5 Simple guidelines that will help your on page SEO.  With the recent Penguin update these factors have only become more important than before.  Everybody knows not to use use duplicate content.  Duplicate content includes the Page Title and Meta Description, not just the text on the page.  There are many free tools available online to help check these factors very quickly.  With Joomla websites we use some of these tools as well as Joomla components that allow you to change your titles and meta tags on the front end.   The following recommendations fall within Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

1) Is every page URL in your site search engine friendly ?

Good Example : http://www.destinyg.com/web/website-packages
Bad Example : http://www.destinyg.com/index.php?option=com_content&;view=article&id=89&Itemid=509

2) META Title Tag - Should be Unique and Relevant to the page and limited to 70 Characters.  Anything over 150 characters may be truncated and not appear in a search engine result.

3) META Description Tag - Should be Unique and Relevant to the page and limited to 150 Characters.  Anything over 150 characters may be truncated and not appear in a search engine result.  90% of the time this “Description” is what will be displayed when your website is found in a search.  This is your “marketing message” for that invidual page!

4) META Keywords - Should be Focused / Relevant to the page AND limited to 10 keyword phrases - anything over 10 may be ignored by search engines and considered keyword stuffing.

5) Internal/External Links - Should be less than 100 per page.  Excessive links on any given page may lower the page “score” for ranking.  See the Penguin Update blog for an explanation.

Google released the Penguin Update on April 24th which is aimed to combat "spammy" web pages. If your site is over optimized it may be affected by this update. The update addresses website content & back links:

Content: Each individual page must be Unique and Duplicate Content across your pages should be avoided at all costs. Keyword stuffing & keyword cloaking will result in penalties and lower rankings. When you look at (read) any page in your site, does it sound 'natural' or is the same information repeated with slight variation? Is ALL of the content on your page about one specific topic or "keyword phrase" ? As an example we always tell clients to make their blogs very focused on one subject/topic because each blog entry is a single page in the eyes of search engines - each blog has its own url. This is why properly structured blogs rank so well and generally very quickly. By making each individual page in your site about one topic/subject/keyword phrase you are not only making it easy for a site visitor to know what the page is about, you are making it easy for SEARCH ENGINES to know what the page is about and you will be ranked accordingly. The goal has been and will always be: Readable, Quality, Focused Content.

Backlinks: Anchor Text vs. Link Source : The penguin update appears to be assigning more "Quality" to the Link Source as opposed to the Anchor Text and for good reason. It has always been relatively easy to manipulate the anchor text of a link, which until now has always been an important factor in Ranking Results(SERP). With todays technology it is easier to determine the "Quality" and "Relevance" of a site that a link originates from. It is more difficult to manipulate the source of al link so more WEIGHT is being given to Link Source vs Anchor Text. Many Link Building companies will continue to come with creative ways to get around this latest update and will often get results - until the next update. You can take the rollercoaster route OR you can simply go after Quality Link Sources , ideally within your niche. One of the best places to find these links is your top ranking competitors. If your competitor has better ranking for a given keyword, chances are they have more QUALITY links than you do. Reverse engineering competitors linking strategies has been a tried and true technique for years and this will not change any time soon.

How can you tell if your site took a "hit" ? By looking at your "Search" traffic between April 15 and April 30th. If there is a drop of more than 20%, chances are good that your site needs to be adjusted. If you are an SEO client, we are already evaluating your site through analytics and webmasters to see if any adjustments need to be made. Over the past 30 days we have also been updating the following for all SEO clients : Page Titles, Meta Description, Meta Tags. This was done in anticipation of the Penguin Update. If you have any questions or concerns about your website and the recent Google update please contact us.

A new twitter version is out and it looks a lot like facebook to me. I think we have now a 3 way competition for the best social network, facebook now is not only competing with Google + but twitter got into the race too. You might think they where already, but tweeter was left behind by the power of facebook and the business pages...  well, now twitter announces branded twitter professional pages coming up...  

