Search engine optimization starts with a good keyword research program where you try to identify the best possible group of words for each page. Sometimes we can be trapped into a type of tunnel vision where we only think of the obvious words or phrases - there are alternatives that can sometimes be considered to bring in extra traffic.

Earlier this week I wrote a post on the use of plural keywords in your search engine optimization program, that is just one of many alternatives. A careful review of your keywords may find that many alternatives exist that prove beneficial.

The term search engine optimization is a good example. You could spell it with an ‘S’ as in optimisation, You could abbreviate it to SEO or even seo. You can also test for a variety of mis-spellings such as ‘engin’ for ‘engine’. There are many other spelling variations that could be tested for competitive use.

Using a good analytics program will also help. These show the keywords that have been used to find your site. Look for unusual variations on your current keyword list to see if these could be taken advantage of. Remember, the keywords thrown up in an analytics program are words that have already been used to find your pages. Perhaps your search engine optimization program can maximize them to effect.

To be effective with your keyword research you need to be able to think outside the square; to look for the unusual; and to be able to find keywords that your competitors are not using but the searchers are. Include those words in your search engine optimization program and may find yourself ranking much higher and receiving valuable extra traffic.

Search engine optimization is all about getting your pages as close to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) as possible. But why? If you use a PPC campaign you can get as much targeted traffic as required. I read an article on SEO Speedwagon on Organic SEO that really puts the issue into some perspective.

They quoted possible statistics relating to the percentage of clicks through organic search compared to paid search. Only 14% of Google clicks were through paid search, the remaining 86% being through organic search. With those numbers, using search engine optimization to get to the front pages of the SERP’s not only makes sense, you would be crazy not to try - after all, organic search is free.

While he admits the figures may only be hearsay, even if the numbers came at 50/50, getting traffic that is ‘free’ is always going to be valuable. I say ‘free’ because search engine optimization does not come cheaply. I have yet to see a set of figures that provides and adequate ROI value on search engine optimization.

There has to be a break even point below which paid search becomes more financially effective than search engine optimization. For now, at 86/14 ratio makes the effort more than worthwhile. As an exercise, it would be interesting to see how many sites that use paid search come close to that 86/14 ratio. As an analytical statistic, any site that has receives close to or more than 86% of search traffic that is organic can sit back happily in knowledge their search engine optimization strategies are somewhat effective.

About a week ago I was sitting at my desk doing what I normally do when I received a very interesting call. Now this part is not the abnormality as I receive interesting calls all day long. Everything from individuals who want to sell outdated Nokia cell phones manufactured in 1995 to people brushing their teeth and flossing while they inquire about our services. I will leave that for an entirely different blog post.

As I pick up my phone on this Wednesday afternoon I am greeted by a very nice caller from an organization called Goldline Research. They proceed to tell me how they are working on a research study on the top SEO firms in the U.S which will be published in a fall issue of Inc. magazine. Of course my ears perk up and my toes get tingly, who’s wouldn’t? She began to explain the initial process and the steps to get started. We went to their website filled out an in-depth questionnaire on all aspects of Brick Marketing. My initial assumption is that Inc. magazine hired this firm to conduct an extensive analysis on some of the most compelling SEO firms through a series of checks and balances. I thought to myself this would be fantastic for our growing company! I quickly marched into the president’s office, Nick Stamoulis and threw my hands in the air with excitement proceeded to tell him the good news and we laughed and conversed about this new amazing turning point potential for Brick Marketing and proceeded to go about our day.

About a week later we got on a conference call with Goldline Research as I was able to sit in and be a fly on the wall. We were speaking with who we thought was an “Inc. editor” who we later found out was a senior level editor for Goldline Research, sounds like my uncles position as a waste management engineer aka he drives a garbage truck, titles don’t really mean anything. Our president than began to reveal confidential company information such as operations, success stories, clients, employees etc. The senior level editor than began to explain to us how an independent board will review our credentials and how they would then compile a list of 40 SEO firms and select the top 10 but in order to move forward if we were chosen we would have to agree to a lump sum of $5,500 dollars. Whoa! This is when my forehead hit the windshield.

