Let’s talk about our SEO STUDIO & Search Engine Optimization:

Yes, it’s important. It doesn’t matter how pretty your site is if no one see it, and that’s where a solid SEO strategy comes into play. If your design company doesn’t know anything about SEO, you may get a visually outstanding site - but it’ll have tumbleweeds blowing through it because the all important search engines will not find it. And that means that your customers won’t find it, either.

SEO is the most important form of website promotion and internet marketing. PERIOD. That said, please watch out for companies that GUARANTEE results. In our experience, it is simply not possible to guarantee results. We can’t predict how many people will visit, how they will click, etc. What we do is an EXTENSIVE amount of research into the current search engine optimization trends and build out sites according to what has been proven to work. That’s us - Website design with SEO in mind.

As soon as we begin the processing of creating your website, we are considering SEO. From start to finish, we are considering the search engines when we design.

Your website should be designed to make new customers aware of your business. To do this, it must be well optimized.

What is OPTIMIZATION? Well, Search Engine Optimization involves creating your web site so that the search engine spiders can find it and read it - enabling your website to receive a high ranking position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

What do we do to ensure that your site is built with SEO in mind? Take a look:

• Spiderable URLS - The website uses a single level file structure to ensure that urls are crawl-able. We do not use URLs that contain IDs=, etc.
• Keyword Relevancy - We use keywords throughout your content as well as in file names, image names, alt tags, title, keyword and description tags.
• Navigational Text Links - Text links are far superior to Flash or Javascript links, which are not ideal for the spiders.
• Sitemap - A complete listing of your site, as well as a path for the spiders to go through your site.
• Minimal Outbound Linking - When used, links from the web site are relevant to the content within the site.
• Relevant In site Linking - Links to pages within the site use descriptive Anchor Text.
• Inbound Links - Researching and obtaining the best possible inbound links with keyword-based Anchor Text - even though Google is changing the face of IBLs, they’re still an important piece to the puzzle.
• Clean Code - Spiders want content not code. All Javascript and CSS is moved to external files.

The best in the Pacific Northwest - Cimmeron Studios SEO STUDIO.

Just got into the new MSN Webmaster Tools today and added a web site.

Took me a bit to find the tabs related to my web site - you have to expand the list of web sites and then click the link you want to look at - but then I found some cool tabs.

Summary: tells the top 5 pages as per MSN, along with green ‘rank’ bars that look way too much like Google PR for my comfort. Without any real explanation of what these 5 green bars mean, I’m not sure how I place in the overall scheme of things ala MSN.

Profile: account info, already entered at signup

Keywords: MSN says, “Review how this page performs in search results against specific keywords.” Ok. But I don’t quite get this tab. All it seems to show is what pages on MY web site are showing up for that keyword. How does this help me?

Top Links From: This seems to be showing me what links FROM my site are performing the best. Again, how does this help me? Am I missing something?

Top Links To: MSN says, “Among all the links to this website, these 10 are performing the best in Live Search.” Ok. So, is this telling me what pages on my site are performing the best? How does this help me? Again, I feel sorta lost.

Sitemap: put in your link to the sitemap for your site. Simple.

Ok, so all in all, I’m not really sure how most of this is helping me. Is it because I’ve thought of MSN as second best (or third) for so long that their every effort is sub-par in my eyes?! I hope not…I hope they’re continuing to develop these tools and that they will evolve into a massive powerhouse of information for my site.

If you’ve been following the latest ripple in the SEO world following Google’s recent PR update, you’ll know that Google has somewhat officially came out AGAINST paid links.

Search Engine Land has a great blurb about what’s going on. To sum it up for you designers…

Google has taken a stance on paid links. Paid links are beneficial (were, I should say) to web masters trying to boost ranking on a web site through increasing in bound links (IBLs). Many high PR websites charge for text links, which then passes on the high PR juice to the site that paid for the link in the first place. Google feels this is bad form and has for a while, but only recently have they actively moved against websites known to be selling links.

