With announcements from the major search engines happening all the time, many SEO providers are still using out of date methods to gain traction with search rankings. We’ve kept track of Google’s changes over time, as evident with our Predicting Panda postings from a short time back. Working in SEO means that we have to be ever vigilant when it comes to search relevance. The key at this point in time is moderation – SEO strategies that are enough to impress a user and a search engine without being overblown. Here are some of the ways we’re staying ahead of the curve.

Real Content, Written by Professionals

The core of all SEO is well-written content. Articles that are thrown together, poorly worded, and grammatically incompetent don’t pass muster with users. Our writers work with all of our clients to produce highly polished and pertinent articles that not only employ SEO, but do so without compromising quality. They strive to avoid the syntax misappropriations that are the hallmark of bad SEO. If the average user can tell that words aren’t falling the right way, it’s a good bet a search engine algorithm can, too.

The same is true for keyword density – a hot issue in the SEO community. Google has stated openly that it plans to penalize results that abuse keywords. This doesn’t mean that your site won’t benefit from SEO done right. What it does mean is that our writers have to work even harder to provide information, rather than boiler-plate articles with keywords used as many times as possible. Those sorts of articles raise huge red flags – both for users and for search engines. When a visitor to your site becomes aware of SEO, they’ll likely stop reading the content. That user bouncing away from your site is one fewer conversion you will have. Providing good information with natural keyword use is the key to pleasing your customers.

Link Building

Link Building

The Panda update changed the rules for link building, but it didn’t totally break past practices. Even though some of the old tricks still work, we’re constantly on the hunt for new techniques to spread awareness of your site. This practice has a dual advantage. Not only will your site rank higher the stronger its web presence, the increased visibility will get you visitors on its own, even if the search engines take some time to place you in that coveted number one position. The search engines no longer respond well to the “content factory” type sites – at least not as well as they used to. By embracing social media and ongoing content, your site will get the attention it deserves.

If you have any questions about employing SEO for your website, or if you’d like to discuss a site overhaul with SEO features, schedule a free 30 minute consultation. There are lots of false promises and shady guarantees in the business of SEO. Instead of that, we boast our #1 ranked successes. Feel free to browse our clients and see for yourself. The key to SEO, at this point, is strong writing, good information, and adaptation. We’ve got all three.

Why Quality Content Matters

You might be asking how much it costs to build and promote a website. Getting something on the page just won’t cut it – neither will casual submissions to search engine indexes. There are a number of services that offer cut-rate writing and content creation for your website. The SEO process requires the creation of many different types of page – those that will appear on your website, any ongoing blog material you may have, and separate articles that will help bolster your online presence and search engine visibility. Building connections online is only one part the problem. Driving traffic to the site doesn’t do any good if people don’t stay there.

Providing Clear and Concise Information

You only have a few moments to catch a visitor’s attention. Our team of professional writers knows precisely how this is accomplished. One of the major pitfalls of online content is the habit of copy and pasting whole documents, choosing to change sets of key words instead of writing unique and relevant articles for each. While it’s possible some content may be repeated – landing pages for similar services or service overviews, for example – the fact that it’s uniquely written won’t be lost on your potential customers. People are sensitive to content that contains low-quality, boilerplate writing. That’s why we refuse to spin content for our customers – not only is it poor SEO practice, it’s a detail that customers won’t miss.

Generating Buzz

Ongoing content, both on your website and through social media outlets, can help your business develop momentum in alternative markets. Not only does word of mouth get you exposure in the real world, when it happens online, it can help build the reputation of your website. This is why it’s essential to have a positive social network presence. However, without great site content, when new visitors arrive, curious about what people are saying, they won’t stick around. Converting visitors into sales depends on compelling and engaging content – text, pictures, and video. If you can keep a visitor around for more than five or ten seconds, the likelihood he will make a purchase skyrockets.

