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Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

Flyte Welcomes Joan Crocker to the Crew!

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Joan Crocker joins the flyte crew as our new search engine marketer.

If you follow the flyte new media news (and who doesn’t, really? I think CNN has a tab for us on their home page), then you may have heard that our search engine marketer, Nicki Hicks, is moving south for warmer climes.

Although she’s going to continue working for flyte, we knew we also wanted to have a search and social media expert in the office here in Maine.

Enter Joan Crocker, the newest addition to the flyte new media crew.

The first thing you need to know about Joan is she doesn’t like to share. That ice cream cone is all hers. Don’t come looking for a bite unless you want to be starting something. Besides that, there are a few things you should know about Joan:

(more…)

Tags: flyte, flyte new media, Joan Crocker, Joan Woodbrey, Maine SEO, Maine SEO Blog, SEM, SEO, Social Media
Posted in flyte news, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Design & Development | 2 Comments »

What Should I Title My Blog Posts for Maximum SEO?

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Dear Rich,

I’ve read that I should load my blog titles with targeted keywords to increase my blog’s search engine visibility. However, sometimes I just want to use a clever turn of phrase, or a slightly irreverent title that is appropriate for the blog post, but maybe not for Google.

How do I balance my needs to rank well at the search engines with my desire to put my BA in English to use?

Titling in Thomaston

Dear Titling,

I would argue that you don’t need to sacrifice your cleverness to create a keyword-rich title tag for your blog.

Here’s how you create titles that work for your search engine optimization and your end user:
(more…)

Tags: Blog, blog titles, Business Blog, page titles, search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 59 Comments »

Greetings, Fellow Bloggers!

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

In just a couple of hours I’ll be presenting How to Dominate Google and Bing with Your Blog at the BlogWorld Expo here in NYC. If you happen to be checking out our web marketing blog, flyte blog, for the first time because of this, here are a few things you should know:

Consider subscribing to our blog either by using the RSS feed or the email subscription to your right. You can always unsubscribe.
We’ve got a great resource in The 11 Biggest Mistakes Small Business Bloggers Make. I hand crafted each one of those mistakes, so why not learn from my mistakes rather than your own? Cheaper that way, you know. There is an email registration piece, but again, you can unsubscribe at any time.
We’ve got an all SEO, all the time blog over at Maine SEO Blog written by our search engine marketer, Nicki Hicks with some contributions by yours truly. You don’t have to be from Maine to enjoy it.
Since Nicki’s moving to Florida (but still working for flyte), she’s started a new blog, Florida SEO Blog. Please give it some love.

That’s all! Now I just have to get the world’s biggest cup of coffee and head over the Javits Convention Center. Feel free to say hello!

Rich Brooks
You Can Also Find Me On The Twitter

Tags: bing, Blog, blogging, Blogworld, blogworld expo, Google, SEO
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, flyte news, Search Engine Marketing | 3 Comments »

How to Create Killer Blog Content from Email Questions

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Dear Rich,

How do I come up with new posts for my blog? You always talk about how to use a business blog to rank higher at the search engines and drive qualified traffic to your website, but I have no idea on how to do that.

Frustrated in Fryeberg

Dear Frustrated,

First off: don’t be frustrated! I’m sure there’s plenty of content that you could turn into search engine engine gold for your blog if you just know where to look. In fact, I’m using one of my favorite techniques right now.

A few times a week a client, prospect or random stranger emails me with some question about search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging or social media. Rather than just hitting reply, I turn the question into a Dear Abby style blog post. The way I figure it is that if this one person is asking me that question, how many more hundreds or thousands of people are asking these questions of Google and Bing? Plus, by posting it to my blog it can be easily shared over social media platforms.

What really makes this a powerful technique is that these questions are what people are asking when their doing research into hiring a company like yours. There’s generally less competition for these phrases (so you can rank higher) and they’re very specific (so people who are researching them are getting ready to make a buying decision.)

For more details on how to optimize these Dear Abby posts for search engine visibility, be sure to read How to Turn Emails Into Search Engine Visibility.

