RSS feeds and SEO

RSS feeds are a great way to add new content to your website. Be sure to find feeds that make sense to your sites audience of course!

If you happen to have a local site that updates the local community on events you might like to include feeds from your local newspaper, if your site is all about entertainment you should look into some magazine sites and find out whether they offer an RSS feed.

RSS feeds can change daily, depending upon where the news is coming from and new content is king for offering new keywords and terms to your own site bringing in new and returning users to your pages.You can also include an RSS feed to your blog, blogger offers this opportunity.

www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com

Description Meta tags - by Ecklund Marketing Group

It's been confirmed! Google still pays attention to the Description Meta information. They have discounted the Keyword Meta tags though and have gone directly to the copy content on your site in order to pick out keywords. This way less keyword dumping can be utilized, rather properly written content with occasional keywords and key phrases is the way to impress Google.
One tip I will offer you is to include in your Description Meta information identical content that you have in your copy for each page. This is an indicator to the engines that you are in fact promoting in your meta information what you are writing about for your human audience. This gives your site a better chance at ranking for what you really want to rank for.

www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com

Landing Pages - by Ecklund Marketing Group

When thinking about optimization of your website think about what it is you're trying to get across. Write for your audience and be specific. Keep in mind that you want to include as many different search terms (The things people are punching into the search engines in order to find you) as you can without sounding ridiculous.
This is not merely important for your index page but for every page in your site. If each page is optimized like this, each page being different from the next in content and purpose, then each page will be ranked due to it's relevance to your audiences search terms. When each page of your site ranks separately then you are covering all of your bases - in effect - making each page a stand alone index page.
If the user finds what they wanted and felt there might be more to gain by venturing further along in your site you need to optimize that aspect as well. By including html links to every page on every page you allow the user to navigate comfortably through your site, and ease of navigation is essential to keeping your audiences attention, that and the content you've written.

See what Ecklund Marketing Group can do to Optimize your web site!

flickr and image optimization

With the purchase of flickr , by Yahoo! there has been a lot of buzz around the idea that one ought to add any and all pictures from their websites including them into the flickr database tagging them with descriptive information concerning their company.
Flickr is a social search engine where people can comment on your pictures and find your pictures through searching specific terms.
It was proven to be a source of great interest at the SES chicago conference this past week.

Any and all pictures, photos, illustrations that you might own the rights too should be included into the flickr database so that when people look for a picture of the item or service they want they will fall on yours and that will link back to your website.

People like graphic images, it's a fact, we look at a graphic long before we look to text. Keeping that in mind will make the flickr ideal make more sense. And consider this, add pictures to all of your blog entries...

www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com

SES conference in Chicago

After a successful learning experience at the 2007 SES show and Conference in Chicago we have come away with new and powerful ways to optimize your website to help rank your site on the major search engines!
Some quick tools for the eager webmaster are located at MSN's Webmaster Help and ASK.com 'Tips for Optimizing your Campaign.'
We've gone over Googles Webmaster Tools in the past and Yahoo's Site Explorer. MSN has a section you can add your URL directly like Google and Yahoo, ASK however doesn't seem to offer that option, rather they simply ask that you include an XML sitemap that their crawlers will pick up on.

In the coming days I will speak more of what we learned and how we can help you increase your visability on the web.

www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com

Search Engine Strategies, Chicago

We're off to the Search Engine Strategies conference this Sunday in Chicago to learn new techniques in search engine marketing.
We look forward to this show every year as it helps hone our skills and update our knowledge base concerning the search engines. As technology grows so do the intricacies of the world wide web and the only way to keep up on emerging strategies is to take in a show like this.
I'm sure we'll see some familiar faces as we hustle to our seats eager to absorb what wisdom is passed down to us by the speakers, all experts in their fields.
Anticipating a show like this never leaves you feeling like you'd built yourself up for nothing.The amount of knowledge gained is usually more than you can actually retain, and so for weeks after the conference you are still finding clues and ways to better your standing on the SR from your notes.
Needless to say we are looking forward to it. The further ahead of the game Ecklund Marketing Group can aspire to be the further ahead our clients will find themselves on the search engines.

