Many website owners get frustrated with the different aspects of Search Engine Optimization.  You have your keywords, meta tags, content and indexing issues.  Researching Google guidelines will keep you on the right path success.  Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the search engine requirements, next you’ll need to research your target market and competitors.

 Google Sandbox Probation

One of the biggest complaints from website owners is, “Why haven’t our website been indexed yet?”  New websites automatically fall into the Google Sandbox.  It’s Googles way to prevent spam built websites from cluttering their search engine.  There are companies with a unlimited spending budgets and will build hundreds of landing pages; in effort to trick the search engines.  The users experience is top priority with Google and they take it seriously and will penalize any website that uses “Black Hat SEO tricks.”

It takes 3-6 months to get out of the Google Sandbox.  It can be nerve wrecking waiting months to see the fruits of your labor.  One way you can jump out of the sandbox is to get links pointing back to your website.  If your able to get a back link from a website that has already has a page rank then you’ll be able to get indexed much faster.  Your 6-month probation can turn into a one-day probation.  Needless to say, that the time and effort seeking a good quality link is worth the achievement.  It would not be a bad idea to go after Social Media links.

Keywords and Search Engine Rankings

Finding out what your keywords are is an important aspect of the SEO foundation for your website.  Keywords will be used throughout your website, meta tags, advertisements, and Pay-Per-Click (Google Adwords).  The Google Adword Tool is the best free keyword Tool on the market.  We use it every day faithfully due to the fact that keyword research never really ends.  If your thoroughly conducting SEO then you realize that it never stops even if you’re on page one.  The biggest perk of being number one on page one is that you get 36.4 % of all clicks; you also get to kick your feet up and relax a little while your competitors are trying to take your position.  Position number two gets 12.5% of all clicks.  The percentage of clicks continues to decrease to almost non-existent on page two.  Average Click through rates chart: http://goo.gl/vrXIM

Choosing the right words in a very small amount of space can be a daunting task.  You have so much to say, but so little room to say it.  To make it easy for you, find out what’s the most important part to your website.  Part three of SEO For Small Businesses Owners will go into depth of the meta tags aspects.  We have awesome secrets that we are willing to share with our loyal blog followers.

The first step is creating an idea; it can be anything, an image or whatever you can imagine. Once you have an image you want to use, turn that image into a vector shape by drawing it out in Adobe Illustrator, Coral or other similar programs. Select the appropriate decal design for the MacBook you are adding the decal to, and be sure to line it up on the template exactly the way you want.

Now that you have a design and the appropriate print settings, use a cutter plotter machine to cut the vinyl, cutting will be based on how thick your vinyl is. The final step is removing the excess vinyl from the design using a very sharp crafting knife and applying the finished design to a roll of transfer tape. For best results make sure you cut it clean and neat. And you’re done! Now all you have to do is apply the decal to your MacBook.

Applying MacBook Decals is the easiest step but also one of the most important. Since you have invested a good amount of time preparing this decal you don’t want to mess up the last part and have to go back and redo everything. Make sure the design is lined up exactly the way you want it on your Mac and make sure there are no air bubbles, if you do however get some bubbles you can put holes in them to get rid of the excess air.

1. Buying links – Google does not support buying links for better results. Many people think they can buy a link from a site with high PR and they will rank, however that is not the case. Buying links for reasons other then advertising looks like an attempt to trick the search engine and Google will and has banished many sites for this.  Link building can be challenging and this may seem like a good way to get results, however its not! Once you invest a ton of money into these results and get banned its all for nothing… Your time and money have been wasted.

 2. Duplicate Content – Content is king for SEO, people will link to unique, likeable, and educational content. Many people like to copy and paste someone else’s content. They think this will help them in their rankings, even if people start linking to this content, it was originally published somewhere else on the web, this means that the content has already been indexed and now it’s turning up on another site loosing its authority and waiting your time.

 3. Tricking the search engines – Google’s search engine spiders calculate how much text and how many links a site has. They check to make sure the link to text ratio is within the appropriate margins, and they check to make sure everything is visible. People use to hide text for their links to text ratios, nowadays its not that easy and you won’t rank, the search engine spiders are very good and always getting better at finding out who is trying to trick and who is real.

4. Spamming  - Link Building is one of the most important, if not the most important step for SEO, there are many ways to get links, blog commenting, forum writing, article submissions, and link requesting using back linking software. Here are the wrong ways to do this: Commenting on any topic regardless of your niche market; Going on forums to get your signature added and never leaving any useful info; Submitting your article to every directory you can find, regardless of the source; Using link building software that collects a lot of emails from a bunch of sites and blasting everyone a reciprocal link exchange email in one shot.

