USA SEO Pros: Reporting Industry News

Before you can try to get ranked well in search engines, first you need help finding the right keywords to get ranked for. What are the terms that you want people to type in to find you on the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing? You’ll probably have some phrases in mind right away, but there are other steps you need to take before you start your work to rank well for those keywords.

Before you begin ranking, make sure the terms you try to rank for a worth your while. While some of the terms (like your brand name) might be obvious, a lot of the terms you work on should be researched to find out if a significant amount of people search for the term and if it’s even possible to rank for. Some of the terms you come up with might not generate any traffic, even if you’re the top spot in all of the search engines. Other keywords might generate traffic if you rank well, but that might be impossibly difficult depending on how much competition there is for the specific key phrase. If it’s obvious a lot of SEOs are already competing for a key phrase, your time might be better spent finding one that is less competitive that you can easily rank better for.

There are some good sources out there to help you find out the information you need to potential key phrases you might want to work one. SEOmoz has posted an excellent article that includes a lot of great information on this subject. Another great tool everyone looking at key phrases should use is the Google AdWords keyword tool, which can give you great insight into how many people are search for the possible key phrase each month. Google will also give you possible alternatives, so you can decide exactly what you want to go after.

Techcrunch’s CrunchUp a few days ago had an interesting panel on real-time search. The panel included SEO heavyweights like Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Google’s Matt Cutts. The discussion surrounded what real-time search is, and what companies like USA SEO Pros are striving for it to be.

It’s good to know what the big whigs of search are doing to stay with the times, and while some of the panel members seemed to avoid specific answers, others weren’t afraid to address the issue head-on.

Cutts from Google’s Web spam team was asked what approach Google is taking to attack the real-time search problem, and all he would say is that they’re working on it as they always have. This was very different from the answer Microsoft’s representative gave when he mentioned Bing’s integration of Twitter results, and specified that real-time search is something they are definitely focusing on.

A few other panel members made some good points when the group was discussing the definition of real-time search and exactly what it is. The consensus when defining real-time search seemed to be that it is a collection of the consciousness of the Internet, where as traditional search engines are the Internet’s memory. Where regular search engines will bring up what has happened in the past, real-time search brings up what is happening in the now. Real-time search is what the Internet is thinking, not what it used to think.

Another point that was brought up is that real-time search needs to distance itself from the rankings that traditional search engines use. While filters should be put in place to get rid of spam and the like, there should be no ranking system when it comes to real-time search results. This is obviously  a matter of debate, but as real-time search gains popularity, this debate will no doubt take place where it needs to, and the resolution that companies come to should be interesting.

Check out video of the panel while they were at CrunchUp below:

Real-time searching. Many claim to offer it, few actually do. The leader of real-time search so far would have to be Twitter. Many celebrities take part in tweeting, companies do so, and it’s mentioned as a major part SEM from many speakers if you have ever attended a Wordcamp convention. But what is real-time searching exactly? Just as importantly, what isn’t it?

As stated by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, blogging is not one of those things that can be considered real-time searching. This is due, he says, to the amount of time that is taken from its conception to it’s publication. Which could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days depending on the amount of research put into said post. Hardly anything close to what one would consider “real-time”.

So what is real-time searching? Tweeting, of course, is as good as it gets as far as we’ve come technologically. But you can’t exactly search for it on Google and expect to see your best friend eating a peanut butter cookie. One; because it’s just not first page material. Two; because Google is currently unable to index the lot of the tweets that occur on Twitter. The only one capable of doing so thus far is, of course, Twitter itself.

So what is the advantage of real-time searching in comparison to regular search engines? Maybe you want a broad subject in a field such as…lets say computer components. Try that on a real search engine and you would undoubtedly get companies trying to sell you their products, not about any advancements made. The results you find may even be dated a month old or longer. Real-time searching in comparison would give better results in terms of if a company was planning to release a better video card, or was designing a higher-end motherboard. Sure, you are bound to see some mundane results like “lol Hey, I picked up a new 8GB USB. Ted owes me a dollar.”, but this is the internet we’re talking about, random stuff happens.

In my opinion, if Twitter and Facebook were to do a joint effort, the result could only be beaten by computers hooked up to our brains. Tweeting our thoughts in true real time.

The video below is Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter, discussing real-time search and his company.

Indexing and crawling are two concepts you need to learn about if you ever want to rank in search engines. Without crawling, you site can’t be indexed, and without indexing, your site can’t rank. You have to know how to do the first two in order to achieve the third, and the third is the whole point of SEO.

