search optimization Websites with extreme SEO search marketing resultz, Resultz Digital!

Measuring the SEO of your site, your competitors’ sites and the people trying to sell you SEO services

January 30, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

There are a lot advantages to having a website with strong, positive, active SEO properties and structure. The search marketing opportunities from excellent SEO may dramatically increase your business income and significantly reduce expenses.

Many website owners will pursue trying to improve their site’s SEO but have little in the way of methods to measure progress or change. Before you spend a lot of time and/or money on SEO it is very helpful to have “baselines” to measure your own site and how it “stacks-up” against your competition. Also before you buy any SEO services I suggest measuring the site of the SEO company. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that if they are selling the service shouldn’t their site(s) demonstrate some of their SEO ability?

So how to measure a website’s SEO? There are a lot of tools, but there are two I use everyday. These provide a quick snapshot of a site’s SEO potential and can be refreshed to show the results of any changes that you make. This means you get an idea of your progress without having to wait possibly weeks for Google’s index to reflect your changes.

They are:

the Website Grader website and,
Vladimir Prelovac’s SEO Doctor add-on for Firefox (you will need to use Firefox)

Both of these tools will provide you a numeric percentage type score and some summary evaluations of important site structure, elements and assets. It is important to understand that these tools cannot measure the outcome of your SEO efforts. (After all you can have great SEO but have it poorly targeted to your potential market. ) But even if you have the best content it will likely fail in the search engine results against your competitors if your site does not score well.

And what is a good score? Glad you asked. In a competitive market I think you need to be above 95 (or work towards) in the SEO Doctor and above 90 in the Website Grader, for meaningful organic search marketing. Because successful search marketing can provide such lucrative results to a business “winning” is now a matter of very small percentages. The difference of 1-3 percent in either of these tools can mean your site will not appear high enough in organic SERPs to gain any visitors. The race is not between sites that score 80% and 90% neither of them maybe winning, it is between the sites at 94% to 99%. So if you want the benefits of organic search you can’t settle with being better than 80% of websites. You need to be better than 95% percent of them.

Finally, just one note of caution in using the tools, don’t follow the tools blindly. Sometimes there is a good reason to vary from their offered guidelines. Just know your purpose in doing it.

As always, if you have a question send me an email.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, SEO, Tools and Tips Tagged With: Firefox, Internet Marketing, measurements, search engine optimization, Search Engines, search marketing, search optimization, SEO, web/blogsites, website marketing

Almost everything you need to know about SEO for search marketing

January 30, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

Once I get the structure and functions of your complete website correct (valid HTML, semantically correct, permissions, sitemaps, indexable domains, blog and galleries together, social media integration, optimal URLs, site speed and much more) then it is all about your content. That is the key to strong online search engine marketing. That is what is important! But how to do it day-to-day after the site is built?

In the below video one of the most respected WordPress SEO gurus, Joost de Valk, explains “Making sure your content is found”. It is 40 minutes long and very well worth every moment of your time.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, SEO Tagged With: Blogs, Internet Marketing, marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, search optimization, SEO, SMO, web/blogsites, Websites

Nice words from Mike Black of Black Studios Photography

January 20, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

When I do a website for a business, the scope includes many, many details that are related in enhancing the search marketing and social media marketing potential of their business’ web presence. It is not just about the website look anymore. Details include; website code validation, social media integration, search marketing keyword content creation, site visitor lead conversion, the website and hosting speed, even domain name and registration optimization. Over the last years I have helped Mike with all of this, including two website. So I really appreciated this recent note from Mike.

A big thank you goes out to Marc Fuller for helping me figure out some SEO issues with our website. I love the Bludomain flash website product for our galleries and Marc has been great at helping us integrate a WordPress based Bludomain web/blogsite wrap for www.blackstudios.com , now in it’s second generation.

I can figure out about 80% of what I need to do, but it’s Marc that takes it to the next level with his customizations and detailed internet marketing optimization knowledge.

I just like to create websites that win new business for my clients.

Filed Under: Testimonials Tagged With: BluDomain, search marketing, search optimization, SEM, social media, Social Networks, web/blogsites, website marketing, WordPress

Kudos from Dapper Images – San Diego wedding photography studio

January 17, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

We are a wedding photography studio and are so pleased with the work that Marc has done for us!

We hired him to create a new WordPress based splash page layout for our Bludomain flash website so that it would be search engine friendly. And very easy to update/modify.

We also had him create a new blog layout for us that is under the same domain name as our website, so that when we post keyword rich blog posts with relevant tags, it would point back to our main website, and not just to our blog domain.

