Web Solutions

How to Please the Penguin: Making Friends with Google’s New Ranking Algorithm

Posted by Vania B on May 11, 2012 | 0 comments

What is Penguin and why do we care?

Penguin is Google’s cutesy name for a powerful secret formula, a special blend of factors that currently determines Google search rankings. Penguin, just like Panda and previous Google formulas or algorithms, is part of the company’s ongoing mission to highlight Good and penalize Evil. In the Google Universe – the Googleverse, if you will – good web content is original. Good content is relevant to search terms. And good content is naturally popularized; it doesn’t rely on shady tactics to get a #1 ranking. Read on for specific tips about how to please the Penguin.

The Penguin likes keywords but only in moderation. Articles written by keyword stuffers (i.e., writers who go keyword-crazy) suffered major hits when the Penguin started patrol. How can the offending sites recover? You don’t need to order all new articles with lower keyword densities. One strategy is to use synonyms or near-synonyms as substitutes for overused keywords. For example, if you’ve used the keyword 2013 Lexus GS too many times in a review, replace some occurrences of the phrase with words like luxury hybrid or powerful vehicle. Besides that, the Penguin likes anchor text diversity. Varying the words used in your links may help improve your website’s ranking. In particular, it’s a good idea to monitor your use of “money keywords” versus the alternatives.

• Money keywords are the words and phrases you’re trying to rank well for.
• Non-money keywords are words and phrases such as “this blog post” or “our website.”

Microsite Masters has found that the new Google formula discourages sites that use money keywords as anchor text in 65% or more of inbound links. Thus it could be advantageous to actually use your domain name or a straightforward “click here” invitation as your link text.

Have Authorities Vouch for You

The Penguin is wary of strangers. Inbound links from authorities in your niche resonate with the Penguin. When an authoritative domain in your industry posts a link to your site, the Google ranking program becomes more confident about your relevance and high quality. After all, an authority link can’t be manipulated through gray-hat or black-hat tactics.

Conversely, spam recommendations will raise red flags. Excessive forum posts and low-quality blog comments are examples of inbound links that can hurt your ranking. If you’ve been a link farmer in the past, it’s time to prune your crop! You might find that removing harmful links is time-consuming, expensive or impossible. If that’s the case, focus on developing high-quality links through legitimate means such as guest blogging, content marketing and gaining authoritative recommendations. Also, submit a list of stubborn bad links to Google and explain how you’ve worked to remedy the matter.
Remember: The More Things Change…
Penguin has the same overall vision as its predecessors: to showcase original content that’s useful or entertaining. Now more than ever, Google can avoid highlighting the low quality or copied pages that have only risen through aggressive backlinking and other shady means. When you provide great articles, videos, infographics and so forth for web surfers, you’ll give the Penguin what it wants and you’ll become viewed as an authority by a wide web audience. Everybody wins.  

Search Plus your World with Google

Posted by Andrew on Jan 19, 2012 | 1 comment

Last week Google made some changes to your search results.  If you have a gmail and Google + account, and are logged in at the time of performing a search, you will see personalized results.  They are calling it Search Plus your World.  We noticed this change last week, and this is really promoting your friends and professional Google + connections.

What is Search Plus Your World showing you?

Personal Results

The new “Personal Results” view that appears in your search results now personalizes the search result listings you get based on both your social connections and your own search behavior.  In addition, content that’s been shared with you through your Google+ social network connections now also appears in results.  According to Google “The social search algorithm and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.”   They are featuring Google + content as well as photos that have been shared on it.  If you look at the image below of a search result for Vab Media, it shows the first result is our Google+ business page and then it shows links and images we have shared on the G+ plus network. This is a nice personal search feature.

Google profiles are featured more now

Another important algorithm change is how people with Google+ accounts are going to be featured more in Google search results.  The search results themselves are devoting much larger emphasis to displaying material from a Google+ person or Google+ Business Page. The results individuals see are now catered toward people in their own social networks, quite similar to how Facebook’s algorithm works when you search for people on FB.

