Tag: SEO

Should you put money into SEO or SEM?

To successfully stay at the top of search pages, you’ll need both SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) working together.

sem-seo-example

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) covers the paid listings that appear at the top of most searches.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works at getting your website to show up in unpaid search results (organic listings).

In this example, someone searching for a ‘freelance website manager’ would see two paid listings and then the organic listings below.

Paid listings are usually sold at a “cost per click” rate.

Organic listings are determined by a website’s SEO score. Your SEO score can be improved by managing your website with the following considerations:

-have relevant and valuable content
-have no impediments to searchers
-be built for sharing (on Facebook, Twitter…)
-be built for mobile (Google loves responsive websites)
-have a functional layout (easy to find what you want)

If you need help (or free advice) with either SEO or SEM (or both), contact me here.

For more on the difference between SEO and SEM, check out this link at Webopedia.

Are Google Webmaster Tools supported by WordPress.com?

Yes! If you have a website or blog hosted by WordPress.com you can still use Google’s Webmaster Tools.

From your WordPress.com dashboard select TOOLS, then AVAILABLE TOOLS, then WEBSITE VERIFICATION SERVICES.

WordPress.com screenshot
Screenshot of Website Verification Services

STEPS
1.Log in to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ with your Google account.
2.Enter your blog address (without http:// or https:// in front)
3.Click the Add a Site button
4.You will be presented with several verification methods. Choose the Alternate Methods tab.
5.Select the option: HTML tag
6.Copy the content value of the meta tag….more here.

WordPress.com also supports Bing Webmaster Center, Pinterest Verification and Yandex.

More information here in this WordPress.com support article…

By: Mike Benny
Google

How to “Perfectly Optimize” a Webpage

Wondering how to create a webpage that’s bound to be found by Google? For a start checkout these seven steps and this info-graphic from Entrepreneur.com.

Make sure your site…

  • has no impediments to searchers
  • is built for sharing (on Facebook, Twitter…)
  • has valuable content
  • has a great layout (easy to find what you want)
  • uses good keywords
  • has a responsive design for multiple devices
  • uses authorship, authorship, authorship…

how-create-perfectly-optimized

An illustration of the steps necessary for a perfectly optimized webpage.

By: Mike Benny
Google

A New Year’s resolution for #WordPress SEO

10-seo-tips-in-2014“10 Tips For Unbeatable WordPress SEO In 2014” by Wajdan Gul

Really interesting and definitely worth reading the entire article.

1. Speed/Load-time optimization
2. Configure critical WordPress SEO plug-ins
3. Configure critical social plug-ins for WordPress
4. Write unique and in-depth content
5. Rich snippets. Please!
6. Authorship with Google+ is the future
7. Commenting is the new SEO
8. Keep updating the (old) content
9. Be a community person!
10. On-page website structure

The Science of Searching – Periodic Table Of #SEO Success Factors

There are no tricks, no plugins and no shortcuts to getting Google to rank your pages. It’s all content.

The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors… from Search Engine Land

Search engines reward pages with the right combination of ranking factors, or “signals.” SEO is about ensuring your content generates the right type of signals.

SearchEngineLand-Periodic-Table-of-SEO-2013-condensed-large1-530x837

The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors, used with permission.

Read more about it here (also a Quickstart Guide to SEO)…