But what’s worse than a monkey running around your back yard? A business owner that is letting monkeys market his business.

Don’t let some monkey run your marketing campaign, telling you that you need to be on the radio, on billboards or even on the side of the Metro.  Where you need to be is on page one of Google for your main search term.

And there’s only one guy in Saint Louis that can do that – me.

I’m the number one SEO in Saint Louis (Search Engine Optimization) guy for a reason – because I get your business to the top of Google, Yahoo!, Bing and many other search engines.

Don’t waste any more money on untargeted shotgun marketing schemes.  Get that monkey out of your neighborhood and hire someone that can get you targeted traffic that’s ready to buy.

After doing a little research, I discovered that they were using a hosting company that was based out of Canada, giving them a Canadian IP address for their domain. Ouch.

After speaking with them about the need to change to a US-based server, we made the switch.  And within two days suddenly they were #1 for their brand name on Google.  Suddenly they were recognized as a US based company, on a US based IP, so Google.com picked them up and ranked them accordingly.

Is your hosting company based in the US?  If not, and your target audience is in the US, you might want to consider changing.  I (of course) suggest my hosting company, which is based in the US. It will definitely make a difference.

During the meeting, he was telling me how he had control over each page footer, how he could build out each footer to be different, link to different pages, etc.  That’s cool, could help with his internal linking.

But then he started telling me how he could build different pages for slightly different terms, and them link them through the footer, thus creating an entire network of pages.  For instance: Mother’s Day

mothers-day.htm
mothers-day-gifts.htm
mothers-day-ideas.htm
personalized-mothers-day-gifts.htm

and so on.

These micropages, in his mind, could each be optimized for their particular keyphrase, and they’d ultimately dump the visitor to the same products.

I think that’s a bad strategy and can explain with one word – dillution.

By creating a network of similar pages, you’re dilluting the domain and potential authority that site may have for “mothers day” terms by spreading them across 5, 10 or whatever amount of pages.

I think building one page that ranks nicely for Mother’s Day is the way to go.

But – you say – if he creates 10 pages with 10 different targeted keyphrases, isn’t he increasing his landing pages by 10?  Sure, but he’s dilluting the chance that any one of those 10 will ever rank for any of those terms.

One Strong Page

The smart way to go is to build one awesomely authoritative page.  Put links to the various product or product categories that Mom would like, and then add some content that reflects mother’s day.  Naturally use a few different keyphrases (don’t go overboard here) and you’ll be ahead of the curve.  Need an example? Check out what Zappos did.

Step two would be to build links back to the Mother’s Day page with various anchor texts, thus ranking that one page for many related terms.

MicroSites

The inspiration for this post came after I read Vanessa Fox’s article today on microsites.  I agree with her that these sites can cause confusion for visitors and search engines alike.  They also spread out your web designer/SEO guy’s time between several domain names.  That time (and money) would be better focused building one kick-ass domain.

Niche Sites – Not to Be Confused

Lastly, I wanted to mention that there’s a definite difference between a microsite that’s created simply for the reason of pushing traffic to a main site and a niche site.

Niche sites are sites created for the purpose of cornering a particular market (for instance bluedoorknobs.com) and selling to that small & tightly focused audience.  These sites can be highly profitable, depending on the audience.  At no time to niche sites “dump” their visitors off to a bigger and better site in order to expand their sales.  They’re there to sell blue door knobs and that’s it.

The Debate Goes On

I know there are those out there who disagree about both the micropage and  microsite strategy.  I’d love to hear what you have to say!

These sub-results take you to SERP pages for that particular search.  So a click on the Maytag link would take you to results for the term Maytag.

From an SEO standpoint, this is a terrific addition.  Companies who are having a bit of difficulty (or lack of finances) to rank for huge terms now have a ‘second shot’ at ranking for them through these sub-results.

And with personalized search, these sub-results can really help out the local vendor who was smart enough to add their business to Google Places.  They’re now “showing up on page two” for a major term.