It’s tough to know exactly how search engines work, but there is one outfit that does a good job of coming up with a lot of reasonable assumptions based on testing and experience in the SEO business. SEOmoz seems to be right most of the time when it comes to search engine optimization, they have some good tools to use, and they recently released a video that explains the details behind crawling and indexing pages.

While the information in the video is really just the best guesses that the SEOmoz team has come up with, they make a lot of sense and SEOs can reasonably assume that SEOmoz people know what they’re talking about. While a lot of what’s discussed is common sense, it’s always good to see it laid out on a whiteboard and put in front of you all at once. It shows people exactly what they need to focus on, and how much work has to potentially be put in to it.

Of course, after crawling and indexing, the pages still need to rank well, but you have to walk before you can run. Make sure your pages have the potential to rank before you try to increase their rankings.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Crawling & Indexing from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

We just posted a great article on our main USA SEO Pros company blog about search engine market share and user loyalty. There have been a few articles coming out about how loyal searchers are to one search engine, and how that could work for or against Bing and the other Google competitors.

No one has come close to Google in terms of market share for a long time, so they’ll probably need to come up with something pretty unique in order to compete. The fight has long been for second place, and Yahoo! has held that spot for a while now, except for one day in early June when Bing took the #2 spot for less than a day.

Zack at USA SEO Pros has looked in to the concept of search engine loyalty and has posted a great blog about it. If you’re interested in the material, make sure to check it out, the link is at the beginning of this article.

If you’re interested in running your own Web site or doing anything involving search engine optimization, it’s a good idea to check out the YouTube videos Matt Cutts hosts. Cutts seems to be the embodiment of the Google algorithm, so anything he says should definitely be looked in to. The videos on this channel involve Cutts answering questions that people have asked concerning ways to get their Web sites ranking better on Google’s search engine.

These videos can be extremely helpful. Some of the stuff is just common sense, but there are dozens of videos, and chances are you’ll find something out you didn’t know before.

Cutts’ job title at Google is “Head of the Web Spam Team,” which doesn’t sound like “SEO Ambassador,” but that ends up being a good chunk of what he does. He can be seen attending most of the large search marketing conferences, and routinely gives presentations on how to properly rank well in search engines. Cutts also gives tips on what not to do while putting together pages on a Web site, since there are a variety of different penalties that can be enforced by engines like Google’s.

Below are a few different videos from the channel you can check out. If the content seems interesting, the link at the beginning of the post will take you to the channel that as all of the different video Matt Cutts has done so far. By the way, he has the same red shirt on in a lot of the videos, because he’ll do a series of videos, then publish one each day.

If you’re familiar with the Internet at all, you’ve most likely heard of YouTube. Heck, even television shows make references to it. Odds are, if you’re reading this, you’ve been on it a few times yourself. YouTube is changing how they feed us the ads of their sponsors. Having the ads stuffed down at the bottom is no longer working for them and they seem to think a new approach is needed. This brand new approach involves placing ads directly in whatever clip you’re trying to watch and giving you the option to watch a longer clip.

Oh wait, Hulu has already been doing this for months.

Personally, I believe this to be a step in a better direction for YouTube in terms of profit. As secure as investors felt before about placing ads with YouTube, they’ll feel even more secure in the fact that the user will have to take an active part to expedite the process of watching the clip/show they wanted to watch. Even if you choose to watch the smaller ads throughout the show, the user has to make notice of whatever ad is being placed there.

Frequenting Hulu quite often, when running into those ads, the longer ad at the beginning seems a lot more favorable than those interruptions while watching. According to TechCrunch, they won’t always be ads. Just someone who really wants their video to become viral. Really makes one wonder exactly how much something like that would even cost and how much people are out there with an excessive amount of spare change to throw around.

All in all, YouTube (and moreover Google) seems to be behind the times in terms of this little ad-dition to their site, but at least they’re taking a step in a better direction. If Hulu comes up with something more brilliant than this before Google does, I will be sorely disappointed. While I’m sure that users will be angry over this in the short term, people will quickly realize that if they’d like to keep it running, the site has to show some profitability or it’ll quickly go to the wayside and ask for donations.

And I’ve never seen those business models turn out well.

It would seem that the king of the Internet might have plans of becoming king of the seas. Google has filed a patent for what is being called a “water-based data center,” which means they would be putting many of their servers and network centers on ships and sending them out to sea.

