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McCord Web Design based in Waldorf, Maryland has changed their business name to McCord Web Services LLC after experiencing a 49% increase in sales in 2007. Positioned for more growth in 2008, McCord Web Services LLC is adding new Web related services in their aggressive growth plan for 2008. Read the full press release at PRWeb.com.
In light of Google using our old business name as the title for our website in their index as of an algorithm change this past week, I wanted to clarify for the Web who we really are.
Here’s the text of our 2008 press release:
Waldorf, Maryland (PRWEB) April 1, 2008
McCord Web Design based in Waldorf, Maryland and serving clients globally for over seven years, has become McCord Web Services LLC after increasing sales 49% in 2007. Positioned for more growth in 2008 McCord Web Services LLC has an aggressive plan to add new Web related services for 2008.
McCord Web Services started out as a web design only service provider and has expanded its service offerings over the years based on client demand. Initially serving only local clients, and working from word of mouth referrals, McCord Web Services has grown into a national provider of webmaster outsourcing services. Core businesses for the firm now include website updates and maintenance, web design, search engine marketing, and ghost blogging. New services that are projected for introduction in the next several months include news release writing and distribution services, feature article writing and listings, and simple podcasting services for business owners.
Part of the reason for the strong growth McCord Web Services LLC experienced in 2007 is due to its introduction of ghost blogging services. With five levels of service offering quality blog writing with a frequency of three to five days a week, McCord Web Services has become an in-demand ghost blogger for many business-related blogs. Employing six writers, spread across the country, the team for McCord Web Services now writes on a wide variety of blogs from political commentary, GPS tracking, ergonomics relating to material handling equipment, bed bugs, stamp collecting, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and other diverse topics.
An additional growth area for the firm has been in the search engine marketing arena. “Google AdWords has become so complicated that clients do not want to get a ‘degree in AdWords’ and so seek us out to set up and manage their Google search engine marketing accounts.” said Nancy McCord, President of the firm. Operating as a professional account manager for Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter, Nancy McCord does all the keyword research, account set up, and account management for the firm’s growing business in search engine marketing. Highly skilled in account management, Nancy McCord is a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador and Microsoft adExcellence member as well as a Google AdWords Qualified Advertising Professional and has been managing search engine marketing accounts professionally for over three years.
After experiencing strong growth in 2007, McCord Web Services is positioning themselves for another year of strong growth with the addition of several new services projected for release this year. Their news release writing service is scheduled for rollout in April and their feature article writing service is scheduled for May. Podcasting services will be introduced in August or September.
For additional information on McCord Web Services LLC or to review their service listings please contact Nancy McCord or visit http://www.McCordWeb.com.
About McCord Web Services LLC: McCord Web Services LLC and has been providing webmaster services, web design, search engine marketing services, and blog writing services globally since 2001. The firm founded by Nancy McCord, employs seven people and has embraced a philosophy of excellence with this corporate tag line: “Our Focus is on Your Success!”
Contact: Nancy McCord, President McCord Web Services LLC (301) 705-7303
http://www.McCordWeb.com/
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Google is now changing your title in the search results. In fact they may or may not pick up your specially crafted meta tag title at all. I find this troubling and annoying.
Here’s just one important example. My business name used to be McCord Web Design. I incorporated over four or five years ago and now our name is McCord Web Services LLC. Just this past week in the Google index, the title of my website changed in the Google index from my careful crafted title to “McCord Web Design”! I don’t and have not used that name in years! Additionally there is no code on my entire site that carries my old name. Sheesh, I hate that. You can’t correct a problem like this or even complain about this issue to Google.
If this has happened to you, just be sure that in time it will go away. Bing did the same thing (created its own website title) several years ago and is now showing the real meta titles in their index. So annoying as it is that Google has done this, most likely this will eventually go away.
So, in the meantime, know that any references you find in the Google index to McCord Web Design, are really McCord Web Services. Good grief Google stop tweaking my code for your index!
