SEO Service Provider

SEO Starter Guide from Google

Some people don’t understand what is involved in doing organic SEO for a website. I believe clients should understand the process so they can appreciate the work that goes into it and so they know what they are paying for and what it should look like when we are done.

Image via CrunchBase

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide from Google

Google put this document online a long time back, but I’m sure there are a lot of people who have never read it. For a free consultation on how we apply these SEO techniques for your website, call Curved Marketing at 512-322-9566.

Overdeveloped Websites – Are you guilty of this mistake?

Over time, has your website started loading slower? You need to empty your browser’s cache to see how fast your website loads. If it is saved in your cache, it loads faster for you than for your first-time visitors. How fast your website loads affects how well you rank in search engines and most importantly, it affects your sales. People will not wait for your website to load no matter how important you think your information and products are to them.

As you develop your website, you add a new graphic here, an image there, maybe a video, a new cool snippet of javascript, maybe a little flash and pretty soon, you have created a slow-loading website one little piece at a time.

It’s easy to get into adding a little bit to your site frequently. You find cool new things you want to share with users. Those little facebook, google plus and twitter icons and plugins for your blog, a cool new flash header you’re sure your visitors will just love and of course you have to add that new video you just made.

Adding freash content to your website is a great way to improve your rankings in the search engine. But add that new stuff on new pages you add to the website. Don’t keep over-developing your home page or any other page. If you slow down your website, your rankings will suffer.

Take a fresh look at your website. Look at each item. Ask yourself, “Do I really need this here?” and “Is the time it takes to download this worth it if it is going to affect my SEO efforts?” Trim the fat and you’ll be much better off.

There are some really big companies online that could use this lesson. Those slow-loading flash ads on some news sites, sports sites, gaming sites and others are annoying to users. Those ads that expand when you mouse over them might look cool, but they are annoying to your users and they slow your website down.

Most importantly, they do not convert any better than an adsense text ad that loads really fast. I’m not saying start promoting adsense instead of the ads. But use the fastest loading ad possible, not the one you think looks really cool. Your conversion rate will actually improve.

Related articles

• Web design tips – things to avoid (marketing.yell.com)
• Flash and SEO: why it’s best to keep it simple (marketing.yell.com)

The Rumors of the Death of Page Rank are Greatly Exaggerated

Image via Wikipedia

With Google not allowing 3rd party tools to give you Page Rank information a lot of people are speculating that Google is discontinuing Page Rank altogether. Google already hampers the ability for 3rd party tools and sites to display link popularity and search engine saturation, so it’s no real surprise they are doing this with Page Rank as well.

So all of you people out there selling links on PR whatever sites are still safe to keep convincing people that it really helps their SEO.

Personally, I uninstalled the Google Toolbar more than a year ago because I don’t care about Page Rank at all. Link building that is based on the PR of the site that links to you is worthless. Getting 100% original content placed on high-traffic websites is much more valuable. Getting a link from a page that already has related content and traffic is more valuable.

Page Rank isn’t officially dead. It’s just almost entirely irrelevant.

Related articles

• Google Has Made PageRank Updates (andrewsegawa.com)
• Why PageRank Doesn’t Matter Anymore (And What You Should Focus On Instead) (entrepreneurs-journey.com)
• PageRank is Dead (The Rush to SocialRank) (ross.typepad.com)