Monday, June 25, 2012

How to Optimize Press Releases


Press releases are a gold mine for attracting high quality links and building site credibility for an SEO campaign. If you already utilize press releases, you might as well get the most out of them to help build your online presence.
By optimizing a press release, you are gaining trusted back links, offering timely content, and providing a way for potential social sharing—everything a search engine uses to determine relevance to rank well in the results.

Where to Start

Optimizing a press release can be simple, and it starts with creating a SEO friendly title. Do this by including a keyword in your title. To maximize the potential of a press release, craft a title that is interesting and “clickable.” Distribution services for press releases also allow you to customize the URL for the release, so implement a keyword here as well.

Polishing the Press Release

After you have the title right, use keyword rich anchor text throughout the press release. Don’t use more than two keywords links in a single press release. It is also a good idea to use the most important link at the beginning of the press release.
When it comes to choosing the right keywords to implement, keep in mind that press releases are one of the best places to utilize branded keywords as opposed to blogs. Make sure the keywords and links flow naturally throughout the press release. At the end of your press release, it is recommended you include a keyword in your boiler plate.

Optimizing Afterward

Once your press release has been submitted, make sure to follow up with other SEO and social media strategies. Take the time to publish your press release on other outlets and social media platforms to maximize outreach. Your goal should be to get your press release picked up by as many reputable sources as possible so your linked keywords have more credibility to boost your page rankings.
After about two weeks, do an analysis for your press release to measure your efforts. If you follow these simple steps, you should start to get more out of your press releases.

Pandas, Penguins and Predictions


Pandas, Penguins and Predictions

Given the guarantee that Google will continually tweak their algorithms, the best way to handle potential impacts is to prepare. Being proactive and anticipating Google’s next move helps protect rankings and your online presence.
Here are some things we believe will become the central focus of future algorithm updates, how they will affect the industry, and suggestions for keeping up with it all.
1.    Over-Optimization: Google intentionally targets websites that try to ruin natural search engine results pages. If you’re trying to manipulate Google for better rankings, think twice. After the most recent Penguin update, plenty of sites paid the price in lowered rankings. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume more algorithms in the future will continue to punish overly-optimized websites that try to cheat the system. Play your cards right, or pay the ultimate price.

Sure, saying you should avoid over-optimization is easy, but there’s no exact formula that defines what constitutes too much SEO. However, we do have an idea on how to try to stay on the safer side. A good approach is to continually focus on best practices. This recommendation is not an earth-shattering idea, but we recommend spending time crafting quality content. Also, focus on visitor interactions and essential SEO elements. Don’t go overboard on tools and techniques that attempt to attract unnatural, quick rankings.

2.    Quality: A lot of websites that were hit by the most recent Penguin update were involved in a number of these issues:
o    Comment spam
o    Article marketing sites
o    Guest posting on questionable sites
o    Paid text links

The common theme is punishing low quality content. Google has preached that worthwhile content will naturally attract more links, and future algorithms will continue to encourage others to adopt this philosophy. For us, credibility and quality go hand-in-hand. We recommend building a credible business and website by balancing appropriate content development and promotion as well as link-building. Websites who balance optimization practices with a more user-oriented experience will likely be rewarded in the future.

3.    Engagement: User-experience and engagement are important. Because Google rewards sites that it believes users will find relevant and of value, it is a good guess to think the future of SEO could include high engagement as a factor for rankings. At present, there are no exact measurements to gauge engagement, but we all know nothing with SEO is certain.

As we mentioned above, creating a natural user experience, developing a relationship, and encouraging action could be even more crucial in the future. We suggest continuing to dive into the social aspect of SEO. Be sure to stay actively involved in social networks, comments, and reviews to encourage natural participation from others. By being active on social media platforms, you can expect more visitor engagement on your site.

As much as people fear Google updates, if you aren’t trying to take advantage of the system you shouldn’t stress too much. In the end, the same type of websites will be punished by Panda, Penguin, or any other animal in the future — those who try to take shortcuts.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

How to get high local rankings

Local search ranking factors to get high local rankings

40 local search marketers around the world participated in a survey to find the most important ranking factors for local search. If you want to get high rankings in Google's local search results the survey can help you.





Why is it important to get good local rankings?
For some keywords (for example "plumbers"), Google shows local results at the top of the search result list. These websites aren't listed at the top because they have good content or good backlinks.
They are listed at the top because they fit to the geographic area of the search query. If keywords that show local results are relevant to your business, it is important to be listed in the local search results.
The five most important factors for local results
According to the survey, the following five factors are the most important factors that influence the overall ranking of a website in Google's local results:
  1. The physical address in the city of search
  2. Proper category association
  3. The proximity of the address to centroid
  4. The domain authority of the website
  5. The quantity of structured citations on Internet yellow pages websites and data aggregators
It also helps to have the city and the state on the landing page.
The top five factors that have a negative influence on your local rankings
The following factors can have a negative influence on your local rankings:
  1. A mis-match of phone numbers across data ecosystems. For example, tracking phone numbers can negatively affect your local rankings.
  2. Multiple Google Place pages with the same phone number.
  3. Multiple Google Places pages with the same or similar business title and address.
  4. A mis-match of the address and/or the phone number on Google Places and the landing page.
  5. Including location keywords in categories.
If your website doesn't have a crawlable version of your name, address and phone number on the landing pages, Google might not also give your website high rankings.
Getting high rankings on Google is important if you want to get more customers and more sales. 

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

How to make your website relevant?

Last month, Google introduced the Knowledge Graph with the claim "things, not strings." Google says that the new algorithm "understands the world a bit more like people do." This has a major impact on how you have to optimize your web pages.



The context of the keyword is important
The same keyword can have multiple meanings and the same search can have multiple intentions. Do you mean Jordan the place, or Jordan the rockstar?
People are interested in knowing what music George Gershwin composed, whereas they’re less interested in what dialog Mariah Carey delivered, and more in what songs she sang.
In the past, search engines simply looked for the words that were used in the query. Now the meaning and the intention also plays a role.
You have to show Google that your website is relevant
If you want to get high rankings for the keyword "SEO Services India" then it is no longer enough to have that keyword on your web page. There are several things that you can do to improve the position of your page:
  • A single page should be as closely related to a single aspect of the keyword as possible. The more targeted your page is to that aspect, the more likely it is that it will be chosen for the results.
  • To make your website relevant to a topic, it helps if you have multiple pages that deal with different aspects of the topic. For example, one page on your site could be about the definition of Search Engine Optimization, other pages could be about why Indian SEO agencies, other about SEO packages, etc.
  • Use different words that describe the topic of your site. Use "SEO", "Organic Search", "Search Engine Optimization", "Search Marketing", etc. depending on what your website is about.
It's not enough that your web page is relevant to a keyword. It must also be relevant to a topic. The more pages you optimize, the more likely it is that your website will become relevant to your topic.
The right keywords are very important but it is also important that you use them correctly on your web pages. Create targeted and focused web pages and optimize as many pages as possible on your website. The more highly relevant web pages your website has, the more likely it is that your website will get high rankings on Google.

At the end webpage content writing is an art of expressing your views in an appealing way so that it not only make your visitors to stick to your website but convert them into your lead and customer.