It is important to make sure that your website or ecommerce store has all of its SEO ducks in a row.  We talk to many visitors about their SEO efforts and usually find simple things to fix.  There are a lot of times where there are simple fixes that can improve your overall website optimization.  We have found that there are many shopping carts or websites that do not have their headings properly formatted with HTML.

Sample H1 Heading

While there are many ways to format headings, it is important for SEO purposes to use the designated heading tags.  The easiest way to format headings is to use your CSS file to differentiate the colors and font size among other things.  Webmasters and designers should remember that you can format your heading tags in your css file as well and it would be the best way to handle any headings.  Heading tags range from H1 to H6 and the size of the heading usually gets smaller as the number gets bigger.  H1 is the biggest heading and H6 is the smallest.

H1 Heading

H2 Heading

H3 Heading

H4 Heading

H5 Heading

H6 Heading

Search Engines understand the H tags and give them the proper weight in their algorithm.   Every webpage on your website or your ecommerce store should have an H1 tag to designate the most important information.  Make sure your ecommerce shopping cart product pages use the H1 tag properly.  Most should have the title of the product formatted with the H1 tag.  This will tell search engines that the title of your product is of the most importance on the page.  You can have other important aspects use different heading tags, but make sure you do not have multiple tags of the same weight.  You do not want more than one of each as that makes it look confusing and search engine spiders might not like it.

To create your heading tags, all you need to do is create format within your CSS file and then call it in your html files.   If you are using an ecommerce shopping cart, make sure that your provider has used the heading tags in a proper manner or even at all.  There have been many providers that just format the headings in the css file, but they are not the proper heading tags that search engines love.  This is such a simple fix that every website and ecommerce store should be implementing it.  Change the look and feel of each heading tag to suit your needs and to match your overall website design.  Headings are important, so make sure they you format them properly with the correct tags.

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The debate between using SEO and PPC for your website marketing is always going to happen and probably will never subside.  The main issue that some people have is that they either use PPC or SEO to drive most of their traffic.  There are  people on each side of the argument saying the PPC is more cost effective or SEO is.  We are going to jump in here with what we feel will work for sites that are new to the internet and are just trying to figure out how to begin their long journey in finding traffic.

The issue that new sites have is that they do not have the power to get indexed into search engines easily without a few quality inbound links with quality content.  Even if they do finally get indexed, it doesn’t mean that they automatically end up number one in google or the other search engines.  This takes time and frankly a lot of skill to achieve.  Most people think that once you achieve a good position, they have it and they can work on something else.  Wrong….you have to work harder to maintain the top position once you get it.

One way that webmasters do is to start marketing their site with PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising.  This type of advertising is quick and easy to setup, especially in Google with their Adwords advertising platform.  New sites can start getting targeted traffic within a few hours of starting an account.  One of the good things about PPC is that you have the power to control where you show up in the search results in the paid advertising section.  Also, most PPC platforms have good reporting tools that can quantify your results.  It helps to have PPC running on a new site because you can see how your conversion rate is and where customers fall off on your site.  This will help with future development of your site.

SEO is a powerful tool that can keep you getting traffic over time without recurring a click cost for every visitor.  The money that is used to develop your SEO can be quantified down to cost per click, but some sites find it much less depending on how they do their SEO.  Some firms keep their SEO efforts in house and others outsource it to companies.  The main issue with SEO is that the results are not immediate and sometimes can take a long time to be apparent.  This does not mean that you should not do it, just that you should never stop doing it.  Webmaster and site owners should continually tweak and optimize their site in order to gain positions in the top search engines, thus getting more visitors.  SEO is a tough task and you have to do it correctly in order to succeed.  If you choose a SEO company to do it for you, please make sure they are reputable and have achieved results themselves.

While we like both methods for traffic gathering, some prefer one over the other.  If you have a new site and you are looking for traffic that is targeted and will convert, it would be wise that you implement both strategies simultaneously to gain success.  You can start a PPC campaign quickly along side with your SEO.  Once you start getting data from your paid search campaigns, you can tweak your SEO to gain the top of the best performing keywords for your site.  The main thing that you  have to remember is that you need to have a good analytics package in order to quality your results.  Without analytics, you will not know how well your doing and where you can improve.  Our advice is plain and simple for new sites, work both SEO and PPC into your mix and you should be happy with the results.