Business Appropriate Content

Some SEO companies will hire out content writing to people who have little investment in their clients. Our writing team is consistent, reliable, and professional. We work to pair writers with clients that share experiences and attitudes. The tone of an article has to change based on what it is our clients do – content describing personal injury lawyer services and content marketing play places for children must be approached very differently. Striking a balance between information, presentation, and attitude will insure that your customers are faced with content that’s appropriate for the products and services they’re looking for. Our writers will work with you through any content revisions you desire. Their services are included in the cost of SEO promotion, meaning it’s not something you should consider when wondering how much it costs to build a website. If you prefer to have more control over your web copy, that’s great, but know that our team of professionals is at your disposal.

If you have any questions about SEO, web design, or simply looking for estimates of how much it costs to build a website, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re offering free 30 minute phone consultations to anyone interested. We offer a wide range of services – whether you’re just getting started on the web, or you’re hoping to take your online user experience to the next level – we should be able to help you.

Once you’ve had a website designed, worked out hosting, and made your place on the internet, you still have one significant hurdle to leap. Having a well-designed website isn’t worth much unless there are people visiting it. Driving traffic to your website is easier said than done. Simply filling a niche, providing a service, or having a product to sell won’t cut it. You have to reach out to your customers – usually in ways they don’t even realize.

Search Engines

While word of mouth can be helpful, organic growth in traffic usually comes from the major search engines. To drive large amounts of visitors to your website, you have to be certain that your business is turning up in the top results when people search for the services or products you offer. If you hire a consultant to help you gain momentum in the search rankings, one of the first things they’ll do is research what keywords people are searching to find services like yours. Search engine optimization strategies will then push the association of those keywords and your website up through the rankings.

Social Networking

Word of mouth can be a powerful tool, which is why any successful business should have a social networking presence. By being an active voice on social networking sites, you make word of mouth easier. Your customers will be able to discuss your services, and your future customers will have the words of their friends and other connections to base their choices on. Combine this with the fact that many social networking sites are, in fact, indexed by the major search engines, and you have a wonderful way to keep your customers informed while also boosting your placement in search engines.

Other Services

When you’re trying to engage users, you want to use as many angles as possible. Social networking and organic search are great, but you should consider all of the different places people look for things on the internet. If you expand your content beyond text and images and decide to incorporate video clips, you’ll be able to grab attention from several new sources. Not only will you have social media and search support, but if your videos are located on different video indexing sites (Vimeo, Youtube, DailyMotion) you have a brand new thoroughfare for traffic.

When Traffic Isn’t Enough

Having a number one page ranking is a great thing. However, without a solid website and user interface, you may not be able to convert traffic into sales. Having a great user experience alone also isn’t enough. The combination of search engine strategy and excellent design is the best way to make your business stand out against the rabble of the world wide web. Throw an active social media presence into the mix, and you’ve laid the foundation for success. From there, it’s up to your customers, your product, and your sales team. If you can direct traffic to your business, have a website that draws them in, you’ve already accomplished the most difficult task. From there to closing the sale is up to your product.

The golden ratio

Search engines look at several things when they rank websites. Link volume and quality are important. However, the search giants are also very interested in how your visitors are moving through your website. This engagement is based on how much time is spent on each page, and how many visitors bounce away from your site within a few moments. There are a few things you can do to improve your website’s engagement, thereby moving you further up the search rankings.

Website Design and Layout

The anatomy of a web page

If your site is bogged down with advertisements and other nonsense, it makes it difficult to navigate. Site content should be easily visible. Sites that depend on advertising for revenue often try to trick users into clicking links to their affiliates. We’ve all seen those sites. If you’re trying to turn traffic into sales, you should make it as direct as possible. Trust your customer to find the things they want, and give them the tools to make the purchase.

Further, the web has evolved since the days of frame-based websites. Search engine crawlers actually take this into account when giving rankings. If the website is boring, the assumption will be that it won’t engage your visitors. Bringing your website into the modern day will give your users a better experience while also helping your search ranking.

