SEO can be an intimidating topic if you don’t know how to write website code. Many of the elements you need to influence lie within the body of the website content like clean code, heading tags, image alt tags, anchor links, file names and meta titles. But the essence of good SEO is about keeping several balls in the air simultaneously and there are things you can do to improve your SEO without knowing anything about how to build a website.

1. Create a Keyword List

Many people want to rank on Google but don’t take the time to really plan out which keywords they want to rank for. If you are new to SEO, choose 5 to 10 keyword phrases you would like to target. Don’t make them too similar. If you are on page 1 for “Canadian venture capital” then you won’t be far behind for “venture capital Canada”. Better to target 5 to 10 very different keywords phrases within your field.

DO – be realistic. You will have better luck ranking for local or specific searches than general ones. Consider “Toronto investment fund” versus “investing”.
DO – prioritize. If you are not ranking for any of your keywords, choose 2 or 3 to really work on. Once you are on the map, you can begin work on the next 2 or 3. Many SEO experts will be actively driving 50 to 100 keyword phrases simultaneously for a client!

2. Have a Blog

Many SEO challenges are won and lost within the blogosphere. More than anything else, Google loves lots of unique content that is updated regularly (ideally daily). A blog is the most efficient way to create new content for your site. Blogs allow you to continually grow the size of your website which is great because Google respects large sites. But be careful. Google rewards hard work, not shortcuts. Don’t fill your blog with duplicate content from another source or with quick articles that aren’t interesting to anyone. Remember that Google sees all – the moment you don’t respect it, it destroys you.

DO – include your blog as part of your main website, not linked to an offsite blog.
DO – use valuable keyword phrases wherever possible within your posts and post titles. But not at the expense of readability. Note that I did not title this article “Toronto SEO Company Offers 5 Tip to Improve SEO” or fill the article with random mentions of the city I live in. Try choosing 1 of your keyword phrases and writing a blog post exclusively about that topic (in this case, SEO!).

3. Use Social Media

Google tracks the relationship between websites and inventories the content and keywords of each site as it goes. It cares about the size and importance of sites that link to each other. For example, if you make a Facebook status update about investment funds and then link to your website about investment funds then Google sees that relationship from a high ranking site (Facebook) which improves the ranking of the site it’s linking to on the keywords  “investment funds”.

Each time you link to your website using relevant keyword text, Google counts that as one backlink. If you tweet 10 times a day, that’s 10 backlinks. The difference between social media backlinks and other website backlinks is that Google sees them as timely. This works in your favour if you want to rank quickly (see SEO Moz’s experiment where Twitter links outranked traditional backlinks) but they don’t last like other backlinks. The answer is to pursue both!

DO – use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to link to your website and blog.
DO – rotate through all of your keywords, giving equal weight to each in your social media updates and links.

4. Use Online Directories

Submit yourself to online business directories. The point of this is to gain a link from their site to yours so if they don’t offer a live website link, skip it. Try to focus on the free ones but also pay for directory listings if they are relevant to your industry. Use Google to find out what directories rank well for your keywords and submit to them.

DO – use as many relevant keywords in and around your directory link as possible. If they let you write a description of your business at all, pack it with keywords.
DO – watch your analytics to see how many click throughs you are getting from the paid directories. If the cost is high and the SEO rank is low, it may not be worth it.

5. Google Place Page

Google Place pages are a great way to secure a place on page 1. A Google Place page shows details about your business including location, photos, reviews and description. These results are shown when location based search terms are used such as “Toronto hair salons”.

If you have a physical location for your business, a Google place page is a no brainer. To be ranked well for your place page, be sure to “claim” the page as the business owner and fill it up with descriptions, photos and anything else that sells your business.

DO – get lots and lots of reviews. The pages with the most positive reviews rank the highest. Google Places will pull reviews from other sites like Yelp and OurFaves but users can also enter reviews right into Google. Get your favourite clients to write reviews to get your Place page ranking.
DO – learn how to add your business to Google Places

6. “Momentum” Press Releases

A momentum press release is a release created around keyword topics and submitted to an online press release company who then distributes it on your behalf for a fee. Press releases could be about an new product or service, a unique approach to what you do, a new location and anything else that is remotely like news.

