SEO Long Island | The White & Black Hat Approaches

SEO: The White & Black Hat Approaches

Search engine optimization Long Island is now a necessary evil; you cannot run an online business without a good SEO campaign. Only an SEO internet marketing campaign will assure that your business gets the attention of Google as well as valuable readers. If you want to make your website Google’s new favorite and if you want to grab valid readers, you need an SEO specialist as soon as possible. They make a content plan for your online business, considering your specialty and services, they will focus on the keywords to assure that your website tops the Google search results. However, as per a search engine optimization Long Island SEO advisor, there are two different types of SEO approaches; Black hat and White hat:

1. Ethics: The white hat SEO campaign is always moral and it emphasizes on moral tricks to get traffic. Despite what might be expected, the Black hat SEO will attempt to discover some alternate ways to the superiority. Black hat SEO experts will use unethical tricks to beat the competition. However, an SEO company Long Island specialist mentioned this fact that Google’s new updates have left little space for black hat SEO.

2. The Reputation of the Website: When our representative met a reputable internet Marketing company head, they cleared up that any fleeting achievement made by the Black Hat SEO tricks is not long lasting. Despite what might be expected, the status gained through a White Hat SEO approach, is permanent. Such a website will always be trusted by prospects.

3. Content & Keywords: It is said that content is the King. The saying is Holy Grail of SEO world. However, many people manipulate the content in a negative way. They pick the Black hat SEO tricks, bombard the internet with keywords and kill the flow of the content. Ye, do get attention, but very soon Google hooks the fishy-fish and that website becomes something that belonged to past. On the other hand, a lucrative internet marketing by a seasoned White Hat SEO expert, earns respect for any online business. Search engines learn that the site is not all about a ‘keywords crusade’, but it is legit. Likewise, the readers also love the flow of content, quality of text and sue of relevant keywords.

4. Techniques: Black Hat SEO is one step ahead of the White Hat SEO, when it comes to technology and tricks. While Black Hat SEO uses ultra-smart tactics and technology like software to take the website’s ranking to a whole new level, the White Hat SEO has a typical approach towards how the links are built and how Google page rank can be improved. White Hat SEO relies more and more on quality content with smart use of keywords.

So, if you have a website and you need an SEO specialist for your company, you should only trust search engine optimization Long Island with your time and money, because they employ white hat approaches. This will assure a steady improvement in your online business and you’d soon taste the flavor of success.

Long Island SEO | The Power Of Infographics

The Power Of Infographics

Taking Your SEO Efforts To The Next Level

If you haven’t given much thought to incorporating Infographics into your Long Island SEO mix, perhaps you should.  Why?  Simply put, Infographics are the wave of the future.  They put hard-hitting, easily understood statistics into a fun, easy-to-understand, and most importantly consumable format that ‘netizens are hungry for.

Why It Matters

After all, who wants to read a wall of text to get to the root of what the statistics are saying?  No one, or almost no one, anyway.  Part of this reality stems from the fact that smaller, bite-sized (or byte-sized) stats are easier to digest and comprehend, but that doesn’t explain all of it.  The rest of the explanation stems from the fact that as of this year (2014), more internet users accessed information via handheld devices than via PC’s.

Make no mistake, PC’s are still a viable force in the world of computing.  They’re not going anywhere.  We’re certainly not going to see a time in the next couple of decades where the PC suddenly drops off the radar or becomes irrelevant, but the crown has officially been passed to the handheld.  That’s the future direction of computing, and it is already redefining how we relate to and interact with the information we consume.

Specifically, it comes down to screen size.  Even the larger handhelds today only have a screen size of 5 inches or so.  You can get tablets with screens roughly double that size, but the tablet market is only a small subset of the overall handheld market, and most screens are significantly smaller than that.  It’s one thing to read a wall of text on a 17” – 19” PC monitor.  Quite another to try to decipher that same wall of text on a tiny handheld screen.  Thus, the surging popularity of infographics.

The Art & Science of Infographics

There’s an art to creating a high quality infographic.  It’s not just a matter of gathering a few relevant stats and slapping them into an image file.  In order to make it work, you’re going to need three things:

• Focused stats that rely information people actually want
• Good artwork and presentation
• A “hook” back to your site

This isn’t hard work, but it is very definitely a process.  We’ll outline each of these steps in brief below, which should give you everything you need to position you to start cranking out high quality infographics for your site and business.

