge deal. Let them build upon each other.

Your facts should make people begin to think about their foot pain or about how terrible concrete is for their feet. By the time they reach the last sentence, they should be wondering what kinds of styles of Crocs are available. That is when you have the link to the Croc inventory page handy. Once they find a style that they love, you have successfully completed a sales conversion! Congratulations.

Final note on writing sales copy is make sure you have impeccable grammar and punctuation, which conveys professionalism and trustworthiness. This is where hiring an editor to give it a proof read can be a great idea if English class wasn’t your forte. No one wants to put down a credit card number on a site that looks and sounds amateur.

Also, don’t make your copy too long. If you are passionate about the product or services that you sell, you undoubtedly have a lot to say. But no one wants to read a novel, which is why I’m trying to wrap this blog post up soon. Just remember that you have unlimited space on your Web site, so use it. If you can’t fit everything on the homepage, create a special page that only talks about the kind of material used for a Croc.

If I had to sum up the secret to killer sales copy, I would say that the more information the better, just make it sound good!

                          

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Catching SEO Blunders

10 Common SEO Blunders That Could Make Your Rankings Dip.

1. Your .htaccess file gets corrupted, changed or hacked.
2. The robots.txt is altered and blocks the bots from crawling or indexing content.
3. A plugin, add-on/module or CMS system is malfunctioning and breaking naming conventions or creates 404 errors (broken links).
4. There is an excessive amount of duplicate content such as meta tags, server side elements, footer links, etc) that toggle an algorithmic suppression from search engines.
5. Server load time could cause a time-out, thus blocking bots from reaching key pages (which support the link flow for other pages).
6. You made too many changes too quickly to pages in your website, which can disrupt the trust and infrastructure your website previously had.
7. You built and or acquired or built too many links too fast and set of an algorithmic filter in search engines for unnatural link velocity.
8. You added too many pages too quickly (such as dumping 500 new pages into a site overnight) when you should have added them gradually to increase spider activity.
9. You excessively linked from common areas of the site from every page with the same anchor and thus cannibalized your SEO efforts of distinguishing each page as a relevant and unique target page.
10. Your website could be suffering from over-optimization or from linking out to a bad neighborhood (untrusted site).

One of the more common things is that your competition turned up the heat for their own SEO efforts and you got too comfortable in complacency (and not defending your position).

Regardless of what happened, each of the ten variables above can be traced back to a systemic root or cause and effect relationship. With the right method, the proper diagnosis and some corrective measures, recovering from a dip in SERP (search engine result page) positioning is all part of the SEO process.

Remaining vigilant and diligent in SEO defense as well as skimming the components that constitute a solid position will keep your search engine optimization tactics polished and ready to deal with inconsistencies (whether deliberate or accidental) as they arise.

                          

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I Have Call to Action... Now What?

Now that you have successfully implemented a call-to-action, it is time to dominate design, which is as equally important as your killer sales copy. Your design should be smooth, sleek and speak to your audience. This means that, even though you love the color lavender, it may not be the best choice when you are trying to sell motorcycle lifts. Think about the colors and images that will speak most powerfully to your audience.

It is always a great idea to chat with your graphic designer about ideas and even sketch out some designs instead of just handing the project over and leaving it to the designer’s creativity. Yes, it may be a good design. But your graphic designer doesn’t know your audience like you do and it is important that you work together to find the best fit.

Once you have your design, go through your Web site yourself and test its usability. It is important to make your design as intuitive and as easy-to-use as possible. The very last thing you want to do is make your visitors think about where they have to go next or what they have to click to find the information they are looking for. That is a very important rule: Don’t make your visitors think!

If you have a call-to-action phrase underneath a compelling image, make sure that both the phrase and the image are clickable! If your visitors want to take you up on the offer of a free eBook, then their first instinct will be to click on the offer. If it doesn’t click through, I can guarantee that your visitor will think, “Forget it. I didn’t want more annoying emails anyway,” or they will be so frustrated with your site that, by the time they find the right page, they won’t want your offer out of spite.

Another factor of intuitive design is hyper linking the keywords in your sales content to the appropriate page. If your visitors are reading your sales content and they read that you have a large collection of motorcycle helmets, they might decide that they want to see your collection of motorcycle helmets.

If so, their first instinct will be to click on the phrase “motorcycle helmets” that they just read. However, if that phrase is not hyper linked to the ‘motorcycle helmets’ page, then you are essentially telling your visitors that they have to find the magic button on your site that leads them to the page they want to visit. That violates the rule of not making your visitors think.

