Tag Archives: portland oregon search engine optimization

A Simple Newspaper Definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

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The Burlington Post recently published a very informative article that helps spell out what it is that SEO specialists can do for business websites, including businesses in Portland, Oregon that need search engine optimization. Here is the article as it appeared. We trimmed a bit for length.

Sooner or later, if you have a commercial website, you will begin to worry about search engine visibility, and its technical counterpart, search engine optimization.

In a nutshell, when a potential client types a search inquiry on a website like Google, you want your web page to come up, preferably as the first “hit” or at least on one of the first 10-20 items. If it does, then you have good SE visibility. If not, then you may need to change your website and this process is called SE optimization, or SEO.

Your website designer, or an SEO specialist, will make the changes to help this happen, but he/she can’t do it without your help.

Before you meet, here are some things you should know:

 

  • It’s tough to be No. 1. As an example, there are as many as 37 million responses for the search term “widgets”.Knowing that fact, what are the chances that your business will appear as the first one on the list.
  • Winning can be just temporary. Suppose your designer creates a page that manages to mention “widgets” 3,492 times on one page, and you’re now ranked No. 1. How long will it be before Widgets R Us changes its page to use the term 3,500 times? Besides, most search engines realize what you’re doing and will de-list you if you use blatant tactics like that, and as well, your clients may get really bored reading it.With that in mind, prepare for a meeting with your SEO specialist to consider presentation alternatives. Maybe your business specializes in antique widgets. A smart consumer will give up looking through 37 million results sooner or later and search for “antique widgets” (Putting the words in quotes makes most search engines look for the exact phrase). Now you’re only competing with only 83 sites found on the first page. That’s a much easier task.Consider other phrases that may describe your product. Make a list and prioritize them. Ask your clients how they found your website. Bear in mind though, that asking clients or looking at your website statistics — a topic for a future article — will only provide data about words and phrases that actually found your website.You need to investigate and determine those phrases that people may have used which unfortunately didn’t find you, because those are the ones you need to add to your site.Although website advisors can do marvellous things, you alone know the business and the clients. Use that knowledge to help your specialists do a better job.

    • Register.com Survey Reveals Interesting Small Biz Marketing Investment, Trends

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    A recent study on how small businesses will invest in marketing, SEO, and revenue optimism – what it might mean for your Portland, OR based business.

     

    70% Expect No Decline In Web Revenue Over Next Year, Despite Economic Conditions

    Register.com announced the results of a survey examining web strategy trends from among its small business customers.

    The findings reveal that despite slumping economic conditions, most small business customers that participated in the survey do not expect a decline in revenue over the next year and expect to make additional investments in website design, search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing to expand their business.

    Register.com received replies from more than 800 of its small business customers, 72% of which responded that they are an owner or partner of a small business. Key findings include:

    • 55% of respondents have registered more than one domain name for their business
    • 41% saw more than a quarter of their total revenue from web sales
    • 20% don’t know how much revenue they are getting through their site
    • Approximately 70% of the respondents don’t expect their web revenue to decline despite economic conditions. (34.6% expect more revenue / 34.5% expect about the same revenue)
    • When asked, “What area of technology are you most likely to invest in over the next year?” The top there answers were: website design (53%), SEO (43%), and email marketing (41%).

    7 Small Business Marketing Tips to Grow Business

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    7 Small Business Marketing Tips to Grow Business: This originally appeared on Stockhouse.com a few days ago, and we thought it might be useful for local businesses in Portland, Oregon. We edited it for length and readability.

    1. Develop a unique selling point (USP) that gives prospects a compelling reason to buy from you now. Your USP must provide a powerful reason to do business with you. It motivates your clients to send referrals in droves to buy your product or service. (I.e., the little pizza company that guaranteed fresh hot pizza in 30 minutes or less – or the pizza was free.) Outrageous, exciting claims can show that you are better than anybody else and the best thing for a prospect can do is buy from you.

    2. Learn selling and customer service skills. Service and sales go tightly together. When you cross-sell, you provide a tremendous service: you save clients the time and aggravation of having to search elsewhere to complete a purchase. Your clients and prospects need and value your recommendations and will follow them so make a habit of providing them.

    3. Capture client and prospect information and create a database. Take a moment to ask yourself the last time a retailer or restaurant asked your name or asked you to return. Think of how far ahead of your competition you can be by capturing this information to build a relationship with your clients.

    4. Use your database to keep in touch. Send thank you notes, special offers, discount gift cards, birthday cards and invitations to special client days. You must thank clients for their loyalty and past purchases from you. Remember to include a special offer that has a deadline to get them to purchase from you again.

    5. Start a newsletter. This is the most powerful small business marketing tip to build a fence around your clients. The added advantage is that you are marketing to those most likely to buy: current and past clients.