The first one’s easy.  Just ask yourself what statistics you would be interested in knowing about, as they relate to your business, or the topic you’re creating the graphic around.  If you can’t think of any relevant stats on your own, shop around and ask friends and co-workers.  It’s not hard to get a good topics list, but it is important that your stats form a nucleus around one central idea or concept.

Where the artwork is concerned, don’t skimp.  Don’t rely on clip art or stock images.  Hire a graphic designer to create all original artwork for the graphics you design, so that the images maintain a consistent look and feel, and are of a style that meshes well with whatever the topic of your graphic turns out to be.

Finally, and most importantly, you’re not designing this graphic for fun.  The end game is to get lots of traffic back to your site.  That means that when you post it on your site, you want the image itself to serve as a link back to your site, but more than that, you want your URL to be embedded somewhere in the graphic itself, so that when people begin to share it on social media sites and the like, its point of origin is preserved.  In other words, no matter how far and wide the graphic gets shared, it’s always going to point back to you and your site.

Interested?  Want to find out what else you might be missing?  If you live in or around Long Island and SEO is something that mystifies, you, don’t hesitate to contact us.  Or, join us on the web at: www.longislandsseo.

Tools For Building A Great Online Business | Long Island SEO

Tools For Building A Great Online Business

If you're just starting out as a new Webmaster and are taking those first tentative steps in building your online Empire, you've probably been overwhelmed by the number of hyped up offers trying to sell you various products that are “Guaranteed to Make You Money!”  They all promise basically the same thing.  They offer a push button ease of use, cookie cutter solutions, and money hand over fist.  The problem though is that in most cases the only money that's being made hand over fist is by the guys doing the hyping.  They get you excited about their product, take your money and you're left with a tool that doesn't really work.  Or, if it does work, it doesn't work nearly as well as you were led to believe.

The good news is that there are some really great tools out there to help you build and then grow your online business.  The best part is that many of these tools are free!  You don't have to pay a cent.  Having said that, there are some really great paid tools that will automate certain things that are big time sinks, so don't think that everybody with a product to sell is a scam artist, because that's not the case.  If you're a new Webmaster just starting out, you would be very well served by taking the approach of using nothing but free tools until you have a firm grasp of the process.  Once you do and you're making money, you can reinvest some of those profits by purchasing tools that automate the parts of the job you like the least.  At that point, you'll have a better understanding of exactly what you want a paid tool to do for you and be better able to determine if the ad you're reading is pure hype or if there's something to it.  Here are some of the free tools you'll want to pay attention to:

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

There are some really great keyword research tools on the market you can buy but the Adwords keyword tool is still one of the best.  This is the first place you should look when it comes to doing basic keyword research.  If you want to supplement the data that Google's tool is giving you, get the free version of Traffic Travis.  Between the two, you'll get tons of good insights about keywords, and you won't have to spend a penny.

Open Office

Don't spend the money on Microsoft Office.  There's no need  Open Office has all the features of the paid product plus it has a PDF creation tool built in (if you were to buy that separately from Adobe it would cost you right at $100).  If you're going to be doing a lot of writing (and if you're serious about making a go of your online business, you certainly will be!), then you're going to need a good, robust word processor.  Open Office is the one you want.

GIMP

The Web is increasingly a visual medium.  To that end, you might be tempted to spend the money to get Photoshop.  Don't.  GIMP is open source and free of charge.  If you don't like GIMP (and some don't, because its interface takes some getting used to), then look at JASC's Paintshop Pro as an excellent alternative.  In fact, some people like it better for the “tube” feature, which is admittedly pretty fantastic.

Windows Movie Maker

Here is another freebie.  With this and the software mentioned above, you can create unlimited videos to help market whatever it is you're selling.  Given the popularity of YouTube, it should come as no great surprise that video marketing is huge and getting bigger by the day.  If you're not doing it, you probably should be.  Fortunately, you can get started for nothing.

These tools aren't sexy or glamorous, but they don't have to be.  They get the job done and they do it well.  If you don't have them, you need them!  You can pick up the whole set for absolutely nothing.

