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Quality Vs. Quantity - Which Is Better For SEO?

It’s an age old debate. Quality versus Quantity. There are motives behind each strategy, sometimes one is correct, and sometimes it is the other that works out best.

But when it comes to SEO, which tactic do you think will work better:

· Going for sheer quantity in producing new search engine optimized content, backlinks, press releases, and so on?

· Or do you believe in taking a slower but steady quality first approach to doing all of the SEO components with great care?

It’s debatable which one really works the best right away. It’s probably not surprising that taking the mass quantity approach can produce short term results—and sometimes the results are even quite attractive really. But for lasting long-term results—the kind that tend to improve gracefully with age (just like a fine wine)—the best strategy is always quality first.

Think about it for a second. If you’re a web searcher, are you looking for information from a website that’s taken a great deal of care to address your specific quest for information? Are you wanting to find exactly what you’re looking for when you make that click in the search engine results page?

Of course, the answer is YES! After all, who wants to be distracted with information that’s just static?

Static is the quantity approach. By plastering all kinds of optimized, but not very well implemented “information” on the web, just to boost web traffic results, you’ll likely get a few extra clicks coming in. It’s the nature of the game. But the visitors won’t stay; instead, they’ll be turned away by the lack of helpful information or content they were actually seeking.

And then what happens? Well, the search engines are really quite keen when it comes to measuring a site’s performance. We know that their indexing algorithms definitely take some account of how well visitors interact with the site. For example, if the bounce rate seems unusually high, that’s a sign that the site is not providing visitors with the experience they were expecting when they made the click.

You can imagine what happens next. Yep. All of that mass produced “SEO value” goes down the tubes just as soon as the search engines figure out that it’s not the best thing to share with their visitors...with an always-competitive search engine market out there, proving quality results and retaining a loyal user base is very important to the search engines.

So when it comes to quality vs. quantity, be sure to choose wisely! Here at WSpider, we always recommend the quality approach to search marketing.

7 Ways To Improve Your Small Business Online Outlook

The budget might be tight for your small business—but that’s certainly no excuse to ensure that your website shines like the beacon it should be. Investing in your online home—the only home of a business that many will ever see—can make or break your small biz. And the best part? Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to break the bank. Here are 7 ways to improve your small business online outlook.

One. Measure your traffic analytics. Make note of how many visitors you are receiving and where they tend to originate from (using free Google Analytics is a great way to get an in-depth view). The first part of improving anything is taking a baseline measurement and understanding what needs improving.

Two. With point number one in mind, the next thing you can do is figure out a plan on how you can improve different areas of your site. For example, if your bounce rate is very high (as reported by Analytics), then you need to work on improving the visitors’ initial first-impression experience with your site. Getting them there is half the battle—you definitely don’t want to lose the visitor as soon as they land on your site.

Three. Set specific, measurable, and attainable goals for improvement. Looking at the numbers, if you’ve been averaging 250 unique visitors per week to your site, then one example goal would be to double that number of visitors by the next quarter to 500 unique visitors per week. Without specific goals in the crosshairs, it’s hard to actually make progress sometimes.

Four. Start driving more traffic. You’ve set the goal to essentially double your traffic in the next 3 months. How will you accomplish this goal? Well—for starters, organic search optimization works extremely well. 3 months might be a tough timeline with SEO, but it’s doable at the visitor counts mentioned above. Plus, there are other ways you can grow your traffic base.

Five. Try traffic-boosting social media. If this sounds like a broken record, it’s because it’s a tune you need to keep hearing. Social media is not going away anytime soon—and the raw traffic it can produce when used effectively is pretty remarkable. With a good catchy campaign, doubling visitors from 250 per week to 500 per week is very do-able with just social media alone.

Six. Create more content. If you haven’t updated or expanded the content on your website since the last design overhaul, chances are good that you’re being left behind in the dust. Search engines and visitors alike demand fresh new content on a regular basis. By all means…give them what they want; it’s not that difficult to do. Plus, adding more and more to your site’s base of content tends to have an exponentially growing snowball effect long term.

Seven. Ask for professional help. Sometimes it’s downright impossible to do it all yourself. Just not enough time, for starters. Well, even if you do have the time, it never hurts to ask for a professional opinion on how you can make your site shine. Just give us a call here at San Jose-based WSpider—we’ll be happy to share a few complimentary pointers with you.

