Doug Williams SEO Services
Increasing Traffic, Increasing Conversions
Home | SEO Blog
503.389.5650

5 Easy Steps to Writing SEO Content

Doug Williams @ 4:08 am

This blog entry was posted on April 29, 2010.

Most people use search engines to find what they are searching for. This means all of your writing for the web needs to be done with the search engines in mind. It doesn’t matter if you are writing SEO content for your website, new articles or postings for your blog.

SEO copy writing is much more than just writing keyword rich text for the search engines. It must appeal to your human readers once they arrive. SEO content writing means applying keywords to your website in a way that tells the search engines how to index your website.

  1. Research your keywords and keyword phrases. Choose one primary keyword phrase to focus on. It doesn’t matter if you are writing a web page, an article or a blog posting. Web pages can handle up to three secondary phrases as long as they are closely related.
  2. Headline: A well written headline will catch the interest of your readers and the search engines. Use your primary keyword phrase prominently in the headline so the search engines will take notice. Remember the purpose of your headline is to attract attention and generate interest.
  3. Write: Start writing with your keyword(s) clearly in mind. Try and form your main topic around your keyword phrase. You don’t need to worry about working the keywords in…yet. Your entire focus is on writing a quality article that will interest your audience.
  4. Apply: Work in your keyword(s) into the top 25% of your text. Search engines put more importance into “prominence” which are the words used in the beginning of your article or web page. Do not use the keyword phrases at all in the last 25% of your text. Search engines place extra emphasis on words used in bold, italics, ordered lists and numbered lists. Use keywords here where possible.
  5. META tags: The only META tag that is still important is the Title tag. Place your keywords into the beginning (for prominence). Place your company name or website at the end of the Title tag. Title tags should be 65-70 characters. They can be longer, Google just won’t display over 70 characters.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: SEO Strategies



The META Keywords Tag is Now Obsolete

Doug Williams @ 3:57 am

This blog entry was posted on April 27, 2010.

Google has announced that they do not consider the Keywords Meta Tag at all in their search algorithm. The Title tag and Description tag are still important. Google will rank your web page or site based on the text it finds on your pages and backlinks (links from other websites).

Matt Cutts in the video below announces that he does not recommend spending any time crafting and creating your sites keywords tags. They are now ignored by the search engines.

Where did the Keywords the Meta tag originate?

In 1995, the search engines Infoseek and AltaVista began promoting the use of the keywords attribute as a way of categorizing web pages. In May 1996, the major search engines got together to discuss and set standards for Meta data. That meeting is where the standards for the Meta robots tag and the Meta description tag were established. The Meta keywords tag was discussed but no standards were set.

The search engines quickly saw abuse of the Meta tags, particularly the keywords tags as a way for webmasters to hide irrelevant keywords in an effort to draw in website traffic. The keywords tag was often the most unreliable and misleading of the Meta tags.

The search engines responded by discounting the value of the keywords Meta tag. Today the keywords tag is now obsolete and holds no real value in search engine optimization.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: SEO Strategies



Use Blogging to Give Your Small Business the Edge

Doug Williams @ 5:02 am

This blog entry was posted on April 25, 2010.

Small businesses have an advantage over big businesses. They are fast, flexible and can make decisions without the bureaucracy that many big companies suffer from. It is this ability to make decisions and take action that makes blogging work so well for small business. Blogs are a powerful way for businesses to reach and interact with potential customers.

