Before we do, let’s take a moment to answer the question:

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

In a nutshell, SEO is a process that has the ability to improve the natural ranking of your website or blog in search results — leading to increased traffic, sales, customer engagement and overall growth. SEO is the connector between someone who’s making a specific query on Google (or another search engine) with websites and/or blogs that contain relevant information pertaining to the query.

We’ve all performed countless searches, right? And on the surface, it seems pretty simple. Someone performs a search — say with the keyword “plumber” — and Google looks for and delivers results that are relevant to this keyword phrase. This, in and of itself, is no big news. But the question is, how does Google decide which results to list? And why do some sites or blogs rank higher than others?

Search engine optimization is a large part of the answer to these questions. It plays a critical role in determining where a website or blog ranks in the natural (also referred to as “organic”) search results.

Let’s take a deeper look at how this works, and learn about …

THE SEO PIE

Part of search engine optimization is the selection and strategic implementation of optimal keywords into your website content. Keywords account for approximately one-third of the SEO pie — a significant amount, for sure, but not a complete package by any means. In the past, keywords were a bigger piece of the pie. Then blogs and social media came along.

Now, effective SEO is broken into three major parts: keywords, content and social media. Together, they make up the SEO pie. And in this tip of the day, we’re going to focus our attention on keywords …

Keywords
You’ve probably heard the term “keywords” referred to more than once in relation to your website. And although you may know they’re a critical element in SEO, you may be wondering exactly what keywords are.

Keywords are terms or phrases that, when implemented into your website, can help connect you with people who are looking for what you do. In other words, when the keywords you use on your site are in alignment with the search terms people use to find the specific products or services you offer, there’s a better chance Google will present your website higher in the search results.

That said, the quality of your keywords makes a big difference in how effective they are. Many factors go into determining which keywords are best for your website and blog, including:

• The size of your site
• How long it’s been around
• How many people are searching for a specific keyword phrase
  within the region(s) where you do business
• How much competition you’ll be facing for that particular keyword
  or keyword phrase
• How relevant a keyword phrase is for your organization

Now that we’ve got a basic definition in place, let’s dive deeper for a greater understanding of what I like to call …

Keyword Hierarchy
This is something I’ve developed over the years to help identify optimal keyword phrase usage.

Essentially, when optimizing content, you don’t want to have just one keyword phrase that you hammer on ad nauseam. Instead, you’ll want to create a well-rounded list of keyword phrases for every web page and blog post. Depending on the topic and the content length, this list could include 3–5 keyword phrases or more than a dozen.

No matter the length of the list, make sure every single phrase is relevant to the topic, service or product you “discuss” in your content.

Once you’ve developed your list of keywords for a particular web page or blog post, you’ll need to decide which are primary, secondary and semantic, respectively.

• Primary Keywords: As “primary” indicates, these are the main keywords in your content. Sometimes you’ll determine them in advance; other times your organically written content will dictate them.
• Secondary Keywords: Used less often than primary keywords, these are still specific to the website page or blog post you’re optimizing.
• Semantic Keywords:Used only once or twice, at most, these stillplay an important role in “rounding out” the relevance of the content.

As you can see, semantic and secondary keywords play a supporting role in the optimization of content. They’re good to use, but they don’t have the oomph that a main keyword has, typically for three reasons: 1) they have low search numbers; 2) they have high competition; 3) they’re not the main topic of the page, but they work tangentially to support the main topic. An SEO novice might use secondary and semantic keywords as main keywords — or might overlook them completely. In Part 2 of the book, we’ll dive deeper into primary, secondary and semantic keyword usage.

Long-tail Keywords
This is a fancy term for using keyword phrases that are typically three or more words long. Very often, what makes a keyword phrase long-tail is the fact that it has some “definers” or “qualifiers” in it, making it very specific.

For example, “dentist” is most likely going to be a strong keyword, no matter where your dental office is located. But I’ll bet it also has very high competition. Adding qualifiers to the keyword — “Dentist Madison WI” for example — makes it more specific and might have less competition from other area dental offices.

