SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: SEO Basics II: Brought to You by the Letters K-Z

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SEO Basics II: Brought to You by the Letters K-Z

2015-09-03 10:00:15-04

Letters X, Y, Z

If you missed it last month, take a moment to check out letters A-J of the SEO alphabet before continuing with this back half of the alphabet. Okay, good? Let's finish the alphabet!

K. Keywords – words and phrases that help visitors land on your page via a search engine. Additionally, keywords are part of the equation for ranking websites.

L. Landing Page –a standalone page on your website where internet browsers may "land" on your website and get information on a specific objective of your website.

M. Meta Tags – an HTML tag that gives information about webpages, but are hidden from the user so they don't change how pages are displayed.… Continue Reading
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SEO-e Friday Trivia: Importance of Headers, Meta Keywords and Title Tags

2015-09-04 14:02:42-04

Welcome back to SEO Advantage's Trivia feature Friday, where we discuss, dissect and comment on the internet and marketing, and how the two intertwine.

Which on-page element carries the most weight for SEO?
hole in the webpage

A. H1 heading B. Meta keywords C. Title tag

(See answer below)

Headers are imperative in that they allow visitors to a webpage know that they have reached the page they intended to be on. H1's also indicate to the searcher that they've found the section of a page they need. Likewise, title tags provide visitors with a quick summary of a page's content, which will specify whether it is relevant to the visitor's search.… Continue Reading

2015-09-09 10:34:45-04

SEO team

When it comes to SEO programs, you can see variations across clients and the span of months. This is what makes SEO programs such an asset: flexibility to evolve over time. But how do you know which SEO programs are worth using and which are worth trashing?

The following judgements are a good place to start.

Fact Check

You should always ensure that the company you're researching takes a look at your company's history with SEO programs before proposing one. Specifically, you need to provide them with the following information:

Have you used an SEO program before?
If so, what did you like/dislike about it?

… Continue Reading
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SEO Roundup (September 11 Edition): Periscope, Google's Structured Snippets, Copywriting FAILS

2015-09-11 11:38:31-04

For regular readers of our SEO roundup, we're glad to have you back for another biweekly installment. For newcomers, welcome to our blog series where we share the latest SEO news, resources and tools that the SEO Advantage team has found helpful and informative.

As you know, internet marketing is a constantly evolving industry and keeping up with all these changes could be a full-time job in itself! Therefore, our goal is to give you a quick overview of the top links worth checking out so that you can get back to being a marketing maven.

So without further ado, let's get to the good stuff…

Search Engine Optimization

It's never a bad idea to brush up on the basics.

… Continue Reading
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SEO-e Friday Trivia: Search Engine-Specific Markup

2015-09-18 12:45:45-04

Welcome to SEO Advantage's Trivia feature Friday, where we discuss, dissect and comment on the internet and marketing, and how the two intertwine.

SEO- search engine optimization

Name the website that has a developed search-engine-specific HTML markup that all of the major search engines have agreed to work with.

A. Google.com B. Schema.org C. Microsoft.com

(See answer below)

Schema.org has blossomed into a community that collaborates in order to, according to their website, "create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet." In addition to promoting a community on the Internet solely, schema.org also structures data across emails, web pages and (hopefully) further.… Continue Reading

2015-09-22 09:21:19-04

house of cards

Have you ever been in a situation where returning to the fundamentals can help you regain a foothold and actually improve your situation—like reconfiguring the design of a house of cards after numerous failed attempts? Some internet marketers have found that stripping SEO down to the bare bones (or minimalistic SEO) can help reset and actually improve your overall SEO practices.

Now before you go and start everything over from scratch, taking the minimalistic approach to SEO by no means suggests you need to use bare bones methods forever; however, it can be much easier to add on advanced practices once you have cut away superfluous ones.… Continue Reading

2015-09-25 15:10:39-04

Google recently issued a stern warning to webmasters who repeatedly violate the Google Webmaster Guidelines and get caught spamming, saying "In order to protect the quality of our search results, we take automated and manual actions against sites that violate our Webmaster Guidelines."

By "manual actions," they are referring to manual penalties doled out by Google Search Quality reps, not automatic penalties inflicted by the algorithm. In cases where Manual Action notifications are issued, websites who are repeat offenders and get caught may suffer "further action" by Google against their site and find the reconsideration process more difficult.

Clearly this announcement is intended as a word of warning for webmasters who practice "black hat" SEO tactics.… Continue Reading

Why Tags Matters in the SEO World

2015-10-02 08:34:28-04

programming code

Even with how essential keywords are to SEO, they are not the only important factor you need to consider when optimizing a website. Eye-catching design and usability is another key factor that Google looks for when assigning rankings, as is title tags, header tags and META descriptions.

In short, the way your website looks and is built can make a big significant difference in terms of your page's search position.

What Google Looks For

Aside from keyword studies, Google uses numerous other aspects to determine your website's page rank. Some are easy enough for you to perform in an afternoon or two; however, their ease shouldn't fool you—they can actually dramatically improve your SEO.… Continue Reading

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