SEO for Blogs

10 years ago, Search Engine Optimization was spam. People who knew very little about the practice could manipulate the search engines with very little effort and huge results. Nowadays, it's much more difficult and takes more than simple trickery to get results. The following myths, however prevalent in the current SEO scene, need some busting, by yours truly, Integraphix.

Myth One: Search Engines don't "see" Images
While this is correct that the actual image itself can't be seen by search engines, applying appropriate tags to the image can benefit your image search capabilities and on-page optimization efforts. While not a huge benefit, Alt Text and Image Filenames does make a difference and should be included in your SEO strategy.
Myth Two: An SEO Can 'Fix' Your Website after it's Built
The simple fact is, if your website is not designed and built around search engine optimization the first time around, it will be more difficult and more expensive to optimize your website for search engines after it's designed. Most web designers don't know what's important for SEO unless they've researched it on their own and can seriously screw up a site's optimization. Optimizing a site that hasn't seen the hand of an SEO can need some serious changes including code changes, CSS changes, and a complete reworking of internal structure.

Myth Three: Google is the SEO God
While Google is very important, there are two other major search engines out there that have their own set of rules to abide by. If Google said it, it may not necessarily work on other search engines. Take all the rules into account, test a bit and see which one works best. Google may not be the end all be all of SEO techniques.

Myth Four: No-Follow Links Don't Count.
Actually, Google, Bing and Yahoo all look upon an unbalanced Do-Follow/No-Follow links as spam. If you've got too many Do-follow links, the Search Engines may actually punish you rather than give you rankings. Try to keep a healthy balance of no-follow/do-follow links to keep your link profile healthy and natural.

Myth Five: Internal Linking Doesn't Matter
The main issue we find when optimizing a client's website is that their previous SEO Firm hasn't paid attention to internal page authority techniques. Internal linking is one of those techniques. Linking to your interior pages via the receiving page's keywords creates authority within the interior pages of your website. This can improve your interior page's PR Rank and even the search engine rankings of your interior pages. Not taking advantage of this can be severely detrimental to your website's on-page and overall website optimization.

For more SEO Tips such as How to use Tumblr for SEO and What does Do-follow mean subscribe to our RSS feed via your favorite feed reader! Have any other myths you want busted? Let us know in the comments!

The internet is a normal, every-day thing in our lives, and because of that, SEO is one of the most important parts of a business's marketing strategy. There are thousands of websites on the web, and we dare you to find someone who knows of, or has been to all of them. You won't find anyone. This is why search engines exist, so people can type in keywords and find products, services, funny things, cats, friends, dates, and many other things. This is why Keyword Optimization via SEO is so very important. If you want to get found first for the keywords people are using, you need to optimize your website for it.

As a general rule, the user will only look at the top 10 sites in a results page, leaving the other 1.2 million websites that came up for that search unseen. Therein lies the competition. You need to be in the top 10 as a minimum! We are an SEO company that excels in getting our clients into this 1-10 range, and provide services based in Chicago. We operate all over the United States, with virtual locations in New York, Charlotte, NC, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, Arizona. We also offer affordable SEO services to the masses.

Our services include:

Internal (On-Page) Optimization:
1. Title Tag Optimization
2. Meta tag creation & optimization
3. Content Optimization
4. Image Optimization
5. Website Structure Optimization
6. HTML code optimization
7. W3C Validation
8. Internal Link Structure
9. Navigation Structure
10.Statcounter & Google Analytics Details
11. Google Webmaster Tools
12. Robots.txt Optimization
13. HTML Sitemap creation
14. Google XML Sitemap Creation & regular updation
15. Footer Content & Other SEO Techniques


External (Off-Page) Optimization:

Contrary to popular belief, scamming in the world of SEO is alive and well. Business owners fall victim to it every day, and good Phoenix SEO firms lose their reputation inch by inch. To fight back, many Phoenix SEO firms, like ourselves, try to dispel the scams and help business owners keep a look out for ref flags that can spell disaster for an SEO campaign. Listen to these tips and you'll not only save time, but save yourself a lot of headaches down the line.

The Gratuitous Guarantee
These top three lies are the most often told, as they are the scams that are the least traceable. You could search to see if a company is associated with Google or if they've publicized cracking the uncrackable algorythm that is Google. But a guarantee? They're just words, and that's all you'll get in the end. Words. Why? Because nobody can guarantee rankings because everybody else is fighting for the top spot. You're bound to run into snags, have to change courses, and perhaps deal with only being on the first page, and not #1 for quite a while. If anybody is offering a guarantee for #1 spot, run for the hills.

The 'Thousands of Search Engines' Ploy
This one is funny, as people hear big numbers and don't use common sense. There are really only 3 major search engines that anyone has heard of. Google - Yahoo - Bing. Can you name any others? If you can you're in the minority, and why would you want to rank on a search engine only 2% of people use?

$50 for 500 Links!This is the pitch we lose clients to. They want to go with the company that's going to give them more for less. Why does it work? Because everybody wants to save money on their business internet marketing, but they know they still have to do it. It's a double edged sword for small business owners wanting to compete online. So when this golden opportunity to gain hundreds of back-links for a mere $49.95 comes along, it sounds too good to be true. At it is. The cheaper the link, the more likely it is to be just that - a cheap link. It will have no weight, most likely not be relevant, and what's more, could be on a website that you just don't want to be advertising on!

It's Friday? You'll be #1 on Monday!
This is the other pitch that people fall for. So you've got a website, and you're not making money off of it. The solution is to start an Phoenix SEO campaign to boost rankings and potential sales, and on top of it, you don't want it to take too long. Well listen up! You can get ranked in 2 days! How? Google AdWords. Why is this a scam? Because you're not getting targeted, consistent traffic to your site. Also - your site is only visible to people who type in that specific keyword, and only if they click in the paid portions of search engines. On top of that, once your budget is used up: your website falls off the face of the earth.

We've got Google in our Back Pocket
No employee at Google is going to risk getting fired and fined till the cows come home to help you get ranked in their search engine. Remember that, and don't ever fall for this. Google is in it for themselves, and they're not going to partner with ONE special Phoenix, AZ SEO company and help them make a profit.

The 'Trade Secret' of SEO
If you've got a contract with hazy deliverables and not a lot of concrete information, someone is hiding something from you. Granted, we have to protect our livelihood and our strategies, but once a contract is signed, you should be able to ask questions and get an answer.

Google's Algorithm? Cracked!
Not so. Engineers are working 'round the clock to keep updating, adding to, and changing the algorithm, so on the off chance that someone who's got enough computer hacking knowledge to even scratch the surface of Google's algorithm, 24 hours later, that information will be old news.

Installing Things on your Website
The only thing someone should be installing on your website is Google Analytics and a sitemap if you don't have one. Anything else and the company probably doesn't know what they're doing. Installing a link directory, or any other type of 'internet widget' probably means all their link building amounts to is a link exchange. The point, gentlemen, is one-way links.

In the end, do your homework. Make sure the company you're paying to do your work isn't just taking money from you and letting a computer program do all the work. SEO takes time, energy and human thought to come up with creative, effective strategies that will be a long-term success solution rather than a quick fix that might land you in hot water.

For more information on our SEO plans (or if you need help fixing an SEO mess!) give us a call at 480.442.6106 or email us directly.

-- Integraphix, an Ethical SEO Firm