Search Engine Optimization Blog - SEO Blog

There has recently been a lot talk about the importance of blogging for SEO purposes. Many experts agree that a blog is a dynamic and interactive tool which allows you to effectively address vital issues and share relevant and useful information with readers both inside and outside the industry. But as blogging increases in popularity, more websites are facing the alarming problem of content theft.
My first encounter with this issue happened a while ego when I posted my first blog on Data Feed Optimization. In a matter of a hours the word-by-word copy appeared on multiple sites. A few days later the original blog was completely knocked out of search results. What happened to me is not uncommon. Scrapers also known as content scrapers or feed scrapers are computer programs that go out onto the web and copy the content from other sites with unique content.
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Popularity: 24% [?]

There’s only one chance at making a good first impression.  That’s why your home page is, by far, the most important page on your entire website.  Optimizing your home page is not just about SEO, but it is also about optimizing your most critical landing pages for conversions.

Most people don’t realize that the ultimate common purpose of a website’s home page is to gain interest and establish credibility.  It is NOT to try to sell everything under the sun on the first page they get to.  It is NOT to present every single possible important fact across a lengthy home page.

If the first encounter with a website doesn’t have a clear message and create positive feelings of a match to what they are looking for, the visitor will be lost forever.  Producing a favorable impression and evoking strong visitor trust within the first few seconds leads to more clickthroughs, which leads to more sales, which leads to better SEO ranking.
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Popularity: 32% [?]

A high quality score  in Adwords means you will be able to run your pay-per-click campaign cheaper and more effectively than your competitors.
Most people don’t know that Google Adwords will give preference to cheaper ads provided they demonstrate high relevance, excellent clickthrough rate and better overall performance.

8 steps in improving your Adwords Quality Score

1. Use Traffic Estimator for keyword analysis.Traffic Estimator is a great tool which helps to predict keyword performance in terms of CPC bid and positioning. It enables you to filter your initial choices and eliminate keywords which are either too expensive or don’t generate enough clicks. Make sure you are not logged into your Google account when using Traffic Estimator because it may skew the results.
2. Try Opportunities to Improve Option. Though generally skeptical of computer-generated tools offered by Adwords, I was pleasantly surprised with Opportunities to Improve button.It instantly increased the QS for some of the ads. Similar results are not guaranteed but since this tool is free, you have little to lose.
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Popularity: 43% [?]

As the price of online advertising increases every single day, it is vital to discover more efficient ways to advertise. Comparison shopping engines such as Shopzilla, Froogle and Shopping.com offer the ability to reach untapped markets without high upfront costs associated with other forms of advertising. The payment structure is similar to Google Adwords but since competition is not as fierce, you will spend significantly less money per click.

Current statistics provide even more arguments in favor of submitting data feeds to comparison shopping engines. One in three Internet users visits a comparison shopping site in a typical month. Comparison shoppers make up for a very distinct customer profile. They are savvier, more product-oriented and spend an average of 24% more than the average shopper. Forrester Reference. These numbers are impossible to ignore.
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Popularity: 37% [?]

For a while now, Google has been taking bounce rates into consideration for rankings, but there really hasn’t been a lot of discussion on what that means to the average site.  Bounces have a large impact on sites which have low traffic, which for many newer sites is all of them.  One of the things we have noticed is that a site can be a fantastic site, but if it ranks for non-relevant keywords, then those hits will be bouncing at a much higher rate.  So, if you have a low-traffic site, and are ranking for terms which you can see in your Analytics is creating a 100% bounce rate, it’s probably a good idea to actually remove it from your meta-tags or content so that your overall bounce rate is higher.

Another thing to watch for are IP’s that are continuously creating bounces.  Very often, the site owner can be the source of many of the bounces simply because they are checking their ranking or are showing a client their home page, or simply because they have it set for their home page.  In order to stop this, you need to go to the Google Analytics and add the ip of the office to the filter manager.  This way, your internal traffic won’t skew the numbers.

This also applies for Google Maps.  If you see your website on a serp, you always want to click on it and go through a few pages if you are on an ip which is not in the filter manager.  Good luck!

Popularity: 59% [?]

For many website owners, there is a logical process which most companies follow.

1) Build a website
2) Do a pay per click campaign
3) If it goes well pay more into pay per click, experiment with SEO
4) If it doesn’t go well, stop investing in the website.

However, after a website is built, the FIRST step should be determining what your conversion rate is. That means setting up a Google analytics account, getting the goal conversions setup, and MEASURING results from traffic generated from a PPC campaign. What most companies don’t realize is that the number one factor which determines success in a campaign is whether or not the website has the ability to convert. Without that, the money spent on generating traffic is very often wasted. If your site can convert 3-5% of targeted traffic, then there is a good chance you’ll make money from an SEO or Pay per click campaign. If not, then it is wiser to invest the money into improving the fundamentals of the website so that visitors find what they are looking for.

Popularity: 86% [?]