Keyword research is the most important part of selecting the proper keywords and keyphrases for your website. You want to ensure that the keywords and keyphrases that you use are relevant to your site and that they are actually searched for on a daily basis. If no one searches for them then what good are they? KeywordIndex is unique because it uses it’s own database, not a shared database.

KeywordIndex offers a white paper at: http://www.keywordindex.com/ki-good-keywords-more-sales.htm on how to select the proper keywords for your website. You will find some valuable information in KeywordIndex free whitepaper, which will include things like:

Improve your business with better keywords
Find the financial value of your keywords
Choose the right keyword type
Understand why single words don‘t work
How to use KeywordIndex to find the best keywords

Visit KeywordIndex at KeywordIndex.com

To get higher rankings on Google you need to be better than your competition. Search for your main keywords or keyphrases on Google and visit the websites of your competitors.

Once on the websites check their anchor text, see how many sites link to your competitors using your keywords or keyphrases. You want your website to have more inbound links using your keywords or keyphrases than they have. If you find that they have more inbound links using your keywords or keyphrases, then find high PR sites that will link into you with your keywords or keyphrases.

Ideally you want your content to be good enough so that they will link to you on their own, but first they have to know that you exist. By contacting them you will now be providing them with a new resource. See you at the TOP!

 Google tells us how to deal with them. If you have low quality links or if known spammy websites are linking to you it has always been believed that this will hurt your Google rankings. A spammy website could even link to you and you might not be aware of it.

 Following are things that you can do to help correct this problem, recommended by Google:

We all know that linking is a big part of Google’s algorithm, but there are many other factors also. Good document structure and content are also extremely important. Structure is king and content is queen!

If you have spammy links contact the website owners and have the links removed. If the owners of those web sites refuse to remove the links then focus on sites that will help and work with you.

Google has also mentioned that over time spammy links do lose their appeal in their algorithm

You can report a website as a spammy site to Google here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1

SEO TIP - Keep your forms on landing pages above the fold and make them as short as possible

SEO TIP - Structure is king and content is queen. Good document structure makes for good seo along with good content

SEO TIP - Neighborhoods matter. Are you #optimizing for a "bad neighborhood"?

SEO TIP - With all the buzz around "Local Search" lately make sure your site is optimized for your local area also

SEO TIP - Does your thank you page have a strong call to action or does it cross sell? It needs to

SEO TIP - Keep your forms on landing pages above the fold and make them as short as possible

SEO TIP - Check your keywords with Google Insights to ensure that they don't have declining interests. http://www.google.com/insights/search/

SEO TIP - Check your keywords with Google Insights to ensure that they don't have declining interests. http://bit.ly/BBXcI

SEO TIP - Glossary pages are a good practice for seo

SEO TIP - Design fast loading web pages as it may soon be part of Google's algorithm if not already

SEO TIP - Double listings in SERPS (search engine results pages) will convert better, try and get these

SEO TIP - Use your local phone number and have your registrar information public, this may help in Google Local

SEO TIP - Do not use your homepage as a landing page

SEO TIP - Giving your users navigation choices will result in better conversions

SEO TIP - Be involved in social media sites and link to and from them

SEO TIP - If you are purchasing a domain name check archive.org for any problems that may associated with that domain name

SEO TIP - Use the allinanchor: operator to search for competitors

SEO TIP - 20 SEO tips every web developer should follow - http://bit.ly/Wwmyr

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; Need to have fast loading web pages

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; Contents of your web pages should be clearly arranged

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; Your web pages should be easy to read

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; Your web page images should use the IMG ALT attribute

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; You should use custom 404 not found error pages

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; Your website should be easy to navigate

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; Important content is above the fold

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; Your web page titles are explanatory

SEO TIP! Factors that can improve the usability of your website; The URLs of your web pages are meaningful and self-explanatory

SEO TIP! How to get the best links to your website; Have a linkworthy website

SEO TIP! How to get the best links to your website; Contact related websites and blogs

SEO TIP! How to get the best links to your website; Get links to different pages of your website and vary your link texts

SEO TIP! How to get links to your website; Make it easy to add your website to social bookmark services

SEO TIP! How to get the best links to your website; Submit your website to related Internet directories

SEO TIP! Links that point to your website should be from related websites and from sources that would "naturally" link to you

SEO TIP! Optimize your web pages for as many keyword variations as possible

SEO TIP! Do not copy content from other web pages that has no extra value to your website visitors

SEO TIP! Do not write text about varying topics on a single page without paragraphs, sub-headings or layout separation

