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The biggest fear any website owner has is coming in to work one day and doing a quick verification of his Google rankings only to find that his site has disappeared altogether from Google. It’s a nightmare that many share – but like most fears, it can be conquered and the best way to do that is with knowledge. You need to thoroughly understand the different penalties that Google could impose and also the risks that you must avoid so that you don’t have to worry about these issues.
If the past year's over a dozen changes in Google algorithms has taught us anything, it's taught us that not only is content king, but it's queen, princes, and the rest of the royal court. Exhaustive studies of tens of thousands of high ranking sites have shown specific elements related to content that must be addressed on every site that wants to be competitive, and we'd like to apply that knowledge to your website.
Building a website can be simple, but building an effective website is a whole different topic. To be effective a website must achieve its goal – too many, though not all, this goal is a financial objective of generating sales (or perhaps, leads). Either way, that goal is very definitive and quantifiable and is referred to as a conversion. If you sell a product, a conversion occurs when a customer initiates and completes a sale. Now, many potential customers will come to your site, but only some of them will become conversions.
Choosing the right domain name should be the first thing to consider in search engine optimization. Domain names and search engine optimization go hand-in-hand, as your domain name is a great factor in making sure that your website ranks high in searches to drive more traffic to it. A poorly chosen domain name or a completely non-relevant domain name will not kill your SEO efforts, but it will make them a bit more difficult.
To many businessmen and women alike, the recent craze for social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and about 300 others seems to be silly and juvenile. And in some ways, that is exactly what social media and web 2.0 is all about – putting a personality online. However, there is a whole separate avenue of thought that you should consider. First and foremost your business decisions should be governed by their likelihood to contribute to the bottom line – revenue.
Remember the “Content is King” statement? Well, many e-commerce sites forget that, but those that thrive realize that e-commerce products are just another form of content and they apply the same core SEO principles to their e-commerce product content as you would to any site.
Much has been made about blackhat SEO principles and, in general, greyhat SEO principles and techniques largely go unmentioned. The differences between black and white are obvious, but shades of grey begin to overlap and the line becomes blurred as to what is acceptable and what is not. Ultimately you must rely on sound judgment and core design principles to protect you from possible damage should you cross over that thin line.
Like everything in life, there is black and white when it comes to SEO tactics, strategy and principles. Whitehat principles are those which are absolutely guaranteed to not cause problems and be within complete compliance both to the letter of the terms of agreements of the search engines and to the ethical intentions of those agreements. On the opposite side of the spectrum, are blackhat SEO principles and techniques.
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