The purpose of these press releases is not get press coverage from publications, but to get “picked up” by hundreds of online news sites that post press releases on a particular subject. This gets you hundreds of backlinks on specific keywords of your choosing over night.

Google likes activity. Within the online world, if you are updating, adding, moving, growing; these are all good in Googleland and online press releases are a great way to indicate just that.

DO – make the investment to use good online press release services like PRWeb.com or Marketwire.com
DO – focus on just one longtail keyword phrase. Trying to stuff too many topics in one release will muddy your results.

7. Blog and Forum Comments

An easy backlinks building strategy includes commenting on relevant blogs and forums. Within your comments, include a link back to your homepage or landing page to build page rank for that page.

Commenting on other relevant blogs drives traffic to your site and potentially adds valuable backlinks to your bank. I say potentially because many blogs have a “no follow” tag on their user links to avoid SEO spamming.

Commenting in forums are another great way to build backlinks. Forums archive their content forever and rarely have no follow tags on their outbound links. Ask questions, answer other user questions, add your 2 cents worth. Include your website link in your signature.

DO – include relevant keywords in your name on blog comments. For example, I wouldn’t list myself as “Angie Caunce”, I would list myself as “Angie, Toronto SEO Expert”. That name link then becomes a link to my SEO page.
DO – contribute to the value of the forum or blog. Do not say, “hey, check out my site.” That’s just annoying. Offer your expert opinion and share your knowledge. With that comes trust and followers.

It Doesn’t Take a Techie to Win a Tech War

You can significantly effect your SEO results simply by having a plan and consistently executing it. You don’t need a degree from MIT to do it, you just need the desire and commit the time to following the suggestions I’ve offered here.

Let me know how it goes! Which method are you most likely to try?

Yellowpages.ca has rolled up its sleeves and put some hard work into improving its online offering, but God bless them, they didn’t hire us and it still sucks. What you really want to know is will a listing in yellowpages.ca improve your search engine optimization?

The answer is: marginally and at a high cost.

Since I hammered Yellow Pages in the spring on their sales techniques versus performance (see Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow: Why You Can Pass on Yellowpages.ca), we’ve been getting more and more traffic from hapless souls wondering if their advertising dollars are being put to good use.

For those businesses, I wanted to focus this article on what exactly an online listing in Yellow Pages gets you from a SEO perspective.

How Directory Listings Increase Your SEO

Directory listings give you valuable backlinks. And the higher ranking the site, the better the quality of the backlink.

To determine ranking, first Google evaluates the directory site itself. Google determines the site’s page rank by considering the number of indexed pages, its popularity, traffic, keyword density, and its own backlinks velocity (the number of web properties linking to it). If the directory site ranks well on a chosen subject then websites that link out from it will get a boost in ranking on that subject.

The strength of the boost is determined by the quality of the link itself. For example, if a high ranking site provides a link to you that is full of relevant keywords (either in the link itself or in the surrounding text), the impact is higher than if the link has generic, non relevant text in it. The more content on the directory site that relates to your business, the better.

How Does Yellow Pages Rank?

Yellowpages.ca has a PR 7 which is nothing to sneeze at. The site has 2,600 Google approved backlinks and a breath-taking 3.1 MILLION indexed pages. In layman’s terms, yellowpages.ca kicks online ass.

And yet, they fail to rank in Google for the industries the serve. This begs the question, how badly do they have to not know what they’re doing to manage that? They should rank in their sleep. Their lunch order should appear on page one.

But, alas. It doesn’t.

A Real Business Example: Cosmetic Dentistry

To get us out of the abstract, let’s choose the highly competitive field of cosmetic dentistry to shed some light on the digital performance of yellowpages.ca

I go to yellowpages.ca and enter “cosmetic dentistry” and “Toronto, ON” as my region.