Ongoing Blog Content

If you want your customers to come back to your site again and again, you should consider hosting a blog. This is a great way to generate positive communication between you and your customers. You can discuss general operations at your company, giving people an insight into how your business works, or you can talk about upcoming promotions. Many blog systems allow for user comments and feedback, so you can even do polls and get feedback on your services. If you provide excellent blog content, your customers will take notice. If you don’t have a spare employee to write things up for you, or if you don’t have time yourself, there are a number of professional writers who are able to respond to prompts and give you the content you need on the schedule you want at an affordable price.

Video Content

Pages are ranked partly on how much time users spend on them. If you include video content to supplement your text, you can greatly increase the amount of time people are spending on your website. If they play the video and read along, or simply watch the video, that few minutes could be exactly the hook you need to make a sale. If you add a few well-made videos to your website, you will be taking a huge step in improving it. Also, demonstrating your product in a video can provide more information than any written explanation. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a motion picture worth?

These are some basic things that can be done to improve almost any website. By improving the layout, design, and user experience, you increase the chances that traffic will be converted to sales. If you add ongoing content and video narration, your website will stand out amid the sea of text-only choices.

Abraham Lincoln’s famous description of the American Civil War states that a house divided against itself cannot stand. He was saying that infighting, that a war between brothers, would not eventually lead to the complete dissolution of the United States of America, but rather, to its complete absorption by one force or another. SEO and web design can be looked at through much the same lens. There are websites that have beautiful designs that nobody will ever see. They sacrifice beauty for the sake of beauty. There are sites with fantastic web presence and link ranking that nobody looks at because they have sacrificed everything to be ranked by search engines.

Where We Are, Whither We Are Tending

The major search engines are at a tipping point with content and SEO strategy. As it stands, the Internet grows every second. There’s a constant battle, both within the search companies, and outside, to avoid being overrun by emerging content. The search giants have responded by getting more personal with their search results. Google Plus Your World is trying to merge social networking with search. More than that, though, search is starting to rely on real user metrics as a larger and larger part of the ranking algorithm. One such metric is time spent on site, described as user engagement.

SEO cannot succeed on its own. SEO should not be the driving force of a business web presence. There must be a merger of SEO utilization and prudent web design

A Tendency to the Latter Condition

Universities and art schools have been training web designers for more than a decade. The internet has seen several phases of web design go into and out of fashion. Those sites still using outdated designs are outpaced by newer, cleaner, better designs when it comes to search ranking. Their users find less clutter, even if the content is very much the same. SEO cannot replace good design. Likewise, good design cannot replace SEO. At the moment, many people are still riding the web design bandwagon. They assume building the perfect website will drive the users in. Put simply, it won’t.

The reason SEO cannot replace good design is simple. SEO will drive users to your page – that is all. Once they arrive, the job of SEO has been done. From there, it’s up to the website to stand for itself, engage the user, and turn traffic into profit. The false assumption is that this will happen automatically. The time where having a flashy new page was enough to make a splash in the internet community has been over for many years.

If We Stand Firm, We Shall Not Fail

SEO is not something that happens overnight. Page rankings take time to become established after a campaign to improve them. It makes sense that, during this time, a website can undergo a serious renovation. The two things together make for an excellent business strategy.

Without great graphic design, your website is boring potential customers away. While your website’s text is critically important to selling success, your website isn’t doing your business any good if no one finds it interesting enough to look at. That’s why you need great graphic design that will help your website engage visitors and increase sales.

Simple Websites

It’s true that simple websites with lots of white space usually outperform cluttered, over-designed websites. However, having a simple website with lots of white space doesn’t mean a bare website with no graphic design elements at all. No – even simple, minimalist websites need graphic design.

Graphic Design

Graphic design includes all of the graphics people see when visiting your website. It’s much more than just the images you use. Great graphic design means looking at a website as a whole instead of as just a series of random graphics. It includes the colors, photographs, graphical elements, and even the way the text is placed on the page.

