Seven guidelines for Winning with SEO Website Design

One of most difficult aspects of building a site for the search engines is implementing proper SEO website design. 

On one hand, the aim is to create a website that wows visitors and is engaging. On the other hand, you want to make sure the site is correctly optimized. Design-heavy sites don’t always leave much room for on-page optimization, so it’s essential to find the right balance.

Here are seven helpful tips to make it work:

Tip 1: maintain the layout simple 

Make sure the navigation links can be followed by the search engines. Keep the layout easy and clean but packed with design. Trying to achieve too much can work for the search engine spiders but will ultimately discourage visitors from browsing your site.

Tip 2: influence text with CSS 

One of the biggest issues designers face is using plain text (such as the h1 tag) when graphical text is far more beautiful.

The solution is to use CSS to influence how plain text looks so the search engines will be able to pick up the content. It will never look good as graphical text, but it will be a huge improvement more than plain text.

Tip 3: Use mouse-over’s on images 

if the site is image-heavy and needs text, using mouse-over will be the ideal solution. If this is set up correctly, it can turn an image-heavy site into one that is full of content.

To the visitor’s eye, an image will mouse-over to written text. To the search engine spiders, the text will be crawl able and seen as real content.

Tip 4: test with different fonts 

there are many fonts that look like graphical text but are in fact regular text. This means that the search engines will be able to read the text. Try experimenting with different fonts and consider buying font packs. This will let you to avoid using images and keep your design simple.

Tip 5: make a mobile substitute and format it

more people are by mobile devices to browse the Internet.

That’s why it’s significant to build a site meant to be viewed in mobile format and optimize it for search engines. In addition to creating this site, it is necessary to test how it appears on different devices and platforms so it is formatted correctly.

Tip 6: Design is good but loading time is bad 

too much design can slow down the loading time of a site. When that happens, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to decrease downloads. Many things can affect loading time from font downloads to plugins for SEO to high-resolution images to scripts.

Tip 7: Conversion is king 

Creating a well-designed site can give you a lot of pride. However, the one thing that matters most is conversion. Try out diverse designs and see which result in more action whether it is e-mail sign-ups, social media shares, or sales. After all, your sales numbers are what matter the most.

Finding the balance between optimization and great design isn’t always easy, but these solid tips will help you to win with SEO website design. There will be many times where it will be essential to go back and forth until all the technical problems are solved and the overall design is attractive.

The fact regarding SEO and Call Tracking

There has been a vast deal of talk about SEO and call tracking lately. Several local marketers have written articles decrying call tracking, saying that it hurts SEO. Other local marketing experts have written rebuttals, stating obviously that call tracking does not hurt SEO when it is deployed correctly.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is a way for online marketers to follow which sources, campaigns, and keywords generate phone calls. Hundreds of thousands of marketer’s crossways the U.S. and Canada use call tracking to close the loop on their marketing ROI calculations. Some of the biggest companies in the world use call tracking to calculate the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns, SEO pains, and retargeting. These companies value call data significantly. They spend a lot of money on it.

Marketing agencies also use call tracking. They use it as a way to show their worth to their clients. It is particularly popular among agencies that do PPC and SEO work.

What is the fact?

Call tracking, when used properly does not hurt SEO. That’s the truth. Even most eager call tracking opponents admit that.

The correct way to use call tracking is to use call tracking DNI. This doesn’t hurt SEO. We’ll discuss more about this afterward in the article.

The problem is that the call tracking industry has usually done a very poor job of educating marketers about what correct use of call tracking actually is.

Why Do Some Say Call Tracking Hurts SEO?

Because of NAP.

Google makes it very clear that Name Address and Phone number (NAP) have to be reliable across all online directories. Having unlike phone numbers in a ton of different places confuses Google’s algorithms and will hurt your SEO. This is why a few local marketers have written articles criticizing call tracking.

They’re right about one craze. Call tracking numbers should not be used in a range of directory listings across the web. That will hurt your SEO. This is common knowledge (or should be).

However, far too often articles offensive call tracking will lump all uses of call tracking (on-site Dynamic Number Insertion, primarily) together with erroneous use of call tracking in directories.

And, admittedly, some call tracking companies have not operated with care in this area. They have located call tracking numbers all over directories without worrying about the consequences for their clients. This is bad business and bad for the industry.

Ways to properly Use Call Tracking

One of the best articles regarding how to correctly use call tracking was written recently by the Minnesota Search Association. I STRONGLY recommend that you read this article. They lay out 5 exact ways to ensure that call tracking does not harm your SEO. At the risk of being recurring, I won’t go into the details and methods they discuss. But I will mention one more method that ensures call tracking is safe, Dynamic Number Insertion.