http://www.ecklundmarketing.com/

Source code and your ranking - by Ecklund Marketing Gorup

A great way to see how your top competitors are getting ahead of you on the search engines is to right click on the page you would like to emulate and click on 'view source'.
Doing this will bring up another window that contains the meta information that is being read by Google bots and the like.
With this information at your fingertips you can then begin your own meta campaign. Take the basic information (The keywords and phrases used by your competitor and include them into your own tags.) This is one way to be looked at more favourably by the Search engines.
Of course you shouldn't borrow their company name or anything that does not apply to your own company because if your meta tags do not jive with your text then the search bots may not see your site as a good resource of information but rather a confusing source.
Be smart, include the information that applies to your site, anything more might steer the wrong traffic to your site generating no sales.
Something to think about.

To see what Ecklund Marketing Group can do for your website clck here.

Keyword Search - by Ecklund Marketing Group

If you're just getting started and want to enter into the world wide web with your business or idea then first things first, get your keywords all in order.
What is a keyword? A keyword can be many words or variations on that word that your audience will to enter into a search engine (like Google) in order to find the product they're looking for.
How do you know what keywords will propel you into the top ten companies searched under your listing? That's where Search Engine Optimization comes in. Nothing will replace a company that knows the ins and outs of the internet and how to design your website to compete with the millions of others that share a similar keyword, but, there are free sites out there that can get you started. Sites such as Key Word Search can offer you the top 100 search terms for any keyword you need. This will give you a fighting chance at getting seen by your audience when you put your site together. Take a look and play with keywords i.e. an internet marketing company might look into terms like "Search Engine Optimization" and "Website Marketing" or something along those lines.

Another tool worth looking into is the Google tool for keyword searches. The only difference is that it does not show an actual number - rather it uses bar graphs to tell you which keyword is most accessed and whether they're in the Pay Per Click category.

www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com

Targeting your website for search terms

First things first. If you can place the name of your product or service into the domain name then you are increasing your chances exponentially in coming up higher in the search rankings when someone punches in their search term.

Next would be the title tag, if it doesn't include the service or product name then the search engines aren't reading what you want them too and thus you're losing an excellent chance at gaining favour in the engines.
Then of course you have your keywords and description meta tags (make sure they match up with the description a viewer is reading off the site).

Having seperate pages for seperate terms is also a good idea, that way the term has a page dedicated to itself and if you include the specific name of that product or service in the domain name (i.e. www.widget.com/curved-widget/) then someone looking for a curved widget will be driven directly to the page on your site that mentions the curved widget rather than to the index page.

See how Ecklund Marketing Group can mprove your ranking on the web!

Social Media and Marketing with Ecklund Marketing Group

Eric Enge is one of our favourite bloggers and posts regularily on Search Engine Watch. Recently he attended the New York SMX Social Media to learn how to navigate the world of Digg, Reddit, facebook and other social networks. He supplies 11 basic rules when looking to emerse ones self into said arena.

A sample of his blog regarding social media and marketing is as follows:
"Don't self promote - There are almost no social media environments that are keen on self promotion. Even if the site terms of service say that self promotion is OK, the community itself tends to frown on it (this is true on Digg and Reddit, for example.) " by Eric Enge.

Visit Eric's latest offering to SEO specialists here.

See what Ecklund Marketing Group can do for you in the world of Social Media

Meta Tags and the Search Engines

Meta description information is used by all search engines, some to help with ranking and others merely as a means to educate the viewer as to what is on a specific page. An example of the description is as follows:

Ecklund Marketing Group
Ecklund Marketing Group is a Hamilton-based advertising, web design and search engine optimization company. We are also marketing specialists for the legal ...www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com/ - 10k -
Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Since individual pages of your site appear in web results a meta description of each page should reflect the content on that page rather than using the same description time and time again. Another mistake is to put identical information into your description that is in your title tag.
The meta description information is a great way to sum up your page for the viewer. The average number of characters that show up under the address is 155-160 so it is recommended you include your most descriptive sentences within those first few characters.
Google admits meta description information does little to advance a site on the page rank but encourages their use to inform the viewer and in doing so offer you more click through traffic from potential customers.