If you've got questions or want to have an expert take a look at your blog, we offer a variety of affordable SEO services in Long Island.  Of course, you don't have to be in Long Island to use us, but if you are, we'd be doubly glad to hear from you!  Visit us on the web at: www.longislandsseo.com

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Trends for 2014 | Long Island SEO

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Trends for 2014

Search engines are the driving forces that are responsible for determining how web pages are ranked and viewed online.  Websites and pages are listed on search engines according to a specific set of criteria that has been determined by each search engine.  Knowing this information will help people to understand the important SEO trends that will be taking place in 2014.  Here is a simplified examination about how search engines work and the current trends that are going to emerge in relation to this information.

Search engines rank information in one of two ways.  They either index a website or pages within the search engine’s network or they perform a technique called crawling.  When a search engine “crawls” it is actually scanning the whole entire web to find the most populated sites for a particular term or subject.  Once a search engine has finished performing both of these techniques it will then present the results to a person on their web browser.

Keep in mind that not all search engines perform these two functions in the exact same way.  Google, Yahoo and Bing are the three biggest search engines on the internet but they perform the same functions in different ways.  Knowing this information will help a person to really understand how the current SEO trends are going to impact the World Wide Web over the next year.

All SEO content will need Three Components in order to be Effective

www.longislandsseo.com 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term for a process that affects how websites or pages are ranked on specific web browser.  Sites that are located at the top of a list will usually receive the most views by searchers.  This is why it is important for website owners to try and have their sites placed at the top of the list for a particular name or subject.

In 2014, website owners who want to be ranked high on many search engines will have to use three components in order to be effective. These three components are:

• Content
• Links
• Media

All three of these factors must be used all together at once in order for a particular website to gain a higher listing on the front page of a web browser.  Remember, that search engines “crawl” for information and websites that contain more crawler friendly components will ultimately be ranked better than those who that don’t.  Link building is important for this process but it will need the other elements in order to be more effective.

Content Marketing Coming to Maturity

SEO has been relying heavily on content marketing over the past five years and it really has become very prominent in 2013. Over the next year (2014) content must be developed in such a way that it automatically connects with audiences and gets them to take action (i.e. buying products) when necessary.  Content marketing is expected to be big in 2014 and it will play a critical role in search engine optimization.

SEO and Mobile Technology

Businesses and website owners will have to consider smartphone and tablet technology as means for search engine optimization.  So many people now own a mobile device that SEO input will be necessary to reach potential customers and web page viewers who use these portable electronic units.  This trend will become more profound in 2014.Branding and SEO

Website owners that want to be ranked higher on search engines are going to have to build up their brand over time in order to reach the top and to stay relevant over time.  Some search engines such as Google have created author profiles to be connected with their web pages.  Supposedly, the author profiles will help generate website traffic growth.

Social Media and SEO

Social media sites are now being used by search engines (such as Google) to help rank websites at the top of lists.  In other words, social media is now going to play a more dominant role in determining which website will be noticed above similar sites within its category. Websites that do not have a strong social media presence will suffer in terms of rankings when compared to those that do.  However, this does not mean that credible and authoritative sites will be automatically bumped to the bottom of list just because it does not have a strong social media presence. The social media aspect is going to enhance SEO ranking and not do away with the other criteria which affects it.

Keep in mind that a website owner can do everything that they are required to do to get their sites rated high on a search engine but still receive a low rank position.  Ultimately, there are too many variables that must be considered before a website is placed high on a search engine’s list.  The main thing is that website owners should be aware of these SEO trends that were presented here in order to increase their chances of being noticed by many viewers.

Learning How to Do Keyword Research to Have Great SEO | Long Island SEO

SEO New York

Search engines use keywords to identify which sites are relevant when an internet search is carried out for a particular word or phrase.  Therefore they are an important part of any SEO work that is undertaken on any website.  However, it is important that they are used in the right way in order for them to be truly effective.  Before any SEO work begins on a website, research is needed on the keywords that the site owner has in mind.

Keyword research can indicate whether the keyword that has been chosen is likely to be searched for on a regular basis.  If the chosen keyword is not going to return a decent amount of traffic then there is no point wasting time and effort optimizing the site for that keyword.

A balance needs to be found between a keyword that will return results and one that is so popular that it will have a lot of competition.  If a page does not feature in the first three pages of search engine results then it will probably not receive any traffic as a result of the keyword being searched for.  Using a keyword with a high level of competition may mean it is hard to optimize the site to feature highly in a search engine results page.