Who determines this sum of $5,500? Does an SEO firm that has triple the employees pay more? Does one with fewer employees pay less? Why on earth is anybody even paying? Shouldn’t this list be made of a quality outcomes generated from actual client results and happiness with doing business with a firm? Shouldn’t this important information be presented from the beginning of this process? If we knew that this was the case we would have never even made it to their website from the beginning. Is this list simply for bragging rights or to pay for the ad space because there is clearly no relationship between Inc. magazine and Goldline Research?

My nose has been twitching since our conference call because something stinks about this whole thing! We are not about to end up as a guinea pig or better yet someone else’s commission check just to have something pretty to hang on our wall in the office. It’s bad enough that times are tough and business is scarce and we all have to work hard to stay afloat but this to me is just bad business.

Is there anybody out there that has encountered this organization? How do you feel about the process of paying if selected as a top 10 SEO firm? All Search Engine Optimization firms be weary when receiving a phone call from a company called Goldline Research.

A recent post looked at search engine optimization and flash where we discussed how flash could be used if you really had to use it. Today I want to take that theme just a little further and look at one option to improve your page’s crawl success.

Web designers often resort to techniques like Flash and Java to improve a pages look and feel. there are times where Java is the preferred script for certain actions like mouse overs. Unfortunately, these are not always search engine optimization friendly design techniques.

One way to get around these issues is to consider producing print friendly versions of those pages. Print friendly versions are generally easier for the search spiders to read and follow. Where a page may be spider unfriendly, the print version will be very friendly. Search engine optimization strategies can still be used on the print version and the original page should have a link to the print version towards the top of the page.

Print friendly versions have several uses. Whilst they may help the search spiders, they also serve to help your readers by providing them with a means to print out your page. For the sight impaired, they provide a way to access those pages - the alternative for them is to provide a podcast version. Search engine optimization is an area where you need to think laterally. Providing a print friendly page is just one example.

It’s a long title, but then Google’s latest blog post by by Udi Manber, VP Engineering, Search Quality, is not exactly short either. However, after reading what he had to say I had a reread wondering what lessons it might hold for search engine optimization consultants - and there were a few.

The first little tidbit that struck me was the comment about search terms: “We also need to understand the queries people pose, which are on average fewer than three words…“. So lesson number one when it comes to search engine optimization is to concentrate on keyword and keyword phrases of three words or less. He followed that with a comment on Page Rank:

The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system.

So for all naysayers, PageRank is not quite dead. Mind you, he did not say to what extent PageRank was used. I still hold by my philosophy that whilst my PageRank means little to me, when I am seeking content to link to or from as part of my search engine optimization strategy, PageRank is still an indicator of page authority. So lesson number two: Don’t discard PageRank just yet.

This statement was interesting and should give rise to some thought:

In 2007, we launched more than 450 new improvements, about 9 per week on the average.

From that quote, lesson number three has to be: What works today may not work tomorrow. Google is constantly changing so our search engine optimization strategies have to revised frequently particularly if we notice a sudden dip in search results placements.

For ‘black hat’ proponents comes the following quote:

There is a whole team that concentrates on fighting webspam and other types of abuse. That team works on variety of issues from hidden text to off-topic pages stuffed with gibberish keywords, plus many other schemes that people use in an attempt to rank higher in our search results. The team spots new spam trends and works to counter those trends in scalable ways; like all other teams, they do it internationally.

The lesson number four, from this quote, is fairly straightforward: Don’t try to cheat the system. If your search engine optimization strategies are not within Google’s realm of fair play they will eventually find you out and penalize you. High placement for a short period of time is not worth the long negative effects.

The final lesson is one that we all know, users are becoming more sophisticated and over time their search queries are becoming more complex. Whilst lesson number one was to optimize for three keywords or less per search, the reality is that into the future searches will be using sentences. Lesson number five has to be: Prepare for change. How and when you do that will be dependent on the type of website you have. Eventually we will have to modify our search engine optimization strategies to meet sophisticated searches, at present, it may be counterproductive.

I could almost say business as usual after seeing the five lessons from the Google blog. It is refreshing to see them come out and actually explain a little about their activities and what is involved. The real lesson from the whole statement was number five, again, something we are all familiar with; when it comes to search engine optimization, prepare for change - assess - plan - implement - reassess. The search engine optimization never ending circle.

