• less than 1% of search queries
• only queries in English made through Google.com

As part of that effort, today we’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

It goes on to say that the penalty doesn’t count as much as “Relevancy of the page” – but what else does?

You can check your website’s load time at Pingdom.

Some tips to speed up web page load times:

1. Reduce HTTP requests
   • Combine all javascript files into one
   • Combine all CSS files into one
   • Use CSS Sprites to reduce number of background images needed
2. Reduce the number of images on a page
3. Optimize images to reduce their file size
4. Use  an Expires or a Cache-Control Header
5. Minify CSS and Javascript
6. Use HTML and CSS over images where ever possible.

We’ll update this page regularly, and hopefully provide an Excel download once the list grows a little bit – so feel free to comment with anybody we missed.

1. 3w CSS Sites
2. CSS Breeze
3. CSS Chest
4. CSS Clip
5. CSS Count
6. CSS Daddy
7. CSS Dance
8. CSS Gallery.com
9. CSS Hampster
10. CSS-Imagine
11. CSS Impress
12. CSS Loggia
13. CSS Pick
14. CSS Rank
15. CSS Showcases
16. CSS Smooth Operator
17. CSS Star
18. CSS Tea
19. CSS Wrap
20. Fantastic CSS
21. Folio Stars
22. Host Pattern
23. Qindex
24. SEF Web Gallery
25. Select Web Design
26. StyleVault.net
27. Wooki.es
28. WP Elite
29. WP Float
30. WP Luxe
31. Your Site is Valid

1. Your Site’s Contact Page

   • First of all – have a contact page!  Title it “Contact” as is the convention around the web, and name it something like “contact.html” or “contact-my-company.php.”
   • Include a full address including city, state, and zip code within the locale that you’re targeting.
   • Include a local phone number, i.e. – make sure the area code matches the the targeted location’s.
   • Have multiple locations?  If you run a multi-national corporation, why not hire an SEO company to rank your locations because it gets a little tricky and is outside the scope of this post.

2. Title Tags, Meta Tags, and Your URL

   • Use a hCard in your website’s head section.  Learn here, create here. Simply use it as the markup/HTML for that part of your contact page.
   • City/State in Contact Page Title Tag
   • City/State in Index Page Title Tag
   • Location in URL (Ex. – AthensGAWebDesigners.com)

3. Your Local Business Profile

   • 1st, go to Google’s Local Business, and claim your business’s profile if you haven’t yet.
   • Profile using local phone number (area code matching the target location)
   • Location in Profile Title
   • Service/Product in Business Category Fields

4. Customer/Client Reviews

   • Customer Reviews are Important!
   • And it’s not just the reviews on Google Maps itself -
   • Google feeds it’s listings with dozens if not hundreds other third party review sites.  For example: Kudzu.com, Yelp, InsiderPages, and many industry specific review services.

5. Pitfalls & What not to do

   • Don’t List a 1-800 number on your profile or on your contact page, I know it makes no sense.  Have one, get your web guys to use an image to display it.
   • Negative Reviews – I know they’re hard to stop, but if you can contact the reviewer & ask them to remove it – do it.
   • Don’t use multiple Business Profiles with:
     1. The same business name
     2. The same phone number
     3. The same address (this one is particularly detrimental)

First, why SEO over other marketing such as PPC?

Pay-per-click advertising is all very well, but it means you have to pay for every visitor. SEO is about getting free traffic from the search engines. Over the course of two years or more, nothing has a better return on investment than SEO. Thus, if you plan on having a website that runs for more than two years, search engine optimization should be a key part of your online marketing strategy.

So what is the worst SEO mistake that a company can make?

The most common mistake that organizations make with regard to SEO is bringing their SEO consultants into the process too late. Many companies fail to give SEO its due consideration during a website’s design phase.

So there you have it, from one of the godfathers of search engine marketing.

Brandt goes on to list several key aspects to a successful SEO campaign that need attention during the design process, or what we like to call “On Page SEO.” Some crucial SEO techniques your design might forget are:

• Search Engine Friendly URLS
  www.abc.com/your-keyword.html vs. www.abc.com/page1.html
• Text Based Navigation Links
• Use of CSS instead of Javascript or Flash

For more in depth info. on the why a SEO consultant should be contacted during a website’s design phase, check out the whole article or give us a call for an informative chat.

But as primarily a SEO firm, we’ve been steering clients away from flash based websites for years due to the fact that Google, Yahoo!, and MSN couldn’t index their content. By content, I mean written text, images, and of course links among other website elements.

It appears the Game is Changing Once Again

Google announced that it has made vast improvements in crawling and indexing flash based content from menus to entire sites:

“In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.”