    6. Create a referral and reward program. Unfortunately, most people are afraid to ask for referrals even though clients are happy to give them. The easiest strategy is to simply ask for them and reward people who send you new clients. It can be as simple as giving coded coupons to a client in your store. For each one that is redeemed, the referring client gets a gift. It can also be as involved as asking a good client to lunch or dinner for the sole purpose of asking for referrals. If you are living up to your USP, clients will gladly refer others. Don’t be shy about asking for them.

    7. Identify non-competing businesses that serve a client base similar to yours. Approach the owner and propose a joint venture or strategic alliance in which you are going to endorse their business to your list and vise-versa. As mentioned earlier, consumers are constantly asking ‘Who should I buy this product or service from?’ This powerful small business marketing tool leverages the trust you and your alliance partner(s) have built with their clients and, when properly structured between two good companies with quality products and services, is as close to a guaranteed success as you will ever get.

    Ten Tips for Directing Organic SEO/SEM Traffic to Your Site

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    SEO Portland Oregon

    Ten Tips for Directing Organic SEO/SEM Traffic to Your Site

    1. Keyword research: Take the time to figure out the words used by people you want to visit your site, and use these words in articles and other content on the relevant page. Make sure you use these keywords in the first few words of your page title.

    2. Get trustworthy advice from SEO sources.

    3. Maintain your code: Build a website that is easy for the search engines to understand.

    4. Make navigation easy: Build clear text links (or a menu) to all parts of your site. Search engines can’t follow image links or clever animated links like Flash; they like their navigation plain and simple.

    5. Get trusted, relevant links: Links are like a vote for your site and you can’t rank well without them. Buying links or being indiscriminate in the places you link to and places you request links from, is a bad, temporary, spammy way to raise the importance of your site. Links must be relevant to the content of your site and they must be from reputable websites.

    6. Build a sitemap: Sitemaps help search engines discover every page in your website. If you have too many pages on your site, create as many sitemaps as you need and link them.

    7. Don’t forget the technical stuff: Technical stuff happening in the background on your site can cause problems with the way the search engines see your site. Does your website use tech that search engines don’t like, like certain types of redirection? If in doubt, ask your SEO/SEM master.

    8. Track your progress with a web analytics program: Google Analytics is easy to use, versatile and it’s free. These analytics can tell you a great deal about how people interact with your site and the traffic that search engines are sending you.

    9. Tell search engines where you are: Submit your site details to search engines. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all have a facility to submit a list of all the pages in your site.

    10. Content is king: Build great content and keep it up to date. This is the key to good SEO; search engines love sites like blogs, which are topical and regularly updated.

    SEM, SEO Courses Coming to Portland Oregon Campuses?

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    Mediapost published an interesting article today that made me start to wonder if SEM/SEO accredited college courses were bound to come to Portland State University, or other Oregon universities.

    The story, based on a course at the University of California San Diego read in part:

    “The course is designed for small business owners and corporate marketing staff. “SEO & SEM: The Fast Track to Search Engine Optimization and Marketing,” will cover basic and intermediate tactics and practices, including Web site architecture and content creation, search engine operation, keyword research and linking strategies.”

    I found this workshop today on the Portland State University (PSU) website:

    “Search engine marketing is a rapidly growing and evolving discipline. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or someone looking for a career change, the Internet Strategies search engine marketing 12 hour workshop is the ideal opportunity to maximize your value and earning potential. Search marketing veteran Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media, Inc., will teach you the fundamentals, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), link development, online reputation management and social media marketing. The workshop will incorporate real-world examples, guest speakers and an interactive assignment to enable instant application in your world.”

    Upon further research, I found that Vertical Measures compiled a list of the top college level curriculum for both search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) a while ago.

    It will be interesting to see how these colleges tackle the ever-fluctuating “Gray Hat” area of SEO and SEM.

    Here is what Vertical Measures came up with:

    California State University – Long Beach

    CSU’s marketing curriculum includes SEO.

    DePaul University of Continuing and Professional Education

    A six-week course designed to provide individuals with tools for online marketing.

    The European Graduate School

    The European Graduate School offers courses in Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Information Architecture.

    George Mason University

    George Mason University’s Search Engine Marketing program provides a high level of coverage including in depth courses in Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Marketing and Web Site Copywriting.

    Harvard Extension

    The Harvard Extension School offers Information Systems Management, which includes Interactive Online Marketing.

    Indiana University (SLIS)

    Indiana University has an introductory SEM course as a part of their curriculum. They cover SEO, PPC, social media, and analytics.

    James Madison University, College Of Business

    James Madison University College of Business offers online marketing practices, building traffic to websites, attracting visitors and using necessary technologies and practices.

    New York University, School of Continuing And Professional Studies

    NYU offers beginning, intermediate and advanced courses in digital media marketing, search engine marketing strategies, multi-channel marketing and internet copyrighting.

    Rasmussen College

    Rasmussen College is offering an internet marketing course with a BS in Business Management. The course teaches e-strategies, and web media marketing.

