2008 was a great year for SEO! More and more businesses showed an interest in search engine optimization and sought out specialists to help them fulfill their online marketing goals. Social linking, blogging, and other forms of SEO garnered more publicity and respect as legitimate ways to grow internet business.
Business owners in every industry worried as the economy declined and moved into a recession. I know my company, MorePro Marketing Inc., was concerned about the effect that the recession would have on our ability to land new clients interested in our SEO services. Yet despite the slowing economy, MorePro grew and expanded in 2008 and business was still going strong at the end of the year.
Smart businesses, when threatened, increase marketing and publicity expenditures and know how to adapt to a shifting market. Many of our clients did just that and turned to search engine optimization and PPC as ways to increase website traffic and boost online sales. These companies saw success even when many other businesses were going under.
Here’s hoping that 2009 brings SEO companies like us, our clients and everyone else continued success and prosperity! Hopefully the buzz around internet marketing and online business will continue to evolve into a new tech-savvy market all its own.
Happy New Year!
-Rachel
A lot of emphasis in the SEO world is focused on improving external linking or backlinks. Of course, since this is one of the most effective ways of improving search engine rankings, it is definitely an important aspect of search engine optimization.
While external links are often the focus, internal or “on-site” linking can be nearly just as important. The way links are set up on your own website can have both positive and negative effects on your search engine rankings. If you link to the wrong websites, you may be flagged or penalized. If you don’t optimize the links on your website with your important keywords, you’re certainly not getting the maximum rankings possible for your website.
Here’s what you can do to make sure you’re getting the most out of your website (in no particular order):
- Use important keywords in your navigation and menu options. Without going overboard, try to use keywords that are popular and relevant to the page the link will be pointing to.
- For any links you add that point to external websites, be sure to use the “nofollow” tag to ensure you’re not showing a “vote” for that website. Of course, there will be instances where you may want to maintain that vote, so don’t use the nofollow tag on those links. Nofollow tags can also be used to block the search engines from following pages* on your own site that are of little SEO value.
- Within the body of your content, there may be opportunities to link to other pages on your website using relevant keywords as “anchor text”. If you choose to create links within your body content, be sure that you’re taking the site’s visitors into consideration - you wouldn’t want to add a link in a spot that may distract them from completing a goal (e-commerce sale, generating a lead, etc.).
- If your images contain links to other important pages, be sure to use descriptive ALT tags that include the relevant keywords for the destination page.
*This is an advanced SEO technique and we do not suggest that you utilize this procedure on your website without consulting an SEO professional first.
The most important thing you need to understand is that your website is valuable and directly influences your company’s ability to rank well in the search engines. While we’ve included some basic linking recommendations here, it’s important that you research each method and determine if it’s something that’s right for your website. We suggest that you consult with an SEO company or consultant to ensure that you’re implementing these tactics correctly.
Jennifer Kaufman
Linking Strategist
It may not be something you think about when you’re reading one of your favorite blogs or RSS feeds, but each electronic media element that you see could be putting a number of individuals and/or companies at risk.
Not only is the creator of that electronic content at risk for lawsuits or other potential risks, so are the 3rd parties who are tied to that content, such as: ISP’s, Feed Aggregators, Websites, marketing companies, technology companies, etc. Even publishing a “negative” comment about a business or individual could land you in hot water if you’re tied to it and someone believes it is “defamatory”. Copyright and trademark infringement fall in the same boat… you publish it or host it (or contribute to it), you could be found liable.
Yes, there are risks online and in other media formats… but there’s hope.
There is a special type of liability insurance called “Electronic Media Activity” coverage that can help protect you from:
- Defamation
- Right to privacy
- Plagiarism/Piracy
- Copyright infringement
- Negligence
This special coverage is available from Stuckey & Company (www.stuckey.com). Electronic Media Activities services are typically not described on professional liability insurance policies as a covered service. Stuckey’s policy gives coverage for electronic publishing, web casting, or other distribution of electronic content on the internet.
Whether you think you need this coverage or not, you might want to contact your insurance broker and find out. If they don’t provide it themselves, they can signup up w/ Stuckey & Company to get it. You also have the option of getting the coverage directly through www.stuckey.com or via one of their listed brokers.
Google appears to be beta testing some new search results features:
The first item allows you to quickly modify the type of search you’re performing, whether it be a standard search engine query, blog/news search, video search, etc.
The second section shows you Related Searches, or queries related to your search.
Not sure I like the layout just yet, but it seems a lot more like Ask.com. I think they’d be better off moving the features to the right hand side of the page or at the bottom personally. It seems to distract from the results themselves.
I had been feeling guilty about an unfulfilled New Year’s resolution. No, it wasn’t to lose weight or start exercising (did those), it was to read all the Internet marketing newsletters I was subscribed to.
There were ten or so weeklies and some daylies on every news item, and posts on SEO, SEM, Website Analytics, A/B and Multi-Variant Testing and Sales Conversion strategies. Great stuff from some of the real Gurus in our trade, everyone of them… At least I believe there is great stuff in them, if I just had time to read them I could tell you what great stuff I found.
The dilemma is there is so much and a lot is just a different coat of paint on the same wall, even the digests, which are supposed to help you discern the best to read, are by the same people talking about the same thing. I mean don’t get me wrong, these people can write circles around me, but what I need is fresh insightful information about our industry that isn’t a rehash of an article written three months ago by someone else.
So I went and unsubscribed to all but 3 sources. Sources that I now pay an annual fee for and if I don’t read these on a daily basis, I’ll not only have the guilt about keeping up on industry news, but I also have the guilt about throwing my hard earned money away.
One of the things that has been bothering me lately is the number of people and firms who claim to have been on the Web since right after the turn of the century and I don’t mean the year 2000 or 2001.
I was doing some research on website conversion strategies and came across an article about a man who had been writing copy for websites since 1986. Hmmm?
Let’s see…Tim Berners-Lee’s team at CERN brought us the first rudimentary web in 1989 and it was another 4 years until Marc Anderson came up with the web-browser Mosaic.
In 1994, the real commercial capabilities came to the forefront, but even then, Internet Magazine (which launched that year) touted a review of 100 websites as the largest list ever compiled. So I guess our industry is now old enough that we can start telling 20 year old industry war stories and no one will question the timeline.
We have 2 documents on the wall in our offices from 1995; the first one is a form I used for submitting a client’s site to the existing Search Engines. I called this service “Search Engine Submission” (catchy huh?) as SEO was not yet a part of the culture. The other document was the domain registration form for this same client, which I am proud to say, is still a client. He knows how long I have been doing this, so I guess I won’t be able to tell any stories that are older then 11 years.
Bits & Pieces, Internet/Technology | racheld | January 6, 2009 | 
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2009, New Year, ppc, SEO, SEO Companies