There are times, that the word keyword is all I hear with respect to websites.

Which makes me wonder, does everyone know what a keyword is? How can we reduce keyword confusion?

In fact, there are two kinds of keywords we are interested in.

The first are the meta-keywords. These are the ones that used to go in the head that tags on all websites. For example, on a site selling widgets, the webmaster often include a lot of meta-keywords,  green widgets, blue widgets, pink widget, tall widgets, short widgets, etc.The idea of these was to make the search engines think the article was about those one and make more chunks of it showing up in the search results.

These days none of the leading search engines use meta-keywords for ranking pages. I believe Bing search engine uses meta-keywords as spam detector – have too many of them, and it could be detrimental to your sites search performance.

Oh, please don’t put lots of keywords on your pages using the same colour as the background to make them hidden. The search engines are not fooled by this for one moment and this can be very detrimental to your page ranking.

All in all, it is best to not use meta-keywords, even though a lot of people still do. We suggest not using meta-keywords, especially because they can only really be useful to competitors doing research on your site.

Please don’t take this as thinking that all meta tags off bad however. The meta-title of the page and the meta-description are both very important.

I think, that one of the biggest confusions comes from the fact that these search keywords are not really single words. They are often multiple words – I tend to think of them as search phrases. Google on the other hand, calls them search queries.
These search queries are really important, both for the website owner and for the Google user.

The best scenario is when the website and the search query coincide creating the best possible experience for the search engine user.
It is important to think of such phrases or search queries rather than keywords because a search obviously comprises of more than one word, a small sentence in fact.

So when we speak about keyword research, we are not thinking of individual words but those search query phrases. Optimising our webpages for the search queries our potential clients are likely to use is one of the key things in digital marketing today.

This quest for the perfect situation is the reason that the spammy SEO companies can never be successful. To create the perfect match between website and search user requires in-depth knowledge of the website builders business as well as knowledge of the potential customer. We’ll discuss this in future posts, particularly with respect to Keyword (AKA Search Query) research.

That is why modern digital marketing is not a quick fix. It is a process that could take some time but the results can be first class.

Fedora web marketing isn’t an SEO company – we help small businesses make the most of their online presence. We can help you too, but remember no more keyword confusion!

The post Keyword Confusion appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

I must admit, it took me a long time to get to love Chrome. I’d always been a serious Firefox guy and wouldn’t dream of being unfaithful. The few times I’d tried Chrome I found that it was intuitive to use at all, especially compared to Firefox.

Even worse, for a long time there was no AdBlock option for Chrome. Although I’m a marketing guy, I hate intrusive web advertising with a passion. AdBlock kept me going with Firefox, even as the browser itself got slower and slower with each new version. Yes, frustrating, but everytime I tried Google’s browser, it still didn’t work for me.

Finally I decided it was time to switch for real. I noted that the AdBlock extension for Chrome seemed to work fine now and I looked around at some of the suggested extensions that are available. At my day job I’ve officially stuck with Internet Explorer, so I downloaded the portable version of Chrome to a USB key and started using it at the office as well.

The result has been that I’m just not going back. Using Chrome now on my PC and Macs at the home office, PC at the work office and on my iPhone is working really well – helped by the extensions I’ve installed.

In case you are looking at some simple (and free!) tools that might help your Chrome experience, here is what I’m using today:

My Chrome Extension Buttons

Here’s a screen shot showing the extensions that have buttons, from left to right…

Evernote Clipper – I use Evernote as my trusted site to collect everything. Just about my whole life is in Evernote, one of the best cloud applications around. The Evernote Clipper allows me to quickly save and tag anything I find to be of interest on the web for future reference.

AdBlock – as I mentioned I hate web advertising and the AdBlock extension does a fantastic job of keeping them away from my desktop. A must have!

Checker Plus for Gmail – I have all my email accounts consolidated in Gmail (hurray no more OutLook!) and Checker Plus lets me know when there is a new message waiting. I can also preview message, delete, mark as spam or mark as read right in the extension, without needing to open Gmail. Very useful. There are several Gmail extensions for Chrome, I’ve tried a few and like this one the best.

Redirect Path – this is a useful little extension that shows all the redirects (301, 302, 404 and 500) that you encountered getting to the page on the screen. Redirect Path works instantly and if you are trying to get a feel for what is happening with a particular site is hard to beat.

G New Doc Extension

G New Doc – use Google Docs? I find myself turning to Docs more and more and G New Doc allows a new Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, etc. to be started instantly.

Check My Links – another simple and useful extension. Tap the button and Check My Links does just as the name suggests. It runs a quick check on all the links on the page and lets you know which ones are broken. I use it all the time on my own sites and others that I ned to ensure everything is working, but don’t want to do a full crawl with something more sophisticated.