  1. Low cost: Blogs can offer a low cost way for businesses to get a web presence. According to a 2009 Ad-ology study 46% of small businesses surveyed do not have a website. Blogs allow a business to have an online web presence at a lower cost than a custom website and without the need to learn HTML.
  2. Content: The focus of a blog should be on the message, not on a flashy site design. Blogs are about reaching your target audience with a message they find interesting and useful. It could be opinions on the latest industry trends or how to advice.
  3. Fast: Blogs broadcast their message via RSS across the Internet. This is the same technology that allows news stories to be found and read within minutes of a story breaking. Normal websites wait for search engines to find and spider them while blogs broadcast their message actively.
  4. Trust: People trust the content on blogs that come from individuals more than stories from mainstream news or from large corporations. Many people will search and read the content from a number of blogs and then draw their own conclusion. Blogs allow small businesses to voice their message online.
  5. Optimization: Add a blog to your business website and this can help improve the rankings of the website. It just takes regular blog posting with keyword rich writing. Blogs are an excellent SEO tool that professional SEOs use.

Yes people do still read blogs, you are reading one right now. You just need to have something important to say. Learn more about how blogs can be used to grow any business. The eBook Mastering Blog Marketing by Doug Williams is a step by step guide on how to use blogs. The eBook is free.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: Blog Marketing



Top 4 Reasons Why Attorney Websites Need SEO

Doug Williams @ 5:16 am

This blog entry was posted on April 23, 2010.

As a lawyer, the topic of SEO or search engine optimization may seem mysterious and confusing. It is a technical specialty not that unlike the practice of law. What you do need to know is that keywords are how people locate you using a Google search. The rules of how to optimize a website continues to change as Google keep changing.

The keywords you select help you target the right clients. These are the clients most likely to call you. Search engine optimization is the process of selecting the right keyword phrases, applying these properly to your website content and procuring links from other relevant websites (backlinking). So why is SEO important to an attorney?

  1. More clients: When a lawyer’s website is on the first page of Google, more clients will call and come into your office. According to a Cornell University study, the top three search engine results receive 79.6% of the clicks by searchers. Top search positions, mean more website visitors and therefore more clients.
  2. Lower costs: Internet marketing is lower in cost and has a higher conversion rate that traditional media such as direct mail or yellow pages. This is why businesses have been shifting their ad budgets to Internet marketing and slashing their traditional media ad budgets. This is according to a 2009 study by the Kelsey Group.
  3. Targeting: SEO allows you to better target and qualify prospective clients. For local clients, you will need to apply local SEO techniques. People search for local businesses by combining city, state, zip code and area code with broader keyword phrases.
  4. Branding: People normally perceive a top Google ranking means as a higher quality and more established firm. Visitors naturally expect HP to come up high in the rankings when they search for computers. Higher search rankings translate into higher trust of your firm.

SEO can make a powerful difference in any business, but particularly in a law practice where people have an immediate need and use search rankings as part of their attorney selection criteria. Choose a SEO firm that can demonstrate the SEO results they have obtained for other clients. The sooner you start the SEO process, the sooner you phone will start ringing.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: SEO Strategies



For the Upsell , Timing is Everything

Doug Williams @ 4:25 am

This blog entry was posted on April 21, 2010.

Upselling is a successful ecommerce strategy where you introduce another offer after a customer has already made the decision to buy something. The odds are much greater of completing the sale if you can present your upsell offer at the most opportune time… immediately after the purchase.

If you can offer them something else to buy immediately after their purchase, the odds of making the sell are excellent.

If you buy some sort of appliance or computer at a traditional store, the cashier at checkout will offer to sell you an extended warranty. In the ecommerce world, this may be just enough to frustrate your buyer. If you present your upsell before the transaction is complete, you run the risk of your customer abandoning the transaction and leaving.

1ShoppingCart has a new feature called Upsell Express. Here the customer is presented with an upsell as soon as the transaction has completed. Here there is a one click transaction for each upsell offer. All of the information is still stored from the prior purchase. With a single “Add to my order” button, the customer adds the upsell to their order, and the sale is made.

You can present multiple post-sale upsell offers. You can even follow each decline with a down-sell offer of a less costly product option.

The only complaint I have heard about the Upsell Express is that if you don’t have a down-sell and the customer does not purchase the upsell, it automatically takes them to the next upsell. You cannot send them to some sort of exit page. This could frustrate customers.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: Internet Marketing



How to Turn Your Articles Into Press Releases

Doug Williams @ 4:34 am

This blog entry was posted on April 19, 2010.

