The past two years have been awash with changes in the world of search engines and internet marketing tactics. Bing created a buzz while Google released its algorithm updates to bring users into immediate contact with the most up to date, relevant and trustworthy search results. For those looking to be found on the internet, this meant search engine optimization of websites and multi-faceted marketing campaigns. As the dust begins to settle, here are some tips for improving your internet viability and visibility for the coming year.

Let’s begin with the DOs of Internet Marketing in 2012

…Give Up ‘Black Hat’ SEO Marketing Tactics

If there is anything we have learned over the last few years, it’s that while black hat SEO tactics could be innovative and useful, on the whole, these methods are being directly targeted by search engine algorithm changes. With the Google Panda Algorithm update, inbound links have become less important to rank and visibility as content relevance and usability become the indicators of trustworthiness. In the past these may have worked, some may still work in the short term, but eventually it will come back to haunt you. Instead, focus on writing good quality content for users with natural anchor texts and links relevant to your topics/themes.

…Create New ‘Quality’ Content on a Consistent Basis

As Google moved from the Minty Fresh (2007) to Caffeine (2010) algorithm updates, clearly it’s goals were set on rapid indexing and refreshing of information to provide users with the most up to date relevant results. Bing operates on a similar principle. These search engines are now able to refresh their indexes in near real-time. If you add new content for your users on a regular basis, your are asking the index to re-crawl your information and relevant inbound links to determine your up to the minute rank. Edge out your competitors, capture new keywords and improve rankings by establishing yourself as a consistent source of new user targeted content.

…Add Multimedia to Boost User Experience and Site Trust

When you embark on a seo campaign to regularly create new content, it’s important to have strong content. Adding videos and images enhances the user experience and reliability of your site. With the Google Panda update, ranks are now aimed at reflecting user trust in the content of a site. Images should be incorporated in each of your posts and videos are a great way to personalize your sites content. Set yourself apart with content that stimulates users to return…the search engines will follow.

And some SEO Tactics to avoid in 2012

Don’t Copy or Duplicate Content – Make it Your Own

Search engines are highly capable of weeding out duplicate material from receiving high trust/rank. Don’t re-post the same industry article as all of your competitors. Make the article your own by writing your own personalized content. And use images or video on website comments to establish a healthy reputation. If you are going to receive credit for only 1 inbound link, make it a strong and relevant link.

Don’t Waste Time with Irrelevant Link Farms – Ensure Your Backlinks are Relevant to You & Your Content

The inbound link has been loosing its traction in determining PageRank since the Google Panda roll out. New algorithms want to see lots of relevant domains pointing towards your site instead of relevant links from the same few domains. Spam or low-quality link farms driving numerous links towards your information does nothing for you anymore. You would be better off back linking to a few sites which are recognizably relevant to your information, expanding into the new frontier of social networking platforms, and building trust with good quality, natural content enticing users to return often.

As search engines begin to incorporate social networking and establish new methods of searching (by voice and/or image recognition), the user is brought closer and closer to immediate access to the information they seek. Keep your content related to you. Move with the times by adding new content often and expand your site with social networking. Keep your users as your focus. And diversify your sites media and reader content to build relevance with a variety of keywords

No matter what changes may come to the future of search engine algorithms and SEO tactics, 2012 will be all about creating new ‘good quality’ content with a layered and flexible approach to internet marketing.

Best of Luck in 2012 and Happy Searching!

1- While most companies are out reducing their digital marketing spend, you can increase your exposure and ensure that your brand or product is out there in front of consumer eyes.

2- Pay per click has an entirely flexible budget – you can choose to spend $500 one month and $5,000 the next depending on the situation and your needs – there is no need for contracts, flight dates or any of the other messy details that can come with other marketing avenues.

3- Those who are focused on revenue will be glad to know that PPC is one of the most ROI focused advertising options there is. While traditional marketing methods such as television and radio are expansive, they have the problem of untraceable performance. Each dollar in a PPC campaign is accounted for, and your overall cost per action (CPA) is directly correlated to your bottom line.

4- PPC campaigns have an instant delivery time – build the campaign, flip the switch, add funds and it will be on within the hour.

5- Those who are data or performance junkies will love pay per click – your account will continually be more effective as you will have the data and tools you need to optimize it on a continual basis.