Great graphic design brings everything together to not only create a visually attractive website, but also a website that is easy for visitors to navigate and read. Web pages with great graphic design keep readers engaged as the layout pulls readers from one thing to another in a logical flow that itself can increase conversions.

What graphic design doesn’t mean is piling a ton of graphics, videos, and other media onto a web page. Great graphic design is all about strategically placing elements to enhance the reader experience – not just randomly placing cool graphics on a web page.

It takes a lot of thought, research, experience, and an artist’s eye to create a website with great graphic design. That’s why you should always consider working with a graphic designer when creating a website. Even if you design your website yourself, consulting a graphic designer to get an opinion of the design and flow of your website’s layout and images can make a big difference in the conversions and success you achieve.

Money Making Graphics

Websites with good graphic design have a much greater potential for profit than websites with poor design. This even comes into play with websites featuring advertising like AdSense and banner ads. A graphic design consultation can help you place those ads so people are more likely to see and click on them.

Since well designed pages keep people engaged longer, you’ll stand a greater chance of making money with graphic design that ensures well placed ads. After all, if your ads are buried under a ton of other graphical elements, your visitors may not even see them. Alternatively, if you have one glaring banner ad on a plain black and white page of text, it may scream “scam” to your visitors.

If you’re looking for a way to increase your conversions, taking a look at your graphic design could be the answer. To learn more, click to schedule a free, no-obligation graphic design consultation with Seattle SEO Consultant. Graphic design expert Chad Morgan is eager to tell you more.

What do you think of when you picture the World Wide Web, beepers, PalmPilots, Beanie Babies, Tickle Me Elmo, and – the thing all kids went wild for in its heyday – Pokemon?

If you said the decade of 1990s, you’re right.

How about when you picture AOL chat rooms, boy bands with frosted tips, bling bling, MTV’s “TRL,” and the television sensation, “The Weakest Link?”

Yep… the 2000s.

Now think about what impression people get when they visit your website. Does it look like it came out of a time machine circa 1998, or does it look current and relevant?

If you’ve had a website for any length of time, it’s important to realize that it’s never a good idea to put up your website and think that’s it – that you’re done.

Sorry. It just doesn’t work that way. To stay competitive and profitable, it’s critical for you to update your website Seattle regularly (and update more than just the artwork and design). This post looks at three of the biggest reasons why you need to update your entire website now.

Your Visitors Have Changed

Not only do people change as time passes, but the way people use the internet to search for things changes as well. Keywords people use today might not be the same ones they use next week to search for the products of services you offer.

For example, people searching for a home back in the booming economy and real estate market might have searched for a term like “large new homes for sale Seattle.” Today, people looking to buy a home might search using keywords like “buy a Seattle foreclosure” or “buy Seattle short sales” instead.

Your Competition Has Changed

Your competition isn’t standing still letting their website become more and more obsolete. They’re updating their website so it evolves with the times to stay ahead of you.

If you’re going to compete successfully, you need to make changes too. Achieving a number one Google ranking doesn’t mean you’ll stay in the number one spot for any length of time unless you update your website in ways that keep you there ahead of your competition.

The Search Engines Change

The internet and the search engines change all the time. Just look at how dramatically the organic search engine results have changed just since the recent Google Panda update. Today’s Google changes can send your rankings plummeting tomorrow.

Plus new search engines start up regularly. For example, one of today’s most popular search engines, Bing.com, didn’t pop up until just a few years ago in 2009. If your website was search engine optimized in 2004 and you haven’t updated it since, you’re probably stuck in internet obscurity right now.

Nothing ever stands still, so if you want to stay current, relevant, and ahead of your competition, update your website. By doing so, you’ll not only avoid an outdated look that turns people away from your website, but you’ll also ensure your website remains an effective, high-performing virtual salesperson for your business 24/7.

Need help updating your website Seattle? Schedule your free, no-obligation consultation with Chad Morgan to learn more.