5. Irrelevant links – Relevancy is everything, there is no benefit in getting a link from a high PR, if its not pertinent to your industry. Google will not punish you for these links, however they will not help you rank either. You can spend month’s building tons of links with no results. If a user clicks on an anchored link that says, “click here to get a free SEO quote”, they should end up on the SEO quote page after clicking, and not any other page.

If you like this article you can follow Donnie on twitter @Donnie_MBMI

2.     Holiday Trends:  Find articles and blogs about the latest holiday fashions, topics and trends.  When sniffing around the articles, you should take note of the keyword and phrases.  Use what you find in your title and descriptions.

3.     Consider the Recipient.  Use keywords that describe your gift idea and who the gift would be perfect for in your title and description tags.  Synonyms are always a good idea.  For example: mom/mother, dad/father, businesswoman/entrepreneur, son/boy, etc…you get the idea.

4.     Search Bar:  Begin with typing what you are selling in the search bar.  A list of the most recent shoppers’ searches will appear.  The words that appear will give you a great idea of what people are shopping for.  Implement these items into your tags.

5.     Google is your Best Friend.  Google has so many SEO specialists trying to trick them that they reward websites that are honest and provide value to their customers.  Place holiday terms into your titles and other areas of your online store when it’s appropriate.

6.     Gradual Changes:  Be mindful not to create too many changes all at once.  Your search engine placement may suffer if the changes aren’t helping your website advance to the first page of Google.

We will post another article about that a little later! Hope this article helps! If you have any questions about this article or need further assistance with SEO Services, feel free to contact us at 888-918-4249.

Politicians could possibly get ruined in the middle of their campaigns.  Who can refute the evidence of a text message, “Sexting” or something obscene that was never sent by the phone owner?  Perfect example, last year, Apple sold 73.5 million iPhones and when the iPhone 4 was released (October 2011) within 24hrs 1 million phones were sold.

The world renowned Hacker, Charlie Miller discovered this flaw in the Apple mobile operating system and was kind enough to let Apple know about this flaw in their networks in late October. The officials at Apple well aware of Mr. Miller’s background told him thank you and that they have an antidote in the works.  They also thanked him by banning him from iOS developer program for a year.

The world renowned Hacker, Charlie Miller discovered this flaw in the Apple mobile operating system and was kind enough to let Apple know about the flaw in their networks in late October. The officials at Apple were well aware of Mr. Miller’s background, they thanked him and stated they have an antidote in the works.  They also thanked him by banning him from iOS developer program for a year.

If iPhone Hackers were to stumble upon what Mr. Miller found, in which we are sure that they will try even harder now; any iOS app could be in jeopardy by the malicious code placed into the app and zapped into the device.  This proves that iPhones & iPads aren’t as safe as advertised. Google Android Market security is nowhere near as secured as the App Store but it shows that no one is really completely safe from hackers.  Websites get hacked and filled with malware and malicious codes all the time; our website was hacked as explained in our blog, “Wordpress sites hit by iFrame Hackers.”   One could only hope that cellphones don’t reach that level of scrutiny that websites endure.

Optimizing your website pages isn’t the easiest thing in the world to achieve.  You have to be able to conduct market research of your industry and competitors.  Identify the right keywords for your market that aren’t overly competitive but drive high search volume.  You will also have to understand and abide by Google’s Guidelines (which are updated from time to time) in order to maintain a better experience for Google users.  You will need to use software that can update your web site in order to include/modify your Meta information. The Title tags, Description tags, and Keywords of  your website must be relevant to the content of the specified page. Each of these tags will need a specified amount of characters.  For example, Google allows a maximum of 65 characters (including spaces) for the Title tag, 165 characters (including spaces) for the Description tag, and up to 200 characters (including spaces) for the Keyword tags. It is said that Google (all major search engines) ignores the keyword tags, which is up for debate, but we would go ahead an add these in regardless.

The best way to perform keyword research is by using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool – its invaluable & free, yes, 100% tax-free.  Isn’t that great?!?! There are several other keyword tools that offer more bells and whistles, but will cost you an arm, leg or maybe even a car payment.

It’s a good idea to monitor your competitors and see what they are doing in regards to search terms.  Perform a Google search on a keyword or phrase that your potential visitors will use to find you and take note of which sites show up.  Also, take notes on the keywords that are being used for the competitors pages that show up at the top (When you open their web page, Press “Control” + the “U” key on a PC or “Command” + the “U” key for Mac).  If you don’t know where to look for the HTML Meta information, then Press “Control” + the “F” key on a PC or “Command” + the “F” key for Mac, this will open your computers search feature and allows you to find what you need. This feature will help you find where the information is located in the code of a site.  Take note of all this valuable information.