So, what are you waiting for? Make a plan to revitalize your small business website. It’s easy to improve the outlook, and you’ll definitely be glad you did!

Speed: A Notable SEO Factor That You Might Not Always Think About

Just read an interesting blog article recently that details how Google—and presumably other search engines as well—is using a website’s speed factor as a small, but important site search ranking factor. And while it is indeed a small factor, it is still one that should be accounted for.

And who knows, depending on your site and its existing search optimization, having a faster site on fast hosting could be the determining factor that bumps up your position in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Stranger things have happened.

Speed…It Just Makes Sense

Now when you think about it, the fact that your website’s peppiness is used by search engines to help determine its value to visitors—and thus search engine ranking—is really just good common sense. It makes sense because visitors always appreciate a fast loading site over the alternative.

Speedy sites are more usable and more effective at delivering their message—their value—to the visitors of the websites. That’s the positive effect having a fast site can provide, thus making it more attractive to the search engines.

But it’s also important to understand why search engines might not want to rank a slow site as well as its zippy neighbors.

Perhaps one of the most clear reasons why slow sites might not fare as well are purely from the search engines’ own image control measures amongst their user base. Think about it…if a search engine prominently suggests your site to one of their searchers, and ultimately, that searcher clicks on your search listing to visitor your site only to have diminishing results thanks to a slow loading (or no-loading) site—well, that’s just not a good thing for anyone involved.

The search engine’s reputation would naturally be a bit tarnished in the eyes of the visitor in this particular scenario. After all, they were depending on the search engine to provide quality results for their search query—and quality means offering results of websites that load quickly, efficiently, and reliably in all circumstances.

Speed is important for countless reasons when it comes to websites and visitor-affecting performance. The fact that a site’s SEO factor is also partly determined by the speed of the site is only another natural evolution of growing on-demand visitor expectations.

The takeaway from this post is that it’s just not worth taking any chances when it comes to the speed of your site. If you’d like an evaluation of your site’s current speed, or perhaps a few suggestions on how you might be able to zip things up a bit, WSpider would be happy to help—just drop us a line at your convenience!

The One Question To Ask Yourself To Get Search Engine Marketing Right

Search engine marketing is a topic that’s really quite full of misunderstanding and a business market that—frankly—tends to be ripe with deception and less than above-the-fold practices. However, as important as SEM is to your business or organization’s ultimate success online, it’s absolutely vital to learn how to navigate the waters and steer clear of any problems along the way to getting your search engine marketing right.

It might be helpful to have a handy test to know if you’re proceeding in the right way, or perhaps might need to aim a little bit higher to meet your online marketing goals. Fortunately, there is a super easy test that you can use as a guiding principle no matter what your online niche happens to be. It’s a simple question:

Is what I’m doing good for the visitors of my website?

Yep. It really is that simple. Good SEM will simply never deviate from what’s best for your visitors. Every wholesome organic search marketing practice should be founded on an utmost desire to serve your customers—to improve your site visitors’ experiences in one definitive way or another.

Don’t be mistaken…good search engine marketing must benefit you and your website too. It’s not just about the visitor—after all, without your site, your visitors wouldn’t be a factor anyway. And let’s face it…business is business too.

But the best thing about quality SEM is that the results bring mutual benefit. By using the best possible effective methods to attract visitors to your site from the search engines, and then over-delivering on the promises you’ve made those visitors along their path to landing on your page, you’re adding value. You’re producing a helpful service to your visitors by giving them the exact relevant information or website experience they were seeking. And naturally the benefits they experience, such as saved time and effort, will only go to help you reach your site goals as you strive to convert visitors to valuable leads or customers.

If what you’re doing is good for the visitors of your website, it’s also good for your SEM plan. If it’s good for your bottom line SEM, but really doesn’t offer an added value of any kind for the visitor, then it’s just not a good tactic…short term or in the long run. This holds especially true when there are so many mutually beneficial online marketing techniques out there that you can depend on.

And while we’re speaking about quality mutually beneficial SEM ideas…please know that if you could use a few good ideas or some help implementing your next search marketing campaign, here at WSpider, we specialize in exactly this. We’re eager to help you (and your visitors)!