The copywriter Seattle tips in this post can help you build a business blog that attracts loyal readers and accomplishes big results for your business.

Create A Strategy Before Writing

1. Determine whether you’ll aim for an editorial, informational, or personal blog
2. Decide on a writing style: informal, formal, laid back, controversial, etc.
3. Set up topic categories that are broad so you always have lots of writing options
4. Decide the actions you want readers to take at the end of each post
5. Set up ground rules for blog comments
6. Establish a posting calendar so your readers always know when to expect new content
7. Define your exact target audience
8. Establish exactly how your target audience will benefit by reading your blog

Design For Easy Use And Readability

1. Select an easy to read color scheme, avoid a black background with white text
2. Choose a magazine style or two-column style blog format
3. Decide on a readable font in an easy to read size
4. Set up an RSS and email post subscription form
5. Include social media links on the sidebar or header
6. Add post categories to sidebar
7. Add archives to sidebar
8. Show recent posts on sidebar

SEO So Readers Find You

1. Do keyword research to find the best keywords for your blog
2. Optimize each post for at least one keyword
3. Include your primary keyword for a post in the H1 tag and meta title
4. Consider adding your keywords to H2 subtitles in your posts
5. Begin your blog posts with your keyword when possible
6. Use keywords in the filenames of blog images
7. Add keyword tags and captions and ALT descriptions for your images
8. Use customized URLs that include the post name

Tips For Writing Blog Posts

1. Write blog posts less formally than your website sales content
2. Use bulleted and numbered lists for easy readability
3. Keep your paragraphs to five lines or less
4. Short posts outperform long ones, so keep them to 300 to 500 words
5. Only cover one topic per post for clarity
6. Use images in your posts for easier reading and to emphasize points
7. Create an outline before you start writing so you stay on track
8. Always edit before clicking “Publish”

These tips will help you create a blog that achieves results because it’s easy to read and understand. If you need help creating your blog or blog post content, contact Seattle SEO Consultant to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with copywriter Seattle, Chad Morgan to learn more.

Seattle SEO services are about a lot more than just adding keywords to your website. It’s about creating a big picture strategy for success, and that involves much more than just a website design, just onsite optimization, or just marketing your website.

It all starts with dividing your budget and then making strong choices when it comes to creating your website, choosing keywords, and using them. This post looks at five different ways to create a solid search engine optimization presence for your website.

Your Budget

For the best, most well rounded strategy, split your budget into three categories: website design, search engine optimization, and internet marketing. Then you’ll be prepared for a truly comprehensive marketing push instead of putting your budget into just one strategy.

Your Website

A good strategy involves more than just creating a flashy website full of keywords. It’s also about creating a website that’s easy for customers to understand and navigate. If people can’t figure out how to use your website, or if it’s slow to load, they’ll leave.

Your Keywords

Spend plenty of time doing your keyword research to ensure your keywords don’t only bring in traffic, but that they bring in targeted traffic that is ready to buy. Stay away from generic terms like “shoes” or “computers” because you’ll never hit page one with them.

Your Content

Once you have your keywords, use them in your content, but make sure you use them naturally. If your content is keyword stuffed, it’ll be awkward to read. If it’s awkward to read, visitors will click the back button to exit your website. Edit for misspellings and other errors to ensure making the best impression on visitors.

Your Meta Information

You should also make sure you include your keywords in your meta information: your meta title, meta description, and meta keywords tags. The easier you make it for the search engines to figure out what your website is about, the higher you’ll rank.

Your Sitemap

Speaking of the search engines, make sure you add a sitemap to your website. Include a link to your sitemap in your navigation or in the footer of your website. Both the search engines and humans appreciate a good sitemap.

Keep these tips in mind, and contact Seattle SEO Consultant if you’d like to learn more. We invite you to schedule a Seattle SEO services consultation with expert Chad Morgan. It’s a free, no-obligation 30 minute consultation that can help build your SEO strategy.