Find out how Ecklund Marketing Group can help your business find more quality leads on the internet.

Link love. Establishing quality Links for your business

Link love. The art of linking.

I think Justilien Gaspard said it best in his latest blog stating: "Age before Beauty" where linking to another site is concerned. The older the site the more favourable a link will be considered originating from it. An older site is established and usually holds a certain respect of the search engines indexing it.

Justilien goes on to speak about linking strategies and useful applications when looking to link to relevant sites.

See how ecklund Marketing Group can help you distinguish a good link from a bad one.

Free SEO services on the internet by Ecklund Marketing Group

Free SEO services on the internet by Ecklund Marketing Group

For those site owners who are willing to take charge of their own online promotion, there is a plethora of free services offered by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Google, for example, has a 'Webmaster Central' that allows you to submit sitemaps directly to the search engine, check to see if the robots have encountered dead links, and even report spam in the Google index! Yahoo has a similar feature in the form of a 'Submit Your Site' section where webmasters can submit sitemaps directly. It's a handy tool, although it lacks the detailed diagnostic features that Google provides.

If you don't have a sitemap, there are dependable online services such as FreeSiteMapGenerator.com. Google's Webmaster Guidelines page offers links to approved sitemap generators, many of which are free.

Adding your business to Google Local Search is also an effective and cost-free way to put your company at the top of the search results, where local information appears. Wordtracker.com is another application worth checking out- it analyzes your keywords and those of your competitors, and offers a detailed comparison report. Google Web Master Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer are excellent tools for tracking your inbound links, checking the integrity of your interior linking structure, and seeing how thoroughly your site has been indexed.

There are several free products available, each giving your business a better chance at being found on the world wide web. It can be frustrating and overwhelming at times and certainly time-consuming.
See what we can do for you at Ecklund Marketing Group to maximize your time and market you on the internet.

Linking strategies by Ecklund Marketing Group

Linking strategies by Ecklund Marketing GroupA good internal linking structure is a must for any complex website. It's common these days to build sites that are several layers deep: in other words, individual pages within the site have their own mini-menus. For example, your menu bar may have a link to a page for widgets. On the widgets page are additional submenu items- purple widgets, green widgets, etc. Proper and clearly labeled links are crucial for both human site visitors and the search engine robots.

You'll also want have your site's link appear on other web pages that appeal to your target audience without being a direct competitor. There's a myth running rampant throughout the SEO community that buying links is a no-no. This is not exactly true. The fact that you paid for it does not matter so much as the quality of the link itself. If you are a litigation lawyer, there's nothing harmful about purchasing a link to your page from reputable legal directories such as FindLaw or LawyerLocate. But paying for inclusion in a link farm that sandwiches your link between a teenager's angsty blog and the Britney Spears official site is something you want to avoid.

When you do buy a quality link, make it clear to the directory's webmaster that you want a DIRECT link. Although this is rarely an issue with smaller sites and directories, larger ones funnel the link through third party tracking software, so that they can monitor how much traffic they drive to your site. Search engine robots can follow the link, but as one forum member on the Search Engine Watch board commented, "You won't get any Google love from it." The third party software deadens the SEO effectiveness of the link.
Proper external linking is a great way to be ranked by the search engines as a trusted source for whatever it is you're looking to sell.

At Ecklund Marketing Group we can help you realize your linking potential.

Over Stuffed Web Pages Hurt your Page Rank by Ecklund Marketing Group

Bloated web pages hurt your page rank.

The rule is that pages must load in five seconds or less. If you can’t manage that then you are losing customers and potential linkers. The trouble starts in your code. That’s why ‘style sheets’ and utilizing an HTML clean-up option on your program (Dreamweaver etc…) is a very good idea. The crowded code can leave the search engines at a loss, not reading anything of importance until line 500 or worse. It can make it very difficult for your site to show up for your descriptive keywords and descriptions.
www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com


An entry from Eric Enge also explains what a webmaster can do in order to side step this fate.