- From the Official Google Blog

At present, Google is only able to index textual content in flash designs, but this is a vast improvement. More information on Google’s new functionality can be found at Google’s Webmaster Central.

Great, now I can have a beautiful flash based and rank it well too, right?

Not so fast. Hopefully this dream is not too distant in the future, but at present little is known about how effective conventional SEO strategies mesh with the new update to Google’s algorithm. Besides, without Yahoo! and MSN Live making similar announcements, website owners could be losing out as much as 30-40% of their search traffic.

First, because many of these sites come up in major search engines for a variety of phrases, which can lead potential clients to your website. Second, it can help build your search engine rankings by giving you high quality, relevant inbound links to your charter or guide website. Most are free, and some require you to link back to their site from yours (reciprocal linking), but all offer web links as well as contact info pointed towards your business.

Where to find relevant blogs?

• Simply Google the industry + “blog” For example, the term “fishing charter blog”
• BlogCatalog directory (there are many other directories). Browse or search
• Technorati Search your targeted keywords, and check out the top results

Add to the Conversation

Nobody likes the guy who posts “I’m the best Fishing Guide in FL, check me out.” Blatant advertisement is likely to be deleted quickly, and very few people will follow the link to your site this way. Rule of thumb is to either add something complimentary, or something thoughtful is even better – it doesn’t have to be esoteric however.

How to Comment for Maximum SEO Effect

On most blogging platforms, there will be three boxes that you’ll need to fill out. Here’s a couple tricks to get the most out of the comment you’re about to enter:

• Name
  The name attribute is what’s going to make up the written text of the link. It helps (greatly) in SEO to have keywords in this text because it tells search engines what the link target (your website) is all about. Now some bloggers won’t take kindly to the name “best Florida fishing guide.” That said, if you’re business name includes some of your target keywords, then it should be OK to use that name. To simplify, entering the name “Bob” doesn’t help much unless your trying to rank well for “Bob” in Google.
• URL/website/address
  Called by various names, but in all cases it is the target of the aforementioned link. Usually you want to include your home page, but it’s good practice to vary them a little bit, especially when you have a page that is relevant to the blog post at hand. Also, if you have other content rich pages that you’d like to rank well for a given term, include it here. An example of this is if you operate a guide service off of a particular island or offer an “overnight” charter option.

Wikipedia defines Link bait as “any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”[3] Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature.”

Link baiting is all about creatin the buzz, and can take many forms, but in all cases involves content that is working talking about, and therefore worth referencing via hyperlink. There are four general types of link bait, but they can contain elements of any or all.

1. Linkworthy content
   A tutorial that is so concise, and so well written that it becomes the de facto manual on a given subject. It could be winter bass fishing in Lake Lanier or qualifications for a great P.R. firm. Example: Spousel Conversion Kit: Video to get your wife on board for buying that new boat.
2. Controversy
   An information peice that is so over the top, sometimes lacking all reason, that stirs up an online community or the blogoshpere at large. Something titled “President Bush Hates Puppies” is sure to draw a debate, and therefore generate links from people who agree and disagree.  Example: Polar Bear Future – Political or Scientific? Global warming, conservation, politics, and those cute, rip your arms off, white bears wrapped up in six words – who doesn’t want to read that?
3. Killer Apps
   A tool or application that is so useful, bloggers and webmasters will link to it to spread the word. It could be a tool for checking inbound links, or a lure color selector based upon weather and water conditions. Example: Georgia DoT Traffic Counts on Google Maps An easy way for retail/commercial realtors to look up traffic counts for a proposed shopping center.
4. Humor
   Everybody wants to share a joke, especially good ones. A collection of jokes, or one especially humorous one pertaining to your niche or industry is a sure way to draw links from related sites.  Example: Fishing Jokes Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day?

Blogging Is The Future Of Online Activity

Actually to be honest blogging isn’t the future of online activity Blogging Is The Now of Online Activity and has been for some time. Everything and everybody is leaning towards web 2.0 based sites such as blogs and when I mean everyone and everybody I’m talking about the people who count and search engines. That’s right search engines…remember those pesky not-so-trivial online dictators that we just can’t seem to do without but fervently wish we could?

SURE…a lot of savvy internet marketers are harping on how the golden era of the search engine has been one-upped by social media sites and is for all intent and purposes over; truth be told that’s a pile of steaming hogwash. Why? Well let’s look at some figures…you can’t go wrong with figures and stats; just as long as they are right I guess:

Search Stats End of 2007

* Google: 63.98% (The bigboy has muscled up)

* Yahoo: 22.87% (Retained the same balanced diet)

* MSN: 7.98% (Looks like Microsoft’s search is on a slimfast diet)

* Ask.com: 3.49% (The toddler of the pack…must be doing good because it won a PC World Nomination for 25 Most Innovative Products of The Year)

Fine And Dandy But What Has Mainstream Search Got To Do With Web 2.0?