All businesses need a presence online today if they plan on staying competitive in their respective markets. Even without a website, it is in company’s best interest to place their business’ info within local listings. Each day, consumers search high and low online for businesses to fit their needs. For companies that rely primarily on local business, is it vital to get in front of customers eyes and by getting yourself out there online, you’re doing exactly that. Brick Marketing is introducing a new service called Brick Marketing Local.

For $49.95 per month, Brick Marketing will submit your business information, including hours of operation, phone number, address and unique description into leading local listing services such as Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, MSN Local, YellowPages.com and more. By placing yourself in these services, you enable people to search for your business by name, category or even distance. While no particular search engine ranking is guaranteed, your business’ information will be resubmitted on a monthly basis to ensure that the proper information is up as well. There is no commitment period and you can cancel at any time for any reason. If at any point, you want to change information – simply send over the changes and it will you will see it changed within 30 days. People have thrown away their phone books and now rely on these major online sites to provide them with the information they need. Be smart and allow your business to be seen by consumers all over the web!

Brick Marketing is a member of the Better Business Bureau and is known for their solid reputation so you can be sure to receive quality service with your Local Online Marketing efforts. So sign up now for Brick Marketing Local and be seen by more customers today!

Search engine optimization is all about one page and off page tactics to get your page listed as high up in the search engine results pages as possible. Having said that, for most DIY optimizers there is always one step that they forget, and it is the first step for ongoing search engine optimization.

We select keywords which we feel we can get good ranking for. We then use all of our search engine optimization “know how” to get that page well ranked. However, there are thousands of other website trying to get to that same number one position.

The first act in any search engine optimization program is to watch your competitors. If your competitors are appearing higher in the listing than you do then you need to find out why. What are they doing that you are not doing?

To get to the top of the search engine rankings, you need to out do your competitors. You cannot out do them unless you know what it is they are doing, that you are not. You can also see which keywords they are dominating. This provides a perfect opportunity to rethink your keyword options and search engine optimization program.

Before undertaking any search engine optimization program, check your competitors keywords and then review your current keywords. Sometime a fine tuning of those keywords could help you rank above your competitors.

Every now and then the topic of search engine optimization and meta tags rears its head for debate. Should you bother with them or simply ignore them?

The argument was picked up by SE Round Table quoting a legal judgment that declared META keywords as irrelevant and no longer used. To quote from the article:

a US court has decided that META keywords don’t matter — they are “immaterial.”

There are two issues to look at from this debate. First, whilst keyword meta tags may no longer be relevant in your search engine optimization program, will they hurt you if you do use them? From what I have seen and read, if you ensure that each page has its own keyword meta tag with only the keywords for that page, it wont hurt. Will it help? Consensus says no, they don’t help at all. In reality, until all the search engines publish their algorithms, we wont know.

My philosophy is fairly straightforward; meta keyword tags wont hurt so if you want to use them, go ahead - just be sure they match your search engine optimization program and keywords for that page. If you want to leave them out, that’s fine also.

The second issue that needs clarifying for some is the use of META tags. Keywords is only one tag. The two META tags that you should concern yourself about are the Title and Descriptions tags. Your search engine optimization program should ensure that each of these are optimized for each page, and for blogs, for each post.

Back in April we published a post on SEO Videos: Meta Tag SEO Tips that is well worth visiting and watching if you need any further advice on META tags.

If you are looking for a search engine optimizing manager or an online marketing assistant than eMarketingSilo should be your starting point. With the amount of clutter in the search engines these days it truly gets a bit more difficult each day to find the right people for your company. At times of need individuals will put anything on a resume in order to secure employment. These days it is really important to put together the right team but more importantly the right time that will work together and get the job done in order to move forward towards the future.

If you are looking for qualified search engine optimizers than eMarketingSilo is a website you need to stop and take a look at. Forget about overlapping verticals and tire kickers flooding your HR department with useless resumes. With eMarketingSilo you can find your entire online marketing department in one location. With a highly targeted audience of dedicated visitors you can rest assured that your job posting will be viewed by prospects that are already high qualified to perform search engine optimization at a confident level. Search Engine Optimization is a fast growing industry but with any fast growing industry some bad apples will populate. It is sites like eMarketingSilo that will allow you to only pick the crème of the crop!

eMarketingSilo is a fast growing site that is in growing as everyday passes. More and more companies are relying on eMarketingSilos position in the market place to deliver highly qualified employees to any organization. Make this website your go to site for all your search engine optimization employee needs.

