The 2019 Marketing Plan

Tired of Marketing That Does Not Work? You're not alone. With so many different options available, it’s hard to decide when, where and how to advertise to get the best return-on-investment. Yes money not clicks and likes. I am talking about marketing as a real tool to grow your business to get a response. Not a look. Not a like. Not a click. But a sale!   NOW For only $2019 a month  You can get new customers!  This is a plan that works. It is not new but uses new elements in marketing you might not be aware of. It is process of taking key elements in marketing and weave them in and out. The big guys use them so why not you?   Email Marketing Direct Mail Content / Blog Management Teleprospecting Marketing has many doors. But which door do you open and when? What order do you open the doors and how many times do you need to go thou the door on the right of the door on the left to attract customers?   We Know! Larson & Associates can help you to design and develop a unique campaign,  and run it for only $2019 a month. We have been doing this for over 44 years. Larson & Associate’s knowledgeable project management take your company through each step of the way. Larson & Associates Direct Marketing services including teleprospecting, direct mail, promotional marketing, email blast and fulfillment services. Making Good Businesses Great and Great Businesses Even Better Larson & Associates 679 N Eagle Lane    Suite 201 Palatine IL 60067 847-991-1294 howard@larsonassociates.ws

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 8

In part 8 we are getting into why content matters to your sit site. What makes a site really work and not work.

61. Useful Content:  Google may distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content. You have no choices on what Google things is good and what Google thinks is bad. All you can do is post what you think is the best you got.

62. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights: Google has stated that they’re on the hunt for sites that don’t bring anything new or useful to the table and guess what? Google lowers the page ranking,

63. Contact Us Page: Google prefers sites with an “appropriate amount of contact”. And if your contact information matches your whois info you might get a bump in page bonus.

64. Domain Trust/TrustRank: Site trust — measured by how many links away your site is from highly-trusted seed sites is a hugely important ranking factor.

65. Site Architecture: A well put-together site architecture helps Google thematically organize your content.

66. Site Updates: How often a site is updated and especially when new content is added to the site is a site-wide freshness factor. And it makes the spiders come back and rank your page more often.

67. Number of Pages: The number of pages a site has is a weak sign of authority. At the very least a large site helps distinguish it from thin affiliate sites. Size can matter.

68. Presence of Sitemap: A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier, faster and more thoroughly, improving visibility.

69. Site Uptime: Lots of downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your ranking and can even result in deindexing if not corrected. Google needs sites that are up. If you are not find another host. It is important

Larson Notes & Satire:  Content, content, content. Good quality and unique. BUT if your site is not on the 1st page of an organic search and you did not let me play with it.

IN the last week Page 1 results got 27 percent of all traffic from the average search, but my blog got 97%. Content matters and blogs matter.

In a sample of over 8 million clicks over 94% of people only clicked on first page results and less than 6% actually made it over to the second page.  One of the biggest drop offs is between the 10 spot (bottom of the first page) and the 11 spot (top of the second page).

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 7

In part 7 we are getting more into the inner workings of your site. What makes a site really work and not work.

60. Parked Domains: A Google update in December of 2011 decreased search visibility of parked domains. So what is a Parked Domain? It is a web address that does nt have a site attacted to it or hosting of a site and is only redirects people to your primary site. A parked domain is NOT a website. Instead, it is a forwarding trigger so to speak to take the person to your primary domain name and web site for your company. Parked domains are commonly used when:

You need a place to park a domain for which you do not have a website

You have more than one domain that should lead to your primary domain

You have common misspellings of your domain name that you have registered.

61. Useful Content:  The key here is what is useful? Google decides. As king of web searches Google may distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content. Again this is a game and you need to learn how to play the game.

62. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights: Google has stated that they’re on the hunt for sites that don’t bring anything new or useful to the table, especially thin affiliate sites.

63. Contact Us Page: Google wants what they call prefered sites with an “appropriate amount of contact information”. You get a bonus and brownie points if your contact information matches your whois info.