Keyword Density
The term “keyword density” is worth a quick mention here. Keyword density is what it sounds like: the number of times (density) a keyword phrase appears on a page compared with the total number of words on the page.

Over the years, I’ve heard SEO experts argue that a keyword phrase needs to occur a certain percentage of the time to be considered an actual keyword. Through testing, I’ve found this untrue. Although a keyword phrase typically needs to appear more than once within the content to be taken seriously by Google, it DOES NOT need to appear a certain percentage of the time. That’s no way to optimize — and that’s no way to write good, relevant content.

Next time, we’ll dive into the content slice of the SEO pie.

Ready to learn more online marketing tips?

You’ll find hundreds of additional ways improve your online marketing in my book, A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing …

The post Marketing Tip of the Day: The SEO Pie — Keywords appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are terms or phrases that, when implemented into your website, can help connect you with people who are looking for what you do. In other words, when the keywords you use on your site are in alignment with the search terms people use to find the specific products or services you offer, there’s a better chance Google will present your website higher in the search results.

For example, if you were a dentist in Los Angeles, CA, phrases like “Dentist,” and “Dentist Los Angeles” would be good keywords because they’re actually terms people use to find a dentist in Los Angeles, CA.

Picking the Best Keywords

The quality of your keywords makes a big difference in how effective they are. Many factors go into determining which keywords are best for your website and blog, including:

• The size of your site
• How long it’s been around
• How many people are searching for a specific keyword phrase within the region(s) where you do business
• How much competition you’ll be facing for that particular keyword or keyword phrase
• How relevant a keyword phrase is for your business or organization

Making Your List

When optimizing content, you don’t want to have just one keyword phrase that you hammer on ad nauseam. Instead, you’ll want to create a well-rounded list of keyword phrases for every web page and blog post. Depending on the topic and the content length, this list could include 3–5 keyword phrases or more than a dozen. 

No matter the length of the list, make sure every single phrase is relevant to the topic, service or product you “discuss” in your content. Some call this “topic-based SEO,” among other things, but we just call it good writing.

For instance, if you have a pet food store that caters to dogs, well-written copy won’t be limited to dog food. You’ll want to talk about food for puppies as well as for older dogs … about different breeds of dogs and what foods might be best for them … and don’t forget dog treats! You might even want to cover how the foods you sell affect not only canine general health, but also canine dental health. You get the idea. Well-rounded keyword usage helps produce well-rounded content that’s good for the human eye — and for SEO.

Want to learn more about keywords and optimizing your website? Check out A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing by Joey Donovan Guido (our fearless leader over here at Cuppa SEO). Or, contact us anytime to schedule a complimentary consultation — we’re happy to take care of optimizing your website for you!

More SEO Tips …
– Optimizing Your Website: SEO By The Numbers
– Does Every Website Need SEO?
– 5 Simple Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Better SEO
– Soup Up Your Sub Headlines with SEO

The post Selecting the Best Keywords for Your Website appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

There’s No Relevant Search Volume

If you’re in an industry that is based solely on referrals — like higher end financial management firms, SEO may not be the best use of your marketing dollars. Why? Because if none of your customers are searching online for what you do, but rather ASKING trusted friends and colleagues, it could be more fruitful to invest in improving the user experience and conversion methodology on your website, as opposed to investing in SEO. Sure, you might receive inquiries from potential clients, but if your business model is based on clients that invest over $100k per year, and everyone who’s contacting you is looking to invest $100 bucks a month, it’s not a good fit.

Of course, when we create a keyword report for our clients we can tell if there are relevant queries that pertain EXACTLY to what each client does.

Difficulty Keeping Up

Search engine optimization used to be fairly straightforward, back in the day. By using certain keywords on your website, you could end up in the search results for those keywords, on whatever search engine your target audience was using. The problem with this was that unscrupulous marketers would employ practices like keyword stuffing: putting the same keywords over and over on a webpage, without context, to trick search engines into ranking the page first in the results for those keywords.