Several sites were greatly reduced in the recent PR update. Some argue that PR doesn’t really matter anyway - that you can still rank well and have great traffic even if your PR disappears. I don’t entirely agree with that. The two things are related and no matter how much Google says PR doesn’t matter, it does…maybe not to a large degree, but it does anyway.

Google’s stance seems to be that paid links are falsely manipulating Google PR and rank placement. I don’t really agree with this…typically, if a webmaster was purchasing text links, they would approach ‘like sites’ - sites that have visitors with the same interests/niche as they have. In effect, you’d approach sites and try to get them to endorse you.

It gets sticky here - this is still ok practice as long as you clearly show the links to be SPONSORS and you add a ‘nofollow’ to the link, which as you probably know, cuts off the possibility of passing on any PR juice. Seems fair enough, but put yourself in the shoes of the website SELLING the text links. If you can’t pass the PR juice onto the site, no one and I do mean NO ONE is really going to want to pay you $500/month for a link. Period. So, there goes a HUGE market down the drain. One that comes to mind right away is Text-Link-Ads, which was rumored to have been deindexed by Google quite some time ago.

As a site owner, you have a choice - to sell or not to sell - that is, if your site is popular enough to warrant selling links.

But you can still sell advertising - which still can be text links - but instead of working to boost your rankings on Google, you’re basically just advertising…getting your product/service information out there to the masses and hoping they will click.

Google can do pretty much whatever it wants at this point - it has become a massive iBehemoth (gBehemoth, maybe?) and until we find a beautiful lady to tame the wild beast, Google will continue to pound it’s chest from the Empire State Building. (sorry, I’m feeling metaphorical).

My take on this? I think Google is venturing into territory that it really shouldn’t. Like I said above, if a webmaster purchases a link on website.com, a site that is closely related to the webmaster’s website1.com, it should be able to leave it at that. It shouldn’t HAVE to use nofollow or clearly display that it’s a sponsored link. I’m saying that because I’m not sure that selling links really manipulates anything to a huge degree.

Where does that leave the people who SELL the links? Well, either go rogue and risk losing PR and possibly ranking, or join the herd and do what Google doth bequest upon thine internet-h.

Now, the question is, where does that put us?

The regular designer/SEO person who works on client web sites and tries to get them set up to rank well in the SERPs? Really, it shouldn’t make too much difference in the every day building of web sites - we need to continue building with good SEO practices in mind, use the methods we’ve learned to get the site set up to be indexed by the search engines and list in the rankings.

Helpful links:
FCC Regulations on Advertising and Dot Coms
W3C’s take on Links and Law

We discussed meta tags previously on this blog, but we didn’t discuss the specific format of the tags themselves.

Now, I’ve come across a nice site that makes the tags for you. Obviously, it’s best if you learn how to create them yourself by hand, but if that isn’t an option, or you’re pressed for time, this web site will help you:

Meta Tag Generator

Simply by entering the information into the boxes provided, it will output the tags for you to copy/paste onto your web page.

Another useful tool on this same site is the Engine View tool, or

how does my web site look to the search engines?

Handy tools that are worth checking out.

Matt Cutts recently updated his original blog post regarding paid links to (hopefully) clarify some of the confusion that ensued from his original post.

The entire post is well worth the read but here are a few bullet points:

• Of utmost concern are spammy paid links, such as are often found on gaming sites or sites that sell hosting, for example, but are linking out to gaming sites.
• Reporting potentially bad paid links is meant to improve the algorithm in general and are not fed directly to it, therefore, negating any possible web site vs. web site sabotage.
• Directory submissions are ok as long as they’re not considered free-for-alls, the links must pass some type of inspection, the links are high quality and any payment is meant to maintain the directory (which I think crosses a bit of a line myself; why does Google have the right to tell us we can’t make money selling advertising space?)

