Denver SEO Blog: Web Development, SEO & Marketing

Hyper Dog Media is providing Search Engine Optimization tips at the Association of Strategic Marketing’s upcoming seminar. The full agenda includes information from experts in PPC (Pay Per Click), Web Analytics, and more:
Proven Strategies for Improving Your Search Engine Marketing

Are you optimizing your greatest asset? Website content is an essential part of online success. Help search engines see the relevance of your sonic payday loanadvance? cash loan online payday ?consolidate payday loan debt,consolidate debt loan paydaypayday loan store milwaukeepayday loan canadamoney tree payday loanquick cash payday loanno fax payday loan missouriapplication loan online paydayfaxless online payday loanfaxless loan online paydaycheap loan long payday term,cheap loan paydayhour loan online paydayfax loan no online paydayloan online? payday quick ?,quick payday loan without checking account,loan payday quicksonic payday loan,loan payday sonicameriloan loan paydaysavings account payday loanfastest loan online paydayloan online payday,2 loan online payday,payday loan online bad creditlow fee payday loangeorgia payday loanpayday loan on linebad credit loan loan payday,bad credit loan payday,bad credit loan payday quickchicago loan payday store,chicago in loan payday storeadvance loan mexico new payday,advance loan payday,advance loan payday software? ?cashquick payday advance loancash till payday loanpayday loan in savings account,account loan payday savings,account loan payday people savingsadvance fax loan no paydaycash loan payday tillcheck credit loan no payday,no teletrack no credit check payday loancash america payday loan,america cash loan paydayloan online payday quickcash advance until paydaycash advance loan online,advance cash loan online,advance cash fast loan online paydayadvance america cash advance,advance advance america cash center,advance america cash firstpayday cash loancash advance new yorkadvance america cash company,advance america cash advance center inc,cash advance americaadvance cash day pay,cash advance until pay daycash till payday loancash til payday loancash loan payday untilcash loan payday tillcash until payday loanfirst cash advance houston tx,first time cash advance,first cash advancegeorgia no fax cash advance,advance cash fax no,savings account cash advance no faxcash advance servicescash advance no credit check,advance cash check credit no online,advance cash check credit no pages, articles, press releases and more. Learn to identify and target ranking opportunities with titles, headings, bolding and additional techniques. Also, HTML can be used to communicate the relevance of your website and content to search engines. You don’t need to be an HTML whiz either!

Once you have the content, you must know how to maximize your search engine exposure. Find out how aggressive search engine submission may harm your ability to get into Google’s listings, as well as modern strategies on how to get your site indexed safely. Learn how to take an active role in getting pages indexed quickly in the major search engines as you add new content. Finally, links from other websites are an important source of traffic and search rankings. Several kinds of links will be discussed and you are sure to leave with new link building ideas!

5 reasons to attend!

• Translate the user experience to all online channels
• Learn about online measurement and analytics tools
• Use your SEM campaign to maximize your ROI
• Ensure you are paying for profitable clicks
• Discover 26 sources of links to target

BONUS! Free manual with registration

Hope to see you there!

Tags: denver web design, website design, seo, denver web development, search engine optimization, website development

Yahoo’s “Search Assist” tool is a hoot. Search for “Denver Mobile SEO“. go ahead, I dare you. Now, I’m thinking Yahoo knows me a little better than I’d like. Is this behavioral targeting? Profiling? Something even more sinister? Or is it just that Mobile SEO always goes better when plenty of chocolate is at hand.

Now look through the related queries for “Chocolate“. Go ahead - I’ll wait. It appears many of us are writing about chocolate and writing about mobile seo in the same places. I’m going to bet more people are writing about chocoalte, and I don’t blame them:

Mobile SEO is the (sometimes thankless) task of making sure websites look good on all sorts of mobile devices, including handhelds, cell phones, zunes, and the new ipod touch(which is probably a “no brainer”). Few mobile seo simulators are available online, which means field testing. And then page tweaking.� It can be a time consuming and arduous task. It’s best accompanied with plenty of chocolate.

