Google is always changing and evolving, are you?

Bing integrates Yahoo traffic data into webmaster tools.

Posted by Andrew on Aug 24, 2011 | 0 comments

Google dominates roughly 65 percent of the search market. While Youtube, Yahoo and Bing are constantly fighting over the remaining market share.

Last month the merger of Microsoft webmaster tools and Yahoo site explorer was announced.  This change comes to help webmasters since yahoo’s search traffic tool  Yahoo Site Explorer is set to shut down later this year. This has been the primary webmaster tool for those looking to optimize for Yahoo.  After all Yahoo sites have migrated to Bing-powered search results.

“Once organic results are transitioned to Bing in all the markets, we plan to shut down Yahoo! Site Explorer,” stated Hemant Minocha, Product Manager of Yahoo Site Explorer. He further stated that, “Microsoft’s Webmaster Tools will be the source for Bing and Yahoo! webmaster site and analytics data.”

Bing recently announced new features to its Webmaster Tools that will show traffic stats from Yahoo directly in the Webmaster Tools reports. While this move appears to be the start of integration, Duane Forrester, senior program manager for Bing Webmaster Tools, suggests it’s not really the start of something new, per se.

“Data integration is important because it gives you a true sense of what Bing is serving and where you are being served by Bing,” Forrester told Search Engine Watch. “Whether it’s on Bing or Yahoo, it’s all Bing and this is why we’re doing this.”

Bing Webmaster Tools will now be showing integrated data from Yahoo within certain areas and reports.  Given the combined effort the Search Alliance represents, it makes sense to showcase relevant data from both engines within a webmaster account.  Most areas and data within the accounts will not be affected.  The short list of areas you will notice changes in are as follows:

To see this new, integrated data, click the Traffic Summary Report or Page Traffic report under the Traffic Tab

1. Impressions – will go up based on combined data numbers
2. Clicks – will go up based on combined data numbers
3. Click Through Rates (CTR) as appropriate from above (change only due to the mathematics involved in the first two items)

Impressions data will rise because we will now be showing you combined impressions for your listings across both search engines.  For each query term in the list within the report, your impressions represent the combined number of times your result showed, based on queries initiated by searchers at both Bing and Yahoo.  Clicks data will follow the same pattern.  CTR data is a factor of the first two items, and will rise or fall based on searcher click activity at each search engine. -Bing webmaster tools

The changes affect the numbers shown only.  No actual rankings will be affected by the combining of data within Bing Webmaster Tools. As a visual reminder that data is now combined, you will see both the Bing and Yahoo logos directly above the graphs shown on these pages.

At this current time the data will be combined, not separate.  The data will also update in any market where Bing is powering Yahoo search.

“Any optimization that you do on Bing Webmaster Center tool will be reflected in Yahoo! organic search results,” stated Hemant Minocha, although he clarifies that some areas of the world are still on the pending list for transfer to a Microsoft-powered back end.

You now will see both the Bing and Yahoo logos directly above the graphs shown on these pages.  Many people really like the accuracy of Yahoo’s site explorers back-link data over Google web master tools.  We shall see if Bing can continue to innovate it’s search engine and web master tools, to be able fill the void for Yahoo site explorer’s departure.

Helpful tips for optimizing videos and content for search engines

Posted by Andrew on Jul 25, 2011 | 2 comments

Here are some basic tips for video search engine optimization (Video SEO).

The integration of videos is by far the most important of Googles Universal Search integrations with at least one video included in nearly 50% of search queries. This presents an awesome opportunity to quickly get on 1st page for your keyword phrase search results with just a few videos. Nevertheless, not enough businesses have  been capitalizing– only a small percentage of websites are actually optimizing their existing video content.                                                                                                      

Choose keywords for video. Just like the Google adwords key word tool, their product Youtube also has a keyword tool. https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool provides the opportunity to examine search volumes for individual keywords. With this you quickly get an idea of which keywords are relevant for video optimization. Keywords that have a high search volume here are also often displayed right at the top of the Universal Search integrations in the normal Google SERPs and therefore have a higher click through rate.

video appropriate keywords are keywords where a user will often click on videos in the search results or where the search query is made up of their [existing search] + video. With this kind of keyword, videos provided with prominent video integrations will feature prominently in SERPs.   YouTube is the most important video platform and has just recently surpassed yahoo as the second largest search engine in the world and, with a large online community, powerful marketing tool for companies.