People & Pages Suggestions

The final algorithm roll out is Google’s suggestions for people and pages on Google+ to follow. These will appear on the right-hand side of your search results, when Google decides they are relevant.   Perform a search for movies or music and you will see many suggestions.  You might see well known or famous people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page. Google is allowing you to be able follow them and connect with them on their Google+ social network.

Our conclusions

Overall, we find the integration that allows for searching through private and public material interesting.  We think many people will find some value in it.   If you don’t want these personal and private search results you can search in google chrome incognito mode or log out of your google account to get just public search results.

This opens up a whole world of possibilities for entrepreneurs, bloggers, and business owners. Now, you can promote your services to your colleagues and friends.  You’re in their circles, so now you just need to put your most popular links on Google + Social Network. Contact us for more marketing ideas and questions.  Read the actual article from Google below.

“Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.

Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box.

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Together, these features combine to create Search plus Your World. Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re just getting started.”  -Amit Singhal, Google     

Contact us for a consultation & quote

*A disclaimer from Vab Media:  There’s been a lot of controversy in the web world and SEO community that the Giant, “Google” is promoting its own products in search results.  Whether this is true or not is not for us to decide.  We just want to let small business owners know about certain changes and how they can take advantage of Google’s Search Algorithms, even in the case that they may change in the future.

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

Increasing your site’s Google Page Rank

Posted by Andrew on Apr 16, 2011 | 3 comments

How to Increase Your Google Page Ranking

The most common question webmasters have in relation to Google is: “How do I improve [or increase] my PageRank? Before we go in to answering this question, it is important to take into consideration what PageRank is, how it is calculated, and what it means for your site.

Google PageRank, based on a scale of 0 to 10, is the means by which Google ranks the worth of particular site. Theoretically, a site with a PageRank of 8 is generally of more use to the average visitor than a site with a PageRank of 3. Accordingly, sites with a higher pagerank rank higher in the Google search results for a given keyword than those with a lower pagerank. The goal of google’s search results is to provide the user with the most trustworthy sites that include the particular keyword phrase they have entered into the search field.

PageRank is calculated based almost entirely upon two factors: how many other sites link to your site, and the PageRank of those sites that link to you.  Ideally, you want a lot of sites with a high PageRank to link to your site. Getting many low or zero PageRank sites to link to your site won’t do you much good.  In fact, there is some evidence that Google penalizes sites that have an abnormally high number of low PageRank sites linking to them. This situation is usually indicative of someone trying to cheat the system by simply adding links to useless pages in so-called “link farms.” So, in a sense, Google is capable of recognizing whether your site hangs out with a good crowd or a bad crowd by what kind of sites link to yours. It is much better to get a few sites (preferably a .ORG or .EDU) with a high PageRank to link to yours (especially those with PageRanks higher than your own) than a bunch of sites with low or zero PageRank.

PageRank is believed to be calculated on a logarithmic scale. What this roughly means is that the difference between PR4 and PR5 is likely 5-10 times than the difference between PR3 and PR4. So, there are likely over a 100 times as many web pages with a PageRank of 2 than there are with a PageRank of 4. This means that if you get to a PageRank of 6 or so, you’re likely well into the top 0.1% of all websites out there. If most of your peer group is straggling around with a PR2 or PR3, you’re way ahead of the game. Currently our website is a PageRank 4.  The higher up you get in the numbers the harder it is to move up. Meaning it is easier to go from a PR1 to PR2 than it is to from a PR5 to a PR6.

PageRank is crucially important because it determines, in part, in what order your website will show up in Google’s results. Besides PageRank, the other factor is largely website content – i.e. what your site actually contains, what keyword and keyword phrases are present in your text and how often they appear. If two sites have basically the same content, cover the same topic, and have the same keyword saturation (the percentage of keywords in the entire text), then the one with the higher PageRank will almost always come out on top.

Okay, now for ways to improve your PageRank, legally and fairly: