It’s no secret that there are literally billions of pages of information on the Internet. Most doesn’t pertain in any way to you or your business, but wouldn’t it be nice to automatically find only the information that does, as soon as it gets indexed by Google?

That’s what Google Alerts can do for you. It’s a little known feature from a company that’s full of great offerings, and it’s one that can become invaluable as your business grows. Using it is a snap, and you can set it to update you instantly, or as little as once a week if you have a great deal of new links coming in to your site.

To set up an alert, start by navigating here: http://www.google.com/alerts

Then enter your search terms. These can be your web site (http://www.dynamixwd.com for example), your company or personal name, or anything else that is important to you. Select “Comprehensive” as the Type and decide how often you would like to be contacted. Personally, I have some items come in “as they happen,” and others that I have come in once a day. Last but not least, enter your e-mail address and press “Create Alert.”

Now you’re all set to reap the benefits of knowing who is talking about you online almost as instantly as they do!

This is a simple list of some of the things we have heard in the past from supposed “Search Engine Optimization Experts.” We have created this list in an effort to help you keep your site on top, and to help you know when you are dealing with a potential scammer. Note that this is by no means a conclusive list, just a selection of some of the more common ones we hear. If you received a proposal from another company that sounds a little fishy and want to discuss it with us, we will be happy to do so at any time, completely free of charge or obligation. Simply contact us.

1. You Need to Re-Submit Your Web Site Monthly/Weekly

-FALSE!-
This one is particularly pervasive, and a just plain silly concept. The idea is that you should pay to have your site resubmitted to Google, Yahoo and others on a weekly, monthly or bi-monthly basis so that they will come back and reindex your web site. Now, realistically these search engines exist and have risen to the top because they are very good at what they do. Google knows when to reindex your site, and they don’t want, nor will they take your input on when to reindex them. Now, Google may be nice the first time you resubmit your site to it unnecessarily, assuming that it could just have been an error on your part. But keep submitting it for no reason, and you could find yourself banned for six months in search engines. These search engines won’t send you a nice e-mail explaining why you are banned, you will just notice one day that far fewer people are finding your web site, and you will find out the hard way that you are no longer indexed on their site.

2. You Should Submit Your Site to 10,000 Search Engines

-FALSE!-
This one has been around for almost as long as search engines themselves. The premise is that you should pay to have your site submitted to a thousand, ten thousand, whatever the number of search engines so that your site will be well indexed and people can find you. It sounds almost reasonable on the surface until you stop to think about it. How many search engines do you use? Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and maybe one or two others. The chances are that you only use one search engine, and the chances are good that if you polled all of your friends, they would all use one of about five search engines. Knowing that, how beneficial do you think it will be having a search engine created by some guy in his basement pointing to your web site? Most of these pull their content from the larger search engines directly already (meaning that you are already in their index), and even if they don’t, the chances are very high that not a single person will ever find you from one of these “other” search engines.

3. Google Adwords Will Increase Your Normal (Organic) Rankings

-FALSE!-
Google has stated repeatedly that the Adwords program is completely independent from the normal, organic Google search engine rankings. Paying for traffic through Google Adwords is a great option if you do your research and set it up properly, but it will have absolutely no impact on your normal, non-paid search engine rankings.

4. The More Content You Have on Your Web Site, the Better

-Yes & No-
Yes and No. Yes, you should have adequate content to present your company and its expertise, and you should have that content written in such a way that people can actually find you in search engines. But just adding content for content’s sake may actually hurt your web site rankings. A good rule of thumb is if you wrote it, it makes sense, and that same text doesn’t exist anywhere else, then it’s probably okay to have on your web site. But taking canned text from another web site will not grant you any favors in search engines, and indeed can actually hurt your rankings. Google is smart enough to know when your text has appeared on other web sites, and will mark you as simply a “copycat,” a web site that doesn’t provide any real benefit over the many others that exist with the same content.

5. Link Directories and Exchanges Help in Search Rankings

-FALSE!-
Google is VERY good at what they do, and that includes knowing when you are just trying to artificially pump up your search engine rankings. If you submit your site to these link exhanges (also known as link farms and link directories), Google knows you are trying to artificially boost your rankings, and they can penalize you for it. Will they every time? Probably not. But just because they aren’t punishing you now, it doesn’t mean they won’t tomorrow when Google changes their algorithms. Bottom line: Bad practice is bad practice, and at some point you’re going to get busted for it.

