Monday, June 20, 2011

SEO and Dodging Content Disasters - News by GERVAIS GROUP LLC

GERVAIS GROUP LLC - Gervais Group`s SEO News and Advice: Despite the search engines currently giving a ton of their algorithm weighting to inbound links, the creation of quality content is still the factor that will ultimately make or break a website. Take a quick drive around the web and you’ll see content that ranges from high value to illegible content disasters.

That being said, producing illegible content is only one of many ways to publish content that will ultimately work against you. Here is a list of actions you can take to avoid publishing content that falls flat, lacks value, and/or is so bad that your readers are going to run away and never return.

1) Know your customer – Knowing who you’re writing for may seem like common sense but it goes deeper than just having a general idea. True knowledge of your customers entails having an understanding of what they’re buying and why they’re buying it. This understanding will allow you to address their needs directly in a manner that leads them toward buying your product or service. Just listening to the conversations that take place in relevant online groups or forums in your industry can shed a lot of light in this area.

2) Determine the best context to present your content – Presenting your content in the wrong context can send a confusing message to your readers. For example, a massage therapist presenting information in a “how to” context would be much better off presenting the benefits of massage. On the other hand, an auto mechanic presenting a “how to” on changing the oil would be presenting in the proper context.

3) Stick with your knitting – Stay on point with your area of expertise and make sure that your content is relevant to your brand and your products/services. Off-topic content may be alright with your regular readers but first time visitors looking for information on electronics will be clicking the back button if they land on your blog about kittens.

4) Have a third person evaluate and distribute your content – It’s always a good idea to have a third party to manage your content. These duties can include proofing, distribution, and measuring results

The quality of your content will ultimately determine the level of success for your website. For more information on SEO and your website, visit: SEO Company or call (800) 381-9358.

Gervais Group News - Evolving SEO in 2011

GERVAIS GROUP LLC - Business and Marketing News by Gervais Group Atlanta SEO Company: Search engine optimization evolves both gradually and suddenly as witnessed by Google’s recent Panda/Farmer update. Expect the following changes to continue into the rest of 2011 and beyond.

* Pay per Click (PPC) will get more expensive – Competition in the bidding process for PPC placement is rising as more businesses shift away from traditional advertising methods to online efforts. Combined with the well established trend showing that searchers click on and give more credence to organic search results, it may be time to re-evaluate the return on investment for any existing PPC campaigns.

* Search engines are transferring their love from content farms to social media – While they probably resent the content farm title, EzineArticles, Hubspot, and the like were the primary target of Google’s Panda/Farmer update and saw traffic drop off a cliff. Meanwhile, the major search engines are doing everything they can to show results that originate from social media sites. Even if you don’t plan to fully engage on these sites, you should have a monitoring system in place to see what is being said about topics relating to your business.

* Local search via smart phones will accelerate – If you’re not optimizing for local search, start now. The trend is entrenched in traditional search and is expected to ramp up faster as smart phones expand their slice of the mobile phone pie chart. 

Consider these trends as you move forward with your SEO efforts. As always, vary your marketing strategy between multiple fronts because you never know where the next algorithm changes are going to be targeted.
For more information visit: SEO Company

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Reasons Your Visitors Are Bouncing off Your Site within Seconds - Gervais Group LLC

Gervais Group LLC - SEO News by one of the Top SEO Companies Gervais Group: As the sophistication (and maybe the ADD) of people searching the web for information increases, the reaction time when the “What’s in it for me” question upon arrival at a site isn’t answered immediately is pretty quick. In fact, estimating ten seconds for that reaction is being generous. The problem is, if your visitors don’t see immediate relevance for their search terms they will bounce off your site and head elsewhere looking for that site that can give them what they want. If your analytics are showing this type of activity, your site probably possesses one or more of the following characteristics:

* Your landing page isn’t relevant to the search term that’s driving visitors to your site. If a search term like “brides lose ten pounds in two weeks” is being used, the people that arrive on your landing page are going to be looking for information on how to lose ten pounds in two weeks. If they see content on planning a wedding when they land, they’ll leave as fast as they arrived.

* Your landing page has relevance but visitors have to search for it. This is better than not having relevance, but you’ll still lose a high percentage of visitors that are seeking immediate search gratification.

* Your content is written purely for search engines. If the same keywords keep popping up and drowning the rest of your content, your visitors aren’t going to see much value in what you have to offer. Instead, balance your content so that your readers see value and the search engines see relevance.

* The search terms you’re optimizing are too broad. Using generic keywords may deliver traffic, but your site will be relevant to only a small percentage of your arrivals. The rest will probably bounce off, refine their search terms a little, and end up elsewhere.

* Your content is dated. Having content that refers to old events in the present tense or snowfall during the summer makes it look like you’re not doing much with your site. Your products may not be time sensitive but visitors will be.

* Your navigation is too complicated. Frustrating your visitors is a bad thing. Make navigation simple so that your visitors can get around your site easily.
The importance of onsite SEO can make the difference between keeping visitors on your site to purchase your offerings and losing them to your competitors.

Gervais Group LLC specializes in delivering a great visitor experience for those arriving at your site, leading to consistently optimal results. For more information, visit: SEO Companies

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Gervais Group SEO News - Maximizing the Results of Article Marketing

Gervais Group - News by SEO Company Gervais Group LLC : Article marketing usually plays a significant role in any type of SEO campaign. The practice is the creation and distribution of informative content for the purpose of raising the profile of a company and its products or services. The focus of this distributed content is to provide information and add value for the reader and is generally not written specifically as sales material.