To prevent that, Google now uses complex algorithms to analyze the content of a webpage and determine where to rank it in search results. Keyword stuffing and similar nefarious SEO practices will now get your page penalized, and displayed to fewer people, rather than more.

Furthermore, those algorithms are constantly evolving and being refined. SEO practices that are rewarded now may be penalized (or at least become less important) the next time the algorithm changes. Keeping up with those changes and trying to optimize your content under ever-shifting guidelines is no easy task. So, if you can’t currently afford a specialized SEO/web design firm, you may wind up spinning your wheels trying to keep up with a confusing methodology like SEO. In other words, if you can’t do it right, it might not be worth your time — or it can even do your website harm.

Short-term Needs

There are a number of reasons why SEO might not be right for you. While it’s very effective as a long-term strategy, it’s not as useful for promoting things that are more immediate. This is because, SEO often takes around 90 days to kick in, which of course is way too long a time span if you’re looking to promote something that’s happening next week.

If you needed results that quickly, Facebook boosted posts, or LinkedIn sponsored updates may be a better avenue to pursue.

You Already Have More Business than You Can Handle

Yes, it happens. Established companies can often find themselves in a place where there’s so much business they can’t handle it. If this is the case, and you’re not planning on hiring more people anytime soon, the first thing to do is probably to have a process improvement expert help you improve workflow and efficiencies. And if you already have more business than you can handle, SEO isn’t necessary.

Still wondering if SEO is the right next step for your brand?
Feel free to contact Cuppa SEO anytime for a complimentary consultation, where we’ll look at your goals, your website — and your brand — as a whole.

The post Does Every Website Need SEO? appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Good web design helps 

High-level search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be brewed into every nook and cranny.

SEO DEFINED
In a nutshell, SEO is a process that has the ability to improve the natural ranking of your website or blog in search results — leading to increased traffic, sales, customer engagement and overall growth. SEO is the connector between someone who’s making a specific query on Google (or another search engine) with websites and/or blogs that contain relevant information pertaining to the query.

We’ve all performed countless searches, right? And on the surface, it seems pretty simple. Someone performs a search — say with the keyword “plumber” — and Google looks for and delivers results that are relevant to this keyword phrase. This, in and of itself, is no big news. But the question is, how does Google decide which results to list? And why do some sites or blogs rank higher than others?

Search engine optimization is a large part of the answer to these questions. It plays a critical role in determining where a website or blog ranks in the natural (also referred to as “organic”) search results.

Let’s take a deeper look at how this works, and learn about …

THE SEO PIE
Part of search engine optimization is the selection and strategic implementation of optimal keywords into your website content. Keywords account for approximately one-third of the SEO pie — a significant amount, for sure, but not a complete package by any means. In the past, keywords were a bigger piece of the pie. Then blogs and social media came along.

Now, effective SEO is broken into three major parts: keywords, content and social media. Together, they make up the SEO pie.

Keywords

You’ve probably heard the term “keywords” referred to more than once in relation to your website. And although you may know they’re a critical element in SEO, you may be wondering exactly what keywords are. Let’s take a look!

Keywords are terms or phrases that, when implemented into your website, can help connect you with people who are looking for what you do. In other words, when the keywords you use on your site are in alignment with the search terms people use to find the specific products or services you offer, there’s a better chance Google will present your website higher in the search results.

For example, if you were a dentist in Los Angeles, CA, phrases like “Dentist,” and “Dentist Los Angeles” would be good keywords because they’re actually terms people use to find a dentist in Los Angeles, CA.

That said, the quality of your keywords makes a big difference in how effective they are. Many factors go into determining which keywords are best for your website and blog, including:

• The size of your site
• How long it’s been around
• How many people are searching for a specific keyword phrase within the region(s) where you do business
• How much competition you’ll be facing for that particular keyword or keyword phrase
• How relevant a keyword phrase is for your business or organization

Now that we’ve got a basic definition in place, let’s dive deeper for a greater understanding of keywords.

Keyword Hierarchy
Let’s start with what I call “keyword hierarchy,” something I’ve developed over the years to help identify optimal keyword (and keyword phrase) usage.