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Do plurals make any difference to keywords and your search engine optimization strategies? The short answer is, it depends on the search engine and it depends on the word in question.

The long answer, it depends on the - oh - I have already said that. The reality is, there is no long answer, just a lot of work. Search engine optimization works at optimizing a page and keywords are the focal point, even for link building.

The hard work is going through the trial and error process of determining whether or not your keywords are plural dependent or independent. Using the word ‘widget’ as an example, I undertook a search on ‘widget’; ‘widgets’; and ‘widget’s’. The results were interesting and if my SEO had widget as a keyword I would need to think carefully about my plan.

Widget was an interesting search as the number one result in Google came out as ‘widgets’ - a Yahoo! link at that - there were 96 million results. Widgets on the other hand had 108 million results with ‘widget’ in the number one position. Widget’s only had 113 million results and also had ‘widget’ in the number one position. The top position on all three was widget.yahoo first. In second position on two of three was apple.com - for the term ‘widget’ apples was in position four. The question is - did they incorporate all three versions in their search engine marketing program?

Using Yahoo! for the same searches, the results were a whopping 500 million for widget and widgets with the same sites listed for both terms. Widget’s on the other hand only had 500 thousand results with a different list of sites in the top positions. Yahoo! asked if I really meant widgets. It seems that for a term like widgets, SEO strategies could rely on the one version.

The results were mixed between Yahoo! and Google and between different words. It seems that Yahoo! seems to be less reliant on the exact spelling. If you have any doubts about plurals then your program needs to include some keyword testing using both the singular and plural version of the word.

Other oddities include hyphenated words, capitals and the ‘S’ - ‘Z’ variations in words. There can also be an interesting variation in regional and international spelling with words like color/colour and labor/labour. Your search engine optimization program and keyword research needs to take these spelling variations into account.

Sometimes your search engine optimization strategies need to take either a back seat or a sideways step. I have noticed a slight trend to displaying product results in Goolge SERPs. If this continues to be a trend then perhaps some of your search engine optimization energy needs directing towards submissions to Google Product Search.

You can enter your product details in the form of an XML file which Google will read and add to its database. The information in the file should include the product’s title, description, link and price. These details should be written in a similar to fashion to meta data as you would if you were undertaking a SEO program on that data.

The description should be detailed although not keyword stuffed and can be up to 10,000 characters in length. Include the brand and relevant information, that is, location, condition and delivery area. The title should just include the name of the product. If possible, include an image of the product. Whilst not a true search engine optimization strategy, if this data is going to appear in the SERPs then you need to be well positioned to capitalize on it.

Sometimes your search engine marketing strategies need to be outside of the box. While keyword stuffing is frowned upon within the products description, clever writing and smart use of keywords may produce some surprising results.

With the internet growing so quickly and search engines like Google aggressively buying smaller internet related businesses, it raises a question: will search engine optimization go through another change?

Google now owns Feedburner so Google now has a good idea as to how many people subscribe to your sites and which pages/articles or posts are more popular. With Google analytics Google can see how many visitors you receive, where they come from and what keywords are being used to find your site. Over time our search engine ranking strategies may need to change to adapt to algorithms that include this data.

On a different front, data is now available in so many different formats. There are commercial sites including eCommerce. Blogs are growing at an incredible rate each day and then of course there is rapid growth of media such as video, podcast and images. Search engine optimization in the future may need to treat these in completely different ways.

I am waiting for the day that search engines, particularly Google, remove the general search functions and move all searches to format specific. You can now refine your search to media, news and blogs amongst other categories. If Google were to introduce a specific commercial section it would have 99% of all online data segmented. As search engine optimization consultants we would need to optimize each page dependent on which category it belonged to.

The future is a mystery and no one really knows we it is taking us. We are, generally speaking, at the whim of search engines like Google who can make or break a business simply through it ranking system. If they ever take a segmented approach I don’t know if the role of search engine marketing consultant would be easier or harder - it would certainly be interesting.