Hmmm,wasn’t the whole point of social media websites and the explosion of new refined niche-category search engines supposed to circumvent bigboy online mainstream search? After all Google is no longer the darling of the people it once was and doesn’t seem to abide by its “Do No Evil” motto anymore. Be that as it may Google ain’t going anywhere anytime soon no matter how loud disillusioned acolytes may chant. Google is making sure of that by strengthening its grip on search and its influence in the social media theater…that’s why it bought Youtube for $1.65 billion dollars despite having its own Google Video platform which however, in comparison, performed dismally.

What was the real driving force behind the Google buy up of Youtube? How about the fact that Youtube has over 100 million videos viewed a day and well over 72 million unique visitors each and every month!

But this is happenstance digression, time to get back to the point!

Mainstream Search Engine Web Traffic vs. Social Media Traffic

If you think of mainstream search as enormous relatively unrefined web traffic and that of social media websites as more niche-oriented or refined web traffic you wouldn’t be far wrong. But that is not the complete story because conversely search-engine based web traffic is more valuable to you as an internet marketer or if you have an online home business. Catch is, it ain’t easy to get to the top of the search engines where it really matters! Luckily this is where social media sites and web 2.0 truly shine.

It is a lot easier to get a good flow of web traffic from web 2.0 and social media sites than it is from the search engines, most especially if your website/blog is spankin’ brand new! However getting internet traffic from social media sites also requires a level of input from you (Yup! What one-time big-hair advocate and internationally recognized hairstylist Vidal Sassoon quipped stands ever strong today as the day he uttered it: “The Only Place Where Success Comes Before Work Is In The Dictionary”).

Social Media And Web 2.0 Is All About Community

Much as we like to think of ourselves as unique creatures and largely independent-minded the truth is we humans are little more than herd animals. We tend to appreciate and hangout with like-minded individuals, people who mirror our thoughts and ideas. In other words people gravitate towards people who share the same interests. True there is some time-whipped saying which states that opposites attract but that’s best left to the field of love not the frenzied amphitheater of social media.

Social Medialites are all about the community and friends!

If you wish to capitalize and make any headway using social media sites you need to become part of the community; a task that involves active participation and not merely flagrant self-promotion! Blatant self-promotion without community service is the quickest and most assured way to get banned from a social media site (oh did I mention that most social media sites loathe internet marketers with a venom that Cleopatra’s Asp would’ve envied, though there are a few good ones solely devoted to internet marketing and online business).

Participation in this context means:

* voting for posts

* reading posts (and not just wanton voting)

* making comments

* joining and inviting friends to lists

* writing your own posts

If you’re new to this whole social media thing a good point to begin is read the TOS (Terms Of Service and conduct of behavior) then start making friends by voting for articles or posts you actually like (leaving a comment tends to warm even the coldest of hearts…assuming the comment is positive; social media afficionados tend to favor positive affirmation, much like what goes on in the real world) which will in turn make it easier to get votes for your own posts. The whole point of votes is that that the more of them you have the greater the exposure of your post which translates into more web traffic.

Mainstream Search And Social Media Sites Feed Off One Another

Undoubtedly building up a quantifiable list of friends and fellow voters can take time but when all is said and done that time spent on amassing friends is time well spent indeed! A well-written, intriguing, controversy-juiced post (otherwise commonly known as a linkbait piece) could send anywhere from 1000s to 100,000s of visitors to your site in next to no time.

Web traffic to your blog or website translates into greater love from the search engines which means better positioning in the SERPs (search engine index pages). The bottom line is your social media and web 2.0 efforts will draw web traffic far quicker to your fledgling website than the bigboy search engines, plus that web traffic will push your website further up the search engines.

A good linkbait post helps your seo efforts not only through the links garnered from your amazing penmanship (post) but also for the fact that the search engines these days ascribe greater rank and influence to such links that are heavily and often trafficked! Many heavy-weight links of yesterday that largely exist today as shadowy relics of their former selves (one-time high PR links that now boast little to no movement across their borders) are being consistently and all too frequently downgraded with each passing Google update.

If Content Is Still King; Fresh Content Is His Queen

No denying it, original content is still, as ever, the engine that powers the internet as well as being the enviable darlingest of darlings of the search engines. And you don’t have to be a genius here to figure out that in this respect static sites just cannot compete with mobile platforms such as blogs. King Content’s queen (HRH Fresh Content) is the driving force behind your site being crawled by the search engine bots on a regular basis. With a blog any new content automatically gets inserted on the homepage and pings (notifies) the search engines almost instantaneously. This means even a short post is going to bring the search engines sniffing to your site within hours (sometimes minutes) like a panting beast hot with lust. Just try and get that response with a static website even with a totally original, lengthy article in play!