Essentially, when optimizing content, you don’t want to have just one keyword phrase that you hammer on ad nauseam. Instead, you’ll want to create a well-rounded list of keyword phrases for every web page and blog post. Depending on the topic and the content length, this list could include 3–5 keyword phrases or more than a dozen.

No matter the length of the list, make sure every single phrase is relevant to the topic, service or product you “discuss” in your content. Some call this “topic-based SEO,” among other things, but I just call it good writing.

For instance, if you have a pet food store that caters to dogs, well-written copy won’t be limited to dog food. You’ll want to talk about food for puppies as well as for older dogs … about different breeds of dogs and what foods might be best for them … and don’t forget dog treats! You might even want to cover how the foods you sell affect not only canine general health, but also canine dental health. You get the idea. Well-rounded keyword usage helps produce well-rounded content that’s good for the human eye — and for SEO.

Primary, Secondary & Semantic Keywords
Once you’ve developed your list of keywords for a particular web page or blog post, you’ll need to decide which are primary, secondary and semantic, respectively.

• Primary Keywords: As “primary” indicates, these are the main keywords in your content. Sometimes you’ll determine them in advance; other times your organically written content will dictate them.
  
• Secondary Keywords: Used less often than primary keywords, these are still specific to the website page or blog post you’re optimizing.
• Semantic Keywords: Used only once or twice at most, these still play an important role in “rounding out” the relevance of the content.

As you can see, semantic and secondary keywords play a supporting role in the optimization of content. They’re good to use, but they don’t have the oomph that a main keyword has, typically for three reasons: 1) they have low search numbers; 2) they have high competition; 3) they’re not the main topic of the page, but they work tangentially to support the main topic. An SEO novice might use secondary and semantic keywords as main keywords — or might overlook them completely. In Part 2 of the book, we’ll dive deeper into primary, secondary and semantic keyword usage.

Long-tail Keywords
This is a fancy term for using keyword phrases that are typically three or more words long. Very often, what makes a keyword phrase long-tail is the fact that it has some “definers” or “qualifiers” in it, making it very specific.

For example, “dentist” is most likely going to be a strong keyword, no matter where your dental office is located. But I’ll bet it also has very high competition. Adding qualifiers to the keyword — “Dentist Madison WI” for example — makes it more specific and might have less competition from other area dental offices.

Case Study — First Choice Dental
First Choice Dental (FCD) is a local dental chain in Dane County, WI. In our work together, Cuppa SEO optimized dozens of First Choice Dental’s website pages and blog posts. Part of this optimization included implementing long-tail keywords in exactly the way I described above.

Take a look at the actual numbers (as of this writing), and you’ll see that the long-tail keyword is preferred over the short-tail keyword:

Keyword Phrase: Dentist
Monthly Search in Madison WI: 1,000
Competition: High
FCD Rank: 2nd on page 1

Keyword Phrase: Dentist Madison WI
Monthly Search in Madison WI: 880
Competition: Medium
FCD Rank: 1st on page 1

As you can see, FCD ranks well on Google’s natural search results for both phrases, but it ranks better for the long-tail keyword: It’s easier to crush weaker competition!

A nice thing about long-tail keywords is that they often contain multiple short-tail keywords. In the example above, “Dentist Madison WI” actually contains, “Dentist,” “Dentist Madison,” and “Dentist Madison WI,” so it really packs a punch.

Keyword Density
The term “keyword density” is worth a quick mention here. Keyword density is what it sounds like: the number of times (density) a keyword phrase appears on a page compared with the total number of words on the page. 

Over the years, I’ve heard SEO experts argue that a keyword phrase needs to occur a certain percentage of the time to be considered an actual keyword. Through testing, I’ve found this untrue. Although a keyword phrase typically needs to appear more than once within the content to be taken seriously by Google, it DOES NOT need to appear a certain percentage of the time. That’s no way to optimize — and that’s no way to write good, relevant content. In Part 2 of this book, we’ll take a step-by-step look at exactly where to implement your keywords, which is a critical component of solid SEO practices.