Both sides of the debate.

The bottom line is this: local marketers and call tracking companies need to deal with this nuanced issue in a nuanced way. If a call tracking business says that call tracking numbers NEVER hurt SEO, they are wrong. If a local marketer says that call tracking numbers ALWAYS or even MOSTLY hurt SEO, they are incorrect.

Using call tracking numbers on directories is bad. Using call tracking DNI on your site is good.

Three dreadful Things That People really Think Are True about SEO

It’s not easy being an SEO. There’s a ton of myth busting that has to happen in order to coax your clients to success. Whether you’re educating clients or trying enhancing your own site’s SEO, you need to be aware of several constant beliefs that can lead to SEO disaster. What follows are three SEO lies that people still think are true about SEO.


“I should optimize my fasten text.”

Even in the ravaged landscape of a post-Penguin 2.0 world, there are survivors who think that optimizing anchor text will boost them superior on the SERPs. While only just talking with an online business owner, I was confused at his insistence that optimized anchor text was the way to go. “It might work,” he argued, if he optimized every single anchor text both for both onsite and offsite SEO.

SEO best practices protector against optimized anchors. Instead, use anchors that hold sentence fragments, branded anchors, or even naked URLs. A site that contains optimized anchors is a site that is in risk of being penalized.

 “Throw enough mud on the wall; some of it will attach.”

Another common faith is that SEO is a haphazard free-for-all attempt to do anything and everything that might help. ”Let’s do SEO!” someone in upper management shouts. So, a team of lackeys scamper off to do social media, onsite optimization, directory register, Tumblr blogs, article submissions, viral videos, backlinks, blogging, and whatever else they can dream up.
The choice is to develop an SEO approach that provides real ROI and ensures that you will gain ranking. Such strategy involves three main areas.

1.    Onsite optimization. 

2.    Social signals. 

3.    Backlinks. 

 “We’ll get first-page rankings in a few weeks.”

“How long will it take?” I’ve heard this question a million times. And I get it. We all want to see skyrocketing rankings right away — a nice line graph that goes every advanced. We want first-page search results in record time. We want the first place on Google by the weekend or at least before the end of Q3. We all want results, and we want them yesterday.
Sadly, SEO doesn’t work that way.

This wait-a-long-time-for-results thing is a huge cause of caution with SEO. “SEO is not working” is code complaint for, “I don’t have the patience for SEO.”

Here’s the truth about SEO:  It’s a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race deal. I was on the phone with someone last week, and I used this very expression — “slow and steady wins the race” about SEO. The person retorted, “I disagree with you; as long as you’re doing it right, you’ll rank instantly.”

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. In spite of the rapidly varying nature of the industry, SEO requires a longview for longterm success.

So, let’s go back to that question — “how long will it take?” As you most likely anticipated, there is no easy answer, let alone a single answer.  The speed at which one attains SEO results depends on the excellence of the SEO, the health of the site, the DA level of the linkbacks, the quality of the link profile, the competition level of the niche, the status of current rankings, and about a million other factors.

For more visit : http://seonewsgoogle.blogspot.in/2013/08/what-is-new-definition-of-seo.html 

What Is The New Definition Of SEO???

The way we market, sell and carry SEO services has undoubtedly changed. Google's algorithm updates have made content marketing and social media the heart of a strong organic search strategy. So while the practice of SEO evolves, the description of SEO ought to evolve as well.
Other digital marketing plans such as email marketing, paid search and search re-targeting have very clear, acknowledged definitions. The definition of SEO, on the other hand, seems to be just as unclear as the practice itself.

Current description of SEO

Even when you Google the phrase, “description of SEO", nothing really solid is returned.
Wikipedia's official definition is, "the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page."

Search engine optimization is about way more than this.

Web opedia's definition is, "a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) -- including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines."

SEO is more than this too.

Is Web Presence Optimization the Evolution of SEO?

So what is an accurate description of SEO given the changes to the business?

Web presence optimization is an grand approach to optimizing an entire web presence for organic search including the website, social channels, blogs, articles and press releases. Where strategies, techniques, and tactics are still used, but content marketing and social media are strongly included.

What's Your Definition of SEO?


1.    SEO is the constant process of finding and discovering non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions, then publishing content optimized for those keywords.

2.    SEO is the process of producing optimized content that is discoverable by the aim audience as they progress through the buying cycle.

3.    SEO is about a prospect discovering a brand's content and web presence through search and social, and the owner of that content being able to recognize who consumed the content and the crash of the content across the organization.