Article marketing serves several purposes in an SEO campaign;

* Article marketing develops trust, credibility, and authority with a target market by providing information that will help that market solve a problem or improve their situation.

* Lead Generation – Articles distributed across the web incorporate links back to a specific landing page on the website. These links deliver traffic and also carry weight in the algorithms used by search engines to rank site pages.

* Lead nurturing – Prospects typically don’t buy on the first visit to a website. Article marketing builds the relationship with these prospects to increase the odds that they will eventually make a purchase.

To maximize the SEO results of article marketing:

* Don’t make it promotional. The best content used in article marketing informs the audience on how to solve a problem or make their life better in some way.

* Incorporate your keywords. Make sure you are using the keywords in your text that your SEO campaign is optimizing.

* Make it relevant. The content must relate back to your website, products, and or services in some way.

* Make the connection between where the reader is now and where they will be (or how they will feel) once their problem is solved.

* Write it well. Producing poorly executed content will actually do more harm than good. Well written content, on the other hand, will build your credibility and authority on your topics, products and services.

* Provide proof and/or references if at all possible. Your content will be assumed to have some bias by the reader but bringing in third party verification of what you’re saying can alleviate that perception. 

Article marketing for an SEO campaign on the web can be much more effective and a lot less expensive than going through traditional advertising channels. For more information, visit: Best SEO Companies or call (800) 381-9358.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Boiling it Down to the Three Functions of Search Engine Optimized Content

Gervais Group LLC - SEO Industry News by Gervais Group:
The content that your prospective customers see, whether it’s on or off of your website will ultimately prove to be the key factor in whether your SEO campaigns deliver results or not. To that end, multitasking with your search engine optimized content can serve to advance your online business dramatically. SEO that works builds from a foundation of search engine optimized content which is created with three distinct functions:

* Search engine optimized content must deliver value to the readers of articles and blogs as well as the visitors who arrive at your site. Presenting quality content to prospective customers is the way you’re going to develop credibility and trust whether it is delivered via text, video, or podcast. Defining your audience and then delivering valuable information to it will ultimately lead to increased traffic that sees your site as a trusted resource.

* Search engine optimized content which caters to the search engines is the same content your prospective customers are going to see. Writing for two separate audiences, search engines and prospective customers, requires a balanced approach that many SEO’s miss. On the side of the search engines, this balance requires that content be deemed as relevant by the search spiders that visit regularly. Relevance is achieved by calculating keyword densities in the text for search terms that are being optimized. At the same time, the content must add value for the reader. 

* Lastly, search engine optimized content has to deliver conversions.  Presenting informative and compelling content to visitors must occur first to develop credibility and trust which will ultimately lead to conversions. The next phase for search engine optimized content is to lead site visitors through the conversion process. This can be accomplished by guiding visitors through this process while making the purchasing of products and services as simple and easy as possible. Clear calls to action for prospective customers combined with simple navigation through the process will raise your conversion ratio by encouraging them to buy and then walking them through a quick and easy process to accomplish it.

Successfully combining the art and science required of these functions may be somewhat challenging at first but simply being aware of what your search engine optimized content is intended to do will improve its performance drastically. Consistently creating search engine optimized content that serves these three functions will move your site up the rankings, deliver targeted traffic from search engines, and walk prospective customers through the purchasing process.  The Gervais Group can get you on the path to SEO success with your content using proven methodologies customized for your online business. For more information, visit:  SEO Companies

Monday, June 6, 2011

Gervais Group News and Advice - The Opportunity of Local SEO

Gervais Group LLC - News and Advice by Gervais Group Atlanta SEO Company - If your business relies on customers from its local area, you have to focus on driving those customers to your location using local SEO techniques. The primary advantage of focusing on local search is that you are competing only against the other businesses that are in the same industry and in the same area as your business. This makes local optimization a very cost effective solution that can yield results much faster than competing on a national or global scale.

Here are a few tips to maximize the returns of your local optimization efforts:

* Submit your website to local directories – Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have local search capabilities. These directories are now the primary venue that people use to find local products and services.

* Add your address and other contact information to the footer of each page – This helps to define your location with search engines and your potential customers. One thing to leave out; your email address. Advertising your email address will leave you with an inbox full of spam. Instead, allow visitors to fill out a form to email you without publishing your email address.

* Make your location part of the keywords you are optimizing – Add your location to your keywords to define your area of service. Searchers are increasingly using a city or county name along with their search terms. An example would be: “Smith City plumber”. Local SEO tactics can push you to the top of search engine rankings as your search terms become more specific.

* See what the others guys are doing – See what your local competition is doing in terms of their local SEO efforts. This will provide SEO opportunities for terms that have been overlooked.

* Optimize separate pages for bordering and/or nearby towns – This expands your reach while still keeping your efforts focused on your local area.

* Use your location’s abbreviations and/or nicknames – Local searches often include these terms instead of the full name of the town. Create separate pages for these search terms as well.

Local SEO provides a huge opportunity for businesses to reach out to their local audience in a much more cost effective manner than through traditional advertising. To see how local SEO can benefit your business visit: SEO Companies or call (866) 530 7703.

Killing SEO Results with Arrogance - Gervais Group SEO News by Gervais Group (The Gervais Group) on Myspace

Killing SEO Results with Arrogance - Gervais Group SEO News by Gervais Group (The Gervais Group) on Myspace