Another point of view is that it’s context — not keyword occurrence rate — that’s important. As you might have guessed, I agree that context is extremely important. When you’re writing rich, relevant, helpful content, that’s a third of the SEO pie. Of course, for content to meet all of these requirements, it has to make sense within the context of the page it’s on as well as within the website or blog as a whole. Let’s talk a bit more about content …

Content

In plain terms, content is the copy (words) and imagery found on your website and blog. And, when it comes to content and SEO, there are two important factors to keep in mind.

The Relevance Factor
Just like a human, Google is judging your content and determining whether it’s rich and relevant or boring and “thin.” Rich, relevant content helps each of your web pages and blog posts gain more authority in Google’s eyes, which means ranking higher in search results. It also increases credibility and engagement with actual people, too.

Thin content accomplishes the opposite, and it might lead your website or blog toward what I call the “black hole of Google Panda” — never to be found in organic search results. The good news is that if you take the time to create quality content, your site is already partially optimized!

The Freshness Factor
Freshness is an important factor in how well your website ranks in natural search results on Google. But where you add that fresh content to your site is just as important as how rich, relevant and useful it is.

Many novice SEO practitioners will tell you that the best way to inject new content into your site is to “freshen up” your homepage and subpages with new copy and keywords — sometimes on a monthly basis.

Taking this approach on a well-optimized site will most likely backfire.

Why? Because once your site is well optimized, changing the SEO on your homepage or subpages is similar to changing your phone number every month: It makes no sense. Just as your customers depend on your phone number as a means to reach you, Google is depending on your optimized content to find you and connect you with individuals who need you. Once you change the SEO on a page, the result can often be going back to square one — losing some or all of your page authority (credibility) with Google.

In other words, unless something changes — like a service or product — or one of your pages starts to perform poorly, you’ll want to leave well-optimized content alone on your home page and subpages.

So, if you need fresh content, where does it come from?

Fresh Content Comes from Your Blog
Use that blog of yours to generate the fresh content Google — and your viewers — are looking for. Adding a minimum of one blog post per week can do wonders for your “freshness factor.” Why? Because every time you publish a blog post, Google notices and gives your website credit for having some new, fresh content.

And, by the way, each blog post is excellent fodder for your social media efforts, too. Speaking of which, let’s review …

Social Media

Your social media efforts round out the SEO pie. Just as with your website and blog, you’ll want to optimize each and every social media post you publish. This means you’ll want to incorporate relevant keywords into each post.

It’s important to note that platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can help with business growth and relationship development, but it’s Google My Business that holds the lion’s share of SEO value in the world of social media.

In other words, consistently publishing posts through your Google My Business page can play a significant role in boosting your overall online authority. Google has made itself extremely self-important in the social media world. Like it or not, Google My Business is an extremely critical platform in the SEO equation. My advice: Use it to your advantage.

At this moment, you might be feeling the urge to jump ahead to part 4 of this book and begin implementing all of the social media optimization strategies. Resist the urge! Remember, your online marketing will be most effective if you stay true to implementing the strategies in this book in the order they’re presented.

SEO Pie Recap

Addressing all parts of the SEO pie helps Google identify what you do, so when an individual searches for your services or products, you’ll more likely show up closer to the top in natural search results as Cuppa SEO does in the following example. The better optimized your website, blog and social media efforts, the better chance you have of ranking high in these search results, which look like this …

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

The post 10 Principles of Good Web Design, #1: Get Found appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Freshness is an important factor in how well your website ranks in natural search results on Google.

But where you add that fresh content to your site is just as important as how rich, relevant and useful it is.

Many novice SEO (search engine optimization) practitioners will tell you that the best way to inject new content into your site is to “freshen up” your homepage and subpages with new copy and keywords — sometimes on a monthly basis.

Taking this approach on a well-optimized, high-ranking site will most likely backfire.

SEO is Like a Phone Number

Let’s take a look at why constantly freshening up your actual web pages is a bad idea. Which leads me the the question …

Would you change your phone number each month?