If that is the case, your visitors will a) decide to click off of your site and, instead, run a search for ‘motorcycle helmets’ to find a different vendor or b) search for the button for some time and become so frustrated with your site that, by the time they find the proper page, they will be wondering if anyone else has a good motorcycle helmet collection? At that time, they will run a search for ‘motorcycle helmets’.

Either way, you just lost a sale.

Now it is your turn to think. If you were a visitor to your site, how easily could you figure out how to navigate it? General rule of thumb is that, if your visitor can’t figure out how to navigate your site within 10 to 15 seconds at most, they will click off your site and find another retailer.

Are you too close to your own project? Often times we don’t see the navigational problems with our site because we are the ones who created it! Find a fresh pair of eyes – ask your sister, spouse or friend to visit your site. Then watch them as they try to navigate through it. Take notes on their first instincts (where they immediately go to start clicking).

If their first instincts is to click on something that is not a clickable link, fix it. If they take longer than 10 seconds to find the page they want, change it. If they are confused about where to go, ask them what they want to see and where they want to see it.

One thing is always for sure: never leave your audience without any place to go. Every page should be linked to one or several other pages so that your visitor will never find one page to be a dead end. Either hyper link keywords back to their designated page or include a brightly colored button that says “Home” and is linked back to the home page.

That way your visitor is never left without anything to do. Always keep ‘em clicking! That’s my motto, anyway.

                          

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Getting Traffic is Not Enough...

That is because traffic, or SEO, is only half the battle. You need to make sure that the pages your audience is landing on are optimized for conversions. This means about four different factors need to be addressed to make sure that people aren’t landing on your pages and clicking off within seconds:

1)      Call to action: Every landing page needs a call-to-action. However, business owners and Web site developers who don’t know any better often take this call-to-action thing to a whole new level, called shout-at-the-customer-until-they-leave-your-site……action. Some examples:

1. “Order Today!”
2. “Click Here Now!”
3. “Hurry While Supplies Last”
4. “Your Last Chance to Order!”
5. “For a Limited Amount of Time Only”

That last one always makes me roll my eyes and laugh because it only takes two visits to the Web site to know that the phrase “For a Limited Time Only” is NEVER NOT there! Hopefully, after being on the receiving end and reading these phrases yourself, you can see how annoying they can be and how they can convince you do to anything but purchase a product.

There is a general consensus amongst the marketing field professionals that there are few things on this planet that are more annoying than flashing, brightly colored call-to-actions or pop-up ads. Please refrain from making your audience feel like they want to bang their heads against the wall. Thank you.

Instead of shouting at your audience, try incentives that relate to your target audience. For example, if your Web site sells green products and you are offering “free email courses” (written courses sent out via email) that describe easy ways to incorporate ‘green’ into your everyday life, then an appropriate call to action would be suggesting that the client sign up for the courses because they are starting soon. For example:

“The first free course starts in 5 days. Be sure to sign up now to be a part of it.”

Of course, your call-to-action should always take place after your killer sales copy. Echo the call-to-action once more underneath the visual call-to-action, which is whatever image or icon you have on the top of your page (usually in the top right corner or in the left or right sidebar – just make sure it is above the fold). The awesome image or icon should, of course, be hyperlinked to the appropriate page where the visitor would need to be to sign up for the free courses.

Offering something for free that is worth money (i.e. information) is always a great call-to-action. It creates consumer trust in your Web site. That trust will eventually translate to reliance when it comes time to decide where to purchase products. If there is trust, then the consumer will rely on you to provide them with quality products and services henceforth.

Other call-to-action ideas that often cost very little for your business to implement:

1. Free shipping
2. Free Gift with Purchase
3. Free Instructional Video
4. Free Instructional Emails
5. Free Video Emails
6. Sign Up For Coupons via Email
7. Submit your comments about our products or services (creates great conversation and extremely beneficial for businesses)

In my next blog, I will discuss step two to optimize your landing pages for sales conversion.

                          

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Is SEO All About the Links?

Internal links communicate prominence and preferred champion pages from orphaned (less important) pages within a website. External links from other sites communicate importance from the link graph and without enough links; your website will only be a legend in its own mind vs. a preferred destination from the web at large based on the footprint or inbound links / referral paths leading to it.

