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8 Everyday Web Technologies Your Website Can Bank On

1.    Google Maps – Google has made it incredibly simple (and fun) to literally put yourself on the map.  This works in two ways.  The first is that you can customize and use their maps on your website.  The second is that your business and site can be placed on Google Maps in search.  A promising tactic worth looking into!

2.    Twitter – Twitter is a great way to build a stronger relationship with customers and likely direct a little bit of extra traffic to your website as well. The trick is to find the right balance of “self-promotion” without it becoming a turn-off.

3.    Blogs – We talk about the benefits of blogging a lot, simply because they’re so prevalent.  Installing a blog on your website and using it to its fullest advantage is definitely in your website’s best interest.

4.    Plug-ins & Widgets – They kind of go hand in hand with blogs, but the sheer number and incredible variety of plug-ins available for the major blog platforms is staggering.  They open up a whole new world of possibilities when custom programming was once the only solution.

5.    CMS – CMS stands for Content Management System and in a nutshell means that you can log in from pretty much any net connected device and make simple additions, updates, or changes to your site’s content.  It’s as easy as writing an email.  Blog platforms can be used to accomplish CMS—also, there are several CMS specific services out there that are fantastic.  WSpider can help you get started with CMS today!

6.    Facebook – Setting up a profile on Facebook for your business or organization is becoming increasingly common.  It’s up to you to decide how to benefit from this strategy the most, but a quick look at what others are doing with Facebook should give you lots of inspiration.

7.    RSS – Another technology that’s basically derived from blogging, RSS (stands for Real Simple Syndication) enables visitors to click on a button and keep track of your blog or site updates the exact way that they’d like to.  While email signups are still a great idea, many users are more comfortable with RSS instead because they’re in full control—no need to worry about potential spam or misuse of their email address.

8.    Mailing List Managers – If you do have an email signup on your site, the only way to go is to use a professional mailing manager service.  It keeps things on the up and up by requiring the correct legal opt-in procedures for visitors and also makes broadcasting your newsletter or email updates a breeze.

What Are The Essentials Of SEO?

What are the essentials of SEO?  This is a really common question among those checking into the scores of different web traffic building methods out there.  If you’ve been asking yourself this exact question, you are in luck—we’re here to help walk you through the SEO process.  Let’s start right from the beginning!

What SEO Means

SEO is simply the common acronym that stands for “Search Engine Optimization.”  You’ve heard the term time and time again, but what it really means is actually deeper than the initial surface level interpretation.  A successful SEO plan is a multi-faced approach towards building an ongoing stream of steady, targeted visitor traffic—and leveraging free exposure from the major search engines to make it all work.

On the contrary, real SEO is not a gimmick or a way to trick search engines to rank a site highly.  This misconception is the unfortunate result of too many unethical SEO services out there!

The Components of High Performance White Hat SEO

White hat SEO, or in other words the good guy tactics of doing things according to the search engines’ guidelines and to provide maximum value to website visitors, is the only way to go.  That is...unless you want to have your website permanently banned from the search engines altogether!

By starting with research and analysis, high performance SEO works to create a plan for success from the very beginning.  For example, here are the high performance SEO essentials that we depend on at WSpider for producing the best possible results:

• Site Analysis – Again, it’s always best to start by really understanding the current build of a website, along with what is working and what is not.
• Code Review – Taking an introspective look into the technical components of a site is very essential to performance.  It’s a well-known fact that search engines like to rank sites with clean, error free code structure at the highest end of their scale.
• Competitor Reporting – Ah yes...the competitors!  We can learn so much about a specific traffic segment by understanding what the most successful competitors are doing to rank highly.
• Optimization – Optimization is actually carrying out all of the changes within a site and implementing additional features that have been identified as being beneficial.
• Geographic Optimization – So many websites neglect the incredible benefits of local-based search.  We believe that accounting for geographic location is a top essential because it is proven to work.
• Directory Registration – Directories still play an integral part in SEO.  By targeting both major and niche web directories, a site will build relevant link popularity and reach many more visitors directly.
• Monthly Tracking – High performance SEO doesn’t stop once the first round of improvements are carried out!  By keeping track of month-to-month successes, it’s much easier to build upon a base of proven techniques.