Here are the some tips that will help your video get more views and rank higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs):

• Content: As with your website’s content, your video content should also be relevant, clear and crisp. It should be able to convey the message in an interesting or different way.
• Title: should contain the most important keywords, arranged with the most important keywords first. keep the title around 60 characters, any more will not be displayed.
• Description: video’s description should contain the keyword more than once and should use additional, semantically related keywords to avoid keyword stuffing. Which means you can simply use alternative terms that describe the same concept and thus strengthen your foothold for all of the related terms of that subject.
• Keywords: Add your keywords in the content or description of your video. Even your video transcript should be keyword-rich. Adding a relevant transcript serves more than one purpose- your video becomes accessible to people with hearing disabilities as well as it becomes relevant for search engine spiders.  The filename of the video should also contain the keywords.
• Tags: Add up to 10 or 15 tags – using the most important keywords.
• Comments: Allow viewer comments and feedback on your video. The more people talk about your video, the higher will be your ranking on search result page.
• Linking: Link your video to relevant content on your site. While linking ensure that appropriate keywords are used. Also make your content relevant so that others link to your video too. More the number of inbound links, higher will be your ranking.
• Sitemap: Add a video sitemap, submit video sitemap to search engines. This will help web spiders to index your video more easily.

Contact Us For A Quote On Video SEO

Video SEO Ranking Factors to Consider

• Keywords in title
• Number of views
• Number of comments
• Category & Tags
• +1/Shares/Tweets/Embeds
• Favorites
• Ratings
• Sentiment (Like/Dislike ratio)
• Channel views
• Number of subscribers
• Links
• Embeds
• Video Sitemap
• Channel login activity
• Speed & consistency of interest
• Quality description (click-thru factor)
• Flags (negative)

Check out our Portfolio of Search optimized Videos we have produced and Marketed for clients.

Vab Media and Muse Cinemedia will be speaking on August 2nd, at Santa Cruz Business Connect about conceptualizing and marketing videos for business.

Post Google Panda factors to think about besides Page Rank

Posted by Andrew on Jul 17, 2011 | 6 comments

Having a high Page Rank for your site is good, but it’s not the only factor that determines your website’s relevance in terms of search results.

What is the real end goal to having a successful site on the web?  To make more money, attract more visitors and readers right?!   It is impossible to know and understand every search metric and algorithm being used, since Google uses more than 200 to determine search engine result pages (SERP). In the post panda era, creating your sites content with the reader’s experience in mind is a good place to start.  Google Analytics is a helpful tool to use for measuring your site’s web traffic.

The more you think about the visitor experience when creating robust content and adding pictures the better off you will be. These metrics are important to look at for the user experience. In the post panda seo environment, the amount of time users stay on your website will play a role in how Google views your site. Seomoz did a whiteboard friday a few weeks ago about post panda and your site, they went into a lot detail about this subject.

