Inexpensive search engine optimization

Posted on July 20, 2011 by DigitalAuthority

It almost goes without saying, that the most cost effective method for inexpensive search engine optimization is doing it yourself. So… if you’re on a tight budget do it yourself.

If you have even a small budget however, the right SEO expert you can often give you a lot of bang for your buck.

But more importantly… a good Okanagan SEO expert can help you set things up correctly, then you can maintain it from there.

If you want to make a go of it yourself, here are the steps you must take to get things rolling:

Internet Marketing - Vernon, Kelowna BC - We Can help
  • Ensure that you have clean design… using CSS and minimal amounts of adobe flash – CSS separates the content form the structure, allowing search engines to index your site faster and far easier.
  • Ensure that your site functions well; no broken links, loads fast, easy to navigate and a straitforward path for your visitor to follow
  • Know which keywords ‘YOUR’ customer is searching with, and optimize your home page and several internal pages for this primary keyword phrase(s). Use secondary keyword phrases as well to enhance search engine visibility
  • Make sure your main keyword is in the title of your home page, in the first paragraph of your site and in several H1 tags
  • Use social bookmarking sites like digg to bookmark you sites pages’
  • Use videos to drive traffic to your site. Videos can be posted on youtube and a number of other video sharing sites
  • Get Links from other sites – one way back links are the most effective
  • Continually add fresh content to your site – the easiest way to do this is to add a blog. Blogs let non-technical people quickly add content with out the need of a tech

On-page search engine optimization is always the first step and one of the key methods the search engines use to rank your site. The caveat with on-page Search engine optimization is that it often entails technical abilities.

Home made designed web sites and the use of Web design software often mess up on-page SEO.

Why?

Because the structure that makes up the pages is vital to a good on-page SEO strategy.

Going after local SEO is the most effective SEO strategy any Vernon or Kelowna small businesses can use

Search engine optimization in Vernon and Kelowna is not as complicated as trying to get a number one spot in a city the size of Vancouver BC… but it does take a bit of work. Following the steps above will give you an SEO advantage in our local market. But if you are planning on expanding your market beyond Vernon and/or Kelowna, you should probably hire an expert. More often than not it will pay for its self in spades.

Until Next Time… May Success Be Yours!

Troy Laughren
Web Site Profit Engineer, Digital Authority

Posted in Internet Marketing, SEO & Search Engines, Video, Web Design, Web Design Vernon BC, Web Development Vernon BC | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Web Design Vernon BC

Posted on June 13, 2011 by DigitalAuthority

Digital Authority is a Professional Web Design Company Servicing Vernon BC, Kelowna BC, Armstrong BC, Salmon Arm BC and other cities in the Okanagan Valley.

In this video, we’ll tease you with what it takes to create an effective web site.

What most people don’t realize is that all website development and design is not equal. It may sorta look like it on the outside… but if fact, the key components to web design success are located inside; the psychology, the positioning, the flow of the design, the call to actions and so on… those components and a few others are what make or break a web site.

Don’t be fooled by Other Web Design firms in Vernon BC or Kelowna BC that spout all kinds of results or worse ‘fancy design’ unless they can prove their systems work. And frankly, most web design firms in the Okanagan don’t have a clue – just ask their customers.

Posted in SEO & Search Engines, Video, Web Design, Web Design Vernon BC, Web Development Vernon BC | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

How Do Search Engines Work? Spiders, crawlers and robots, oh my!

Posted on May 28, 2011 by DigitalAuthority

Search engines direct visitors to your website.

So, how do these search engines actually work and how do they present the information to the visitor doing the search?

As complex as it looks, the concept is pretty straightforward really . The underlying algorithms’ however are super complex.

There are basically two parts to a search engine. The first is the robot; also known as a crawler or spider. The second is the UI (user interface)… the UI is where the visitor types their search query into, and views the results of that query or search phrase.


Google Search Results

Search Engines use their crawlers or spiders to read the contents of your web site, then store and rank that information in their database. This is called indexing a website. When you submit your website to a search engine, or for best results entice the spider to visit your site by an external link on another site, or by a link embedded in a web 2.0 or social media site. If you’ve successfully seduced the search engines’ robot, the search engine spider/robot will begin crawling through your web sites pages… and if they’ve been linked together correctly, it will index your entire site.

Sites not linked correctly end up with only a few of its pages available in the search results.

