Tag: SEO

Sure you’ve seen sites like this on the web; ones that have no phone number, no address, and just a contact form, but they want you to buy! Do you? I don’t! Especially if I am comparison shopping. In fact, I’ll pay more to know that I am dealing with a legitimate firm, do you?

In my business, confidence equates sales. It is just simple, if you are not willing to share your phone number, email address, and location address on your own website, you communicate that you will be hard to reach if there is a problem. Not sharing these important items can become a big problem that does really impact sales.

In online sales, it is all about confidence. Are you who you say you are? If I have a problem will I get help? Will I be able to talk to a “real person”? These are the items that all website should have prominently placed to communicate legitimacy and thereby build confidence with potential customers.

1. Phone Number
2. Email Address
3. Location Address – no P.O. Boxes – a real office location!
4. Hours of Service – for phone contact
5. Time Zone – for customer planning

Don’t  have these on your website because you think that you may be spammed? Think again! You do not communicate your willingness to trade with potential buyers by hiding your contact information. Take a look at your website and make sure that you aren’t communicating improperly your desire to serve and sell. You may just find that your sales significantly improve when you are confident enough to put your own information on your website.

Continued from Monday.

In February of this year there was more chatter in my industry about AuthorRank. Here is a great background article to review for a fuller picture.

“AuthorRank could be more disruptive than all of the Panda updates combined. ”  AJ Kohn

It appears that AuthorRank will factor into Google’s algorithm in regards to the importance of links and thus organic placement. The focus seems to be on PageRank, shares, traffic, and link numbers. These cues will all be evaluated and tied to one author. With Google already encouraging that you tie your content to your personal (not business) Google+ page this sure looks like a roll-out and big change in in the near future.

The thrust is that Google is actively and aggressively pursuing a link to content identification. To me this makes perfect sense and is in part just one piece of stopping spam and improving search quality in Google’s results.

There are two excellent articles I recommend that you read for further information on this important topic. The are as follows:

How to Prepare for AuthorRank and Get the Jump on Google

Author Rank

If you are currently not tying your content to your Google+ page I would highly recommend that you do so. If you syndicate content as I do on SiteProNews and Bing Ads Blog Community, make sure your site owners are already working to help you identify yourself as the author of content you share with them.

It is important to watch Google’s Patent Disclosures as they will give you a view on what Google considers important. I remember reading one over five years ago where Google spoke about “agents” at that time I wrote that I felt that there would eventually be an author meta tag introduced so that Google would know who really should get SEO juice credit for what they write. You can read my full blog post from February 12, 2007.

What is highly interesting is that now in 2012 Google has given a new name AuthorRank to this specific tactic and it looks like they are tying the algorithm update in with activity on Google+.  Here’s what I thought was important in 2007.

“…it appears that Google working to identify content and assign it an Agent Rank and assign an authority rating based on the author.  Well, that is it in a nutshell in very simplistic terms.”

“There has never been a more important time than to become an expert in your own field using your website to disseminate information about your area of business and to keep your clients and readers up-to-date with information using a blog, RSS news feed, and e-newsletters archived on your website.  Doing this will establish you as an authority in your marketplace and provide value to your readers.”

“In the past four months, this will be the second patent disclosure from Google that I have read.  The earlier disclosure had to do with identifying duplicated content across websites and identifying which website should be the one to receive top ranking as more authoritative.  Now we have a disclosure to identify how authoritative a writer is on the web.  These two patent appear to dovetail very nicely with each other.”

Back in 2007, Google+ was just a thought on a white board, now with Google+ being heavily entrenched into the Google mindset and algorithm, AuthorRank is finally now something to really think about as you position your website.

From my point of view there is nothing negative about AuthorRank. In fact, I consider it a huge improvement for sites such as mine, where I am a prolific writer and a target for content scraping. With AuthorRank, when I create a  whitepaper, article or blog post, Google will KNOW that I have written it and give me the full credit not a snatch and grab artist.

Check back Wednesday for more on this important topic.

Part III of III

Why Is This So Important?

All of the information in this newsletter is important because the business that is driving these changes is Google. As Google owns 65% of the online search market, to be positioned well on Google means taking full advantage of what Google considers important.It is very important to understand that Google+ is not Facebook. Google considers Google+ and +1’s integral to the it’s new face of search and how search results are shaped and delivered. These new Google offerings are very important and should be embraced quickly and completely for your future organic placement benefit.

Placement is More Than Twitter and Google+ There Are Still Links to Factor In

Sorry, you can’t just stop with Twitter and Google+ and think that you’ll garner organic placement, you’ve got to think about links too. But smart links! For most clients the easiest way to build links naturally (that is important to Google) over time is by blogging. Google considers each blog post as if it were a new page in your website. But a page that is on one topic and so may easily place in the search results for that topic.

If the page gets indexed, it can lead readers from your blog right into your website and can even improve the stickiness of your website. There is no downside, in my point of view, with blogging. It is not unusual for a website that blogs three days a week to build 156 new website pages and grow links to over thousand in a year.

Conclusion

I want to reiterate that there is no magic formula to getting organic search placement on Google.

What I do know is that Google likes content-rich authority websites that have a large number of pages and have an older established domain name.

Google likes a natural slow progression of links pointing to a website and blogging works great for growing these inbound links slowly.

They like linking and a social exchange through Twitter as Google includes tweets in their search index.

Google loves Google+ and Google +1 activity. In fact so much so, that they have a special section in your site’s Google Webmaster control panel where they track these and even show the search impact.

The bottom-line is that it is becoming increasingly harder to grow and build organic search placement, but there are still some very smart things you can do if you follow what Google themselves considers important.

We are here to help and can offer consulting services, Twitter updates, blog writing, Google+ updates, and website content services. If you need serious professional help, I invite you to call us at McCord Web Services.