There are tools that can be used to help with keyword research.  These include Google Adwords and Wordtracker.  Google Adwords is often used as a starting point for keyword research as it has a number of useful features.  It provides an estimation of the search volume that the chosen keyword will return and makes suggestions of other keywords based on the one that has been entered.  This is particularly useful if the original keyword has a search volume that is either too high or too low, as an alternative can be chosen that will perform better but is still relevant to the site.

SEO Long Island

It is a good idea not to rely on one single source for carrying out keyword research.  Each tool will have their own methods of gathering information and using a number of different tools means that the website owner will have access to these resources.  There are several free tools available which can provide a lot of useful information, although most of it will be basic.  Most tools offer an upgrade for a fee and this will give the user access to more features.  It may be the case that the fee is worth the expense if the features lead to better use of keywords which attracts more traffic to the site.

Different search engines will have different methods for ranking pages.  If there is a particular search engine that the site owner wants to optimize their site for, the research will be needed to find out what these methods are.  Not all search engines make this common knowledge so it may be difficult to find this information.

A page will not be fully optimized for search engines without the correct use of keywords and keyword research plays a large part in this.  When SEO techniques are used successfully it can have a positive effect on website traffic growth.  This is important for any business as increased traffic can lead to increased sales.  Using the right keywords will not only attract more visitors to the site, but if used effectively can attract visitors who are ready to make a purchase.

Tips to Improve Your Google Page Rank

Tips to Improve Your Google Page Rank

Google is the most popular search engine that is in use today.  It’s with little wonder that a lot of effort is put into optimizing websites to be found easily by Google.  Google keeps the exact formula that it uses to rank pages a secret but there are a number of steps that can be taken in order to help your page rank higher in a Google search.

QUALITY LINKS

Google places a great deal of importance on the amount of quality links from other websites to your page.  It is important to remember that Google will only take into account links that it considers to be high quality so posting your link wherever you can on the web will not return good results.  Instead, it is a better idea to concentrate on link building by getting your link shared by others, or by getting it placed on other sites that are relevant to yours.

Page Titles

The title of the page needs to be used effectively.  If a description of the page is given within the <title> attribute, then it will attract more visitors when it appears in the results page.  This is because search results are displayed by Google as a link which uses the title of the web page.  If the title attracts the attention of the person viewing the results page then they are more likely to click on the site.  Higher numbers of visitors to the site can lead to a higher Google ranking.

Keyword Phrases

Optimizing your site for keyword phrases is more effective than using a single keyword and it can also lead to a higher page ranking by Google.  The most effective place to use the keyword phrase is in the title of the page as this will carry more weight than phrases used within the page.  It may also be the case that visitors who reach your site through a search using a keyword phrase rather than a single keyword are more likely to make a purchase.  That is just awesome!  Somebody searching for 'best priced laptops' is probably closer to being ready to purchase a product than someone searching for just 'laptops'.  Make sense?

Keyword Density

Keyword density is also an important consideration.  While they need to be used certainly in the title, and a few times within the page, care should be taken not to overuse them.  If Google detects a large frequency of keywords on one page it may mark the page as spam which will negatively affect the ranking of the site.  The use of keywords should flow naturally with the content of the page and not sound too disjointed or out of place.  Google can detect if keywords are being overused and will penalize a site for this practice.

Great Design and Content

Perhaps the most important technique for search engine optimization is creating a site that has good design and good content.  All the SEO strategies in the world will not lead to conversions if people do not like what they see when they get to the page.  A well designed site that retains the attention of the visitor means they are more likely to make a purchase.  A site's ranking in Google will improve if it attracts a lot of visitors.  This is especially true if these visitors start sharing the link to the page elsewhere on the web.

While it is not possible to fully optimize a site for Google due to the formulas and algorithms it uses being unknown, following the steps discussed above can lead to you achieving a higher ranking.  It should also lead to website traffic growth which will be of great benefit to any business, although in order to convert these leads to sale the website needs to be well designed with great content.

Link building strategies to drive traffic to your online website

Link building strategies to drive traffic to your online website

A lot has changed about internet marketing and website traffic growth strategies over the past year or so, and…a lot hasn’t, but if you find yourself bewildered and wondering why one (or more) of your sites that was formerly prosperous, is struggling this year, maybe it’s time for a top to bottom review!  Or, maybe you’re new to the game, and have no idea where to even begin in terms of marketing your site. Either way, we've got you covered.

So let’s start with the basics.  The internet is still, and will be, for the foreseeable future, a textual medium.  Yes, increases in bandwidth have allowed for massive growth in still images and video streaming on the web, but by and large, when people want actual information (as opposed to cute kitten videos), they look for something written.