As an example, if you wanted to see which websites online have the most prominence from the link graph, just type in WWW in Google and hit return. This will display the sites in order of priority of which have “the most juice” within the Google index. A link from any one of these sources is a godsend for SEO.

Aside from using Google as a link barometer, Rand Fishkin and the SEOMoz team have been mapping out the web with their suite of phenomenal SEO tools in addition to the top 500 most linked to websites online. The importance for who you link to as well as who links to you is what many of the algorithms in search engines utilize to ascertain who you are as well as what value (based on that footprint) your site has within the ecosystem of its sphere of influence.

If your website is about cars and you acquire a link from a Ford or Chevy who has massive quantities of inbound links and authority, then the power of that link passes on a fraction of all of those links (and more importantly trust) to your web property.

Similarly, the number of links leaving a page to the number of internal and external links from other sites pointing to that page also play a major factor in what type of link flow and authority they pass on to the target site (they link to). This is known as theme relevance; the more theme relevance a website has by acquiring inbound links from other sites within their niche, the more trust it can acquire.

It is not to say that an authoritative site from another market, niche or segment does not pass along value, but just a different type of value than a themed link. This is also why internal links play such a prominent role within a website as well. If you use absolute links for internal links (including the entire URL) then each page can act as its own miniature oasis and pass along vital ranking factor to other pages within a website.

This is why it is important to audit the internal links from page to page in a site (from the standpoint of SEO) and not have too many links leaving a page (which can diffuse the buoyancy and percentage of link flow it can pass along). You can use tools such as Xenu Link Sleuth for this purpose to measure inbound to outbound links, assess the anchor text in addition to an array of other distinct SEO metrics.

For a more detailed perspective on how to measure this, check out this SEO Video on how to assess your competitors SEO strategies and gauge the barrier to entry into a market.

In closing, the takeaway here is (a) focus on quality more than quantity for inbound links from other sites (b) link contextually from the body area of pages which have keywords that are relevant to the target page to create preferred landing pages and (c) your own website is your own best source to supplement SEO ranking factors in tandem with trusted aged links from authority sites which share the same theme relevance as your own.

                          

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Which SEO Metrics are Important?

Here are some of the metrics we pay attentions to and why.

• The total number of pages in a website
• The aggregate amount of pages targeting specific keywords
• The ratio of internal links a page has from other (themed and related) pages within the site
• How many external inbound links a page has from other (authoritative or themed) websites
• Site age specifically how old the site is and how long has it been online?
• How many visitors the site receives from referrals
• The type of referrals (authentic or automated)
• The relevancy and relationship of the content (coherence)
• How frequently the site is updated (new content)
• How frequently pages are revised and / or updated

Total number of pages: When it comes to relevance and rankings, size matters. The more relative content you have related to a theme, the more opportunity for you to cross-link those pages to support a common goal. The amount of pages you need to stave your competitors depends on the keywords you are targeting and the aggregate average volume of pages required to off-set their degree of traction, authority and relevance score.

Aggregate number of pages targeting a keyword: Using the Google search operator site:website.com keyword command, you can quickly assess the number of pages a competitor has for any keyword or key phrase combination by using shingle analysis. This will allow you to ascertain a ballpark volume of pages you will need to topple others below the top 10 threshold. We typically look at the metrics from the top 3 websites holding down the top 5 results or the first 3 commercial (non educational) sites to gain perspective on this threshold.

The ratio of internal links: For every page with a keyword occurrence, there is a page that could gain a link from it within your website. If you understand the value of co-occurrence, then you can use internal linking to build links to your preferred landing pages (which means you can rank with less dependency on external inbound links from other sites).

The amount of external links to each page: We refer to this as the deep link ratio and it is always a good idea to have at least 10 inbound links to individual pages. This ensures that each preferred landing page has enough off page ranking factor to toggle search engine inherent algorithms which look for this metric as a basis of a pages integrity. The more quality, themed or authoritative links a page has, the more clout and SERP relevance it can garner. In other words, rank higher with less dependency from on page factors.

Site Age: We often refer to this as the grandfather effect, the older a website is, the more likely it is to acquire trust from search engines. If you sweep the majority of sites holding down top ranking positions, look at the average age of the site as an indicator of authority. It is not always the case, but, typically, the older a site is the better for SEO (and the more resilient it is).

Number of visits: Popular sites have higher crawl frequency, which means, the more opportunity you have to rank new pages or reinforce preferred pages with additional content based on a keyword cluster or market segment.