6. You Can Buy a Guaranteed #1 Ranking on Google

-FALSE!-
We hear this one a lot as well. People come to us and say “I want a web site, and I want to be the number one result in Google. Now, I’ve talked to someone already who promises he can do it for me, can you?” The sad truth is that no one can promise you a number one result for anything but Google, and they aren’t going to. That’s not to say that by good practices, meaningful content and an attention to detail your web site can’t be highly ranked for the keywords important to you, maybe even the top result, but there is no way that anyone could possibly promise that to you. If you hear this from a search engine firm, run the other way. Think we’re bluffing? Read what Google has to say (Look for “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google).

7. It Doesn’t Matter Who’s Linking to You as Long as They Are

-FALSE!-
Search engines don’t just look at how many web sites are linking to you, but also the quality of those sites, and what relevance they have to your web site. For instance, if a very well known and well respected soft drink company were to link to our web site, we would receive a boost in our rankings because they are very important in search engines, but as soft drinks are not at all relevant to web design, we would not see the boost that could come from an equally large software company linking to us, as they are both large, well respected and relevant to our web site.

8. Meta Keyword Tags are Important

-FALSE!-
Ten years ago, you would have been right. But today’s search engines are far too smart to give you any credit for having meta tags on your site filled with hundreds of your key words. The way to bring visitors in is to use those keywords meaningfully within the content of your web site, not in a one-after-the-other format in a meta keyword tag at the top of your web site. Search engines won’t give you any benefit for these meta tags, but oddly enough there is research to say that having too many meta tags can actually hurt your rankings. Not only that, but by keeping a list of your most important keywords on your site in the form of meta tags, you are giving your competition prime advice as to the most important keywords to your business! Your competitors can easily copy and paste this list right into Google Adwords and start bringing in your potential customers.

9. The Quality of the Code on Your Site Doesn’t Really Matter &

10. A Web Site is a Web Site, SEO is All that Matters

-BOTH FALSE!-
Google can’t index your site if it can’t get through your code. Errors and problems can prevent search engines from properly reading your site. In addition, poorly created pages using tables and iframes may be difficult – or impossible for a search engine to see. Many sites use images in lieu of actual text, which Google cannot read at all. This means that, while you may have a long paragraph that does a great job of describing your company or product, if it’s in an image without alternate tags, Google doesn’t know what it is and you will get no credit for it, just as if you never included it on the site at all.

Interested in learning more? Give us a call toll free at 800.203.8139, or send us an e-mail.

We are happy to announce that one of our clients, BMSCC is currently listed as the number one result out of 11,900,000 for the term “building materials consultant” (without quotes) in Google. Screenshot included below.

The BMSCC web site was created from the ground up by DynamiX Web Design, and they had no prior web site. Congratulations BMSCC!

We created the DynamiX Labs web site as a resource for anyone who is looking to get more in depth with PHP, HTML, design and CSS. Recently, it has come to our attention that the DynamiX Labs site is ranked #4 out of a staggering 142 MILLION results for the phrase “loading icon” (without quotes) in Google.

In addition, the site is ranked #2 out of a whopping 95,300,000 (that’s 95 Million) in Yahoo for the same keywords.

Thanks to all who have linked to and referenced our articles!

Probably the most common questions we receive about search engine rankings relate to keywords. People ask how many keywords should be added on a given page, whether hiding text behind other objects works in increasing rankings, if adding words that the company is not actually relevant for will help in search engines, etc. Hopefully, this article will help to dispel some of these myths, while providing a clearer understanding of what is necessary to create a web site that is both highly ranking, and also friendly to site visitors. Because, after all, who cares how search engine friendly a site is if customers leave in disgust as soon as they find it?

Myth #1: Forget wasting my time writing good content, Adwords will do the work for me, right?

Yes and no. Yes, if you want to keep piling money into adwords, you will keep bringing in traffic. But, the moment you stop paying for adwords, you are right back where you were before but with less money in your pocket. Google Adwords will not increase your organic rankings. It’s worth saying this again, because it seems to be a very pervasive myth, Google Adwords will not increase your organic rankings.