By following a well balanced plan built of high performance SEO essentials, rather than just randomly attempting one-off optimization tricks, long lasting traffic success is inevitable.

From Rags To Riches: Optimizing Your Site For The Next Google

Getting ready to make a significant investment in the success of your website?  If you’re considering quality white-hat search engine optimization, then you’re making the right choice.  In fact, by making sure a few important white-hat standards are followed as your site is SEO’d, there’s a pretty impressive bonus waiting just around the corner in the fact that your site will not only be optimized for the short term, but the optimization will be just as good in the future as it is today.

This is actually kind of the true test to tell if SEO is white-hat search optimization or not.  If the optimization will help your site do well with Google now and with the next big thing to come along in the future (sure, Google is obviously here to stay, but hey, you just never know what might be next) at the same time, chances are good that you’re doing the right thing by carrying out true quality optimization.

Optimizing Your Site For The Future Means Optimizing It Right!

Investing in the long term success of your website is not overly challenging—especially with the help of experienced all-organic web optimization providers like WSpider.  The key is avoiding all of those little tricks and gimmicks that are all too often used by less-than-ethical SEO services to boost your rankings just long enough until your payment clears.  When dealing with this kind of black-hat provider, your rankings (as well as your money) are practically as good as gone in short order.

The Success Factor Is Focusing On Long-Lasting Quality Strategies.

There are several plans of action that will ensure your site receives honest long term benefits for the SEO work you have done today.  For example...

• Gradually building up a base of on-topic incoming links from other relevant high-quality websites.
• Encouraging the use of polished and proven technology to help analyze each and every detail of your site for optimal performance.
• Developing a keyword blueprint that precisely directs ongoing growth of your site along a predetermined path of success.
• Making absolutely sure that each SEO objective that’s undertaken will also bring an increased level of value to your website visitors.

Yes, there are plenty more examples of successful long range strategies; these are just the tip of the iceberg.  Optimizing your website effectively for the search engines today—and also for what will come along in the future—is a matter of making only ethical improvements each step of the way.  All organic white-hat SEO will ensure that your site will be ready for whatever the future holds!

Buyer Beware – The Warning Signs Of Unethical SEO Providers

Much like any product or service out there, it’s really important for those hiring an SEO service to be at least casually cautious in their provider selection process.  While there are certainly plenty of respectable SEO services out there, it’s only natural that there are also a few fly-by-night service “providers” with a less than stellar reputation for integrity too.

Fortunately, for SEO buyers in particular, there are a few basic telltale signs that foreworn of possible trouble at hand when it comes to finding the right providers.  Let’s take a look at a few of the most obvious warning signs...

Warning Sign #1:  The SEO provider is promising overnight results.  Buyers beware...this is as clear of a warning sign there is!  Search optimization results can happen quickly; they can even begin to happen in a couple of weeks.  Most of the time, it takes a month or two for real signs of success to show.  But ethical results NEVER happen overnight.

Warning Sign #2:  The SEO service is touting their ability to get you guaranteed number one results for a popular keyword term with the major search engines.  While this is a noble goal, the only entity that could make this promise with 100% authority is the search engine itself (and unfortunately, there’s just no way they’re going to do that).  Providers that promise specific results are simply not being honest.

Warning Sign #3:  An SEO provider plans to get you hundreds of thousands of incoming links in just a day or two.  Building link popularity is essential to long-range search optimization success, but doing it immediately can only mean two things...the provider is planning to use link farms (considered search spam) to place your links or they are planning to get you links that are low quality and irrelevant to your site’s topic.  Depending on the severity of the case, the end results of this tactic could be anything from being banned from the search engines to simply wasting lots of money.

Warning Sign #4:  An unethical service provider suggests keyword stuffing to help your website rank highly.  Keyword stuffing—a.k.a. filling your pages up with excessive keywords, often to the point of being completely unintelligible to visitors—is simply nothing more than search spam.  It might produce a short burst of increased traffic, but will get your site banned from the search engines in no time at all.  Steer clear of keyword stuffers, but also know make sure to understand the difference between keyword stuffing and ethical optimized use of keywords (the former is really bad, and the latter is really good).