Now our website and blog are under the same domain and we are thrilled because we know this will make our website so much more visible to search engines. Marc was amazing to work with, great communication, we highly recommend him!

Yasmine + Deshun
dapperimages.com

Filed Under: Testimonials Tagged With: BluDomain, search engine optimization, Search Engines, search marketing, search optimization, SEM, social media, splash page, web/blogsites, Websites, WordPress

Optimizing Google Places for Local Search Marketing Results

January 16, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

Local search is critical to most of my clients’ businesses. That is how people find many, if not most, of the goods and services they buy. Face it we have used it for years with directories and yellow pages, that is a form of local search. It is easy and appropriate to think of search engine driven local search as the new yellow pages and replacing all kinds of directories. Today’s market uses online search with computers and smart phones. Not so much anymore … phone books.

One of the most quickly effective and productive tactics to boost your local search engine marketing is to improve your Google Places page. This is the listing of a few business with a map locating them that appears at the beginning of many search results initial page. All it takes is time and effort properly applied, to frequently be one of those few businesses when people are searching for what you offer.

If you have not already verified (and captured) your Google Places page do it as soon as you can.

First step, if you not have already done it is to “verify” the Goole Places page for your business. Or if you’re a brand new business you may even need to start the Google Places page for your business.

Here is how you do it. (from this excellent 31 page pdf guide, “Ranking in Google Places” by SEOFactor)

We need to first see if your business is already listed in Google Places. If it is, we need to make sure there aren’t any problems like duplicate listings or incorrect information.

Finding Your Business.

Searching for a Google Places page is simple enough. Simply go to http://maps.google.com and search for the name of your business.

It’s a good idea to search for more than just the business name though. Try your street address and phone number. Also, go ahead and try a few “common” searches one of your customers might make. If you still don’t see any listings for your business, it’s probably not in there.

Google will also do a search for you when you first begin the claiming process, and if they find similar listings they will let you know.

What if You Find Your Business?

If you find a listing for your business, then there are a few things we need to look at. Take a look at all of the information on the listing’s Place page and note any corrections that need to be made. Also, see if there are more listings, and make a note of those as well.

When you’re looking at the Place page, you should see a link in the upper-right corner (almost the exact middle of the screen). The link will either say “Business owner?” or “Owner-verified listing.”

If your listing has the “Business owner?” link, then nobody has claimed ownership of this Place page yet. However, if the page you are looking at has the “Owner-verified listing” link, then somebody claimed that listing. Don’t worry too much. This could just mean that someone in your company has already claimed the listing. Ask around the office to make sure.

If your business was claimed, but not by anyone in your organization, then it means that someone claimed the listing, and not likely for honorable reasons. Take a closer look at the listing, and you may notice that the phone number or website address is incorrect.

No matter. Whether your business has a listing or not, you will soon be taking ownership.

If you didn’t find your listing, then you’ll need to add it to Google directly. Simply go to
http://google.com/places and you will be met with a login screen. If you don’t already have a Google account login, then you’ll have to create a new account.

If you found a listing during your initial search, you just have to click the “Business owner?” link, and the process will continue as normal.

Above are just the first steps in making Google Place provide a competitive advantage for you. For detailed instructions on completing the process and making as good a listing as is possible you should download the guide linked above, or contact me to make your Google Places page as strong as possible and significantly increase your search impressions. I recently increased a clients Google Places search impressions for their product in the Denver area from an average of 300 impressions per month to over 9,000 impressions per month in just two weeks time. If you don’t have the time it is worth the small amount of money to pay an experienced expert for this optimization service. I do this service for each of my website clients.

A final tip. This is not mentioned in the guide but one thing I have found recently that will significantly help boost your placement in Google Places is to offer a special or coupon. There is a link in the Google Places edit screen for the information and duration of the coupon special. Make it timely, relevant to your marketing keywords,of modest duration say 30-60 days and describe if with your marketing keywords. Then change and add new specials every 30-60 days. If you have question about this send me an email.

Bonus – here is another good link that will help you understand Google Places best practices and even a little information about optimizing Yelp for better placement and local marketing of your business.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: Google, Google Places, Internet Marketing, marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, search optimization, SEO, SMO, Yelp

Whois privacy may hurt your SEO and search marketing

January 12, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

Whois privacy, something that many domain name registrars like GoDaddy will try to sell you, but that you probably don’t need, and don’t want As much as domain name registrars will encourage you to make your registration information private and buy their upsell add-on annual fee, I have another view. Unless you have a compelling reason other than spam, I recommend not to do it. Compelling reasons could include a “no outside employment” agreement or perceived social acceptability of your site’s products/offering

As for spam, face it, if you are doing business on the internet with a website you will get spam. There are ways to reduce and fight spam, but be cautious about using domain name privacy to do so.

