Photo credit: www.inmagine.com

By Britnee Nguyen

Microsoft released Bing (formerly known as MSN Search) just a few months ago with more than $80 million being spent in promoting it. An issue that has been brought up was whether the SEO rankings of companies would be affected. If Bing becomes more increasingly popular, then companies will need to start catering their utah SEO techniques to it or else they’ll lose out on searches being made there.

Bing is still fairly new so many are waiting to see its long-term effects. Right now, some are saying it’s a good idea for companies to make the extra effort within the next year to increase ranking to take advantage of Bing’s advertising push for utah online marketing. Since Bing is paying so much money right now promoting itself, its bound to have a lot of traffic flowing through at this time.

Companies could take advantage of this new venture by jumping on to get more higher rankings on Bing. Google is still the number one search engine and will most likely always popular, but Bing is working hard to become a household name. They recently just partnered with Yahoo’s utah search engine marketing and will be working together.

Although Microsoft’s efforts are admirable, I’m not sure if Bing will hold out for as long as Google has. Google has made such a statement that they’ve become a verb such as, “Google it.” They have such a strong presence that I even went to Google to search “What is Bing?” and look for news and blog posts about it. It was only after that I decided to go to bing.com itself.

That’s just my own personal experience, but I’m sure there have been others who have become hooked on it since it’s the new thing. Even though I don’t think Bing will be as strong as Google, I still think it’s a good idea for companies to get involved with it during this popularity burst. And if Bing does end up being a top search engine, then companies will benefit more receiving traffic from more than just Google.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Here’s the scenario: You’re searching for information on the most poisonous spider in the world, the black recluse, which you’ve recently learned has been found in an area near your home.  Desperate for information that may help you protect yourself and your family from the dangerous arachnid, you type in “brown recluse” in a search engine bar.  As the information is populating, several articles on the effects of the spider’s poison, the origins and known locations, or other subjects pulls up, looking very promising.  Then there are the pictures.  Lots of pictures of the huge, brown and black spider and even the damage its bite inflicts on the human body.  Which of the two would draw your eye?

Most likely, you would immediately move your cursor over the picture, possible exclaiming something like, “Gross!”, and would possible spend the next few minutes sharing the images with your friends and coworkers.

Recent studies on the browsing habits of search engine users confirms that people will consume information through pictures more than 30% faster than with regular text.  Why would someone knowingly skip over interesting pictures like graphs, charts and other images, utah online marketing in favor of reading a full-length blog post on the subject?  Some just might, but most won’t.

Image searches account for hundreds of millions of searches on Google everyday.  By optimizing the images on your site, you can tap into this market and begin a new side of Search Engine Optimization for your company.

Here are a few ways you can optimize your images to generate traffic.

Name the Image Correctly: An accurate name that describes the picture in brief, simple language is important, and will ensure that your image is pulled up in a relevant search.

Use Keywords: Keywords are another important factor.  Properly describing the image with keywords and alternate keyword tags will increase the power of your photo and increase its searchability.

Place Images Near Relevant Content: The best location for an image is surrounded by relevant content, like in a blog post.  This will increase the organic ranking of your photo within search engines.

Optimizing your photos can be a great source of traffic for your site!  These simple guidelines take very little time to implement, so start following them today to get the results you’re looking for.

By Robert Lockard

I enjoy Webmarketing123’s free Webinars on Internet marketing. I always learn a lot from them, and I try to apply what I learn. I’ve discussed several Webinars in the eHarbor Blog, most recently in my blog entry, “Experts are wrong: Twitter and Facebook help SEO.” In that post, I said I didn’t agree with one of their ideas about social media, but most of the time I appreciate their insights.

Today, I’ll talk about what I learned at their August 5, 2009 Webinar, “Advanced SEO Webinar: Linking Best Practices.”

The five things a website needs to get ranked on the first page of Google results are:

1. Keywords – These are the search terms you want people to type into a search engine in order to find your Web page.

2. Site Content – You need to use your chosen keywords in your website’s text to show search engines your site is relevant to those topics.