Content Relevance: Having a coherent outline supported by logical site architecture is one way to score extra points with search engines. The more themed the content is, the easier it is for your site to encroach on a niche, segment or market through the global term weights represented by each page in the site shoring up the theme of the site, subfolder or sub domain.

Post Frequency: Although this is not a constant, we are strong believers in consistency when it comes to post frequency to expedite authority for a domain. There are numerous metrics in play to develop an authority site (which is the basis of SEO), however, time and lots of themed pages are the spine to this strategy. Adding a new page a day will keep you in the game, however, 3-5 pages per day or more will allow you to use those pages in tandem to collectively target asynchronous keywords simultaneously.

Revisions to legacy content: revisions to legacy pages are one of the most overlooked aspects of fine-tuning rankings for search engine optimization. The initial time a page is indexed it makes an impression; however, you can add layers to it over time and the ghost content (which may not even exist on the page) can still appear due to the search engines repository which keeps cached versions of the data from that page in the cloud data used to tabulate that search.

In other words, optimizing legacy content in tandem with unified new content, internal and external links equals pure dynamic ranking potential if wielded with intent.

                          

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SEO Transcends Techniques

SEO is many things, but it is really the basis of understanding which keywords, markets and methods produce results. You can tweak all the meta tags and descriptions you want, add all the pages, external links or internal links you want or program in just about any platform possible (cfm, asp, aspx, php, html, xhtml, etc.) but without a firm grasp of how everything fits together, it is all in vein.

Just like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, SEO transcends the basic parameters it utilizes to express itself. Rankings are nothing without conversion, and SEO does not matter, unless the market is present and a genuine demand exists.

You could exhaustively cover every facet from the level of usability, programming, design, conversion optimization, market research, competitor analysis, analysis tracking with key performance indicators, baseline benchmarks and the like, but there are all tied by one unique thread that runs through them all (monetization, compensation and results).

There is not enough time in the day to work for working’s sake just to play with ideation and theory, you have to roll up your sleeves, assess all the metrics that are imperative to the success of your website, understand the trends, market, influencers and your competition to push through the barrier to entry and rise above common obstacles online.

For as much energy and effort you put into your website, there is always someone out there pushing a little but harder. Just as Tony Montana “Al Pacino” from Scarface said “Never Underestimate the Other Guys Greed”…

So, while you are content to carve away a few keywords in a market and religiously monitor them to see which keywords slipped a few positions that day, there are others out there targeting entire markets with virtually limitless budgets because they understand one thing. What works and how to replicate it…

What is their secret? It is time divided by return on investment scaled by market share. Meaning, while you spend a few hundred dollars to acquire a keyword, a competitor may spend thousands under the same parameters to optimize several. While you write one blog post, there are companies with entire teams dedicated to writing who post 20 a day to stay on top.

We are firm believers in targeting hundreds of keywords simultaneously and eventually ranking for thousands of keywords in the same time other SEO firms might focus on a dozen. You have to hedge your efforts, understand your competitors, but also observe their weaknesses while leaning into your own strategic advantages.

Why settle for a few keywords, when you could dominate a niche, why settle for one website, when you could have several working on your behalf, and why target a few keywords, when you could virtually devour your market whole.

The only difference is (a) commitment (b) method (c) budget (d) management and (e) execution. If you can successfully implement each of these collectively, and understand that online marketing is about ROI, then it is only a matter of time before you understand that SEO by design is the basis, and the deeper the knowledge base you have to use at your disposal, the more impact you can make.

We have given away a lot of free information on this blog, methods and SEO techniques we created, implemented and have tested time and time again. Search engines are by no means done with their evolution.

Just as we are passionate about optimizing content, website platforms,  SEO plugins, methodologies, etc, there are those who are just as passionate about keeping their inner workings a mystery to all those on the outside.

We commend those engineers for upping the ante so to speak and the competition for pushing the envelope, as they give us an opportunity to improve our game and add to our repertoire of optimization methods.

That which does not kill you makes you stronger, and that which pains you the most at times, can be your greatest inspiration. SEO is more than just a collection of techniques and tactics, it is a lifestyle which embraces many layers to fully understand and implement (beyond the processes involved).

This is why we share so much at SEO Design Solutions, because we understand that competition is healthy, that profitable markets are fierce and you can talk about SEO all day, but unless it produces results then it’s not SEO…

                          

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Just like you have got to learn to walk before you run, if you understand the various aspects of SEO, then you can combine them at will to produce the necessary degrees of relevance needed to get things moving in the right direction.