A Crucial SEO Element: Web Site Credibility by Aaron Wall

It seems like credibility and trust issues are a serious concern in the SEO community. A recent post on the Search Engine Land blog reiterated the potential pitfalls when it comes to working with web-based companies. There's an old saying which goes, "If it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it's probably a duck." In SEO land, it's probably a decoy, not a real duck! You get our meaning. It makes sense to educate yourself on a company that is web based. A one man operation can be just as impressive on the internet as a billion dollar company. SEO blogger Aaron Wall hit the nail on the head when he advised site visitors to look for certain features that confirm legitimacy: “Does a site have an 'about' section and list a physical address on it? How old is the company? Lacking these details makes an organization seem less like an organization and more like a person sitting in their underwear in a basement somewhere.”

Check out this link and read the rest of what Aaron Wall has to say on the subject: A Crucial SEO Element: Web Site Credibility

Ecklund Marketing Group

All about the Blog, by Ecklund Marketing Group

All about the Blog, by Ecklund Marketing Group

A weblog (or 'blog' for short) is a great tool for any law firm or sole practitioner hoping to reach potential clients. From a 'techie' perspective, blogs are loved by the search engines because of their regularly updated content, so they're indexed at a rapid rate and can offer another opportunity to drive traffic to your website. By using proper anchor text in your blog, you can also get an added SEO boost: if you're doing a post about civil litigation, you can insert a link that says 'more information about civil litigation', and direct it toward the civil litigation section of your website.

Google, which recently took over Blogger.com, offers free blog space. Other blog hosting services are available, but some require server-side installation and tweaking, so choose one based on your personal degree of technical knowledge.

Think blogging is for teenagers? Think again. Major corporations like the New York Times blog regularly to satisfy their customers' need for news and information. And so this goes back to the very fundamentals of search engine strategy - write for your target audience and you’re writing for the search engines.

See what EMG can do for your business

Updating your website by Ecklund Marketing Group.

Updating your website by Ecklund Marketing Group.

An alarming number of websites lie stagnant for years. Their pictures and text remain the same, and some of them look like they haven't aged a bit: frames and the blink and marquee tags still haunt the Internet despite the fact that people and SE bots hate them in equal doses. What web surfers, both of the human and robot variety, do appreciate is regularly updated content.

Search engine algorithms take a site's popularity into account when calculating rankings, and a popular site is usually one whose fresh and useful content attracts repeat visitors. Popular sites are authority sites from the SE perspective, and when the emphasis these days is on returning the most relevant results for a searcher's query, authority is a huge deal. Visitor loyalty can be won by offering a site newsletter compiled by experts in whatever field you cover, or keeping a sharp eye out for news and innovations pertinent to your business, so that word gets around that your page is the one to see for the latest buzz. Blogs and forums where visitors can interact with you and each other are also great ideas. A flow of fresh content is also a great way to entice the search engine robots to keep coming back. Although crawl rate does not influence your ranking for a chosen keyword or search term, it does ensure that your new content is found and indexed more readily than it might have been.

Ecklund Marketing Group has the tools and the know how to take your business to new heights. Find out how.

Hide ‘n Seek with Descriptive Keywords by Ecklund Marketing Group

Hide ‘n Seek with Descriptive Keywords

Hiding descriptive words within the body of a web page, otherwise known as 'keyword stuffing', is an old trick that used to influence the site's ranking on the search engines. If a webmaster wanted to rank well for 'Britney Spears', all they would do is type her name over and over throughout the page, making sure that the text matched the color of the background i.e. blue text on a blue background. Site users wouldn't see it unless they viewed the source code, but the engines picked it up whenever the page was spidered, and the favorable indexing that usually followed made many a webmaster a reluctant black hat operator.

That was then. Nowadays, keyword stuffing not only makes you look like an amateur or a porn site operator- it can also get you banned by the search engines. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are on the lookout for such flagrant and unethical attempts to manipulate the search engine algorithms, and when abuses are detected, the penalties can range in severity from e-mailed warnings to total de-indexing from the search engine's databases.

