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SEO Tips

Our core product has always been search engine optimization (SEO). With several years of experience in the market, we bring you our SEO tips and tricks that have been used for years with proven results. Our SEO services in Miami FL helped many of our customers achieve their online goals and in many cases exceeding their expectations. Follow these Search Engine Optimization tips to a succesfull SEO campaign.

  1. DOMAIN: The some tips for you to pick a domain name:
    • Pick the shortest domain possible
    • Pick the most relevant to your business, and if possible include a keyword.
    • Pick a domain name that is easy to remember and/or catchy. Don't try to change the language to your special spelling needs.
    • Avoid numbers, dashes, or special characters.
    • Spend time looking up for an excellent domain. There are several websites that offer a free domain look up tool such as Zehaa.com, NetworkSolutions.com, etc.

  2. CODING: This is a very big part of your SEO campaign, make sure your code is very well written and with the appropriate tags, and make sure they are in the right place. Don't forget to include CSS and many important parts of your code.

  3. DIRECTORIES: I can't enforce how important this is for a good successful SEO campaign, register your website with main directories as well as the relevant ones. Spend a good amount of time in this process, and be really careful to enter the info as they as for because you don't want to go back to do it again, it will be a big waste of time.

  4. HOSTING: Find a good hosting company, you don't need to spend millions on hosting plans, but make sure they can handle the traffic. Usually for 10 dollars a month, you can get pretty decent ones until you get to heavy traffic. If you are processing Credit cards or asking for any type of personal info, don't forget to get an SSL Certificate. Here are some of the recommended hosting companies: Zehaa.com and Verio.com

  5. MAKE WEBSITES FOR HUMANS NOT FOR SPIDERS: This is a mistake most people make, your website has to be interesting to the public you are selling too. Most SEOers make websites thinking on the spider but they forget the spider cares most on humans.

  6. TEXT LINKS: If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

  7. CONTENT: Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase. We recommend adding relevant content to your website on a weekly basis. Four to Five pages a week will be optimal.

  8. LINKS: If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you do not want the link. Nobody likes this part because we all know it takes a lot of time to get this done, but, as we like to say the more the merrier. Make sure you spend alt least 20 hours a week on this process.

  9. FRESH CONTENT: Fresh content improves rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines. If your site content doesn't change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three times a week. Make sure you use good and fresh content to feed those little crawlers. That's all they eat.

  10. ANCHOR TEXT: Be sure links to your site and within your site using your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is "Red Shoes" then link to "Red Shoes" instead of what most people use "Click here" link.

  11. TARGETED KEYWORDS: Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text ("our Palm Springs store" not "our store") to help you get found in local searches. Avoid  general or broad keywords, if your main keyword is "hotel" but your hotel is located in Springfield OH, then your keyword should be "Hotel in Springfield OH". You don't want to bring traffic to your site that is looking for a Hotel in Springfield CO because this is going to drive your bounce rate thru the roof.

  12. SEO VS DESIGN: It is very important you don't design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won't cut it. Fixing it could be more expensive than to build a new one. Always remember spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

  13. CANONICALIZATION: Check for canonicalization issues - www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

  14. HOMEPAGE LINK: Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you're splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com  and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html. Make sure this does't happen so you can measure your traffic correctly.

  15. FLASH, FRAMES AND AJAX: Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem - you can't link to a single page. It's either all or nothing. Don't use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

  16. PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE: Your URL file extension doesn't matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won't make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned. Just make sure is correct.

  17. LINKING: When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

  18. NATURAL CONTENT: Search engines want natural language content. Don't try to stuff your text with keywords. It won't work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you. There is no exact number or percentage that will tell you the right amount. So all we can tell you is to make it sound normal.

  19. SURROUNDING ANCHOR TEXT: Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text. Do this the whole website, blogs, links and for all the material related to your website.

  20. BOUNCE RATE: This is one of the key ingredients to a qualified online positioning. Your bounce rate is what determines if you have a qualified and relevant website for your public. Search engines will look at this number to determine several aspects of your site and will have a direct effect to your position within the organic searches.

