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  • Local Review Ideas

    Today I thought it a good idea to write a post meant to get the brain juices flowing more than a strict SEO technique. Sometimes it’s nice to think aloud without holding back on your ideas just to get to the good little nuggets tucked away in your own brain.

    I’ve been thinking really hard about a post Stephen Espinosa wrote on Reviews and how they affect local ranking (if you haven’t yet, go read this, then come back). Add to that Andrew’s post this week announcing that local.com is now accepting reviews, and we can see the need to promote ourselves with reviews. But how do we get these reviews? We could make them up, but where’s the fun in that? Let’s consider a few ideas, and perhaps we will come up with something.

    Web Based

    Let the Client Give Them To You
    When you consider local SEO/Internet Marketing, it seems that the most prevelant business model is that of a service provider instead of product offerings (this probably isn’t the case, it just seems so). That being said, it would be conducive to have a page on your local site to convince people to leave a testimonial about the great stay at your hotel or incredible job you provided on their lawn. Compile these, and submit them to various review-based services (hey, it’s not like you are lying, you are just spreading the good word that was given to you). Please be sure to have a disclaimer somewhere that says you will use these as you see fit.

    Point Them In The Right Direction
    Perhaps you could go one step futher and direct people from the page on your site directly to the various local profiles that your SEO has setup among local sites. Provide a few instructions on how to start an account and vote for their favorite spots or service (yours, of course). The caveat of this is the idea that you are making people go through the hassle. You may lose a few votes this way. Also, you are exposing your visitor to a whole world in which they could easily get lost.

    Hard Copy

    Here, Take My Card
    This idea was brought to me by a friend. Wherever your place of business, you almost always have a “front desk.” Why not print a bunch of postcard with a list of review type sites where your business currently has a profile. You can hand them out at the front desk, or as a piece of material that you send your current clients. Again, you are putting a bit of work on the visitor, but a lot of them will be doing this anyway.

    You Mind Filling this Out?
    There’s always the bunch of pads you see at some places asking for email addresses. Now I’m not against getting email addresses for the right business type, but why not replace that pad with one for testimonials for a little while?

    Got Any More?
    These are just a few ideas to get those reviews stocked up. I hope it gets you thinking of ways to gether some more. If you have any more, please feel free to comment them here.

    With this, and any other post, please read the disclaimer.

  • General Blogging

    Posted by admin on Tue, 06/17/2008 – 02:47 in

    As SEO Factor is concerned, I haven’t really taken the business aspect seriously. SEO Factor started as just a blog to share a little information to a small group of people. Over the years, business owners would often contact me for services. Though I was all to happy to accommodate, I never sought new business. Over the last few years, I’ve been contacted more and more, and so as increased my desire to take SEO Factor to the next level.

    2008: Year of the LLC

    Posted by admin on Fri, 06/06/2008 – 15:24 in

    Well, it was an interesting week. Seems everyone is at the SMX Advanced this week, so it was a little slow. I thought I would wrap up a few bits of news for a nice Friday informative. I haven’t been blogging a lot lately (seems less and less every week), but that’s just a sign that SEO Factor is doing well. Catch 22 I guess.

    Catch 22

    Posted by admin on Thu, 05/29/2008 – 14:59 in

    After my hotel reputation management post yesterday, I received a lot of emails about the subject, and how a hotelier goes about finding an Internet marketing firm for their hotel. I couldn’t answer some of those emails too directly, as there would be a conflict of interest, but I thought I would create a decent post to help you out.

    Posted by admin on Wed, 05/28/2008 – 15:28 in

    It seems that almost every conversation I have about SEO with someone new to the idea includes some common questions. With answering these questions, I am then asked the exact same question, every time. “So, what sites do you read?” Well, let me tell you.

    It’s not uncommon for SEOs and bloggers to share their RSS feeds or XML files to their readers. This indeed allows for the reader to make use of the ones they want to read, and use their desired RSS Reader.

    Posted by admin on Fri, 05/16/2008 – 15:42 in

    First, I should really apologize for not posting in a while. I’ve been super busy lates. I know that’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth. However, there are some great posts and happenings this week that I wanted to link to. I have a couple of posts coming next week, so there will be something good to read.

