By Britnee Nguyen

Building external links is one of the vital things utah SEO technicians do to get their clients to the top of their search engine listings. These links are important to promote SEO for a site, but it’s also important to look at the internal links – those links that are already located within your website.

Internal links sometimes gets overlooked, but can help your utah online marketing immensely. You really should be taking care of your internal links before working on external ones. There’s times when a site with a better internal structure gets ranked hirer than one with a poor internal structure with a number of external links. The great thing about internal links is that they’re coming from an authoritative site which is your own. Authority is something that external links sometimes lack.

Internal links are used by search engine spiders to see what is on all of your pages. So you’ll want to build the content on your website by using keywords you’re targeting through out it. When you increase the page rank of your internal pages it will overall increase your site’s ranking.

If your website has been on the utah internet marketing for a good amount of time, it tends to get better SEO than others because it has a history of internal links that search engines use. If your website is newer, it will take time for the results to take effect, but it can definitely be ranked higher through internal links if done correctly.

Also, remember that not only should keywords be put into your content, but should be put into file names as well. utah SEO keywords should cover codes, tags, anchors, picture files, folder names, etc. It isn’t just limited to the content of your website.

If you place an image on your website and it’s named “1023940.jpg” then the search engines aren’t going to read it. But, if you named it “onlinebirthdaycards.jpg” for your on-line birthday cards website, then the search engines will be able to pick that up and rank you better.

Internal linking is important to get all of your pages found by search engine spiders. It’s useless to have 40 pages throughout your website if only six of them are being found. Keep internal linking in mind in your SEO efforts and Utah internet marketing techniques.

By Britnee Nguyen

Google and Bing have both announced that they are going to start including Facebook and Twitter posts into their search results. They also claim these will be real-time searches. Social media has so many internet users that Bing and Google want part of that action in their search engines.

They have said that they will start letting users search for Twitter tweets and Facebook statuses on the general search engine sites. In addition, Google is going to include a social search tool that shows a user’s friend’s posted information on various social sites. Google is also partnering with La La music to start offering music downloads on their site as well.

Lately, there have been many on-line social media sites where more people are going towards to get their information from instead of through the traditional on-line searches. It sounds like Google and Bing are trying to steer that group back to their own websites with this new strategy.

According to reports, web traffic to search engines increased by 15 percent in the past year with Twitter increasing tenfold and Facebook tripling its numbers. So they are all growing immensely, but Google and Bing still want to remain the main place to go for information.

This is great and all that the search engines are still working hard to keep business thriving, but I haven’t found out yet how those who don’t want to be included in the search results to opt out.

Personally, Facebook is my private space and I don’t want everybody to be reading my statuses. Which is why on Facebook, no one is allowed to look at your profile unless you make them your friend. Allowing access to this through search engines interferes with this privacy.

Twitter on the other hand is okay to do so. Most everyone’s T

witter accounts are open to the public that anyone can view. When I write something on Twitter, I write knowingly that anyone could see it. With Facebook, it’s more private. This is from a personal opinion, from a business opinion this is great news. It means more coverage and chances to get your name out there through search results.

It’s great that search engines are being innovative and offering new services, but I do hope they provide a way for personal social media users to block the search results if they want that option.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Running successful paid search ads is almost a “guess and check” type of process.  It can often seem like ages before you find an ad that works for you!  However, there is one main aspect of internet marketing that is often underplayed in the world of PPC: landing pages.

Your paid search landing page should be carefully crafted to suit your visitors so that each click from your ad counts.  If you, like most companies, run multiple utah paid search PPC ads at once, catered to different key words and phrases, you should create corresponding landing pages for each ad you run. The “one size fits all” method, with all your paid ads running to the same, generic landing page, is a thing of the past!

Here are some of the reasons why you should create separate landing pages for different keywords:

Targeted Marketing: When you’re running more than one PPC ad, it’s likely that they all cater to a different feeling or benefit.  For example, one of your ads can claim to save people money while another can boast of its ease of use or low price social security disability.  All these ads create a different meaning to the visitor who clicks on them.  If they are looking for an easy to use product, you should create a landing page that outlines how easy to use your product is!  Your visitors will not only get the information they are looking for, they will also get a targeted marketing strategy that will prove profitable for your business.