I’m choosing Denistry On Wynford as my example because it is a full listing with all the Yellow Pages bells and whistles including website, ad, video, and photos. Dentistry on Wynford clearly cares about their marketing and have used all the opportunities offered to them through yellowpages.ca

The first thing to note is that there is very little content on this page. This is the primary reason why Yellow Pages doesn’t rank for anything. They can’t because they are not about anything. Google loves content. The more words talking about a subject you have, the better Google will rank you for that subject.

But on this listing, any real information about the business (and therefore, on the subject) is buried beneath the fold and is very tiny and stilted. Instead of giving businesses 2 paragraphs or so to describe themselves and what they offer, they are forced to conform to one word answers in cookie cutter categories dictated by Yellow Pages like “Business Hours” and “Brands Offered”. These categories are the same if you are in furnace repair or stereo systems.

Next, if you were to look at the source code, you’d see that it is a javascript jungle in there with no heading tags whatsoever. Google looks for linking text and H1-H6 tags (headings) to get a sense of what the page is really about. Yellow Pages uses custom CSS class names like “business name” instead of standard heading tags, hurting their SEO.

Making the default main content a video (or worse a graphic image of a print ad) with no supporting text is a mistake. While Google likes the interactive qualities of video, if there is not enough supporting text and the video itself is not optimized, its impact on ranking is nominal.

Google’s new Caffeine algorithms really likes user interaction. Yellow Pages has implemented a review system but the system has no reviews. They have Facebook integration but have no “Likes” on their pages. They can tell me how many millions of users they have every month until they turn blue, but a site with no signs of life tells me there is no engagement. And why is there no engagement? Because there is no content. In other words, what’s to like? A list of brand names?

Of the items in the listing tabs, they are all things that are considered supporting content to Google, not primary content. The only content Google can read from an image is the alt tag and the name of the image file. That means, from and SEO perspective, the ad, photos and website preview are all useless. The only relevant content is the business details which are stark at best.

Does a Listing In Yellow Pages Help My Ranking At All?

What you need to know is the most valuable thing yellowpages.ca has to offer you is a live link to your website. Despite their SEO ineptitude, they have achieved a PR 7 and a link from a PR 7 site is a big deal. Even an indirect link (which is what they offer) will raise you up in Google’s esteem. Because this is the only real SEO benefit they offer, I find it particularly disappointing that the linking text says “Website” rather than keyword anchor text like “Toronto Cosmetic Dentist” or even the name of the business.

Our business example Dentistry on Wynford is on page 2 of our “Toronto Cosmetic Dentist” Google search. This is just as likely because of the total online marketing efforts the business has made as on their investment in Yellow Pages. Of the Toronto cosmetic dentists who invested in a premium listing on yellowpages.ca, less than half of them appear on the first 5 pages of Google.

The Cost of Backlinks

When I say Yellow Pages doesn’t rank, I mean at all. It is vital to note that within our example of “Toronto Cosmetic Dentistry” not a single Yellow Pages listing showed up in the first 50 pages of Google results. There are between 10-12 results per page which means Yellow Pages didn’t show up within the first 500 search results.

It also important to note that over 30 online business directories did show up in the first 20 pages of Google. So what you should perhaps ask yourself is how much is a PR7 backlink worth to you? An online listing in Yellow Pages can cost you anywhere between $200 and $1,00 a month depending on how many areas you want to cover. For $2,500 a year, you could likely get listed on all 30 of the ranking directories (good for any search performed with “Toronto” in the keywords) and you would gain 30 backlinks for the price of 1. Many directories are free because they make their money from Google content advertising, not from the businesses they list. And there are many opportunities for backlinks from PR7 and higher websites that are free if you know where to look and what to do.
So, the answer is yes, Yellow Pages does improve your Google page rank. But at what cost?

Click here for more information on our SEO services and how we help build rank within your budget.

If you want to learn more about how to supercharge your web presence, join our Meetup.com group, Toronto Intro To Online Marketing. Our intention with this group is to educate businesses and marketers so they can make intelligent decisions about their online marketing. See you there!

Do you write your website content to rank on page 1 of Google or do you write it to drive sales from your visitors? Don’t worry. I’m here to tell you that you can have your cake, and get your fork, because you can eat it too.

