Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization (SEO)’ Category

SEO Top Tips for Las Vegas

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

5 Tips to Good SEO: SEO Top Tips for Las Vegas

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has quickly climbs the ranks as one of the most important processes in getting a site noticed. Articles and web content often focus on the importance of SEO with keywords while SEO specialists find their niche in many other aspects of this growing business. SEO aims at the heart of publicity and it’s a known fact that the better your skills at SEO, the more likely you are to climb the search engine charts. Let’s take a look at what makes up a good SEO ethics.

Inbound Links

Often referred to as “back-linking,” inbound links create a direct route to your site from other well known sites. Inbound links are essentially piggy backing off another site’s traffic. These links can be contained in signatures, blurbs, or any other means as long as they link to your site. Creating back links is a time consuming job, but it’s well worth the effort. The most efficient way to develop SEO through back links is to make sure and put your links on pages that have content much like your own.

Lots of Content

Having lots of keyword rich content is one thing, but there is a trick to it you should understand. As Google searches pages for new content, it refreshes the crawl over your site. Having lots of content and creating new content on a regular basis are two different things and Google will recognize that. However, if your page is extremely light on content, like 100 words or less, then you definitely should bulk up a bit. Also, creating new subject content, meaning subjects not previously covered on your site, will help too. This is a big debate and many SEO researchers will tell you it isn’t necessary; however, it’s all in the way that your content is done and not how much of it you have.

Minimum Code Clutter

Search engines sort through your site’s HTML in order to read content. Leaving open or broken codes in your site’s content can prove to be a deal breaker for a search engine. Always use simple HTML and never over use things like flash players and images as search engines can only read text.

Deep Linking

Creating a deep link for your site is much like back linking, however instead of simply pointing to a domain, like a .com, it will point to a specific place of your site. The essential idea here is to direct visitors further into your site so that your information is further accessed.

Maintenance

Site maintenance is the simplest and quickest thing some one can do. That’s not saying is the fastest rise in page rank, however there are some positive things to say about it. Everything in our lives need maintenance: cars, homes, even our bodies. Why should your website be any different? Maintaining your website will allow the search bots to crawl through your site on a regular basis and ensure new and fresh content, which links back to the second point above.

While different trial and error sessions work well with SEO, the last point, maintenance, is worth mentioning again. Simply because you put a few back links out, doesn’t mean you will survive. If you don’t take the time to maintain all your SEO set ups then any progress you have made will surely fail. It is one thing to be the first site on a search engine for a day, but it’s another to be the top site on a search engine for a year or more. Without proper SEO and without following up on the path you’ve begun to create for your site, it will fall off the face of search engines everywhere without a peep.

Evaluating Your Website’s Performance

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Evaluating Your Website’s Performance

Setting up a website for your Las Vegas business is the very first step of marketing your website on the internet. The success of your website depends on the goals you set and accomplish. 

If you expect your site to move your visitors to take some form of action while on your website, whether it is visitors filling out a simple online form so that you can contact them, or purchasing a product online, there are specific steps you can take to insure that your web site is functioning efficienctly. One of the very first ways to tell is to check on your website’s traffice. It’s a great tool to judge normal traffic vs. traffic at times when you are running promotional marketing and activities.

Having a large amount of traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that your site is successful at getting your business leads and sales. You want visitors to take action while on your website; call you, submit a form for a quote, make a purchase, etc. This is known as your website’s conversion rate and is essential in judging your website.

How to calculate your website’s conversion rate

To find your web site’s conversion rate, you take the number of visitors per month and guestimate the percentage of your visitors that actually purchased something. So, if you had 1000 hits to your site in one week, but only 10 of them purchased from you, your site conversion rate equals 1.00%. 

If your website’s goal is to get your visitors to fill out a form, make sure to figure out the difference between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. Not everyone who fills out your online form will actually become a client. However, whether your site is setup to sell a product or service, or to get them to fill a form out, your website conversion rate measures the success and/or failure of your site whenever you promote or update your website.

Over time, you just may find that you need to implement a few additional marketing strategies if your website traffic and conversion rates are low. Some ideas that might help are implementing a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy so that you can rank on search engines for organic searches. More visitors will be able to find your website more easily. Once your SEO strategy is in place, you should monitor your rankings and make any needed adjustments regularly to keep or grow your SEO rankings.

You should also review the usability and ease of your “call-to-action” on your website. How simple is it for a visitor to take action and what motivates them to take action? If you want them to fill out an inquiry form, for example, how easy is the form to find? How is it called out on your home page. How simple is the form to fill out? If the form is too long, it may discourage your website’s visitors to fill it out.

Lastly, write the copy on your website (especially the home page) carefully and with a keen marketing sense in mind. Remember the goals of your website and gear the copy to encourage visitors to take action. The right copy writing can be the difference between profit and loss for your website.

