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A Few SEO Questions Answered.

Does using social media have an impact on SEO?

Yes, it does. While the game is changing rapidly when it comes to social media and how search engines are viewing it, the trend is definitely moving positively towards your social media profile having a much larger impact on your overall SEO effectiveness. If nothing else, being active with social media is a great way to build more incoming links to your site and spread additional content even further than just using a website alone can do. Social media and SEO are a perfect match—let WSpider provide you with some ideas on how this can help your website grow.

What’s the story on Meta-tags…some say to use them, while others say they don’t matter?

Meta-tags are still very important to your site’s SEO. If someone is telling you that Meta-tags no longer offer the value they used to, please don’t believe them. This misconception lies in the fact that over the years search engines have become much savvier about how they use Meta data to influence the ranking of a website. It used to be that you could use the tags to sneak a site into higher rankings—and while this is no longer the case, Meta-tags have a huge impact on a site’s usability and accessibility, both of which can affect a site’s SEO dramatically.

Do noFollow incoming links have any value to my site?

Using noFollow tags for hyperlinks has become a popular way for websites to maintain their link ranking, by telling the search engines that they don’t want to share any link weight with such outgoing links. Some would say it’s a vote of “no-confidence,” but really, it’s just the norm these days. But does receiving noFollow-tagged links incoming to your site still have worth? Absolutely yes. It would be naïve to say that search engines pay zero attention to these links—if they ignored them, there really wouldn’t be too many links to consider after all. While they might not be quite as coveted as restriction-free backlinks, even noFollow links are certainly better than no incoming links at all.

Can a really simple 5 page website draw in much traffic if it’s optimized?

Sure, a well-optimized 5 page site can actually draw in substantial levels of traffic. SEO can do pretty amazing things, after all! But here’s the thing to think about…if a 5 page site can demand healthy levels of traffic from organic search, just imagine what a 25 page site could do. While the positive quantity effect might begin to level off at some point, there’s definitely value in expanding a site indefinitely as long as it’s done in a quality-conscious and SEO-friendly way.

Should Your Site’s RSS Feed Replace Email Newsletters?

Staying in touch with your site’s visitor base, your clients, and your customers is a definite must-do when striving to build your conversion rate. As long as it’s not over done to the point of becoming a turn-off, it’s a well known marketing principle that the more times you can contact or connect with a potential prospect, the more likely they are to become a full-fledged customer.

Email Newsletter Subscriptions

Now unless you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere for the last decade or so, you’re surely well aware that email lists—most commonly in the form of “subscribe to our newsletter” or something similar—have been a reliable staple for website owners to use to stay connected with their visitor base. At some point, spam started to become a serious problem for the average subscriber, and there was a movement away from this marketing method for awhile.

But today, email newsletter subscriptions are still alive and well. In fact, with improved spam-resistance and today’s use of clear privacy policies, some would say that prospecting email subscribers is stronger today than ever. No matter what your thoughts on this may be, one thing is for sure—visitor confidence in sharing their private contact information is precious territory, but as long as you can prove trustworthiness through your site, most folks will be comfortable signing up for your email list.

And what’s more, email lists still work. Why else would master marketers and internet marketing gurus still swear by them? Operating an above-the-fray email newsletter as part of your website is an awesome way to control your list. Plus, it works really well with twitter and other external components of your overall web presence.

So, What About RSS Then?

The thing about RSS is this...even for as long as it’s been around now, it still hasn’t totally caught on. In fact, most average web users don’t even have a clue what it is and how to use it—yet alone have a feed reader set up. RSS, as much as it’s been promoted as a great way to keep your audience up to speed, is simply not mainstream at all.

And even if your visitor base happens to be very web savvy—the demographic that would tend to utilize RSS subscriptions—it’s still not a very good way to control your contacts. First of all, those using a reader are not connecting with your site and its well designed interface at all; instead, they’re reading your content externally. This really removes your capability to sell or pre-sell (yet alone the opportunity to show advertising).

