How do I Create Quality Content

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:06:41 +0000

Perhaps you have heard that the search engines are giving more credence to “Quality Content” when developing the ranking of a page. If so, and our recent experience confirms that both Bing and Google have an emphasis on new–quality–content, the question becomes what is and how do I write quality content.

First start with a plan of which the focus is on answering all the questions a visitor to you website might have. For example: you wish to sell a vacuum cleaner on your website but all you have is the generic description from the supplier and pictures of the toaster. If you simply post this information then every other site that has done the same is considered duplicate content and your content will, at best, be ignored.

Next, decide if the sale of the vacuum cleaner has sufficient profit margin the make the following investment of time worthwhile. It is Ok to start with the basic content provided by the manufacturer but expand it. Don’t just state the weight of the cleaner but compare it to something that the visitor can understand. Such as a 20 lb. sack of potatoes on wheels. Describe how maneuverable it is and how it easily will get to those hard to reach spots under chairs. Pictures of the vacuum cleaner in use and perhaps a 2 minute YouTube video will complete the task.

Not every product or service is worth this effort. Target the ones that convert well you make you the most money.

Why Social Media? Does it help ranking?

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:57:25 +0000

We often are asked this question, not only by our clients but also from prospective clients. The most often form of this question is that there appears to be few, if any, direct ranking benefits from using social media. By social media we mean Facebook, Google+, Twitter. etc.

The bottom line is that both Google and Bing use social media in their organic Web search ranking algorithms. These social media considerations may, and do, include the following:

Social authority – the higher the reputation, clout, etc of the social user creation the content, the higher the content is valued
Shares – the more likes, tweets, Google+ recorded to the content the more attention the search engine robots will give to the content
Traffic – content that receives noticeable shares results in the website achieving higher rankings
Local – content with more reviews, check-ins and geographical information will receive better position in Google Places.

So what does this mean? Social media is not a cure all but it is a necessary part of your overall SEO effort. If you carefully read the items listed above you will note that it is not a one and done effort but rather an ongoing, time consuming task that has significant SEO ranking benefits.

Mobile Search Optimization

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:20:48 +0000

Over the last year or so we have noticed a steady increase in the number of searches on our client sites that are conducted from a mobile phone or ipad. The data, which comes directly from our client websites’ Google Analytics, is that the pattern of mobile search is typically 10% to 15% of the total number of searches. This is projected to approach 20% by the end of the year.

To show the importance that the search engines are attributing to mobile searches Google is introducing a new crawler to find content specifically made for smartphones or to search for “redirects” that will point a smartphone to a mobile site.

This means that your website should be constructed to load fast and show well on the small screen of a smart phone. If you are a local business which depends upon reservations and customer contact — pizza shops, restaurants and services come to mind – you may want to consider a mobile site that makes it easy to select the phone number and call.

Content for your website

admin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:24:05 +0000

As you may have heard the search engines, lead by Google, are interested in original quality content that is relevant to the subject of the web page. In addition they have been stressing “fresh” content. Writing content can become a chore so one way is to have your customers and users create the content.

User created content involves any of the following:

Customer testimonials
Product or service ratings
Product and service customer reviews
Discussion boards
Product tutorials (video or text-driven)
How-to guides or FAQ’s
Company or customer interviews
Social media content (blog comments, likes, tweets, etc.)

If you are interested in adding or improving the content for your website Nti4 has extensive experience in connecting with customers, using the online community to provide content for a website and then promoting that content with outside sources. Interested, then give us a call at (610)631-8471

Google’s “Freshness Update” and Website Ranking

admin — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:46:08 +0000

Not to long ago Google revised their web indexing algorithm. This recent update has become known as the Freshness Update and appears to be affecting nearly 35% of the searches. The stated goal of the update was to rank Newer content Higher in the search results thus delivering more recent, fresher results.

Enough time has passed that we have seen the effect on our Search Engine Optimization customers. Those that provide routine fresh content have seen a significant improvement in their ranking with content that is date/time stamped performing best.

A blog, of course, is probably the easiest method of adding time stamped content to the website though periodically adding date stamped content, relevant to the subject matter of the website, to the home page seems to have a slightly better ranking boost.

If you would like assistance in adding a blog to your website or managing fresh page content give us a call at 610-631-8471

YouTube Video

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:27:58 +0000

If your web site is not performing as well as you wish in the search engines then it may be time to consider adding a Youtube video.

It should be obvious to everyone that Google has become the #1 search engine in the world. And …since they own YouTube they’re
#1 and #2!

Online video is becoming a mature process and is a major way to get your message out. In the years to come, as broadband continues to become more available, it will only become better. Hence the reason why Google spent billions to acquire YouTube. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, “More online searches now take place on YouTube, the popular video site owned by Google, than on Yahoo, the No. 2 Web-search property.”

We believe that it is worthwhile to consider integrating video into your marketing efforts? However just adding a video to YouTube does not accomplish all that it should. The video should be optimized and its placement on YouTube announced to the Internet community.

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