Multi-Faceted Approach: If you were stuck with one generic landing page for every paid search ad you ran, you would only be able to address two or three benefits of your product in the same place.  For example, “Our online marketing product is easy to use, cost effective and will save you money!”  When you cram too many benefits into one page, your marketing starts to sound gimmicky and will be ineffective.  By creating multiple landing pages catering to different facets of your product, you can be more successful, for each specific page will be stronger than one catch-all page.

Keep these things in mind when embarking on any utah internet marketing endeavor you have.  And remember, if your landing page stinks, your paid search efforts will have been in vain, no matter how successful they were!

The photo of the friends smell bad sticker is from Flickr, and is the copyright of evelynishere.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Many people do not understand the art of linkbait.  In fact, the term is most often associated with negative connotations!  However, there are many classy ways to use linkbait principles to gain inbound links to your blog.

Inbound links are extremely important for SEO.  The links that are pointing to your blog, and the greatest variety of links at that, will greatly increase your organic rankings in search engines like Google or Bing.

The negative connotations surrounding linkbait are usually generated from spammers, as usual.  Here are some great ways you can use linkbait to optimize your blog rankings:

1.  Have an activity: Create an activity relevant to your niche.  For example, a quiz or interactive generator of some kind.  Then, have the ability for those that complete the activity to post the results on their blog or website.  This is a fun way to create inbound links!
2.  Socialize: Being involved in social media can also create valuable inbound links.  Try picking one or two social networks that appeal most to your genre and interests.  Be sure to spend time interacting with others and not just promoting your own content!  This will help you create influence in that community and will power up the links you post.

These are just a few thought-starters!  Try coming up with other ideas of how you can create inbound links to your blog through linkbait.  This is one of the essentials of SEO and is often overlooked!

By Robert Lockard

Search-engine giant Google is trying to buck the overall downward trend in Internet advertising sales by grabbing a bigger slice of the pie and by eating a little of TV’s pie, as well.

In my blog entry, “Google debuts ‘stock market’ for display ads,” I talked about Google’s attempt to make its new DoubleClick Ad Exchange successful. At the end I touched on Google’s attempts to grow beyond its core competency of search ads into the world of display ads. I’ll pick up where I left off.

According to the Wall Street Journal article, “Google Decides to Find Its Creative Side,” Google is trying to translate its ownership of YouTube and DoubleClick into a more dynamic advertising approach. Google is so well-known as the king of search ads that it might be difficult for it to break into Yahoo’s territory of creative display ads.

They’ve already created YouTube ad campaigns for J.C. Penney and Quaker Oats, but they saved their most innovative campaigns for Hewlett-Packard and Volvo. For those two companies, Google helped create YouTube ads and display ads featuring the latest updates (tweets) from Twitter.

Search engines are notoriously slow in catching up to social-media sites like Twitter and Facebook. You can read my insights into this topic in my eHarbor Blog entry, “Google can’t keep up with Twitter.” It’s a promising sign that Google is making this effort to use Twitter in its online-advertising services.

Google’s foray into YouTube might be the key to grabbing some of the TV industry’s advertising sales. In the United States, TV receives more ad revenue than any other medium. Google’s ad-sale growth has fallen from 56 percent in 2007 to 31 percent in 2008 down to 3 percent in the second quarter of 2009. It’s still growing, which is remarkable since we’re in the middle of a recession, but Google wants to stop the downward trend.

Can Google pull it off? They seem to be fighting a war on three fronts. They’re trying to hold on to search-ad dollars, which have fallen because of the recession, while also jumping into both display ads and TV-like ads. I won’t count them out because they might just have the resources and patience to do it. We’ll keep an eye on what happens.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Google flexes its creative muscles.” The photo of the cat in the Coca-Cola box is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Greencolander.

By Robert Lockard

Talk about a captive audience. The government of Finland says it’s a human right to have access to the Internet, so companies must provide Internet with a speed of at least 1 megabit per second. Doesn’t that seem a little strange? You can read about this in the CNN article, “Fast Internet access becomes a legal right in Finland.”