Sure, it’s a roundabout way to get there, but I’m going to go ahead and say they’ll see more organic traffic from this change.  What do you think?

Sometimes I meet a business owner that has done a little research, changed a few things on his/her website, and is really proud of being on the second page of Google for one of their industry’s terms.  But how many Internet searchers actually go to the second page of a Google result?

The Internet has definitely cultured a great bit of impatience, particularly when it comes to finding information online.  We want the right information, and we want it now.  Searching the Internet through search engines like Google, Yahoo! or Bing (or the thousands of other choices) will usually yield good results, but they aren’t perfect.

On average, only 11% of Internet searchers go to page two of a SERP – search engine result page.  So ranking on page one gives you nearly 8 times the amount of traffic that a page two ranking will give you.

Even worse – only 3% of that 11% go to page three.  That means that a page three ranking is virtually useless.  While it may bring you a visitor or two a month, it’s not doing you much good.

Spiders on the Web

The average ‘stale’ website gets visited (aka spidered) by the search engines every 4-6 weeks.  Since the website hasn’t changed in a long time, there’s no real reason for them to come by every week and check for new content.

This is pretty typical of businesses.  They get a website:

• because they heard they needed one
• because their competition has one
• because all the cool kids have one

There’s no thought put into the website beyond the fact that they needed one, and in most cases business owners didn’t even put much thought into who they hired to do it.  Total waste of huge opportunity for revenue growth.

Getting to Page One

Since the average website isn’t going anywhere fast, getting the search engines to take notice of it can take some time.  A lot of time.  If you started making changes to your website today, there’s a high possibility that the search engines won’t even notice those changes for up to a month and a half.  Even then, noticing and doing something (ranking you higher) are two different things.  If you’ve optimized your home page for the term blue widgets, and currently you aren’t listed in the top 100 results (10 SERP pages) for that phrase, a move into position 89 isn’t really doing you much good, is it?  Sure, it’s a step in the direction you want, but it’s not producing any traffic.  So how do you get to page one?

Ah, that’s the golden question, isn’t it?

The way to a page one result is through constant and consistent pressure.  Blogging weekly will increase the search engines’ awareness of your website.  They’ll see that ‘movement’ and start to visit your website more often.  They’ll start to rank your site because there’s real information (content) that’s valuable to their searchers.

That change, along with link building, onsite optimization, and a ton of other things will get your site moving in the right direction – up!  But don’t think it’s a one time or quick fix.  If you do, you may see some very short term rankings, but you’ll fall right back in the no-traffic-pit.

Why Most SEO Contracts are Long Term

A good SEO will require (at minimum) a six month contract.  Personally, I won’t take anything less than a one year commitment from a new client.  Why?  Well, just like I said earlier – six months of work might get you to page three or two of a term.  It’s still useless unless you’re happy with sitting at 11% of your potential.  I’m not happy with that.  A one year commitment tells me that the business owner understands that they are investing in a long term strategy, not a short term bandaid.

Want to find out more about Search Engine Optimization for Small Business?  Contact me and let’s talk!

Many business owners are surprised to find out that changing just a few things to their website can result in a decent raise in their overall site rankings.  What they may not realize, however, is that there are more than just a few things that Google measures when ranking their website against their competition.

The complex algorithm that Google uses to determine where your website should rank contains over 200 parts. So while those few things you’ve done will bump up your site a little bit, there’s still a lot to be done.

And no, no one but a very select few know what all 200+ parts are.  If you come across an Internet Marketing guy who claims to know the secret, you should run the opposite direction.  Google isn’t in the business of sharing their trade secrets, and with good reason.

The latest addition to the 200-part algorithm measures site load time.  That means that slow loading sites will actually be penalized in their ranking if they take longer than average (1-2 seconds max) to load.  If your site is taking a while to load up, you’ve got something else to fix.

A business owner should be aware that there are a ton of variables involved when building a website that ranks well for industry-related terms.  If you’re in the position of needing to hire a  search engine/Internet marketer, ask them if they know just how many parts of Google’s algorithm there are.