SEO TIPS

By Gabriel Gervelis
From time to time people ask me, how can i do SEO myself? Can you post some SEO TIPS that i can do myself?

I don’t want to create another SEO Tutorial, there are already many out there. However, lets take a second and point out some of the top SEO Tutorial sites.

Top Rank Online Marketing
The top rank blog covers Search engine news, search marketing strategy, and search engine optimization tutorials. I am a reader of this blog and have found it very useful through out the years.

Digital Point
At the Digital Point fourms, industry pros help new comers in the SEO, online marketing, and marketing worlds. Search through question and answer threads that should answer ALL of your DIY SEO questions.

Big Oak, Inc
The Big Oak Inc Blog features a new SEO TIP every week. SEO techniques range from basic to advanced.

SEOmoz
SEO moz is an online powerhouse! Keep your eye on the SEO Moz blog and the YOUmoz blog. I read their content daily. This site will give the new Do it yourselfer a good SEO and online marketing overview.

Search Engine Journal
This blog covers both search engine optimization strategy and search news. Check the archived SEO posts!

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

By: Gabriel Gervelis

Understanding the Google Analytics dashboard

Google Analytics is a free program offered by Google that allows you to answer two main questions.

1) How are visitors coming to your website?
2) What are visitors doing once they are on your website?

Once you’ve installed the free Google Analytics program within the code of your website, if you don’t know how to use the program, there is no added value. Understanding the language of Google Analytics will empower you to get the most out of your SEO campaign.

The first thing you see after logging into Google Analytics is the dashboard. Understanding the terms used on the dashboard is key to understanding Google Analytics.

The Basic Google Analytics Glossary

Visits
The number of visitors entering your website. Keep in mind that visits are recorded by IP address, so this figure is not unique.

Page Views
The number of web pages within your web site have been viewed. This is the total amount of page views from all visitors within a given amount of time.

Pages/Visits
The number of pages the average visit generates. This is an average number.

Bounce Rate
How many visitors bounced off of your website. A bounce is a visitor that enters your website from any entry page, the exits the website with out visiting pages deeper within the site, or clicking on any links. For Example: a visitor that enters your website from a search engine, spends 35 seconds on that page, then exits with out clicking on any links is considered a bounce.

Avg. Time on Site
How long the average visitor stays on your website. You may want users to have a long time on site or short time on site depending on your goals.

% New Visits
How many of your total visitors are new visitors versus how many of your total visitors are repeat visitors.

Other Google Analytics Resources:

Mahalo Beta
This post shows how to install the free program, and other basic functions of Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Blog
This is the official Google Analytics blog, if you can’t find the information you are looking for here, you can’t find it at all!

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

By: Gabriel Gervelis

We thought it would be appropriate to touch the top 5 things to look for in an SEO campaign, 5 basic features that every legitimate SEO campaign should include. An upcoming post will feature 5 things to stay away from that an SEO campaign can include.

1. Keyword Research
Who cares if you’re #1 on Google if no one is searching for that keyword?

Keyword research is one of the single most important elements to an SEO campaign. IMPORTANT: Make sure the SEO Company that you chose provides search counts for keywords they want to target in the campaign. Also, make sure you have final approval on what keywords the campaign will target. View this post for more details about keyword research.

2. Meta Tag Optimization
Meta tag optimization is another important factor that every SEO campaign should include. Currently, there is much debate is certain meta tags hold weight with ranking in the SERPS or if they hold no weight at all. Every page within your website needs to have the basic meta tags optimized to match the page content. Title tags, description tags, keyword tags, robots follow tags, and other meta tags apply to this theory. Always make sure that your SEO campaign includes meta tag optimization. View this post for more information about meta tags.

3. Header Tag Optimization
High rankings in the SERPS cannot be achieved by utilizing just one or two SEO Techniques. SEO campaigns should include multiple SEO techniques. One of these SEO techniques is the optimization of a web pages header tag. Header tags can are formatted h1, h2, h3, etc. You can see how the header tags and meta tags are optimized creates a direct relation to the quality of keyword research.

4. Content Optimization
The header tag is part of the content of the optimized web page, however the entire content of the web page needs to be optimized. Bold content, italic content, content that is underlined, and simply optimized content are key to any SEO campaign.