    The Future of SEO

    Posted by admin on Thu, 05/15/2008 – 15:33 in

    I recently wrote an article for Skellie of Anywired.com on 7 Signs of SEO Scams. It was posted yesterday, and I would like to direct my readers to it. It was a post on SEO offers that should be noted as signs of a scam.

    Posted by admin on Thu, 04/17/2008 – 15:43 in

    Shimon Sandler wrote an interesting article on CEO Bloggers and whether or not they should clear their posts throught their legal department that got me thinking about my current situation with company blogs. I love to push the idea of a blog to my clients, but with a strong air of caution. I’m also in a constant uphill battle with an agency I work for to either take their blog seriously, or remove it all together. I thought this would be a great time to go over some of the reasons not to start a blog.

    Posted by admin on Tue, 03/25/2008 – 22:15 in

    I saw an interesting story on the news today here in Jacksonville, FL. The story was relating to the website ratemycop.com, and its validity in the eyes of the resedents here in the city.

    With a massive poll of 2 people, WJXT Jacksonville returned the results. Half of the 2 people said they would use the site as a means of both investigating a police officer, and as a way to contribute experiences. The other half of the 2 people stated that they would take any information on the site with a grain of salt.

    Posted by admin on Fri, 02/22/2008 – 15:18 in

    Today’s post is from a guest, Brenton Crozier. He is a freelance copywriter with whom I work closely on many projects. I asked him to give me something to help promote his new website, and he was all too happy to oblige. Thanks, Brenton!

  • Keyword Research – Part 1

    Posted by admin on Sat, 03/29/2008 – 15:55

    Keyword Research
    Understanding the search terms to pick is a tricky thing indeed. There are plenty of tools that will give us an estimated search number, but we need to understand what it is we want. Actually, we need to understand what it is they want. The searchers. The people who will be going to Google and looking for that new cell phone. Yes. Cell phone.

    So I’m Joe searcher, and I need a new cell phone. I go to Google and type “cell phone.” Well poop. All those millions of searches, and I’m too overwhelmed to go through all these results. Besides, all the top results are just big cell service companies (remember I said that).

    What I need is a “cell phone with internet.” That’s more like it. Now I’m checking out these different pages with information about cell phones with web browsers. This is a lot of money, I better check out a few sites (Unless I’m compulsive, or you’ve done a good job with your calls to action. We’ll get to that later).

    I’ve done my research. I’m ready to buy it. I know that I want the “RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130.”

    So, I looked for “cell phone,” and was so overwhlemed and unsatisfied with the results that I searched again. This time I was a little more precise in my search for “cell phone with internet.” I got to do my research, compare a few phones, and decide upon the “RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130.” And that, my new little SEOs, is the essence of the buyer’s process and the idea behind the “long tail of search.”

    Long Tail
    The idea is, the most competitive terms will have the most searches, but the lower conversions. The more precise the the search term, the lower the amount of searches, but much higher the chance of a purchase. You don’t search for “RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130” unless you know exactly what it is you want. Check out this handy graph:

    In a perfect world, we would rank for “cell phone” and rely on the shear number of hits to your site and call it a day. That’s just not how it works here. We need to select search terms that aren’t so broad and competitive that we never see the light of day, but prevent limiting ourselves to search terms that only a few people a month will check for. Even better, we need to find the right blend of both. To get both, we need to talk site structure, so we will save it for a few more pages. For now, just remember that we will be getting a touch of both types of search terms.

    Alright already. We know what “types” of search terms we need, Mr. Factor (that’s what I make my fiance call me), but how do we pick them? The same way we build a house my little Factorlets (that’s you); with tools.

  • SEO Copywriting

    Posted by admin on Fri, 03/07/2008 – 18:28 in

    As many blogs and sources I read, you would think that I share them a little more on my blog. Not too sure why I don’t, but I think I’m going to try. Especially the newer ones that are popping up and producing some really great stuff. Today, I want to shine a little light on a very important (if not tied for the most important) aspect of SEO, and an awesome blog dedicated to the subject.

    Posted by admin on Fri, 02/22/2008 – 15:18 in

    Today’s post is from a guest, Brenton Crozier. He is a freelance copywriter with whom I work closely on many projects. I asked him to give me something to help promote his new website, and he was all too happy to oblige. Thanks, Brenton!

