Web Strategic Marketing

Aug 23

xml-sitemaps.com’s standalone sitemap generator

I’d thought I’d share one of my favorite search engine optimization tools – a sitemap.xml generator by http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

and while xml-sitemaps.com offer a great free service, if you have multiple web sites I thoroughly recommend spending $19.95 for the standalone sitemap generator, which in addition to XML, Text and mobile site maps also produces HTML sitemaps. Not only does this product produce in depth, fully accurate, sitemaps it is a great productivity tool because it will save you an awful lot of time.

The standalone sitemap generator:

Has no limits for the number of pages included in sitemap
It generates any kind of sitemap you require: XML, Text, HTML, mobile site maps
Images information can be optionally included in sitemap
It will work for all sites including dynamic websites such as portals, blogs, forums, and online stores.
Fast and easy installation onto the same host that should be crawled
Support of LARGE websites, dividing the sitemap on the parts per 50,000 URLs each and creates a Sitemap Index file according to the Google sitemap protocol.
Informs (ping) Google and other search engines automatically when sitemap generation is complete
Any broken links that are detected by the application are reported on a special page, providing you with the URLs pages that refer to these bad links enabling you to fix them and keep the search engine robots on your site.
Can be setup automatically with a cron job to create sitemaps without any user interaction
Free Updates for life.

This is a product I use on many of my web sites, and I fully recommend become part of your search marketing strategy.

Every time you make a change to your web site, your should create new sitemaps and notify the search engines….if you don’t how else will the search engine know that you have added new content to your web site(s)…quickly!? We operate in a competitive world and this product can provide the Internet Marketer with a competitive edge.

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Tagged with: bing • content delivery • google • micro-blogging • organic search • retweets • tweets • twitter

Aug 18

Top SEO ranking factors

Search Marketing No Comments »

One of the most common questions that my clients ask about Search Engine Optimization is “what are the most important ranking factors?” Well the folks at seoMOZ have documented the answer to this very common question and break it down into great detail in this report – I highly recommend that you check it out – but the summary of the Top (on-page SEO and off-page SEO) is as follows (the following is an extract from the seoMOZ report) :

Top 5 Ranking Factors

Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links

73% very high importance
External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)

71% very high importance
Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)

67% very high importance
Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

66% very high importance
Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains (e.g. TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)

66% very high importance

Check out seoMOZ – a great SEO resource for the SEO practitioner.

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Tagged with: anchor text • external link • keyword • link sources • off-page SEO • on-page SEO • root domain • SEO • SEO ranking • title tag

Aug 17

SEO tutorial by seoMOZ’s Whiteboard Friday series: Link alternatives

Search Marketing No Comments »

By way of disclosure, I have a Pro account with seoMOZ but I did want to share one of their ‘Whiteboard Friday’ tutorial series and the good news…you do not need a Pro account because many of them are available via Youtube. If you’d like to learn more about SEO but don’t have a whole lot of time the ‘Whiteboard Friday’ series are only a few minutes each and are well worth the watch. In this video, rand discusses link alternatives. If you’d like to learn a little more about CSS image replacement check out this cool blog article

http://css-tricks.com/css-image-replacement/

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Tagged with: css • css image replacement • link alternatives • SEO • seoMOZ • whiteboard friday

Tagged with: linkedin • twitter

Jul 18

SEO 8-step guide: How to design a web site for great keyword search performance

Search Marketing 1 Comment »

The objective of the SEO professional is to make web pages relevant to search engines and in a competitive environment, more relevant that your competitions’ web pages! If someone is searching for ‘keyword‘ then the search engines will only return pages that are relevant to that search team. In order to make a page relevant there a 8 basic steps that you should follow. Of course, selecting the correct keyword is a subject to itself.

Here is a easy 8-step guide to designing a web page with good SEO keyword practice. Use this guide as a cheat sheet or checklist because the information below should be applied to every web page…if you would like someone to find it!

Step 1) Title tag should include the most important keyword on this page. If there are multiple keywords then the most important keyword should be positioned first.

<title> Keyword </title>

Step 2) Include the most important keyword in the URL. If you have a couple of important keywords that you wish to market then include them in the URL, per the second example below:

URL with one keywords: http://www.domain.com/keyword.html

URL with two keywords: http://www.domain.com/keyword-keyword2.html

Step 3) Use headings (H1, H2, H3, H4 etc) when structuring your page but make sure that the keyword is included in H1

<h1> keyword </h1>

Step 4) Body Text – write the text for people, not bots, but include your keyword in the first 100 words

Step 5) Image file name:

keyword.jpg

Step 6) Image Alt tag

<alt> keyword </alt>

Step 7) Bold text

<strong> keyword </strong>

Step Links back to the ‘Keyword’ page should include the keyword

Click to link to Keyword

After following these 8-steps your web page will be relevant to search engine searches for that term.

Ok, I hear you say “If I do this, will I go to number one?” Good question and if only it were that simple – search engine optimizing a web page is very complex and many of the ranking factors have little to do with the way your web site is designed such as the number of back-links to your site. However, the first step to obtaining great search engine rankings begin with following these 8-steps and once that is complete we can tackle the the other factors which influence your web sites search performance.