“Finally, you are going to be optimizing around user and usage metrics. Things like, when people come to your site, generally speaking compared to other sites in your niche or ranking for your keywords, do they spend a good amount of time on your site, or do they go away immediately? Do they spend a good amount of time? Are they bouncing or are they browsing? If you have a good browse rate, people are browsing 2, 3, 4 pages on average on a content site, that’s decent. That’s pretty good. If they’re browsing 1.5 pages on some sites, like maybe specific kinds of news sites, that might actually be pretty good. That might be better than average. But if they are browsing like 1.001 pages, like virtually no one clicks on a second page, that might be weird. That might hurt you. Your click-through rate from the search results. When people see your title and your snippet and your domain name, and they go, “Ew, I don’t know if I want to get myself involved in that. They’ve got like three hyphens in their domain name, and it looks totally spammy. I’m not going to get involved.” Then that click-through rate is probably going to suffer and so are your rankings.” – Seomoz Rand Fishkin

Below are a few definitions from Google web master’s latest blogs about this subject:

1. Conversion rate
2. Bounce rate
3. Clickthrough rate (CTR)

Conversion rate

A “conversion” is when a visitor does what you want them to do on your website. A conversion might be completing a purchase, signing up for a mailing list, or downloading a white paper. Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who convert (perform a conversion). This is a perfect example of a metric that, unlike PageRank, is directly tied to your business goals. When users convert they’re doing something that directly benefits your organization in a measurable way! Whereas your PageRank is both difficult to measure accurately, and can go up or down without having any direct effect on your business.

Bounce rate
A “bounce” is when someone comes to your website and then leaves without visiting any other pages on your site. Your bounce rate is the percentage of visits to your site where the visitor bounces. A high bounce rate may indicate that users don’t find your site compelling, because they come, take a look, and leave directly. Looking at the bounce rates of different pages across your site can help you identify content that’s underperforming and point you to areas of your site that may need work. After all, it doesn’t matter how well your site ranks if most searchers are bouncing off of it as soon as they visit.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)
In the context of organic search results, your clickthrough rate is how often people click on your site out of all the times your site gets shown in search results. A low CTR means that, no matter how well your site is ranking, users aren’t clicking through to it. This may indicate that they don’t think your site will meet their needs, or that some other site looks better. One way to improve your CTR is to look at your site’s titles and snippets in our search results: are they compelling? Do they accurately represent the content of each URL? Do they give searchers a reason to click on them? Here’s some advice for improving your snippets; the HTML suggestions section of Webmaster Tools can also point you to pages that may need help. Again, remember that it doesn’t matter how well your site ranks if searchers don’t want to click on.

google-panda-update

Conclusions about Page Rank and Search Engine Page Results factors to keep in mind.

PageRank is just one of many ranking factors used to determine ranking in search results.  Try to improve your website’s speed or loading page time.   Studies show faster sites create a happier user experience.   When a site responds slowly, visitors get impatience and spend less time there.  Sometimes using flash and image sliders can slow down your website.  These are just a few of the 200 metrics Google uses.  Of course relevance of a page is still the biggest factor in search results.   The anchor text of a link is usually far more important than whether it’s on a high PageRank page. And having lots of high quality backlinks is also important in search results.  If you really want to know what are the most important, relevant pages to get links from, forget PageRank. Think search rank. Search for the words you’d like to rank for. See what pages come up tops in Google. Those are the most important and relevant pages you want to seek links from. That’s because Google is explicitly telling you that on the topic you searched for, these are the best.  Feel free to visit our other blogs for more useful information.

Google is always changing and evolving, are you?

Posted by Andrew on Jul 9, 2011 | 1 comment

What You Need to Know About Today’s SEO

Google  is creating new algorithms all the time.

“The “Panda” algorithm change has improved rankings for a large number of high-quality websites. Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.” -Google webmaster blog

SEO is a moving target.  Search engines are constantly changing and evolving; they are consistently refining their techniques and algorithms to supply the best, relevant results to searchers.They are also making it tougher for unfair “black hat” marketers to manipulate search engine results by trying optimization tricks.  This is a good thing… at Vab Media ; we have always advocated using ethical SEO based on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to boost your rankings and traffic.

That is the reason why we stress to our clients that SEO should be considered a marathon instead of a race to the finish line. Using tricks and manipulation may get you fast results but they are going to be fleeting and may even be damaging. Using legitimate and effective SEO strategies will deliver more impressive, lasting results.

