If you have ever talked about “searching the Internet” you probably meant that you were searching the World Wide Web. The Internet is a much larger concept, whereas the World Wide Web is the aspect of the Internet that is visible and usable by the public. Finding what you need on the Web can be truly overwhelming if you realize just how expansive this collection of information is. There are literally hundreds of millions of individual Web pages spread across the Web that are available to be accessed and read by anyone who can find them. This, of course, means that internet users must be able to find them.

Even before the concept of the World Wide Web was fully developed, search engines had been put into place. These search engines allow Internet users to look for the exact information that they desire so that the engine can find it for them. Rather than just wandering aimlessly throughout the Web, users can put a keyword or phrase into the search engine and be directed to the pages that are most applicable to the search.

Before the engine can direct a user to the information that he wants, however, this information must be found. This is where internet spiders come in. …continue reading this SEO article »

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 »

SEO, Hosting and Web Design Decisions?

How does web hosting affect SEO?

Avoid SEO web hosting issues.  See Blend SEO top 3 picks for hosting.

Web Hosting and SEO

SEO should be addressed during the planning stages of a website or blog.  A wrong decision on website design, server platform and hosting company can handicap your SEO efforts.  Many SEO hosting web design companies offer turn-key, all-in-one, one-stop-shop, too-good-to-be-true solutions for SEO, hosting and web design.  Many of these companies started out in one area and respond to customer demand in other areas by putting together a package to serve them all.

• Don’t expect SEO from a hosting company to be a full service, all encompassing SEO solution.
• Likewise, don’t expect an SEO or web design firm to provide top notch hosting.
• More likely they are reselling server space from a hosting company or else maintain an on-site local server.

My top 3 choices for web hosting…

…continue reading this SEO article »

GLiD becomes Blend.

Blend starts with the end in mind.  A blended skill set of design and marketing contributes to SEO for a stronger, unified result.  Blend is SEO (search engine optimization) infused with design and marketing.  Our blog, the BlendER (ER = Everything Relevant), breaks down problems that are hard to chew into easily digestible servings.

Meaning Behind the Cute Words and Symbols?

…continue reading this SEO article »

Change Site Domain Name – Keep the Traffic

I am changing my business name and the website domain name.  How do I keep search engine traffic?  What do I do for search engine optimization so that I don’t throw away my past SEO efforts?  How do I redirect traffic from other websites and marketing to the new website?

If you are in this situation, there are two things to consider:

1. people’s perception of the name change
2. technical aspects of the name change for search engines and internet traffic

Name Change Perception

At the very least, I expect you will inform your current and potential customers and  that the name will be changing before it happens.  For example, I plan to change my business name from GLiD to Blend.  The name change has been long overdue.

People may want to know why and what to expect?  Will services change under the new name?  Is management changing?  For example, GLiD will be changing to Blend.

For GLiD, the core services have evolved from industrial design, to graphic design, to search engine optimization and internet marketing.  GLiD initially was created for Greg Lee Industrial Design.  Keeping the same name, the acronym transitioned to Greg Lee I.D. (for identity) and later to Greg Lee Intelligent Design (encompassing identity, print and web development).  Since 2004, SEO and internet marketing slowly infused deeper into the services while providing extensive graphic design and website development while working in tandem with an influential internet marketer in Charleston, South Carolina.

The internet evolved and GLiD did too.  Learning from experts in internet marketing and SEO, GLiD knowledge base grew.  In January 2009, I moved the GLiD office to Atlanta, a hub for the internet marketing and SEO community.  By January 2010, I began serving as the search engine optimization research and development department for the Atlanta internet marketing firm, Medium Blue.  In summer of 2011, GLiD will transition to Blend, dropping industrial design to completely focus on SEO, website development and graphic design.

During the transition period, www.GLiD.us will be co-branded with banners advertising the name change to Blend.  After the transition to Blend, there will still be prominent messages showing formerly GLiD, to address traffic from old links that promote GLiD. …continue reading this SEO article »

An essential part of SEO is designing your website so that it conforms to standards.

The below table of Microsoft Core fonts is no longer freely available from Microsoft, but these free standard fonts are available here, completely legally thanks to the terms of Microsoft’s font license.

…continue reading this SEO article »

Do you create landing pages for your PPC ads?

Do You want to maximize their SEO benefit?

Being raised with a thrifty mindset and borderline hoarding tendencies, I am compelled to use every website asset to further SEO success.  This article will reveal to you:

1. How to know if your landing pages are causing duplicate content for organic search engines
2. How to eliminate duplicate content penalties
3. How to reclaim unused back links
4. Long term strategy to build organic traffic using your paid search landing pages

Are Your Paid Search Landing Pages Causing Duplicate Content Penalties?

A lot of clients don’t realize that their PPC landing pages end up in the search engine index.  If your landing pages have nearly identical content as each other or other pages of your website, they will potentially cause duplicate content penalties without you realizing.  Your website will not completely drop out of the search results, but those individual pages will waste resources (link authority, PageRank, crawl budget) that should go into other areas.  And, Google will remember that your website has useless duplicate pages, which affects your website’s overall profile.  Over the years Google has told us to disallow, redirect and apply canonical links to those pages.  Depending on how you address duplicate pages can hold back your potential for Google PageRank and high search engine rankings.

Check Google for your landing pages by searching…

site:yourwebsite.com/landingpage.php

A lot of times I find duplicate versions of the same landing page in Google or Bing, the only difference being different strings in the URL.  The URL may have some random looking string at the end such as ?src=W4THMJHWWZRP. Because these have different URLs, the search engines assume they are supposed to be different pages. They may have identical content with only slight differences. Unfortunately, search engines are penalizing you for duplicate content in the organic results.  You can turn this around to your advantage!

So the first thing you’re probably wondering is how do these pages find their way into the Google or Bing index?  You don’t have any links to them, they are complete islands, pages hosted on your server with no links from any part of your website.  So how does Google find them?

Easy… someone else landed on the page from your PPC ad and created a link to the page.

Here’s the proof.  Once you find a page in a search index using the “site” search above, check that page for backlinks. Go to Yahoo Site Explorer and enter the URL for the page. Make sure you click “Inlinks” and chose the drop down “Except from this domain”.  Here you will see other websites that link to that landing page.

How to Eliminate Duplicate Content Penalties

Some people would say to use your robots.txt file to disallow search engines from listing those pages in their results.  For a long time, this has been the standard way of addressing duplicate content.  However, there is always the potential for other websites to link to your landing pages.  Even if you don’t see back links in Yahoo Site Explorer, there may still be back links not shown (search engines just refuse to show you everything they know and there’s nothing we can do about it), you need to plan on the possibility of people creating links in the future.  Using the robots.txt to disallow a page with potential back links does not let you take advantage of potential back links.

How to Regain Unused Back Links

Every back link you have is one more that your competitor may not.  …continue reading this SEO article »