Just this past Friday, Matt Cutts, a key engineer at Google, announced an algorithm update for Google that is biased against ads. Although this update doesn’t have a name yet (and it will soon), it is a filter to remove websites from Google’s index that are top heavy on advertising.
The Google Webmaster Central blog spoke in-depth about the algorithm. You can read the full article from this link. Here’s what Google says about the change:
“In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a web page and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.”
“We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. “
Google again is reasserting that content is key to relevancy and thus to organic placement. With too much ”stuff” above the fold (what is visible on your screen before you have to scroll), you will now be dinged by Google in the search results. Take heed as you don’t want your website or blogsite that is even heavy with images to be caught in the filter.
 The future for web traffic is in mobile and tablets. I don’t think anyone in my industry could disagree. Based on a growing use of handheld tools to access the Internet, now there’s an easy to use WordPress plug-in that takes your WordPress website or blog and makes it instantly mobile-friendly.
Introducing WP-Touch, this plug-in takes your blog and converts it based on a mobile stylesheet into the perfect readable option for smartphones or tablets. There are nice configuration options for the display to iPad users, but once installed smartphone users can still opt to see your blog the desktop way or the smart mobile way.
To the right you can see a screenshot of what a smartphone user will see when they visit your blog once the plug-in is installed. The posts are now set up by date, comment and share counts are noted and there is a link to view the full blog post. At the very bottom of the screen your reader can toggle to see the blog or website the regular desktop application way.
This WordPress plug-in is a smart and easy way to make sure that you are mobile-friendly. Check it out by visiting the plug-in author’s page.
For best search engine benefits what is the best configuration for your blog a subdomain or a subdirectory? First, it is important to clearly identify the difference of a subdirectory versus a subdomain.
Subdirectory example: http://www.mccordweb.com/weblogs/
Subdomain example: http://blog.mccordweb.com
How search engines handle the two is entirely different. So set up determines the link juice and search engine capital that a blogsite will pass to the parent website (in the above example the parent site is mccordweb.com).
Here is a very concise explanation of how search engines index, spider, and count subdomains:
“… Google considers sub domains separate from their parent domains: sub.yoursite.com is considered a different site altogether compared to yoursite.com when it comes to search engine authority.” You can read the full and very interesting article here.
Although you can track subdirectories and subdomains using Google Analytics with special code inserts, how search engine weight and evaluate content that is resides off-domain as in a subdirectory domain is crucial to your organic placement strategy.
It is clear that I am not alone in finding that a subdirectory domain is considered as if it was a separate domain by the search engines. You can find out more by following this thread to the Webmaster World forum.
“It [a subdomain] is treated much more like an independent domain in many respects – for example, if urls from both the root domain and a subdomain show up on the same page of search results, they do not cluster together.”
Matt Cutts says this on the issue:
“My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site.”
The bottom-line is that a subdomain is simply a way to mask the URL of an off-domain site or blog location and give the APPEARANCE that it is installed within the server where the parent site resides. Search engines consider the content separate and will weight it an index it separately from the parent website. What is crucial to understand is that any links that point to the subdomain blog or website do not flow through and add capital to the parent domain.
For best use of blogging and mini-websites, it is still by far best to install them in subdirectories and not subdomains.
Google rolled out a new version of its search engine last week and many of you will see it this week and in the weeks to come. It is called Google Search Plus Your World or in my industry Google Search Plus. Using the backbone of Google+ this incredibly important search engine enhancement may very well change Google.com and organic search placement tactics as we have known them forever.
This new way that Google will be delivering your search results is based on Google+ and your social activity (including your updates and your social network). The key is Google+ but that does not mean that Google may not show Twitter or Facebook activity at some point in time. However, for now it appears that it will be mainly pulling from activity on Google+.
Clearly businesses and individuals will need to embrace Google+ now or in the very near future in order to capitalize on this new approach for organic search placement and Web Visibility.
