Posted by Chelsea Maxwell, Sr. Marketing Coordinator

Does social media participation have an effect on your website’s overall search rankings? This question is top of mind for companies anxious to drink the social media Kool-Aid, and the answer is both yes and no. While having a presence in the social space will not affect your placement in search engine rankings, it does give you visibility for both real-time and social search.

Google, Yahoo and Bing have all integrated social media into their search environments. This often pushes the “regular” search engine results below the fold in favor of real-time updates, meaning that social search is now taking up prime real estate in the search engines.

Participating in social media and receiving backlinks from social sites can have a positive impact on a website’s search engine reputation. However, remember that jumping into social media before you are ready is never a good idea. Get the basics down first. Then, when the time is right, examine what social outlets make the most sense for your company or brand.

Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator

Although Google continues to own the majority of the search engine market, Bing’s continued growth makes it necessary to think beyond Google when optimizing your website. Fortunately, most search engines rank their results based on many of the same criteria.

Below are four key areas to focus on when optimizing for search engines, particularly Bing:

Content and keyword placement: Great content is the best way to improve search rankings. Pay attention to where your keywords are located; use page titles, H1 and alt tags and linked text. Referring to Bing Webmaster Center is also a great way to stay on top of any changes.

Inbound links: Inbound links are important for any engine, especially Bing. Focus on obtaining a large number of links from other relevant pages.

Well-built website: A technically sound website with validated code, no broken links and proper redirects is important to Bing. Also, make an effort to use static URLs instead of dynamic URLs.

Domain age: Bing’s algorithm prioritizes older domains. Search engines are always looking to establish authority and domain age is one way to accomplish this.

Although it is important to include Bing in your optimization strategy, make sure you’re continuing to optimize for Google as well.

Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager

When managed properly, company blogs are a great way to keep readers up to date on company and industry knowledge, and can be very useful in improving a company’s online visibility. Implementing the following optimization best practices can help improve both your blog and your website’s organic visibility within the search engines:

• Use a relevant keyword in your domain: When naming your blog, consider using an important keyword in your URL.

• Use relevant keywords in content: When writing content, consider common keywords and key phrases people would use to learn about your product(s) or industry. Include these keywords within your blog title and body copy with the most important keyword included in your title.

• Link to various pages of your website: Include links back to your website within your content to increase the number of incoming links to your website. Be sure to link to more than just your homepage.

• Include relevant anchor text: When linking to another page, use relevant keywords as your anchor text and hyperlink these accordingly.

• Submit to directories: There are many online directories where you can submit your blog to further increase its reach, such as BlogCatalog.com. This will increase the number of relevant back-links to your blog, increasing the importance placed on your blog by the search engines.

• Update frequently: Post content to your blog frequently so it does not go stagnant.

Try using these tips to improve your blog’s organic visibility within the search engines. Ultimately, they can help improve your website’s visibility as well.

Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager

Is online video a part of your marketing mix and, in particular, your SEO strategy? As online video usage continues to surge, more marketers are focusing on how video can integrate into their search programs. The following YouTube statistics show how prevalent online video has become:

• 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• Approximately 120 decades of video are uploaded in a year

What can your company do to make sure that your videos are ranking high in search results and are visible to relevant users? Much like your site content and meta data, you need to make sure that your video title and description are keyword rich (without being spammy) and applicable to what the user is looking for. Think about what terms users that are interested in your video would use to search and work to incorporate them into your copy. You can also provide keyword tags for your video to increase search visibility.

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Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator

The start of 2010 brought a lot of changes and updates to search engine optimization practices. SEO is constantly evolving, making it necessary for companies to stay up to date on current trends.

Here are the top three SEO learnings from the start of 2010:

1) Incorporate social media into your overall marketing strategy to increase visibility. In an effort to make search a more interactive experience, search engines are focusing on incorporating social media into their results. Companies who are on board with social media have reaped the benefits through increased visibility. Users can now see social media results related to their search request and select websites they want to see more of, essentially customizing their search results. If you are not a part of social media yet, consider getting involved.