  21. DEDICATED IP ADDRESS: When you share an IP address with other websites you might be affected for their actions. Say someone is caught spamming, It is hard for Search Engines to determine exactly who is doing wrong from that IP address. For this reason, we recommend you run on a dedicated IP address to be on the safe side.

  22. DOMAIN NAME AGE: This is key when we look at SEO. Many people say why pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for an already taken domain name when they can get one available for $10.99. Well this can actually save you money in the long run. The right domain name with the right time on the market can save you hundreds or thousands on SEO time. New domains can take up to 24 months to be fully optimized, existing domains depending on time and the current use can take anywhere from 3 to 9 months to be fully optimized. Think about this from a sales point of view and you will see the added value.

  23. SPELLING AND GRAMMAR:  A well-written website will always have priority over any other non-professional website. This is a part that many people take for granted and should not be overlooked. Quality copywrite is key factor for any website to be on top spots.

  24. CSS: This is a great programming technique with several benefits. As for SEO, CSS can make you website lighter, increasing the browsing speed and giving your visitors a better experience.

  25. TEXT SIZE AND POSITION: Not many people make an effort to this point, many people don't even think is relevant, but the size and the location of your title and text is another important factor that will influence the positioning of your site.

  26. CROSS LINKING:  Is another way for Search Engines to determine the importance of your site around the web. This will help the ranking of your site because the more sites point to your website the more important it is. Make sure you spend quite enough time in this process.  At least 8 to 12 hours a week.

  27. CONTACT INFO IN FOOTER: This is a great way to get your site into the local map search, Crawlers take your contact info from this part to learn about the location of your business and how to contact you.

  28. SERVER REPORT: This point goes back to a previous topic DEDICATED IP ADDRESS. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to make sure your site not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

  29. USER FRIENDLY WEBSITE: Make sure your site is easy to use. Remember build websites that are for Humans not for Crawlers. If your visitors are not happy when they visit your website they will go back to find a better site. This is going to affect bounce rate and ultimately your rankings. Also, another factor to consider is that this can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

  30. UNIQUE CONTENT: Search engines like not only unique content but also good quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content has both.

  31. FLASH INTROS: Flash intros are great for customer experience, not so much for SEO purposes; however, if you absolutely MUST have your main page as a flash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

  32. .EDU AND .GOV LINKS: As you can imagine Links from .edu and .gov have great reputations; therefore, domains like these are given nice weight by the search engines. If possible, we recommend running a search for potential non-profit .edu and .gov sites that are looking for linking partners or sponsors.

  33. OPTIMIZE FEW KEYWORDS: Give each page focus on a single keyword phrase. Don't try to optimize the page for several keywords at once. Also keep the keywords to the essential ones. Trying to optimize a bunch of keywords irrelevant or with low relevance to your site will most likely affect the important ones.

  34. NEVER STOP OPTIMIZING: SEO is not a one-shot process. In fact is a never-ending process. The search scenery changes daily, important factors today can be irrelevant in the future and vise versa.  So expect to work on not only your website's optimization daily but include a few hours to R&D. We recommend to work at least 1 hour a day in SEO in order to obtain outstanding results.

  35. OPTIMIZE TEXT: Use every chance to optimize. For instance optimize the text in your RSS feed, blogs or post just like you do on your meta descriptions, copywrite or titles. As always use descriptive, keyword rich text in your titles and descriptions.

  36. CAPTIONS: Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keywords with rich captions with your images. Also, name your picture files with keywords instead of image1, pic02, etc.

  37. FOOTER AND XML SITEMAP: You're better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Don't ever rely only on your XML Sitemap, good global navigation and linking will serve you much better.

  38. QUALITY LINKS: Links (especially deep links) from pages with a high PageRank are excellent. High ranked pages indicate high trust, search engines like this, therefore, the back links will carry more weight.