Co-Occurrence

All parts of your website should accentuate your relevance. Of the most important are the first occurrence of a keyword in the title, url (www.example.com/buy-trucks-online.html), and the h1 (your main header tag) which signifies what that page is about.

If all three of these parts are support the same keywords (“buy trucks online”),  that is considered high co-occurrence. Other variables for co-occurrence are meta description, inbound links and tags.

Lastly, it ALWAYS helps to have the keywords located within the text on the page.

Start with the right platform

There are a million ways to create a website. Use one that can be tailored easily for ‘out of the box seo’. If you don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a custom CMS (content management system) solution, then you can always start with an open source CMS.

Three that we recommend to our clients are Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. Which one is best for you depends on what you are trying to accomplish; are you selling bicycles or attesting the Google Monopoly?  Aaron Winborn wrote a great article that details the differences titled:  Drupal, WordPress, or Joomla? (A Trick Question).

Link to other pages within your website

Linking your pages together (also known as internal linking) is an important part of having a website. Look at it this way, if Google or the other search engines gets stuck at any one page, they will go away. The less Google comes around, the less they care about you. When Google does care about your site, there is a slim chance that it will come up in the search engine results pages. Simply put: Link Often.

Contact Other Professionals in your field

Use the social relationship in your professional networks to ask for links to your website. Google also likes it when you receive links from important websites around your geographic area (E.g. SEO Design Solutions is located in Chicago, so it would make sense to receive a link from the Chicago Tribune). When you ask for the link, prefer the link to use the keywords you want to rank for E.g. SEO Company in Chicago, etc.

Write for Quality

The best way to create a buzz around your website is to offer value to others. A great way to determine that is to ask the question, How do I better the lives of others? More value to readers, more value to Google.

Because Google is after all, just one type of visitor.

                          

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Introducing the Ask an SEO Help Section from SEO Design Solutions

In conjunction with the daily advanced SEO written works, we will be answering your questions… so go ahead, and ask away.

Here is the first question of the How-to SEO Series: Is there any benefit to using subdomains versus subfolders? Second, how do I create a subdomain? (–Tim from Chicago)

For the same reason that keyword rich domains sell for upwards of millions of dollars, using subdomains is an attractive solution to increase your relevance score in the SERPs (short for search engine result pages).  Google, and the other search engines give preference to all-in-domain versus all-in-url relevance.

In other words, using a subdomain like chicago.example.com versus www.example.com/chicago will, out of the box, have a better chance for ranking for a query containing “Chicago” and “example”.

Before anyone jumps on that claim, I will make the obvious caveat: SERP positioning is holistic; all-in-domain is just one metric that search engines use to determine relevance.  Other examples can be found here with allintitle, allintext and allinanchor (which respectively reflect the degree a website has based on the aggregate amount of relevant content in the title, body area (text) and anchor text (both within the site and from other sites) for specific keywords.

As for subdomains in application, our team recommends using this tactic to distinguish nodes of relevance within your site. Take yahoo.com as an example. The auto sections of their site is located on the subdomain: autos.yahoo.com. Reason: a separate node of relevance.

Another benefit of using subdomains is bypassing custom development, or issues of incompatibility. For some of our clients, who operate a coding platform that dates back to the dawn of php, we recommend pointing a subdomain to a separate server. Reason: less headaches.  In a same vein of thought, when building websites it is easier to send clients to a subdomain for live demos than a subfolders. Reason: easier to remember; as well as the ability to rank next to your main domain in the SERPs.

So the big question, how do I create a subdomain?

The easiest way is to call your domain registrar and have them walk you through the process.  In most instances, they will point you to the cPanel and hold your hand every step of the way.

But, the process in detail: Navigate to domains>subdomains. Within will be a blank text box as well as a box with your main domain name –cPanels vary in layout. Enter your subdomain in the box and direct the subfolder to either a document root (public_html/subdomain), or a separate IP address (in the case that we are pointing the subdomain to a separate server). Depending on the host, you may need to add a username and password.

Feel free to post additional questions and the new “Ask an SEO” Help section of SEO Design Solutions blog and we will randomly select a question to address in our next entry.

                          

Related Posts

1. Official Seo Design Solutions Blog
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3. Using Keyword-Rich Domains and Subdomains for SEO