Google Plus has a lot of SEO buzz right now thanks to Google’s own initiative feeding itself.  The purist attitude of providing non-biased information is moot as Google promotes its failed Facebook knock-off in search results.  Heavy Google Plus users are rewarded in search results.  For online organizations to remain competitive and use all the opportunities, they now must invest into the Google Plus community.  But there’s a trick to enabling your thumbnail and Google profile links in SERPs (follow the how-to below).

Google Plus Rich Snippets in SERPs

Google Plus search results appear prominently, with color photos in the top right column ABOVE paid ads.  These are the search results in Google Plus for the search query entered into Google web search.  Since there is only a small community, you have a chance to jump in now, ahead of your competitors and start appearing at the top of Google Plus search results that are inserted into regular web search results.  Additionally, there is a Google Plus rich snippet including your profile image thumbnail, inserted inline with organic results that links to your Google Plus profile.

Personally, I feel Google is bribing SEOs and internet marketers to join its failed community by offering extremely valuable (yet free to Google) webpage real estate.  However, here’s how to enable your Google+ profile snippet in search results. …continue reading this SEO article »

Symptoms of Panda Filter Penalty and Strategy to Escape the Filter

Google Panda Filter Strategy

I enjoy giving free SEO consultation and advice.  The following conversation string is copied out of emails between myself and the www.rocknrolltv.net website owner who filled out the BlendSEO contact form because she abruptly lost rankings for her blog.  Per the website owner’s request, I have omitted her name throughout the conversation.

The unifying theme you can learn from this conversation is that rich, unique content is essential for organic search engine visibility.  Content is what the search engines rank.  If you have content, optimization is a matter of finessing and organizing the content.  As you read below, the ranking problem is due to her website being caught by the PANDA filter.  After comparing competitors and with an understanding of what  degree of thin or duplicate content trips the PANDA filter, the proposed solution is based on content.  There are some great SEO tips in there as well.

Website Owner:

Hello.

I’m interested in possibly hiring your services to help me with our site. We seem to be hitting some penalties with Google. Our site is a music news video show with affiliates. The affiliates give us coupon codes which we have to push. Several of the promo code pages have slipped drastically in the Google rankings and I’m not sure why. I used to be #6 or #7 for “4inkjets coupon code” .. now I am down around #80 or so. This has happened with a few important keywords to me and my income! Please let me know how you work and if you think this is fixable.

Thanks. …continue reading this SEO article »

Have you decided to create a blog in addition to your main website?  Is it time for a company blog?

How you setup your blog is crucial for SEO.

1. Where To Install a Blog:
   - Subfolders?
   - Subdomains?
   - Separate Domains?
2. How to Integrate the Blog into the Main Website Architecture
3. Optimize Website Navigation Anchor Text
4. Optimize Blog Categories
5. What to Remove from the Blog

Steps 1 and 2 (concerning blog location and navigation) were discussed in a previous article on the 5 step process to setup your blog for SEO.  As a quick review of these two steps, the strategy for blog SEO is to integrate your blog within your main company website.  Typical blog architecture creates a strong web of interlinking.  Blogs also attract links from other blogs and directories.  The inbound links hit the web-like framework of interlinking and spread authority throughout the blog.  Search engines naturally view a blog as a tightly interlinked section of your website.  That is why, if you want your blog to benefit your main website, it must be actively interlinked.  That means, install it in a sub-folder of your main website, so link authority will count toward the domain, not toward a sub-domain or separate domain.

Step 3 is your first act of optimizing your blog using keywords.  Imagine if you were a s search engine starting at the top level of your website.  The first thing you read is the domain name.  Optimize it.  You might take a quick scan of the text near the top of the homepage, and then go right through the main navigation.  What do each of the links say in the navigation?  What is the file name of each page where they link?  The internet is too big to read every inch of every website, so you pull what information you can from a quick preview.  Using meaningful keywords in the main navigation anchor text and file names is only logical.  And its something every SEO consultant can agree upon.

This concept carries right into the next topic, optimizing blog categories. …continue reading this SEO article »

5 Strategic Decisions to Get the Most Out of  Automated Blog SEO

When it comes to blog SEO, everyone talks about title tags, meta tags, search engine friendly URLs (slugs, permalinks, whatever you want to call them)…  That’s all pretty common stuff and there’s plenty of information about the WordPress SEO plugins to help you find them and set them up.  But here’s the most important thing that no one tells you to consider – website architecture.  This is closely related to silo linking, but MUCH more powerful.

Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing clients are sent my way when they need a little extra above and beyond ideas, technical recommendations and help for their organic search engine results.  Clients look to our search engine marketing consultancy for advice, but make their own ultimate decisions on optimizing their website.  The trend I’ve noticed is that most people are uninformed to a certain level of SEO information regardless of what their consultant recommends.  The most common unknown is the magnitude of missed opportunity not optimizing their website architecture.  And this is the biggest opportunity for setting up your wordpress blog so that it’s automated SEO feeds optimization for the rest of your website.

…continue reading this SEO article »