This would allow Google to have their servers all around the world and have their services a lot closer to many places that are still without servers. Many people all around the world would get data at a much faster rate.  Now, I know this might sound a little crazy and to tell the truth, it sounded crazy to me at first. The more I got to read about it though, the more it sounded like a cool idea.

Not only is Google thinking about moving to the seas, but they have also come up with a way to cut cost and maybe become the most environmentally friendly company of the 21st century. In the patent that was filed, it shows a system that would generate power just by the water hitting the side of the ships the servers are on.  I am sure there is a lot more to it than that, and it is a very cool idea.

On top of all the power that would be saved, the cooling of the servers would also be a lot easier with all of that cold ocean water around, but this plan does not come without its draw backs. If Google were to do this, they would be putting themselves out in international waters. This means they would not be protected by the U.S. or any other nation.

There is also the means of staying connected to the web while at sea, since being linked to satellites is still too slow for most practical uses. I believe their best bet would be to stay connected by running wires from the anchored ship to the land, but even that comes with a lot of maintenance.  All in all it should be fun to see what comes of this, and most of all, see if any other companies start to move out to the seas as well.

With the last day of SES Toronto passing on the 10th, there are quite a few things to talk about. One of which is the first keynote speaker of the event, Tara Hunt. She’s the author of “The Whuffie Factor” who is hailed by the founder of Wikipedia and the co-founder of Twitter to be the perfect author for a book about building business via social networks. One of the reasons for the endorsements is because she’s done just that.

Within the first section on their agenda, they jumped right into getting sites internationalized for the companies that targeted a number of countries or markets. Covering everything from technical keyword research to cross-border management issues. Great for the bigger business, but for more localized companies, this session provides little, unless they’re close to hitting it big.

Of day 1, I personally think the two most important sessions were about linkbait and Twitter. With  linkbait, it seems to me that Tara Hunt should have been one of the speakers. The “Beyond Linkbait” session provided major tips on how a company should portray themselves online. Instead of caring a horrendous amount on getting that link, care about how that community or authority takes a look at them. Last thing you want is Biz Stone of Twitter mad at your company. While the publicity would be nice (regardless of the fact that you’re being slammed) wouldn’t you rather they be talking about it in a good sense?

Day two disappointingly started off with paid search coverage. While yes, paid search is a very good way to get that exposure for certain terms, it can end up being quite expensive. Not to mention a good deal of people ignore the paid search results entirely. Analytics coverage seemed like a much better topic to open up with as the analytics to any given site hold the information that shows the owner where people are coming from, what they’re searching for, how often they bounce away, and what pages they’re looking at. Google Webmasters is another incredible tool that should have been mentioned with resources on how to set it up.

Covering social media was also a big topic that everyone was on edge to see. There are an astounding amount of companies that are supposedly big game that are just missing the mark in the area. Also telling you which bits of social media are just falling off the wayside, this session was surely an eye opener to a good deal of attendees.

The last day was helpful to many, since the workshops seemed to be divided between the SEM and SEO aspects. The only problem is that you couldn’t attend both. Unless you had a friend go and take notes in one while you took notes in another. Needless to say, if you missed out on SES, you really did miss out.

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is, “How do I get better Google rankings for my business?” While the answer to that question can be very complicated, a lot of people who ask me this seem to think I’ll be able to tell them something quickly that will fix all of their problems.

The truth is, it takes a good amount of knowledge, some consistent work, and a little bit a creativity to get the results you’re looking for. It’s not as simple as a quick fix, and in today’s search engines, it takes more than some content and a good product. Ranking your business on Google can be especially tricky, since this is the search engine that a lot of people go after. You need to have your website optimized in order to have a chance to compete on a search engine like Google.

One of the problems with getting your website optimized, is that the rules what you you should do to increase your rankings can change from day to day. Search engines are changing their algorithms all the time, which means if you aren’t staying on top of the updates, your site can suffer some unexpected penalties. A good way to combat this is to hire an SEO firm where their job is to stay on top of these changes, so they can optimize your site accordingly.

Google is a very competitive search engine, so getting good rankings for the key phrases you want can be very difficult without some professional help. Unfortunately, a lot of companies charge large amounts to help you get the rankings you need. Some firms charge as high as six figures to get your business ranking on top of the search engines. This kind of price might work well for top-shelf large businesses, but what about small ones? That’s where USA SEO Pros comes in.

We focus on search engine optimization for all kinds of companies, including small businesses. And in addition to our SEO services, we also provide companies with the other Internet marketing services they may need. Make sure to check us out if you’re looking for SEO services, but can’t see why you’d need to spend five of six figures on your campaign.