It is absolutely possible to write website content that ranks well in search engines and sells like a dream. The key is planning and achieving a perfect balance between the two objectives.

Let’s start with how to write for search engines.

If you’ve done any research into SEO, you’ve learned that in order to rank high in Google, you need good content. But what does that mean? It means volume, quality and lots of juicy keywords.

Start at the Beginning: Listing Your Keywords

Before you do anything else, create your list of keywords. A “keyword” is a word or term that customers are likely to use in a search when looking for your business. Don’t go crazy. Choose your “Big 5”, the top five terms you’d love to rank for.

For example, I want Amalgam Design’s Search Engine Optimization landing page to rank when business owners are looking to optimize their company websites. The keywords I want to rank for might be: Search Engine Optimization Toronto, SEO company, SEO firm, Search Engine Optimization agency Canada, and Google ranking.

Don’t forget to include location keywords (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, etc.) because customers search on location. If I’m looking for a plumber, if I don’t put “Toronto” in my search terms, the #1 result could be from Texas. Google has recently updated its search to always provide location based results (it knows where you live), but users still put cities and countries in their search terms so you should include them in your content.

When I’m writing content for a website, I put my keywords in a list and keep them at the top of my draft as I’m writing. This reminds me of what terms to lace into the copy. I write as naturally as possible, writing what I want to say about the product or service and I periodically reread my keyword terms. Where possible, I’ll use a full keyword phrase in the copy, and if I can’t do that, I’ll add an extra word into the content to achieve better ranking.

For example, if I’ve written the sentence, “Amalgam Design offers SEO as part of our web design services,” I might edit it to say, “Amalgam Design offers search engine optimization for Google as part of our SEO web design services.” In this case, it didn’t break the flow of the sentence too much and I was able to insert 2 more keywords into my copy.

Try to keep keyword terms together whenever possible but consider splitting them into single words where you can because Google looks at your entire page of content. That is, if I can’t fit “Toronto SEO company” naturally into my copy, it’s okay to just say “Toronto” as long as “SEO” and “company” are also somewhere else on the page.

Don’t forget that questions can be keywords. Many users treat Google like an oracle and may enter “How do I make my website rank in Google?” as their search terms. Consider making questions part of your content but remember that questions don’t communicate the solution which is what you are trying to sell, so use them sparingly.

Where to Use Your Keywords

Google puts more emphasis on headings and links than on body text. Consider working your keywords into your headings and menu links where you can as well as your meta titles. I don’t just say “Services” when I can say “SEO Services”.

Don’t bother filling your keywords meta tags with your favourites because all major search engines ignore this meta tag as a result of abuse. Similarly, search engines don’t care what you put in your meta description but users sure do (this is the blurb that shows up in your Google listing) so make it as sales driven as possible! The only meta tag that Google cares about is the meta title (the title that shows up at the top of your browser window).

Don’t Stuff It, Sell It

Yes, you are writing your content with search engines in mind, but you must always write your content for users, not for bots. Why? Because you could drive an army of users to your site through SEO but you’ve accomplished nothing if they don’t buy anything.

This is why you should never use keyword stuffing to rank. Keyword stuffing is a popular SEO tactic where you use as many of your keywords as many times as possible in a paragraph. This copy is clearly not written for users and can be confusing to potential customers.

Using our Toronto SEO company example, here’s what bad keyword stuffed content reads like: Toronto SEO company, Amalgam Design is an affordable Toronto SEO (search engine optimization) company that will get your website ranking in Google and other major search engines. A Toronto SEO company since 1999, Amalgam Design makes your website search engine optimized.

This kind of keyword spamming (or stuffing) works sometimes to achieve rank but certainly doesn’t sell anything to anybody and leaves your visitors wondering why you’re talking to them like they are an idiot.

Writing To Sell

Identifying your unique selling point is Marketing 101. So when you are writing sales copy for a website, you must keep that in the forefront.

With our Amalgam Design SEO company example, our unique selling point is that we are marketers, and can write killer sales copy and create beautiful designs that achieve awesome ranking in Google. So that has to drive my message.