Final Remarks…

Sure, go ahead and use RSS. It won’t really hurt your site. But don’t promote it too heavily, less you’ll lose that important direct customer contact. Seriously consider keeping your email list (or implementing one) as a primary way to reach out to your customers. And one final thing…please contact us here at WSpider for further advice—we’re always here to help!

Social Is Becoming More Serious.

For the last couple of years, building and maintaining a rockstar social media presence to compliment your website has really become the big thing to do. Some have dismissed it as being a little gimmick, and even as overkill for many basic web presences. Others who have worked hard at implementing social media to the fullest extent have absolutely come to depend on the results they’ve managed to produce through it.

Pretty much up until the present, social networking has been a plus-factor when it comes to building traffic. In other words, you usually get the efforts that you have put in to it back out is some helpful or practical way or another. But not doing social media hasn’t really had a negative impact on overall search optimization. Social media has been extra credit…bonus points, if you will.

But today, the game is changing. Social is becoming much more serious.

It’s kind of hard to tell right now how much of an effect social media has, be we are starting to see more and more of it—and also the search engines are really beginning to appreciate the efforts and integrate the social aspects more and more into their results pages. And one thing is certain—if they’re listing a website’s associated Twitter feed right in the results (which they are), then this definitely means they are paying attention to these components very closely.

And just this week, we’ve seen the latest social media phenomenon start to shape up with the unveiling and release of the Google Buzz service. Whether it will catch on in the same way Facebook and Twitter have is yet to be determined—but one thing is certain. When Google enters a market, we know that it’s serious. We know that the web giant as plans to integrate that with their other services, and of course, with their bread and butter search service especially.

The prominent search engine is sharing a sign here. They’re leading the way towards using social media and the way a website utilizes it as a way to determine how the site will be listed within the search results. It’s a good idea to take notice now, and if you’re not already doing so, to start becoming more serious about your social media strategy in order to positively impact your SEO results.

Can we help you with social? Here at WSpider, we get social media. We can help you come up with an ideal strategy to use it to help your site prosper in an increasingly social web world.

7 Non-Design Questions To Ask When Planning A Website

1. Who’s the host?

Having a dependable, first-tier webhosting plan is vital to the success of any website. This doesn’t always mean that the most expensive plan is the only way to go—sometimes there are great options for entry-level plans that will perform just as well. It’s important to fully understand whether your web designer will take care of hosting or if it’s a separate deal to be arranged.

2. What about the domain name?

You should have full control over your domain name. For a variety of practical reasons, it’s almost always best to use a separate domain name provider from your hosting plan. It’s also important that it be in your name—you want to own the domain name yourself, not just technically “borrow” it from your service provider.

3. How will email addresses be handled?

Many web designers provide or set up email functionality as a part of the initial website design services because it’s generally easy to do so at the same time as setting up hosting, etc. But at the same time, email really is a separate ballgame from design altogether, and in some complex situations, it can be necessary to use separate management of email. Some even prefer to use third party email addresses (like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) instead of setting up mail through their domain.

4. What can be done for SEO?

Search engine optimization really has two different overall components—the “on-site” SEO, which is usually set up at the time of site design, and the “off-site” components, which are improvements and promotional strategies that are separate from the design and coding process itself.

5. Should I use Pay-Per-Click Ads?

PPC is often a recommended strategy for those just getting started online. It is a great way to begin establishing a traffic base before the organic SEO starts to kick in. And even then, high return-on-investment (ROI) PPC is often kept up as an ongoing strategy in addition to SEO, since it’s profitable.

6. Do I need to submit my site?

Unless you’re really familiar with the process, it’s probably a good idea to leave site submission up to the SEO pros (like WSpider here in San Jose). As it stands, sometimes submitting incorrectly can be viewed as being spammy—and that’s just not a risk you want to take.

7. How does ongoing website maintenance work?

Many web developers provide ongoing maintenance of a website, either on a complimentary basis or through a fee-based rate structure. It really depends on how significant the maintenance will be. Security upgrades of open-source software and similar setups need to be monitored and implemented regularly. Be sure to ask about how ongoing maintenance will be handled for your website.

