My son recently had surgery. It wasn’t anything too serious, but it was traumatic enough that we noticed that he behaved a little differently once it was complete, and his recovery was going to take a little time. However, as soon as he fully recovered, he would be better, stronger, faster, and overall, he would be a healthier 3-year-old than he was before.

As soon as my son came out of surgery, we noticed he was a little fuzzy on what had happened and he hurt a little bit too. He couldn’t immediately get up and play with the toys that he was playing with before-even if he wanted to. Something inside him had changed. He knew that something was different. He noticed a little pain and he was uncomfortable. But the doctor assured him, and my wife and I, that this was normal and that he would be jumping off the furniture and squashing his new little sister again, soon.

Why do I tell you this? The other day I was on a client phone call with a SEO.com colleague. The client we were meeting with was a little concerned that their site was not on the first page of Google and that they had dropped slightly in the SERPs for previous keywords they were targeting. They have only been with us for two months, so we were trying to explain that “valuable” SEO takes time. In the end, the client understood the timeframe and when results could be expected.

As a result of this experience, I realized that SEO is a lot like surgery. We receive new clients who are just plugging along, not really aware that anything is wrong with their website. After we conduct keyword research, competitive analysis and site optimization, things begin to change. And change is frequently accompanied by a measure of discomfort. In SEO we change the keyword emphasis of the pages, reconstruct the meta-tags, and a lot of the content of the website. In other words, we “operate” and begin to make some much-needed changes at the inner-workings of our clients’ websites that may, temporarily, throw their rhythm off. And just like my son, these websites will not immediately rise to the tops of the SERP’s and command Google to index and place them where they want to be immediately. They have to be rehabilitated and strengthened by a healthy, but aggressive, link-building campaign. They need constant monitoring and measuring so the site can begin to rise to the top of the first page in each search engine.

In short, SEO is like operating on a semi-healthy individual who thinks they feel OK, but after having surgery, they realize what bad shape they were in. They have to trust that the competent physician who treated them has made the correct adjustments so that they can perform to the best of their ability with the proper amount of exercise and rehabilitation.

I’m pleased to report that my 3-year-old was once again jumping off the living room couch 3 days after his surgery! I’m not promising that our clients’ sites will rebound as fast as a three-year-old, but we have had great success helping them exceed their desired goals quickly.

SEO Is A Lot Like Surgery is a post by SEO expert Nathan. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Are you being kept in the dark by your current SEO firm? Do you wish the communication lines were a little more open? It’s too bad that some SEO companies view communication and sharing as a conflict of interest rather than an opportunity for reinforced, attack-at-all-sides teamwork. Amazingly, some SEOs believe clients would only stick around long enough to find out their methods and then bolt! In sharp contrast, SEO.com has found that as we share valuable information and resources with our clients, it builds the relationship and they achieve greater success.

I love the work I do at SEO.com. It is a privilege to work at one of the best, if not the best, SEO firms out there. We have consistently helped our clients rank on page 1 of Google (which holds about 70% of the search engine market share) for multiple targeted keywords. Each day I marvel at the methods we employ to help our customers achieve their desired conversion goals. I quickly gained great trust and admiration for SEO.com for many reasons, but especially for how transparent and open we are with our clients in regards to the methods and tools we use to help them.

At first, I was taken-back by it and wondered why any successful company would consider sharing valuable company tools, intellectual property, methods and training with a client who could choose to go out on their own and mimic the same techniques. But I quickly realized that there was no genuine risk and it is one of the reasons why we are so effective.

There are no big secrets in Search Engine Optimization. The work is very transparent, and most anyone can do it. Quality optimization only takes a lot of time, knowledge, dedication and skill, and that’s where an SEO firm comes in. We work for hours a day doing the tasks that anyone with SEO knowledge could do-because we have the time, and the training, to do it. We spend multiple hours every day doing keyword research, looking at our clients’ competitors, link-building and offering site optimization recommendations.

Every now and then we all need to be brave and do something different. We have to break the molds and stereotypes to step out of the norm and stop following the crowd if we want to be special and set apart. I’m proud to work for a company that does this. Many SEO firms simply do the basics for their clients. SEO.com is great at the basics too, but we also do things no other firm will-transparency with clients being only one example.

For example, a current client of SEO.com has seen phenomenal results in the year they have employed our services. During their first six months online they had no sales and only a handful of page visits. As a result of this failure, two of their four investors backed out, and the remaining two investors began desperately searching for a new firm. During their first month working with SEO.com they had 15 sales. By the third week of the second month they had between 5 – 6 sales a day. By the third month they began asking questions about what we were doing and how we were doing it. They even asked if we could show them our SEO methods, so we could work together as a team. We gladly shared the information with them. By the sixth month they were experiencing between 400 and 500 visits to their site every day and a dramatic increase in sales. At the end of their initial six-month contract they decided to double the amount of work we were doing for them and renew the agreement. Today they average between 1200 to 1300 visits and 30 to 40 sales each day!