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

    Posted by admin on Tue, 01/22/2008 – 01:12

    Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is defined by WikiPedia as the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. It sounds a little overwhelming when you first read that definition, so hopefully we can help you understand what SEO is, and how it can be used to help an online business.

    The SEO
    My name is Josh Garner, and I’m a freelance SEO (Search Engine Optimizer). “Hi Josh.” Hopefully I can explain a bit better than the definition above what SEO is, and is all about.

    As an SEO, my job is to “optimize” a website so as to attain higher rankings in the search engine, and provide my clients with a return on their investment; be it making a sale online, or getting a phone call, or a walk through the door, etc. By “optimize,” I mean that I will fine tune the site’s structure, content, meta information, and a large number of other factors (as much as I can find will appear on this blog) so the search engines will take a liking to it.

    The Search Engines
    If you haven’t already (and I’m pretty sure you have) go to Google.com. Type in a search. Anything at all. You see all that stuff? Well, that’s what happens when you search on Google. Google is a search engine, and its job is to process your search query, and return to you a list of websites it believes to be most relevant. In this respect, most of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) act in much the same way. They take what you type in, and give you what they think you want. I say think because, like anything else man-made, it isn’t a perfect system. As such, this is really where SEO comes in.

    You see, the search engines have a vested interest to return results that you want. They make their money through advertising, so the more users they have, the more lucrative their ad spots will become. Likewise, if you were to use Google, and it consistently returned poor results, you would soon leave, and the ad spots would decrease in value; at the same time pushing the value of the search engine you decided to move to up just a little more. So, how do they determine what the right results are?

    Relevancy
    This term is used a lot in the SEO world. The idea for a search engine is to return relevant results, meaning results that would satisfy your search. Once a website is included in a search engines index (the database that holds a record of all sites that a search engine has crawled and listed) an algorithm makes a number of decision on it’s relevancy to terms depending on the site’s content. The more relevant a site is to a certain word or term, the higher its location in a search engine’s results page (SERP). Now, there are a lot of things that determine a website’s relevancy in a search engine’s eyes, and all the engines determine it in different ways.

    Overall, a site’s content, its markup (HTML, the way your site is built), and it’s popularity online make up a large portion of the relevance determination. Those, along with the selection of the words you want your site to target, the competition of those terms, where and how they are used on your page(s), what other websites link to yours, how many sites link to yours, how other sites link to yours, and a great giant number of other fine details help to push your relevancy score higher; and so your rankings will follow. Sound like a lot? It is. But it’s not as much as it sounds like it is right now. I’m sure there are a few questions about how SEO can help a business, or some more details on the ranking factors, but first may want to read ‘SEO Myths’ to see a little bit about what SEO is not.

  • Social Media Marketing

    Posted by admin on Thu, 04/24/2008 – 15:07 in

    Social media is big talk these days. From news stories about the amount of money a social media site is “worth,” to firms scurrying to offer “social media services,” it’s difficult to turn your computer on without seeing or hearing something. But honestly, how do you test the power?

    Posted by admin on Thu, 04/17/2008 – 15:43 in

    Shimon Sandler wrote an interesting article on CEO Bloggers and whether or not they should clear their posts throught their legal department that got me thinking about my current situation with company blogs. I love to push the idea of a blog to my clients, but with a strong air of caution. I’m also in a constant uphill battle with an agency I work for to either take their blog seriously, or remove it all together. I thought this would be a great time to go over some of the reasons not to start a blog.

    Posted by admin on Tue, 03/25/2008 – 22:15 in

    I saw an interesting story on the news today here in Jacksonville, FL. The story was relating to the website ratemycop.com, and its validity in the eyes of the resedents here in the city.

    With a massive poll of 2 people, WJXT Jacksonville returned the results. Half of the 2 people said they would use the site as a means of both investigating a police officer, and as a way to contribute experiences. The other half of the 2 people stated that they would take any information on the site with a grain of salt.

    Posted by admin on Thu, 03/20/2008 – 16:42 in

    Mike Blumenthal noted on his blog, that Steve Espinosa noted on his blog (makes you wonder what we bloggers do all day, doesn’t it) that Google Maps is now allowing for the upload of videos.