This is not to say that you can’t incorporate digital imagery and/or video into your marketing efforts (you can, and it is, in fact, recommended), but bear in mind that the bread and butter of the internet is still the written word.  That means that now, and for the foreseeable future, article marketing still has a strong place in your marketing efforts, but before we even spend much time talking about that, let’s talk about our old friend, SEO (or, Search Engine Optimization).

SEO can be summed up like this:

It is a system of best practices that optimizes a page of web content so that search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc), can:

a) readily identify the page’s subject matter

b) rank and display it appropriately in search results when a user types in a given key word or phrase into the search box

SEO is comprised of two factors.  “On page” factors, and “off page” factors.  That’s it, but of course, there’s more to be said about each.

Relevant On-Page SEO Factors

• The presence of a site map – Bottom line: Google loves site maps. If you have one, you’ll score slightly higher than sites that don’t.  Add it.  It takes like five minutes of your life and provides some good internal link building for your site.

• Good intra site linking that makes sense – Your pages should not exist in isolation from one another.  If you have a blog that’s on a fairly narrow (niche) topic, then when you write a new page, odds are good to excellent that the new page will relate, in some way, to other pages on your blog.  Where there is overlap, and where it makes sense to do so, link your pages to one another.  Improves the user experience, and builds link juice for you automatically.

• Keyword placement and optimization – A lot of people obsess over this, insisting on a certain, fairly exacting “keyword density.”  Don’t bother.  The algorithms in use today are heads and shoulders smarter than they were a year ago.  Write naturally and Google and the others will figure it out.  Use keywords, yes!!  Just don’t obsess over them.

• LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) - Ever wonder why, when you do a search for the term “apple iPad” you don’t get apple pie recipes?  LSI is the answer.  Because the search engines “know” that if you’re talking about the apples you put in pies, they can expect to see words like “sugar” and “crust” and “tasty” and the like, associated with that use of the word “apple.”  On the other hand, if you pair the word “apple” with “ipad” or “istore”, the search engines are smart enough to know you probably aren’t talking about grandma’s dessert.  You can use this to your advantage.  Since the search engines already know how to interpret a search, rather than obsessing on keyword density, how about insisting on better writing quality from your content creators, using LSI terms to reinforce what your page is about?  Better reading for your users and it makes it easy for the search engines to work out what your site is actually about. That’s win-win!!!

• Meta tags and descriptions – Another thing not to obsess over. Back in the nineties, this was a Very Big Deal.  It’s barely a blip on the ratings RADAR anymore, so spend time on it, yes, but don’t obsess over it. In fact, if you run a WordPress based site, there are plugins (Yost, etc) that will do almost all of the heavy lifting for you here. Use them and move on.

Relevant Off-Page SEO Factors

• Link building strategy (in general) – As mentioned, for the foreseeable future, article marketing still has a place in your strategy, but here, don’t obsess over use (or overuse) of the exact keyword in your links. Use LSI, use related terms, and heck, sometimes even use “for more info” or “click here” as your linking text. The other big thing to remember is link diversity.  You want a broad spectrum, and you want natural (in body) links, versus resource box links whenever you can get them.

• Social media component strategy – Increasingly, search is becoming about community.  If a stranger recommends a restaurant to you, you may or may not take the recommendation, because after all, what does the stranger know about your likes and dislikes?  On the other hand, if a friend recommends a restaurant to you, you’re likely to take that recommendation much more seriously.  Search understands that, and is moving in that direction.  That’s why it’s important for you, as a marketer, to build and maintain a strong community presence in at least two social media platforms (FaceBook and Twitter, Twitter and LinkedIn…something).  You need it now, and you’ll need it more in coming years.

• Visual media component strategy – Not necessarily applicable to every market, but given today’s free software, it’s laughably easy to create quick informational videos and use these for marketing purposes. If it fits your niche, do it.  The written word is still king, but video is sexy and attracts lots of eyeballs. Take advantage of that.

• Strategic Partnerships and Associations – This is especially important if you are in a highly competitive niche.  Buddy up with someone bigger.  Offer to do free guest blog posts for an honorable mention.  If you can get even a few percentage points of a much bigger site’s traffic volume looking at you, that’s dollar signs.