Must Have’s to Market Your Las Vegas Website

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

When a Las Vegas business is looking into whether to invest in web marketing or to stick to local business it is good to know the pros and cons of working on the internet along with how to make a successful and widely exposed website. This way a business can properly decipher whether expanding onto the world wide web is right for them.

How to market websites?

There are many ways to market a website, some important and vital in the success of a web based business, and some more on the optional level. Some examples of vital needs in marketing a website are:

Web Development Related Marketing

When marketing online the way your website is put together and designed is vital in getting your business into the top of the search engines above all potential competitors. Some examples of making a good website are keeping all concepts within the website all related to one topic which is your business. Use an easy to remember domain name with a popular URL such as dot com or dot net. And also make sure your URL will not be confusable with a competitors so you do not risk losing business to someone else.

Search Engine Optimization

There are many very complicated concepts in search engine optimization such as installing meta tags, creating codes which make bot crawling easy to achieve on your website so search engines can easily index every page of your website, and more. When utilizing search engine optimization it is good to think about investing in a professional web design company in Las Vegas. A professional web design company can easily create very complex coding within your website to help you get your business an increase in visitors in a short amount of time. 

Free Search Engine Rankings Check in Seconds for Las Vegas

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Another great free online too to check your Las Vegas Search Engine Rankings in seconds:

http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/

Searches google, Yahoo!, AOL, Bing (MSN) AllTheWeb, and AltaVista. Mike’s Marketing Tools has a lot of other free online marketing tools as well.

If you run a report on your Las Vegas Website and find you’d like to rank higher in the search engine results, contact Perkolate at 702.341.0085 for advice and assistance with your search engine optimization (SEO) or email us at fullsteam@perkolate.com.

More information on Las Vegas Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Professional Las Vegas Blog Design and Content Essentials

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Successful marketing techniques are crucial to any Las Vegas business. This is especially true when it comes to internet marketing. Hiring a Las Vegas company like Perkolate to handle marketing concerns can prove to be very beneficial, this is why it is so important to make sure that you have hired the right company. Marketing can not only be hard work but can be quite strategic, not all internet marketing companies may be proficient.

When marketing on the internet, blogs and articles can be very effective in getting the word out. However, utilizing the proper tags and maintaining the appropriate content can be quite perplexing to the most business savvy individual. Some companies may simply make use of “filler” content, which provides no real substance. This makes marketing strategies ineffective and wasteful. Not only should the company provide relevant content, but it should not read as a paid ad.

In addition, content should always be professional. Grammatical and spelling errors should not be present. A reliable company will ensure that the grammar and spelling is always accurate. Information should be factual and geared toward the appropriate audience. These mistakes may seem minor but may prove detrimental when it comes to marketing techniques that involve blogging, aritcle writing, or otherwise posting information on the internet.

Making use of the proper tags is also another frequent error. If the information isn’t searchable, your business is not getting out there. Search tags should be frequently assesed for popularity, age group, and several other criteria. Many other companies may simply attach a few tags and assume their work is done. Maintaining and updating tags assists in extending the life of the material and can make a significant difference.

Blogging and article writing is an excellent marketing strategy, it’s a proven way to get maximum returns on your investment. However, it does require a lot of time and know how. If and when deciding to hire someone to do this for you, make sure the services offer professional quality content. Blog design and content is an expertise and should not be left to just anyone. The future of your business may depend on it.

Website Archiving Look Up Tool

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Here’s a great tool from archive.org to look up how websites have looked in past years:

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Overview of Las Vegas Blog Marketing

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Blog marketing in Las Vegas is a comparable new form of Internet marketing, which depends on blogs as the main attraction of advertising. Blogs are fantastic at alluring search engine traffic in Las Vegas. Their format advances itself to the search engine so it can be updated frequently and easily. Many companies find that blogs are a great way to keep in touch with their customers and increase search engine exposure all at once. Blog marketing is a cornerstone of a strong advertising crusade, and has become a substantial vehicle for public relations.

Blogs are basically websites that show information in a specific way. Blogs allow themselves to be updated quickly and easily by members of a company. They stimulate customer participation, viral marketing and feedback. For these reasons, they are perceived as a strong supplement to existing business websites, but in various ways a greater power in terms of connecting to a new or existing customer.

Businesses want to use blog marketing because it easily brings in inbound links from other sites. Sites can be hesitant to link to a corporate site. A blog usually feels interesting, and therefore other blogs and online guides may be attracted to link to it. Blogs solve one of the ample problems of businesses trying to adjust to the world of online marketing. The best kind of advertising does not come from paid ads. It comes from word of mouth.

It is important to create a blog that is interesting. Businesses have found that by letting employees discuss the business openly and freely fascinates people. People love to see the inner workings of major corporations. Blogs give you an uncensored view in to that thrilling world. Some businesses even have the CEO’s blogging. People are interested in hearing from individuals who are at the peak of an organization.