Tags: denver web design, website development, denver web development, search engine optimization, seo, website design

AOL could become another internet marketing powerhouse. The company has recently announced it’s new “Platform A”, a mixture of the technological successes of Advertising.com, TACODA, Third Screen Media, Lightningcast, and ADTECH’s global ad serving platform.

Platform A is poised to be a powerhouse of ad distribution through tightly defined niches like mobile advertising, video ads, behavioral targeting, and more. AOL has noticed CPM advertising is requiring more than just selling a bundle of clicks. Internet Advertisers and search marketers are requiring more demographic information before purchasing CPM these days. Without the right targeting, return on investment for CPM can be difficult to track(or realize!).

But Platform A also has the breadth of distribution to compete with Google: Platform A already reaches more than 90% of the domestic online audience, according to comScore. It will be interesting to test the two internet ad networks side by side: Each will likely have their own flavor, but one is going to clearly emerge as the leader. The competition will be good, but I doubt Google will be toppled just yet.

Tags: denver web design, seo, website design, search engine optimization, website development, denver web development

Successful web design projects require a tremendous amount of planning, and planning starts with asking the right questions. Any web design benefits from extra planning, but 4 questions should define the entire project from the start:

1. Who is my target audience?
Too many websites try to be all things to all people. Instead, think of your most important visitors and design according to their tastes. They may or may not appreciate animation. They may be on dialup connections or they may be visiting the site via a cell phone. Knowing your website’s target audience is vital to the project, even before a web site design has been created.

2. What do I want them to do?
If the purpose of your website is to get prospective customers to call, be sure your phone number is prominently displayed. A link to the “Contact Us” page should also be prominently displayed. Other websites may want to capture email addresses or newsletter signups. Ecommerce websites want to make a sale. Whatever the objective, make it as easy as possible for your customers.

3. How will they get to my site?
With competition among websites growing daily, it’s important to plan how you will increase the visibility of your website. Will you blog? Or participate in forums? You might even use pay-per-click advertising on Google AdWords. There are many ways to bring targeted visitors to your website, but they won’t come just because you’ve launched a new website design. Plan ahead, and watch your website bring you new business!

4. How can I measure the project’s success?
Many smaller website owners do not measure their web site metrics or statistics. Without an idea of traffic patterns and popular keywords, it is difficult to tell if a new web site design is effective. Are web site visitors converting to leads? Is the web site generating sales? Only by measuring can you know for sure.

Tags: website design, denver web development, denver web design, search engine optimization, seo, website development

There was an excellent story in the San Francisco Gate in May about Lake Champlain Chocolates, and the lessons they’ve learned with Pay Per Click Advertising. The story title is “PAY-PER-CLICK PROBLEMS: Emeryville gourmet chocolate company has a rough go of it“, but the real value of the article is the PPC secrets it gives away. The article discusses two chocolate retailers: Lake Champlain Chocolates and Charles Chocolates. Lake Champlain Chocolates has experienced successful growth due to their PPC campaign, but Charles Chocolates did see any measurable growth from theirs.

1. Use negative keywords
In the article, words like “cheap” and “free” were used as negative keywords to avoid showing ads to less affluent searchers. Every time you show an ad it’s like holding out a dollar bill for your searcher to snatch away. Be sure to get a prospective customer in return!

2. Refrain from using the content network
Google AdWords users expect that the content network will show ads in all the right places. In a perfect world, new customers would see your ad and keep you in mind for their next purchase. But it isn’t a perfect world(Don’t even get me started!). Consider:

- Visitors probably will not click. Content ads are like billboard ads. How often do you see a billboard and pull off of the highway to make an immediate purchase? It’s highly unlikely. Like the company in the article learned, “The return was never there.”

- Visitors who click your ad won’t buy that day. They were reading, not shopping. At best, they will signup for your newsletter or bookmark your page. Is the landing page converting them into bookmarking or signing up? Probably not. Either fix that, or turn off the content network for now.

- Clickfraudsters will click your ad and keep half. Click fraud is a plague of the content network. Last June, Outsell estimated that click fraud could be as high as 14 percent. The real estimate is probably a little lower, but click fraud does exist.