64. Domain Trust/TrustRank: Site trust — measured by how many links away your site is from highly-trusted seed sites — is a massively important ranking factor. There are services that you can subscribe to for your site to become a trusted site. I guess if you need a quick fix it might be a good thing but I like to do things organically because they are more lasting in the long run.

65. Site Architecture: A well put-together site architecture (especially a silo structure) helps Google thematically organize your content.

66. Site Updates: How often a site is updated — and especially when new content is added to the site — is a site-wide freshness factor. A blog, a new service page in the beginning do daily updates or changes to your site after a while a few times a week should be enough to keep those little web spiders coming back to your page looking for your changes.

67. Number of Pages: The number of pages a site has is a weak sign of authority. At the very least a large site helps distinguish it from thin affiliate sites.

68. Presence of Sitemap: A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility.

69. Site Uptime: Lots of downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your ranking and can even result in deindexing if not corrected. If your down all the time maybe it is time for a new hosting company.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Your site has to look nice load fast and now be able to be mobile friendly. I’ll take my personal satire down to a minimum because I don’t make the rules I just try to figure them out as they happen. BUT if your site is not on the 1^st page of an organic search and you did not let me play with it.
Page 1 results got 92 percent of all traffic from the average search.
In a sample of over 8 million clicks over 94% of people only clicked on first page results and less than 6% actually made it over to the second page.  One of the biggest drop off’s is between the 10 spot (bottom of the first page) and the 11 spot (top of the second page).
And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 6

Here we are at part 6.
As before today’s list of 10 are all things you could do yourself but might want to outsource. Most of it is just content, content, content.
50. WordPress Tags: Tags are WordPress-specific relevancy signal.  Tagging your pictures is always a good way to ad in keywords.
51. Keyword in URL: Another important relevancy signal. If it fits work the key word in the page URL.
52. URL String:  The categories in the URL string are read by Google and may provide a thematic signal to what a page is about. This is one place I love. You might get hammered out with one or two key words but if you can work your key word strings to be nitch specific like “telemarketing for printers” , see what company comes up on page 1 with that string, you will start to get my excitement over them
53. References and Sources: Citing references and sources, like research papers do, may be a sign of quality. The Google Quality Guidelines states that reviewers should keep an eye out for sources when looking at certain pages: “This is a topic where expertise and/or authoritative sources are important…”. However, Google has denied that they use external links as a ranking signal. But Google could change the rules tomorrow if they wanted to. I tend to think that if you put in any sources for your content research it is an addition to key works and you could pull in possible hits from those companies or people.
54. Bullets and Numbered Lists: Bullets and numbered lists help break up your content for readers, making them more user friendly. Google likely agrees and may prefer content with bullets and numbers. I love numbered or bulleted content copy. I think or at least I like to have things laid out for me in a nice order to follow along.
55. Priority of Page in Sitemap: The priority a page is given via the sitemap.xml file may influence ranking. Most of you are not even going to get into the site map of your site but its there.
56. Too Many Outbound Links: Straight from the aforementioned Quality rater document a few blogs ago. Keep your links down to those that are important to you and your business. Don’t link out just to do it.  Don’t distract from the Main Content of your page
57. Quantity of Other Keywords Page Ranks. If the page ranks for several other keywords it may give Google an internal sign of quality. Keep in mind you want to be content consistent but all (keywords) matter.
58. Page Age: Although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page. Yes age does have its benefits. But like a hair cut keep it fresh, cut and trimmed monthly.
59. User Friendly Layout: Citing the Google Quality Guidelines Document yet again “The page layout on highest quality pages makes the Main Content immediately visible”

Larson Notes & Satire:  This is all stuff you can do and be checking MONTHLY. If you don’t want to get a hold of me and I can do it for you. I took my page up to #1 so I know I can do the same for you.