    Rice University, Glasscock School of Continuing Studies

    The Glasscock School of Continuing Studies provides a course in search engine optimization.

    Rutgers University

    Rutgers offers a nationally recognized search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEM), pay per click (PPC) marketing, and website copywriting course.

    University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH)

    UAH offers a search engine optimization course to teach students learn to set up and maintain search engine optimization campaigns, search engine compatibility, and how to start SEM or SEO based businesses.

    University of Georgia

    U of G offers a Master of Internet Technology that features database management, internet programming, electronic commerce and website design and usability.

    University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV)

    UNLV offers a Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing course in online marketing, website development that is search engine appealing, and Pay Per Click campaigns.

    University of Texas at Austin, School of Information

    The University of Texas at Austin offers a technical approach to learning web design and SEO/SEM.

    University of Utah

    The University of Utah’s Search Engine Optimization course includes accessibility, “black hat” optimization, and search friendly website design.

    University of Virginia, Darden School of Business

    The University of Virginia offers an Online Marketing Update course offers instruction on search engine marketing, email marketing, leading and cutting edge concepts as well as Web 2.0.

    University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Continuing Education

    UWM’s Information Technology program in Search Engine Optimization provides basic and advanced techniques in developing content and maximizing search engine results.

    Valdosta State University

    Valdosta State University offers online courses on achieving top search engine positions, and designing effective websites.

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    Portland Oregon Businesses: Eight Essential Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips

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    Bytestart provided this quick list of eight tips for streamlining SEO efforts that I thought might be useful to some Portland, Oregon-area businesses:

    1. Be realistic

    Everybody knows the “ideal” keyword that they would like to rank for, but the chances of ranking well for this keyword may be slim / almost impossible in competitive industries.

    Be realistic with yourself in terms of the amount of time, money and effort required to rank well for these search terms. Does the potential reward justify the time and effort? Are your competitors actively carrying out SEO work? Would the rewards of achieving 6th / 7th position justify the effort? Are you competing against big brands outsourcing their SEO to large search marketing companies?

    Prioritise your tasks and look at outsourcing opportunities if you do not have the time necessary to complete tasks. You should be asking yourself all of these questions before deciding on a primary keyword to target.

    2. Set short term and long term goals

    Related to the point above, setting realistic short and long term goals are great ways of staying motivated. Keep the short term goals towards longer tail search terms. If you already have a relatively established site, which terms are currently driving significant amounts of traffic? How easy will it be to increase the ranking of this term?

    Use click through rate data to predict the number of clicks you can achieve. For example, if you rank 9th for “purple mice”, and receive 22 visitors per month, if you increased this 4 places to 5th, you could expect to almost double this number.

    Look through all of your search terms looking for good short term search strategies. Longer term goals should be your more competitive keywords, often with a 6-8+ month timescale (depending on industry) for achieving good rankings.

    3. Research

    Spend a lot of time researching every aspect of your strategy. Keywords, potential link building strategies, onsite work, content, industry authorities, competition. In order to have a credible search marketing strategy, all of these factors need to be analysed in as much detail as possible.

    4. Competitors

    One of the most important individual factors to focus on is the competition. How good is their onsite SEO? Have they missed obvious tricks? Can you take positive things from their site design /structure and implement it yourself? How impressive are your competitors’ backlink profiles? How are they going about obtaining back links? Is there scope to replicate strategies, or further improve on strategies your competitors have implemented?

    5. Use available tools

    There are a number of useful tools out there today to help with all aspects of SEO and search marketing. The use of Google webmaster tools, and rank checking software are a definite must. Google trends and Google Adword keyword suggestion tools are great resources for keyword research.

    Other handy tools include SEO plug-ins for the Firefox browser, spider simulators and keyword density tools. There are multiple versions of many tools, it is worth spending a little bit of time trying each one.

    6. Stay up to date

    The SEO industry is changing all of the time, so it is important to stay up to date with the latest developments. Reading SEO blogs and browsing SEO discussion forums are a great way of staying informed of the latest developments. By doing so, you will also learn a lot, be it a new link building idea or a new handy plugin which may save you a lot of time.

    7. Wider picture

    Look at your search marketing campaign from broader picture, what else could you be doing in online marketing that will have a positive impact on your backlink profile / traffic / rankings?

    For example, if your site has a blog, are you using blog pinging services (Google’s own service or services such as Weblogs and Feedburner). Are you utilising local search, universal search elements? How appropriate is your site to social media outlets?

    8. Stay ‘white hat’

    There are a lot of SEO practices that are frowned upon by the search engines, if you are unaware of them, the chances are that you are not doing them. If you have heard or read of “new” SEO techniques, spend a lot of time researching their potential negative impacts before implementing them.

    Search engine algorithms are getting better and better at detecting techniques used to purposely manipulate their algorithm. Read their guidelines and stay within them, if you decide to implement grey hat or black hat techniques, it is only a matter of time before you are found out and penalised.