Logo Design And Web Design – The Same Designers?

It’s all too common for those planning a new website to assume that the web designers they decide to work with will automatically also handle other areas of design—like logo design, graphic design, and branding. A good website is designed first and foremost to perform and attract visitors from around the web, but naturally, it also needs to look great and sell the folks that are behind it.

As it stands, most good web designers simply are not proficient at graphic design and logo design. Many can do it just fine if necessary, but choose the field of web design for its own unique practices and principles.

The takeaway point here: Logo design and web design are two totally different fields of practice.

It’s fair to ask your web design team if they also do logo design. Again, some do and some don’t. Some will gladly manage the process and outsource the logo on your behalf to a third party graphic designer—a sub contractor. This may or may not be okay in your book, but it is important background information for you to have regardless.

So, what makes graphic design and logo design so different from web design?

Well, in essence, both logo design and graphic design have their roots in traditional print media. In other words, they were being done long before the advent of today’s world of digital technology. This is not to say that some designers with traditional print oriented backgrounds have not crossed over into the digital realm over the years—so many have done exactly this.

It does say though that there’s a big difference between pixels and print. Web design is really a matter of putting all of the graphics, code, and content together effectively to create a usable and functional finished product—the website if you will. But really, this is independent of the design process (especially so when you begin to get into web marketing practices like SEO and so on).

Some web designers are “backwards-compatible” with graphic design. They’re great at the design end of things and the tech end of things. Here at WSpider, we’re actually quite good at taking care of the entire design process from start to finish. But this should really never be taken for granted when looking to hire a web designer for your next project. Feel free to ask them about their design background—and if they do logos—but it’s important to not just expect it.

Remember, logo design and website design are two very different schools of thought. For simplicity and a more balanced, cohesive finished product, look for designers like WSpider that are cross-proficient when it comes to all components of creating an awesome website.

5 Reasons To Reconsider Your DIY Website

Thinking about taking the do-it-yourself route to web design? If you know enough to get a few web pages live on the web, DIY design can be tempting. But, while building your own website might sound like a good idea, here are five reasons you should reconsider…

One: Are you sure it’s professional? Sometimes after working on a do-it-yourself website design for hours on end, and only if you haven’t tossed your monitor off the desk in frustration yet, it’s easy to just give up and settle. Your website is your organization’s face on the web—never just settle!

Two: Thinking about accessibility. These days more than ever, having an accessibility minded website is super important. Accessibility impacts everything from ensuring that all users will have a decent experience on your site to search engine optimization. If you’re not sure about accessibility, then you should definitely reconsider the DIY website.

Three: SEO sounds easy enough. But that’s just it—it sounds easy, but in reality, there’s a little bit more to good search optimization than meets the eye. Do you fully understand all of the on-site and off-site aspects of SEO on a professional level?

Four: Clean code is a must. Sure, many of us are able to hack together bits and pieces of HTML—at least enough to make decent looking website design. But what’s behind the scenes really does matter. Clean, standards-compliant code is a necessity in order to ensure best SEO results and cross-browser functionality.

Five: Building a site is one thing, hosting it is another. Even if you do happen to have some decent site building software or adequate knowledge of hand-coding a website, are you comfortable with publishing it on the web and managing your web hosting platform? For many, it this can all be very intimidating; for others, it’s just simply not worth the hassle.

And finally, if you insist on tackling your own website project, we have just one quick piece of advice for the do-it-yourselfers out there: keep it simple. It’s easy to get really carried away with all the bells and whistles, but 9 times out of 10, a simple and elegant site is going to perform much better and make better impressions that one that’s over the top.

Based right here in San Jose, WSpider is eager to help would-be DIY web designers. We take pride in our work with small businesses and organizations all around the country and will definitely be happy to answer your questions or give you a free estimate at any time.