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Posted by: Nikki Johnson, Marketing Coordinator

Yahoo and Microsoft recently received regulatory approval for a search and advertising partnership that may simplify the world of search engine optimization (SEO). Per the agreement, Yahoo will soon begin using Microsoft Bing’s search algorithm to return its search results. Some SEO gurus are speculating that this new union will streamline optimization so that marketers will only have to optimize for two search engines (Google and Bing) instead of three (Google, Yahoo and Bing).

That being said, Bing returns far fewer search results than Google, and it is more difficult to be deemed “relevant” within Bing listings than within Google listings. This could have a few implications for SEO marketers as they try to optimize for Bing’s slimmed-down version of the search results page.

Although Bing will be the driver behind the wheel of Yahoo searches, Yahoo claims it will still have a strong influence on the Yahoo.com user experience. Last year it revamped its homepage offering users a number of applications for page customization. The company has also incorporated a number of innovative features within its search interface. Yahoo is finding new ways to get in front of its users and is not expected to fade behind the spotlight that’s currently focused on Bing.

Learn more at WebProNews.

Posted by: Lauren Klostermann, Project Manager

Since Google Buzz launched on February 9, 2010, it has had a far-reaching trickle effect across the web. Buzz, the fully Google-integrated platform for real-time sharing speculated to rival Twitter, has several implications for traditional search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

The first is that Buzz is facilitating an influx of new content that is highly likely to be indexed in Google’s search engine. Buzz also allows all links posted to be read by the search engine. Based on Google’s search engine algorithm, more links to your site, even those via Buzz, will signify that your site is more important and should be listed higher in search results. Finally, Google Buzz has an easy-to-use integration on mobile phones to help provide your business with local information and reviews.

If your company already has a social marketing presence on Facebook and Twitter, Buzz is the next obvious place to begin a conversation, which will in turn also help your SEO visibility.

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Posted by: Kelly Hall, Account Manager

“Optimization” has many meanings in today’s marketing world. What might come to mind first is search engine optimization — or improving your rankings in search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. And while that should be an important part of your overall marketing plan, optimization has a place in many other tactics you use to build brand awareness, attract your audience, and of course, create conversions.

To read the full article and learn more about measurable optimization tactics subscribe to 90news and view the February 2010 issue in the archives.

Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager

As a fundamental building block to a search engine optimization (or SEO) program, it is important to build strong, qualified incoming links to your website. Here are a few ways to build these links and optimize visibility:

• Submit Press Releases: Submit keyword-rich press releases through newswires and online PR sites, such as PR Newswire and PR Leap, to gain increased online visibility.
• Submit to Directories: Directories, such as DMOZ, are a great way to submit links to your website building quality incoming traffic.
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Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager

The latest statistics show that more than 40% of searches within search engines have local intent. For local business owners this means that not only is important to have a website, but to also focus on optimization of your local business listings. Some best practices to consider when developing and optimizing local business listings include:

• Claim your business listing and ensure it is updated. This may sound obvious, but you would be surprised how many listings some businesses already have that they don’t even know exist or are outdated. Claiming the listing you want or that is the most accurate, will allow you to make updates on a regular basis which is very important within the eyes of the local and larger search engines.
• Select the most appropriate categories for your business listing. In most cases you are given several options and can choose more than one category. Make sure you don’t select too many categories as this can dilute the significance of your listing for the most appropriate and relevant categories; however, you also don’t want to select too few categories as this may make it difficult for potential customers to locate your business when searching.
• Include important product and/or service keywords related to your business within the title of your listing. This will not only help increase your rankings within the search engines, but also make your listing stand-out amongst the competition.

Similarly to optimizing a website, optimization of local business listings can take time and involves several more factors than the ones listed above, but starting with these few tips will help start your listing in the right direction.