Four More SEO Myths To Watch Out For

In our last post here on the WSpider blog, we talked about 5 common SEO myths that never seem to go away. Well, it’s a popular topic and there’s a lot of territory to cover here, so the topic definitely merits some additional attention. With that said, here are four more SEO myths to keep an eye out for…

SEO Myth #6

There’s no need to bother trying to obtain incoming links to my site from sites that use the noFollow tag on all of their outgoing links. Not true. As long as they are on topic and relevant, really, the more the merrier when it comes to incoming links pointing to your site. The fact that they use the noFollow tag may or may not hinder the weight they give to your site, but a link is a link—and always worth a shot if it makes sense topically.

SEO Myth #7

I need to go out and get hundreds of incoming links to my site in order to rank highly. Not true at all. Sometimes, having more backlinks is better than the alternative, but there is definitely such a thing as building too many links too fast. Search engines do keep an eye on such unnatural expansion of a site’s overall link profile. If it seems to be outside what would be normal for the type of site, it could actually be tagged and penalized as search engine spam. Keep it real with links.

SEO Myth #8

Incoming links should be laser focused—pointing to a specific page and using the same predetermined anchor text. Much like our last myth, following this myth would tend to be a bad thing. It’s just not natural to have dozens of incoming links to your site, all pointing to the same page and using the same predetermined anchor text. Search engines will most likely pick up on those that abuse this technique because it’s obviously being done to try and game the system rather than to add value for the visitors.

SEO Myth #9

If my website was developed to be SEO friendly, I won’t need to do anything else. This myth is easy to call out. Quality, ethical SEO is a process that is constantly ongoing. Most of the time, the more quality content you create for the web and broadcast from your site, the better you’ll tend to do as far as SEO. While on-page SEO does have some bearing on how well as site will rank, it’s incredibly important to focus on continually improving your site for your visitors—in doing so, you’ll also be improving its SEO factor as well.

If there’s one thing to remember, it’s that SEO doesn’t have to be complicated. A good rule of thumb to determine an SEO myth from the truth is applying the common sense factor—if it doesn’t make sense or is just too difficult to understand, then chances are it’s an SEO myth.

5 Myths About SEO That Just Never Seem To Go Away

Let’s get right down to the point here—with a topic like SEO that is very often misunderstood, it’s easy for myths and falsehoods to become commonly believed. Here is a look at a few of the more common SEO myths that simply have no basis of truth to them (and the explanation why)…

SEO Myth #1:

The Google PageRank that you see within the Google Toolbar’s PageRank indicator means everything to how a site is ranked in the search engines. This one simply can’t be true. Some sites that show a zero PageRank score have a way of outranking even some of the higher ranked sites. Although there’s no way to know for sure, it’s very likely that Google uses a separate internal ranking score for search placement purposes.

SEO Myth #2:

Getting ranked well for SEO is all about writing with a specific keyword density percentage. Not true at all. Maybe ten years ago, doing this might have helped by tricking the search engines—but today, their algorithms are much more intelligent. Instead of keyword density, web writers should focus on creating quality content that’s useful, helpful, and relevant to the site’s visitors.

SEO Myth #3:

Using WordPress to power a site is not good for SEO. Actually, this one works both ways. Although you may have heard that using popular blog/CMS software like WordPress is bad for a site’s search engine presence, this is really only true if it’s set up incorrectly. The software alone really doesn’t help or hurt SEO by itself…it’s how it’s used and configured that makes the difference.

SEO Myth #4:

Linking out to other sites from my web pages will hurt my link popularity score. The only time this is actually true is if you’re running a link farm for the sole purpose of tricking the search engines. Otherwise, the occasional natural and relevant outgoing link that helps a visitor is a good thing. In fact, not having links, or blocking them all from passing link popularity through the noFollow tag, can actually be seen as unnatural and manipulative by the search engines. After all, it’s normal to have links on your site.

SEO Myth #5:

I received an email guaranteeing top search engine placement results—how does this work? This doesn’t work. It’s that simple. Despite all of the myths floating around out there that might suggest that guaranteeing top search results is really possible, there is no real way to guarantee it. The person making a promise to help you achieve a specific ranking is either trying to pull a fast one or is willing to give it shot under the conditions of their guarantee—just be sure to read the fine print first to get the full story.

