Good Search Engine Optimization should be a part of your overall Internet Marketing Plan. That being said, there are plenty of myths surrounding what proper Search Engine Marketing really is.

6 Myths of SEO You Should Not Fall For:

1. Keyword Stuffing – Stuffing your keyword metatag, website content, H1 tags, headers etc. with keywords will not increase your chances of getting higher in the organic search results. If you are advised to use white text to hide keywords, or to use a bunch of unrelated keywords in your website, don’t do it. Instead, do proper keyword research and then use the appropriate 1-3 keywords that fit the page you are working on.
2. Tons of Links to your Site – Link building can be part of your overall SEO strategy; however, the key is to get relevant links from relevant websites using relevant keywords. Relying on link building will not increase your overall ranking within the search engines.
3. Multiple Websites – Building multiple websites to link to your website is not a reputable SEO strategy. Instead, work on building your current website with relevant content.
4. Optimized Sites are not User-Friendly – A website that has been well-planned and designed for visitor experience can also be SEO-friendly. It all starts with strategy.
5. You Can Buy Results – You cannot buy organic listings in Google. Google and other search engines do offer Pay-Per-Click listings that you can pay for.
6. SEO Is All About Meta Tags – There is more to SEO than filling out your Title, Description and Keyword meta tags

Professional web design and Search Engine Optimization starts with proper planning and strategy. In fact, SEO is just a portion of what should be your overall Internet Marketing strategy.

By Michelle Collie
Internet Marketing Specialist
GetOn Marketing – Kelowna Web Design

Updated: Feb. 17, 2014

We get asked regularly what tasks a business should be doing regularly. In addition to the article below (items that still hold true), businesses should:

A) Update their content – Utilize analytics to determine what your visitors are looking for and what content pieces are getting read the most. Continue writing in-demand pieces. Don’t simply concentrate on the blog. Go through your site’s main pages and make regular updates as needed.

B) Get social – Choose your social media platforms and then set aside time and resources to post regularly and interact with your audience. This includes responding to posts, generating conversations, posting on other people’s pages, and reading others’ updates.

C) Stay in the know – Continue learning by staying up-to-date on industry related news and updates.

If your small business has a website, there are some essential tasks you should be doing on a monthly basis to maintain or boost your rankings, traffic and conversions. Failing to perform SEO correctly could cost your business website visitors and customers.

1. Identify Your Demand

It is important to regularly identify your demand. In terms of SEO and Internet Marketing, this can be easily accomplished by performing regular keyword research using a keyword tool such as Google’s Free Adword’s Tool.

2. Measure Your Market

Learn how to read your website Analytics and peruse them regularly. When you can identify how is coming to your website, how they are getting there, how long they are staying and why they are leaving you can work your site to your benefit. Plus, your analytics can change by the season, the month, the day or even the hour. Additionally, if you are running additional advertising campaigns, it is always wise to search your website analytics for traffic that may be in correlation.

3. Build Your Audience Base

Establishing quality links to your website and content, engaging with current visitors and promoting your website should be a regular task. Offer new ways to share content with friends, hold a contest, or encourage customers to re-visit your website. You should also try and get a few websites to link to your website on a regular basis as well.

4. Check Your Competition

It’s important to regularly check your competition online. You may be able to uncover tactics that are working for them, find things to avoid, or discover new things. Check who is linking to them (so then try and get those same websites to link to you) and how they rank. If their ranking has improved substantially, can you see what they have done differently that may have prompted the change?

5. Pay Attention to the Details

It’s a great idea to regularly go through your website with fine attention to the details. Look at your metatags, your H1 tags, your links, your spelling and your grammar. Periodically change your title, descriptions and keywords. Make a couple changes to your headings. Make sure all of your links are working correctly. Then, fill out your ‘contact’ form to make sure it is working properly too.

6. Remember that Content is King

 When you go through your analytics, have a look at what pages are receiving the highest number of visitors or have the longest time spent on the website. Take a look at what pages have a high bounce rate. Then, use what you uncover to update your content to take advantage of your visitors. In addition, you should create a content plan to grow your website to meet visitor demands. Whether you continue to add pages to your website or regularly post a blog or news item, adding new content to your website is great for your visitors and the search engines, too.

Ideally, you should check your statistics and website positioning on a weekly basis. You should also strive to write a minimum of one blog post and fine one or two new links to your website each week, too. The rest of the tasks you can tackle once a month. Paying attention to your website and learning how to make your website work for you does require regular work; however, the benefits will come!

When businesses first began publishing websites online, the goal was to reach a bigger market. It was “The World Wide Web” and suddenly the entire world could be considered a potential prospect. Businesses had increased opportunities and the power of the Internet was easily recognized.