You can spend $100 million dollars, but as soon as that money is gone, so is the traffic that was created. You can’t throw money at your search engine rankings and hope that they will raise. Now, that’s not to say Adwords doesn’t have it’s place, it’s great for sites with a low organic ranking to start (ie a new web site, or one that has recently been redesigned and is still being indexed), as well as for bringing in traffic in an incredibly competitive arena (we use Adwords ourselves), but the fact is that organic rankings are always more important and valuable to your company than paid rankings.

Myth #2: People will search for my site using industry jargon.

This one is less a myth than an attitude. Consciously or not, most people tend to write their content from the perspective of an industry insider (you know your industry better than anyone, right?), and don’t think to review their content with the people who matter most, their customers and potential customers. If you sell “Information Technology” but someone is looking for an “IT guy,” you lose, plain and simple.

Thankfully, there is a quick remedy. Talk to four or five people who are outside of your industry, and ask them “if you were looking to buy a (insert product or service here) online, what would you type into Google to find it?” Take those phrases and words, and make sure that they are actually on your web site. If they aren’t, then add them in, in context on your web site.

If it means removing some of your industry jargon, all the better, as visitors probably don’t know what they mean anyway. If your industry is highly technical, consider a page that provides straightforward definitions for some of your more complex terms. This has the added benefit of giving you a great place to write the list of phrases that you have gleaned in talking to your customers.

Myth #3: I heard that I can just write the top 100 keywords on my page, in no particular order, in the description of my product and call it a day.

You could do that, but you’d run the risk of annoying your customers. No one likes to see a page full of paragraphs of nonsensical content when they are looking to purchase from you. It shows that you have shady morals, or at the very least that you don’t really care that your description doesn’t make sense. And since Google can read your content almost in the manner that a person does, they will quickly notice that your text is garbage.

Myth #4: Someone told me I can hide text on my site by writing it in the same color as my background.

Yes, we still hear this one, and no it won’t work. Google is way too smart to be tricked by an obvious scheme like this one. Enough said.

Myth #5: I heard that Meta Keywords are important, and I want to add them to each page of my site.

This is a complete waste of time. Instead, take that hard work you spent making a list of keywords for each page and put it to good use, by making sure that those are actually written on your web site in some context. If they aren’t, consider rewriting the content. For more on meta tags, read our article entitled “Meta Keywords Tag: Long Dead, But Still Not Gone.”

Take these tips to heart in your writing, and take a hard look at your web site. When is the last time that you isolated half a day to cover your web site’s content? Just how old is what you wrote on there? Does the site even mention your latest products or services? What about the ones that you no longer offer, are they still prominently displayed? Set aside a day’s worth of time every few months (at a minimum) to focus on your web site. In particular, take these words to heart if you just said to yourself “the web site doesn’t bring us enough business to justify spending time on it.”

The web site doesn’t bring you business because you have not taken the time to create value. Make your site a resource, and you will have no shortage of business coming from it.

I was driving down the road a few days ago, when I passed a sign that made me stop (metaphorically speaking of course) and think. It read something like this:

“Our plumbers, 100% steroid free.”

What???? Why would anyone care that a plumber doesn’t use steroids? Does it affect job performance? How does this have any bearing on anything?

Then I realized, the ad was simply designed to catch my eye and to keep me thinking about it. Well, it succeeded at that, but it failed in it’s ultimate goal – as I spent so much time wondering how steroid use impacts plumbing that I have no idea which plumbing company was the advertiser.

I see similar ads all over the place. I see more and more radical headlines, company names and colors than ever before. Usually, the “attention getter” makes literally no sense whatsoever (like the plumbing ad), and is simply created in a desperate attempt to get noticed.

I say, take an extra hour of brainstorming to uncover what stands out and would interest people about your company, instead of just throwing out whatever you think will get people to look. I will notice something out of place on an ad (until it’s so common that it gets ignored too), but I won’t be impressed that a company spent it’s ad budget to tell me something nonsensical.

What if the plumbing company had instead said “Our plumbers wear belts,” accompanied by a picture of a plumber leaning over a sink and not flashing himself at the drivers passing by the sign?

Instead of a minute spent wondering why plumbers would use steroids in the first place, I’d spend 10 seconds smiling about the companies’ sense of humor. Their ability to poke fun at one of the biggest stereotypes in their industry (and consequently themselves) would go a lot further for me than some ill-planned ad simply designed to catch my attention.