The bottom line?  It always pays to ask a few questions and look at examples of an SEO provider’s previous successes before inking the deal.

Think Local For These Six Easy To Score Incoming Links

Incoming links are not always easy to obtain! Fortunately, search optimization experts are really good about finding and securing plenty of quality, appropriate links to help build your site’s link popularity ethically. But there is one way in particular that you can help move the process along, right from your own neck of the woods.

More often than not, local organizations are eager to help out fellow organizations and businesses within their own communities. This means that asking for a link will often receive an automatic “yes” response. Here are 6 great places to start...

1. Chamber of Commerce – That’s right, if you’re a member already, be sure you’re website’s link is listed at your local Chamber of Commerce web directory. Almost every Chamber organization offers this as a little membership perk. And if you’re not a member already, you should seriously consider joining—the rewards are well worth it!

2. Convention & Visitors Bureau – Most communities have one. If you provide a service or benefit to the community, and especially if that service might apply to those visiting your community, this is a win-win proposition.

3. The Local News - Here’s a thought...the news is always looking for possible stories that involve the community. If your business is finding unusual success during the current recession, or if you just have a unique story to tell, inform the media via PR or perhaps even a simple phone call. Be sure to give them the link to your website so they can share it along with the news story.

4. Local Only Directories – Chances are, your web optimization strategy includes promotion to several important global-audience web directories. But have you forgotten to look up the local online directories? Even most small communities have one—see if you can score a link with yours.

5. Provide Testimonial – This works great nationally too, but it works especially well locally. Contact a few of the businesses you contract with on a regular basis and offer to provide a short testimonial about the merits of the service or product they offer for them to freely post on their website. It’s not unusual at all for a link back to your site to be included with such a testimonial.

6. Better Business Bureau – Providing your customers with assurance is just one respectable reason to become a member of the BBB. Another reason is that your local area’s organization will probably give a link to your site from your profile on their site.

Again, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the obvious. Don’t forget about asking for links according to these six tips and also from any other organizations you might be involved with.

Is Twitter Going To Make My Website Obsolete?

There’s no need to be afraid of Twitter. Let’s face it, micro blogging can be a really great way to build buzz and even to generate traffic and build a stronger customer base. But while it’s a perfect way to competent your website, it’s just not going to come anywhere close to replacing it. Why not?

Search Engines Aren’t Likely Going To Index A Bunch Of Random Micro Posts Well

Web optimization professionals all know that the backbone to building great search rankings is building a solid website full of targeted niche information. While the little blurbs offered by micro bloggers can indeed be catchy, helpful, and sometimes even informative, they are just not organized well enough or comprehensive enough to make a noteworthy impact with the search engines.

When the search engines do pick up on Twitter profiles, it looks like most of the results listed will be supplementary to an organization’s website. Remember, this can only help your website succeed by offering additional exposure and catching potential new visitors that might not find you otherwise.

Micro-Blogging Is Not Going To Replace Traditional Blogging

Blogs have proven to be one of the most reliable tools in a website’s traffic building arsenal. They provide information, offer “sticky” content to visitors, help develop trust with customers, and are a fantastic way to share news and updates. Micro blogging might present a little bit of competition for that last aspect—sharing news and updates—but other than that, the long format of standard blog posts just provides more of a resource to convey your site’s important messages.

And the best thing about traditional blogs is that we already know that the search engines love tightly-themed, regularly-updated content on websites. Blogs provide plenty of fresh new material for the search engines to index, but most importantly, for your visitors to read. The less than one short sentence format of micro-blogging provides a nice lead to attract visitors to a site’s blog itself, but other than that, long-form blogging remains the bread and butter.

So, Should You Use Twitter For Your Organization?

Absolutely! Again, the unique catchiness of the micro blogging platform is a fantastic way to draw serious attention. Many businesses are finding great success using their Twitter presence to reach out and offer customer and product support. With a little research and creativity, there’s no doubt that using Twitter can be an incredibly effective success tactic for your business.

That said—it’s only going to help your website, not make it obsolete!