Apparently, it’s not an unalienable right to own a car or a house, but somehow it is an incredibly important right for every person to be connected to the Internet. To me, that just seems like faulty logic. In reality, we can all work hard to gain access to new tools, like cars, cell phones or the Internet, to make our lives easier, but there is no guarantee we’ll get those things without effort.

Ninety-five percent of Finland’s 5.2 million citizens are already connected to the Internet. This law makes little difference to the vast majority of the population. However, officials say they are trying to not only bring Internet access to rural areas, but also increase the speed for everyone to at least 100 megabits per second by 2015.

I’m all for creative solutions to problems, but this seems like overkill. Websites are certainly getting more complex and social-media sites like YouTube and Twitter require fast connections to constantly download new information in real time. But the invisible hand of competition can certainly balance supply and demand and lead to better services than a government mandate can.

What if it’s unprofitable for Internet providers to build connections to the 5 percent of Finland not currently covered? Maybe the government would have to subsidize those companies if they were in trouble of going bankrupt. That can create a vicious cycle of companies depending on government funds to stay afloat.

If you ask me, this whole thing is silly. I don’t have the right to a fast Internet connection. I have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, according to the Declaration of Independence. I also have many other rights enumerated in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. But luxuries or necessities like the Internet or food, respectively, are not among them.

Keep coming back to the Submit Solution Website Design Services Blog for great discussions on topics like this.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Is Internet access a human right?” The photo of the dangling cat is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Al Abut.

By Britnee Nguyen

Most designers and artists in general are creative. This is a plus when it comes to original creations, but can sometimes be a downfall if they are working for a client and only think about creativity and not other things. Especially in the field of web design, when you’re creating a website for a client, be sure to keep their needs in mind. They don’t just want a nice-to-look-at website, but one that functions well and can make them a profit.

When creating a website, be sure to include tools that can be made available to the client if they want to make any changes themselves. This includes content management tools or e-mail marketing tools. Make these available to the client so they have the freedom to change things to their liking without always having to go to you. It’s basically just to make things easier and operational for the client.

Designing a website can be a fun, creative process, but if you’re doing this for a business owner, they want it to be profitable as well. So keep in mind that how you design it will be search engine friendly for free website submission and user friendly for potential customers who visit the site. Remember that people don’t just go to websites to look at them, but to use them too. Talk with your client to see what they specifically want to achieve with their website and go from there.

If you’re not sure if something should be placed in a certain area or if your design fits the client’s needs, have someone you know do a run through of it. Ask someone who has never seen your created website before and ask them to do certain tasks like “find the purchase button” and ask what their eye is drawn to first. This will help you evaluate if your placement and design is meeting the needs of a client.

In your business transactions when web designing for clients, always keep in mind that creative design goes hand-in-hand with web presence. You need both for the website to succeed. Make sure to keep the client aware of your process in designing the website and do everything you can to make it not only pretty, but successful and profitable.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Let’s say that you’ve decided to start an e-commerce site, selling pet products online.  Your shop has been online for a few months now, and you are still struggling to get noticed by online shoppers.  This is a fairly common feeling among new e-commerce businesses, and when it comes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often overlooked as a solution.  This is perhaps because the average person feels that SEO is too complicated for them to participate in, or they feel lost trying to find a proper SEO solutions company to complete the task for them.  However, I would like to argue that there are many easy fixes in SEO that can be completed in just a few minutes and that do not require highly technical skill or understanding of SEO principles.

Try these steps in our SEO Makeover to help your site get a quick boost of traffic:

1.  Keyword Research:

Before beginning to build and market your website, you should have done a quick keyword research to see what key terms and phrases you should focus on in your marketing strategy.  If you have not done this already, do it now!  Simply visit a keyword research tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  This will allow you to put in keyword that you think would work for your site and niche (e.g. pet products, pet food, discount pet products, etc).  The tool will then rank those keywords according to search volume and will even give you suggested synonyms to use for your site.

Here’s something to keep in mind when researching keywords: the top keywords in a niche are extremely difficult to tap into.  For example, with the pet store example, you should not focus all your energy on marketing the phrase “pet products,” because this will be dominated by companies with much more time and resources available than you to market these words, for example Petco and PetSmart.  The lessen here is to market key words and phrases that are relevant, relatively popular, and that can apply uniquely to your site, for example, designer doggie clothes, (if that’s what you would like to sell, of course!)

