TKG SEO Blog

The SEO world is buzzing about the recent news that Google, Yahoo and Adobe have teamed up to make Flash file format content easier to find, index & rank. Google’s blog states that:

In the past, web designers faced challenges if they chose to develop a site in Flash because the content they included was not indexable by search engines. They needed to make extra effort to ensure that their content was also presented in another way that search engines could find.

Google’s Webmaster Central Blog provides detailed Flash Indexing Q/A along with several comments that provide informative information as well.

As for Yahoo!, they will have the same capability once they update their technology…I’m hearing it should be soon.

Guest Blogger: Megan Jeffery
As I make my way through the natural SEO world, occasionally writing news pieces for the newsletter, creating copy for our site and those of our clients, I have learned that there is a fine line between a naturally optimized page, and one that is just spammy. Sometimes that line is a judgment call.

There are certain elements on a page that need to be addressed when it comes to optimization. Most tend to agree that Meta tags are still a good idea (they certainly can’t hurt), so they should be optimized to reflect the theme of the page. The page titles should also clue your reader (and secondarily, the search engines) in to what they will find on the page. I personally feel that these items should represent exactly what is on the page, and that the phrases used to optimize should serve the user, not the search engines. If you serve your users, you will ultimately serve the SEs anyway.

Many people feel that the copy itself should have the key phrases sprinkled throughout the copy for the purpose of ranking for certain terms. This is where things can get a little tricky. I am sure that many of you have seen copy on a page that goes something like this:

“We sell hockey pucks, blue hockey pucks, green hockey pucks and yellow hockey pucks. If you really need hockey pucks, you should buy our hockey pucks because they are the best hockey pucks in the whole world.”

I am sure that most would agree that this is a little bit spammy. When you are using your key phrases so much that it even borders on annoying or difficult to read, or changes the meaning of your copy, then you have gone too far. A more appropriate approach is to write what you want your readers to know about your product. A few pointers:

• Be descriptive, especially when writing for the web, because your customers want to know what they will be getting if the decide to buy from you.

• Make sure they know why they should purchase your product, as opposed to someone else’s.

• Read it through. Make sure it sounds good, the meaning is clear and the product or subject is well described.

• Then, go back through and find the places where your key phrases will fit into the copy naturally. Many times the key phrase is better than the word you used, especially if you have copy such as “Try our new product line!”. A sentence that includes the phrase you would like to optimize for such as “Our Green Hockey Pucks are now available!” would be a better choice. However, watch how many places you decide to plug in your key phrases. Too many and not only will your piece make no sense, but it could be considered spam.

So, that annoying paragraph about hockey pucks should look a little more like this:

“The Pucks are Us Company has a long standing tradition of producing only the highest quality, best performing hockey pucks. Our new line of hockey pucks come in new colors such as blue, yellow and green.”

A good rule of thumb is if you have included the phrases, and you enjoy reading the piece, it flows nicely, then you have probably done a pretty good job. On the other hand, if you are repeating your key phrase four times in three sentences, you have probably gone over the edge into spamdom.

Until next time, keep it natural!

I’ve been following traffic to TKG.com during the domain change and the new domain has experienced fluctuating traffic trends; however, the increase in the total number of unique visitors to the site is a positive trend that I’m happy to report on! Not surprisingly, our Search Engine referral traffic has wavered over the last few months, but we still have a SE presence and the SE’s continue to drive traffic, so I can’t really complain.

An interesting stat to point out is the declining trend in MSN referrals which is the opposite of what I expected given that TKG.com’s rankings in MSN have been somewhat steady during our domain change.

*I’ll discuss this drop in traffic at another time…promise!

During this whole domain change process (since April 30th), we have experienced some trying times with Google…First we found out that TKG.com was blacklisted and then our Google rankings disappeared and we had to deal with Google taking over a month to index just 25% of the pages on TKG.com - Nevertheless, Google has continually supplied the majority of Search Engine traffic to TKG.com every month this year!

Guest Blogger: Corey Hammond
Even though I consider myself fairly skilled with utilizing the web for marketing and information gathering, I am still amazed about the incredible amount of data that is available. With companies under even more pressure to make good hiring decisions, in addition to investigating current employees, there has been an emerging trend of employer’s using the web to research prospective or current employees via a variety of web tools. So what can employees do to make sure they are getting a fair look? Here are 4 things to look at to avoid some potentially embarrassing situations that could arise from your online activities.

Search Engine Results

Who has ever Googled someone or yourself? I’ll admit, I do it all the time! Just like my credit report, I monitor the search engine results pages for my name. The last thing I want is something to show up that isn’t accurate or could potentially hurt my reputation. Online reputation management is a huge thing right now. People have the ability to quickly get information on companies and people. Outside of Google there are specific people search engines like Wink and Pipl. Employers can use Google and these other search engines to potentially find information about you. So how do you take control of this? Check out these suggestions:

1. Buy a domain name, that is your name - You could use the site as an online resume or profile or even start a blog
2. Start a blog! Even if your name domain name is taken, you can still use a free service like Wordpress.com to create your own blog.
3. Be social online! Social network profiles can easily come up in the search engine results for your name. There is more information on them in the next section.