3. Meta Content – You don’t usually see this content, but it must be there in the backend of your site and in your Web page titles for your site to be fully optimized.

4. URLs – Include important keywords in your URLs. For instance, it is much better to have a URL like www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/07/17/is-twitter-overhyped, which includes the date and headline keywords, than something like www.eharborinc.com/blog/post-81. The second URL gives no clue as to what it contains, while the first one gives a much better idea of the page’s subject matter.

5. Inbound Links – These are links (or votes) from other websites to your site. Search engines look at both the number and quality of the links you receive from other sites.

This Webinar focused on the importance of inbound links and how to improve their quality and impact on your search-engine rankings. After you have created an excellent site, with top-notch content on a well-defined subject, you can start working on getting links from relevant websites and forums.

Three important principles to remember in your links are:

1. Make sure the anchor text, or the text that is hyperlinked, describes the page it is linking to.

2. Provide supporting material near the anchor text to further describe what the linked page contains.

3. Be as specific as possible where you send links to. Avoid sending links to homepages unless you have a good reason for doing so.

This blog entry is getting long, so I think I’ll have to cut it short and finish it in a second part. Stay tuned to the Submit Solution SEO Blog for more updates on how to use search engines in your Internet marketing strategy.

This is a complete version of the blog entry on the eHarbor Blog: “I link, therefore I am… on top of Google.” The photo of the confusing keyboard arrows is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of jeremyfoo.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

September 8th, 2009

The extreme growth of social media users in the past year has prompted the development of a new kind of internet marketing. Instead of emailing stories they like, people are “digging” and “tweeting” them. The importance of websites and blog posts are determined by the votes of readers on Reddit and Delicious. People can follow many of their favorite brands on Twitter and become their fan on Facebook. This intense boom in social media use begs the question, “Where did this all come from?”

The popularity and hype of social media marketing has taken away from the traditional marketing focus on search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads. Utah SEO and utah PPC have fallen into the background while social media shines with all its glamour. Although social media marketing has proven to be useful, it cannot stand alone. All the followers in the world will not generate the amount of traffic that a great Google ranking can! Until search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! decide to index every tweet in their rankings, SEO must be part of internet marketing. The trick to creating an effective marketing plan for your business is to combine traditional SEO tactics with fresh, new social media methods.

Here are some of the important “can” and “cannot” features of social media:

Social Media can…

Help you engage your customers. Social media allows your company to engage with the public in a casual, conversational way. You can find out so much about your potential clientele through this mode of communication! This is reciprocated as your customers learn more about your company through your conversations.

Help you build a following. Connections with your customers through social media outlets give you more opportunities to build sales through word-of-mouth reviews. It is also a great way to resolve questions and concerns in a way that will build trust with other readers. Social media is great for building awareness for your brand.

Social Media cannot…

Be the sole source of traffic for your site. Relying solely on social media networks to bring traffic to your site is foolish! In a recent presentation by @HubSpot titled “How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation,” they revealed that while three social media sites accounted for about 15% of all traffic to their site, Google alone provided over 22%! This means that while social media is certainly on the rise, search engines still provide the largest source of traffic.

Get your site ranked. Twitter, the fastest growing social media site, is filled with internet marketers promoting their brand. While this is a great method of driving traffic to your site, it is invisible to all outside of the Twitter world. Google do not index activity on Twitter! Therefore, Twitter, and other social media activity, does not help to promote your business through search engines. Most people rely on search engines to bring them to the information they’re seeking. To take part in that, you need to use SEO tactics to give your site a great organic ranking and, therefore, a piece of the pie.

Despite all its glitter and appeal, social media is not a one-stop solution for internet marketing. Search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads may seem outdated amidst all the social hype, but don’t abandon SEO! These traditional methods take advantage of the search engine traffic that social media cannot access. In the dynamic industry of internet marketing, it’s important to stay on top of all the latest trends, so stay tuned for more SEO and social media tips!