Back then, businesses relied on phone books, billboards, and local advertising mediums such as newspapers, radio and television to increase their branding and marketing efforts within their locale. The Internet was for ‘the world’ market.

Today, the power of the Internet is being harnessed to increase a business’ profile within their local market. More and more businesses are seeing the relevance and usability to positioning their website within the local search market, too.

When was the last time you opened a phone book? When you are looking to order a pizza or call up your mechanic or schedule a hair appointment, how do you go about finding the phone number? Google?!? How many of these searches are you doing on your mobile device or tablet?

Technology, once touted as making the world smaller, is now making it even easier to reach out to your neighbours.

Is your business being found?

Whether your not your business has a website, your business can still utilize the Internet to grow your local business. A Google Places listing is a good start. Plus, there are a number of other local directories that are regularly being used by Internet searchers.

The GetOn.com team can work with your team to ensure your business is being found in the right places by the right people. Contact us today to learn more about how your business can increase your Internet exposure locally.

If you have a domain name and a website, chances are you are regularly inundated with requests to exchange links. While being linked to can boost your Search Engine Popularity and in turn help with your website positioning, it is very important to employ a proper strategy to your link development. 

Our Favourite 5 Link Development Strategies are:

1. Natural Linking
2. Relevant Directories
3. Social Networking
4. New Media Linking
5. Link Exchange/Reciprocal Linkin

Natural Link Building

Just as you naturally link to other websites of interest, others may link to you. Perhaps you have a links page, or periodically showcase another product/service/website in your newsletter, blog, or general content areas. Because these types of links normally offer value to the visitor, are relevant to your website and provide good information they usually provide good ‘link weight’ with the search engines. By sharing a link with your visitors, you are also telling the search engines that the other site is of value. Natural Link Building starts naturally and it starts with providing content that encourages others to share.

Relevant Directories

The jury is still out on just how important directory submissions will be in the future; however, hand-submitting your website to local portals and directories, as well as industry specific directories, and directories that have NOT been penalized by Google and other search engines can serve you well in the long run. Ideally, your rule of thumb should be “will my potential client/visitor be visiting a directory like this and does my site provide value to their visitor”.

Social Networking

If you are using Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In as part of your Social Networking Strategy and you are sharing links to your website then you are engaging in a positive link building strategy.  Your Social Networking Strategy should ensure that you are not inundating your friends/followers with links/marketing etc.

New Media Linking

If you are sharing photos and videos online through any number of popular websites including Flikr and YouTube then you can also share a link to your website/product/services etc.

Link Exchange / Reciprocal Linking

In the past, many thought that the more links you had to your website, the better. It did not matter where the link came from, or what sort of content was provided alongside the link, people began massive email campaigns to encourage others to exchange links. Today, your site could be penalized for sharing links in this manner. If your site is found on sites that are considered link farms or have been penalized for not providing valued content then not only will you not receive weight from that link, but your site could be penalized as well. This is why hand submission to directories and websites is so crucial.

You can do link exchanges / reciprocal linking without being penalized, if you go about it properly. Again, you will want to exchange links with other sites that are relevant to your visitor. For instance, a real estate agent may wish to exchange links with a mortgage broker or local moving company, a winery may wish to exchange links with a local real estate agent, and a health food store may wish to exchange links with a fitness centre or personal trainer.

When taking part in a link exchange you want to ensure that:

•  the site is relevant to your viewer
•  adds valued content/resources to your viewer
•  may or may not be local
•  the page you are listed on does not have a long list of other links
•  allows you to offer a description to go along with a Keyword Phrase Link

There are still many ways to build your link popularity and encourage proper link development to your website. By utilizing the best practices, your website stands the best chance of taking advantage of the leads, traffic, and potential search engine positioning that comes with proper Online Marketing.

How long does it take to rank – One Week? One Year?

You have signed up for a monthly SEO program with GetOn. Your website has launched and you’re excited to begin seeing results. So, how long does it take to rank? Although patience is key, when and how you rank can depend on a number of important factors. 

1) Are your keywordscompetitive or non-competitive?

If your target search results are not competitive you may be able to rank within a few weeks of your website and optimization program’s launch – even if your domain and site is brand new. However, with the growth of the Internet, there are very few uncompetitive categories remaining.

2) Is your website and/or domain name new?

Google (and the other search engines) treats new websites as new businesses. Many of the top ranked websites have been providing Internet users with valued information for years. It takes time to build that same credibility and trust. The search engines watch a new site, monitor them for their value, and make sure that the new sites are practicing proper SEO methods, are not spam, and are not trying to manipulate their results. In other words, you have to earn your position for keyword searches. While the search engines do not always get this right, they do work hard to provide clients with the best matched websites for their search query.