That’s it for this installment…stay tuned for part 2!

5 Ways To Keep Your Site Up To Date

It is extremely important to keep your site alive and well in the eyes of the search engines (and your visitors too). Fortunately, doing so doesn’t have to take hours of your time every day or every week. It’s simply a matter of automating and scheduling a few simple tasks to keep your website fresh and up to date.

Here are five easy suggestions:

One: Add Social Media Widgets.

Adding your latest Twitter posts to an automated feed widget on your site is a small, but helpful way to keep your site from becoming stagnant in the eyes of the search engines. Doing this keeps a small trickle of new content coming to your site (every time you update your social media), and in doing so, it effectively tells the search engines to keep coming by on a regular basis to look for updates and new content

Two: Outsource Help.

You’d probably be surprised to find out just how affordable outsourcing a weekly blog post to be written for your site can be. Developing new content, in the form of a weekly blog post or otherwise, is a great way to maintain and build your site’s SEO rankings.

Three: Weekly Review.

It will only take a couple of minutes once a week or every couple of weeks. Just schedule a time on your calendar to give your site a quick regular look-over to make sure everything is working properly. Take time to archive irrelevant or out-of-date content where necessary.

Four: Install An Automatic Sitemap App.

WSpider can help you with this one if you’d like—automating your website’s sitemap means that every time any of the site’s content is updated, the search engines will be able to see what’s new just by taking a look at your automatically updated sitemap. This is a very common strategy used with CMS and blog-based CMS software like WordPress.

Five: Encourage Active Participation.

Web 2.0 was all about bringing the visitor to your site and encouraging more active participation. And although it’s been around for some time now, the concept is definitely still alive and well. Be having an active blog or community forum of some type within the “walls” of your website property, the activity is a natural way to keep the site from becoming dated or stale. Let your visitors and community of supporters help you out with the task by encouraging participation.

Could you use some help implementing these tactics or coming up with a few additional ideas on how to keep your website up to date? If so, just let us know...we’re always happy to help!

A Few Thoughts About Selecting The Right Colors For Your Website...

Is should come as no surprise to know that choosing the right color scheme for your website can really either make or break your site’s look and feel.  In other words, getting the colors just right is kind of a big deal.

With that said, sometimes when setting out to create a new website, the first thing that comes to mind regarding color selection is that it should be matched or tied into the existing company logo or color scheme.  Well, maybe so or maybe not.  Sure, in most cases, this will work flawlessly to tie the whole look together.  But there are also times when traditional print colors just don’t work very well for the web.  So, in this case, it’s really a case by case basis—sometimes it will work out perfectly and other times…well, not so much.

Another common color selection dilemma is whether or not to use a certain color for the background of the website.  Let’s start by saying that using a white background behind black text pretty much always works well.  It works for professional themes, and it works for the less professional styled sites just as well.  Regardless, it’s classy and makes the site both more usable and easy to read.

What doesn’t work for the background and text colors?  Well, most visitors’ eyes will simply prefer as light of a background as possible with decent sized dark text overlaid.  Anything that diverts from this standard is taking a little bit of a risk (especially for non-creative or non-artistic field sites).  A black or other dark color background with white text works just find for some sites—and can even be quite classy—but it’s simply not a very good fit for sites that are text and copy intensive.  It’s hard on the eyes, after all!

So as you can see, there are really no hard fast rules when it comes to color selection, but you should almost always take a common sense approach.  First and foremost should be how your visitors will respond to the site’s color scheme—does it encourage them to stick around and browse your site, or does it somehow cause them to leave the site?

There’s also significant research out there about the psychology of color selection—businesses have been using this knowledge for decades and decades—perhaps you’ll want to take the opportunity to take a look at some of this research (just do a search for “color psychology”) before deciding on the specific color palette to use for your site’s design.

Designing Websites With Realistic Timelines

Designing a brand new web presence to professional standards does take a reasonable amount of time to complete.  This may or may not come as a surprise, but when you really sit down and think about all of the different areas of work and expertise that actually goes into the creation of a new website, it’s kind of amazing how quickly it does all come together in the end.