Make Money
Ba Kiwanuka is the webmaster of http://www.internetbusinessmart.com

Building Business through Forum Posts

Knowledgeable posts and interesting discussions on forums and message boards can benefit your business in four ways:

1. It helps establish you as an authority. Think about someone searching for family trust or tax issue that you answered back in 2006. You had it answered, think they may want to give you a call if estate planning is on their mind?
2. Direct Web Traffic. And it’s targeted too. Let’s say you answered the question “What’s the best time of year to fly fish for tarpon in the Florida Keys?” Potential clients can follow the link in your signature to check you out your charter operation.
3. Search Engines Love Them. Posting on boards that allow you to include a link to your website is a cheap and non-technical way to increase your search engines by building relevant, in-bound links to your website or blog.
4. It keeps working for you. Although message boards normally list current topics first, your post content still shows up in the message board’s search function as well as search engines proper. The post is still their linking to your website, so the in-bound link isn’t going anywhere. Lastly, on many forums, when a visitor comments on an old post – it jumps right back up to the top for it’s category!

Pick Your Forum Wisely

Nearly all forums and message boards are free, with few exceptions, skip any that have membership fees. There are three criteria you should evaluate before joining a forum and posting on it regularly.

Subject Matter

Sounds like a no-brainer, huh? Well, back up for a minute and think about where your customers or clients might lurk. Are they going to be in a national fishing forum discussing redfish and marlin, or are they more likely to be zeroed in on a Florida fishing forum before they book their next outing? Every business niche will have a different posture on this, but take a look at who’s posting around the message board and ask yourself is the subject matter relevant to your customers?

Popularity

Nobody likes talking to themselves, and web forums are no different. Look for vibrant, active communities to join, it will help you more in search engine rankings and human trafficNobody likes talking to themselves, and web forums are no different. Look for vibrant, active communities to join, it will help you more in search engine rankings and human traffic.

Signature & Linking Policies

Last, but most important. Make sure to read the message board’s terms/rules/guidelines and find out if you are allowed to add link(s) to website in your signature. Without links, it may be fun and/or informative, but it’s not doing anything for your business. Even if you can put your company name in a signature, will the interested parties “Google” it? If they do, will they find you? Speaking of Google, and all major search engines for that matter…. The web is a democracy, and think of links as votes. The more votes, the better the rankings. If you write an excellent post or tutorial on tying salt water flies, they won’t know who wrote it if your link isn’t in the signature.

How do I find them?

A simple search on your favorite search engine should suffice. Just enter your trade or industry name, along with geographic keywords if appropriate, and take a look at the top results.

What is a signature? What’s the best setup?

A signature, in forums speak, is text, links, and even images that are automatically inserted underneath your forum post as shown below:

Each forum may be different, but somewhere under “Profile” or “User Control Panel” or the like, will be an option to set up your signature. While adding your name, company name, an image, or anything else is up for debate – you certainly want a link (or more if allowed) to your website. If possible, you want to include keywords into the actual text of the link (called anchor text), because it tells search engines what your site is about. Links will most likely be inserted in one of three ways:

1. Bulletin Board Code. Just copy this code, making the necessary changes of course: [URL=http://yourwebsiteaddress.com]Your Website OR Keywords[/URL]
2. HTML. Again, copy this code making the necessary changes: <a href=”http://yourwebsiteaddress” mce_href=”http://yourwebsiteaddress”>Your Website OR Keywords</a>
3. Code Editor. There are many variations on this, but anything that pops up and asks you the name/text and address for a link that you wish to insert. Just enter your website’s name or keywords in the name/text box, with your website’s URL in the link box.

Tips on Posting

• Don’t be a spammer! Nobody likes spammers, and quickly posting “Have boat, can fish, call me” will annoy board members, potential clients, and possibly get you banned from the forum.
• Do make worthwhile contributions. You don’t have to give up the farm, or for example, list GPS waypoints of your favorite fishing hole. But lending your knowledge or perspective on an issue can demonstrate your command of the subject matter, and build a solid foundation for building personal relationships and sales.
• Strong, concise titles. A great title is half the battle in getting readers to check out your post. It should be as concise and descriptive as possible, and never post generic titles such as “Fishing?”
• Provocative posts are actually good. Controversial posts are often replied to more, and also linked to more often from external websites. This keeps your post up at the top for longer, and increases the value of that signature link in the eyes of search engines.