2.  Title and Meta Tags:

The meta and title tags of your website dictate how a search engine will catalog your page.  Therefore, you will need to use the keywords that you just researched to describe your different web pages and blog posts.  There are many tools that can help you with this, but it depends on what type of server is hosting your site and if you are using a platform like Wordpress.  Simply look in your hosting account for the option to change the title tags and meta tags of your website.  This is the next step in getting your site out there for the world to see!

3.  Free Website Submission:

When a website is new, it can take time for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to notice that they exist.  This is also true when a website is redesigned dramatically-the search engine loses all information that was previously indexed on the page.  In order to alleviate the time it takes for Google to index your site, you should use a free website submission service to get the ball rolling.  This is just like it sounds: the free website submission will submit your website URL to hundreds of search engines and indexing services.  Try our free website submission tool now to get started!

Hopefully this post has been helpful in teaching those who may have been intimidated by the complexity of SEO in the past to be able to improve their search engine rankings by themselves.  Be sure to check back in the future for more tips and tricks!

The photo of the tools is from Flickr and is the copyright of ELF cosmetics.

By Britnee Nguyen

A new and free research tool, Google Insights, provides e-commerce owners with the ability to improve their pay-per-click (PPC) advertising with its search data. Many on-line retailers depend on utah PPC services to get more customers to their shops. If less people are clicking, then that means less business coming in.

Some may not see the relevancy in PPC or even understand how many people actually use it. Google reported that most of its $5.5 billion revenue in the last quarter was from PPC advertising. This is why Google has a keen interest in paid search ads and want to help on-line retailers receive the best support in it.

So the newest tool is Google Insights which helps hone a marketing message. You can choose three different ways to describe your product such as “environmentally-friendly”, “portable”, and “high-tech” for example and plug them into Google Insights which will tell you which term is searched for most in the U.S. or whatever area you’re in. This gives you a starting point on knowing which phrase will benefit you the most.

You can also see how a certain keyword tends to trend each year. For example, “softball cleats” trends to be the highest on March when softball season is about to start. You can also see which states search for the most and other related keywords and how they trend. You can see below how each divot and peak occur around the same time each year.

Note that Google Insights doesn’t tell you exactly how many people search for that keyword, but instead scales it accordingly. It is a helpful tool to help those with pay-per-click and to use it more efficiently. It’s not the only tool needed to succeed in utah PPC, but it is definitely one you’ll want in your toolbox.

By Robert Lockard

In September, Google introduced a new way for its customers to buy and sell online display ads. It’s called the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and it allows Internet marketers to find a variety of Web pages to advertise on and quickly make a bid. This speeds up the process for both advertisers and publishers looking for ad revenue.

I heard about this development in a Wall Street Journal article, entitled “Google Unveils Market for Display Ads.”

Google has literally thousands of partner websites scattered across the Web that display its online ads. However, Google has never been very good at display advertising. It bought DoubleClick back in 2007 for $3.1 billion and has been trying to come up with a good way to jump into this part of the paid-search market. This appears to be its big move.

This isn’t the first online-advertising exchange service. Actually, other major search engines, like Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have had them for some time, though none of them has been able to make them particularly big or useful, yet. Maybe Google will find a way to make this exchange service popular and profitable.

Google’s move comes with plenty of risks. What if few ad publishers and advertisers sign on to the service? Who would want to participate in a service that no one else is using? Internet marketers are looking for ways to reach the right audience in simpler ways.

Surprisingly, Google is far behind other search engines in the display-ad market. Google is definitely the king of PPC with about a 70-percent share of the industry’s total revenue, but it only received 1.3 percent of all display-ad views. Yahoo is actually the leader in display ads.

Apparently, Internet marketers who want to target a specific audience with simple Internet ads turn to Google. But if they want something more dynamic, appealing to customers’ emotions more than their intellect, they are more likely to turn to Yahoo or TV advertisements.

This is a complete version of the blog post on the eHarbor Blog: “Google tries to expand into new PPC forum.”

The photo of the fiery wok is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of liber.