By Britnee Nguyen

Before the internet and blogs, writers were only being published in newspapers, magazines and books –all print material. Nowadays, writing is being published in a variety of different avenues through the internet. This is great for writers which means more opportunity to get writing noticed, but it also means they should be more aware of SEO writing. SEO  is search engine optimization using keyword to get higher up on the search engine results. SEO isn’t here to ruin good quality writing, but it’s to direct people to your writing to read what you have to say. It’s for your own benefit.

When writing, consider using keywords often. You can still make your writing comprehensible while inserting keywords. Obviously, you don’t want to go overboard with keywords in every sentence because that will look silly and forced. You don’t need too many to make the search engines understand what your article is about. These keywords should be the ones you want to focus on when people search those terms at search engines. You’ll have a better chance of getting higher if you’re using the right keywords.

A change to SEO writing from regular writing is the headlines. No longer can you use puns in headlines without it taking a blow to your search rankings. Headlines should be key phrases that you think people would search for. If you use a clever pun in a newspaper, you’re considered witty, but when you use it on-line it won’t capture as many readers because people aren’t going to be searching for that pun.

When inserting links into your writing, don’t just write our “click here” for my other related article. You’ll want to actually put the headline as the hyperlinked text. This will improve your SEO even more so for your other articles since you’re giving them an inbound link related to that keyword. This is why “click here” is of no use. If you google “click here” you’ll see that adobe is at the top. This is because they’ve use the phrase a lot of for downloads.

Nowadays, many employers are not only looking for good writers, but those who can optimize their writing for the web. As writing jobs become more competitive, it’s important to understand SEO practices and incorporate them into your quality writing. This will give you an edge over your competitors for a job. SEO isn’t meant to interfere with good writing, it’s to improve your writing techniques and get more people to read your stuff.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

We’ve all seen this before: the rapid weight loss plans, the get rich quick schemes, and in internet marketing, the “amazing” linkbait strategies that will, supposedly, get you on top of Google in a matter of days!

What’s my point here?  The world is full of easy alternatives to good ‘ol hard work.  And, while these alternatives have allowed us to create indoor plumbing and sliced bread, they’ve also elevated expectations to an unnecessary degree and allowed scam artists to flourish.

In the case of SEO, I’m talking about link farms that allow you to purchase “quality links” in order to increase your search engine rankings.  These institutions claim that you will see results in days, when in reality, great SEO plans will more often take months to generate results.  However, you can be assured that when these results do kick in, they will give your site an incredible search engine presence that will last for years.

The problem with get-ranked-quick linkbait schemes is that search engines are designed to pick up on fishy activity like this, and will take action against it.

Here is a list of linkbait tactics that will raise red flags with Google and Bing:

1.  Your inbound links increase suddenly and dramatically in a short period of time.

2.  Your inbound links come from irrelevant blog comments and unrelated topics.

3.  Hiding links in your pages.

4.  Receiving links from known link farms, paid link firms, and other known spam websites.

5.  Linking out to known spam websites.

In the long run, when it comes to SEO, don’t fall for the get-ranked-quick scheme!  Good ‘ol fashioned networking, relationship building and conversation is the best way to receive quality inbound links.  Yes, it will take time and effort, but the search-engine-deities will surely reward you for your diligence!

By Robert Lockard

Optimizing your website’s content for search engines costs about half as much as relying solely on a paid-search campaign for getting customers to your site. So says a recent study by Frommer’s Unlimited I read about in the Travolution article, “WTM: Rich content ‘more cost-effective than PPC’.”

Of course, the main flaw I saw in this study is that it analyzes SEO and PPC results separately when many ecommerce companies use a combination of the two. SEO and PPC have different strengths and weaknesses. SEO is slower but more cost-efficient while PPC is fast, but each click costs money.

It’s essential for a website’s long-term future for it to have strong content that is designed to attract search engines’ attention and increase its ranking in their search results. But that doesn’t mean PPC is irrelevant or too expensive for companies to take advantage of in their Internet-marketing campaigns.

According to Frommer’s study, it costs about 17 cents per visitor to optimize a site’s content. On the other hand, it costs about 33 cents per visitor through PPC ads.

The company based its findings on the results of eight companies focusing on travel, hotels or airlines. They divided the total cost of an SEO package by the total number of visitors who clicked on the sites’ natural search results to get the cost per SEO visitor. They divided the total amount paid for a PPC campaign by the number of visitors who clicked on PPC ads to get that average cost.

They found that 70 percent of their site visitors clicked on an organic search result, not a paid-search ad. Thirty percent isn’t bad, though.

What are your thoughts on this paid-search vs. search engine optimization debate? Which works best for you, or do they both work well together?

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Is SEO a better deal than PPC?” The photo of the SEO, PPC Scrabble game is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of therichbrooks.

By Robert Lockard

I read an article on Entrepreneur.com a while back, entitled, “Rev up the Search Engines.” It gives a helpful rundown of solid SEO principles for small businesses, which don’t have a whole lot of money to spare but need to start generating results from ecommerce.