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Tagged with: Alt • backlinks • Headings • keyword • search marketing • SEO • URL

Jul 16

How to find customers (and friends) by target market (or interest) on Twitter

Social Media Marketing No Comments »

So, you have a Twitter account but you have very few followers and friends? but, you would like to use Twitter to target a specific market segment or find friends with a similar interests? If so, then follow the 6 steps in this guide and you will identify your target market and you will find friends with a similar interest.

Step 1: Track Hash tags ( # )

Hash tags are simply a method of putting a tracking code onto a popular keyword. For instance, I track ‘SEO’ (Search Engine Optimization) and anytime I send out a tweet with #SEO it will appear in the Twitter dashboards of all those who are tracking #SEO – which in the entire twitter sphere is both my target market and my source of knowledge.

You can visit hashtags.org to research which Hashtags have an interest to you. Okay, I can hear the question “I am a sales person, how can I use hashtags to fiond customers?”

Let’s assume that you are a Real Estate Agent in New Haven, Connecticut and you would like to build a following in your target market. By filtering out tweets with the hashtags #newhaven, #connecticut and #CT you can identify potential friends and followers in your target market. Once you have built you following you can send out tweets with hashtags #newhaven, #connecticut and #CT. Pretty cool, huh?

2) Twitter Stalking

Let’s start with a competitor…find a competitor and examine his following and followers list and begin following all on his list. Also, make sure that you also follow any pertinent lists that he may have created. The next step is to go through each of you competitors followers and go through their list…..etc. You can Twitter Stalk your way to a following in your target market.

3) Twitter Lists

As soon as you find an account that looks interesting, search to see the lists that they have been included on as this will be a gold mine of people with similar interests – don’t be shy follow each list or go through each list and follow each person. Does the stalking never stop. Nope, not if you want to use Twitter seriously as a marketing channel.

4) Socialoomph (fee-based)

It doesn’t get any easier than with Socialoomph – just tell Socialoomph what keywords that you are interested in (along with a bunch of other selection criteria) and once every 12 hours with will provided you with a list of 50 potential friends for you to evaluate, if you like them add to your list if you don’t you need ever see them again. It is a great product but like many great products you get nothing for nothing.

5) Twellow (Twitter Yellow Pages)

Twellow categorizes all accounts in a similar fashion to the way in which the Yellow pages categorizes businesses which means you can find potential followers classified by market segment…. how cool is that? A marketer’s dream. It is a lot of work going through it but…you know, …nothing for nothing. Plus based on you profile, Twellow will provide you with a list of ‘suggested’ friends…will the coolness never stop?

6) Twibes

Twibes allows users to meet and group themselves by subject of interest. Simply join, search for a keyword and you will meet like-minded individuals.

Whatever floats your boat.By following any of the steps, never mind all of them, laid out in this 6-step program (There could be many, many more steps but I have kept it to 6) you will be able to grow your Twitter account with either a target market focus or a focus on a special interest. Have fun.

Be my friend @georgebross

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Tagged with: @georgebross • hashtags • socialoomph • twellow • twibes • twitter

Jul 16

Redirect your domains via the rewrite rule on .htaccess for extra SEO juice

Search Marketing No Comments »

So, you thought that http://www.yourdomain.com was the same as http://yourdomain.com was the same as http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html was the same as http://yourdomain.com/index.html well from a search engine perspective they are not and failure to connect all 4 will result is a loss of SEO juice.

What to do?

Well thanks to a rewrite rule on the .htaccess file on Apache servers there is an easy fix. The following code has been copied from the .htaccess on this web site ( Web Strategic Marketing ) and to use it on your site, simply copy it and replace the text in red with your domain information.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

#redirect index.html to domain.com
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.html
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html$ http://www.webstrategicmarketing.com/$1 [R=301,L]

#redirect domain to www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^webstrategicmarketing\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.webstrategicmarketing.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Enjoy the extra SEO juice.

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Tagged with: .htaccess • apache • redirect • SEO juice

May 31

Read your web site as a search engine sees it

Search Marketing No Comments »

When web designers publish a web site it is often only after many, many, client project reviews and page edit after page edit with a focus, a sole focus, on how the web site will appear in a browser. Few clients have any interest other than how the web site will appears in a web browser and they just assume that everything else is in place that will make the web site perform on search engines.

However, in the months that follow publication the client observes that the web site simply is not performing well on search engines!. What to do!

One of the first steps is to understand how a search engine reads you web site.

A great, efficient and simple way to evaluate your site is to look at the site in the same way that a search engine spider would… checking each page with a text browser using a Lynx Browser. This tool reads all the text on a web page including the ‘Alt’ text assigned to images.

If you’d like quickly to check a page on a site you could use the Lynx Viewer. but for maximum convenience and efficiency you can download Lynx and run it locally.

It is quite common that web sites that look spectacular have little-to-no content and this occurs because of a dependence on images and flash files and very little use of text. Spiders read text.

If your web site must be image intensive then please read this blog entry for advice on image optimization for search engines…http://webdesign-ri.com/web_site_design_and_SEO_blog/2009/09/18/how-to-search-engine-optimize-images/

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