It will probably take at least a year to catch up to already established websites, especially if they are practicing good Search Engine Optimization methods and are link building. Even if you have a great marketing idea that will help you build many organic links, if your competition is a large corporation, a household name etc. it will take much longer to out-rank them, if ever.

3) How much time is spent on link building?

New websites require slow and steady link development over time. While it may seem easy to take part in one of those “Get 100 links in an hour” advertising schemes, these mass-submission marketing methods only serve to penalize your website in the future. It is best to grow your links and popularity manually and over time. For instance, if you grow x links this month, then next month you will want to create x more links, and so on. It does not matter how new or old your website is; link-building should be done regularly.

5) How many hours do you spend optimizing?

Organic Search Engine marketing is an ongoing process. Even when target rankings are achieved, there is still work involved to maintain the results and to keep up on and implement new search engine optimization practices.

Websites with non-competitive keywords could begin ranking in a few weeks after 4 hours of initial SEO work, followed by a couple hours per month thereafter. Of course, the website has to be utilizing search engine friendly code and navigation practices.

For websites with competitive search results, we could spend hundreds of hours of SEO work and still not see the results we are looking for. In other words, the number of hours that need to be spent is in direct correlation with the competitiveness of your keywords and search results and the age of your domain/website. Your success is our success, which is why we work hard to help you achieve those top rankings.

6) What other factors affect ranking?

Competitive keywords, age and time play a big role in when you will see results; however, there are other factors that influence rankings, including:

• Not only do you want to look at the age of your competitors websites, but you also want to look at how hard they are working on their online marketing campaigns. We track their current link count, link growth and inbound link quality. We also check their social marketing activity and the partners they associate with.
• Your Internet Marketing Budget has a role in your success. How much are your clients investing and how is their money allocated? Does your budget allow for implementation of all SEO recommendations?
• Your off-line branding can help with website traffic. In addition, if your brand is more focused or narrow you may see results more quickly.
• Is your website adapting to the ever-changing technology? You may launch your site in June and by July there may be a new technology or a changed SEO practice. How flexible you are with your online marketing strategies can help influence ranking.
• Of course, a little passion never hurts. If you are passionate about your business or topic, it will come out through your website, your content, your blogs and your newsletters. While passion alone may not influence your results, when you combine it with hard work top rankings could come faster.

One of the most important SEO practices is competition analysis because it really does play a role in when and where your website will rank well. It is our job to analyze what your competition is doing in terms of their organic search engine marketing strategy and then utilize that knowledge for the benefit of YOUR strategy. For the websites that are already ranking where you want to be, it takes hard work, determination, knowledge, and time to overtake them. Patience is key.

The quick answer to “how long does it take to rank?” is about a year; however, as noted above, there are so many other factors that can play a role in determining when and where your website will rank. With search-engine friendly web design, proper SEO development, and a little bit of patience you will see your website climb the rankings. An investment (time and budget) in organic search engine marketing is a long-term marketing strategy and, if done well, can offer far greater returns on investment than most other media outlets. That’s where GetOn comes in and specializes in your personal organic SEO marketing plan.

Multiple domain names aren’t as helpful as you think.

It’s a common myth that purchasing multiple domain names and pointing them toward your main website address will help your website rank better. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t approve of “parking” and it won’t improve your SEO. That being said, there are a few reasons as to why you may wish to purchase multiple domain names:

Protect your brand/business name

It is often recommended that businesses purchase domain names related to their brand or business name. This is for purely protective measures only. Not only does it protect your business from another company purchasing your name but can also help your clients find you. After all, how many times have you gone to a domain name only to find that the website was nowhere near what you were looking for? Or was a site of the competition?

Purchase common misspellings and typos

If your domain name can be easily misspelled or mistyped, it is wise to buy the misspelled versions as well. By doing this, you are giving your clients another way to easily access your website.

Purchase variations of your business name

Can your business name be shortened? Do you often go by an abbreviation? Are you often referred to by your products? If you can think of any reason why someone might type something else in as a URL (than what you currently have as your website address) then it may be useful to buy that as a domain as well.

So, now just what do you do with all of these domain names? You absolutely do not want duplicate content or websites on each of the domains because the search engines will penalize you. Instead, you need to redirect the additional domains to your website URL. Of course, there can be additional costs involved in maintaining a domain with a redirect. This is when you need to reevaluate your list of domains and determine which names bring about a positive return on investment by directing qualified visitors to your site.

Once again, multiple domain names pointing to your main site will not help your rankings, though they may help your traffic if they are being used. It is unwise to buy large quantities of keyword rich domain names with the intention of forwarding them to your site to help with rankings. This will not work. It is also not recommended to post a one-page site on a domain name and then link it to your main website. The search engines will catch this one quick.