SEO | CategoryCode

No One Can Guarantee a #1 Ranking on Google

Posted by Landon Poburan on March 25th, 2013

Search engine rankings are not something that can be guaranteed. Beware of companies that make this promise. There is a lot of spam emails and phone calls these days promising companies #1 rankings on Google. This devalues the hard work good quality companies do.

Here is an excerpt from the Google Webmaster Tools docs on Search Engine Optimization

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google.

Most of us have likely received emails from ABC Company explaining they can provide #1 Ranking for our keyword, guaranteed, or they will get us thousands of links, etc. Quick tip, the actual good quality firms would NEVER cold-email you in that way!

Just as Google states it, the bottom line is no one can guarantee #1 rankings. It is an ever evolving process that takes time to do it right. In the past there has been websites and SEOs that have “scammed” the system to quick rankings, and most likely there will be people that continue to try and do so. But Google’s latest Panda and Penguin updates are evidence that they are constantly evolving and that using “Black Hat” methods can get you penalized. You could even get your website banned from Google’s index. The search engines are set to provide the highest quality, most relevant result for a users search query, they will always be fighting spam. Spam will never win.

The best way to increase your website rankings is to produce good high quality content that is relevant for your niche. Then set goals, and work towards them. Working with a local SEO and Internet Marketing company can help you with this.

Blogging, SEO and Website Traffic – The Domino Effect

Posted by Landon Poburan on February 26th, 2013

Most tech savvy professionals and business owners know that blogging is a great way to benefit your business online. If by chance you didn’t, it can help with search engine rankings, website traffic and social media if done correctly. I have noticed when we combine blogging and social media we have a domino effect with our SEO and Website Traffic. It compounds over time, giving you more results with the same effort.

When businesses are just starting out with SEO and Internet Marketing Strategies or just starting to use Social Media they may not have may followers, or many website visitors. But blogging and generating quality content to be hugely beneficial.

I have noticed this personally, with our CategoryCode website. I will outline our experiences with this.

Our Experiences

Each time I write a blog post, I share the article and post the article via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ and some others (When I share the article on Twitter I will typically use some hash tags so it is exposed to people following the topic). There will always be some people that see the post and visit the article. This causes a spike in Website Traffic similar to the spike we seen with our blog post last week on a WordPress Plugin called Gravity Forms. Can you see the spike?!

Now, along with this large spike in website traffic we typically also gained some Twitter followers and Likes on Facebook. Aside from the Social Media sharing, we also make sure we submit an update sitemap to the search engines so the blog post can get indexed quickly.

The Domino/Compound Effect

This is where the magic happens. Keep in mind consistency is key.

1. You write a new blog post on an interesting topic.

2. You share your awesome blog post on all your social media accounts, and gain new followers.

3. Search engines index your new page. Search engines love good, quality, fresh content. The more, the better (of quality content).

4. You see a spike in website traffic from people visiting the article.

5. Rinse, and repeat.

Each time you do this, you will gain more followers/friends on social media. This means that each time you share something more people are seeing it, compounding the amount of people that it will be exposed to, especially when they share it with their networks. Overtime you build a bigger and bigger network that your content will be exposed to.

Each time you blog you are generating new quality content. This is fantastic for search engines, this can benefit your website traffic and this can benefit various search engine ranking factors if you become a quality source of content.

Over time, your social media networks will grow, your website will perform better, and your website traffic will increase. You are putting in the same effort, but each time the results are compounding!

Tip to Maximize Your Results

Determine The Best Time To Tweet

Using a tool like SocialBro to determine the best time to Tweet can be a huge benefit. Sharing your content at optimal times means that more people will see it, creating the opportunity for more people to visit it and share it. SocialBro has a tool to see when your Twitter followers are most active – What time of the day and what days of the week.

Scheduling Your Sharing

Once you have determined the best time to share your content, you can easily schedule your content to be shared using tools such as TweetDeck or HootSuite. For example if the best time to share is Tuesdays at 9:00AM, you can still write your article on Sunday night, then schedule it to be shared on Tuesday at 9:00AM.

Doing Keyword Research

If you would like to create a bigger SEO impact with your blog post, I suggest using Google’s Keyword Tool. This will provide you some vital information on what keywords people are searching for allowing you to use them in your article title and throughout the body. We did this with an article and we ranked on page 1 for the targeted term.

Practice Makes Perfect

Many businesses don’t like blogging. I personally am not crazy about it either! But the benefits are too large to ignore.

The more you do it, the easier it gets. Ideas start to flow better, they come together faster, and it starts to take less time. Just like anything else in life, you need to get into a routine!

Wrapping Up

I truly hope that you have found some benefit to this article as we have found it beneficial for us. Hopefully you can start to see these results if your not already!

PPC vs. SEO [infographic]

Posted by Landon Poburan on July 20th, 2012

I came across a fantastic article yesterday discussing the war between Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-click Advertising. This is typically a great debate and each have pros and cons.

When reviewing them, SEO generates ‘free’ clicks. In essence, they are not free if your paying for SEO but your not directly paying for each click. PPC on the other hand, you pay every time someone clicks your ad and goes to your website.

Wordstream has a fantastic infographic demonstrating a plethora of statistics and comparisons. Here are some that stood out to me:

On average the top 3 spots take 41.1% of the clicks – The top 3 are paid ads.
On average the top organic listing gets just 8.9% of clicks.
PPC accounts for 64.6% of clicks for high commercial keywords.
45.5% of people couldn’t identify paid ads.
PPC is not affected by Google’s algorithm updates.

Read the full Wordstream post or view the full infographic here.