3 Super Easy Ways To Keep Your Website Fresh

To keep your site up-to-date in the eyes of your visitors, as well as in the eyes of the search engines, you’ve got to look beyond “just getting the site up and live” in the first place. Search engines will eventually give up on sites that just never change in favor of those that continually make improvements and strive to provide their visitors with a fresh experience.

1. Blog Like Crazy

Have something relevant to say? Blog it on your site. Have news related to your company or organization? Again, blog it. There’s really no limit to how often you should blog—the rule of thumb is that as long as you have something relevant and on-topic to say (and will say it with the same standards of professionalism that you’ve used throughout the rest of your website) then go ahead and make the post. Blogs are an endless source of new content to keep your website fresh.

2. Add New Static Content

Writing new informational articles that provide value to your visitors is a great way to keep your website relevant and fresh. Differentiate these static content articles from blog articles by making them permanent and in no way date-related. These can be articles perhaps along the lines of “How To …” or some other really helpful information for your niche visitor base. It’s also good to add and build on this cornerstone content over time as a way to improve it while keeping it fresh and up to date.

3. Post Your Current Specials

Or post hot deals or offers if you have them. Be sure to cross-promote them via social media too. This is a great grassroots way to get the word out—using little tidbits of information spread out virally all around the web that each point back and send interested visitors back to your website where you can interact with them on a more significant level.

If you follow these three simple and easy ways to keep your website fresh and up to date on a regular basis, you shouldn’t have any problems with the search engines (or with your visitors) thinking that your website is a thing of a the past and no longer relevant. Sure there are other additional ways of keeping your site fresh too…the real key, however, is simply to keep your site fresh and keep it relevant.

Is the task bigger that you’d like to undertake? WSpider can help you. Please contact us today to find out exactly how.

Links In SEO…Here To Stay?

Achieving a bottomless deep link profile has long been the primary ambition of many search engine optimizers. In fact, the traditional philosophy of SEO even depends on the fact that more relevant, quality incoming links equates to better search engine rankings and performance for a website.

And link building, especially when done to very organic yet professional standards absolutely does work. That’s hard to dispute by any account.

The question is not whether or not traditional link building strategies still work—but rather, will they still work as well as they do now in the near or long term future?

First of all, what do you think about this…Yes? No? It’s a topic that’s being given a lot of thought lately. After all, the search engines must continually evolve and strive to deliver better quality, more accurate results in order to stay competitive and keep their customers happy and loyal. Whether or not building backlinks is going to be around to stay as a way to SEO success really depends on how things are going right now.

And the bottom line is that search engine spammers have really seemed to figure out the existing link formula to success. Getting mass quantities of backlinks has become practically second nature in some circles—and it’s anything but natural and organic. This is not promising for the future of linking as defining how valuable a website is to its visitors (and therefore, to the search engines as well).

But at the same time, thanks to the growing scale of “no-follow” tags and other link weight blocking standards, webmasters have pretty well become wise enough not to pass along their own link popularity to very many other websites. This alone has certainly changed the way search engines are able to depend on link popularity as a sign of a website’s popularity.

Also, we’d be foolish to really believe that the top search engines—all operated by multi-million dollar behemoths of modern business—are really naïve enough to allow link / SEO spammers to win the upper hand here. That’s just not realistic at all—the search engines are using proprietary technology these days that goes way beyond link popularity alone as a determinate of a website’s ranking success.

In fact, with as much information that’s available to search giants like Google through their other web ventures, they clearly must know plenty about how well a website should be ranked—all without even having to consider link popularity.

So what’s the answer?

Well, really there is no answer…just food for thought. We know that search will continue to move forward and look for new ways to determine the worth of websites. We also know that a site’s link profile does have an effect, at least for the time being. So it’ll be interesting to follow this as the future of the web becomes web history.

A Few Quick Featured Frequent Questions

Today, we’ll tackle a few frequently asked questions regarding SEO and websites. Let’s get right to it. Ready?