    Posted by admin on Wed, 11/28/2007 – 14:43 in

    MySpace. Flickr. Facebook. The plethora of social bookmarking sites. So many avenues to promote your site, so few people doing so with reserve. These are all very viable ways to promote products, services, blogs, etc., but there are a few things that you should consider when making use of a social media to market yourself.

    This post isn’t meant for the veteran Social Marketer, but for those that are just now considering it’s application to your business, and need a few pointers.

  • The Designer’s Guide To SEO

    I received some feedback from a few designer-oriented folks over at the FreelanceSwitch forums, and would very much like to put something together that they can use. These guys and gals are designing sites all day for their clients, so they don’t have the time to do all the research and learning we do over in the SEO world.

    I put this together as a way for those outside of the SEO trenches to reference during their site design and creation. I hope it builds as I get more questions, into a standard designers can use to make sites ascrawlable and crawler friendly as possible.

    Please note, though, that the items involved will not necessarily gain fantastic rankings, as there is a reason it has taken me and my SEO brethren years to get this stuff to work. It gets a lot deeper and more involved to get sites to rank well, and drive quality traffic. Rather, this guide will help to prevent some pitfalls that designers may not even know they are employing.

    It should also be noted that most SEO questions are usually answered with “well that depends on…” As such, these are some basic ideas to be mindful of, and understand that each site carries its own challanges and required areas in regard to SEO. 

    If you have any questions about the information contained, please feel free to let me know, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

     
    Navigation

    • Make sure to opt for text link navigation as opposed to images.
    • If you have to use images, make proper use of the alt attribute.
    • In the alt attribute of navigation images, be clear and concise as opposed to stuffing it with keywords. If it’s the link to the used cars page, make the alt “used cars” as opposed to “used cars for sale in jacksonville florida cars for sale used.”

    Title Tag

    • Make sure the title tag for each page is unique and relevant to the page it is on.
    • Try not to exceed 70 characters in the title tag.
    • Don’t stuff the title with keywords in an attempt to rank. Instead, make it easy to read and relevant.
    • The title is seen in the search engines’ results pages, so it should make sense as well as make use of relevant terms.

    Good Title = “Freelance SEO services by Josh Garner”
    Bad Title = “Freelance SEO, SEO Services, Freelance SEO Services, Josh Garner”   Yuck!

    Description Tag

    • Make the Description unique and relevant for each page.
    • Try not to exceed 180 characters.
    • Don’t stuff the description with keywords in an attempt to rank. Instead, make it easy to read and relevant.
    • The Description is often used in the search engines’ results pages, so make it a good call to action with the necessary search terms as applicable.

    Good Description = “Josh Garner provides Freelance SEO services to small and medium sized businesses.”
    Bad Description = “Freelance SEO Services, SEO services, Freelance SEO by Josh Garner. Offering Search Engine Optimization and SEO services for freelance and such.”

    Keywords Meta Tag

    • Highly Debated.
    • Most say it doesn’t help, I’ve seen proof otherwise. However, it is extremely low on the list of things that matter the most.
    • Spend a few minutes here, nothing more.
    • Use it as a means to store the search terms you are targeting for the pages of your site.
    • Put 5 or 6 terms on each page.
    • Don’t stuff with keywords to get more coverage, this is exactly why it isn’t weighed upon by the search engines anymore.

    Good Keywords = “Freelance SEO Services, Search Engine Optimization Services, SEO Services, Small Business SEO”
    Bad Keywords = “SEO, search engine optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Services, Services SEO, seo services, services seo, freelance SEO, freelance seo, Freelance SEO, Freelance seo”

    Content

    • Go for quality over quantity.
    • Use the search terms as necessary.
    • Don’t stuff search terms in the content in a fashion that would hamper the readability.
    • Use of header tags (h1, h2, etc.) should be used for intended readability and as a title for the page/paragraph accordingly.
    • Don’t stuff the header tags.
    • H1 and h2 tags should be used at the top of the page accordingly, and lower header tags to introduce paragraphs.

    Images

    • Use the alt attribute appropriately.
    • Don’t use the alt attribute as a means to stuff keywords.
    • Describe the image.
    • Image file names should also be descriptive.
    • More on the alt attribute.