In SEO, stepping out of the norm is usually rewarded with highly-desired results. Clients like to be kept in the loop. They like to know what is going on-especially with their money. Communication is the key. Our success and growth as a company are the result of a number of different variables, but the level of transparency and openness SEO.com offers its clients certainly deserves due credit.

Does Your SEO Firm Offer X-Ray Vision? is a post by SEO expert Nathan. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Question: So, you’ve optimized your website and you’re getting plenty of traffic, but your conversions are still lacking, what can you do now?

Answer: Conversion Optimization. What’s the use of getting loads of traffic to your site, if it doesn’t improve the bottom line? That would be a giant waste of time, money and other resources. Conversions are the ultimate goal in search marketing efforts.

What Exactly Is Conversion Optimization?

Conversion Optimization is the process of making it easier for users to buy from you (or whatever other conversion goal you have). If it sounds too hard or ambiguous don’t worry; improving the conversion-ability of your site is easier than you think. Below are some conversion-optimization steps that are useful and can be easily integrated with your search marketing campaigns and strategy.

Step 1: Strengthen Usability

Before anyone will buy from you, they need to feel comfortable with your site. The following tips can help increase the usability of your site.

• Think like a user. Try navigating through your site like an average Joe. How would a new user rate your site navigation? Useful? Useless? Easy? Hard? Navigation is one of the most basic elements of usability, so spend some time making it simple and effective. Can a new user get where they want to go in three clicks or less?
• Remove barriers so users can find what they need. Is there anything in your site that is awkward or complicated for a user? Fix it.
• Is the overall design eye-appealing and professional? If not, fix it.
• After looking at your competitors sites, determine if there is anything you should add or omit.
• Use Search Engine Friendly and User Friendly URLs so visitors can bookmark pages and come back easily.

Example of a Friendly URL:

http://www.mysite.com/this-is-a-friendly-url

Example of an Unfriendly URL:

http://www.mysite.com/page.php?section=goodideas/=3201!%!@$!@&!@*!/@*&^!@(&^!@(*%^!@(&*!*@!@HG!G@/((!H@JH!@JHKH!L@JLJ!(!@@}}{++!+!++!++P_+_++P:++=/==/==/=&q=7583

Step 2: Strengthen User Confidence

Most people won’t spend money until they trust you. To increase trust, check the following on your site:

• Do you have secure lock icons and “secure ordering” verbiage on your shopping cart pages?
• It’s important to make sure your site uses standard e-commerce security features such as SSL encryption for processing orders, and/or other appropriate security certificates that are current and work on all browsers. A common mistake made by ecommerce sites is allowing certificates to expire unknowingly.
• Is there warranty or product guarantee information that users need to know about? Do you have features or services that make you stand out among your competitors? Make sure potential customers/clients know about these services, not only on your site, but in your paid ads. For example, if you have an industry-leading warranty, make sure that it’s shown prominently (and tastefully) on your site, and also in your paid ads.

Step 3: Make It Easy For Users To Spend Their Money

Have you ever scanned the “impulse-buy” sections at the grocery store near the checkout counter while waiting? Chances are you discovered something you forgot or didn’t know you needed and bought it! Modules that show other items the user can purchase once they’ve added products to the cart can increase sales.

This could include:

• Popular products/top sellers
• Featured products you want customers to be aware of
• Items purchased by those who bought that particular item (similar interests)
• Accessories that complement the product

Having A Hard Time Determining Where To Start?

Remember that marketing is about communication. If you’re stumped on where to begin, ask customers or clients for feedback. If you’re really motivated, hold focus groups. Obtain customer suggestions for making your site better, easier to use, and building more trust. You can gather some extremely important data by just talking to your target audience. Have fun with it and learn to delight in discovering what you can do better.

Conversion Optimization is a post by SEO expert Nathan. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

If you’re like me, when you hear the word cloaking, you probably think of Star Trek, right? You know those episodes when the Klingons or Romulans employ their “Cloaking Device” to hide their ship from the Enterprise and then they appear all of a sudden and blast their unsuspecting, unaware Federation enemies to kingdom come? Yeah, that’s a cloaking device! It’s too bad they don’t make them small enough for a person!

So, what is cloaking in regards to a website? In SEO terms, cloaking is a sleight-of-hand, deceptive tactic. The term ‘cloaking’ is used to describe a Website that returns altered web pages to search engines that are crawling them. For example, if a regular Joe the Plumber were to visit a cloaked website, he will see and experience something different from what the search crawlers will encounter when they visit the same site. That is, the crawlers will view a more relevant, optimized site! And it is likely unreadable to human visitors. In short, the site is viewed differently by people as opposed to the search engine.

