How To Handle Secure Files Being Indexed
At SMT we typically do a website audit for new clients. During these website audits we see a lot of the same mistakes from web developers and web designers that do not fully understand search engine optimization best practices. One of the issues we come across is the client's site starts to get indexed under the HTTPS version of their site. HTTPS is typically used to protect sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or personal information that is submitted...
Survey Finds Social Media Impacts Search Engine Rankings
A recent study, The Impact of Social Media on Search, by BtoB and Business.com took a look at how business-to-business B2B marketers are integrating social media with search engine marketing SEM. The study polled 464 B2B marketers to see how they are using social media to improve their search engine rankings.
Did social media have an impact on their search engine performance?
44% stated it had a positive impact 28% stated neutral 27% stated they did not know 1% stated it had a negative...
Using Infographics to Build Links
Infographics, or Information graphics, are visual representations of complex data or knowledge that is presented in an easy to understand graphic. While infographics have been around for a long time, Internet marketers have turned to using infographics as a link building tactic. As you can see from the Google Trends graph, infographics started to really pick up at the beginning of 2010. So, the start of 2010 has been the year of the infographic. Producing an attention grabbing and timely...
The Forgotten Power of Internal Linking
Did you know that Google says there are hundreds of factors that go into getting your site to rank for targeted keywords? It can be overwhelming to think about. That’s why many of our clients come to us in the first place. It can be intimidating to figure out everything you site needs in order to be successful online. There have been many instances where a client would search "SEO" or "Rank #1 on Google" and come back to us saying, Build me links so I can rank for keyword ! We hear that...
Few People Using Location-Based Social Networks
Forrester Research recently released a report, Location-Based Social Networks: A Hint Of Mobile Engagement Emerges, that noted there were only a few million consumers using geolocation apps on a monthly basis. Location-based Social Networks include such sites like Foursquare, Gowalla, BrightKite, and Dopplr. The report states that only 4% of adults have used a location-based social network and only 1% have used it more then once. The profile of a location-based social network users: Male...
Digital Marketing: A Road Map of the Basics
Survival of the fittest To this day, the Internet is the fastest changing industry which adapts many changes throughout every month, even on a daily basis! With the Google algorithms always increasing in complexity, it becomes harder to be able to generate organic results for any given website. If you just now want to start with Digital marketing campaigns for your business, you must start with a very well defined niche which is in demand, yet is still not saturated with competitors. On top of...
Tips If Your Domain Name Is Too Long For Google PPC
Recently, we had a client that was very interested in launching an aggressive PPC campaign. Everything started out perfect. During our collaboration to form a strategy, we found out the domain name for this project has 36 characters. This is not including the www. ExampleOfA36CharacterDomain123.com For those of you who don't know, Google's Adwords policy states that the display URL has a character max of 35 characters. Since this site is a newly acquired site, it normally wouldn't have been an...
Digital Marketing: Investing Wisely in your Business
If you have a website, you need traffic. Unfortunately many people know this and also come to realize their lack of knowledge on how Internet traffic really works. There are lots of opportunities out there offering you thousands of targeted visitors to your website for just a few bucks, or a directory promoting your website on Google on your behalf. If you do not advertise your business, your incoming flow of customers will be low. Nowadays simple word-of-mouth and referrals are not sufficient...
Reduce SPAM without CAPTCHA using a CustomValidator
There are plenty of resources and methods out there you can use to reduce the amount of submissions to a form on your website by non-humans. Some website administrators get hundreds or thousands of submissions from bogus people. They are often automated bots searching for open holes your website to infuse content for whatever their purpose is. Many times it is to promote their own website, content, or services. Sometimes they are attempts to cause the website or webserver to crash, inject...
Optimizing Search Engine PageRanking by Using Dynamic 301 Redirects
How to Optimize your Page Rank Those SEO-savvy web programmers and search engine optimization specialists are familiar with the problem caused by changing a previously ranked URL to a new URL. For example, an old page that a search engine has ranked on page 1 may be www.domainname.com/about/default.aspx. For a variety of reasons, it may be necessary to change the URL to www.domainname.com/about-us/. The new URL will be identified by search engines as a new page, even though it is the same...