6- Exceptional quality: search leads are inherently high quality because searchers are actually looking for a specific information and product. This differs from other types of media such as billboards as they attempt to answer a question that may not be asked by the viewer at the time.

7- Scope and reach: Google and its partner sites on the Display Network have up to a 98% reach, so you can be sure your target audience will be within Google’s massive monopoly of search.

8- Cutting edge technology: not only will you get the highly effective pay per click options working for you, but you will also have access to displaying Flash ads around the web, retargeting, behavioral marketing, click to call functionality & more.

9- Synergy with other marketing methods: I hate to use the word “synergy,” but PPC marketing is a perfect compliment to any traditional or digital advertising you are currently doing. Once someone sees a TV commercial or reads an organic link, they often return to the search engines to conduct a search for more information. As a business, you want to be there.

10- Geotargeting: want to target a specific city, a faraway state or even another country? The global reach of the search engines will allow you to easily and quickly target anywhere in the world, giving you a true international scope.

For more information about getting your PPC campaign started, call us today, 303-558-6374

Myth #1 – SEO is a one-time IT service with overnight or guaranteed results

Good search engine optimization goes beyond ranks to increase your accessibility to users and crawlers where consistent internet visibility converts into increased business. SEO is an on-going process and there is always room for improvement. The days of ‘Set it and Forget it’ are over as search engine algorithms are constantly changing to provide users with the most up-to-date, relevant information for their queries. It often takes days for your information to update in their indices and your results will vary as information is sorted and re-sorted. The only guarantee is that you will never be done – good results take effort and time.

Myth #2 – A Pay-Per-Click or AdWords campaign will help/penalize organic PageRanks

Google has debunked this myth in the past, however, it continues to crop up among those new to SEO. If PPC campaigns improved organic ranks, then A) organic results would be biased towards the largest budget and B) users would not trust the search engine. If PPC penalized your organic ranks, then search engines would loose one of their few sources of revenue. However, a PPC campaign along with good SEO can make your information consistently visible and accessible to your target audience.

Myth #3 – Keyword Meta Tags Matter

In 2009, Google – who rarely reveals any details of their algorithm – publicly announced that it does not use Keyword Meta Tags to determine your rankings. In the past, many people crammed keywords into their tags, diluting the quality and accuracy of results. Search engines still often utilized the Description Meta Tag as a snippet for users, however, even that meta tag is not used in calculating ranks.

Myth #4 – Keyword repetition or ‘stuffing’ is acceptable

It is commonly believed that having more or your keywords on a page than your competitors or maintaining some arbitrary amount of keyword density will improve your rankings and visibility, however there has never the case. If you simply repeated your target term on your page, the usability and credibility of your content would drop off. Users will back-click to find easily legible content and search engine trust in your information will also rescind. Write your content for people; be loquacious but never repetitive.

Myth #5 – SEO can manipulate or trick search engines for higher ranks

In order to provide users with the most relevant search results, search engines are constantly looking to prevent spam and ‘black hat’ SEO techniques from achieving high ranks or visibility. Deceptive practices, dubious redirects, keyword stuffing, link farms and other manipulative techniques are being sought out and penalized by search engines. You may loose credibility with users and you risk being removed from the index altogether. Don’t waste your time with these techniques…it will not help you in the long term.

Myth #6 – High Google PageRank = high rankings on SERPs

The PageRank on your Google dashboard is just one factor used to evaluate your website and content. The 1-10 number you see is reflective of your websites popularity based on incoming links; not to mention, the PR is only updated every few months. There is no proven connection between having a high PageRank and high ranks on organic search engine results page, high traffic or increased sales. For certain keyword queries, a low PR may outrank a high PR website. PageRank is only part of a general SEO campaign to build trust, visibility, traffic and business.

Myth #7 – Ranks are the Goal of SEO

Many people approach SEO with high ranks as the goal, however the real goal of SEO is to drive business and sales. Being on the top is nice but its completely worthless if high placement does not get you clicks, or translate into customers. Build and optimize a site that your customers need, the search engines will follow.

Keeping up with Nikki and her travels will be easier than ever before. The website is complete with the Five Lines Dance Event Scheduler, as well as a student section dedicated to articles and musings direct from Nikki herself.

We are very excited to launch NikkiMarvin.com, and can’t wait to see more of her.