4.    SEO is the outcome of a content marketing strategy that makes use of highly converting keywords that your target audience is searching on.

5.    SEO is the process of attractive the visibility of a brand's web presence in organic search.
SEO in the digital marketing mix is here to stay. Standardizing a definition of SEO will help buyers better understand the importance of it, the reason for committing to it, and the short- and long-term impact an SEO approach has on a web presence.

How Voice Search Is varying SEO

Voice search is really attractive. I use it co instantly and I know many of my peers do as well. Why type with your hands when you can just reveal out a search query? Now that Chrome offers voice search on a PC, it is growing even faster. Truthfully, it is going to change SEO. Voice search is young, but we better think on some of the implications of this budding technology now, otherwise our search strategies are going to be left in the dust.

In this post, we look at how voice search is varying, or may change, search engine optimization.

More Likely to Search with Natural Language

When you make use of voice search on your phone, you really don’t take the time to sit and think about the most helpful and concise way to perform a query does you? Instead, you just ask your phone a question. This in turn is the underlining thing that leads to many of the slight changes in voice search when compared to typed search. When we use natural language, things change.

Less Likely to Use Keywords

This point comes straight from Matt Cutts: “It is definitely the case that if you have something coming in via voice, people are more likely to use natural language. They are less likely to use search operators and keywords and that sort of thing and that is a general trend that we see.”

This is largely due to the relaxed mode that people are in when they make voice searches. When someone is looking for an electrician and they do a voice search, they might say, “Where can I find a really good electrician?” different to doing a typed search for something like, “Electrician San Diego.”

This greatly changes the way that Google and other search engines need to deduce queries. In fact, what this means is that they will need to increase their spoken query abilities by mapping questions and phases to keywords, or simply ruling a new way to deliver results based on the conversational query. What is really essential, is what results they will deliver and how.

Decline in Informational-Based Traffic Queries to Websites

We have seen it with Siri and with Google maps. When we do a search now, our phone talk’s right back at us and we don’t even need a webpage. Think of the implications of this as this information delivery method expands. If they don’t need our webpages, then they won’t be transfer us traffic. This same idea will no doubt spill over into voice search on a PC. Here are some things to consider regarding this:

If a user doesn’t need to click on a web page to get information, that will edge search traffic.
SEO’s will need to find ways to have their information delivered when a spoken voice search is Marketers will have tracking issues when trying to find out how many times a website/brand has been mentioned as a conversational search result.

    Some queries will still demand that results are delivered via a web page; the more information needed the better chance.

    Actionable queries will still require a webpage only if the search engine does not have the ability to carry out that request.

    Follow up questions will become common in voice search, as only a partial amount of information can be delivered in each response.

Longer and Longer Queries can be predictable

Google may need to change the way they do search to match longer queries. Here is a quote from Matt Cutts on the subject.

“At some point we probably need to change our mental view point a little bit because normally if you add words to your query you are doing an ‘and’ between each of those words. And so, as you do more and more words you get fewer and fewer results because fewer and fewer documents match those words. What you would probably want as you do spoken word queries is the more that you talk the more results you get because we know more about it. So you definitely have to change your viewpoint from it’s an ‘and’ between every word to trying to extract the gist to summarize what they are looking for and then matching that overall idea.”

As we can see, Google will need to find the significant parts in longer search queries.  People don’t want to think about keywords, they want to talk and use their thought process to return a result that really matches what they are belief. Right now, Google doesn’t work like that. With the raise in stop words being used and just longer queries in general, things are truly changing.

Conclusion

Voice search is a huge change for SEO, but it is not negative, it’s just different. Voice queries are easier for users and often deliver information more rapidly. The leading SEO companies will always find ways to get their clients planned in the search results, no matter how they are delivered. It’s an eager time in SEO and it will be fun to see how things open out. As we move forward, modernism will be critical. Now that we have identified the opportunity, it is time to make a path to take advantage of it

5 Google Analytics features for Business Owners

It is wiser for small and midsize businesses to have a website and use digital marketing as a mean of gaining visibility in the eye of targeted audience. Usually business owners are busy running their business and cannot get into the details of marketing. Thus, they know very less about how traffic is reacting on their website, what is going good and what is needed to be changed in order to increase the overall revenue.

Business owners frequently hire companies or consultants that offer digital marketing services and work with them so that they can get better visibility against the targeted key phrases in Google and other search engines. Aside from the progress report provided by marketing team, I believe business owners should be well-known with the analytics of how their website is performing in search engines and what he should do in order to amplify business visibility and to get noticed by the targeted audience.

