Optimize Images for SEO in 5 Easy Steps

More Than One Way to Get to Page One of Search Engine Results Pages

One of the frequently over-looked pieces of content on a webpage when it comes to SEO is image optimization.  Optimizing images can significantly contribute to your SEO and also help you get additional exposure on SERP pages now that universal search results frequently include images.

While it might be difficult to get your pages to rank highly for many head terms, you might be able to get an image on page one for the head term, which, if compelling enough can bring you a decent volume of traffic.

Here are the five most impactful things you can do to optimize your images:

Use your keywords in your image file name. Rather than the typical image01.jpg filename, use a filename that it descriptive and keyword rich. …

Crowdsourcing and Social Media Marketing

How to Avoid “Black Hat” Techniques

If you check out popular crowdsourcing websites, you will find the “jobs” sections dominated by requests for social media marketing activities.  It can be difficult to get your social media up and off the ground–especially a regular, high-quality blog publishing effort–so it seems many small businesses have turned to what I would consider to be “black hat” techniques.

Consider the following most common social marketing “job” listings…

Blog and Article Writing. The pay for these ranges from $0.50 to $5.00 per article.  Most article requests range from 350 to 500 words and specify the keywords to be used and the keyword density.  These jobs seem to fall into a gray area.  If you can find good writers out there who can provide you with legitimate content, why not?  However, the quality of…

Hiring Search Marketing Help

Fancy Nancy vs. Redundant Rhonda

When looking to hire or partner with someone to help with your search marketing, the traditional ideas of a fancy advertising agency tend to pop into people’s heads –fancy glass office, dressed fancy, talks fancy, creates fancy messaging and images, etc.  However, when it comes to search marketing, Fancy Nancy isn’t likely to get you very far.

Her sophistication and wit will likely mean that her content won’t reach, attract or convert the average searcher you are seeking out.   For online marketing, you should be thinking about working with Redundant Rhonda.  Qualities you really want are redundant, simple, monotonous and patient.

Why am I advocating for Redundant Rhonda?  Who in their right mind wants a boring person to handle activities related to marketing and advertising?

Here’s why…

Quality #1: Redundant

Being successful online is all about…

Attracting In-bound Links to Your Website

Above-the-Board Tips and Tricks

One of the best ways to ensure your website ranks well for your most important keywords in natural search results is through in-bound links to your site.  But how do you attract them (short of begging other website owners to link to you)?  We’ve got some tips and tricks below that will help you build links to your website.

Before we get started, though, just a quick reminder about links, link juice and the social etiquette of linking:

First, not all links are created equal.  Google, Yahoo! and Bing all evaluate links to your website relative to the quality of the source of the link.  So, for instance, if you get a link from The New York Times it’s vastly more important to the search engines than if Yield Software links to you (we hope…

Impacts of Google Ranking Changes

Mayday Mayday – How Was Your Website Impacted?

Google is constantly making changes to its algorithms, which determine what websites appear in their natural search results and in what order they appear. Most changes do not have significant impacts, but Google’s recent change made between April 28th and May 3rd — called the “May Day Update” because it happened mostly on May 1st, but also “Mayday Update” because of its potential adverse impacts on websites — has resulted in the following for many websites:

• Rank of deeper individual pages within websites
• Rank for long tail keyword searches (three-plus words in the search query)

In a nutshell, Google has cracked down on quality for longer-tail keywords – making its evaluation of deeper individual website pages more similar to how it conducts natural search rankings for keyword searches with one-to-two words.

This is probably…