SEO TIP! Do not embed text in images because search engines cannot read it

SEO TIP! Do not use text with many spelling and grammar errors on your pages

SEO TIP! Do not use non-descriptive 404 not found pages

SEO TIP! Do not block search engines from indexing your 404 not found pages

SEO TIP! Do not use broken links on your web page

SEO TIP! Do not base your entire navigation on drop-down menus or images

SEO TIP! Do not link every page of your website to every other page of your website

SEO TIP! Do not use capitalization in your URLs

SEO TIP! Do not mix www. and non-www. versions of your URLs in your internal links

SEO TIP! Do not use directory names that have no relation to the web page content

SEO TIP! Do not show the same content with different domains or sub-domains

SEO TIP! Do not use too many sub directories

SEO TIP! Do not use lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs

SEO TIP! Do not copy the entire content of the web page in the meta description tag

SEO TIP! Do not use only keywords in the description

SEO TIP! Do not use general descriptions such as "My web page" or "About kittens"

SEO TIP! Do not use meta description tags that have no relation to the web page content

SEO TIP! Do not stuff unnecessary keywords in your title tag

SEO TIP! Do not use web page titles that have no relation to the content on the page

SEO TIP! Do not use very long titles that do not help your users

SEO TIP! Do not use the same title for more than one web page

SEO TIP! If you purchased links to improve your website rankings, try to get rid of these links!

SEO TIP! How to find out if your website has been penalized - Search for your domain name on Google

SEO TIP! How to find out if your website has been penalized - search for "site:yourdomain.com" not there? U may have been penalized

SEO TIP! How to find out if your website has been penalized - Does your website use hidden text or nearly hidden text?

SEO TIP! Website lost its rankings in Google? Spam elements on your web pages may have applied a penalty to your website

SEO TIP! Website lost its rankings in Google? Your competition may have built web pages with better content

SEO TIP! Website lost its rankings in Google? After a web page change, Google temporarily downranks web pages

If you ever find that your website rankings drop in Google here are the things that you want to determine. First determine if they have dropped or if they are gone altogether.  If your rankings dropped or if you have been removed you will want to research why this occurred. Here are some things to check:

Have you recently made changes to your web pages? If so Google downranks pages after changes sometimes but the rankings will most likely come back.

Your competition may have improved their pages and popularity and they are now better than yours. If this is the case you will need to better optimize your website and look at your inbound links.

You may have what Google considers to be spam elements on your web pages and they may have removed you or penalized you by dropping your rank. You will need to research this and make the appropriate changes. Once you fix these problems you can email Google and ask them for reinclusion.

Feel free to contact Hieroweb Interactive and we can determine why your rankings have changed. Or call us at 805-582-2081

Does Google use the bounce rate of a webpage in their algorithm?  If so what does this mean to your website and can you improve your bounce rate?

The bounce rate of your website is what that see only one page of your website and the percentage of visitors who spend a small period of time on your website. What this does is help figure out the quality of the traffic that your site receives.

Google Analytics documentation defines the bounce rate as such:

"Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors."

Google can determine the bounce rate via their toolbar and their analytics. As is typical with Google’s algorithm we don’t know how big of a role the bounce rate plays.  But Google views a high bounce rate as a sign that the viewer is visiting a low quality page, which tells Google that what the user was looking for is not what they found.  So what you need to do is improved the contents and the usability of your web pages, and thus you might lower your bounce rate.

 It's easy to have negative results using AdWords if you're not careful and don't have a solid understanding on how Google AdWords works. If you find that you're not getting the results you thought you would then it's time to check your landing pages and the keywords associated with those landing pages. Good keywords and landing pages will result in good conversions. So the phrases that you're targeting most importantly need to be where you take them with your landing pages. Once on your landing page you must present the user with a clear call-to-action. That call-to-action needs to be enticing and must make they want to continue. Since Google uses a Quality Score when deciding the frequency that an ad shows up and the position of the ad. It’s important that the keyphrases used in your ad are also targeted on your landing page. If that landing page also does well in the natural search engine results then it will also have a good Quality Score.

 How to achieve a good Quality Score on Google's search network. The components of Quality Score vary depending on whether it's calculating minimum bid or ad position:

Quality Score for minimum bid is determined by a keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword to its ad group, your landing page quality, your account's historical performance, and other relevance factors.

Quality Score for ad position is determined by a keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword and ad to the search term, your account's historical performance, and other relevance factors.

Cloaking is using a website optimization technique whereby a different web page is shown to the search engine than the actual web surfer. By knowing the search engine’s web bots different IP addresses one can serve up pages specifically for the search engines. Cloaking is a violation of the search engine guidelines. If and when you get caught your site will be removed from the search engines. Some companies that offer cloaking state that their service is undetectable; the search engines state that this is a false claim.  If your website is of value to you then DON"T use unethical means to do well in the search engines. White Hat practices will prevail.