Keyword stuffing still occurs, but usually in the form of poorly written page copy: ‘Hamilton Accident lawyers can help you because they are the accident Lawyers in Hamilton going to court for you if you have an accident in Hamilton.’ The engines may not penalize you for this, but potential clients definitely will.

Don't despair- you CAN still control how well the SEs receive your site. Make sure that your content is intelligently written, and emphasizes your preferred search terms without demolishing the page's readability. Seek link exchanges with REPUTABLE web directories and sites whose themes are in keeping with your site's purpose- since you're running a law office, you might pay LawyerLocate or LawInfo for a listing, or link to a court reporter's page in exchange for their linking to you.

Proper networking and relevant content are the keys to successful SEO these days. At Ecklund Marketing Group, we use our experience with copy editing and context-appropriate linking to make your site a hit with both your clients and the SE bots.

See what Ecklund Marketing Group can do for your website.

The importance of HTML Sitemaps by Ecklund Marketing Group

The importance of HTML Sitemaps

A sitemap is just that. It is a map or index of your site. It comes in two varieties: 1) XHTML files and raw URL lists (text files) that allow the search engine bots to crawl your links more fluidly, and 2) HTML pages that organize your site content for the benefit of your visitors. You've probably seen the latter when you browsed bigger web sites. Google recommends that If you have more than 100 links in total to include in your HTML sitemap, you divide the content over two or more sitemap pages.

Both versions should offer an easily navigated list of the site's pages and the html links to each page. Because human visitors go to web pages in search of information, not links, you should take extra steps to make your HTML sitemap organized and informative. You can group your links by subject and put a header over each group i.e. 'Provincial Rules of Civil Procedure' or 'Lawyer Profile Pages'. It is good etiquette to add in the vicinity of each link a small description of what that page might contain, so the user can decide at first glance whether it interests them. Search engine robots also take adjacent text into account when assessing links. For example: if you’re directing someone to a page that sells ‘green widgets’ you would use ‘Green Widgets’ as the link and offer a description such as ‘We sell green widgets in all sizes’.That tells both people AND bots that you sell green widgets in all sizes! A few extra words is all it takes to make your site more user-friendly AND get the bots indexing you favorably.

See what Ecklund Marketing Group can do for you. Visit us at: www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com

The trouble with graphics by Ecklund Marketing Group

The Trouble with Graphics

A big blunder that some webmasters make is to design sites that are nothing more than an assortment of graphics pieced carefully together like an online jigsaw puzzle. These sites can be visually very appealing because you can use fancy fonts that otherwise would not display properly and minimize the risk of the pages looking different from one browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc). But there's an enormous trade-off involved: search engines hate these sites because they're beautiful!

Search engine robots cannot read text that's incorporated into an image, so all of your content is rendered useless from an SEO perspective. It's important to keep your graphics and your text as two separate elements. When you do use images, make sure that you add ALT text to each one. Alt text is what you see in the little yellow box that pops up when you mouse over some images. It gives some information about the picture in question i.e. "A photo of our Family Law team'.

Graphics are frequently used as navigation links. There's nothing wrong with that, provided you include HTML links at the bottom of each page. The bots will be able to follow the image link without difficulty, but it can't read the embedded text, so you lose the anchor text advantage.

We don't recommend that your index page be one huge graphic. While using proper meta tags will ensure that Yahoo appreciates your site's content, Google ignores meta tags these days and dives directly into page text. If your index page, the gateway to your site, has no text to feed it, the Googlebot will go away unsatisfied. Graphic elements will always take a back seat to good copy.

See what we can do for your business at: www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com

The importance of Anchor text by Ecklund Marketing Group

Anchor text is, literally, the text that constitutes a clickable link on a web page. On the surface, it looks like a mere site navigation tool, with little SEO value. That was once the case too. But now, it's another weapon in your campaign to get your website noticed by the search engines. Skillfully applied, anchor text can improve your ranking for your search terms of choice, like 'Ottawa estate lawyer'.