5. Link Building
The above 4 SEO techniques are on-page optimization techniques. This last technique is an off-page technique. It is weak SEO practice to use all on-page efforts and nothing off-page. Link building can include:

• blog posts
• directory submissions
• link exchanges
• link baiting (covered later in this blog)

Now you have 5 questions to ask if you receive a call from an SEO Company claiming they can put you on top of the SERPS for some miracle amount, or if you’re currently looking to hire an SEO company or in house SEO optimizer. There is much more to the SEO game. However, here at Seo Tips we want to attack things one post at a time!

SEOTIPS.ORG is a service from Clocktower Media designed to inform and educate business owners/decision makers on the concepts of SEO in order to justify cost, and to provide an education and understanding of SEO.

Good luck with your SEO campaign and be seen!

By: Gabriel Gervelis

So, what happens when you find an SEO company to work with? We’re going to look at two methods to monitor the effects of your SEO campaign. We’ll be using tools from search engines you’re probably already familiar with, Google and Yahoo!. This blog will serve as an introduction to SEO monitoring; in future posts we will explore these methods in more detail.

1. Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is a free online application offered by Google that allows you to review your websites traffic statistics (view analytics demo). This program offers many features that show you where your website visitors come from and what they do once they’re in your website. Google Analytics also allows you to monitor traffic sent to your website from keywords on organic (not sponsored) searches. This information is helpful in identifying effective targeted keywords in the SEO campaign.

There are also many advanced features of the Google Analytics. One of these features allows you to create and monitor sales goals (called conversions) through your website. Using the program properly, you can monitor how many conversions the SEO campaign is generating. This allows you to monitor the ROI of the SEO campaign.

2. Yahoo! inlinks:

This method only applies when the SEO campaign uses off-page optimization SEO techniques. A good SEO company will provide their own benchmarking and reporting system, but you can assess the success of your SEO campaign on your own. Use this technique to benchmark the number of links pointing into your website (inlinks) before the start of the SEO campaign, then 2 months after the start of the seo campaign.

Yahoo! offers a search that finds how many inlinks your site is experiencing. The more inlinks you have, the higher your website’s visibility on search engines becomes. To check your inlinks, type in “link:” and enter your URL. This will look like this: “Link:www.yourwebsite.com”

For example, to view the inlinks for SEOTIPS.ORG, we would search “Link:www.SEOTIPS.ORG”

You will see our inlinks on the top left corner of the results listing. The result listing should look something like this. Once we have these inlinks, allow a few months and work with your SEO company to do your on-page changes, and then search again.

Good luck with your SEO ventures!

By: Gabriel Gervelis

Do the search engines approve of search engine optimization? Will the search engines penalize you for using SEO Techniques? These are both good questions, and are questions you should ask yourself before hiring a SEO company. Each question has two answers, Yes and NO.

To understand both answers to the questions you must first understand SEO Practices.

There are three ways to practice SEO:

1. White Hat SEO
2. Black Hat SEO
3. Gray Hat SEO.

White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is the practice of search engine optimization using “search engine approved” methods. Search engines have not released any type of list of approved methods, so when we talk about “search engine approved” methods, it means methods that won’t lead to the blacklisting of your website.

A few examples of White Hat SEO are:

• Meta tag optimization
• Title tag optimization
• Header tag optimization
• Link building

Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the practice of search engine optimization using unapproved practices that “trick” or “deceive” the search engines. A few examples of black hat SEO are:

• Keyword stuffing
• Over submissions to the search engines
• Use of duplicate content.

Gray Hay SEO
Some say there is a fine line between love and hate. In our case, there is a gray line between white hat and black hat SEO. When new SEO practices are discovered they are considered gray hat until proven otherwise.

So the question remains, do the search engines approve of search engine optimization?

YES
Search engines approve of White Hat SEO practices. These practices make the search engine’s job easier, and thus increase your visibility. Remeber, there are billions of web pages on the internet, so anything you can do to legitimately rank higher on search engines is a good thing!

No
Search engines do not approve of Black Hat SEO practices. These practices can lead to the blacklisting or penalization of your website.

Home Work
When researching search engine optimization companies, make sure you have identified common White Hat and Black Hat SEO methods. When speaking with an SEO Company, the odds are you will speak with a sales representative that does not know the difference between these methods. It is your job to know and identify the differences.

Supporting info:
Google Help Center: What does Google think about SEO? Top pointers from the search giant.

Good luck with your SEO ventures!