Contained within these nine bullet points are everything you need to put together a comprehensive strategy for your website (whatever its topic) that will help you drive traffic, but of course, what’s just as important as these is the Golden Rule, not mentioned above.

“Say something worth reading! All the marketing tips on the planet won't help you if you're not adding value. If nobody wants to read about whatever you're trying to tell them, you're just wasting everyone’s time. Don't do that. That’s the kiss of death.”

Long Island SEO | SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Page Rank

Long Island SEO 

SEO Tips to Help Boost Your Page Rank

Attracting traffic to your website is essential for the success of any business.  Increased traffic can potentially lead to increased conversions which can only benefit the business.  Search Engine Optimization techniques can be used by a business to make their site easier to find through search engines and ensure that it ranks highly among relevant search terms.  There are a number of these techniques that can be employed by a business.

1) Create quality backlinks.  Search engines take into account the amount of quality backlinks a site has when considering how relevant the site is to a search query.  It is important to bear in mind that it is the quality of the link that is important rather than the quantity.  Getting your link shared on trusted websites should be the focus rather than sharing it in as many places as you can.  Search engines attach more relevance to high quality links than sheer volume of average links.

2) Appropriate use of keywords.  Keywords are an important part of the SEO process but only if they are used correctly.  The practice of keyword stuffing is likely to get your site marked as spam by search engines and should be avoided.  Keywords should be used in the title of the page and also in headings to be easily found by search engines.  They should be researched using a tool such as Wordtracker.  This will give you an insight into which keywords are relevant to your business and may be most likely to return good search engine results.  Ideally you want to choose a word or phrase that is searched for often but has low competition among other sites.

3) Have great content.  Once visitors have arrived at your site after finding it through a search engine, you must keep the reader’s attention or they will quickly leave the site.  A blog can be used with articles that establish your expertise in your area of business.  This also provides the opportunity for content marketing which can increase sales.  Great content on your site is also more likely to get people sharing this content which will help get more backlinks to the site.

4) Build your site with visitors in mind.  There is a danger of becoming too preoccupied with optimizing your site.  It’s important to focus on creating a site that is user friendly and provide the visitor with all the information that they need.  A good strategy is to design the site in the way you would like it to be and then look at how it can be optimized for search engines.

Website traffic growth should be a target that your business is continuously trying to achieve.  SEO techniques have a large part to play in this and if used properly, they will drive traffic to your site.  As it is such an important part of your business, ensuring your site remains optimized should be an ongoing process.  You might consider allocating it as a specific duty to a member of staff or setting aside some time to concentrate on this as often as you feel is necessary.

Long Island SEO Inc.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization and How it Works!

In recent years Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become less about filling content with keywords that will be detected by search engines and more about creating content that is likely to be linked to and shared.  As search engines have developed their algorithms for ranking sites the focus has shifted to rating how trusted a site appears to be.  This trust is measured by the amount of quality links to the site that can be found on other pages.

Increasing the amount of traffic to a website is crucial for the success of the business.  More visitors to the site has the potential to lead to more sales.  There are techniques that can be implemented by an owner of a site to increase the ranking of their site in a results page and therefore increase the chances that their page will be visited by people who have entered a search term that is related to the business. Long Island SEO techniques can help all businesses in the area attract more visitors to their site.

Creating backlinks to the business site has become an increasingly important SEO technique in recent years as the way search engines rank their pages has developed.  The key to success with this particular method is to create quality links to the site.  There are a number of ways that this can be achieved.  It may be possible to exchange links with other similar sites.  Existing customers may be encouraged to share a link to the site through their social media sites.  The important thing to remember is that it is the quality of the links that is important, not the quantity.  If a site has too many links to it that are not relevant then the search engine may detect that it is trying to cheat the system.

Keywords still have an important role to play in SEO as long as they are used in the right ways.  Keywords should feature in important sections of the website and most importantly in the title of the page and in any headers if there are a number of different sections on the page.  It is important not to overuse the keywords as this may result in the search engine classifying the page as spam.

It may be difficult to find a balance between a page that engages and interests visitors and one that will be easily found by search engines.  Content that has been optimized for search engines may not hold the attention of visitors to the site.  The best idea is probably to ensure that content will engage the visitors and then make any small changes as necessary for SEO purposes.

The primary aim of employing any SEO technique is to promote website traffic growth.  A business may choose just one technique to concentrate on or they may use more than one.  Whichever technique is chosen ensuring that the website contains great content means that once visitors arrive at the site they are more likely to be converted to sales.