Linking pages correctly is an important web design strategy, and results in the best SEO possible – when it comes to SEO and search engines, every extra effort goes a long way. Often it can be the difference between a page 10 listing (no traffic / no visitors) and a page 1 listing (lots of traffic / lots of visitors).

Quick tip: To determine how many of your sites pages are currently indexed in Google, use the ‘site:‘ qualifier. For example in Google’s search bar type: site:digitalauthority.com to see how many pages we currently have indexed. As a side note… if your site is frequently updated, Google’s index will change from time to time – and you may even disappear altogether for a day or two as Google works to determines your new ranking. Once your site is established however, that is, Google ‘trusts’ it, only changed, added or updated pages will come and go as Google indexes your site… this is known as the ‘Google dance’.

Technically speaking a ‘spider’ is an automated program used by the search engine to travel the web and spider (index) new and changing content. Spiders visit the web site, read that content; like the Meta tags, text, picture captions and follow the links the site points to. The spider then returns home with all that indexed information and dumps it into a central repository, where the data is taken apart, analyzed, ranked and indexed.

Spiders periodically return to a site and check for any updated information. The frequency of re-spidering is determined by the programers of the search engine and is often dependent on the type of site, niche or category its filed under.

A spider is similar to a book, where as it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search. Spiders index million and millions of pages each day.

There are only a handful of BIG search engines; Bing (formerly MSN), Yahoo and the grand daddy if them all… Google. Google owns in the range of 75% to 85% of all searches performed. So always focus your SEO (search Engine Optimization) efforts on Google first, for other two and the hundreds of thousands of other lessor search engines, will quickly follow in its footsteps.

When you ask a search engine to locate information by typing keywords or keyphrases into its search query form, it quickly searches through its own index – the index it created from all the data that its spiders gathered – not by actually searching the Web.

Different search engines produce different search results… because every search engine uses a different algorithm to spider (index) and search through its indices.

There you have it Search engines 101. Spiders, crawlers and robots, oh my!

Posted in SEO & Search Engines, Web Design, Web Design Vernon BC, Web Development Vernon BC | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Internet Marketing Matters So Much?

Posted on April 21, 2011 by DigitalAuthority

Over the last 15+ years the Internet has taken the world by storm and it’s become ingrained in nearly every single persons daily life.

People use the Internet to search for almost everything, and now, more than ever, local businesses and other local information too.

In fact, Local Search for Vernon BC and Kelowna BC has reached an all time new high. According to Googles’ Insights (A Google Lab product that tracks search trends)… the search for local businesses here in Vernon and Kelowna has grown by a whopping %1400* in the last 12 months.

Internet Marketing - Vernon, Kelowna BC - We Can help

And with the explosive growth of smartphones; HTC, Blackberries and the iPhone, the move to searching for everything online is happening even faster. Access to the Internet is no longer available just from our desktop computers – its now availble from our cell-phones, DVD players, Blueray Players, TV’s and set-top boxes too.

The problem is, that to many small businesses fail to take these trends serious. Then wonder why their advertising doesn’t work like it once did.

Advertising doesn’t work like it once did… because practically everyone is using the Internet, and particularly Google, to find the information they want. Consumers (you and I) are ignoring traditional media more and more – and the trend is only going to continue.

The Yellow pages are dying (when was the last time you looked in a yellow pages directory?), newspapers are on their last leg and more views happen everyday on YouTube then views on the 3 big US networks combined; NBC, CBC & NBC.

It really boils down to this… if you’re not reaching your customers, and potential customers, in the places they’re looking (i.e. Google, Bing and Yahoo, FaceBook, YouTube etc…) you’re simply going to get left behind, but what’s more, you’ll end up surrendering all the business to your competitors to just take.

In the coming days and months… we’re going to look at several must-know tactics and strategies, that you can no longer sit idly by and ignore when it comes to marketing and more importantly marketing on the Internet.

In addition we’ll take a look at the ONLY 3 ways there are to grow a business:

  • Increase the Number of Sales per day, week or month
  • Increase the Frequency of those sales
  • Increase the dollar amount that each customer/client spends with you

Yip, try as hard as you might, those are the only 3 ways to grow a business – everything else is just the dance you must do to support them.

Until Next Time… May Success Be Yours!

Troy Laughren
Web Profit Engineer, Digital Authority

* Google Insights June 2011

Posted in Internet Marketing, SEO & Search Engines, Web Design, Web Design Vernon BC, Web Development Vernon BC | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment