January White (Hat) SEO Sales Event!

January is typically the month when merchants have their annual "White Sales" to get shoppers to stock up on their towels and bedding. January is the time when Awareness Creation has its annual "White Hat SEO Sale" so that clients can stock up on the best Search Engine Optimization tactics to start off the new year with improved search positioning.

One of the best ways to take advantage of this yearly sales event is to get a Site Audit which includes reviews of the following:

• Your site analytics to determine on-page SEO effectiveness. 
• Page load speed.
• Canonical issues.
• Indexed pages.
• Web content. Specifically checking for duplicate content, insufficient content, use of keywords.
• Indexed pages.
• Back links and internal links.
• Social signals.
• 1 hour follow up Q&A.

Interested? Just drop us an email info@awarenesscreation.com with any questions you may have, your contact info, and we'll get in touch.

And, I want to thank you all for getting in touch with us wondering about this blog. You know, our time and priorities can get high-jacked sometimes as did ours in the last 9 months - oh well, it happens. But, we are now back on track and you can expect continued SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing, and more Internet Marketing info coming your way!

Carole

Are You Sabotaging Your SEO – How You May be Zapping the Power of Your Online Touch Points

Many companies are not doing themselves any favor by approaching Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with self-sabotaging practices.  The way a company optimizes their online touch points can really make or break a company’s sales, business development, reputation management, customer relationship building, and Marketing/PR efforts.  
 
The Top 5 Ways Companies Compromise the Power of SEO  

1. Having an “either or” attitude.  Successful SEO Strategies require Social Media and effective Social Media requires SEO.  By having an “either or” attitude, a company misses out on great business advantages that come with the necessary integration of SEO and Social Media. 
2. DIY SEO.  SEO requires specialized expertise.  Most companies have an idea that SEO is important and that they should be using it with their website (and since many of these companies have an “either or” attitude Social Media doesn’t even come into the SEO discussion). However, many companies believe that an intern or employee can do a little reading up about SEO and develop a “good enough” strategy that will get their website to the top of the search listings.  
3. Hiring Cheap “Experts”.  More people are jumping on the SEO bandwagon to promote themselves as “experts”.  You may be seeing this in action when you get email spam from companies that offer SEO services for $15 (USD) per hour.  On the other side, some companies are seeking an SEO “expert” that will create and manage strategies for $17 per hour. 
4. Depending on Web Designers.  Good website designers and developers are crucial to creating a professional website but they are not typically SEO experts.  Finding a balance between good design and usability with SEO is important and some designers may have a lopsided perspective about that balance.
5.  Ignoring online content standards.  To get top search engine positioning your online content must be optimized.  SEO requires a specific style of writing that incorporates very specific SEO tactics. Many Marketing execs, teams, writers, and managers don’t understand the necessity of using a writing style that is appropriate for the Internet and SEO.

Do any of the above sound familiar? If so, just stop!

Till next time!

Carole

SEO No-Nos Could be Hurting Your Google Positioning

Just a heads-up:  even though you think you’re only using one URL for your website, search engines may see that your site uses a number of URLs which creates what the techies call a “canonical” issue – which can weaken your SEO strategy and positioning.

For instance: www.awarenesscreation.com is my website URL. However, IF I had a canonical issue (which I don't!), search engines would see that my website used the following additional URLs:

Awarenesscreation.com
Awarenesscreation.com/index.html
http://www.awarenesscreation.com
 
If you have a canonical issue, search engines interpret the situation as using duplicate content, which is an SEO No-No.  Even if you don’t have duplicate content, Search engines will penalize a website as though it has duplicate content if you have a canonical problem.
 
And, if you’re backlinking to a variety of URLs (especially from valuable, authoritative sites) your inbound linking strategy is also going to be weakened which will prevent you from getting top Google search positions.

How to Repair a Canonical Issue & Improve Your SEO
 
Your website developer or hosting company can help you fix this problem:

1.     Select the URL that want to consistently use as your website’s URL.
2.     Create a 301 redirect from all URLs to your selected (canonical) URL.
 
Chipping away at Repairing SEO No-Nos

SEO continues to be important for your business development, reputation management, and online effectiveness. By repairing your canonical issue, you’ll have one less SEO No-No to worry about.

Of course, you’ll still have plenty of other issues lurking around the Web that can sabotage your SEO Strategy and keep you from out in front of the competition; but you can always get in touch with Awareness Creation to help you chip away at those SEO No-Nos!

Happy SEO-ing!


Carole

DIY (Do it Yourself) SEO May Not be Helping You!

I've had a rash of new clients who have just updated their websites (or have new websites) and are just now discovering that their DIY SEO may be keeping their wonderful new sites from being indexed by Google. Many clients have had nothing but the best intentions to improve their websites with SEO but, unfortunately, many of the SEO strategies applied may be actually hurting the websites' rankings instead of helping.


Or, what's even more frustrating is that some clients are finding out their developers are using content management systems that need to be tweaked to get the benefits of  SEO. After paying a pretty penny to design or update a site, you would think that some problems shouldn't have to be worried about. You would think...


Some of the most common SEO problems include:

• Mis-use of keywords (or lack of strong, relevant keywords)
• Duplicate content
• URLs that are not search friendly
• Canonical issues 

If you're planning to have a website re-design or new website designed from scratch, check with us first so we can give you an idea of the SEO problems you can avoid before it's too late.

Have a great week!

Carole