How might having your domain registration details private hurt? Well it turns out spam and scam websites often do have the registration privacy in-place. (you can reason why) While most legitimate sites don’t. Whois privacy can present a certain type of site profile.

And it is interesting when Matt Cutts (Google anti-spam team leader) was reviewing sites for SEO effectiveness and he had this to say about a HiFi store website:

The HiFi store was fine, but this was another example where someone had 40+ other sites. Having lots of sites isn’t bad, but I’ve mentioned the risk that not all the sites get as much attention as they should. In this case, 1-2 of the sites were stuff like cheap-cheap-(something-related-to-telephone-calling).com. Rather than any real content, most of the pages were pay-per-click (PPC) parked pages, and when I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. Having lots of sites isn’t automatically bad, and having PPC sites isn’t automatically bad, and having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.

More directly Jon Glick, former key member of the Yahoo! search team said this about using Whois domain registration privacy:

This is one more potential “flag” that can earn you points to a spam audit. It works well for spammers who are attempting to keep the engines from finding all their sites in one swoop. Those guys are in the business of disposable domains; if you’re not it’s better to avoid this tactic.

So this is one area where you can save money and perhaps help enhance your SEO. Particularly if you put that savings towards a longer domain name registration period.

Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO Tagged With: domain names, Google, search engine optimization, Search Engines, search marketing, search optimization, SEM, SEO, SMO, WHOIS privacy

A Dream Wedding by Sharon Replaces Their Old Bludomain Flash Website with a New WordPress Site

July 12, 2010 by Marc 2 Comments

Well known San Diego wedding planner Sharon Cole of A Dream Wedding by Sharon contacted me regarding improving her search engine marketing and internet presence. For a number of years she had been using a Bludomain website but recently found that with increasing competition, her website traffic and leads had become almost nil. This is in spite of her being an area ABC leader and the all the awards and news paper articles and links she had developed over the years in business in San Diego.

In looking into her site’s presence, we discovered that her website was virtually not present in Google’s index. Even Google searching with her business name and city the site was not found. The reason for this is because the inherently low “indexability” of a Bludomain site combined with no changes to the site in years. Effectively the search engine calculated that the site was just not relevant for what people may be searching. You see, most Bludomain websites really only have two actual pages, the splash page and the rest of the Flash website. The website itself is functionally just one page of Flash content with different actions. When we discussed all this the plan became multi-faceted and clear.

Sharon and Maria (her office manager) improved the legacy splash page text content and began using Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics to begin to “wake” up the site. I helped Maria install WordPress on the Bludomain hosting account and behind the scenes started to create an all new WordPress based website for A Dream Wedding by Sharon. A little progress, Sharon’s legacy site returned to Google’s index, though very far down in the listings.

But the Bludomain hosting account was very troublesome for WordPress. The blog was always a struggle with loading plugins and having errors. Bludomain’s hosting setup is often not a very friendly enviroment for WordPress, more so with WP 3.0. So the new WP based website would be based on a non-Bludomain server. (When the time came to choose whether the legacy Bludomain site would be kept, moved or dropped it was decided, after Bludomain quoted $80 to move it for what was effectively 2 indexed pages, that the site would be allowed to “fade away” and the savings used elsewhere.)

It’s done, and Sharon feels the new site is a great fresh look for her San Diego wedding planning business, and not like a typical blog site. And it succeeds in Google, search marketing and social media marketing. The new site already has well over 90 pages in Google index, is moving up in search placement and search traffic and best of all the site traffic has increased almost 10 fold. Plus it is easy to add new information, pages and posts to it to tailor internet marketing to the interest of today’s bride to be. When Sharon adds new content to the site it automatically Tweets the news and posts content to Facebook. And, not to forget that the new site is also viewable in iPhones and other mobile devices where her Bludomain site was not.

Please visit and take a look at A Dream Wedding by Sharon’s new web/blogsite. If you have questions about Bludomain SEO, internet marketing or WordPress based web/blog sites please send me an email.

Filed Under: BluDomain, Featured, Portfolio, Websites Tagged With: BluDomain, Facebook, Flash, Internet Marketing, marketing, search engine optimization, Search Engines, search marketing, search optimization, social media, twitter, web/blogsites, Websites, Wedding Marketing, WordPress

Measurements – Four Favorite WordPress Stat/Analytics Plugins for your Site’s Dashboard

July 12, 2010 by Marc Leave a Comment

One of the treats with a WordPress based website is how easy it is to measure results of your posts and other marketing activity. What gets measured gets done and the plugins discussed in this post can help.

