Portfolio: Check out our new website!

So for the past year, we have gone on and on about search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords. So why did we design our site in flash which doesn’t work so well with SEO or keywords? Simple. After analyzing the usage of our site over the past year we established that SEO and keywords didn’t work for our service-oriented business and 90% of people who visit our site go to the portfolio page.

We decided to make our site match the look and feel of the type of design we offer and match what our visitors want to see: just our work. But never fear, we still can use SEO techniques on our blog. It’s a perfect combo for our business.

Visit the new site and your comments are most welcome!

Namaro SEO standing

Search Engine Optimization is a slow and steady process. Painfully slow. However, if you continually work at it the results start coming in and hopefully some new business.

So after 4 months, Erica Darcy (our guest blogger and SEO expert/emhdarcy@gmail.com) looked over the webstats for our website www.namaro.com:

1. Search is currently driving about 50% of the referrals to the site this month, up from 15% in February. Good!

2. Gone up in positioning overall, so that is a good also.

3. Traffic overall has not been increasing. Not so good!

What can we do to drive traffic? Erica is suggesting some article syndication, both for the traffic boost, and the links. She believes that bringing the blog onto your domain will also help in that area, as will posting to the blog more frequently. She also wants us to play around with digg or other social media.

Yes, it gets confusing but this blog is about working through this SEO stuff to gain a better understanding for ourselves and for you the readers to take full advantage of the web.

The next post will cover some of the things we continue to do to increase the traffic.

Top 11 SEO mistakes

11. JavaScript Menus
Using JavaScript for navigation is not a big problem as long as you know that search engines do not read JavaScript well and site is built with that in mind. JavaScript is usually used for fly-out and mouse -overs in navigation. Many of the typical functionality of a JavaScript menu can be duplicated using CSS, which is search engine readable.

10. A Flash website without a HTML alternative
Flash is attractive but not to search engines and users. Most search engine spiders cannot read flash sites, and those that can read flash are not very good at it. If the search engines cannot read your site they cannot index it. If you absolutely must have a site in Flash and you want search engines to love it, provide an HTML version. This means double the updates and additional cost.

9. Ignoring the Title tag
Many, many sites leave the title tag of the site blank, or have duplicate titles. The title tag is a line in the HTML coding of a website and appears in the top bar of your web browser. This is an important place to have keywords, because not only does it help you in optimization but the text in your title tag shows in the search results as your page title.

8. Targeting too many or the wrong keywords
Sometimes people choose keywords that they think are descriptive of their website but average searcher just don't use. A good example of this is when a business has a term they use to describe a service that is generally used in another context ... like NHL for the New Hampshire Library. Choosing the right terms is key to having a successful SEO campaign.

7. Lack of Maintenance
One of the big misconceptions is that SEO is something you do once and then it is done forever. If you want to be successful, you need to constantly optimize your site, keep an eye on your competition and pay attention to the changes in the ranking algorithms of search engines.

6. Concentrating too much on meta tags
Another misconception people have about SEO is that it is all about getting your meta tags (meta keywords and meta description tags) just right. In fact, meta tags are becoming less important than in the past. Creating good, optimized meta keywords and descriptions tags is important but don't expect to rank well only because of this one thing.

5. Using only Images for Headings
Some think that an image looks better than text for headings and menus. It's true an image can make your site look more distinctive but in terms of SEO images for headings and menus are a big mistake because h2, h2, etc. tags and menu links are important SEO items. These can be modified using CSS to get a different look.

4. Ignoring URLs
Another item often overlooked is the site URL. Dynamic page names are still very frequent and no keywords in the URL is more a rule than an exception. It is possible to rank high even without keywords in the URL but all being equal, if you have keywords in the URL (the domain itself, or file names, which are part of the URL), this gives you additional advantage over your competitors.

3. Backlink spamming
All backlinks are not created equal. Backlinks are the sites that link to yours, and are used by the search engines to judge importance. Many people believe that the QUANTITY of backlinks to your site is what is important and because of this web masters resort to link farms, forum/newgroup spam, which ultimately could lead to getting their sites banned. What you need is QUALITY backlinks to your site. Personally, I'd take one link from the New York Times or CNN over a 100 poor quality links.

2. Lack of keywords in the content
Once you come up with your keywords you need to modify your content and put the keywords into your on page text in the right balance and in a way that makes sense. You wouldn't believe how many times I've had to ask clients to put keywords into the content of their site.

1. Lack of fresh content
Search engines like frequently updated content. What this means is like your SEO is never done, neither is your website. Plan for frequent additions or updates to your site, at the minimum a couple of times a year.

Many Thanks to Erica Darcy for this informative post. She can be reached at

emhdarcy@gmail.com

http://mhvtheater.blogspot.com
http://thefrequentbookworm.blogspot.com

What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

We have a guest blogger this month with detailed information about SEO. An essential tool for anyone marketing on the internet today. Erica Darcy is an SEO consultant with experience working with small, mid-size and large companies including fortune 500 corporations.

She has great things to say!

You've spent time and money developing a website for your business, now you're wondering where all those new customers you should be getting are.

Why can't you find your site on Google, Yahoo or MSN?

Why is your competitor's site showing up and not yours?

No, it's not magic or some sort of trick. It's a process called search engine optimization or SEO.

What is search engine optimization?
SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (also called organic) search results for targeted keywords. What this means is if your website is a community for dog lovers, like dogster.com, when you search for “dog community site”on Google, Yahoo or another search engine you would want to see dogster.com at or near the top of the results.

The higher up in the search results, the more traffic a site will receive. The top three results receive the most traffic and it decreases as you go further down the page. Very few searchers will go beyond the second or third page of results.

SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

How does it work?
As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users.

Basically, SEO works by focusing on creating a good site both for your visitors and for the search engines.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other school of thought on SEO. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and usually remove them.

Using black hat techniques can get your site banned from the search engines. It may work for the short term, but it's not a sustainable model. It's not easy to get a site re-indexed after it has been banned. I've had new clients who have come to me after being banned, and it took months to clean up the site and to get re indexed.

How do I get started?
SEO works best when it is included from the very beginning. Before you design the site, before a single line of HTML gets written you need to research your keywords. These will be the basis of everything for the site. SEO when it is built into a new site is more cost effective then when doing it as an afterthought.

If you have an existing site, not to worry, there are plenty of things you can do to improve your site too. You start in the same place as well – researching your keywords.

When is the SEO done?
Never. SEO is a continual process of optimizing, measuring and seeing what works best for your unique site. Just like your website should be updated from time to time, your SEO needs to be measured and re-evaluated. The search engines change the way they index results frequently, so your site needs to change as well.

Am I guaranteed results?
No. there is no way to guarantee a site will rank in a certain position in the natural or organic results. No reputable consultant or company will ever guarantee results. That disclaimer being said, you should see improvements within 3-6 months of starting a SEO campaign.

Many Thanks to Erica Darcy for this informative post. She can be reached at

emhdarcy@gmail.com

http://mhvtheater.blogspot.com
http://thefrequentbookworm.blogspot.com