Of course not. Customers and colleagues are depending on your being on the other end of a specific set of ten digits when they make a call to get in touch. It’s the same with Google, who is counting not just on your URL for a particular page’s location — but also on the content, keywords and imagery (which of course is optimized, right?) that live on each web page.

Like a phone number, Google is depending on you to keep the same definers in place for your web pages. And when you change the information, like changing a phone number, you’re no longer where Google expects you to be. Depending on how much content and keywords are altered, this may mean that you go back to ZERO in Google’s eyes for page authority (which affects where you rank in natural search results).

Where Fresh Content Should Go

Now that you know what not to do, the next question is where do we put our fresh content? Google’s algorithm is looking for it, and so are our visitors, so we can’t just forgo implementing a fresh content strategy.

The answer is actually pretty simple. Fresh content goes on your blog. Now, every time you publish a blog post, Google notices and gives your website credit for having some new, fresh content. If blogging is new to you, check our article, Blogging 101 Tips: Creating a Blog Campaign, to help get you started. You can also sign up for our free Blogging 101 Webinar to learn more about the art of blogging.

The Subpage vs. Subdomain Dilemma

In order for your blog to count as fresh content on your website, it has to be a subpage of your site, not a subdomain. If this doesn’t make sense, check out our bleet on the topic, Blogging 101 Tips: Subpage vs. Subdomain.

Thank you for visiting Cuppa SEO! I hope this clarifies where and how to publish fresh content!

The post The Freshness Factor: The Right Way to Freshen Your Website Content appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

As you may have guessed, here at Cuppa SEO we talk about search engine optimization quite a bit. To follow is a brief definition of the term, but for a more detailed look at SEO you can check out our What is SEO? page, or you can click on SEO in the categories box to your right for a variety of articles.

What is SEO?

In a nutshell, search engine optimization is the selection and implementation of optimal keyword phrases along with rich, relevant content into your website, blog and social media efforts.

Keywords and relevant content help Google identify what you do, so when an individual searches for your services or products there’s a better chance you’ll show up in natural search results. And the better optimized you are, the better chance you have of ranking high in these search results.

There’s a lot more nuance involved in the art of SEO, but we’ll leave those details for another day. For now, it’s enough to know that search engine optimization needs to be present, in a meaningful way, on your website, blog and social media.

Does SEO Need to Be Maintained?

In most cases, NO. Although there are many SEO firms that would lead you to believe otherwise.

If someone offers you an ongoing “SEO package” to keep your search engine optimization efforts “fresh” on your website be very careful — in many cases this can do more harm than good.

What about Fresh Content and SEO?

Fresh content is another part of the SEO equation, but on your website homepage and subpages you’ll want to leave well-optimized content alone.

Changing your SEO efforts on your web pages is similar to changing your phone number every month — it’s bad. Just as your customers depend on your phone number to reach you, Google is depending on your optimized content to find you and connect you with individuals who need you. Once you change the SEO on a page, the result can often be going back to square one — losing some or all of your page authority (credibility) with Google.

So, if we need fresh content, where does it come from?

Fresh Content Comes from Your Blog

Use that blog of yours to generate the fresh content Google, and your viewers, are looking for. Adding a minimum of one blog post per week can do wonders for your “freshness factor.” And, by the way, each blog post is excellent fodder for your social media efforts!

SEO & Social Media

Speaking of social media, you’ll want to incorporate relevant keywords into each social media post you publish. Plus, be sure to include an image, with an optimized image name, in each post, too!

Looking to learn more about online marketing?
You can sign up for our complimentary Holistic Approach to Online Marketing webinar.

You can also check out other articles in this series:
– Understanding Online Marketing, Part 1: Your Website
– Understanding Online Marketing, Part 2: User Experience (UX)
– Understanding Online Marketing, Part 3, Conversion
– Understanding Online Marketing, Part 4, Blogging
– Understanding Online Marketing, Part 5, Social Media

The post Understanding Online Marketing, Part 6: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Shocking as it may be, the one-time deal is true. Well, at least partially. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be, “search engine optimization (SEO) for your website is a one-time deal.”