Local SEO is the method of targeting buyers in a local geography for the services and products that local companies provide.  According to comScore, an industry leader in Internet research, 63% of U.S. Internet users perform local searches. Of those local searches, roughly 41% were hunting for info on a local service in their home area.

The study also found that consumers searching locally typically take action. Almost half (47%) of local searchers visited the local merchant as a direct result of their search behavior. For small to medium sized businesses, local SEO now has the one of the highest investment returns our of all the marketing mediums online.

While most people still use a variety of different methods to find local business, the study found what people seem to prefer as their first choice for doing so: (Source: comScore, Georgia Institute of Technology).

1.  Search Engines (31%)

2.  Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%)

3.  Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%)

4.  Local Search Sites (11%)

4 reasons to do SEO:

1.  Better ROI – SEO is a long term strategy which brings a greater ROI than in PPC marketing.

2.  Credibility – SEO work brings higher levels of credibility with your customers.  (About The Author)

3.  Track & Prove Success – Discover what your customer are typing into Google, and which keyword convert the highest.  We install web metrics to show you what is working and what is not working with your SEO strategy.

4.  Tapping the trend — 81% of all consumers are now making purchasing decisions online.   Websites are no longer optional. SEO will drive traffic to your site.

1^st Page Google Guarantee

Despite what you read, it is impossible for any SEO company to guarantee you a #1 ranking in organic search engine results. However, we understand that you still want some assurance that you will get the best possible results by signing on with us instead of a competitor.

Vab Media Web Design and SEO Marketing Firm has a stellar track record of helping our clients increase their rankings and, more importantly, their sales through our web site optimization services. Even though there is no way we (or any other company) can guarantee a 1^st Page ranking in Google, Yahoo! or Live Search (MSN), we are willing to put our money where our mouth is by offering you our 1^st Page Google Guarantee.

Under our 1^st Page Guarantee, if we do not deliver the results we promise (10 new first page ranks) we will render our services free of cost until we deliver on our promise.  This lowers your financial risk as you will only be charged fees for truly measurable results… first page rankings!  Vab Media will bring the client’s web site to the 1st page Google results for 10 new keyword phrases.  This ranking guarantee is not search engine specific and only applies to those clients who complete The SEO SUCCESS Plan (3 month plan).

It is important to realize that the competition is also spending money on SEO, and this will affect your ranks. If your competition decides to spend money to out rank you, we do not have control over this.  For this reason, client is encouraged to continue to work with Vab Media to sustain the ranks.   For the most part, once you get ranked, only a minimum amount of work is required to sustain ranks.

Company Overview: About Us

Vab Media is a search engine optimization firm specializing in local and national organic search. We help clients increase their sales through local and national search engine optimization. Vab Media will work exclusively with your business to promote your website to search engines using acceptable practices based on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to boost your ranking and traffic. Our goal is to make sure your website is visible to potential customers who are searching for products and services in your business category .

Search Engine Optimization

To really make your SEO campaign a success, our SEO team will first develop a deep understanding of your business;  what you are trying to accomplish and what your goals are. Our discovery interview provides you with the opportunity to supply us with the required information that we need to make your campaign a success. In addition you can ask any questions that may be concerning you in regards to the types of changes that will be made to your web site, when to expect results, how it’s possible for you to help maximize your campaign and more.

Keyword Research

The keyword research process is the foundation to a successful SEO campaign. Our total keyword research process permits us to identify the following :

• Target keywords which will produce the highest volume of traffic
• Keywords that the competition are using to find success
• Significant high traffic keywords your rival does not know about
• Newly rising keywords primarily based on new trends & services and products related to your site
• Keywords with high conversion rates to raise your ROI

This info will help us identify search phrases that are vital to your SEO campaign and overall net success.
Website Analysis

There are 3 key areas the search engines look at ; your web site code, your server and your prior history inside search engines.  Our team completes a total research package based on your domains origination, to the way the search engines see your site today. Below you will find an inventory of areas our team will cover :

• Research of server at the host level, DNS setup, IP setup
• Research of site structure & page relations
• Current indexation standing across the major search engines
• Research of any issues now impacting search engine spidering
• Research of site link structure, page structure, navigational structure and hierarchical system of content of the site.