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 5

Links links and more links! But do they do you any good? Here we are at part 5.
Today’s list of 10 are yours to not just take care of but be on guard that they don’t disappear on you. Yes links do disappear and become a deterent to page ranking.
40. Broken Links: Having 1 broken like is bad enough but having too many broken links on a page may be a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. You need to check who your linking to every once in a while. The Google Rater Guidelines Document uses broken links as one was to assess a homepage’s quality. Be vigulent its your site, not your linking partners.
41. Reading Level: There’s no doubt that Google estimates the reading level of webpages. In fact, Google used to give you reading level stats: But what they do with that information is up for debate. Some say that a basic reading level (sadly 3^rd grade) will help you rank better because it will appeal to the masses. But others (like myself) strive for a higher level to get a more educated client.  A lower language level will also rank your site and associate you to a basic reading level with content mills like Ezine Articles.

42. Affiliate Links: Affiliate links themselves probably won’t hurt your rankings. But if you have too many, Google’s algorithm may pay closer attention to the quality of those links to make sure you’re not a “thin affiliate site”.

43. HTML errors/W3C validation: Lots of HTML errors or sloppy coding may be a sign of a poor quality site. While controversial, many in SEO think that WC3 validation is a weak quality signal. ( https://validator.w3.org )
44. Page Host’s Domain Authority: All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority. That is sort of common sense but needs to be said.

45. Page’s PageRank: Not perfectly correlated. But in general higher PR pages tend to rank better than low PR pages.

46. URL Length: Search Engine Journal notes that excessively long URLs may hurt search visibility.
47. URL Path: A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost. Set up your page order to make best possible use of the content.
48. Human Editors: Although never confirmed, Google has filed a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs. OMG yes real people do sometimes get involved.
49. Page Category: The category the page appears on is a relevancy signal. A page that’s part of a closely related category should get a relevancy boost compared to a page that’s filed under an unrelated or less related category. Yes the company your site keeps matters.

Larson Notes & Satire:  This is all stuff you can do and be checking MONTHLY. If you don’t want to get a hold of me and I can do it for you.
And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 4

The more you do or sometimes the less you to the more you get! Welcome to Part 4.
Today’s list of 10 are more things you will have control over or not. And if you are like me, you love, control. More tecky stuff than I like but someone has to do it.
30. Keyword Word Order: An exact match of a searcher’s keyword in a page’s content will generally rank better than the same keywords or phrase in a different order. For example: consider a search for: “dog grooming methods”. A page optimized for the phrase “dog grooming methods” will rank better than a page optimized for “Methods for grooming a dog”. This is a good illustration of why keyword research is really, really important.
31. Outbound Link Quality: Many SEOs think that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google. I agree.
32. Outbound Link Theme: According to Moz, search engines may use the content of the pages you link to as a relevancy of your page. For example, if you have a page about dogs that links to automotive company, this just might tell Google that your page is about the dog in a car, not dogs themselves.
33. Grammar and Spelling: Proper grammar and spelling is always good but  Cutts gave mixed thoughts back in 2011 on whether or not this was important. Personally it is not good to misuse and misspell things but it is more important to keep pushing your message and content out than to be worried about the grammar police.
34. Syndicated Content: Is the content original? If it’s scraped or copied from some other indexed page it won’t give you as high a ranking as original content or it could just end up in their Supplemental Index.
35. Helpful Supplementary Content: According to a now-public Google Rater Guidelines Document (good till they change it), helpful supplementary content is an indicator of a page’s quality (and therefore, Google ranking). Examples include things like currency converters, loan interest calculators and interactive recipes as long as the content fit your business and page content. Did a site for a company that stored boats in Chicago and we put on the bridge openings on the Chicago river. Do you think a pica/points conversion table would work for me?
36. Number of Outbound Links: Too many does demote your Page Rank. So don’t go stuffing in every link you can find even if it is pertinent to your business just because you can. Over saturation does not work.
37. Multimedia: Images, videos and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signals if you tag.
38. Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page: The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site. Some you can control some you cannot. Other times it’s nice to have friends who own a web site or two. But keep them relevant if you can.
39. Quality of Internal Links Pointing to Page: Internal links from pages on domain have a high page ranking  effect than pages with no or low ranking.