Here is a rewrite of the previous example, this time using sales driven good keyword content: Amalgam Design is a Toronto based company that loves ethical SEO. We create stunning search engine optimized designs and use proven sales driven content to get you ranking in Google and other major search engines.

While, technically, the first example uses the keywords more often, Google finds keyword stuffing fishy and my primary goal is to convince potential customers that they should hire us.

Know Where To Draw the Line

Customers always win. If it becomes clear that I have to choose between writing for a customer and writing for Google, I’ll always err on the side of sales. I’ll choose a pithy heading over a keyword laden one any day. Why? Because clients like it. There are many marketing channels driving users to our website. While search may be the biggest, it hurts our overall revenue if in the end we’re nothing more than Google groupies.

Search engines update themselves all the time, changing what they look for in a good site. If you create your site for users, you’ll never be left holding a bag of useless, outdated tricks.

I got no love for Yellow Pages. Anyone who knows me knows not to get me started. The Yellow Pages print book serves its purpose, on some level or another, or at least my dad likes it. I must admit, even I crack it open once every year or two but that’s only because so many of my local businesses haven’t clued into how awesome Google Maps is and have yet to list themselves on it.

The noise in the other room

The noise in the other room is the sound of print dying. Don’t mind him. He’s been dying for years. We all saw it coming but he wouldn’t listen. He kept insisting he was still relevant while we warned him to devise a back up plan. And now he’s in his final death rattle and when he comes a-callin’ asking for my advertising money, I always ask him the same question, “What have you got for me online?”

Too many print organizations are trying to transfer their print business models to the web and are dismayed when they don’t succeed. Yellowpages.ca is guilty of this in 3 major ways.

1. One year contract? Exsqueeze me? It’s not permanently “out there” the way the print book is. If your online service is any good, prove it by letting me try it for 3-6 months before I commit.
2. Showing my print ad as my online listing. Online is not print. A print ad scanned and put on a web page is illegible and uncrawlable to search engines.
3. Charging me by location. They over complicate their model and their rates are anything but competitive when I need to pay separately for each neighbourhood I want to be listed in.

My bone to pick

Most of our clients find the Internet a little bit overwhelming and all its opportunities more than a little confusing. As a result, I feel that the people who work in the industry have an obligation to be as clear and up front about their offering as possible. My contention with YellowPages.ca is that they obfuscate the facts, taking advantage of the lay person. I realize that’s a bold thing to say, but as I mentioned, I got no love.

Of all the things on the Internet, nothing seems to confuse people more than SEO (search engine optimization). It’s a magic word. If you use it, you can convince people of anything because they know they want it but aren’t entirely sure how to get it. So when Yellowpages.ca claims to be partners with Google and says that paying for a listing with their online directory increases your SEO, it seems like a win-win.

Organizations claiming to be “partners” with Google make my head blow up

When the sales package I was faxed (yes, FAXED) from Yellowpages.ca had a Google logo in it and claimed they were partners, I asked the sales representative to clarify.

He stuttered a little and when I followed up by asking if I would see the Yellow Pages logo on a Google.ca page he flat out didn’t know what to say. That’s because web stuff can be confusing. And he didn’t know his own product because the people in charge had made it more confusing than it needed to be.

The vague wording in the sales package implied that Yellow Pages had a special relationship with Google which enabled your Yellow Pages ad to be advertised in Google’s sponsored listings for a small additional fee. On top of that, your Yellow Pages ad would rank organically better in Google.

Sigh.

How Yellow Pages uses Google’s sponsored listings

Here’s a quote from Google’s Philosophy page on the Google website: Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank.

The truth is, if you pay them extra, Yellow Pages will run a sponsored listings campaign in Google on your behalf driving traffic to your Yellow Pages ad.

The Pros: If you don’t have the first clue how to run a sponsored listings campaign and can’t afford someone who can, this is a great way to get presence in Google’s Adwords for a reasonable amount of money.

The Cons: Yellow Pages is using your money to advertise themselves. Notice how they aren’t driving traffic to your website, but to their ad? What’s more, if you haven’t paid for a live link to your website, your advertising money is flapping in the wind. And the part that really cheeses me, if Google users are interested in your ad and click on the sponsored listing, you still pay for the click but it’s Yellow Pages’ page ranking which increases.