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Anyone that has a website knows that meta tags should be utilized on every page that is on public domain.  Meta tags are a useful tool to let visitors and search engines know what your page is about and the information on it.  The three meta tags that are usually updated are the Title, Description, and Keyword tags.  Most webmasters update all the meta tags according to each page, but some are now going in another direction.  We are going to provide insight into the importance of the Keyword meta tag.

For quite some time, the main search engines have no longer given any weight into the keyword meta tag due in part because of webmaster keyword stuffing this tag.  Most of the keywords in the tag did not match up with the topic of the page, so it will reduced in importance.  Reduced to almost nothing.  Google has stated numerous times that the keyword meta tag is not used in their search algorithm.  The other engines still look at the tag, but most give it little to no weight in their algorithm, but since Google has over 60% of the market share, it is important to look at what they are doing.

While we still tell most new webmasters to include the keyword tag because it is a good practice to be able to keep up with all three tags, we tend to tell seasoned webmasters a different story.  Reason being, we have found that the only thing the keyword tag is good for is competition spying.  Most competitors of yours can use your keyword tag to see what keywords you are going after on each page.  This can help them discover good keywords to compete with you directly in natural and paid search.  Don’t get us wrong, this can be good as well for you if your competitors use them, so you can see what keywords they are using and trying to optimize for.

While the importance of the keyword meta tag has decreased to almost nothing over the years in the eyes of the big search engines, it can still be useful for keyword gathering and competitive analysis.  If you are a new webmaster, try and use the keyword meta tag in order to get versed in adding new keywords for each page that you have on your site.  Try not to duplicate the keywords on different pages and keep them unique.  So in the end, if you site is large and you have a very competitive environment, don’t use keyword tags, but if your site is small, then keep placing them in there.

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SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is becoming a large part of many company marketing strategies.  This is the known practice of  tweaking your website to better rank on the search engines for given keywords.  The issue is that many companies do not know how to do it properly or in the correct manner that will not get them in trouble with the big 3 engines.  Many companies outsource their SEO to firms that handle small parts of the SEO plan or all depending on the needs.  With the large increase of SEO services on the internet, many people are trying to get their piece of the pie.  With this happening, we want to warn you of some potential issues that can arise.

There are many great companies out there that provide their service and get results for their clients, but they are usually masked by the bad companies that do not thing, but take your money.  These are the companies that you have to be careful of.  Here are a few tips that can keep your marketing budget safe and get you results at the same time.

• How long has the business been in business? This is an important factor because most reputable companies have been in business and have experience in the field of SEO.  Not everyone can do SEO, but many say that can.
• Does the company have a portfolio? – A portfolio is an important tool for any SEO company to have because it shows proof of what they have accomplished.  Most reputable companies will furnish their portfolio for you upon request.  These usually contain websites or keywords that they have worked on and what they have done to turn it around.
• Do they offer a Guarantee? This seems to be a trend in the SEO world, but seems only to be done by shady companies.  No One can offer you a guarantee for results.  This is not how SEO works.  If a company that your are looking at provides you a guarantee like you will be on page 1 within a month, just turn around and leave.  They cannot offer this guarantee without the knowledge that they are doing something shady.  Most people or companies that offer guarantees end up getting your website banned or in trouble somehow with the search engines.
• Do they have an office and contact information? With all the new start-up SEO companies out there, it is wise to look just for companies that have offices and contact information beyond an email address.  Most companies that have a real business address have invested the time and money into providing a real service to their customers.
• What are their time frames for results? If anyone is telling you that you should see results within a week, they are probably not doing the SEO in the right manner, more like Black Hat SEO.  This can be very bad for your website.  Most companies should tell you that it will take months to see good results depending on the project.  Go in with realistic goals and you should realistic results.

With these simple and easy to remember tips, you can make sure that your are not taken by a shady SEO company.  Not only will you lose money, but you can hurt your website’s current rankings.  Take the time to properly vet the companies that you are interested in.  Making a decision on the fly will never be good for you or your company.  SEO is a constant process that never stops, so don’t expect outlandish results within an unmanageable time frame.  Most reputable SEO companies should tell you that you can start to see good results within the first 12 months.  Good luck to everyone looking for a good SEO company to help them succeed online.

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