3. Use large sets of focused keywords
The successful Lake Champlain Chocolate seller had a keyword set as high as 70k at one time, and now has it trimmed down to 30k. That’s  a big keyword set!

4. Use advanced keyword features
One of the issues Internet Marketing Consultant Lael Sturm found with the struggling Emerville Chocolate Retailer Charles Chocolates was that they “hadn’t modified the ad text to match each specific keyword.” Be sure to use the advanced keyword options that PPC engines like Google AdWords provide. In Google AdWords, the code is {keyword: your keyword}. This option shows the keyphrase your user was searching for in the text of your ad.

5. Measure and adjust
Is money being wasted in your campaign? You won’t know unless you are measuring. Lake Champlain saw they spent money attracting a searcher for “Chocolate covered scorpions,” something they didn’t sell, and decided not to let that happen again. Along with measuring what ads are the most effective, be sure to measure what you are paying for and remove/adjust the ads lacking good ROI.

6. Outsource your campaign to professionals to dramatically increase your sales
Even with Lake Champlain Chocolate’s success inhouse, they were able to DOUBLE their sales by outsourcing their PPC management to professionals. You just can’t beat having the right help. Get to your friendly neighborhood search marketing agency today!

Tags: search engine optimization, website development, seo, website design, denver web development, denver web design

I’m still getting two copies of Search Marketing Standard magazine, but I’m not reporting it. First off, it’s so good that I don’t want to possibly miss an issue by having anyone mess with my subscription. With other magazines, I’ve found that fulfillment centers sometimes get confused, and it’s usually months before I realize a certain issue isn’t coming. I just can’t risk it. Every article is good.

Secondly, I’ll probably read through it twice. Might as well have a fresh crisp copy the second time. I wonder if I’ll even dog-ear the same pages?

Here are four excellent resources for anyone interested in SEO, internet marketing, ecommerce, and the affiliate scene:
1. Search Marketing Standard. If you’ve thought the SEO world moves too fast for print, think again.

2. Practical Ecommerce. Not just for ecommerce store owners. Every web developer creating ecommerce websites should be in tune with the industry.

3. Revenue. Great for affiliate marketers, ecommerce merchants, or any company creating PPC(Pay Per Click) campaigns on Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing.
4. Internet Retailer. Especially important if you are helping larger companies with their SEO, SEM, PPC, and ROI! This publication is best at industry trends influencing larger retailers and online merchants.

It is essential that web designers and web site developers start paying attention to the many facets that can make or break an online business. These publications can help get you serve your clients!

Tags: denver web development, denver web design, website development, website design, search engine optimization, seo

Many view the worlds of Pay Per Click Advertising and Search Engine Optimization as opposites. While they are certainly very different, the goals are similar: bring eyeballs(with wallets) to your site and make it easy for them to buy.  Here are 5 tips to improve your SEO based on lessons from PPC.
1. Converting keywords
Some keywords convert into sales better than others. Use your analytics to discover which keywords are bringing you sales, then target them with your SEO campaign. PPC(Pay-Per-Click) ads are a wonderful testbed to discover those converting keywords if you are pressed for time.
2. Your title and metadescription are your ad
When composing your titles and metadescriptions, remember they will be shown in the search engine result pages. It’s like having an advertisement to click, but without Google’s AdWords rules. Always remember you are competing against the other pages in the SERPS(Search Engine Result Pages) - who will get the click?

3. Landing pages
It’s great to optimize for your homepage, but setup some (even more relevant) landing pages and be sure they get some of the inbound links you are building.

4. Optimize landing pages for different steps in the buying process
As visitors reach your site, think about what step they might be at in their buying process? Are they conducting preliminary research?  Give them links to bookmark your content, send it to a friend, or signup for your newsletter.  Is their search so specific that they are probably ready to buy? Now is the time to wave the free shipping!

5. Split Test
Internet marketing is measurable. Why not setup split tests when you design your web pages? Create a couple of similar pages(avoid duplicate content) and use your analytics to measure performance. When your sample size tells you which one is better, adjust the worst of the two and measure again. Or create a third page. Hey, why not? HMTL is still free.