How your Yellow Pages listing impacts your page ranking

Does listing in Yellowpages.ca improve your SEO? Yes. But so does listing in Canpages.ca and Toronto.com and any other high ranking business directory. Google collects information about your website from everywhere. The more times it sees your business listed the more credibility you have. Especially if your listing is surrounded by lots of juicy keywords. In other words, directories where you get to submit a description of your business and your website link are ideal.

The Pros: Yellowpages.ca has a good page rank so being listed with them is one more notch in your SEO belt.

The Cons: The link to your website is indirect so it doesn’t count as one of your high ranking backlinks (which is kind of the point). Yellowpages.ca shows the image of your ad online (if you bought one) which is useless to search engines. All those relevant keywords are no where to be found and the only thing Google learns from Yellowpages.ca about your business is your address. This would explain why the SEO for yellowpages.ca itself sucks. Type any business category into Google (example “accountant Toronto”) and see if yellowpages.ca shows up on the first page. It doesn’t because the Yellow Pages site contains no relevant content.

My advice on choosing a directory

Most industries have online directories specific to them that rank well in organic searches. Try anything once. Track your results. Review your analytics (your web traffic sources) and make sure to always ask how customers heard about you. Pay close attention to your traffic on the day a print ad runs and assume any increase is from that.

For every marketing channel, take the number of click throughs and divide it by the money you spent on the channel. If a product is good, it delivers good results: solid traffic for a reasonable cost. What’s a reasonable cost? We like anything around $2 per click but it differs from business to business. If the click is highly targeted and likely to convert (result in a sale), you can pay significantly more. If you are in the double digits (or, God help you, triple digits) for a channel, you can certainly do better.

Take some time to investigate landing pages and you’ll see that close to 100% of results will be talking about using stand alone web pages to drive conversions coming from email or sponsored listings. The purpose of these landing pages is to “Buy Today!” and “Sign Up Now!” –  to convert every visitor into a buyer. Often these pages don’t even link to the main website. Its entire reason to exist is to sell.

I want to talk about the other kind of landing page – the kind that is built for search engines. The purpose of these pages is to earn a high organic ranking for a specific product or service. This gets you click throughs from organic search engine results that lead directly to your website.

Because Landing Page Topics are Targeted, They Rank Well

Imagine you run a hair salon and under your “Services” page you list all the cuts and styles you specialize in. This serves you fine for customers looking for “Hair Salon Services” as their search terms. But what about people searching on “up do” for their upcoming formal event? If you have a page dedicated to everything you’d ever want to know about up do’s, you have a shot at pulling in those customers.

This is what the experts mean when they say Google loves great content. Position yourself as an expert, not through empty claims, but by informing the world about your knowledge area.

You Can’t Cheat The Keywords

You can throw as many keywords as you want into a random paragraph in the footer of your website but Google sees you. Google looks at the context around your keywords and when it sees a full page dedicated to useful original content on one keyword topic it says, “Hot damn! That’s what I’m talking about!” A well written landing page will always outrank a keyword storm.

Don’t Forget About Making the Sell

Just because the purpose of our landing pages is to inform (and therefore rank) doesn’t mean they doesn’t have to sell as well. Your landing pages need to include call outs about buying the product or service from you. Putting these in the sidebar is ideal. The up do page for our hair salon could have call outs like, “Up Do’s in Only 1 Hour”, “Call Us Today”, “Walk Ins Welcome”, or “Call For a Free Consultation”.

Other Uses: Landing Pages for PR and Social Media Campaigns

Try writing a landing page on a high profile project or client and create online buzz by driving traffic to it from your PR and social media campaigns. Not only can the page rank for your keywords, but it gives you more content to Tweet and Facebook about!

You, The Expert

Remember, it’s not so much about ranking on page 1 of Google or converting every visit into a sale. It’s all part of the bigger marketing build. You want to show every visitor that YOU are the industry expert, the go-to guy, the one to watch. Landing pages show the world why you are an industry God and why everyone else is just a hack.