Blog marketing is also a great way to reach out to customers. For example, new product releases can be written about on a blog and regular readers will be informed instantly. The reader will link to his or her own communications, creating a promising buzz about the product before it is even released. Blogs have also been used in place of press releases.

People involved in blog marketing may also want to participate in the company through honest feedback. There are commenting tools on blogs that allow customers to give their feedback instantly. This can help businesses to improve on their products. Blogs are great tools for businesses to get honest and direct customer feedback.

If you’re interested in having a blog designed and built for your Las Vegas company or business, please contact us here at Perkolate at 702.341.0085.

For More Information on Blogs and Blog Marketing, see:

Search Engine Optimization - Keep up on all the changes

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Most of our clients here at Perkolate are always interested marketing their website to make sure they get the most exposure they can for their website and for good reason. What’s the sense of having a great website if no one knows about it? Search engine optimization is always part of a thorough marketing plan for any business on the Internet; yet, most people don’t realize that each search engine places different priority to search engine-optimizing strategies. What works best for ranking on Google may not be the best strategy if you’re looking for higher ranking on Yahoo or MSN.

Here’s a website that I’ve used for a while when I have search engine specific questions when a client makes a particular request to gain higher ranking on a specific search engine. The website is Search Engine Forums ( http://www.searchengineforums.com ). It’s basically a forum community of people looking for questions answered on specific search engine standards. Their regular posters are very knowledgeable people usually in the Marketing/SEO industry who keep up all the latest changes in the way certain search engines index their search listings and help inform those of us who don’t have the time or desire to stay on top of the latest index and spidering changes to the Big 3 Search Engines - Google, Yahoo and MSN.

They also have info on other search engines and listing directories besides the Big 3, so no matter how well you may know SEO, people of any expertise level can find useful and helpful information on the latest updates and changes to the search engine or web directory they are looking to increase their website’s overall search ranking. Remember, the Internet is like an ocean and just putting your website out there without worrying about SEO is like tossing a bottle with a message in it and expecting someone to find it. Give your business and website a better marketing chance by getting the fundamentals down for Search Engine Optimization.

Increase Organic Ranking for Your Las Vegas Website

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

You may have a website for your Las Vegas business or company and that is most certainly a valuable marketing tool. The question to ask yourself is how does your website rank on major search engines such as yahoo!, google, msn and others?

Organic ranking is when your website ranks on a search results under the organic rankings once a search is performed on a set of keywords (not the sponsored or paid listings).

Here are some tips to increasing your organic rankings on local search engines in Las Vegas:

  • Ensure your city, state and zip code are in HTML text somewhere on each and every page.
  • Optimize your META tags to include relevant keywords, key phrases, for the title, description and keywords tags (consult a professional web designer in Las Vegas for more information.)
  • Ensure you have links between website pages from the home page to sub pages and in between.
  • Ensure you have a website site map page with links to all of your website pages included.
  • Keep your website content updated often. Search engines like websites with fresh content.
  • Purchase your domain for a long period of time. Search engines like google, yahoo, msn and AOL like when your domain name is purchased for a long period of time (10 years or more) as it means that your website is planning on being around for a long period of time.

How to Improve Website Search Engine Rankings

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Improving your Las Vegas website’s search engine ranking is crucial to your success online. If you don’t take time to learn SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) you will waste a lot of time and money building sites and blogs that no one sees in Las Vegas or beyond. SEO is how you get more viewers to your pages (traffic), and SEM is the process of combining SEO with pay per click (PPC) advertising to market your website and products. Search engine traffic means people already searching for your product or information, and therefore already interested in buying.

First determine your best topic choices and how much competition there is for each topic. If you start out trying to compete with a lot of high ranking websites, you’ll find your site gets hopelessly lost in the search engine rankings. Instead, try to find niches where there is considerable demand for the product or information, but less competition from very strong sites. That makes it much easier to to rank higher in the search engine rankings. A keyword research tool like Wordtracker is very helpful in this process.

Once you have your content, one of the best ways to get higher rankings in the search engines is with backlinks. Backlinks are links to your website or blog from other websites. The more backlinks you have, the better. Backlinks from higher ranked sites have more weight. You can manually request backlinks from other sites, but this can take a very long time to accomplish. There are products that help, such as article submitters, which submit articles you write to different article directories, providing backlinks to your site.

Another product is backlink exchanges. If you use a backlink exchange, be sure it is a legitimate one: there are many that use techniques that can get your site kicked off the search engine results pages.

Taking the time to study SEO and SEM beats months and years of trial and error. The end result is a site that ranks high, on the first page of the search engine results, and that’s worth investing in SEO education and products that streamline the process.

If you need professional assistance in improving your website’s search engine rankings, contact Perkolate at 702.341.0085 or email us at fullsteam@perkolate.com.