All the information that you are gathering will assist you in optimizing your website.  The best way to conduct SEO is to do the research before you build the site (if possible). This way, you have a better idea of how many pages will be needed, what keywords to target, and what the consumers in your market are looking for. In order to protect yourself and your investment, you MUST get educated about SEO and the companies out there that can help you by providing SEO services.  Internet marketing is extremely time consuming but well worth the squeeze at the end of the day! This article was drafted to provide our visitors with some general knowledge about “ON-PAGE” SEO practices. Once these practices have been mastered, you will need to venture down the path of “OFF-PAGE” SEO, which includes Link Building strategies and such.  We will post another article about that a little later! Hope this article helps! If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to contact us at 888-918-4249.

Recently, one of our (WordPress) websites was compromised by an unknown assailant.

During a typical day at BoastingBiZ, our development team was performing routine maintenance on one of our websites and noticed a grayish/white bar that went across the screen at the bottom of the home page (just beneath the footer). After further research, this “Mystery” bar was found throughout the entire site. On the left hand side of this bar was 3 microscopic characters that appeared to be the letter “F”. Our team went ahead and viewed the source code of the page to identify where this line was generated from. They didn’t find anything in the code that would cause this to appear! NOT GOOD!!! This was our initial indication that we had a problem.

Over in our SEO Services department, our guys noticed that this same site was cached by Google at about the same time this “Mystery” bar was detected. Lucky us right?!? WRONG!! Now, when we perform a Google search for our company name, the search results for our web pages show a message underneath our description tag that reads:

“Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer”

Our team immediately went into COMBAT Mode!  We had no idea WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN and HOW this could have occurred. What we did know, was that our website was in perfect working condition throughout the day and was also in good standings with Google up until around 4:00pm that afternoon. We also knew that Google last indexed our site about a week prior. Something happened, and what ever it was, it happened recently!

Immediately, we had a meeting with all technical department heads.  During this meeting, we discussed each and every detail of the work performed on the site through the past week. Perhaps it was a newly installed plugin, we thought. Or maybe it was caused by a new update that WordPress rolled out? It could be have been either of these if not a combination. Being that this issue was isolated to just ONE site, we knew it was not an attack on our server. Which was a relief to know!

In situations like this, we utilize a website that provides access to a set of tools which identify if a site has been infected with malware or has been blacklisted. Bookmark this link for future use: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/

About 10 seconds after entering the URL, we received the Search Engine Optimization answers we were seeking! We identified “What” and “Where” the issue was in the click of a button. Then we knew exactly how we were going to fix the problem but, we did not know how we were going to prevent it from happening again. Well, we did some digging and came across the fix. See step 6 below for details.

Somehow, a Hacker-Jack was able to modify a JavaScript file within our site and became able to inject malicious malware.  But rest assured, there is a way to add the necessary layers of protection! Follow the steps below to make sure your site is protected…

The Solution:

1. Make sure that the Database and Tables of your WordPress site are backed-up daily, weekly, or even monthly. Daily back-ups are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED so that you will not lose too much data in the event of a catastrophe (i.e. Blog Comments, etc.).

**Back-ups can be performed on the server level or directly onto your local machine via FTP or SFTP.

2. Make sure that your HTML & Javascript files are also backed-up daily, weekly, or even monthly. Again, “daily” is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

3. Make sure to set up your website in Google Webmaster Tools. If your site is not already set up here, please click the following link to set up your FREE Webmaster account with Google. www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

4. Identify the INFECTED file and its location using: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/

5. Log into your site via FTP or SFTP and replace the infected file with your stored BACK-UP version.

6. Modify the permissions of your websites “Files” & “Directories” based on the following instructions provided by WordPress.org: http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions

Great Job! Now you’ve added an additional layer of protection to your site! This was the first phase. The next phase only applies in the event that Google indexed the pages of your website after the malware was uploaded.

Once you’ve finished securing your site, you must request that the warning be removed from the Google listings by visiting:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=168328.

At this point, you will be able to request a review of your website and explain what happened to the “Google Gods”. You will also need to explain the steps you took to correct the issue. Typically, if Google indexes your site after you have been hacked, they will notify you of the situation via email and provide you with info on how to request a review. If your site is no longer harmful to its visitors, Google will remove the warning and you will no longer be a “Google Blacklisted” site!

If you’ve run into a similar situation, feel free to leave a <a href=” http://www.boastingbiz.com/contact-us.html target=”_blank”> Question/Comment/Feedback </a> – We would be happy to provide any assistance we can!