Articles Regarding Search Engine Optimization

How Long to Rank High (Number One) in Google?

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When asking questions like “how fast can I increase my website rankings” or “how long does SEO take”, you should take into account that natural growth is important. Overly aggressive optimization techniques can result in timely penalties in major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Imitating natural growth during optimization will provide long-term results.

How Fast Can I Increase My Website Rankings

Our Search Engine Optimization plans begin as short as 6 months.However, for new domain names, we recommend

Do AdWords Count as Backlinks from AdSense Sites?

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Do AdWords Ads Help Increase Backlinks (in-links) for Link Building?

Google AdWords LogoUnfortunately, the answer to this is easy; NO. There are multiple reasons why this is an ineffective method of creating backlinks. Check out this SEO Forum Article titled “Do Adword adverts count as backlinks from adsense sites?”

Reasons AdWords Ads Don’t Increase Backlinks

Search Engines Spiders or Robots Won’t Read JavaScript Data

So here is the first nail in the coffin; your AdWords ad is written in JavaScript. Search engines robots and spiders do not analyze Javascript (yet); they simply will not read and interpret the data. A search engine spider will not conclude that the object is linking to your site. And finally, even if they did, AdWords ads work by redirecting the user through Google’s servers –not directly to your website.

AdWords Redirects Traffic Through Google’s Servers Before Linking to Your Website

That’s right; even if AdWords ads counted as backlinks, Google would be first on the list of beneficiaries. If you notice the status bar in your browser after clicking on some AdWords ads, you’ll notice the URL “google.ad.sgdoubleclick.net”. Read this article about a common problem with Mozilla Firefox causing redirection error(s) that preventing you from contacting this server (and can subsequently cause problems displaying Google AdWords ads)

Does AdWords Attribute to an Increase in My Google PageRank, Rankings or Pages Index?

Again, unfortunately, NO, says Matt Cutts. (Or, supposedly no, say the conspirators) Check out this posting from his blog, summarized below:

“Joining service X (AdSense, blogsearch, News crawl, any Google service that uses a bot) doesn’t queue up pages to be include in our main web index … Just as always, participating in AdSense or being in our blogsearch doesn’t get you any ‘extra’ crawling (or ranking) in our web index whatsoever. You don’t get any extra representation in our index, you don’t get crawled/indexed any faster by our webcrawl, and you don’t get any boost in ranking.”

Read Matt Cutts full article about how Google services affect PageRank and other domain and link scoring.

 

Does SEO Increase Website Traffic?

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Can SEO Increase My Website’s Traffic?

Yes, it can and Smith-Digital, located in Houston Texas, can help. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy used by website designers and web developers to optimize the structure, content and links within your website. This optimization prepares your website for search engines, making it easier to be fully indexed. All websites that want to rank better in search engines, rank number one on Google or rank high in local map results need SEO.

How Long Until My Website Rankings Increase?

Some of our clients see drastic increases in traffic after the first session. It is recommended that customers secure their domain name as far in advance as possible. This helps establish longevity for the domain name. Domain names that are recently registered will more than likely not rank high within their first three to six months. An option is to purchase established domain names, however these can be very expensive. The best policy is always to register the domain name first, and begin search engine optimization as soon as the website is completed and online. Also, make sure to submit your URL to Google to be indexed as soon as you have content online. This will give you an idea of your starting point with keywords, and the amount of competition you will be up against.

Should I Trust Companies that Offer “Guaranteed First Page Results”?

Do pigs fly? If getting first-page status on Google were that easy, no one would stay for long. You will always notice (in Google, at least) consistency with the top, quality organic results. These websites are distinguished above others, as their content and”popularity” show. Established websites that have been optimized for a year or more stand a high chance of remaining in the “first-page” results even after discontinuing SEO services. Smith-Digital does not guarantee any specific rankings, however we do guarantee to use 100% acceptable, “white hat” techniques to naturally increase your website’s organic rankings in search engines like Google.

Increase Website Traffic

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Increase Website Traffic – Houston, Texas

Example of Website Traffic Increases - Houston, TX

Are you looking to increase website traffic? Do you need more traffic for your business? Smith-Digital offers search engine optimization services to increase traffic to your website. Our team of search engine optimization professionals will handle all aspects of SEO for your website, including:

Increase Website Traffic with More Content

The fact is, sites with more and better content rank higher in search engines. Let Smith-Digital provide you with an in-depth analysis of your current website (if any), as well as an estimate containing our proposed updates. Our articles are always over the 300 word minimum, and will be tailored to your industry or existing content. Our team of copywriters will work with you to increase traffic to your website.

Optimizing Website Structure

Building your website properly is important too. Using TAGs, ALTs and Descriptions to provide additional information to search engine web crawler bots is also important. Minor changes to the structure of your website can help with increasing traffic to your website.

Link Building

Using outbound links throughout content, and generating incoming (reciprocal) link. Many compare having inbound links to “votes” for your website in search engines. Realistically, links help search engines crawl the internet,and without them the bots would go nowhere. Try to have at lest one outbound link on every page, and make sure the content on the site is relevant to your website.

Optimizing Images and Links

Optimizing the images and links found within your website is a quick and easy to to help with your search engine optimization (SEO). These tags provide additional information to search engines that is not normally available when including an image. Links should have titles and alts for both search engines and users alike; when a user rolls their mouse over the link, the text contained in the ALT tag will display in their browser.

