Vero Beach SEO Blog

This SEO BLOG is my reminder to stay current on the latest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and it's also a service to Florida businesses who want to learn more about SEO and why it's important. Here is a quick SEO BLOGGER BIO to let you know how I came to know about search engine optimization... I am a native of Norway, but went to university in the United States. I have a computer engineering degree from Arizona State University. After graduation, I moved back to Norway, joined IBM and simultaneously obtained an MBA from the Oslo School of Economics. After several years as Vice President, IBM Norway, I struck out on my own and started the Norwegian E-Learning company, Apropos Internet as well as Virosafe Norway and ViroSafe Denmark, distributors of anti-malware / anti-virus software. My American wife, Corinne and I have now settled in Vero Beach, Florida and are offering SEO, WEB DESIGN and E-COMMERCE services to businesses from Melbourne to West Palm Beach. As a veteran computer programmer and entrepreneur, staying current on changes in technology has been essential to the success of my companies. The Lumino Web Design SEO BLOG is a smattering of SEO topics that are vital to my business and potentially relevant to yours. Profile on Google+

E-Commerce Clients - Go For Google Shopping Feeds Savvy online-shoppers cut to the chase when looking to buy a product on the Web. By selecting the Google "Shopping" tab in the drop-down-menu under MORE, they are taken to a search page that looks like this. ➜ When they type a product search into the top search bar a new results page appears with a “Best Match” photo, a list of stores that carry the item, price of the item at various retailers, and a filter function to quickly find the best deal. The Google Shopping Center is dominated by the big players, Amazon, Sears, Best Buy etc., but smaller players can still earn extra clicks and conversions by having their stock on display here. Listing your products on Google Shopping is also a way to create more back-links to your website.
Google Product Ad Extensions Lumino Web Design offers set-up of Google Products as an add-on to our SEM (Search Engine Marketing) service. Once we have made a product feed with full details adhering to Google’s product feed parameters, we can link your product feed to your Google Ad campaign to produce something that looks like this under your ad. ➜ Setting up Product Extensions on your AdWords account is quite simple. Once we have your product feed uploaded to your Google Merchant Account center, we use “Ad Extensions” tab to line your Google Products with your existing Google Ads.
Product Listing Ads We can also set up PLA’s. Product Listing Ad campaigns are similar to AdWords, but look like this when displayed. ➜ We can manage them through the Adwords interface or Adwords Editor just like any other campaign. Unlike normal text ad campaigns, PLA campaigns are not keyword-based. The more important factor with PLA’s is quality and relevance of your product feed. Google issues very specific parameters and formatting instructions for its product feeds and we make sure your data feeds meet their criteria. We use as much detail as possible and update often. A broken or misguided link will put your whole product feed into disfavor. In order to track performance of your Product Listing Ads, we separate your ads according to product labels, making sure that each label has been validated. Setting up your online store is just the beginning. Make sure you hire a web design company who will offer the value-added service of marketing your products on the Internet.

You know SEO has gone to far when you begin reading content on a website and can't even decipher the meaning of a sentence behind the deluge of keywords. During a recent SXSW panel discussion between Matt Cutts from Google, Bing's Senior Product Marketing Manager and Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, Cutts revealed a plan by Google to penalize "over-optimization" of web content. In the coming weeks or months, Google plans to change its algorithm so that sites with an annoying percentage of keywords and and links will be downgraded. Critics are calling this move another empty promise by Google, while those of us who are over-optimistic, hope the move will genuinely improve search results and reward White Hat website and SEO providers who create informative, relevant content.

On February 27, 2012 Google announced 40 new improvements to the quality of search results it provides. As usual what was not said, merely hinted at, was as interesting as what was said.


GOOGLE SEARCH QUALITY HIGHLIGHTS FOR FEBRUARY, 2012 INCLUDE:

• Google has changed their evaluation of links; "in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years." (This leads us to ponder what they were doing before that turns out to be undesirable.)
• Local search results are now even more streamlined to global results, providing greater consistency.
• When doing an image search the results will be in larger format and contain a more updated assortment of images.
• Reliability of local searches will improve as Google improves location detection for both query and document.
• Linked to what we learned when Panda 3.2 was unveiled, Google has made strides in giving fresh content precedence over stale content.