How does it work? You make your chosen search term part of a link in your site navigation or, even better, an external link to your page from a quality, popular website. Here's an example of this technique being applied to your site infrastructure:

'View our firm's personal injury lawyers'. Notice how we included 'personal injury lawyers' in the link text. This is tremendously beneficial in your endeavor to rank well for the term 'personal injury lawyers' because anchor text is weighted highly in search engine algorithms. It's surprising how many sites do not take advantage of this easily incorporated SEO feature. We still see links that run along the lines of 'To see our firm's personal injury lawyers click here.'

The same principle can be applied when you list your website in directories like LawyerLocate or Rominger Legal. Instead of having your site's link labeled- ABC Law Office, you could request ABC Law Office- Toronto Personal Injury Lawyers.

You may be skeptical that mere link text can make that big a difference. For proof that it really works, recall the 'Miserable Failure' incident, which is a prime example of the phenomenon known as Google bombing. Several anti-Bush webmasters grouped together to create links that included the phrase 'miserable failure' and direct those who clicked on them to George W. Bush's official White House biography page. Their campaign was so successful that Bush's official biography became the top search result for 'Miserable' and 'Failure.' Google addressed this potential for abuse at the end of 2006, by altering its algorithms to reduce the effect of harassment campaigns like the above.

For more information on Search Engine Optimization techniques, please visit this blog regularly. Also browse our website at: http://www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com/

Search Engine Optimization Techniques from Ecklund Marketing Group

The number one problem for website copy is that people tend to overdo it with keywords and overly descriptive explanations of what they do, offer, etc. Consider a lawyer who wants to say they’re a ‘Toronto car accident lawyer’. A common blunder is to incorporate your key search phrase into one rambling, drawn-out sentence. i.e. ‘We are Toronto car accident lawyers acting for you in the defense of an accident involving a car in Toronto where we will defend your car accident in a court of law…’

See what I mean? Ridiculous phrasing, and a potential client who reads site copy like that would question whether they want to engage the services of a lawyer with such a poor online representation. Packing search terms so densely into site text is a feeble attempt to rank well with Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines for those phrases, and doesn't do anything for site visitors except annoy them. You have to write for your potential clients, not the search engine bots. And here's a little not-so-secret tip: search engines don’t even like that kind of keyword stuffing any more, and doing it can actually hurt your ranking.

At Ecklund Marketing Group we work with you to ensure that your website's content achieves the ideal balance of appealing to clients and search engines both. It's a fine art, but we have a team of professionals who can bring out the best in you on the web.

See what we can do for you at: http://www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com/

Top SEO Strategies from Ecklund Marketing Group

There are many pitfalls on the road to success on the internet and so choosing a company that can market your business well is crucial.

We will add daily blog entries that deal with problems common to webmasters both new and experienced, introducing solutions that will help your website gain recognition from the major search engines.

If using Flash to build your site or just the index page, have another site designed to mirror your Flash site built in HTML format. Search engines need HTML links in order to move through your site indexing along the way. Flash does not allow for this to happen. Another way to approach this problem is if you use Flash sparingly, by importing short animations into your HTML pages. This way the 'bots' from Google, Yahoo and MSN can easily navigate your site helping to rank you higher in their indexes.

See what we can do for your company at: Ecklund Marketing Group Website Services

Ecklund Marketing Group, Web Design and SEO

Hello,

We'd like to welcome you to our blog space where we will offer solutions to your website promotion questions and also publish other blogers' posts that can help your company better understand the web and better promote your business on the internet.

We are active members of the SearchEngineWatch.com community forum, and attend the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in Toronto and Chicago every year. Knowledge obtained from recognized SEO experts such as Danny Sullivan, Bruce Clay, and Matt Cutts as well as representatives from the major search engines are put to use to give you the most cutting edge web presence.

We have been promoting businesses and organizations on the Internet since 1996, back when frames were 'cool', blinking text was a coding breakthrough, and everyone thought that style sheets were the latest offering from Sears.

Ready to give your business or organization the online presence that it deserves? E-mail us at info@ecklundmarketinggroup.com, and one of our company representatives will get back to you to discuss your project. Visit us at http://www.ecklundmarketinggroup.com/