HTTP Status Code, Web Page Error Codes

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HTTP Status Code Definitions – Web Page Error Codes

We will discuss the common error codes associated with your website and web hosting account. The definitions for these status codes have been excerpted from the World Wide Web Consortium’s webpage; “HTTP/1.1: Status Code Definitions“. All credit for quoted information is assumed given to W3C. They are an excellent group. Visit the previously listed page for all HTTP status code definitions.

404 Not Found Error

404 Not Found Error Code“10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.”

You are used to seeing this in Internet Explorer and FireFox as “Server not found” or “Web page not found”. This status code means the filename or folder is not found; it does not (currently) exist. Depending on your server and hosting account, you may be able to modify or replace the templates used for these pages. Adding your company’s logo or a brief contact form or phone number is a great idea.

 

 

SEO Company Houston Texas

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SEO Company Houston, Texas

Smith-Digital is an SEO Company in Houston, Texas. We provide search engine optimization services, web site and web page design and internet marketing to clients in the Houston metropolitan area. If you are looking to research SEO (and its techniques and tactics), we have a number of related articles available for you to read. Please visit any of the links below for more information about our website and company.

How Much Does SEO Competition Matter

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SEO Competition in Houston, Texas

SEO Competition refers to websites that you are competing for rankings with in search engines. If you want to rank high in search engines, or rank on the first page of Google, you have to take your direct competition into account while performing search engine optimization (SEO) in Houston, Texas. You’ll also want to take note of the different SEO techniques they are using, and how frequently their website is updated. Knowing that your biggest competitor does SEO quarterly should give you the idea that, with monthly search engine optimization, you can outrank them.

How Much SEO Competition Do I Have?

You can tell your direct competition by using search engines to find keywords and phrases that you would expect customer to use. If you were a Search Engine Optimization company like Smith-Digital, you would target phrases like “seo houston”, “seo in houston tx”, “seo houston texas”, “first page rankings”, and so on. For more specific locations (like if you live in a suburb of a large city, or in the metropolitan area) you could use more specific searches like “seo katy tx”, “seo sugar land”, “seo the woodlands”, and so on. Using these refined, location-specific keyword phrases will hopefully help match you with users that are searching for your type of business.

How Can I Beat the Competition?

Regular updating and adding to your website is very important for SEO in Houston, TX. Link building can (is) also a very important aspect, especially for newly built websites. Both inbound and outbound links are considered by search engines, as is the content found in the links. It is pointless to generate thousands of inbound links from link farms or other non-related web pages. Quality, reciprocal links will help to quickly increase your website rankings in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and so on.

How Long Before I Beat My Competition?

This will depend on a number of items; see if you can discover how frequently the competition’s website is updated and what techniques of SEO they are using. If they are updating monthly, update your website weekly! If they are adding 5 links per month, add 10! Your goal is to out-do your competitors so that you can rank higher than them in search engines like Google. Smith-Digital in Houston Texas can help you beat your SEO competition!

FOLLOW or NOFOLLOW?

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Should I use follow or nofollow for my internal links?

To follow, or not to follow… Links have several options that can be specified for search engines. One of those options is rel=”nofollow”, which instructs a search engine not to follow the link, but to continue on the current page. The questions has been asked “should I use follow or nofollow for internal links“? The quick answer is NO, you should not use rel=”nofollow”. Who says so, you may ask? See this video about Matt Cutts (from Google); he gives you an excellent answer in about 2 minutes. It is well worth the time to watch it about FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW links.

Why do some people suggest to use nofollow for internal links?

What is the reasoning behind using rel=”nofollow”? Some believe that using FOLLOW on internal links creates excessive searching and/or indexing for search engines. If this were the case, precious resources could be wasted having bots follow links that eventually all bring themselves back to the same pages. How would this benefit the website? It would seem that excessive searching within the same site would ensure a thorough indexing of it. This may not be the case, though. If there are flaws within the internal structure of your website, pages or entire sections of your website could be missed.

How important is a sitemap.xml for search engines to index my site properly?

Missing data is the last problem you want when it comes to your website. The best way to ensure that your site is indexed properly in Google, and other search engines, is to use a sitemap file–“sitemap.xml”, “page-sitemap.xml”, “post-sitemap.xml” and so on. The larger the website, the larger (or at least more thorough) the sitemap should be. One of the advantages of using a content management system (CMS) is that these files can be automatically generated and updated by the system.

How Important is Content?

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Content is the “holy grail” when it comes to search engine optimization. If Google’s computers (not humans) can pick and choose the very best, relevant sites and rank them for you to see, it safe to make the statement “content is very important when it comes to search engine optimization”. Don’t be misled by companies or individuals who try to promote link building or directory/press release submissions before writing and optimizing your content; regardless of how many inbound links or press notoriety you have, your site simply cannot rank well without a decent amount of well written, relevant content.

How Do Search Engines Work?

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Search Engines use proprietary algorithms–normally regarded as “highly secret”–to calculate a number of components of your overall ranking score. Though the algorithms vary from search engine to search engine, it is commonly known that all of the following are taken into account: content (and the optimization thereof), images, links (both internal and external), page titles, META descriptions and keywords*, URL and longevity, and overall traffic from within that search engine.

*It is arguable that search engines no longer use information provided in the “META Keywords” section of the META tags. Instead, they calculate their own keyword ranking percentages based on the page content.