 

• 300,000+ business have a presence on facebook
• Participants in online communities usually spend more $ online.
• 70% of companies plan to increase investment in social media by an average of 40% in 2010.
• Social media = Low Cost Marketing + Getting Traction
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI

What do you think about social media?  Share your story and if you need more information on how social media can help your business grow please call us at 1(866) 388-2697, or click here to contact us.

You can start by checking these sites:

• facebook
• twitter
• youtube
• tumblr
• myspace

Thanks
Destiny

Draw traffic to your website using Twitter:

Every time you have a new product, a new services, a special or anything that might be useful for your customers you should communicate that to your followers on Twitter. There's a chance they will click on it and go to your site to read more about it and that generates more traffic to your site.

Follow your brand and products on Twitter:

Twitter has become one of the best tools to see what people think about your brand and products, competitors and keywords related to your business. This allows you to reply to any concerns immediately and really know what is what people is saying about these issues.
You can use Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) to find your brand on twitter and subscribe thru RSS Feed to get updates of that search.

Use favorites in Twitter as your Testimonials:

Mark all good comments about your company and products in Twitter as Favorites and then use this as a new source of Testimonials. This is done thru the STAR icon on the top-right of every tweet.

Be the expert and leader on your area:

Use twitter to help other people, send tips, recommendations, and valuable links thru Twitter. This will help improve the credibility and image of the brand and company on twitter.

Use Twitter as a customer service tool:

• Reply to all comments about your company and brand:  Designate a person in your company to check search.twitter.com every day and if there are questions or issues about your products reply to them as soon as possible. This will help keep the image of your company and your customers happy thru good customer service.
• Use twitter to let people know your site or blog is under maintenance or down: This will help communicate this to a lot of people very easily and fast.

Having a Blog inside your website and blogging often, will help you with your online positioning.

How is this possible?

• If your Blog is inside your website (in the same domain and structure of your site), every time you create a blog entry, a new page is created for the site (a new potential indexed page by google).
• On the other hand if you keep your website updated google will come back more often to you for new information.
• Let say now that you also assigned tags to that blog entry, now every one of the old tags you assigned (which was a page by itself) is going to be updated and also all the new tags you created for this specific blog entry will be created as another new page.

So as you can see, a simple blog entry could make your website grow exponentially and keep your pages updated, both things google and the other search engines love.

Blog every day if you can!!! and remember to asign tags... Also remember, an external blog (not inside your domain) will only generate inbound links from the outside (which is fine and you also need) but those keywords, tags, copy, etc will not be taken as content inside your site.

Lets get Blogging...

Here's a good example of Google maps helping you on your internet marketing campaign. If you search for SEO Sarasota (Search engine optimization Sarasota) which is one of the services we provide in one of the areas we provide it locally you'll find us on the map at the very beginning of the first page of Google.

You can make your business come up locally on the first page of google or bing very easily using maps.

Many people don't know that you can actually add your business into google's map or bing's map systems. This is a very easy, FREE way to put your business on the first page of google if someone is searching LOCALLY. Adding your business into GOOGLE's MAP or BING'S MAP can help your company's website come up on the first page with selected keywords when people is searching in your area or using the city or state that you are located in the search string.


How to create a Google Map entry for your business?
You just need a GOOGLE ACCOUNT... If you have a gmail or use any of the google or youtube services you already have one.
Login with your google account or create one here (https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount)
After login go to Google maps (http://maps.google.com/) and click on the Put your business on Google Maps or go directly here (http://www.google.com/local/add/)
Follow all the steps in google's map entry creation.
Remember to use KEYWORD ORIENTED descriptions, names and information. This will help your google map entry come up with those keywords in the search. Also remember you need to be RELEVANT, you need to have those keywords also on your website, blog entries and other profiles you might have.
At the end of the process google will ask you to verify your business, you can do it thru a postcard to your address (takes time) or the easy way, by phone (We recommend this one).


How to create a Bing Map entry for your business?
The process is the same, but you have to create a live.com msn.com or hotmail.com account (click here to create one: https://signup.live.com/)
Then login to it and go to this address to put your business into the BING MAP (https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx)
Follow the steps, using KEYWORD ORIENTED content.
And verify your business thru their process (they only have the postcard option here).