And in the end, which is more effective? Is it the minute spent thinking not about your company, but an ad that doesn’t make sense? Or is it the 10 seconds spent reflecting on a humorous ad, one that gives the viewer a shot at also remembering the name of the company, instead of just the ad?

I want a company with a sense of humor, not one that deliberately makes no sense in an effort to get my attention.

Anyone else with me on this one? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Why do so many companies steadfastly refuse to provide enough information on their web sites for customers to make an informed buying decision?

Over the years, we have heard dozens of companies respond with the same message. “We don’t want to provide them with enough information right off the bat, we want them to call us.” That technique may have worked back when there wasn’t a huge, multi-billion (trillion?) page entity called the internet, providing answers to literally anything you can think to ask. Now, it just turns potential customers into no-potential site visitors.

Unless you are the only company in the world that offers your particular product or service, all a potential customer has to do is move on to the next web site to find the answers they need. And when that happens, do you think that they will come back to the site that didn’t answer their questions? No, they will buy from the one who was straightforward with them.

I hate to sound harsh here, but the days of the tough sell are over. It’s so easy for a customer to buy from your competitor online, be they down the street or five states over, that it’s no longer acceptable to try to play games in the sales process. Being honest is not just a best-practice way to succeed, it’s the only way to succeed.

There are many examples of companies who ignore these words. You can find them all day long in review sites such as Kudzu.com. They are usually the ones with the 1 or 2 star reviews.

Thankfully, the remedy is fairly simple: Review your web site content, and remove all the tricks. Make it easy for a customer to reach you by phone and e-mail, but don’t make it the only way for them to find what they need. If there is a question that consistently comes up in customer interactions, add it to the site.

If you aren’t sure what needs to be added, consider putting a simple contact form on each page that allows customers to ask questions about a particular product or service directly, and then incorporate answers to their questions on your web site. Become a resource to your customers, or they will find another company that is.

Here’s a concrete example:
Take a look at the reviews under Reliable Heating and Air. As I write this, there are currently 42 reviews, and the company has an overall rating of five stars out of five. Believe me, they didn’t get that way by holding back information that would help their customers to make an informed buying decision. I know that first-hand, because when my air conditioner failed last summer, they talked me out of a more expensive system that I didn’t need.

Maintain your honesty, both online and off, and your reputation will carry you even if times get tough.

Only three things are certain in this world: Death, Taxes, and Meta Tags. Long regarded as useless, officially and often labeled as such by Google itself, the meta keywords tag alas still manages to persevere.

I have a theory as to why meta tags won’t just “rest in peace.” I think it’s because it is very easy for a so-called “SEO Expert” to sell an unsuspecting business owner on the idea. Why? Because adding meta tags to a site takes a minute or less per page, and the tags can be generated from one of a hundred free keyword tools.

It’s easy money for them. And, I think I can safely say that everyone with a computer has probably heard the phrase “meta tags” tossed around at some point in the past as a way to increase search engine rankings. It’s comforting to believe that high web rankings can be achieved simply by adding in some hidden keywords, but it’s just not true.

The harsh reality here is that these people won’t help you increase your rankings. Sure, there might be a few misguided souls who used to build web sites in the late 90’s when the technique was mildly effective, and who still honestly believe that is still the case. But most of them just want your money, and don’t care that they won’t help you.

It’s time to confront these people/companies and ask them to explain how spending your hard-earned money on meta tags will help you, when Google’s official blog states: “…we generally ignore the contents of the “keywords” meta tag.”

It’s no secret that we are in a recession, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do if your business is slow. Now is the perfect time to re-dedicate yourself to your web site. I’m not suggesting you call up your web guys and drop $10,000 (though our feelings won’t be hurt if you call us), but if you have a web site that allows you to edit your own content (and if you don’t, it’s time to rattle the cage of your current web designer), now is the best time in years to be working on making your site better. Why? Simply because if business is slow, you probably have a little extra time on your hands.

The people who come out of this recession, just like any other, stronger and better will be the ones who take this time to make their business better. In the web world, that means focusing on ensuring that your site’s content is readable, friendly and conveys the message you would like to get across. It means removing the pictures of the Christmas party from three years ago from the “Latest News” section on your site (how many people reading this hear me all too well on that one?), and it means updating your list of products and services to purge those that you no longer do, and to emphasize the ones that you have since added. If you don’t have a blog, now would be a great time to start one, but only if you are willing to dedicate yourself, and your company resources to at least one meaningful article per week. This doesn’t mean a blatant advertisement for how much better you are than the other guys down the street, it means actually writing something that people will enjoy reading, and that will provide them with solid benefit.