And Google keeps search engine optimization alive. One of the reasons that helps Google grow stronger each day is the strange relationship that exists between Google, advertisers, publishers, users and search engine optimization activities.

Because Google is number one, advertisers want to see their ads on that network. Publishers want traffic and the number one search engine is, Google. Publishers and advertisers want their sites ranking well in the search engines so they employ search engine optimization techniques with the main thrust being towards Google. I know that every search engine optimization consultant will tell you to optimize for all search engines, but the number one priority is to get to the front page of Google.

With this concentration of activity on Google, it is only natural that users will goto the search engine that has the best concentration of generic and paid links. Put it all together and Google will continue to grow stronger. Without search engine optimization strategies, search engines would need to rethink their algorithms or be left with a mish-mash of results that would drive searchers else where.

Search engines, particularly Google, need ethical search engine optimization programs to make it easier to deliver relevant responses to search queries. Naturally, search engine optimization consultants need the search engines to stay in business.

It would be interesting to see the end result if one of the smaller search engines decided to actually work ‘with’ search engine optimization consultants. If a straightforward method of passing relevance and importance to the search engines could be designed so that search results provided more accurate data then perhaps users would be more attracted to that search engine.

At present, Google sets the rules and SEO programs are developed to comply with those rules. Step outside those rules and say goodbye to a good ranking.

Search engine optimization for product pages is not that difficult particularly if you follow a few guidelines.

To get the most out of your search engine optimization program for your product pages you need to concentrate on three aspects. Your site structure, your internal linking, and the product pages content.

Your site structure should be fairly simple and easy to follow. We wrote a post in February, The Best Internal Link Structure For Your Website, about tiering your pages. I suggest a quick read of that post before continuing here. This post also discusses some search engine optimization linking options. Another post included this paragraph on internal linking which is quite appropriate to repeat here:

Areas such as “My Account” “Your Cart” “Add to Cart” and “Checkout” do not need the flow of link juice nor would they really need indexing by the search engines. Your search engine optimization strategies should concentrate on pushing as much link juice to the pages that you want yo have appearing high in the search engine results pages.

With a good site structure and smart internal linking, that only leaves the content to create. Content could fall into two main streams, product description and product reviews. Search engine optimization strategies have as a core component, unique content. Don’t duplicate what is on another page or another site.

Many web owners fall into the trap of simply copying information from the manufacturer or from the product handbook. Be creative and create your own product descriptions. They often sound more authentic particulalry as many products are now imported from overseas and the English - well not quite English. Writing your own product descriptions enables you to concentrate on the dual search engine optimization keys of targeting keywords and providing user focused content.

Reviews can written by yourself, or better yet, by consumers. Encourage feedback from consumers and use some of their content in the form of reviews. This can act as a type of recommendation particulalry if the reviews are user generated with web or blog URL’s that can be tracked back. Blogs with blog comments are ideal for this type of user generated input and are a useful search engine optimization tool in themselves.

Optimizing your product pages for search engines is not a difficult task particularly if done from day one. Good structure, clever internal linking and optimized content are the hallmarks of a good search engine optimization strategy and high rankings.

Search engine optimization and flash do not go together and at present search engines cannot read and index these files. This doesn’t mean you cannot use flash files within your web pages, what it does mean is that you will need to act carefully.

Flash is popular for making web pages look dynamic, exciting and attractive to visitors. However, if the search spiders cannot read these files then using flash in pages that have a heavy search engine optimization program maybe counterproductive. The following guidelines for the use of flash may help.

• Make sure your Flash code has been validated using the W3C Validator, search spiders may decide to leave before indexing if they detect invalid code.
• Don’t use a flash based navigation system on your homepage, search spiders cannot determine links, text or images in a flash file.
• Provide a non-Flash text version for search engines and visitors who may not have flash enabled.
• Use Flash sparingly and only when really required, for example, to provide media content.

Follow these guidelines and your search engine optimization strategies wont come undone due to poor use of Flash. The use of Flash can improve the visitors experience on your page, however used incorrectly, and your page will not rank highly and you wont receive visitors to enjoy the experience. Search engine optimization is all about getting that traffic, don’t spoil it by getting all flash.