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: 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.

Posted by: Susan Smith, Marketing Coordinator

Now that Google and Bing are displaying Twitter tweets in organic search results alongside other social media, tweets should be optimized just as a website would be.  There are multiple ways to increase the relevancy of your tweets and have them indexed by the search engines:

• Get more followers, each follower is considered an incoming link
• Get relevant followers, keywords in their bios relate to your relevancy
• Get tagged in lists that relate to your industry
• Have your tweets retweeted
• Tweet relevant, keyword rich content utilizing active lingo and buzzwords
• Choose a username that is short, easy to remember, and relevant to your brand or industry
• Stick to one handle/username for consistent indexing
• Choose an account name that reflects and promotes your brand
• Utilize the 160 characters available for a bio to insert key words and phrases
• Place a call to action on your website to gain Twitter followers
• Embed your Twitter URL in the footer of your website
• Occasionally tweet a link to your website to drive traffic
• Place your most important keywords at the beginning of your tweet as that is what shows up in Google

As Twitter continues to gain popularity and people begin seeking out real time updates, optimizing tweets will become vital to keeping your company at the top of the search results.

Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator

Over the past month, Yahoo has been bombarded with questions about their statements regarding how they use the meta keyword tag as a ranking factor. When Yahoo first stated that they were no longer supporting the meta keyword tag, many were hesitant to believe it and curious how it would affect their search engine optimization. Other big search engines such as Google and Bing have long since confirmed that they do not use the tag for ranking, but this was Yahoo’s first statement surrounding the subject.

Unfortunately for Yahoo, many a company and individual have proven them wrong, performing tests to see if words they place only in keyword tags and not anywhere else on their sites are getting ranked, and indeed they are. This pressure has forced Yahoo to clarify their statements.

According to Yahoo, the meta keyword tags are given the lowest ranking signal compared to words that appear in the body, title, description, etc. Essentially, if you have the same keywords in your meta tag and on your website (body, anchor text, etc.) then the meta keyword tag is ignored. But, if there is a keyword only in your meta keyword tag and cannot be found elsewhere on your site it will be used to rank your site.

So how does this affect your search engine optimization? For right now keep your focus on having a site rich with keyword content and continue to place your most relevant keywords within site copy and within your title, description and keyword portions of the meta-tag.

Posted by: Jessica Shepherd, Project Manager & Gloria Dutton, Senior Marketing Coordinator

You’ve done some SEO work, by hiring an SEO agency or dedicating some in-house time and expertise. What’s next? Is your team giving you regular actionable reports prioritizing the tactics they are engaged in? Are you seeing how the program is performing and what your next high-priority steps are? If not, are you considering an SEO audit?

Some search professionals describe an audit as a “99 point assessment” of every possible SEO tactic, from meta data to links to social presence. That’s nice, but it doesn’t tell you much when your budget only allows for 20 tactics – and you may just need to do five of them right to dramatically improve your program.

The key is to start not with a laundry list but with evaluation and prioritization. As long as you are focusing on the right keywords – an assumption that an audit can help validate – you can use a broad set of analytical tools and a solid methodology to efficiently identify where your program is strong, where it is weak, and where the low hanging fruit is. Consider taking these steps:

1. Focus on major tactical areas like on-site factors, linking, social media and local visibility.
2. Identify the areas that are most likely to get you listed and convert your target audience.
3. Measure how well you are executing on the high priority tactics.
4. Scope out the level of effort required to fill the gaps in each of these areas. Play to your organization’s strengths – e.g., if you have a great story and a PR engine to tell it, use that asset in your SEO program.

With this approach, you can direct your team or vendor to focus their time where the impact will be greatest. If you are also engaged in paid search, combine your SEO and SEM analyses. Contact us to get started – email info@90octane.com and ask about our SEO/SEM audit.