Here is just one future world example, and that is not too distant really:
Let’s say you are active on Google+ both personally and you have tied a business page to your personal Google+ profile. On top of that, you tie your Google AdWords program to your Google+ account (yes, you can actually already do this). You post and interact with a wide variety of followers and people on the Web using the +1 button as well as comments on Google+. You actively work to grow your network and hashtag your updates(at this point we are not sure of the character key that will mark this on Twitter it is #). What Google says about this activity is very important…
“Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”
You can sign up or find out more information about Google Search Plus Your World here.
You can read more on the Google Blog about Search Plus Your World.
Since the announcement last week, Twitter has been mounting an online complaint campaign about unfair use and favoritism of Google properties in Google.com results. Clearly Twitter feels challenged by Google’s actions.
To our clients and readers, I recommend that you watch Google+ very closely. Google is so big and so powerful and it is throwing its full resources into integration of Google+ and +1′s that it will be impossible to ignore the importance of embracing this far reaching change early.
As Google+ does not yet allow for easy posting and scheduling of updates yet, we do not provide client services, but will be in the very near future. As clearly involvement with Google+ will impact what prospects and customers see about you in the Google.com search results this is an action item for all businesses concerned about organic placement in the near term. Not only will status updates be needed to position your business, but you will need interaction with others, and a follower growth program to really impact your search placement.
I have been using Twitter since the day it was made available and I have to say that I really like using it for my own personal business. I have developed over time a Twitter strategy that is really working for me both for follower growth, link sharing, and personal satisfaction.
I typically tweet on Monday through Friday and typically tweet five times a day. I cover 6:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. There are some times when I may tweet more, but this is my typical schedule. I use HootSuite and schedule all my tweets for the day in the morning. In the morning I also respond to all direct messages, and review what my lists and followers are saying and interact back with them.
What I have found is that through regular interaction with certain people in my industry I have created a network where we will retweet and comment on each others updates. As I have over 2,473 followers on one account and 2,032 on the other, when I retweet someone to my own followers the exposure for that tweet is strong and link exposure excellent. I monitor who retweets me and know who has klout on the Web so that I can look to retweet them and know that they will retweet me. It is a win-win situation of power users in the same industry, who are not competitors, sharing the viral nature of our follower lists through retweets among ourselves.
The personal satisfaction that I receive from these interactions on Twitter is what fuels my additional activity. It is enjoyable and I learn things from others. Twitter for me is a vibrant community of similarly minded people. That does not mean that I am just tweeting to people I know. It means that I have many followers but the people I interact with the most are in my industry and my account followers get the benefit of these exchanges between power professionals.
I hear all the time from potential clients, “I don’t get social media.”, “It seems like a big waste of my time.”, “Twitter is so far down on my list of want to do’s or things to implement.” Although they may not “get” social media, there are others just like me who get it and who are soaking up the viral community nature and new search engine benefits from strong effective interaction on Twitter.
If you don’t “get” Twitter but need someone who does to create your own Twitter strategy, I invite you to visit our Twitter services page to find out how inexpensive updates to Twitter may be for your business. They start at $170 for three tweets a day for a month to $560 for 10 tweets a day for a month including follower interaction.
Organic placement improvement for your website is much more than code optimization. In fact I have seen some sites whose code is not really optimized still place well. But for the typical business website code optimization is a start and just one of the pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together for better Web visibility.
First off, it is very important to understand that where you place on the search engines is now much more that what is happening back on your own website. Now it is about all these things working together:
- Inbound links from new sites and authority websites
- Facebook activity and regular status updates
- Twitter activity and follower growth as well as retweets from authority followers
- On-domain blogging to build Web authority and keyword density
- Quality content, more than blogging, press releases and white papers are needed
- Website code optimization
- Regular updates to your home page and website content
What I have found is that once a site hits the tipping point by doing all of these things on a regular basis they insulate themselves from big drops in the search engines. I have seen sites stay at nearly the same search positions without additional code tweaks and even improve from just the above updates. It does not require a monthly source code update to keep and maintain position organically. I have however found that improvement from a poor position once these strategies have been implemented is slow but steady.
If you need help in these area, I encourage you to visit our website to find out how to start with an evaluation so you can create a blue print for how your website can get better organic placement.
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