Content Analysis

A Content Analysis Report is performed on pages throughout your web site. This permits us to identify the present pages and content which has the capability to help support your selected keywords and sustain long-term top 10 rankings.  If your internet site is short of additional content, we then assign one of our pro content writers to guarantee the correct selling message is conveyed and new creative copy is written specifically with SEO Goals in mind.

Content Writing

There are occasions when sites don’t have enough content to support their SEO campaign ; there are times where pages in your site are ideal for the visitor, but missing integral parts for a successful SEO campaign. As you may know, Content is King on the net.  We provide a professional content writing service that will permit you to keep your current content intact, while incorporating new content and / or pages in your site to maximize the success of your SEO campaign. This highly creative content will incorporate your selling message, robust calls to action and exhibit the same appearance as your current net pages.  In addition, we write with theme keywords to respect LSI (latent semantic indexing).  You will always have the final say of any new content made for your web site.

Competitor Analysis

The only real way to beat the competition is to understand the competition! Our SEO team will identify the competition based totally on the keywords you select ; find the keywords that they are targeting, discover sites that link to them, compare your site to your competition, and identify precisely what is needed to out-rank them and get top ten rankings for your target keywords. This info is then used to craft your Link Plan , Content research, and SEO Implementation.

email us at vania@vabulous.com or visit other pages on our website for more information  http://vabulous.com/

Google PageRank Updated 2011

Posted by Andrew on Jun 30, 2011 | 0 comments

Google PageRank Update June 27, 2011

How to target and rank high for low competion keywords

Posted by Andrew on May 30, 2011 | 11 comments

Facebook for Business Class in Santa Cruz

Posted by Vania B on May 13, 2011 | 0 comments

Webworx Santa Cruz is launching a series of workshops for entrepreneurs and small businesses to help them with their website and marketing:

The other two workshops have already passed, but the upcoming workshop is highlighted below and if you want to know how you can use Facebook to improve your bottom line, you should check out Workshop #3.
Build and catapult your website to success with:
1. MANAGE YOUR WEBSITE WITH EASE using WordPress
2. GET FOUND with Search Engine Optimization
3. SPREAD THE WORD with Social Media!

Workshop 3

SPREAD THE WORD with Social Media

Social Media
Facebook for Business – Thursday May 19, 2011 6-9pm
$250 per person

Learn how to use Facebook to put your business out where the masses are and attract attention for your products and services.

Social media is not just a social past time. Come learn how to harness the power of Facebook Business pages with this hands on course we walk you through understanding your business social presence and determining your goal. Is it about fans, more activity on your blog, increased sales or awareness?

The basics will be covered for uploading images, videos, links, questions and there always popular status update. Learn how to use your Facebook fan page to interact with your customers, listen to what they want and deliver it to them. The second internet is upon us and it will be known as the Social Internet.

Mobile platforms will be discussed on how to engage your fan as well. Conflict on your Facebook wall? We can teach you how to deal with that head on.

Understand the practice of blog integration and how to complete the circle driving customers back to your message and eventually create a sale.

You will learn how to use the analytics for Facebook to determine how your posts are received, how many fans you add or lose and where they live. You want to expose your business only to the people that are interested in hearing about it? Facebook targeted advertising can facilitate that, learn how to target geographical areas, interests, age and more when running ad campaigns.

Social applications to be discussed: Facebook’s personal profile, Facebook business pages, Twitter, as well as applications that will tie them – AND your website –  together!
Workshop Instructor:
Danny Keith – Social Entrepreneur - Jack Wagon Agency
Assistant Instructor:
Our Own -Vania Benavides- Social Media Strategist & Web Developer