Do these things now, and you will reap the benefits down the road.

Our original article, entitled “Is your website selling your company, or your competition?” explains the effect that a poorly formed web site could have on your competition. It’s now time to clarify exactly what steps you can and should take to ensure that you aren’t helping to sell your competition with your web site.

1. Keep your text READABLE.

It’s one thing to want to make sure that search engines know what you do, and to ensure that you appear highly in them for the keywords that are important to your company. It’s another thing altogether to make your site a collection of unreadable, poorly formatted keyword paragraphs. Many people don’t even realize the way their content comes across to site visitors, because they haven’t taken the time to read it themselves, or to solicit feedback from individuals who don’t know the company or the industry well already.

How to do it.

Ask friends and neighbors to read through your most important few pages or products, and to give you honest feedback. After reading each page, would they know more than they did when they started, or would they have a headache trying to make sense of what is written?

2. Keep your text FRIENDLY.

No one wants to be talked at, in person or on the internet. Does your text have a friendly demeanor, or is it boring? Does it inspire people to buy from you, call you, e-mail you, or does it inspire them to look to the next web site?

How to do it.

Don’t take yourself quite so seriously. Yes, you sell an important product or service, and yes, people need to know more about it. But friendly costs nothing, doesn’t hurt the quality of the message and makes people feel like they are doing business with a human, not a computer. Note that this doesn’t mean you should tell jokes about your products or showcase your items in a ridiculous way, it simply means adding a personal touch.

3. Keep your DESIGN friendly.

Is your web site solid black, or bright blue with yellow text? Is the text large enough, the menu noticeable and easy to navigate, and the color scheme one that makes people want to stay on the site? Do you have a bunch of meaningless flash animation, with dancing letters or loading screens?

How to do it.

Be very aware of how your site design is perceived by others. Does it make them feel happy or sad? Lethargic, annoyed, or intrigued? Try asking a select group of non-company related individuals to use five words to describe your site design, and see what comes up. Also remember that if you are selling products, white sells. There’s a reason Ebay, Amazon, Target and all of the other large, successful online retailers accent their web sites with white. It emphasizes the product rather than the web site, and it makes people want to buy. What colors are you using?

4. Keep your content FRESH.

Seeing a news headline that invites visitors to a conference in Cleveland scheduled for two years ago, or a Merry Christmas message in the middle of April is a dead giveaway that you don’t pay attention to your web site. What does that mean to the visitor? It means that you may not be paying attention to keeping your product cutting edge, either. People want to know they are getting a new product with solid innovation behind it. If your site shows signs that it’s old and outdated, people could easily assume your product is as well.

How to do it.

If your site allows it, put “end dates” on your time sensitive articles. Our customers use SE’s built in date function to allow articles to disappear before they get too old, so there’s never a concern about having a conference invitation that has long expired, or reference to a holiday that has long-since passed. If your site can’t do this, then keep a note on your calendar to remove these old items the day they become dated. Another note, if you don’t have a lot of news, make sure your articles don’t mention the date. Nothing says “never updated” like an article with a post date of 2006.

5. Make it EASY to reach you.

It always amazes me when I see a web site with tons of great information, a clean design and… absolutely no way to contact the company.

How to do it.

This one’s easy. Place your phone number prominently in the top-right hand corner of your site header (studies have shown that this is the first-looked to location for contact information), and have some sort of simple and obvious link or button that directs people to your contact us page. Speaking of, you do have a “Contact Us” form, don’t you?

A simple, clear and concise contact us form is much easier on the visitor than a simple e-mail link. Instead of having to open their e-mail program (or give up if they are on a public computer without access to their account), the visitor simply needs to enter a little information and press send. Having a well-built contact form also prevents spammers from getting your e-mail address and using it to their advantage (aka sending you spam). Just remember, the more fields to fill out, the less chance someone will do them. If your contact us form has 20 fields to fill out, expect your e-mail box to be lonely.

Taking it further.

Did you like this article? Need some clarification, or want to know how these principles apply to your business and web site? Send us an e-mail and tell us what’s on your mind.