Click here to read the complete list...

When optimizing www.twowayradiogear.com for Google, I ran into a question on the keyword "two way radio". The dictionary will tell you it is spelled with a hyphen, but it is also very commonly spelled without a hyphen or with the number 2. "If your main keyword has several versions, is it better to use the most popular one exclusively - for consistency - or set a wide net and hope you catch all ways people "think" your product is spelled?" Purposely misspelling a word on your site is probably a bad idea. However, if you know that your keyword has two or three alternative spellings, it is a good idea to use all versions but confine one keyword version to one page. In other words, do not mix spelling versions within a single page.

When you're bug-eyed from scanning statistics and re-writing copy, get outside for a healthy dose of nature's antidote to SEOing.

If you have a Google account, and are logged into Google when you search, now you'll find it's not just keyword related public websites that come up, but also keyword related personal content from friends, family and contacts. If you are planning a vacation to the Grand Canyon say, your search might just bring up snap shots from your cousin's trip to Arizona last May. 

Some are already accusing Google of anti-trust violations while some feel the added personal content will enrich the Google search function.

Check out the official Google blog to get the full story and decide for yourself...

André Vold

Search Engine Optimization is all about trying to reverse engineer Google's algorithms - or maybe we should call it "playing cat and mouse" with Google. Google has more than 250 parameters that controls the ranking your site will get on the search result page - Google calls this the PageRank, named after Google's founder Larry Page who came up with the initial Google algorithm.

Tuesday, June 21 is the day when Google rolled out its Panda update 2.2 and changed the SEO rules forever. The Panda algorithm is also know as Farmer, and its sole aim is to make the web more user friendly by removing unwanted content. The algorithm was developed by Google engineer Navneet Panda - hence the name.

Google announced today that they had implemented several changes directed at unethical search engine optimizers. Two of the best known techniques used by this group are "link spamming" and "web farming". By creating superficial websites, with content copied directly from other sites and links to the customer site, unethical SEO operators have been able to propel their client to the front page of Google.

Many honest, hard-working search engine optimizers are fed up, and have begun reporting these cheaters to Google and Google is finally putting their foot down. Google implements about 500 changes to its algorithm each year, but the changes made today are said to be the most expansive in several years. The changes are expected to have considerable consequences for low quality web sites that have been employing unethical search engine optimization techniques.

I have written more on this topic on the Lumino News page.

Be sure to check out:

J C Penney exposed by New York Times and demoted on Google

Google fights back against unethical SEOs

In this article I will explain how we can use the information from the Google Cache to improve our SEO efforts.

Before you go on with your search engine optimization efforts, it is important that you understand the differences between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). A well planned SEM campaign can greatly enhance your SEO efforts - at least in an early stage of your campaign. I will talk a lot more about Search Engine Marketing in later articles. This article will explain everything you need to get started with an effective SEO and SEM campaign.

In this article I will discuss the use of Header Tags and text modifiers in your web pages. Use these simple rules to better organize your web pages for both human readers and for Google and other search engines.

In this article I will discuss how to search engine optimize hyperlinks and image tags. If you have read my previous postings, you will probably say by now - more tags? Give me a break. Well, Search Engine Optimization is all about the sum of those seemingly minor steps that, combined, will make a difference.

So, don't give up quite yet. Image tags and the way Google interprets these are actually pretty exciting...

In this article, the third so far in my SEO Blog (plenty of more coming though), I will explain the term "Meta tags" and the importance of these HTML tags when it comes to search engine optimization.

The importance of well designed domain names, web-addresses (URLs) and file names / menu names...

This is the first in a series of articles on SEO or Search Engine Optimization. (These articles have been written by me, André Vold, founder and chief programmer at Lumino Web Design).

In this first article I'll provide a short history of the boom in SEO services, and a description of what it means to "optimize" a web site for search engines such as Google.