Rich Brooks
Blogging for SEO

Photo Credit: Jay Malone

Tags: bing, blogs, business blogs, Google, search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 4 Comments »

Search Engine Marketer Wanted: SEO Jobs in Maine

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Last week we announced a job opening here at flyte for a search engine marketer.

No, we’re not losing Nicki Hicks, who’s been a search engine and social media marketer here for the past few years. As she documented in a recent post over at Maine SEO, she’s moving out of state but not out of flyte.

Here’s how the job posting reads:

We’re an energetic, successful Web design and Internet market firm located in Portland, Maine, looking for an experienced search engine marketing professional.

Our philosophy is that only an integrated, holistic approach to Web marketing will help our clients succeed on the Web, so we’re looking to fold your search engine experience into our Web marketing model which includes email marketing, blogging, social media and other Web-based strategies.

You will run keyword analyses, consult on client content, review analytic reports, provide ongoing support and handle any other tasks that help our clients rank higher at the search engines and drive more qualified leads to their sites.

You have excellent copywriting skills, are organized and detail-oriented. You work well with a team, but you’re a self-starter who doesn’t require a lot of supervision. You’re passionate about helping small businesses succeed online and you’ve got the experience to make it happen.

Flyte believes in ongoing training of our crew and you’d be no exception, but we’re interested in candidates with 1 – 3 years of SEM experience. This is a results-oriented position and we’re looking for someone who has a proven track record.

If you’re up for a challenge, if you want to make an impact, if you have an entrepreneurial mindset, then flyte new media is looking for you.

Please provide your resume and a cover letter with specific SEO projects you’ve worked on in the past, and the outcomes of these projects. The more detail you can provide on past experience, the better.

So, is that you? Are you ready to join the flyte new media crew?

If so, please fill out our application form and submit a cover letter and resumé and we’ll take a look.

No phone calls…please!

Rich Brooks
10% Less Crazy Than Your Last Boss

Photo Credit: Brenda Gottsabend

Tags: maine jobs, Maine SEO, search engine marketer, sem jobs, SEO, seo jobs
Posted in flyte news | 4 Comments »

Why We Blog: It’s About the Visibility, Stupid

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

This post goes out to my good friend Braden Buehler who was looking for real world examples of how blogging can help increase your visibility, online and off. I’ve got dozens of examples, but here’s a recent one.

It wasn’t too long ago that I became aware of QR codes and how they could be used for marketing. I went to see a local presentation on QR marketing and blogged my thoughts in a post called What is a QR Code? What is QR Marketing? I followed up with a post called Should You Use QR Codes in Email Marketing?

Soon after that I wrote a blog post for Fast Company called 13 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Marketing. I also contribute to Social Media Examiner and pitched them on a post on QR Codes, but they already had one in the hopper. Too late.

I also wrote an article (you remember articles, right? blog posts’ older brother?) called QR Code Marketing for Small Business that I posted to our website.

I pitched a story for 207–an evening news magazine that uses me once a month or so for tech stories–on QR codes. They posted the segment to their website and I embedded it in our blog under the header, QR Codes Explained on TV [Video].

I followed all this up with another blog post called 50–Count’em, 50!–Creative Uses of QR Codes. (The bigger the number the more likely people are to retweet it, I’m discovering. At current count the post has 143 retweets and over 100 likes on Facebook.)

What happened next?

I got a call from CNN. (Yes, that CNN.) They were doing a story on QR codes and wanted to interview me.

How did CNN find me?

The same way any of us find information, they Googled for it. I’m not sure which post or article caught their eye, or maybe it was that I had multiple results for QR-related searches on the first page of Google. Whatever the case was, they interviewed me and a few weeks later they ran a story on CNN.com called Marketers Embracing QR Codes for Better or Worse. I was quoted extensively through the article, and they even linked to flyte. (Thanks, CNN!)

For a while that article came up in the top results in the news section. Friends who I hadn’t talked to in a while had read the article (it was featured on the home page of CNN) and reached out. It definitely helped raise flyte’s profile.

What’s the outcome?