This article gives six tips for a small business to get the most bang for its buck, when it comes to search engine optimization. They are attributed to Steve Wiideman, a fairly renowned SEO expert. I already talked about most of these in my SEO series in the eHarbor Blog, back in February and March of 2009. But I think a refresher is healthy.

Here are some of the highlights I took from these tips:

- Search engines are getting smarter. Don’t expect Google, Bing or Yahoo to fall for the same old SEO tricks. Bloggers and other content generators used to focus on their keyword-to-content ratio, but now search engines recognize when you use the same keyword too many times in the same post. Use relevant keywords prudently. If you use keyword-stuffing tactics, don’t expect much success.

- Google should be the focus of your SEO strategy. I thought this one was interesting because, while Google is certainly the king of search engines at the moment, things can change fairly quickly in the digital age. Of course, Google is constantly changing its algorithm for search results and it’s even changing its search engine completely with new products like Google Wave, Google Caffeine and a focus on social media, images and music. But that’s the topic of a whole other blog entry.

- If an SEO consulting company guarantees No. 1 placement on Google or any other search engine, don’t believe them. Google is the only that can absolutely guarantee top placement on its results pages, and every other company has to do its best to influence Google, but none can absolutely guarantee success. Keep that in mind when you come across SEO companies’ marketing messages.

Having said that, I’ll note Submit Solution is a good SEO resource for you. Submit Solution has more than 13 years of experience working on Internet marketing, which includes search engine optimization. It’s a great resource because it has helped many companies like yours reach customers online through its efforts. Like I said, they can’t guarantee No. 1 placement for competitive search terms, but you can expect dramatic improvements in your search-engine rankings for specific keywords in the months after they start implementing their SEO strategies on your behalf.

Keep coming back to the Submit Solution SEO Blog for the latest updates on major search-engine trends. This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog entry, “Top SEO tactics for small businesses.” The photo of the flying bicyclist is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Tom Grundy Photo.

By Britnee Nguyen (@brit_witters)

If you are getting a new website domain name, you might be wondering if all the SEO and internet marketing work you did for your original domain will carry over. Some people change their domain name to target a better audience by using their keywords in the URL. If you choose to do this, there are ways to do it without affecting the SEO you’ve already put in place.

Keep your old URL for the purpose of getting it forwarded onto your new website. This way if you have a returning customer who doesn’t know you changed your website, when they type in the original site they will get redirected to the correct one. This will keep your customers coming to your website and keep your page rank. Always use a 301 redirect that is permanent. If you use a 302 redirect that is temporary this could do some damage to your SEO.

When using the 301 redirect, it will redirect every page on your site to the correct page on the new website so you won’t lose any web traffic. Some just redirect it to the main homepage, but it’s better to make them all direct to the most relevant page you have on your new site.

Another option you can do in this process is while you’re redesigning your new site, go ahead and move your old site to the new URL. When you have the new design ready to be put up, go ahead and change it. This might affect your rankings for a small time on Google, but it shows them that you are just moving your domain name and not some outsider who is trying to bank on your built-up credibility.

If you do these things, then you should have no problem with Google recognizing your new site as the correct version of your old one and will keep your page rank and SEO in place. Remember to keep your old domain name and use a 301 redirect and to have your company’s old design on the new one while waiting for the new one to be completed.

By Britnee Nguyen

You might have found a talented designer who can create a stellar-looking website for you. This is a plus when it comes to the actual design of your website, but do they know how to design it so it can be easily optimized with SEO and found by search engines? Web design needs to be made with SEO in mind.

Maybe you’re wondering on how web design affects SEO. Well, it does in several ways. One example is that a web designer may create some good-looking graphics and puts them on your website. When you scroll your mouse over the graphic, usually a little pop-up type box shows with the file name or some other text. This is called the alt text.

It’s important that this text has your target SEO keywords inserted. So if you have a picture of a dog and your website is about an animal shelter in Utah. You don’t want to put your text as just “dog” or a random file number like “495803”. If you’re targeting the keyword “Utah animal shelter”, then put that exact wording as your text of your picture. This gets you moved up higher in the search results, especially in Google Images. Every picture that I have specifically written a alt text for with a keyword, I’ve always found it on the first page of Google Images within just a few days.

It’s these kinds of things that make web design important for SEO. Web design also needs to take into account of using words instead of images. A lot of websites are built as one image instead of a web layout with the content as a separate entity that’s entered in. This typically results in a pretty website, but the search engines can’t read it. If you have each page as one image inserted that had the text pre-inserted, then there really is no “text” for the search engines.

Make sure web designers keep the design and content separate so the search engines can read it and index you. Web design is a very important aspect in succeeding with an on-line business or identity. SEO is just as important also. Web design and SEO go hand-in-hand when creating the best on-line experience for your business and its customers. Be sure that your web design is functional so SEO experts at Submit Solution can optimize it to the most advantageous level.

By Britnee Nguyen

Search engine optimization tends to have a lot of different aspects about it that businesses need to be aware of in order to see results. There are so many things that can be done when optimizing a website that it’s important to let experts in the field work on the SEO for your business.