For the complete update, click here:Â Matt Cutts addresses the Paid Link controversy

You’re building sites and your customers want you to consider the basics of SEO in your work but you’re not sure exactly where to go - so you’re here, at this blog! Excellent choice.

But what if you have a question that I have not yet answered? Well, I would like for you to visit me over at Total Web Talk Webmaster Forum. With a large number of gifted SEO people, as well as designers, coders and more, you’ll find all your questions answered!

This is my constantly expanding list of sites to get listed on - based on the fact that they show themselves as IBLs on Google (therefore, increasing rankings in the SERPs):

• http://www.prolinkdirectory.com/
• http://www.jtrotta.com
• http://www.iwebdirectory.net
• http://www.worldsiteindex.com
• http://www.webdesignplaza.com/web-designers-affordable.html (Web design related only)
• http://www.linkforever.net/

Ok, what does this mean to designers in SEO-land? Nothing at this point, but it should be kept an eye on simply because any kind of merger between the ‘lesser two’ search engines will signify some major changes and would possibly make google ‘tighten the ship’ a bit, but it’s really difficult to say.

and maybe I’m missing the point but really - would 2 lesser engines = 1 big engine? I don’t think so. In fact, I would question if this would do anything more than eliminate one member of the competition for the top search engine position. Think about it: microsoft has in the past, tried to squeeze out the competition…is this what they’re doing with yahoo or are they going to take yahoo’s relatively different approach and combine it with theirs? That’s, to me, like microsoft taking macs approach and trying to combine it with their pc-based one - it won’t work well, that’s for sure.

however, it’s important to point out that a deal isn’t on the table, or at least that’s what they’re saying. Read about microsoft’s bid to buy yahoo on yahoo news.

Interesting article from Forbes, unfortunately, it’s not entirely accurate. Matt Cutts explains everything very clearly in his blog in response to the article. It’s a good read and designers should know what’s going on with the latest buzz words (Google Hell, Supplemental Results) as well as the real perspective from Google.

Read Google Hell Blog here.

Not all stats programs are created equal. And you’ll find that not all hosting companies have stats programs readily available for their customers. The bottom line is, however, that at some point, your customer will ask you how the website is performing. If the company sells products, that is always a very good indication of performance, but it doesn’t give you a clear picture of WHY products are selling. That’s why you’ll need stats.

Now, there are a lot of programs out there and many of them are superb. I’m not recommending one program over another, I’m simply going to point out the easiest and cheapest (at no cost except the time it takes to install) stats program available today and that is Google Analytics.

You will need to have a Google account (free and easy to sign up) and then you can create your Google Analytics (GA) account. GA is a nice program for webmasters because it allows you to add multiple sites to your profile, while also giving limited access for reviewing reports to anyone who has a Google account. You can restrict their access to only the website they should have access to, while you can review all the reports in one single location.

To install the program, you’ll need to add a new website profile and get the small piece of tracking code provided. Install that on all the pages you want to track stats for and VOILA! that’s all there is to it. GA will start gathering data immediately.

Now, it does lack some reporting flexibility that I’ve come to enjoy in other programs and you do not have any ability (that I’ve been able to find) to customize reports outside of the minor things GA provides. However, it will show you the main stats and a number of other interesting reports that can assist you and your customer in determining how well the website is performing.

ADWORDS INTEGRATION:

GA has the ability to track your Google Adwords account inside the GA application, giving you one single location to check all of your stats. This is EXTREMELY useful because reviewing what works on PPC vs. organic and vice versa can be very helpful in improving the performance of your website.

Your customers will love the pretty graphs and the fact that the stats are at their fingertips, whenever they want to view them - and let me tell you, I’ve had customers who view their stats daily, if not hourly! People LOVE stats.

Get out there and get Google Analytics on your new site - it takes no time to install and it’s a great way to show how well your SEO campaign is working for your customers!