Right now the top 3 results for “qr code marketing” are:

50 Creative Uses of QR Codes in Marketing & Communications – from the flyte blog
QR Code Marketing for Small Business – from flyte.biz
13 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Marketing – from FastCompany.com, with links back to our blog and my Twitter profile

That’s pretty good since we only started writing and blogging about QR codes about three months ago. And we’re not experts in QR codes. And we’re beating out people with a lot more experience and clout than we have, at least in this arena.

What’s the takeaway?

That you can do this, too. Yes, it took work. I had to write 4 or 5 posts and articles. I understand a bit about SEO so I wrote my titles with good keywords and cross-linked them. But it led to CNN finding me, and I didn’t have to hire a PR firm. In just the past month thousands of people have visited our website and blog who never would have heard of us otherwise. And I don’t have to pay for people to click on my links like the sponsored ads above my results.

And if you can’t do this, because you absolutely can’t write, or don’t have the patience to blog, or can’t find the time because you’re too busy “running your company”…well, then, you can always hire us to blog for you.

#justsayin

Rich Brooks
Will Blog for SEO

Photo credit: Alberto P. Veiga

Tags: Blog, blogging, qr codes, search engine visibility, SEO
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 3 Comments »

How Does the Recent Google Changes Affect Your Website?

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

Herb, what's a Google?

If you follow SEO news, you’ve probably heard about Google’s recent update named “Panda” or “Farmer,” depending on who’s speaking. If you don’t follow SEO news, you probably have a life, which is nice. Please feel free to let me know what that’s like.

Google is continually fiddling with it’s algorithm to (assumedly) continually improve the results it provides. Whenever a major change comes, invariably some people who see a huge drop in traffic bemoan the changes, while other people who’s rankings go up state that “it’s about time.”

The biggest losers this time around appear to be “content farms,” big websites with tons of poorly written, keyword-stuffed content. In a recent piece in Website Magazine (a truly great magazine for anyone who relies on the internet for business–which is another way of saying anyone who needs to eat to stay alive) they list some of the sites that have seen the biggest drop-off in traffic this time around. Unfortunately, the article online doesn’t include that graph.

The worst hit was blippr.com, losing almost 98% of it’s traffic from Google. The list contained some surprises (at least to me), such as business.com and merchantcircle.com. There were also some article marketing websites I’ve contributed to, like ezinearticles.com and hubpages.com that were hit hard.

So what’s the takeaway for the average website owner?

Quality content counts more than ever. Although the “news” is that a lot of content farms took a big hit, the takeaway is that the rest of us putting up unique, quality content are all edging up.
If you used article marketing as a link building technique, that ship has probably sailed. I would focus more on guest blogging opportunities.
Don’t put all your eggs in the Google basket. In fact, don’t put all your eggs in the search basket. Instead, diverse your investments, and spend more time driving quality leads from social media activity.

Rich Brooks
Is a Content Farm Aid Concert In the Future?

Tags: Content Creation, content farms, farmer, Google, link building, panda, SEM, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Web Copywriting | 9 Comments »

301 Redirects: How to Keep Your Search Engine Ranking During a Redesign

Monday, March 28th, 2011

301 redirects are essential when you’re redesigning your website and don’t want to lose the search engine traffic that you currently enjoy.

The unfortunate thing about a 301 redirect is that it sounds so extremely geeky and off-putting to the average business owner that they’re scared away. That’s too bad, because it is a critical tool in search engine optimization. So, to that end, I’m going to attempt explain the benefits of 301s in the least geeky way possible.

Search Engines and Trust

There are a lot of variables in why one site ranks higher than another site at Google and other search engines. One is how long the site (and a given page) has been in existence, and another is how many incoming links a page has. All things being equal (which they never are), older pages rank higher than newer pages and pages with more inbound links rank higher than ones with fewer inbound links.

Breaking that Trust

Often, when rebuilding a site, you end up changing the URLs–or addresses–of your web pages. Maybe it’s because you’re reorganizing your site, or maybe it’s because you’re redeveloping your site on a content management system like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. In either case, the new URLs don’t have the trust that the old URLs do, even if a lot of the content is the same.