Larson Notes & Satire:  My page is #1 in google yahoo and bing is yours? So we got a little tacky today. You did not think it would be all easy and straight forward and just anyone could walk in a do it, did you? All I can say is lie with it, Fix and do what you can and it will work out, maybe.
And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 3

Now we are cooking! Sort of nice to have things that are totally in your control to make your site better and stronger isn’t it. Welcome to Part 3.

Today’s list of 10 are more things you will have control over or not. And if you are like me, you love, control. More tecky stuff than I like but someone has to do it.

21. Duplicate Content: Identical content on the same site is one of those things that is not liked and can negatively affect your site’s search engine ranking.

22. Rel=Canonical: When used properly, use of this tag may prevent Google from considering pages duplicate content. Canonicalization can be a challenging concept to understand (and hard to pronounce: "ca-non-ick-cull-eye-zay-shun"). It is essential to creating an optimized website. The problem is that canonicalization can fix stem from multiple uses for a single piece of writing a paragraph or, more often, an entire page of content that appears in multiple locations on a website or on multiple websites. For search engines, this presents a problem. Which version is the "real" version that they should be showing to searchers? SEOs refer to this issue as duplicate content. Another option for dealing with duplicate content is to utilize the rel=canonical tag. The rel=canonical tag passes the same amount of link ranking power as a 301 redirect, and often takes much less development time to implement. The tag is part of the HTML head of a web page.

23. Page Loading Speed via Chrome: Google may also use Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s loading time as this takes into account server speed, CDN usage and other non HTML-related site speed signals.

24. Image Optimization: Images on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption.

25. Recent Content Updates: Google Caffeine http://webtrends.about.com/od/webportals/a/what-is-google-caffeine.htm

 update favors recently updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Highlighting this factor’s importance, Google shows the date of a page’s last update.

26. Content Updates: The significance of edits and changes is also a freshness factor. Adding or removing entire sections is a more significant update than switching around the order of a few words.

27. History Of Page Updates: How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every 5-years? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness.

28. Keyword Prominence: Having a keyword appear in the first 100-words of a page’s content is a significant signal to the little web spiders.

29. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags: Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2 or H3 format may be another weak relevancy signal.

30. Keyword Word Order: An exact match of a searcher’s keyword in a page’s content will generally rank better than the same keyword phrase in a different order. Remember we are dealing with web robots not real live thinking people. For example: consider a search for: “Snake charming”. A page optimized for the phrase “Snake charming” will rank better than a page optimized for “practice of hypnotizing a snake”. This is a good example of why keyword research is important.

Larson Notes & Satire:  So we got a little tacky today. You did not think it would be all easy and straight forward and just anyone could walk in a do it, did you? All I can say is lie with it, Fix and do what you can and it will work out, maybe.

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 2

Are we having fun yet? Come on this is a game you are now playing between you, your completion and Google.  You can play if you have or control a web site and you can win or beat your competition at the game of web ranking.

So you ready for more. Today’s list of 10 are things you will have a little better control over. Some of the items from yesterday were sort of out of your control and I know, for all you control freaks it was driving you up a wall. Have no fear it’s not all that bad. So roll up your sleeves and take care of what you can.

11. Keyword in Title Tag: The title tag is a webpage’s second most important piece of content after the content of the page. The title sends out a strong SEO signal to all the little web spiders filtering through you site to say what you are about, at the top.

12. Title Tag Starts with Keyword: According to Moz data a title tags that starts with a keyword seems to do better than title tags with the keyword towards the end of the tag. Might seem like a small thing but each hit up (or down) can compound and snowball your site to the highest heights to oblivion.