Google is the search engine that most businesses want to be top ranked, but Google is regularly changing their search results formula which makes it more difficult to stay on top. Internet marketing experts who work with SEO everyday, such as those at Submit Solution, stay up-to-date on these changes.

There are several things that need to be kept up on an updated basis for businesses to succeed on Google. For example, the local results feature on Google helps target certain areas for results. So if your business wants to do more in a local geographical area, Google can get you more traffic from those in that area. You just need to make sure you write some local information when optimizing your website. To boost your local ranking, use local keywords when you’re writing directions on how to find your business with a map included.

You also want to take advantage of recent results. Some of those who use search engines only want to read about the most recent and updated information. This means you should be constantly updating the content on your website or blog to make sure you’re fresh to show up on recent results. Google also offers searchers to look for related results to their original search. This is where variations of your target keywords will benefit you. Your website will be more likely to show up if you have more related keywords on the niche you are in.

Google has been one of the top search engines for many years and businesses have continually found success when they’re ranking high on it. There are many other ways to strategize your SEO to get ranked high on Google, but hopefully the above tips will help you get started.

By Britnee Nguyen

Building external links is one of the vital things 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 SEO 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 internet 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. 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 internet marketing techniques.

By Robert Lockard

Google could soon change the rules of keyword Internet marketing with the debut of its new Google Caffeine search engine. Right now, Google is not doing a good job of searching through social-media sites, like Twitter and Facebook. So the company is working on a new version of its popular search engine that will add them to the mix and shake up other sites’ rankings for certain keywords.

The online marketing firm 360i released a study a little while back in a blog entry on Digital Connections, entitled, “6 Things to Expect if Google Decaf Gets a ‘Caffeine’ Boost.” In the post, SEO Group Director Mike Dobbs and SEO Analyst Martha Mukangara noted some pretty surprising findings.

They included 40 retail keywords in their study of the differences between the first three pages of regular Google search results and Google Caffeine search results. The 40 keywords are made up of 10 major brand names (keywords), 10 retail head terms (single keywords), 10 retail torso terms (two-word phrases), and 10 retail long-tail phrases (four-word phrases).

They pointed out six ways the new search engine will dramatically affect online marketers’ strategies. For instance, 15 percent of all first-page rankings were different for the 40 keywords used in the study. Amazingly, the single keywords and two-word phrases saw 50 percent of their first-page results change with the new search engine.

The reason for this big change is the fact that Google Caffeine is focusing more on keyword relevance and it’s steering away from blogs and wikis in favor of social media, video, music, photo and other sites previously outside of its search capability.

Since single keywords are so general, they will face more competition from these new sites being allowed to vie for top ranking. Longer phrases, with four or more keywords, will benefit from the new system because they will be drawn from a smaller pool with a focus on how relevant they are to the searcher’s needs.

All of these changes could have serious consequences for ecommerce marketers. At the end of the article, the study’s authors give the following advice to them:

Marketers will need to keep a close eye on their own set of keywords and determine how results change if a switch-over does takes place… [I]f your keywords shift in rank, you will need to refresh your strategy and focus in on any results drop-offs, or take advantage of subsequent wins.

What an interesting topic. Be sure to keep coming back to the Submit Solution SEO Blog for the latest updates on Google and Bing, as well as other major search-engine trends.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog entry, “Internet marketers brace for Google Caffeine changes.” The photo of the upside-down YouTube page is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of engineroomblog.

By Britnee Nguyen

SEO… It’s been around since the creation of the internet, but hasn’t really become a focus of companies to use until five years ago. Search engine optimization has successfully helped hundreds of companies reach high on search engine lists to get noticed more by on-line users.

Different strategies are used such as including keywords in page headers, titles, hyperlinks, navigation bar, ALT description and META tags. Another important valuable tactic is to use unique content writing. The actual content with keywords inserted that are posted on websites can help increase traffic flow and improve sales. Because not only does it provide an avenue to display keywords, but those who visit the website will notice the quality of it too.

There are a few things you should look for when writing SEO-quality content. First, make sure your content is not duplicated or copied from somewhere else. This includes even just a sentence or phrase; it could affect your rankings. Original content is the best way to go to and preferably by a real human being – not a robot.

If you have a robot or foreigners write your content, it most likely won’t have completely correct grammar and good word usage. Hiring a person with a background in writing, English, or journalism will give you better assurance that they will do a good job and write content that will draw viewers in. For example, Submit Solution has a content team that was specifically hired to write quality content for their websites. If they had outsourced, they might not be guaranteed they will get what they are looking for.

One last thing – when writing, be sure to keep in mind who your audience is. If you write very informal on a medical website, then viewers will not be impressed and not think it’s professional and won’t purchase services. If you wrote the content in a formal voice for the medical site, then it will fit better for the company and its customers. So not only should you write SEO content just for search engines, but you should cater it to your readers as well.

Flickr Photo Credit: Linda Cronin