  39. SOCIAL NETWORKS: Be aware of social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand with reference to websites like Myspace.com, Youtube.com, del.icio.us, Facebook.com, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search engines.

  40. ALT DESCRIPTIONS: Try to use the words "image" or "picture" in your photos ALT descriptions and captions. Many searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

  41. OPTIMIZING IMAGES: Make sure you enable "Enhanced image search" in your Google Webmaster Account. Images are a big big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will maximize your SEO efforts by a big percentage. Also make sure they have the right weight and quality in order to optimize your website's speed.

  42. VIRAL COMPONENTS:  Make sure you add viral components to your web site or blog - reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc. As we said on previous tips, knowing how social networks work will maximize your SEO efforts.

  43. SIMILAR PAGES: In case you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page on your sitemaps.

  44. SERVER HEADERS: Check your server headers this is very important. In case you don't know just Google for "check server header" to find free online tools regarding this. You want make sure your URLs report a "200 OK" status or "301 Moved Permanently" for redirects. If the status shows something else, check to be sure your URLs are set up correctly and used consistently throughout your site.

  45. HEADING TAGS: Heading tags are probably one of the most important parts of your website's text. Making this visible for Search engines is key, whether you us CCS or H1s is up to you. Just make sure you make it important.

  46. TERMS OF USE AND PRIVACY POLICY PAGE: This is a great for you to show not only search engines but visitors as well, that your website is a legitimate business.

  47. SERVER SPEED: Remember the ultimate statement for SEO "build websites for visitors not for search engines" This said, server speed is a determinate factor for visitors. If your website takes to long to load visitors will leave your website and you end up with no customer and a high bounce rate.

  48. WEBPAGE SIZE: Crawlers are set to read certain size of pages. To long a page can be seen as too much information falling into the spam category and/or might consider as keyword stuffing.

  49. LOCAL MAP RESULTS : Here is a great way to gain traffic for your local business. You optimize your address an location just like you do with everything else on your website.

  50. POOR CODING AND DESIGN: Search engines say they don't want poor pages that have regular attempts for design or coding. It is very important that your website is design by qualified professionals. Companies that offer templates or Cheap websites are not the solution to success online. Like the old saying "you get what you pay for".

  51. DOMAIN NAMES: It is recommended that you choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. If your favorite domain name is taken, avoid trying to change the world's spelling just so you get the name you want.

  52. DOMAIN AGE: New domain names and website will always take more time to optimize that domain names already register. It takes time to gain credibility with the search engines.

  53. DOMAIN PRIVATE REGISTRATION:  Be aware that by using services, that block domain ownership information when you register a domain can be harmful. Google might see you as a potential spammer or a not trustworthy site.

  54. KEYWORD PHRASES: Use keywords that are being searched for. You might offer the product but if nobody searches for the keyword is a waste of time. You need to structure your campaign some other way. You can check your keyword phrases with the Google Keyword Tool. Use keywords that are specific to your business, don't try to fool the customers by using keywords that are not relevant just so you get traffic. Add keyword synonyms to your content. Put the keyword phrases in the <title>keyword phrase</title> . Insert the keyword phrases in a <h1>keyword phrase</h1> tag at the beginning of your page. Make sure not to use more than one <h1> tag per page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles. Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map.

  55. KEYWORD DENSITY: Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. There is no exact  percentage to tell what is good or enough. You just have to know. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted. Too little might not do the trick. The best advise I can give you is to make it sound normal, but emphasizing your point. It is recommended to have your keywords towards the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.

  56. TITLE AND META DESCRIPTION: creation of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed, the title is the first thing people see. Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content="Description phrase" or from the first sentence on at page. Make sure your description has also 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning, same as your first sentence.

  57. META KEYWORDS: The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be, some say Google doesn't ever look at it anymore, but it doesn't hurt to put them anyway. It is as follows, <meta name="keywords" content="keywords,go,here" /> and put in it all your keywords and keyword phrases. This tag should be different for each page(just in case).


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