On the other hand if you have a new website, embedding a google map inside your website will help you bring Google to your website faster for indexing. But remember, your website has to be search engine friendly, you should have a blog, use tags, and have a nice organized keyword oriented copy inside your site. Without that you will not be RELEVANT for google or bing and the MAPS could just not come up on the search.

For more information about SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) tips, click here.
For more information on Search Engine Friendly affordable Joomla Websites, click here.

We created a youtube channel to share videos with Internet marketing tips, good SEO practices and search engine friendly website design. Here's the first video with some of the websites we created...

Here's a great video showing how Social media is changing everything and why you should be doing it. Incredible numbers that show how marketing changed in the past years and why it is so important to be part of this change.

del.icio.us is a web-based bookmarking site. Delicious users save their bookmarks on the website so they can access them from any browser. A website that has many bookmarking it is generally popular and will get more traffic. You can use del.icio.us bookmarks to help improve your SEO campaign. The public social component of del.icio.us makes it a great tool to make your website stand out form your competition. 

Here's a video explaining how to use del.icio.us and why is it SOCIAL:

 

You can also use Social Bookmarking as a great online collaboration toll. Since your bookmarks are public delicous allow you to easily share important or useful links with coworkers, customers and partners. 

We recommended before using linkedin in your SEO campaign in this article: http://www.destiny-soft.com/improve-your-seo-campaign-tip-1-linkedin-profiles.

Here you have a great video about Linkeding and how to use it to not only help your web presence but also make your business grow thru online networking.

 

If not done properly you could be missing out on very valuable keywords. If you do not take your time you could put keywords on pages that don't belong or target keyword in your pay per click campaign that do nothing but produce clicks and burn through your marketing and advertising budget. When conducting keyword research there are some things you should be looking out for.

What Niche do you want to be In? You will have to find out what type of group you want to be visible to and get inside their shoes in order to figure out what types of keywords will fit best on your website. Really find out and isolate what type of products you are servicing and find all the niche keywords and phrases that revolve around that niche. Don't always worry about targeting all the high volume keywords because they receive the most traffic. Long tail keyword phrases often times convert the best when it comes to SEO and PPC. The long tail phrases are usually conducted by web users who know exactly what they are looking for.

Budget: Budget meaning how much of a marketing budget do you have to go after competitive keywords? If you are a one person company starting out you will need to bring some heavy ammo to go after the same keywords that your competition that might have been around for 5-10 years and is established is going after. It is important to not only target the very competitive keywords but also the keywords that have medium amounts of traffic and also low. You have to remember that SEO is long term and you won't be visible over night, but SEO could bring better results and it creates an asset over your website (because it could keep building up without having to spend money per every click)

Competition: Take a long hard look at your competition to see what it is that they are targeting. It is always important to take a look at what your competitors are targeting for keywords on their website when you starting conducting your keyword research. You know what they say; the best offense is a good defense. It is always important to know what types of keywords your competition is going after so you can gauge just how much of an effort you will need to put out there in order get into the same area.

Here at Destiny Technologies we include KEYWORD RESEARCH in all our SEO packages, Contact us if you have any questions about this.

 

Original Blog Post: addme.com

# 1 - Drive Traffic:
You can use Twitter to let know your followers you have a new blog entry on your website, or you have a new products line and always include a link to your website or the article you are relating to.

# 2 - Develop Brand Loyalty:
One of the many ways of building BRAND LOYALTY is to release good, related and useful information to your own customers.

# 3 - Improve your Exposure (Buzz):
In Twitter you will be able to interact with thousands of potential customers.

# 4 - Networking using Twitter:
This system allow you to interact with people and it could help you know you clientele or your potential customers a lot better.

# 5 - Real Time Research:
Find out what people is doing, buying, searching, etc. You can decide what content people will enjoy the most by using the search function.

Want to learn more?  Contact us!

 

Here you have a nice video about TWITTER SEARCH:

First of all, what is a WIKI?, well lets go to the WIKIPEDIA definition of WIKI:

A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simple text editor, within the browser. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, and for note taking. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and knowledge management systems.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIKI

A wiki could be use for collaborative projects, events and more. In business all this is going to be published online so you could use it to promote your events and products by creating a wiki about them and having the members of these events or product collaborate. Remember to create links back to your blog (were you talk about the event) or to your website, were you have information about yout product.