13. Keyword in Description Tag: Another relevancy signal. Not especially important now, but still makes a difference. Really don’t listen to all those web experts who say it does not make any difference anymore. Everything counts. So things count for the good and some for the bad. Put lady luck on your side.

14. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag: H1 tags are a “second title tag” that sends another relevancy signal to Google, according to results from this correlation study http://cbutterworth.com/do-h1-tags-still-help-seo/ .

15. Keyword is Most Frequently Used Phrase in Document: Having a keyword appear more than any other likely acts as a relevancy signal. But I will warn you not to black hat yourself and spam your key word though out your text like we did in the old days of SEO. Keep those words relevant throughout your copy

16. Content Length:  Content with more words can cover a wider breadth and are likely preferred to shorter superficial articles. SERPIQ found that content length correlated with SERP position. http://blog.serpiq.com/how-important-is-content-length-why-data-driven-seo-trumps-guru-opinions . Now I am a long content kind of guy so don’t listen to me but say what you got to say. Put most things in the first paragraph and let the just flow.

17. Keyword Density: Although not as important as it once was, keyword density is still something Google uses to determine the topic of a webpage. But going overboard can hurt you. Yes those days are long gone.

18. Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI): Try saying that 3 times fast. LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words with more than one meaning (Apple the computer company vs. the fruit). The presence/absence of LSI words (probably) also acts as a content quality signal.

19. LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags: As with webpage content, LSI keywords in page meta tags probably help Google discern between synonyms. May also act as a relevancy signal. Yes you got to work the ideas on both the front page and the back page of your site.

20. Page Loading Speed via HTML: Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a ranking factor. Speed matters. Search engine spiders can estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on a page’s code and file size. Even if you could care less about all the little web spiders your customers and prospects sure don’t want to be waiting for your site to come up. So make if FAST.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Ok the rubber hits the road today. This is stuff you can all take control of. Some things big some small but it all counts for and against you and your competition. And if you don’t care, someone else does. Don’t let them take your site ranking and get your customers because you are on page 2 or 3 of a Google search and not page 1.

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

205 SEO Hints: 10 At A Time Part 1

Type in “Telemarketing for Printers” for a Google search. Go on do it. . . .

Surprise. Who is right at the top? Yours truly (I hope). I work very hard at my ranking for that position. Work? Mmmmm well not work. Let’s call it a game between me, my competition and Google. And I like, I really like to win.

So you want to stake out your territory in cyber space?

You probably already know, or not that Google uses about 200 plus ranking factors in their algorithm and they are always changing the rules so what is here today could be gone tomorrow. What is White Hat today could be Black Hat and get your site kicked out of Google tomorrow.

So what the heck are they? Well today and for the next few days I’m going to give you 5 to 10 cyber ideas until you have my complete list. Some are proven. Some are controversial. But remember it’s a game so let’s play!

1. Domain Age: Matt Cutts joined Google as a software engineer in January 2000. Matthew "Matt" Cutts is an American software engineer. He is the former head of the web spam team at Google, and is currently on leave in his role of working with the search quality team on search engine optimization issues. Matt states that: “The difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all.”. SO in other words, they do use domain age…but it’s not very important.

2. Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain: Doesn’t give the same kind of boost that it used to, but having your keyword in the domain still acts as a relevancy signal. After all, they still bold keywords that appear in a domain name.

3. Keyword As First Word in Domain: A domain that starts with the target keyword has an edge over sites that either don’t have the keyword in their domain or have the keyword in the middle or end of their domain. Might not seem like a big deal but we are talking micro-cyber inches of higher rankings here.

4. Domain registration length: A Google patent ( https://www.searchenginejournal.com/domain-age-how-important-is-it-for-seo/7296 ) states: “Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain”.

5. Keyword in Subdomain Name: Moz’s 2011 panel agreed that a keyword appearing in the subdomain can boost rankings.

6. Domain History: A site with volatile ownership (via whois) or several drops may tell Google to “reset” the site’s history, negating links pointing to the domain.