What is Social Bookmarking and Great Tips on How It Can Help Your Business?

Social bookmarking allows you to save all your bookmarks online rather than in a web browser.  These bookmarks can then be accessed from any computer that you are working on.  All of your bookmarks can be shared with your friends or colleagues, or with anybody that is using the same social bookmarking site.  Pretty cool, right?

• If you own a small business, social bookmarking has a number of benefits.  Here are a few great reasons to use a social bookmarking site:
• Websites that need to be accessed regularly by employees as part of their work can be shared on the bookmarking site and they can be immediately available to use across all the shared computer drives at the business.
• As well as being a more convenient way to access your bookmarks, social bookmarking can be a very useful tool for promoting your business website.
• A big advantage of using a social bookmarking site to share your link is that these sites are free to join. This in effect means the opportunity to advertise your link for free.  This in itself ought to be enough to encourage you to give serious thought to using a social bookmarking site as you have nothing to lose. Having links to your site on other websites is one of the most effective ways of improving your sites page ranking by search engine.
• Social bookmarking encourages the sharing of your content and therefore more links to your page are created.  
• As well as improved results in search engines, a search relating to the product or service your business provides made on the bookmarking site can also bring increased traffic to your site.  When your site is bookmarked by someone else using the social bookmarking site this counts as a 'vote'.  The higher the amount of votes your site has makes it more likely to be viewed as a trusted site. This could then potentially lead to more conversions as interest is generated in your site before the person has visited it.
• Many sites also give the options to add comments and having positive comments alongside these votes can only make your site more attractive to new customers.
• There is no limit to the amount of social bookmarking sites you can use, so for the purposes of search engine optimization signing up to as many different sites as you can will really increase the potential for your link to be shared.
• Encouraging your existing customers to share their bookmark of your site with their friends can be a good place to start as this will mean your link is already starting to be shared.
• It is predicted that search engines will soon begin to use the votes a site has received on social bookmarking sites in their algorithms. Therefore the more people that are sharing your website on these sites, the higher it will rank in internet searches.

Social bookmarking is already an important part of Long Island SEO practices as search engines currently index the content of these sites. It looks as if it is becoming even more important in the very near future,  which can only have a positive effect on the amount of traffic that is driven to your site.  

SEO Consulting - Why It's Worth It and What You Might Be Missing Out On!

Search Engine Optimization is a crucial part of increasing the online presence of your business and driving traffic to the business website. To be truly effective SEO needs to be an ongoing process and this is where using the services of an SEO consultant can be of benefit to your business. You are free to concentrate on the day to day running of the business while all your SEO needs are being taken care of by an outside party.
If your business has ordered SEO consultation for recommendations about how they can improve their ranking in search engine rankings this will only be a worthwhile investment if these recommendations are implemented correctly. An ongoing relationship with the SEO consultant will not only ensure that the recommendations are implemented successfully but will also allow for the strategies to be altered as the process develops if this is needed.

Link building is an essential part of SEO but this is only effective if the backlinks that are created as part of this process are quality links. Using an SEO consultant can ensure that these quality links are created as they will have a lot of experience in this area and will have knowledge of the best sites to place the links. If a site has a higher number of quality backlinks it will be considered more relevant in an internet search.

Once content has been created for SEO purposes and is available online you will want to make sure that it remains current and contains the information you want about your business. An SEO consultant can monitor this content as often as is required and can edit existing information or create entirely new content depending on your needs. The chances are that your competitors will be continually updating their content which may cause your rankings to drop as theirs rise. For best results content needs to be updated on a regular basis with relevant information.

Tracking the success of different techniques implemented to attract traffic should be a key part of your marketing strategy. Analyzing where visitors to your site come from and whether these leads were converted to sales can be a lengthy and time consuming process, especially if carried out by in house web teams who have other jobs to do. An SEO consultant would have the time to devote to this task and may even have online tools that they can use to complete the job quicker. The information they gather can be presented to you as often as is required and any action that you wish to be taken as a result of the report could be acted on by the consultant immediately.

Ongoing support from an SEO consultant can be a real asset to your business. Website traffic growth can lead to an increase in sales as more of the traffic that arrives at your site should be relevant traffic. There will be costs involved but taking advantage of SEO consultancy and reaping the benefits that it provides can mean it pays for itself and more.