Outsourcing SEO Saves Significantly

Let’s begin with the facts.  At WSpider, we are clearly in the business of offering professional organic web search optimization services.  So with that said, we have an active interest in promoting the value added services we offer.  Hey, it’s only fair to be upfront, right?

So with that said, it’s safe to say that our opinion on outsourcing SEO is probably a little biased towards the multiple benefits offered.  But, wow—does outsourcing ever make incredible sense when it comes to cutting edge technology like search optimization!

Outsourced SEO Saves Your Organization Significant Money.

Let’s do a little study of the numbers here.  Starting off, we’ll assume that a reasonable salary for a highly experienced trained SEO professional is at least $50,000 per year (in reality, it’s probably quite a bit more)...  Now adding the typical company benefits package of approximately 25% to that amount puts us at a yearly sum of $62,500.

Tech professionals are in high demand, even with the current recession.  This means that to be competitive, you’d need to offer at least 3 or 4 weeks’ vacation, plus holidays and perks.  The point is, from the very beginning, hiring in-house is VERY expensive, and at the same time, as the hiring party, you’ll also start progressively losing hours the newly hired pro puts in from day one of their hire.

So what’s the cost of outsourcing and receiving even more services than an in-house employee could possibly provide?  Well, our WSpider Essentials package starts at just $49.99 per month.  Compare this to the $5,000+ in wages per month that’d be paid to an employee to achieve the same results.  Clearly, outsourced SEO saves your organization significant money!

Outsourced SEO Saves Your Organization Significant Time.

Moving on to the next component of quality white hat SEO—it does take time to achieve significant results.  The thing is, with the proprietary technology-based solution that we use, we’re effectively replicating what would take a traditional employee months—or even years—to do, all in just hours. 

Sure, it still takes a bit of time before the results really begin to take off, but with our unique process, we really can get your site off the starting line today.  On the other hand, it would be several months before in-house optimization would reach this point of initial launch momentum.

Outsourcing SEO is not expensive.  In fact, using the figures above, letting the professionals perform expert optimization of your organization’s website might just be the best bargain in the history of the web!

How To Stand Apart From Your Online Competitors

Having a bit of trouble keeping up with the competition?  It’s a common issue for those doing business online.  Here are a few practical pointers to increasing your website’s competitiveness.

Find Out What They’re Doing Right

Your competitors must be doing something right; after all, they’re still in business, aren’t they?  The trick is to check out their website thoroughly and try to figure out which parts are really connecting with the visitors.  For example, does their site’s blog really stand out...Is it receiving lots of comments from customers?  If this is the case, maybe you should consider improving your own site’s blog.

Make a list of the components of their site that you like and those you don’t.  Whatever you do, be sure not to copy their website in any way, but do use the features you like as inspiration when working with your own website design.

Analyze Their Search Strategy

This can be difficult to do in-house without the right tools, but it is possible to gather some preliminary data through a few simple web searches.  When you search the web for a specific product or service, does your competitor rank better than your own site for that term?

If this happens to be the case, it’s probably a good idea to dig a bit deeper and get to the bottom of their methods of success.  WSpider offers extensive search analysis and competitor reporting services that can provide you with all of the insight necessary to be more competitive in search.  Please contact one of our expert reps today to discuss the particulars.

Offer More Detailed Content

One surefire tactic to out-competing the competitor is to provide better information regarding your products and services.  As an example, your competitor might just be passing along a few product specs provided by the manufacturer of a product they sell.

You can do better than this by writing unique and original product descriptions that really connect with your customers.  Another upside to originality is the fact that search engines actually penalize websites that use duplicate content (such as copy provided by a product’s manufacturer).

Be As Friendly As Possible

All too often, businesses end up taking an approach that’s just way too “professional.”  Now granted, coming across professionally to your customers is absolutely important, but it’s still possible to stand out with a unique voice of your own.  Go beyond just stating the facts alone—instead, chat with your customers through your content, just like you would to a customer in person or over the phone.

Doing business online is indeed very competitive.  The good news is that the sales methods and website components used are also very transparent—it’s easy to see what your competitors are up to!