When you think about it from a technology standpoint, it’s pretty amazing SEO remains the gold standard for getting your website “seen” by search engines. Though some adjustments have been made because of changes in search engine algorithms, the standard practice of SEO has been in place since the late 1990s!

As a Cuppa SEO reader, you probably know that. However, did you also know once your website is optimized with rich keywords, no monthly “tweaking” of them is necessary? Yep, it’s true. Unless you add a new page or image, etc., once your website is optimized, that’s it.

Unfortunately, you’d be amazed at the number of SEO service providers who charge monthly retainers to keep clients’ website keywords “fresh.”

You see, SEO is both a one-time setup and an ongoing process. You apply it to your website first and then bump up your traffic and search results through blogging and social media activity. As an example for the website part of the picture, we audit a client’s website and identify every page, image, URL, nook and cranny for search engine optimization opportunities. A keyword report is generated to identify which keywords will pack the most punch for your business, and we use them to get the attention of search engine crawlers. Think of it this way: search engine crawlers are “blind” and keywords are the braille allowing them to “see” what needs to be indexed for a search engine results page (SERP). So, this means you want the keywords on your website to remain fixed, to make sure search engines recognize your site as a credible source to be displayed on a SERP. It also means you need to generate ongoing, keyword-rich content to attract even more attention from the search engines.

Now, to some readers, this information may not be all that new. But, when thinking about the many customers who have come to us after experiencing retainer-based “freshening” that did more harm than good to their site’s authority — not to mention depleting their budget with no results to show for it―a quick SEO recap seemed appropriate. In fact, you may want to pour it into your mental cup and drink up.

The post Search Engine Optimization is a One-time Deal? appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Have you heard of Google Panda?

He’s very smart. And although he’s cute, you don’t want to get on his bad side. Simply put, Google Panda is an algorithm that that filters websites into two main groups — sites it likes and sites it doesn’t like. The sites that Panda “likes” are upgraded in Google’s search results, while the ones it doesn’t like get downgraded.

Why You Should Care

If your website is breaking some of Panda’s rules your ranking could plummet, making it harder for you to connect with customers. If you adhere to Panda’s rules, and implement an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy that Panda likes, you’ll be in much better shape.

Here’s a top 10 list Panda dos and don’ts:

DO

• Make sure you have original content on all your pages. Original and boring won’t cut it with human eyes or the eyes of Google Panda. Your content has to be engaging and interesting — offering value and relevance to the reader. This is often referred to as “rich” content. If you don’t have someone on staff who can accomplish this, hire a copywriter who can.
• Use keywords correctly in each web page as part of your SEO strategy. Keyword phrase choice, placement and density all play a part in where you’ll rank. 
• Use Market Samurai, a free SEO strategy tool, to help you choose good keywords and keyword phrases. Make sure you understand how to use this tool by reviewing the videos in their DOJO. If you don’t use a tool like Market Samurai, you’re essentially  throwing darts at a dartboard in the dark, while you’re blindfolded.
• Write for the reader, not the search engine. If you have nothing relevant to say on a web page or in a blog post, just delete it! Panda hates pages that have been created for the sole purpose of increasing traffic. Google Panda fancy’s pages that are full of relevant content, written with “passion.” Yes, algorithms are now smart enough to know (for the most part) if you’re posting with sincerity or if you’re just greedy for more traffic.
• Learn about your customers. What are they looking for? What problems do they need solved? What solutions can you offer them through your website or blog?

DON’T

• Lift content from other websites. This is called duplicate content, and it’s a rule breaker. Instead, write your own.
• Cut corners on keywords or quality content. A successful SEO strategy entails taking the time you need to create pages that are optimized well.
• Be boring. If a web page is boring to you, it’s probably boring to everyone else (including Panda).
• Create web pages with the mindset of getting more traffic. Instead, create web pages that people will get excited about. This will get you more traffic AND more business. Plus, Google Panda will like you.
• Use too many keywords. This is called “stuffing” and it’s another big rule breaker.

I hope you enjoyed this top 10 list of Google Panda Do’s and Don’ts.

Thanks for visiting!

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