Press releases and articles are an excellent way to direct visitors to your website and develop quality back links that will help your search engine rankings. There are plenty of free article syndication websites and free or low cost press release sites.

What should you write about to get the best results? It can be anything that your target audience considers valuable, unique or interesting. Many companies are good at creating articles, but do a poor job of creating press releases.

You can change an article into a press release or turn a press release into an article. You just need to understand what makes each unique.

  1. Press releases are pseudo news stories. They are designed to announce something and are written in the third person (he, she, they).
  2. Articles teach, provide instructions or opinions. They are typically written in the first person (I, we, our).

Let’s assume you have a nutritional supplements website and you market to people who want to improve their health. You have written a number of articles about weight loss using natural supplements for teenagers and how they help even when there is a genetic tendency to gain weight.

You want to create a press release which needs to be a newsworthy announcement of some sort. You need to create some sort of interesting “hook” that will grab your reader’s attention.

You could start with a newsworthy title such as “Supplements can turn off the obesity gene.” The first sentence in your press release should be a summary rather than a lead sentence. Press releases shouldn’t be written as a sales piece promoting your company. But you can be a quoted source in your press release, of course naming your website or company.

Use your article as a basis for your press release and then use it as a basis for creating your press release.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: Internet Marketing



5 Ways to Improve the SEO of Every Website You Design

Doug Williams @ 5:22 am

This blog entry was posted on April 17, 2010.

You want to attract interested and motivated visitors that are likely to take action. Simply attracting visitor traffic is not your goal.

  1. Keywords: Keywords are how search engines categorize and index websites. Keywords are the phrases people type in when they do searches online. To do your keyword research there are a number of good keyword research tools. Choose phrases that will attract buyers. Buyer phrases are very specific and will include things like make and model or specific locations or details as searches get refined.
  2. SEO Copy Writing: Write your pages using your keywords you selected. Each optimized page should have 400-600 words of test and use each keyword phrase 1-2 times in the body text. These should be used as close to the top of your text as possible. In addition, use the keywords once in the page headlines and once in link text. This should link to another relevant page.
  3. Title Tags: Each page should have a unique keyword rich title tag. This is the one META tag that the search engines still put a lot of importance on since it is visible on the top of the browser on your screen. Place your most important keywords at the beginning of the title tag and make  sure these phrases are relevant to that page.
  4. Add a Blog to your website such as worpress.org. Adding a blog and writing original keyword rich content is one of the best ways to increase the size of your website and to attract links from other bloggers. Write informative and original blogs or articles and post them regularly on your website. If you are a good writer and the ideas that you present are original and insightful, then these much sought after links will come almost automatically.
  5. Google Analytics: This is where using your website analytics such as Google Analytics comes in handy. You can analyze factors that lead to conversion such as bounce rate. Bounce Rate is the percent of visitors that leave without moving deeper into your website. These people leave directly from the page they entered on. A high bounce rate usually leads to a lower conversion rate.

Understanding SEO basics will make the websites you produce be found naturally in the organic search results.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: SEO Strategies,Website Design



"Stop Words"… Does Google Ignore These Anymore?

Doug Williams @ 12:39 am

This blog entry was posted on April 15, 2010.

Not long ago Google and other search engines used to ignore what was termed “stop words.” Stop words are supposedly words that search engines ignore. These are common words such as in, a, the, of, or, on, etc. Full list of stop words.

Google used to provide a statement that certain words were actually being removed from your search query. Google used to tell you words were not being considered in your search. If you searched for “a restaurant in the Phoenix area”, you would see a statement at the top of the results that said “the following words have been omitted from your search: a, the.”

Search engines such as Google would often ignore them when indexing the words on pages to conserve storage space. They tend to slow down a search without improving the results. But is this still true?

Google now stores and processes all words on a web page. This includes what used to be called stop words.