 Google Analytics is the strongest tool that offers tons and tons of data for business owners to look in to the details and take business decisions accordingly. Google Analytics contains every small detail of a website, how REAL people are reacting to the website and this overloaded information sometimes confuses business owners.

So today I decided to talk about few of the simple yet significant features in Google Analytics that can give business owners a strong indication of how audience is reacting to their business, what needs to be changed.

Business Conversions

Conversion tab is one of the most significant areas for business owners as this will tell business owners about how many people are reaching to the contact form and exact number of leads and conversions.

This tab also indicates the amount of sales that you have generated in the current month and comparing option can tell you the variation of sales rate from the previous dates.

The reason why this option is so important for business owners is because a continuous increase in sales is something what they are really looking for at the end of the day. This is also significant because usually business owners make future business strategy keeping their current sales ratio in mind.

This is the 2nd most important option for business owners as it gives them a strong indication of where to invest in the next phase. Traffic sources in Google Analytics let business owners to see what channels are most powerful and allowing most targeted traffic to land on their website.

This feature also tells them about correct proportions of traffic coming through varied sources such as search engines, referral websites or directly so that one can have complete stats in hand to make decisions about further dividing their marketing budget for different online marketing channels.

Similar to Traffic sources, traffic location in Google Analytics is quite necessary for a business person to plan his business and marketing strategies for the upcoming months.

Traffic Location at one end tells about where the traffic is coming from and which area is bringing in some solid leads and sales. On the other end it indicates potential locations that you can invest in future.

For instance, if you are getting good amount of traffic from United Kingdom however, you might be getting less visitors from United States but more sales and leads. Then it indicates business that United States is the sweet post for their business and investing in US locations will increase their traffic as well as would have a positive effect on leads and sales as compared to UK which tend to have more traffic but less leads.

This is one of their features that most businesses either miss or do not believe as important and in any case they are avoiding one of the significant features that can help them take smart business decisions.

The idea is to see what technology that traffic is driving through your website, which can be various browsers like firefox, chrome, safari or mobile devices like iphone, android and others.

Check your website in every browser as well as dissimilar devices and see if it is well-matched to all the devices and browsers in case it is not make sure website is friendly to all.

If most of your power visitors are coming from mobile devices like iPhone or Android, it is smart to think about creating a mobile app that will help business to boost its revenue.

This feature is usually handled by webmasters but business owners should keep a keen look on it as this feature contains some essential business information that they can find within.

The idea is to list down the pages from where most people are leaving the website and then see if there is any service page (or any other important page) that is listing in the top most exit pages. In case of yes, business owner can make a decision if they need to invest in revamping pages or find an alternative of it.

In the era where Internet and online platforms has become necessary for businesses, business owners should need to look in to these above given matrices and data in order to get better insight of their investment and take smart business decisions instead of only relying on assumptions.

Facebook Launches Verified Accounts for Brands, Businesses, Public Figures

Facebook is getting into the verification business, borrowing a feature that Twitter first introduced approximately four years ago.

Facebook’s verification badges for pages and profiles will also mimic Twitter by leaving much of the process unknown and internal.

It’s unclear why Facebook is making the move to confirm brands and well-known figures with large audiences on the site but it plans to start the proactive process over the coming days. The company will “automatically verify the largest pages on Facebook that are at the greatest risk of duplication,” said a Facebook spokeswoman.

“Verified pages fit in to a small group of prominent public figures (celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses) with large audiences,” the site notes in a blog post announcing the news.

“I think that it’s a concern for a lot of the luxury brands,” said Raina Penchansky, chief strategy officer for Digital Brand Architects. “Social and digital is a difficult space for luxury brands,” because luxury brands prefer to preserve an aura of exclusivity by limiting their exposure and access to larger untargeted audiences, she added.

While verified pages and profiles will add some semblance of authenticity, brands aren’t precisely begging for the feature or avoiding Facebook because they don’t have a small blue badge and check mark next to their names throughout the site.

"I've never seen any pushback from a product,” Penchansky said. “It doesn't feel like something that's been a huge barrier for entry for our brands."

Still, she said, some brands might be a little uneasy about the random verification process, particularly since Facebook hasn’t outlined the requirements for verification or the ability to request a profile or page be verified.

The blue check mark identifying verified pages and profiles will 98come out in timelines, stories, search results, news feed ads and while users hover over the name of a page elsewhere on the site. Brands that don’t automatically receive verification over the coming weeks are being referred to Facebook’s help center where common duplication issues can be resolved.