• before 1999: On page keyword density, Meta data
• 1999 – 2002 On page keywords, Page rank
• 2002 – 2005 On page keywords, Page rank, Domain name, Anchor text
• 2005 – 2009 On page keywords, Page rank, Domain name, Anchor text, Domain authority, Link diversity

As search engines got more sophisticated through the years, search engine marketers added more and more criteria to their search campaigns. However, as we move forward, we have seen not only the addition of new criteria, but the removal of some as well.

Antiquated Criteria

Keyword rich domain names were the hot topic the last few years. Instead of creating a domain name that included the name of your company, such as:

SunriseAdGroup.com

you would create a keyword rich domain that included the keywords you wanted to target for your website, like:

seosearchenginemarketinglinkbuilding.com

Fortunately, Google has adjusted their algorithm and is no longer awarding improved search value for these domains.

Page rank was also a hot term a few years ago, and has now been pushed off the criteria list. Google, the originator of Page Rank, felt that too much emphasis was being put on this score, and not enough emphasis being put on the content itself.

Consistently Valid Criteria

One of the only criteria that has stood the test of time has been on page keywords. Which is obvious, tell google what your page is about, and you will rank. Correct use of HTML and careful construction of content (avoiding keyword stuffing) will create a page that informs  communicates your content successfully to a user, and also lets Google know how/where to index the page.

Future Criteria

Social Media is the latest and greatest, and fortunately, it is sticking around. With an improved presense and increased quality of content, search engines are looking to social media platforms as an additional variable to their search algorithm. This is where brand awareness comes in.

Google is smarter than you think.They know more about your website than your webmaster does. So it is no surprise that there is early indication Google is starting to use social media platforms to value your website/brand.

• Do you have a linkdin account?
• Are you on Facebook?
• How many twitter followers do you have?

These are all questions google is asking about your brand in order to value you against your competition.

But why?

As any web surfer knows, search results are polluted with spam and irrelevant content almost no matter what you search. However, most of these spammy websites don’t have the time/resources to spend on building a reputable social media campaign. Attracting legitimate people to follow, fan and subscribe to pages takes time and trust. However, real companies with real value and content have seen tremendous value in social media as a means for advertising, consumer information, customer service, and brand awareness. Google and Bing are now using this inferred trust to help identify those brands/websites as reputable companies and reflect this rating in their search results.

By creating a social media campaign, not only are you improving your relationship with your existing clients, building new relationships, or reaching out to old partners; you are also helping Google identify you as a reputable brand thusly increasing your search value.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing websites for search engines. The easier the website can be read by search engines, the more visibility a website has to reach new audiences. This is particularly beneficial for Businesses or Internet Businesses to expand the use and knowledge of their products or services.

Search Engine – Databases (ie. Google or Bing) which crawl over other websites to index them according to keywords found in their content. Thus, when someone searches for a particular product or service, the database produces a list of indexed sites that correspond to the keywords in the query.

Crawler (spider) – This is a search engines robot which downloads a website and “crawls” them for links. It then opens those links and crawls them too. These robots visit site periodically to update changes and re-index their content.

The Indexer – Like the index of a book, this stores all of the websites crawled in a large database. As the crawler changes or updates information, the index also changes to include new or changed information.

Ranking – Search Engines use software to allow users to access the most relevant information within the index to their query. The result is a list of indexed pages according to their relevance to a set of keywords input by the user.

Keywords – One or more words describing a service, product or theme of website. For instance, the keywords for a restaurant’s website may be: Restaurant, Food, Fine Dining, Seafood, etc.

Meta Tags – This is a description of your page content. Previously the Meta tag was used to tell the search engines the keywords relevant to that page, however, modern search engines do not use them for ranking; instead they are used as a short page description in the SERP listings.

Domain Value – A mathematical value used to help assist in creating a quantitative number to identify the overall importance of a specific website or webpage.

SERPs – The “Search Engine Results Page” is the ranked list of indexed websites relevant to a keyword search. The first page results get more visitors than page 2, 3 and so on.
Link building – Establishing links from other relevant, trusted websites to your website encourages the crawler to index your information more often and usually increases your ranking.

A well constructed SEO marketing campaign can drive more traffic to your website which increases your chances of reaching and keeping new customers. You know your business and the audience you want to reach. Your SEO consultant can help you and your website get the exposure and traffic necessary to make that happen. We can make that happen.