Think about it.  These are just a few of the components that go into web development:

•    Planning and research
•    Content development
•    Wireframe site creation
•    Navigation design
•    Graphic design of the site
•    Programming and coding basic site functionality
•    Programming advanced site functionality like CMS and shopping cart software
•    Selecting and adding appropriate images
•    Editing, formatting, and adding written content to the site
•    Adding videos and other multimedia features to the site
•    Extensive testing
•    On site search engine optimization
•    Off site SEO work
•    Establishing and setting up hosting
•    Domain setup
•    Email setup
•    And the list could go on and on!

As you can see, pulling off a timely launch of a new website from start to finish can clearly be quite the feat of accomplishment.  To make deadlines, everything must flow smoothly and according to plan—even small diversions from the initial plan of action can spiral to more significant delays later in the process.

As a quick side note here, we should also mention that our web production team here at WSpider is very experienced at establishing realistic, accurate deadlines and working tirelessly to meet these goals and timeframes while producing the best possible results along the way.

So, back to the timeline for completing a new website…

Can a website be completed overnight?  Unfortunately, it’s just not possible.  It’s safe to say that 2 or 3 weeks once progress towards development begins would be just about the most conservative time frame estimate for a fairly basic site.  More complexity and more features tend to take more time for development…that’s only natural, right?

And then for the SEO process, it’s important to know that the on-site SEO is generally completed as part of the website development phase itself.  The offsite SEO process kind of kicks in once the site launch is complete.  We’ve found that it usually takes about 6 weeks or so from the time off site SEO begins until the initial results can begin to take place.  Things can speed up a bit after this initial timeframe.

So, in the end, the bottom line is that quality web development does take some time and patience, but the end results will definitely be worth the wait!

Avoid These 5 Web Startup Beginner Mistakes

Starting a new website?  Hey, that’s great news!  But as you move through the steps to bring your vision to reality, please be careful to avoid these 5 web startup beginner mistakes…

One:  Choosing Amateur Design Services
You’ll probably hear about this potential pitfall a thousand times by the time you launch your new site, but it couldn’t be more important.  So we’ll say it again—don’t succumb to choosing amateur web design services.  Yes, they might be significantly cheaper; the service might even be offered for free from a cousin’s nephew so he can build his portfolio.  Either way, you pay for what you get.

Two:  Getting Too Caught Up In The Graphic Design
Yes, it’s important to have a sharp looking website that is pleasing to the eye.  But one very important thing to remember, especially when just getting started, is that while the design is important, it’s only a small part of the overall site.  It’s usually a better idea to keep the design attractive, but as simple and basic as possible and focus your time and investment on getting the content and SEO right.

Three:  Writing In A Non-Web Friendly Manner
When doing the copywriting for your new website, the first thing to remember is to throw everything you learned in high school twenty years ago out the window before you begin.  Not that there’s anything wrong with traditional writing styles, but they generally just don’t work very well on the web.  A few web-friendly rules of thumb: Write as you would speak conversationally, keep plenty of white space (using short paragraphs and sub headlines), and don’t get to academic in your writing—use simpler words and terminology.

Four:  Breaking The Rules And Standards
Sounds crazy, but some will try it anyway.  Remember that there are usually reasons behind why most websites use similar layout formats—menus across the top or down the left site, written content below the header, and so on.  This is what most visitors expect and are comfortable navigating and using.  It might sound fun to break the conventions of design, but doing so will only alienate a large portion of your potential visitor base.  Follow the rules (at least with your first site).

Five:  Insisting Your Site Be Flash-Based
Flash is great for some applications, but it’s just not a very good way to design an entire website.  Doing so might look great—but it causes significant functionality and search optimization issues.  First of all, an increasing body of visitors won’t even be able to see the site (predominately those that use iPhone & the new iPad, as these and many other devices don’t support Flash technology at all).  Secondly, the search engines really don’t do Flash sites well either—they might pick up on some components of an all-Flash site, but the chances are very good that such a site will be mostly ignored by the search engines.

You’ll do great with your new website launch—just be sure to do your research ahead of time to figure out all of the different pitfalls that you might be faced with along the way.  The best way to avoid them is to learn about them in the first place.