Question #1: How important is it to follow Google’s SEO guidelines?

It depends on how you look at it. Many fly-by-night “black hat” SEO providers ignore the guidelines completely and somehow manage to gain decent rankings…only to find that these results don’t last and they get penalized a short while later for trying to game the system. For lasting long-term SEO rankings, it is VITAL to follow Google’s SEO guidelines faithfully—after all, they pretty much spell out exactly what they want to see in a well-optimized website, so why not provide them with what they’re seeking?

Question #2: I’ve heard it’s important to optimize ever web page individually…is this true?

In a nutshell, the answer is yes. The truth of the matter is that most search engines look at each individual web page almost as if it is its own unique stand alone website. One way to find success is to ensure each page would indeed be able to hold its own if it were the only page of the site that existed. By treating each page with due respect this way, when all put together to form a comprehensive website, they all help build and strengthen each other.

Question #3: Even with the prevalence of social media lately, is blogging still recommended?

Again, yes. Despite what you may be hearing out there in the social media world, blogging is absolutely still alive and well. The bottom line is that maintaining an active blog as part of your overall web presence is an ideal way to keep fresh content rolling along and extending your site’s range within the search engines. Each new blog post is essentially a new search engine listing; the compound effect can be quite remarkable.

Question #4: Is my 5 year old website still okay?

Possibly, but unfortunately most 5 year web technology is pretty deficient when compared to what’s available today. Depending on the circumstances, it’s probably time for a complete new website design, or at least a solid revamping to integrate modern SEO, social media, and other important staples of the web for 2010. The good news is that it doesn’t necessarily have to cost a fortune—and moving forward with high performance SEM (search engine marketing) should more than pay for itself when it comes to the return on investment.

Have additional questions about SEM, SEO, or web design? We’re always happy to answer them…please just give us a ring here at WSpider!

How To Tell If Your SEO Is Pulling A Fast One

Have you been receiving offers in your junk mail folder from rogue SEO companies who are promising the world to you? There’s a reason these fly-by-night operations must resort to sending mass quantities of e-mail spam. Let’s take a look a few of their tactics.

Situation One:

They are promising that ever-elusive number one spot on Google. First of all, it’s impossible for anyone to guarantee a specific placement. If you’re getting a guarantee regardless, this can mean one of about three things:

• They are promising the ranking for a long-tail obscure keyword that you’d probably naturally rank number one for anyway because no one is actually searching for it.
• They have only the intention to take your money and hope you forget about the guarantee later on.
• They are taking a risk with the promise of number one ranking for a major keyword, aiming for success, and actually willing to stand behind their guarantee (good luck with this one—it doesn’t happen very often).

Remember, promises and guarantees are nice—but most ethical SEO companies simply don’t make claims that they’ll be able to achieve number one rankings because it’s really all up to the search engines where they’ll place your site.

Situation Two:

The SEO company is suggesting that they’ll deliver peak results for your website within a matter of just a few days. Bottom line is this is downright impossible, but it’s not unheard of for rogue SEOs to try and trick you into believing they were successful with this (just long enough to get your money anyway). Here’s what they might try to pull:

• Showing you completely falsified traffic reports.
• Using traffic bots to rack up completely useless traffic numbers to your site.
• And the really savvy scammers might even use bought and paid off-shore human traffic to mimic legitimate search engine visitors on the traffic logs and make it look like a success.

Bottom line here is that most honest and ethical SEO companies don’t over-sell themselves in the overnight results department because good quality SEO takes time. And even once it begins to really shape up over the course of several weeks, the ultimate payoff is a bit further down the road when the SEO campaign reaches maturity and its compounding effect kicks in.

In the end, the bag of tricks that some of the rogue SEO operators out there will try to use is pretty much bottomless. It’s important to pick an SEO company that has a proven track record of not only achieving real results for their customers, but also one that’s very transparent about the process and realistic expectations. Locally serving the San Jose, San Francisco, and San Mateo areas, WSpider is committed to achieving results while being straightforward about the process.