Cloaking is something that a server is programmed to do only when it sees a search engine robot visiting the site. It’s called ‘cloaking’ because it involves hiding the content people see, and substituting it with content designed to rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines have a problem with cloaking because it mocks their ranking algorithms. These algorithms rank pages with respect to what people will see on the page. When this information is deliberately withheld, or alternative information is delivered to the search engine, the algorithm cannot do its job. Cloaking is the ultimate form of invisible text—nobody sees it, not even by viewing the HTML source code.

Now, let’s address what cloaking is NOT.  Personalized content delivery is not cloaking. XML feeds are not cloaking either. The common denominator in both of these examples is that neither of them hide aspects of a site from some, and reveal or make some known to others. Cloaking is only an application that exists to hide optimized content from people (in order to make them more user-friendly), and not the search engines.

Search engines strongly discourage cloaking and will penalize and even strike your site from the SERPs if you are caught using cloaking techniques. Some webmasters and programmers mistakenly think that they need to utilize cloaking to protect their website source code. What they have neglected to consider though, is that the search engines don’t care why you choose to use cloaking, they only see its use as a pattern of deception and will penalize you accordingly.

You never need to cloak. A perceived need to cloak usually indicates a more basic problem with a site. Solve those elementary problems first and you will improve your site for your visitors. A better return on investment for much less effort! So, the next time you are tempted to act like a shady Romulan or a tricksy Klingon and use cloaking—don’t! Instead, do the right thing and come out in the open like an honorable Federation Starship Captain and don’t be afraid to “engage” the enemy in broad daylight.

Cloaking – What It Is and What It Isn’t is a post by SEO expert Nathan. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Looking for a quick fix that will improve your rankings? Take a look at your title tags. A title tag is the line of text that is normally displayed at the top of the browser window.  Title tags are arguably the most important SEO tags for any site.

For most search engines, the maximum length of a title tag to be displayed is between 60-70 characters. If your title tag is over 70 characters, your title will be cut off around 70 characters on the search results page.

Search engine spiders use these title tags as the main source for determining the page topic. Spiders or crawlers examine the title and then translate the topic of the page. This is one reason why it is always best to use your keywords in the page title, and to place them as close to the beginning of the title as possible. Remember, the text included in the title tag is also the text that will appear in the SERPs (search engine results pages) as the linked title on which users will click to access your page. In fact, just fixing the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and significant improvements in your rankings.

For example, let’s say you have an educational site that provides information and guidelines on teacher certification requirements.  You’ve decided that the most important keywords for your site are “teaching certification” and “teaching requirements.” In this case, a page title along the lines of “Teaching Requirements for Teacher Certification” is highly relevant to the topic of the site. Spiders will crawl your site, and because the title is the first factor it sees, the spider will “read” it and then examine the rest of the page finding the keywords used in other places on the page to determine how relevant the title is to the rest of the content. If the content, H tags, and title tag all relate—you’re in business! This is why it’s so important to target the most critical keywords in the title tag.

Follow this same process for all of your pages, and remember to create unique titles that are relevant to each page and do not keyword stuff.  This greatly improves the effectiveness of those tags and will increase the search engine rankings for your keywords. Although your home page might show up for 20 or 30 different keyword combinations, only your top two or three keyword phrases should be included in the tittle.

Title Tag SEO Tips is a post by SEO expert Nathan. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Because keywords are such an important part of the substance of your website content, they require extra special attention. You could even say that keyword usage is a “rite of passage” skill that takes time to acquire. For example, if your site sells church chairs, or knives, you might think that the word “knives” would be the best keyword to utilize. Well, you may or may not be right, but it’s a good bet that this site sells many different kinds of “knives.” Being able to select the right keywords requires a good understanding of your target audience and what they are looking for.

Some unethical SEOs choose to employ  renegade tactics such as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is overloading the content or meta tags of the web page with every possible keyword or phrase that relates to the site in many different forms. For example, a bad meta description for our knife site would read as follows: “knife, knives, butterfly knives, switchblade, spring assisted knife, sharp, steel.” Notice that this example has only keywords and no sentence structure. There was no coherency and certainly no call to action inviting the browser to “do” anything.

A good meta description would read something like: “Find a wide variety of knives including switchblade, butterfly and spring-assisted knives at Knife.com.  Take a look at our selection of knives and order yours today!” This example is better because it’s not stuffed with keywords.  Another benefit to this meta description is that it doesn’t just target broad terms like “knife,” but employs other specific search keywords that are related to the site.

Keyword stuffing doesn’t work because when the search engine crawler examines your site, its algorithm can quickly determine if  keywords are used an  unreasonable number of times. If your site contains an unnaturally high density of one single keyword, your site will actually drop in the rankings rather than rise. In severe cases, your site could be removed from the search engine index completely.

Don’t give in to the temptation to stuff your website full of keywords in an attempt to improve your rankings. The result will be the exact opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. You’re better off writing good, relevant content that humans and search engines will love.

Keyword Stuffing is a post by SEO expert Nathan. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.