Here is a good video about how wikis work and how you can create one.

 

Destiny.

Google has launched a new keyword tool called Sktool (Search-based Keyword Tool).

Google’s new Search Based Keyword Tool (SKTOOL) allows search marketers to generate keyword ideas based on the content of their Web site and back-end data.  The tool maps similar queries to each other and also maps back to the keywords you’re currently bidding on in your AdWords account.

The tool has a number of applications.  The main application is to expand your keyword list in an organized and thematic way.  However, many of the keywords suggested by the tool should not be bid on by search advertisers; in fact, an advertiser would waste a lot of money if all the suggested keywords were added to a program.  The tool should be used to consider suggestions and pick ones that are relevant to your site.

 

The tool also shows the amount of competition on a given keyword, a suggested bid for that keyword, the average monthly searches for that keyword and the best page of your Web site to land that searcher.

This tool will actually help us in creating a better, more relevant, keyword list for your SEO campaign. We will be able to find the keywords that people are searching for a specific market and apply it to your search engine optimization and social media optimization.
Even thought this tool is in its BETA phase, we think it has a lot of potential.

link: Sktool - Search-based Keyword Tool    

 

This is a great video that explains what twitter is... Now, can you use this for your business?  Can you help your website be more prominent on the search engines by using twitter?  Yes.

1 - Follow as many people as you can, friends, coworkers, customers, etc...
2 - Do not copy paste your website link over and over again every 5 minutes...  try to create relationships, promote your business by helping others...  with their problems, etc.
3 - The Goal here is to have MORE FOLLOWERS than people you follow, IF YOU BUILD GOOD RELATIONSHIPS, more and more people will follow your feed.
4 - Promote your services, products and your website at twitter and your followers will convert into potential customers.
5 - Keep in touch, and you'll see you can get business from this and also make your web presence grow.

Facebook is the fastest growing social networking website and business owners and marketing managers should consider adding conversational marketing to their toolbox of marketing strategies. Facebook has powerful features that can help grow your business if used correctly.  Follow these tips as you implement marketing on Facebook.

1. Profile: Build an attention getting profile that will make an impact. Think of this as your branding for your business. Include a good photo, contact info, a link to your website, education, work history, personal interests, etc.
2. Networks: Take the time when building your profile to include the city your business is in, your industry, and other networking information. Let potential business partners find you and make yourself more searchable.
3. Friends: Add friends to build your networking. There are tools to find friends that are already on Facebook. Use Facebook tools to meet people with common interests, build a relationship and gather them as friends to build up your base.
4. Groups: Join online groups that are related to what you do. This is an excellent way to make contacts and build from there. If you don’t see a group that is a close enough fit, form your own. An excellent way to brand yourself as the authority.
5. Blog: Create and syndicate your own blog on your personal profile page. Broadcast your blog using RSS and increase your exposure and increase your readership.
6. Comment: Make comments on other people’s profiles. By reaching out, you will start interacting and engaging with new people and contacts. The more comments you leave on these virtual walls, the more exposure you get.
7. Events: List your events and new services by creating an events page. Instead of printing flyers and mailers, use the Facebook Events app. to get the word out. You can invite anyone you want. Guests can leave valuable feedback.
8. Gifts: send virtual gifts to show your appreciation. Send a virtual potted plant or flowers to make that great impression. There are third party applications that allow you to give unique gifts. A great way to build strong relationships.

Original Blog Post: webdesignseo.com

Yes. If you embed a video from youtube inside one of the pages of your website, Youtube automatically will create a link back to that page on the youtube video page at www.youtube.com
This is great since you will have a video inside your website which will bring fresh content, it will help you improve your AVERAGE TIME ON SITE and also this link back will create a new INLINK to your website, helping your SEO campaign and your web presence.

So keep adding those related videos and always remember to include some relevant text talking about the video and why it could be important for your audience.

Destiny