I ran some tests to see how much search results would vary using a single stop word. I ran comparisons for “plumber los angeles” and “plumber in los angeles” (no quotes). I looked at the top 5 results, only 3 were the same.

I did the same for plumber in Denver and for Portland. I repeated with dentist. What I found was 53% of the time listings would still fall into the top 5. This means that 47% of the time they didn’t. This was by only adding a two letter “stop word.”

Other interesting observations were:

  1. Google sponsored ads were different.
  2. Google Maps (7-pack) seemed unaffected.

My sample size was small, but there was a big difference even with a subtle change in the keyword phrase. My conclusion is that stop words need to be included in your SEO strategies and how you place words on your pages. You do need to look at which exact phrases a searcher is likely use.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: SEO Strategies



How to Write a Killer About-Us Page

Doug Williams @ 4:26 am

This blog entry was posted on April 13, 2010.

Someone arrives to your website and they are interested in what you sell. They immediately want to know more about you. In their mind, they are asking: “Why should I trust you?” The job of your about-us page is to answer that question.

How important is the about-us page? It is the second most viewed web page in the typical website. The home page is the most popular page.

These pages should help people learn more about who you are, what you do, and why they can trust you.  The about-us area for a website can be a single page or a section of pages, depending on your website.

Include things like your press releases / press room, an organizational profile, an investor relations section, disclaimers and legal information, careers and employment opportunities, public relations, affiliate programs, green initiatives / sustainability, community relations, frequently asked questions and sometimes the contact page.

A “Meet the Staff” page is a common companion page to About-Us. The focus here is to highlight key customer facing employees. A short bio, a picture and maybe a favorite quote.

Many websites have a link to their Privacy Policy and to their Terms of Use page from their About-Us page.

One definite trend is the increasing use of video to add a more personal engagement with the visitor. This can bring in the personality of the CEO or to highlight community and sustainability initiatives. Short videos of 2-4 minutes are best.

The about us if a single page is usually located in the top navigation bar. If a group of pages, it can be a drop down (such as for Adobe in the example above) or near the bottom of the home page (such as Best Buy and Amazon above).

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: Web Usability



7 Ways Business Blogs Are Better than Websites

Doug Williams @ 5:43 am

This blog entry was posted on April 11, 2010.

Blogs are today’s online magazine that more and more people are turning to for their information. Businesses have adopted blogs and are using blog marketing as a major strategy to build up their brand and attract new customers.

  1. Active: Blogs are active while websites are passive. Blogs broadcast their content out to the web via RSS every time there is something new. Websites, on the other hand, wait to be discovered by search engine spiders. It’s like the difference between fishing and hunting. You can sit and wait for fish, or you can actively hunt and pursue.
  2. Faster: Blog posting and syndication is almost instantaneous. Blogs distribute information very quickly and efficiently. Because blog feeds are similar to news feeds, information spreads in minutes instead of days or weeks. Blogs are a great place to kick-start marketing campaigns for new products and services.
  3. Loyalty: It is easy for visitors to subscribe to a blog so they can view new postings as soon as they happen. Blogs encourage repeat visits with content being delivered to your favorite reader or delivery by email. Compare this to bookmarking a website which depends on the visitor to come back.
  4. Current: By their nature, blogs have regular fresh content and they are more up to date. Blogs tend to deal with breaking events and technology insights.
  5. Interactive: Blogs invite participation and interaction. Blog conversations are encouraged providing multiple viewpoints and discussions. Comments can be made easily from each page.
  6. Personality: Blog writing is more informal and conversational. It allows the writer’s personality to make it more alive and interesting. Websites on the other hand are more formal and tend to be written in marketing speak.
  7. Easier: You don’t need to understand HTML to publish your thoughts and opinions. The content management systems on blogs allow you to type, format and add pictures as easily as you can in a word processing program.

If You Like this posting please +1 it!

Filed under: Blog Marketing



Next Page »