  • Is Google Evil or Is This Business?

    My goodness. You don’t have to look far to find a lot Google bashing in regard to penalizing link sellers. It’s a pretty big topic right now, and you can’t waste countless hours of company-paid time on Sphinn without seeing at least three posts on the subject (umm…I mean after work). A lot of bloggers are pretty upset, and rightfully so, I think. But does the move to penalize bloggers for selling links that pass PageRank make Google evil?

    Let’s look at some of the issues. In one corner, you have a lot of people that believe that there is a real problem when Google is penalizing sites that sell links. I mean, why can’t I sell links? It’s my site. Right? Right. Now, you’re going to penalize my site because I’m selling links? What the hell?

    And then, in the other corner, you have Google. Hey, those links you are selling don’t have a nofollow tag. They are getting PR this way, and manipulating our index. We are getting crappy sites pulling up all over the place. For heaven’s sake, what if someone has a tumor?

    So, who’s right? Well, both of us, them, we, I, and you. Each side has some really good arguments. Like, how the hell does Google know that this link is sold? And what if I whole heartedly believe in this link? Maybe I want it to do better to share with the rest of my online brethren. Or, Google thinks, why on Earth would you write a review on a spammy product, telling everyone you believe in it, without doing any research on the product, taking your money, screwing up our results, and spamming the place up?

    In the end, we have to remember something. Google is a company. They have an interest to protect, and they are taking the actions to do so. It’s easy to think that they owe us something, and they do. But they don’t owe us as bloggers or SEO’s, they owe us as users. So imagine, if you will, that Google let the whole paid links debate go, and removed all restrictions on the practice. I don’t know about most of you, but I would run out of money long before some other larger companies did, and they would outrank me rather quickly. To me, I would think that Google could come up with a better way of determining quality other than broadly punishing the practice of selling links, but for the time they aren’t. It sucks to think that they probably won’t. It’s just too easy for them to act in the way they are, and it protects their own ad sales as a bonus. So, what do we do?

    If you want the Google traffic, don’t sell links. Or at least outsmart them as long as you can. If you are more concerned with the revenue, then there are plenty of other ways to get traffic. As an insight, I can tell you that Stumble and Sphinn have both sent me more traffic in the last 2 months than Google has in the last 6. I believe that this whole thing is going to bite Google in the ass anyway, in this. I look at my clients with a black and white view when it comes to advertising. A) we work for the revenue from paid ads, or B) we don’t. If we do, AdSense isn’t exactly the route I would suggest, and Google isn’t the major target of traffic generation. So, we find our way of driving the right visitor without regard to Google (Ban the site, who cares?), and we find our success. Or, we don’t worry about advertising as the site is probable selling a product directly, and optimize and market with Google in mind. Either way, we win, and in this example, Google loses.

    I believe that if more bloggers and site owners took this same practice of non-AdSense/non-Google ad marketing, then they would soon see that they need to come up with something better. For as long as we are attempting to rank in Google, use AdSense with other paid links, get banned, bitch about it, then try to do it again with a few new tricks, then get banned…you get the idea. They are still winning. Get a little AdSense money here, ban a site, get some more AdSense money, rinse, repeat. And as much as I like (not love) Google, I don’t want them to win this one. I want them to come up with another way.

    If I want to sell a link, and it’s of quality to me, that should be my business without consequence to my rankings. They should be working on the quality thing themselves, not finding examples to make and taking the easy way out.

    Now, I’m not supporting or bashing Google in any way. They have decided on their moves, and I have decided on mine. It’s business. This doesn’t make them evil (at least this doesn’t). When it comes to their index, they have made the rules, and when I’m in ‘Google SEO’ mode, I play by them. When I’m in ‘Get traffic for ad revenue’ mode, I couldn’t care less about Google. No need to argue with them. Let them do what they will, and I will do what I will.

    With this, and any other post, please read the disclaimer.

  • testtesttest

    • Priced from $1,500 – This service allows for a strong optimization and promotion of your business’ website on a local (usually state-specific) level.

    • Priced from $5,000 – This will provide your business’ website with a nationwide optimization and promotion strategy.

    • If the SEO you need for your site is of a different sort, or need a consultant to guide your online endeavor, I’ll be happy to discuss options in that area as well.