SEO Tip, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you go on the Internet and can’t find your site, then it’s not doing what you want. A lot of folks use their website as a business card and for some that’s all it is. The only way to increase your traffic naturally is to start an SEO campaign, so when people do a search they can find it. And not just by the name of your company, it should by searchable for other key words like the services you provide.

We compared the websites we built with other sites. We found deficiencies and plenty of non-existent files like robots .txt and sitemap.html files. These last 2 files are absolutely necessary to optimize your website and we found most people didn’t have them.

We regularly rocketed our clients’ websites to the top of search engines but didn’t really fully apply our own expertise to ourselves. We found just looking at our own website that even we weren’t up to snuff on our SEO. So we decided to follow our own advice and start our own SEO Campaign.

It’s easy to do your own SEO but there’s a lot to it. It’s how you organize your page and how you structure your keywords with your content. Simply adding a list of key words isn’t necessarily going to help your ranking. Your keywords also need to match your content. You should also highlight keywords with header tags and title tags. All these combined help move your ranking up on Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.

Another way to help your ranking is to have back-links linking from other sites back to your site. And if that website has a high ranking, it helps your SEO more than having one that has a low ranking. Here’s an example, you can have 50 websites link back to yours but maybe they have a ranking of 1 to 3 and that might not be as good as a having a single site linking back to you that has a ranking of 7. Higher rankings happen when you have good SEO so people can find you and good traffic.

We have a product called Media Suite Pro which is a CMS or Content Management System. Within Media Suite Pro, we created functionality for the end user to maximize their SEO. And we coded it in such a way that the end user doesn’t need to be a programmer. You can just go in and enter your their keywords and it’s coded for each particular page. It also adds a meta-description and schedules automatically how often a search engine should come back to the webpage to review it. Plus it assigns page priority and ranks each particular page on your website. Page priority in Media Suite Pro tells a search engine how important it is on your website. Priority rankings goes from 0 to 1. A page that is important is assigned a 0.9 or 1.0 and a page that is not as important is typically assigned a 0.5.

Typically a good SEO campaign takes about 2 to 3 weeks before you see any changes to your ranking. It’s a matter of the Search engines spiders or web-bots finding your website and their search engine algorithms re-ranking your site.

SEO Tip, Anchor Title

What is an Anchor Title?
An Anchor Title is the word or phrase (Tool Tip) that appears when you mouse over a link.  Anchor Titles are important for making your website more ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant. 

Tip: When adding Anchor Titles, try to include some of your keywords. Make a decision as to which keywords you want to focus on for a particular page.  Be careful that your Anchor Title makes sense and doesn't look like a long list of keywords.

SEO Tip, Anchor Text

What is an Anchor Text?
An Anchor Text is the visible text of a hyperlink This is an Anchor Text.  Anchor Texts are important for targeting webpage keywords.  It allows search engines to identify the important words and links for your site.

Tip: When adding Anchor Text, try to include some of your keywords. Make a decision as to which keywords you want to focus on for a particular page.  Be careful that your Anchor Text makes sense and doesn't look like a long list of keywords.

Media Suite Pro, Content Management System

Website Content Management System

Take complete control over your website once it’s built. Media Suite Pro is a powerful, web-based Content Management System that equips you with all the tools needed to update web content, create new pages, track visitors, upload images and create links. It also allows you to maintain your online visibility by optimizing each web page so that every major search engine notices your site. Web management has never been easier and more efficient.

System Features: 

• Easy-to-Use Content Editor
• Fully-Templated Component System
• Automated Search Engine Optimization
• Contact Manager
• Admin Manager
• Basic Traffic Statistics 

For more information on Media Suite Pro, please contact us

Search Engine Optimization Special

Paddington Media is offering a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Special for $199.

 

We will examine your website and provide a list of recommendations on how to improve your SEO. 

 

Paddington Media specializes in the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  The goal of SEO is to increase a web site's traffic count by making the website more relevant and rank higher within search engine algorithms and organic search results.  Improving the internal and external factors, which influence page ranking is achievable by following SEO guidelines to increase page ranking.

 

The following is the list of SEO guidelines Paddington Media uses to get your website ranked higher, increase customer visibility and ensure better performance.

• Keep the Sitemap.xml file up to date
• Make sure to have a Robots.txt file
• Include relevant keywords in your Meta Keyword tags
• Include relevant descriptions in your Meta Description tags
• Include Title tags
• Include H1 tags
• Include Alt tags
• Include Anchor texts
• Check for Broken Links
• Increase Back-Links
• Use Silos and Hubs to improve website rich content
• Decrease Webpage Load Time
• Get Listed in Google Local Search
• Include Web Analytics

SEO Tip, Importance of a Sitemap

There are lots of SEO tips and tricks that help in optimizing a website's relevance score. One often overlooked file that should be included on your website is the Sitemap or Sitemap.xml file.

Why are Sitemaps Important? 

A Site Map (or Sitemap.xml file) is a list of website pages on your website that are accessible to crawlers or users. As the name implies, a Sitemap is just a map of your site. Sitemaps provide a roadmap allowing search engines an easy way to navigate websites. Sitemaps also inform search engines when new changes have occurred, how often they should come back, what the priority is and so on.

What do Sitemaps look like? 

Sitemap xml formats can be found at http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php

Generating and Submitting the Sitemap 

The steps to adding a Sitemap to a website are relatively simple.

• Generate the Sitemap - To Generate the Sitemap simply go to the following website http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
• Upload the Sitemap to the Website - To Upload the Sitemap you will need a FTP (File Transfer Protocal) program to upload the new Sitemap.xml file. A really good FTP program to use is http://filezilla-project.org/. The program is free and is very easy to use. You will also need to have the FTP User Name and Password for your website. The information will be used when connecting using the FTP program. The Sitemap should be placed in the root directory of the website. Once the Sitemap has been added, the last step is to notify the various search engines that a sitemap has been added to the website.
• Notify Search Engines  - You can use the http://www.sitemapwriter.com/notify.php to help submit your website to Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo.

Interview, CEO Brandon Burris

Why did you start building websites?

I’ve got a political science degree. My first internships were with politicians.  I started building websites because politicians found out I could program.

What is your definition of a website?

The basic mission of a website is to collect and disseminate information and provide a service, if there is a service to be offered.  Despite their differences, websites all have the same basic elements: content, sign-up forms, blogs, forums and eCommerce components.  You can take those same components and apply them to campaign sites or to regular business operations.

How have you seen websites change since you started Paddington Media?

When I first started I had a general understanding of what was standard for web development.  I quickly learned the importance of programming in ASP.Net.  Most recently the development of the server side and the development of client server interaction like AJAX has extended the internet past just document sharing.  So now-a-days, you can see a range of what the web has to offer through our own website examples from static sites with no dynamic server-side interaction, to fully interactive web-based telecommunications.

What is the future of the internet?

To tell you the truth, in my own opinion the internet will grow into the ultimate eCommerce solution.  It will eventually be where the majority of commerce will be from…

The Internet is fast becoming the commerce platform of choice.  Where I would like to take our part of the Internet is to expedite communication globally through communication networks worldwide.

On The Set of True Grit

Paddington Media enjoyed a little fun on the set of the 1969 western movie remake of True Grit.