Tags: denver web design, website design, search engine optimization, seo, website development, denver web development

Web Designers frequently destroy their clients’ chances of ranking well in Google, without even knowing it! Here are three common mistakes that can ruin a client’s chances of ranking well in Google, Yahoo or MSN - simply by preventing the site from being indexed!
Search engines follow regular text links, but web designers like to use these unfriendly search engine navigation methods:

1. JavaScript Menus
Search Engines do not follow links reliably in JavaScript, if at all.

2. Imagemaps
Search Engines cannot see the image, and so cannot classify the relevance or topic of the link. Lesser search engine robots do not even attempt to follow imagemap links.

3. Image Links / Rollover links
These links frequently contain JavaScript, but also are difficuly for search engines to classify.

4. JavaScript popups
Search Engines do not follow JavaScript reliably, and do not seem to like popups at all!

5. “Jump menus”
These pulldown menus are usually submitting a form. If the form target is sent GET requests, there is a chance that the links will be followed in some manner, but again - this isn’t reliable navigation for Search Engines.

6. NOSCRIPT embedded links
We were told that content in NOSCRIPT tags is for those visitors that have JavaScript off. But if you were told this means search engines, you were told wrong! This HTML tags has been abused by spammers early on, and search engines do not reliably follow navigation within these tags.

7. Frames - they’re rarely done in a search friendly manner
More on the “right way” in a later post. Frames are challenging for search engines, and we have recently seen Google penalizing framee-based sites, perhaps due to the usability challenges they can present.

8. Java
Java cannot be executed by search engines. Many early rollover effects relied on Java, but the navigation cannot be read by search engine robots.

9. Flash
Flash navigation cannot be followed by search engines. Splash pages can become a deadend for search engines, and alternatives to Flash navigation should always be given.
So what can you do to be sure that search engines will crawl your site? We’ll have answers in a future post, but a frequent supplement to websites that use the above techniques - meant almost entirely for search engines - is a set of footer links for seach engines to follow.

Tags: denver web design, website design, denver web development, website development, search engine optimization, seo

Google Hell is a term being used to describe a sudden, far drop in a website’s ranking on Google. The ranking is usually for an important - or many different important - keyword terms.

I’m pleased an article on Google Hell being covered in the mainstream press. It’s a phenomenon known to main online businesses, tied heavily to changes in the Google algorthym. Some of the excellent points in the article:

• The criteria for Google’s Supplemental Index can be vague.
• “Grey-area” techniques are sometime necessary to compete on the internet with larger stores.
• Duplicate content penalties exist!
• Newly created sites are especially vulnerable to falling into the supplemental index.
• Buying links may now be a deciding factor in whether your site ends up in the supplemental results.

The article quotes Jim Boykin and Micheal Gray. Besides the great sources, it is refreshing that businesses are starting to see the importance of search engine marketing to the bottom line.

Tags: denver web development, search engine optimization, seo, denver web design, website development, website design

Google Adwords opens your advertisement up to a vast audience. Sometimes it’s an audience that is a little too vast. You can save tremendous amounts of money on adwords by excluding the wrong audience:

1. Exclude surfers during the wrong time of day
If your product or service is primarily marketed to businesses, be sure to turn off your ads during off hours. Business products and services are only sought during business hours, and there is little need to show ads in evenings and on weekends.

2. Never use broad match
Broad match can be a horrible waste of money. If your broad match is for red widgets, your ad will come up in searches that include the word red, and searches that include the word widgets. With so much of the wrong traffic - searching for red gadgets, red ipods, etc. - there are bound to be costly clicks upon your ad. Instead of using broad match, use phrase and exact match. This will help save your clicks for visitors that might actually buy your product or service.

3. Exclude keywords that are unrelated
For most any product, you can exclude some keyword. If you sell boats, you should exclude the word “toy” from most of your ads. Be creative, search Google and look for negative keywords.

4. Exclude other countries
Make sure you are not showing ads in other countries. Some continents are also notorious for being involved in PPC fraud.
More tips to save money with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing! Get Joy Milkowski’s “Amazing Results with Google AdWords” course - it pays for itself! Or you can continue throwing extra money to Google.

Tags: denver web design, seo, website development, search engine optimization, website design, denver web development