KEO Marketing » search engine optimization

Google Search plus Your World, Changing SEO and Going Social

Sheila — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:48:16 +0000

Last week Google Search rolled out the “Search plus Your World” update to their search algorithm, but this one is a change everyone can actually see. Google Search has always strived to bring relevant results from across the web and rank them accordingly, based on a nearly endless array of factors. Now, with Google Search plus Your World, Google’s search results get personal, making search engine optimization even more critical.

When you are signed in with your Google+ account, you will now find personal results and profiles of the people you know or follow including pictures, posts and content shared on the Google+ network within your circles. We all turn to our real-world friends for recommendations or referrals and Google has now taken this a step further and is showing these results in a mash up with results from the web.

This Google update could prove to have a greater impact than 2011’s Panda update and make a dramatic change to search engine optimization. Personalized results will be the default when you are logged into your Google+ account, and are only disabled if you are not logged in. The Google Search plus Your World update essentially will make it harder for your customers to find you and for you to get traffic from the same rankings due to Google+ rankings now showing before public listings.

For example, if you ranked #3 in a search result for your keyword, you now could be #6 or lower, and if you were #6 before the update, you might be on page #2 now. That’s probably not what you wanted to hear starting off the New Year.

However, not all hope is lost. You now know that you can’t have search without social media networks and since Facebook and Twitter results are not aggregated into public search, it’s put a major emphasis on not only creating a keyword rich Google+ account for your brand, but being an active member on the network too. Unlike Twitter, you can’t go around and follow everyone, so reaching people outside of your network is not an easy feat. Google plus Your World means that your brand needs to be relevant, well-found, and well-liked (or at least, well-shared) by influencers.

For additional information on the Google plus Your World update and how it will affect your brand and search engine optimization efforts, contact KEO Marketing today.

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Google, Yahoo Enhance Image Search

Sheila — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:15:03 +0000

Both Google and Yahoo have enhanced the way their image search works and is displayed recently, showing the impact images have in maximizing content optimization. Image search optimization goes beyond simply adding keywords in the ALT tag, and image results appear in more than just one location.

Google image search has added an image carousel which allows the viewing of large images within a few swipes and started clustering similar images like it does for text. Yahoo image search now allows anyone to instantly share any image found on Yahoo via Facebook and Twitter, adding social sharing and continuous scrolling of images, similar to Google’s image search carousel.

Recently, PR Newswire highlighted on their blog that images that are syndicated with press releases find their way in Google’s universal search, news search, image search and Google Maps. This goes to show the importance of optimizing images for Google’s search bots which read the HTML tags of the images including the image source and ALT tags.

When uploading any image to the web, whether it is for a press release, your website or in an e-mail, you never know where it might end up so follow these guidelines when optimizing:

Include keywords in the HTML including image source and ALT tags.
Caption the image with the keyword towards the beginning and keep it short.
Use the keyword as your image name (keyword1-keyword2.jpg)
File size matters – reduce size if needed but keep the quality high.

For additional information on image search optimization and how to get your images to appear in image search results, contact KEO Marketing today.

Beyond SEO: Improving Your Website’s User Experience

Sheila — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:57:43 +0000

Improving your website’s user experience can be difficult if you have a major focus on SEO efforts. Everyone wants to see the big traffic numbers – the stampedes of visitors that make your server sweat and teeter on the brink of meltdown. At the end of the day, the number of visitors doesn’t mean anything if they don’t convert and turn into a customer or a sales lead. Creating a more meaningful user experience for your visitors should become priority, as visitor retention and a decreasing bounce rate climbs in importance for both SEO and the overall user experience.

Always be truthful. Never publish a PPC ad that doesn’t accurately represent your site. Take into consideration the correlation between your H1 tag, first sentence, internal link anchor text and how it matches up to your page title and meta data. If the search engine page result (or SERP) doesn’t accurately depict what your page is about, you are only hurting your own image and inflating your bounce rate.

Blog posts, white papers and fresh, timely content will keep visitors coming back for more, but rarely do PDF files. Outside of the slight edge PDF documents can have, there is little reason for a site to feature content in a PDF. Users are not able to enjoy the same website experience or interact within your page as they would if the content was scripted in HTML. Basically assume you are alienating your visitors with your PDF files.

Always mind where your external links open, especially social media profiles which can distract first-time visitors away from your site. It is important to introduce your visitors to your social media communities and further develop a relationship, but do make sure that all external links to your Facebook and Twitter pages open in new windows.

With the rise of tablets, smart phones and mobile devices, it is undeniably critical to have a site that is properly optimized for mobile use if your visitors often come to you via these devices. A poor mobile experience correlates directly to a reduction in credibility on your behalf and if it’s an ecommerce website, lost sales.

If you’re currently getting the traffic you’ve desired or simply looking to increase quality traffic, make these quick fixes to improve your overall user experience and watch your conversions climb.

Likes, +1s and SEO: Focus on Authority

Sheila — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:38:27 +0000

In the past couple years, social signals such as Facebook Likes and Google’s +1s has had an increasing role in effecting SEO. If you aren’t familiar with social signals, they are simply a measure of personalization when a user selects content that they deem worthy enough to share with a Like or +1, essentially endorsing the content for all to see. This plays an important role in SEO, and the bottom line is the importance of focusing on your own authority to increase your ranking via social signals.

When you are looking for a new doctor or a babysitter, you probably ask a trusted source, such as a friend for a referral. Online, content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from complete strangers.

Because of this, social signals can be a useful trigger to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. In theory, +1s and Likes can cause results to be re-ranked, based on your friends giving an endorsement to valuable content.

From a pure SEO perspective, getting a handful of Likes and +1s won’t really have a huge impact. However, getting an authoritative person in your space to share your content will probably be a big win, and this is an excellent goal for your social media campaigns. The reward is increased visibility within your target audience, branding authority and website traffic.

For more information on implementing a social media campaign to your online marketing strategy, contact KEO Marketing today for a free site audit!