It’s like moving to a new town. You may have been the greatest manager/plumber/accountant in your old town, but that doesn’t mean anything in the new town. You haven’t changed; you still have an excellent bedside manner or mad sales skills, but you’re starting from scratch in this new town.

When you take your established content, uproot it and replant it somewhere else on your site, you are resetting the clock on when that content was created and breaking all of the inbound links that pointed to it.

Reestablishing that Trust

There are many ways to tell the search engines that you’ve moved your content, but the most search engine friendly way is the 301 redirect. By setting up 301 redirects for your content, you show search engines where your content has moved from, and your inbound links will now direct to your new pages.

How you setup your 301s may depend on the type of host you have. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s time to talk to your web developer and get them involved.

If you want your web developer to create redirects for you, I recommend writing up a guide for him or her to show where the old pages should be redirected. Here’s a guide for you to use, where the first item is the old page and the second item is where you want the traffic to flow:

old/old.html -> new/new.php
van-halen/david-lee-roth.html -> van-halen/sammy-hagar.html
wonka/gene-wilder.php ->wonka/johnny-depp.php

If you do feel comfortable playing around with 301 redirects, .htaccess and other files on your server, there are plenty of resources online:

These are just a few of the top results.

Final Thoughts

301 redirects are also great when you are changing from one domain to another (never a great idea, but sometimes a necessary evil.) Even with a 301 redirect, you should expect a dip during a major overhaul of your website. However, my own experience has been that the numbers get back to normal in about a month or three and then you see increases after that.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Photo credit: nnecapa

Tags: 301 redirect, 301 redirects, htaccess, search engine optimization, SEM, SEO
Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Web Design & Development | 6 Comments »

How Can I Get More Buyers to My E-Commerce Site?

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Dear Rich,

I have a website and many [handmade apparel items] and some traffic but no buyers. How can I get a buyer?

Handy in Harrison

Dear Handy,

Probably one buyer isn’t going to help; you need a regular stream of buyers if you want to turn your skill into a business. I took a quick peek at your site and here’s some feedback:

You need more traffic. Your site is almost invisible to the search engines, so you’ll need to invest some time and money in search engine optimization (SEO). You’ll need to perform a keyword analysis so you know what your prospective buyers are looking for when they’re at Google. The name you give your product may not be the same as what your prospects call it. You’ll need to rewrite the copy throughout the site, concentrating on title-tags, headers, body copy and intra-site links. Also, check out Nicki Hicks’ Maine SEO Blog for plenty of good tips.
Your website could be more…um…professional looking. Ouch, I know. But if you’re selling things that have an aesthetic quality, whether they’re [handmade apparel items] or plastic surgery, you need an aesthetic website.
Your product photography is um…poor? OK, now I’m just being cruel. But it’s true: if you want to sell something, you should invest in some professional level photography. If you can’t afford it, maybe you could barter with a local photographer who needs a [handmade apparel item.]
You need to make it easier to buy from you. I had trouble finding the product page; you should make it easy to buy products from you. Put products on the home page, and write more enticing descriptions of your product. Be persuasive.

If you can’t afford all those services–SEO, photography, copywriting and web design can add up–you might want to take a look at a site like Etsy or Shopify that will get you up and running in no time.

And good luck!

Rich Brooks
Cruel to Be Kind

Photo Credit: antwerpenR

Tags: E-Commerce, etsy, search enginen optimization, SEO, shopify, traffic
Posted in Web Design & Development, Web Marketing | 3 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

What Should I Title My Blog Posts for Maximum SEO?

Greetings, Fellow Bloggers!

How to Create Killer Blog Content from Email Questions

Search Engine Marketer Wanted: SEO Jobs in Maine

Why We Blog: It’s About the Visibility, Stupid

How Does the Recent Google Changes Affect Your Website?

301 Redirects: How to Keep Your Search Engine Ranking During a Redesign

Search Engines and Trust

Breaking that Trust

Reestablishing that Trust

Final Thoughts

How Can I Get More Buyers to My E-Commerce Site?

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