Tag: SEO

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Do Videos Help My Organic Placement?

Do videos help your website to place better on Google? Hmm, that is a good question and one that has several answers and this is mine. Yes… but.

First off I would not install Flash videos unless you have to. My preferred way of showing videos is to load them to YouTube.com (a Google property), and then embed the iframe tag into the website page. There are several reasons why I recommend this course of action.

  1. At YouTube, you can add tags, a keyword dense subscription that Google will spider and spider preferentially as YouTube is a Google property. By building a channel on YouTube you can actually get organic placement boosts by keywords and add to your own site authority with links from YouTube to your site.
  2. Others can link to your YouTube videos, embed them in blogs, and use them while you get the credit. Traffic can funnel to your website directly or to your website via your YouTube channel page.
  3. If the videos you have are not yours but you are authorized to use them, you cannot go the YouTube route and then your best scenario is to place them in a quick loading Flash player. You won’t get SEO juice from them, but you will improve website stickiness.

Video however is not the SEO placement magic tool that it was once thought to be as when Google bought YouTube and started pushing video several years ago. At that time, many SEO gurus claimed that adding videos would move your website up in organic placement. That however has simply not happened. Videos are just another great way to engage customers, get your message out, and if you are using YouTube potentially get some link juice and web authority back to your website.

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When It Comes To SEO Services Be An Educated Consumer

Just because you receive an email from a firm saying your website is poorly placed organically or has supposed SEO issues does not mean that you have to take action. First off, I have a high ranking on Google on many of my services, and nearly all of my business comes in via my organic placement efforts, and I still get these letters!

If you do decide to work with an SEO firm, that is fine, just make sure that you are getting what you pay for and are an educated consumer about what they say they can do. Here is just one case study that should help you to be aware that you need to be careful, aware, and vigilant when you are shelling out your hard earned cash for SEO services.

Fees: Six months expense for a local business for SEO services $400 a month or $2,400 already spent

Services: SEO work plus articles to garner inbound links.

Review: After six months of service Google shows the site as having 223 links. Many of the links are from link farms or off-topic locations. As comparison we did a report for one of our long time blogging clients the same day we looked at this other client’s results, our client had 70,000 links. A different client we also reviewed for links had 11,000 links just from on-domain blogging. 223 links for $2,400 is not a lot of links. When challenged by the client, the SEO firm said typically they get results in regards to links in the ninth month. My analysis of this is that I have seen it take 90 days for links to happen and start building with an article program, but my next question would be let me see some of these articles and where are they syndicated. You may get better overall performance with your on-domain blogging efforts as our own clicnts have than with poorly written articles that may actually give you a black eye with consumers if they are not up to snuff.

Services: Website work for SEO – installed Google Analytics, created sitemaps…

Review: Yes these are all good things and should be done, but as a consumer you need to know that in many cases, and certainly in this one, Google Analytics was installed via a WordPress plug-in that took less than 12 minutes to install and once installed Analytics code appeared on all pages. WordPress will build a sitemap without your involvement once you install a plug-in. Don’t let SEO firms bill you big money for these things. Yes, they are important, yes they should be done, but when the report comes to you stating that these things took hours to do and were labor intensive, know that this is simply not true in most cases and certainly not if a WordPress plug-in is used to do the work or code installed in a footer include.

Services: Add keyword dense image alt tags and link title tags to website.

Review: Yes these things may be extra ways to capitalize on SEO, but did you know that most browsers now do not show an alt tag on mouse over. The information is only shown if you use a title tag. If you are paying for these things, go to your own home page and right click “view source” do a control + F to find title or alt. Is there even anything there? In my case study situation,  the SEO firm said that this was one of the things they had done. After six month of payment, at least the home page should reflect these items, and there was not a single keyword dense alt tag or link title tag on the page. With the home page being crucial for SEO placement, one needs to wonder why this is on the supplied services list and not visible on the home page of all places!

Services: Increase website traffic

Review: The case study client thought that the Google Analytics report showed good traffic. They were pleased with 250 visitors in a 30 day period. This is about 9 visitors a day! Good grief, that is awful traffic for having spent six months of $400 a month. This money would have been better spent on Google AdWords to drive qualified immediate sale generating traffic.

Our case study client has gotten in fairly deep with an expenditure of $2,400 that really has not given them much of anything. There are surely some SEO firms who will deliver what they say they will and are, but you as an educated consumer need to be aware of what you are paying for and confirm that you are getting it. In this most recent case the client did not get value for a $2,400 of expenditures with their SEO firm. Make sure you are not being charged for things you are not receiving.

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Google Rolls Out the +1 Button

This past week Google released access to the +1 Button. If you have not added it to your website or blog yet, here’s a link to the code generator. If you don’t know, Google has said that +1 button votes will be used to raise your position in organic results. Here’s what Google specifically says about that issue:

“Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For  example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1’s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search
quality. For +1’s, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

That’s pretty big news! If you want to read all the FAQs here is a link to the help section on Google. Right now you have to sign u in Google Labs to have the +1 results be shown in your own personal Google.com search results. What is great is that you can +1 something right from Google.com or if the website has the +1 button installed, you can +1 it right from their website page.

We are encouraging all of our clients to get the +1 on their website and blog. We’ve only run into one problem with installation. In only one case it appears that there is an onLoad issue with other scripts that are showing on the page, but that is just one website out of several we’ve installed so far.

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Watching New Meta Tags

I am always on the watch for new meta tags that are being tested by search engines. I like to be an early embracer of new technology. If you are unsure of what meta tags are in common place use right now, here is a great primer and list for you to consider using on your website.

Two new meta tags that I am watching and just getting ready to implement on my own site are two that Google released recently mainly for use on Google News. They are syndication-source and original-source. These two tags inserted in your source code in the head tag allow you to notify search engines that you are the creator of content on your website. You can read more information about both in this interesting article.  Why not just use the canonical tag? Well, Google says it best and here is the quote:

“We felt the options currently in existence [the canonical tag] addressed different use cases and were insufficient to achieve our goals. The more accurate metadata that’s out there on the web, the better the web will be.”

Google is pretty clear that they are just using these new tags for Google News right now, but if you are a unique informational content author such as myself, it is a good thing to make your content as the originator so that scraper sites that steal your content will not get credit for your hard work. Google does say that they are evaluating the wider use of these meta tags, but has not embraced them for you use in their regular index.

Here is how you would actually use the tag in your head tag code:

meta name=”original-source” content=”http://www.mccordweb.com.com/weblogs/2011/04/23/watching-new-meta-tags”

I personally feel that I will most likely use both to just cover all bases, but remember these tags are not being widely used right now by Google’s index. Will they use it? Possibly, but I am willing to try anything to tag my content as my own.