• An audience has loyalty.
• An audience is receptive.
• An audience is interactive.

It’s easy to throw thousands of dollars at an ad campaign and pay for traffic to your site. But how much of that is wasted? How many of those ‘new customers’ will be returning customers? How long can your business sustain an approach that is so unreliable?

Instead of manufacturing an outbound marketing strategy to garner new customers, create an inbound marketing battle plan to build an audience.

Information Sharing

Create a section of your website dedicated to sharing information. Talk about the current trends or common pitfalls or new technologies within your industry. Give your customers a reason to come back. Let them know what you have to say. If they like what they hear, they’ll return. Building an audience full of people who want to hear what you are saying is far more valuable than marketing to people who don’t know, and aren’t necessarily interested in, what you do.

Teach It

Teaching might not be something that you have thought about and probably neither have your competitors. Most of your competition is focused on selling or servicing their customers, not teaching. Teaching forms an important give and take relationship with your reader, something that a banner ad or email campaign just can’t do. Writing an article teaching people how to use a product or sharing a short anecdote on how a product was built creates an intangible but highly important relationship bond. Creating this bond with your readers builds trust and loyalty.

Building an audience with these two simple steps creates a pool of people, that, when you need them to, will be listening.

Bruxie is a new take on the authentic Belgium Waffle. The “Bruxie” is unlike any waffle offered: the Bruxie is light, crisp, yeasty and not sweet. It’s street food that’s perfect for breakfast, lunch, mid day snack as well as a dessert or late night treat.

Bruxie.com is being developed in two phases. The first phase is a simple landing page providing mouth watering images of the sandwiches as well as easy access to location and contact information.  Phase 2 will include enhanced social media interactivity, a full blog section, an expanded menu area and more.

One benefit of working in Orange County is the relative proximity we are to Bruxie. So, with first hand experience, we can confidently say “Bruxie waffle sandwiches are out of this world!” If you find yourself around the Orange Circle, stop by, grab a sandwich and do the Bold Fold!

After the relaunch success of atomicballroom.com, Shesha approached us with a request to design and develop his personal website. The website is a fully featured Web2.0 website, with all the bells and whistles:

• Five Lines Dance Event Scheduler
• Five Lines Awards and Commendations Plugin
• FaceBook Photo Incorporation
• Easy update dance partners and media gallery
• and more…

Inspired by Shesha’s dancing, the design is clean and intriguing, incorporating the standard elements of web development, but also including a few hip features.

We are very excited to launch SheshaMarvin.com, and cannot wait to read more about the traveling hat trickster and dancer!

The new website is a complete transformation from what it was before.  Not only has the aesthetic been restructured with a clean, modern design; the user interaction has been drastically enhanced and the content increased tenfold.  The old website was just calling out for attention.  Some of the  challenges we faced with the old website:

• Incorrect execution of SEO
• Bloated code
• Lack of a strong navigation
• A void of self promotion and accolades
• Limited content and information about the ballroom

It is now fast approaching the one year mark of the new website, and we took a look at where the site was and where it is headed.  The statistics show that the new website is a marked success. Since the new site launched last fall we have:

• Doubled monthly visitors from approx. 5K per month to over 10K
• Increased the number of new visitors from 3,000 to over 6,000 per month
• Increased the average time on the site from 2 minutes to 3 minutes

How did we do this?  This website is a completely custom solution.  Working closely with the client, we brainstormed and pinpointed exactly what the ballroom needed and came up with custom solutions.  This coupled with the Five Lines Media strategy of utilizing trusted development techniques along with advanced user interaction on the front end, bolstered the new website.  Some of the key elements in the redesign included:

• SEO targeted URLs
• Creation and implementation of the ATOMIC blog
• Improved artwork and design sitewide
• Expansion of website content including special events pages, dedicated evening dance pages, and even inclusion of dance style pages
• Integration of social media platforms (FaceBook and Twitter)
• Stronger placement of hot ticket items: Location, Weekly Classes and Special Events

Also included in the redesign was the creation of a custom CMS to streamline updating of the website for the ATOMIC staff. This feature was built specific to ATOMIC’s needs, including custom input for adding instructors, classes, dances, and special events.

Overall, ATOMIC Ballroom and Five Lines Media could not be more happy with the results. Finally, a website that matches the success and beauty of the ballroom it represents.