Of course you can get all this from Google Analytics, and if your hosting company provides the server host logs, in programs like AWStats, Webalizer and Analog those too. But you have to login in to those services. I think it is great as long as your are in the Admin area of your WordPress based website to see how your site traffic is while you are right there … writing a post, approving comments or otherwise updating the site.

Below are four WordPress stat plugins that I like. Not sure which one I like better, they all provide a little bit different view of your site traffic and depth. They are all current (as of this post date) work well with WP 3.0 and fortunately they all seem compatible with one another.

WordPress.com Stats

If you have activated Akismet (and you should) you should also install and activate WordPress.com Stats. It uses the same API key that you use in Akismet. WordPress.com Stats provides an excellent data set for quick review with nice “drill-down” functionality. All the data is processed in WordPress’ servers so this plugin will not slow down your site or load your server. Very fast. Ultra easy to setup.

Analytics360

This plugin was developed by Alex King for MailChimp. (Alex is also the author of the indispensible Twitter Tools plugin.) Analytics360 allows you to pull your Google Analytics data into your WordPress dashboard for easy review TOGETHER with your MailChimp data. In one panel you can see how your posts and email are driving site traffic. Trends in site traffic and list growth. And your site’s top traffic sources.

This plugin does require Google Analytics (also free) and will work with or without MailChimp, but the basic MailChimp account is free and allows you a list of up to 500 addresses and 3000 sent emails per month. If you don’t already have Google Analytics tracking in your site, Google Analyticator is a very simple to use plugin that makes placing the Google Analytics script easy.

Clicky

I am liking Clicky more and more; it has very easy to read, useful interface and uses your real time site data. Joost de Valk (a true WordPress SEO master) created a new Clicky plugin to take advantage of the many new statistical features offered by Clicky. The basic Clicky stat account is free and provides some unique views of your website traffic. It is simple and quick to setup a Clicky account and then install and enable the Clicky plugin.

Woopra Analytics

“Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application.” And I find that somehow the Woopra’s WordPress plugin stat reporting interface is fun to use (“fun” and “stats” don’t normally go together) and again provides some unique perspectives into your site visitors and traffic. Like all the other plugins listed here you will need an account for the data tracker, but the basic Woopra account is free and simple to setup. Just visit the Woopra website and sign up. Then place the script in your site’s footer, activate the plugin and you are good to go.

May you have great measurements! If you have any questions just email me. All four of the tools are running on this site.

Filed Under: Business Planning, Internet Marketing, Tools and Tips, WordPress Tagged With: Internet Marketing, search marketing, search optimization, statistics, trends, Websites

New website for Midnight Magic Studios a growing wedding videography business.

July 11, 2010 by Marc 1 Comment

Don Samples of Midnight Magic Studios in Knoxville TN works hard and makes really great wedding videos. He has been a long time client and I adapted the first Kertesz release for use as his website starting in 2008 using WordPress 2.5.

So it seems very unfair that his site was severely hacked recently. I think Don would be the first to admit he should have kept WordPress system more up to date, but the automated site hijack hackers are just wrong.

midnight magic video new si 250x300 New website for Midnight Magic Studios a growing wedding videography business.

New Midnight Magic Studios website

After not being able to cure the site infection himself, Don contacted me in late June to see what could be done. It was pretty bad, the database and PHP files were hosed, but WordPress was able to export a clean XML file we could use to rebuild the site pretty quickly. So there were two paths, 1) restore the site using my old backup of the current theme or 2) take the opportunity to upgrade the site to a newer more appealing theme layout offering all the new WordPress 3.0 features plus better SEO, improved security, easier one click total WP site system upgrades and social media integration with Twitter and Facebook. The second choice was only about two hours more time that the first even including some new site graphics. Don chose the second option!

We picked a layout that was almost brand new and adapted well to videography. Then over the next two days I customized the layout, graphics, imported the old site’s content and setup a bunch of new features for both site visitors and search marketing. Then like the Bionic Man, Don’s site was back even better, faster, stronger than before in just three days total. And for me the best of it all is Don likes it better, too. Not to mention the improved site traffic and inquiries. All for almost the same cost as just restoring the old site.

Please visit Don’s new site and see his work. And if you have any questions about the potential advantages of a new WordPress based website system for your business please send me an email.