St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

This guy makes some great points about competing in the local search market. Remember, it is a competition, not an automatic thing. You’re not going to be automatically listed #1 on Google for Florida Web Design just because you submitted your web site to Google and you are actually in Florida. On a smaller scale it’s the same for St. Petersburg Web Design. just because you are in St. Petersburg and you tell Google doesn’t mean that the national companies aren’t fighting hard for your spot.

He doesn’t really give away a lot of tips but he does highlight the challenges that most small businesses don’t understand.

Here’s a rather dry but informative video that tackles the oft subtle differences between White Hat, Grey Hat and Black Hat link building methods:

You just never know where the next big fundraiser is going up on the internet next. One things is for sure, putting more resources into your internet presence is a must just to keep up.

To all local and state level Politicians. It’s time to play catch up or loose it all to new challengers.
Here’s some younger republicans driving home the point that they can and will put more effort into internet marketing so as not to be bested in the future.

One thing they seem to be aware of is that 12-6 months before an election is the time to begin internet marketing in earnest.

Read about the Last big google update in the months right before an election that set this practice as a tradition with google and other search engines. It’s called the Florida Update (ironic name).

Note they are also touting only a few of the successes their opponents have been having by using internet marketing and great web applications to raise funds and get their message to the people. I can’t blame them, I like to talk about the future myself.

If your a local or state level politician in any party here in Florida. You need to contact us today. Why today? It takes time to develop an internet presence using natural search engine results. If you wait until right before an election, you will have to much more money into paid advertising, which people trust less.

Here’s a little video of an interview with someone from IBM that is supposed to be about how they manage their content. If you’ll watch the video you’ll notice he doesn’t speak on that directly he answers the question from a SEO point of view.

Please note that unless you company is IBM, Microsoft, or some other large multi-national mega-corporation this isn’t going to work for you. How can I tell? Well by the things Mr. Hunt doesn’t say and by the state of the mess that is large mega-sites like ibm.com and microsoft.com.

There is gold in his words, but when it comes to actually managing the content in a search engine and human friendly manner, Mr Hunt (and his clients websites) totally drop the ball.

Link building campaign is a pretty straightforward term. Basically it just means trying to get web-sites to publish search engine readable links to your site.

Why?

Well Search Engines think the more links there are to a web site, the more important and relevent that site must be. It almost sounds good on the surface, but actually it’s quite the moronic idea.

Here’s some things you can do to increase the effectiveness of your link building campaign:

• Get links from sites that are related to the keywords you which to market.
• Use your chosen key phrases / words in the text of the link that others place on their sites. The text of the link matters a bunch.
• If your going to pay for links, make sure they’re NOT “Jump links”. Jump links are coded in such a way as to be not readable to search engines.
• Make sure the links that point to your site don’t use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. that asks a search engine not to follow (therefore count) the link in question.
• Get links from sites w/ as high of a PageRank as possible. Search Engines mistaken believe this has something to do w/ site quality too.

The google sandbox isn’t actually a place or a thing at all. It certinley a place where google employees play during breaks. The google sandbox alludes to a term that programmers of web “Content Management Systems” (CMS) where the users of their web content management systems (typically not programmers or even technically inclined at all) could learn to post articles and stories using that partcular CMS by praticing. The sandbox was an area where they cpuld pratice and ewxperiment with all aspects of the systems methods of making articles without saving them permanently and displaying them to the public as real articles.

Google’s Sandbox isn’t quite that, but it’s similiar. Evidently google in their all knowing wisdom has decided that it takes several months for a web site to decide what they are about. Perhaps a lot of people change thier message and keywords alot during this first period. I’m sure they’ve read the tags on way more sites than me. When I do a site, it’s get fully planned before implemented so there isn’t much changing after it goes live. But I understand not everyone has my skill or even uses a professional.

The Googlew sandbox is actually a status unofficialy given to web sites by google. They may have them in their index but they usually won’t list them in the search results unless the search is for the address. Yes, some people still type the address into a search enginge instead of the address bar. This period can last from a few weeks to a few months.

Little is know about how it exactly works. In fact some people in the search engine optimization business try to say it doesn’t exsist. Well rest assured it does. I have discovered two things about the google sandbox however:

• Whatever the cause, new sites do not get listed in google’s search engine results for a considerable longer period than other web sites.
• This effect can be mitigated (not entirely), by submission fromm someone who has successfully submitted sites that were index by google in the past.