The Basic Facts On Writing Articles For Links

Are you aware that the more quality incoming links you have pointing to your site from other websites, the higher your website is likely to rank in the search engines?  It’s true—your site’s link popularity is a major determining factor of how well your site will do with organic search.  And while there are many other quality ways to build links, one of the most basic methods is to write articles for links.

Relevant & Targeted

First of all, the ultimate goal should be to attract links from external websites that fit a certain standard.  For example, links that will be favored by the search engines will mostly likely come from other sites that are:

• Relevant to your own site’s topic
• Well-respected, quality websites
• Websites that rank well in search themselves
• Natural sites—in other words, not made solely for listing links

By keeping this in mind before the article process even begins, it’s much easier to focus on an effective link building plan.

Writing The Articles

The next step is actually creating articles that will be shared with other sites.  These articles must be unique and very readable in order to make them attractive enough for other sites to want to use them or permit their use.  Naturally, the articles written to promote your site will contain a direct hyperlink or two to your site within the body or the footer of the article itself.

The idea is that you freely share and allow others to use the articles however they like, as long as they promise to keep the link to your site intact.  It’s a win-win proposition for both parties—they get free content for their site, your site gets quality free incoming links from their site.  The overall idea is not very complicated really; however, the most effective results are produced when the article promotion link building campaign is carried out by experienced professionals.

What To Do With The Articles

Once the articles are complete, it’s time to promote them and get them out there to do what they’re intended to do...create links.  The most common outlets for sharing the work are through a handful of popular article directories.  These directories are set up to be sort of a clearing house for free-use articles like the ones that will promote your site.

Other webmasters can access the article directory sites and locate the exact articles they’d like to use.  Each time one of your articles is used, that’s effectively a new link pointing at your site.  Many folks rely on this basic strategy to publish hundreds of articles per month—just think of all the links those would create!

Like to explore how an article promotion strategy might work best for your website?  Give one of our online marketing pros a call today and we’ll be happy to chat with you about the most effective way to achieve results.

9 Of The Most Common Beginner Web Optimization Mistakes

1. Over-optimizing – Yes, there’s such a thing as “too much of a good thing.”  Over-optimizing, or in other words using techniques like keyword stuffing, just causes a website to get itself banned from the search engines.  The key is in achieving the right natural balance.

2. Lack Of Effective Link Popularity – Quality incoming links are among the straightforward components of achieving excellent optimization.  In general, blogging, article directory submission, and online press releases are a good way to achieve higher link popularity.

3. Incorrect Inter-site Linking – Also important is the way each page within a website links to other pages on the site.  Having a proper inter-linking structure and an effective navigation structure is key here.  Getting this formula right is almost like a science of its own.

4. Website Code Errors – A snippet here, a snippet there, and before long, your website becomes a true Frankenstein!  It’s simple enough to cut and paste code to make a site appear the way that looks right, but the code errors created in the process can be absolutely detrimental to a website’s optimization.

5. Non-optimized Blogging – Regular blogging can help any site achieve better rankings; however for total effectiveness, there are several optimizations that must be made when considering the default blog settings.  By default, most blogs are set up to completely ignore commonly practiced optimization factors.

6. Lack Of Content – The search engines find your site based on its content—certainly not because it has great design or sells a great product.  With so many professional websites relying on expert web copywriting to stay ahead of the pack, competition is fierce when it comes to quality content.

7. Flawed Tag Structure – This refers to the lack of or the improper use of header tags, Meta tags, image tags, and other related components.  While these aren’t necessarily visible to the naked eye, they do play a major role in the way a search engine interprets and considers a website’s optimization.

8. Duplicate Content – Perhaps even worse than the lack of content, using duplicate content is another fatal mistake that’s made all too often.  First of all, copying content from another website is almost always illegal.  And even if your site does have permission to use the same exact content that’s featured elsewhere on the web, search engines will penalize and ignore it.

9. Not Seeking Professional Advice – There are many ways website owners can help to make their websites more optimized for the search engines.  One of the most efficient and affordable ways is to bring in the pros from the very beginning.  And based on the results offered, the rates are often way more affordable that you’d ever imagined.