Social Profiles and Social Networks

Social networks like Facebook and Myspace are great places to keep connected with friends and family. When it comes to your current and future employers, it can be a different story! These social networks can give employers a great feel for who you are that they may not get in the office or in an interview. Here are some tips to keep in mind if you have social network profiles:

1. Don’t bad mouth your company where people can see it - At some point in everyone’s life there comes a point where you’re not happy with your current employment situation for one reason or another. The best thing to do is to keep it private. The last thing you want is for your current employer to see you speaking about them negatively. On the flip side, it probably won’t look too good to a prospective employer if you are speaking badly about your current employer because they may think you’ll do the same about them.
2. Watch what you put on your status - Almost every social network allows you to update your status to tell people what you are doing or where you are at. There is even a fairly new social network called Brightkite that allows it’s users to “check in” and give people their current location. You can have this network change your Facebook status and update your Twitter as well. It would be pretty embarrassing to “check in” to a competitor’s office that you are interviewing with when you requested the morning off for “personal reasons” and that status gets spread across multiple social profiles.
3. Keep profiles “clean” - Keep stuff off of your main profile page that could be misinterpreted like “drinking pictures”. Even though they are personal, it’s a lot safer to not let people’s minds wander. Another solution may be to check your profile’s security or privacy settings and keep your profile private until you accept a friend request. This way you can keep a tighter lid on who is actually viewing things.

Resume and Job Boards

It’s great to have a good resume but be careful on where you put it. There are sites like Monster and CareerBuilder that help people find jobs by allowing people to upload an online resume. These services are also used by companies to search for particular people with skill sets they are looking for. The problem is that your current employer could find it too! Depending on your job and career, it might be a better idea to submit your resume directly to different companies. Another option might be to work with a recruiter that has connections and can be discrete with your identity.

LinkedIn

I decided to give LinkedIn its own section because it is fairly unique. LinkedIn essentially IS your resume online, which is ok! BUT, LinkedIn is also a social network where you connect with people.

1. Be careful who you connect with and when - If you are interviewing at places it probably isn’t the best idea to connect with them before you have the job. You company could potentially see your connections and be like “hey, Corey just added recruiter so and so from Competitor XYZ to his LinkedIn connections”. This can be a pretty big red flag that you may be interviewing with them. The same could work with adding too many connections from the same company. If all of a sudden, you know 3+ people from a competing company, it could look suspicious.
2. Build your profile out - It’s good to at least have the basics on your profile and ensure the information is correct. If you are really gearing up to find a new job, it might be a good idea to start building out your profile more. You can “beef up” certain areas like your summary and specialties. You could also participate in different groups and associations. Another good way to increase your presence is to start answering questions related to your industry that could showcase your knowledge and help others out. You never know, one of these questions might be posed by someone from the company you are looking to work for!

Google is now indexing about 146 pages, up 16 pages from nearly 3 weeks ago. The last month has been slow and steady. It’s been 47 days since TKG.com was removed from the blacklist and being indexed by Google - I’m actually shocked that Google isn’t indexing our entire site already.
Prior to switching domains, thekarchergroup.com had 425 pages in Google’s index. Since then, we’ve probably added about 25 pages to our site…
TKG.com is still hundreds of pages away from being fully indexed by Google.

Google’s indexing timeline:

Guest Blogger: Emily Croskey
Back in May, as part of one of our client’s SEO strategy, I posted 8 of their video clips onto YouTube. The client was a little nervous about our strategy, thinking that YouTube might not be the right direction to go. I chose to put up some of their video clips to help give their name and products more online exposure by focusing on a targeted audience interested in their video products. This type of web marketing completely makes sense for this client because they have tons of videos on their site that have the potential to gain real online popularity. The chart below indicates the increases from when we first started.

So far, some YouTube users have subscribed to the channel and commented on several of the videos. Now, I realize that for some, this is not that much, but this was just my small scale strategy to create some additional online visibility for the client.

Since our domain change 7 weeks ago, there hasn’t been any real consistency to TKG.com’s MSN ranking trends. Unlike in Google where rankings disappeared or in Yahoo! where they immediately dropped then came back (some even ranking better than before the domain change).

The majority of phrases we’re tracking that were ranking 1 & 2 maintained these same rankings in MSN over the last 55 days (see table below) - neither Google or Yahoo! provided this type of ranking stability. There are a few phrases that haven’t bounced back yet, but for the most part, MSN has kept TKG.com ranking fairly well throughout the last 7 weeks of this domain change process.

Guest Blogger: Chad Henderson
This is post # 2 in a series of who knows how many, discussing a rookie’s approach to SEO. Topic of the day, the value of an initial web site analysis…..

It can be pretty overwhelming when you are faced with the overwhelming task of figuring out the best place to start an SEO campaign. But for me, I have personally found that a valuable SEO tip is to complete a thorough initial site analysis to ensure that some important components are in place, and to determine what might be missing. Even though we’ll actually start the SEO campaign concentrating on another area (post #3 keyword research will be coming soon), I’ve found it is always helpful to get a good overall picture of the usability, structure, and current optimization of the site before digging too deep into the research stuff.

So, here is a brief list of a couple of the things I look for when going through this process. Each one of them could probably be expanded into its own post, so be sure to post any questions, comments, or additions to the list. Also, this listing is by no means complete, so additional thoughts would be great.

1. check that the non-www version of your site is being directed to the www version. Can of worms, a whole discussion about duplicate content.
2. check that your sites file include a robots.txt file which identifies “off limits” paths for the spiders. The Karcher Group has an excellent Web Development & SEO Glossary to reference any terms you may not be comfortable with.
3. check to make sure that unresolved pages (someone going to a relocated, removed, or incorrectly typed URL) go somewhere other than a blank page.
4. check common on-page search engine optimization items, such as page titles and internal tag usage (like the headers).
5. check site usability, including navigations, design, and layout
6. check conversion points for functionality and usability

In the next post, we’ll clarify some objectives of our campaign, discuss the possibility of looking at some case studies, and begin our key phrase research.

Congratulations to my uncle, Jeff Monter for receiving Canton Advertising Club’s 2008 Advertising Person of the Year! Jeff is Vice President of Creative at Innis Maggiore Group, a local Canton advertising firm that’s just a few miles away from TKG. Jeff is one of the most creative & talented artists I know - congratulations again Uncle Jeff.