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Top Five SEO Areas to Focus On

I watched this video recently from Matt Cutts, from Google, on what are the top five SEO areas to concentrate your efforts on and wanted to give you a synopsis and additional insights from my own point of view. Matt’s video is excellent, so make sure to check it out as well.

1. Have a website, domain, be crawable, don’t hide or lock down important content.

Seems like a no-brainer here right? But you would be surprised at the number of people who still don’t have their own domain, are using free services for their website, or hide their best content behind a wall trying to get email addresses to read their best content. Don’t do that!

Build web authority and trust to place better on Google.com.
Build web authority and trust to place better on Google.com.

2. Include the right words on the page and especially in query type phrases.

You’d think that this would be common sense, but this is easily overlooked. I’ve seen sites include their important keywords in images (that are not readable by the Googlebot) or forget to include top phrases completely on the home page which is their most important page for Google.

3. Think not about link building but rather creating converting or compelling content.

This is a hard one for many people to grasp. Google wants to spider content that actually provides value to your readers not just a brochure of your services. Sites that invest in creating shareable content that is more than a listing of services will receive better rankings.

Now here’s an interesting note from the video, Matt says don’t just invest in search placement widen your reach consider other avenues including paid advertising, billboard, and other ways to get your message out to your audience. Broaden your marketing plan for a wider appeal.

4. Craft your Meta title and Meta description carefully.

These two source code tags are top real estate for websites. Special attention should be paid to create great tags that are more than a listing of keywords and that entice visitors to click in. The Meta description will appear as your snippet in Google.com. Make sure it works to entice readers to click in to your site.

5. Use all the free webmaster resources.

Google has some great and free tools to use to understand what is happening with your website. Make sure you are using the Google Webmaster Control Panel and Google Analytics to know what is happening on your website.

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Helping Others to Succeed

Put the pieces together to help your team be effective.
Put the pieces together to help your team be effective.

As an incredibly strong scheduler of my own time, it makes it very difficult for me sometimes to understand that not everyone else’s lives revolve around Outlook.

I’ve found that there are types like me who are strong on the details and their are other who are strong on the creative side instead. Finding the balance to help those who work for you to be effective and enjoy their job with you is crucial for business growth.

I’ve found that not every great creative person is a good match for my business. There may be some terrific writers out there, but if they can’t make a deadline so your business gets paid they may not be the best match for your needs. On the other hand others who are highly creative but can be worked with to perform within somewhat flexible guidelines may be strong business partners in the long run.

This is what I’ve found. There are some things that you as a business owner can be flexible with and other things that you simply cannot be flexible with.

Maybe you can be flexible about when a contractor sends their invoice to you.

But maybe you can’t be flexible about a contractor missing a client’s deadline.

Maybe you can be flexible about the time of day a project is turned in.

But maybe you can’t be flexible when other people are waiting to work on this same project.

Working with others is a balance. By trying to create an environment where others that work with you have a degree of input and you yourself show flexibility for their needs, you develop loyalty and trust. It can be a win-win for workers and bosses.

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Turning AdWords On and Off is a Recipe for Disaster

McCord Web Services is a Bing Ads Accredited Professional Company and Google AdWords Certified Partner.
McCord Web Services is a Bing Ads Accredited Professional Company and Google AdWords Certified Partner.

As a Google AdWords Certified Partner, I make my living managing Google AdWords accounts. I work in a wide and diverse sectors of business. I’ve been managing Google AdWords for over nine years and so can speak on this issue authoritatively.

When I have a client who turns AdWords on and off regularly sometimes just for days and other times for long periods, I have to say that it is very difficult to effectively manage a program and generate a return on investment for the client.

Turning your AdWords account off for the weekend or when you go on vacation is not necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer to instead move a client’s budget setting down versus pausing the program. When an account has been on and off and on and off, this is what I see.

  1. Google does not know how to serve the program as history is spotty. In many cases managing a program like this will require the same amount of time in the first month (typically 8 hours of more of management for about 5 ad groups) when it has been restarted as it is like creating an account history all over again.

  2. Conversions will not start back up again at the level they were at before the account was stopped. It can sometimes take two or three weeks once an account has been off for conversions to start rolling again.
  3. In many cases page placement and cost per click will be significantly different than when the account had previously been running. As AdWords is an auction when you move out of the auction and then move back in after a month or two break, the auction prices may all have changed – higher or lower.

I prefer instead to take a great performing program that needs to be paused to a low level budget to keep placement than to totally turn a program off. It can cost so much more for your account manager to bring around a stale account than to move to a maintenance mode.

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Cross Linking Domains You Own

Cross Linking
Cross Linking

This question comes up a fair amount when we have business owners who have multiple website – “Should I link and cross link my various web properties?” First, most website owners would simply do this without thought and there is no reason why you should not if you have one or two website properties. In fact, it makes perfect sense to do so and you may actually get some backlink benefits from doing this.

There are however some situations where doing so will be a negative for your organic placement. Here are when you should be careful doing so.

  1. If you have several websites but you do not reveal that you own the properties and you are actually trying to appear as if you were different businesses, I would not cross link the sites.
  2. If the content is the same on the web properties, I would not cross link the sites.
  3. If the businesses are totally different, say one is to sell dog toys and the other is to provide web consulting. I would not cross link the sites.
  4. If you have created many, many, keyword domains and you are trying to use cross linking these multiple sites for organic placement improvement. I would not cross link the sites. You may have been able to do so before and received a benefit, but not Google is identifying sites using this tactic as link spam and is actively penalizing their organic placement on Google.com.