7. Exact Match Domain: EMDs may still give you an edge…if it’s a quality site. But if the EMD happens to be a low-quality site, it’s vulnerable to the EMD update (http://searchengineland.com/google-emd-update-research-and-thoughts-137340 )

8. Public vs. Private WhoIs: Private WhoIs information may be a sign of “something to hide”. Matt Cutts is quoted as stating at Pubcon 2006: “…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “who is privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual.  …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”

9. Penalized WhoIs Owner: If Google identifies a particular person as a spammer it makes sense that they would scrutinize other sites owned by that person.

10. Country TLD extension: Having a Country Code Top Level Domain (.cn, .pt, .ca) helps the site rank for that particular country…but limits the site’s ability to rank globally.

Larson Notes & Satire:  It’s a start but not the BIG Guns. You got to come back and get punished more with my satire and writing skills. Or you can throw your hands up and just hire me.  That works to.

And for better lead gen in telemarketing, teleprospecting and lead generation call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting sales leads into your funnel.

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Making SEO Work

If getting your web site found organically is important taking a quick look at the basic principles of SEO is always good. .   If you have read me at all you know my adversion to PFC (pay for click). So just how important it is to create your site according to the specifications of the search engines, after I say VERY. . .  

MOBILE RESPONSIVENESS

A survey conducted way back in 2013 showed that at least 87 percent of Internet users accessed the Web through a mobile device, and that was in 13. You know it has to be even more now with better data packages out there, Heck even I do some mobile web searches now and you know if I do, almost anyone who can, is. I would say mobile should be a priority of yours to ensure that your site allows users on any devices to have access. Not doing so, (soon) will cost you in your website rankings on Google but you did not hear ME say that.

DOMAIN NAME EXTENSION

With the increased impact of local SEO, emerging brands may want to consider adding a local extension like .chicago to show how local you are. It is not going to be as good as getting your Google plus account set up ( https://plus.google.com/+LarsonAssociatesPalatine ) and any SEO bump is still up for debate, but it does show your immediate area you’re serious about working local and that should be worth a few brownie points.

DESCRIPTIVE PAGE NAME

The name of a site should be as descriptive as possible. While exact match domains tend to be cheap or spammy sounding (such as bestratemotel.com), the name should have a connection to the brand or the product’s name. The previously mentioned local domain name extensions can help brands achieve this goal when their ".com" is taken.

SITE SPEED

Website visitors expect a site to load quickly and so do the search engines. You might want to consider using Google Page Speed to check for loading issues, as well as current Web design trends that can strip down a site to its most basic elements. Sometime times less is more in terms or getting higher and seen more

PAGE ACCESS

How many clicks does it take to reach the page a person wants to go to on your website? If someone has perform multi-clicks to get to the page they are looking for, there is a good chance they will leave and never come back. Put page links where users can see them and hit them.

SITE CONTENT

This is not quite the function of the website designer, but the content that is being posted can have a huge effect on its SEO ranking. You need compelling content that also utilizes key works you want people to be using to find you in an organic search.

SITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography does matter and I am not talking just about the look of the shot. Take for example a site for a photographer. If the photographs used on the site are too large and are slowing the site’s speed down or even stalling it out you had better make some changes, like fast.

Larson Notes & Satire:  If you don’t know where your web site is sitting you might want to get an Alexa Traffic Ranking. I have been tracking my site for years and find it more of a game to tweak it up and make little changes to see what happens. Words, meta tags (yes you heard me) links, content it all counts and all works together.

So for the answer to your SEO problems call Larson & Associates at 847-991-1294 or email me at howard@larsonassociates.ws .  One call is all it takes to start getting up higher on the rankings

Howard Larson

Larson & Associates

Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition

Making good businesses great and great businesses even better

847-991-1294

howard@larsonassociates.ws

http://www.larsonassociates.ws

http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans

http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make teleprospection for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 10 hours a week. Maybe you should add teleprospecting into your marketing mix call today and find out.