Awesome Screenshot Tool

Awesome Screenshot – as far as I’m concerned, SnagIt is the best tool for grabbing screenshots. Sadly, I don’t have it installed on all the computers I use so Awesome Screenshot is the next best thing. capture the visible part of the page, a selected area or the whole page; the choice is yours. Tools for adding annotations too. A great extension!

SEOmoz – if you have any interest in SEO or Inbound Marketing in general you’ll be familier with SEOmoz, one of the best communities in the business. The Mozbar extension is great for being able to get a lot information on a site as quickly as possible. I won’t go into into detail here (it will be the topic of its own post soon), but for anyone wanting to put together a fast overview of a site’s workings, SEOmoz Mozbar is a super tool. No charge for the Mozbar, but to unleash all the potential you really need to be a paying SEOMoz customer.

So these are my main Google Chrome tools, although I also have more that are “under the hood”. Together these help my daily use of Chrome a pleasure, i glad I made the switch.

Do you use Chrome? What are your favorite extensions to make it work for you?

The post Which Chrome Extensions? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

When visitors find your site using their smartphone how does it look on their mobile browser? Some sites work quite well, others are a distaster.

Some companies make a separate mobile version of their website – if a mobile browser is detected, the visitor is redirected to a version of the site that is optimized for mobile. In many circumstances this works very well, but for a small business is just more work to do.

FedoraWeb on Iphone

A solution to this problem is to make your website Mobile Responsive. This site is an example of such a setup. The site template is designed in blocks of content that are rearranged on the fly depending on the browser and screen size that a visitor uses.

The photo shows how the FedoraWeb blog page has rearranged its pieces to fit in the space available on my phone.

If you use WordPress as the basis of your small business website, you’ll find that many modern templates are Mobile Responsive, right out of the box.

We use exclusively StudioPress WordPress themes (affiliate link) where there is already a good selection of Mobile Responsive themes in the portfolio to choose from. To be honest, if you are setting up a new WordPress site or looking to change the theme of an existing one, it would be crazy to use a theme without the MR feature.

Want to compare MR and non-MR sites on your SmartPhone. Two of the sites we manage are WincoID.com  and LabelingNews.com -  check them out on your phone and you’ll see right away which is Mobile Responsive. Both are StudioPress themes, but on one it is an older theme without a current Mobile Responsive option.

What about your website – are ready for more mobile traffic? We can help, contact me with the form on this page.

The post Is Your Site Mobile Responsive? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

So you might ask “why, with all this free goodness around, should I pay for FedoraWeb Website Checkup?”

The simple answer is that the FedoraWeb Site Checkup isn’t an automated process – it involved some real work done by me.

I certainly use some tools to run checks on your site, but I also personally evaluate the results. I take a look at your site to see if there are any things that could easily be improved and then write up some suggestions.

If you purchase the In-depth Site Checkup, you get much more of my time. I’ll be doing some research on your competitors too so we can see how you stack up against them, you also get more detailed reporting and more ideas to move forward.

Sure I’m biased, but I think our site checkups represent great value for money and offer more than the free sites can.

If you agree, get started by choosing your level of Site Checkup now!

The post Why Isn’t Website Checkup Free? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

Without having a vision of success, it is impossible to know when it is achieved, if it ever is.

If you are thinking of hiring someone to manage your online marketing, what do you want them to do for you? There are a lot of possibilities:

• Design and build a functioning website
• Get to the top of the front page of Google for all kinds of appropriate search terms
• Set up a Social Media Program
• Boost the number of Twitter followers or Facebook “likes”
• Get the graph in Google Analytics to have a nice upward tilt
• Convert more website visitors to customers (I like this one!)
• Get more sales – how many?

Clearly to get to meet the goals, there needs to be a plan.

Where best to focus time and resources

Decide how important Social Media will be

Should paid search (AdWords) be part of the plan?

What about local search? I’d say this is where a local business such as a retail store or restaurant needs to really concentrate.

If setting up (or improving) a website, how to get people to see it?

What is the appropriate kind of content?

As you can see there are a lot of questions. What are your marketing goals?

If you are looking to get your online marketing into good shape or if you are a new business starting out, yell out. Maybe we can help you!

The post What Are Your Marketing Goals? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

I noticed several “Pay Per Click” (PPC) marketing “experts” quickly proclaim that SEO was dead and that any business wanting to use the Internet to get new customers needed to invest more heavily in PPC programs such as Google’s AdWords.

First, let me say that I have nothing against AdWords – indeed we use the service as  part of our marketing. So which is the best choice, AdWords or SEO?

I would however say that right now is a better time to work on SEO for your business than it was before the Google update. Oh, you might be aware that Google tends to name the changes to the search algorithms after cute animals and this one was called Penguin, the previous (which is still being tweaked) was Panda – we now live in a post Penguin Google world!

There are two schools in the SEO world (with a lot of overlap between the two) – what is called black hat SEO and white hat SEO. Yes, it’s true –  black hat SEO could be considered the bad guys and white hat the good.

Black hat SEO is all about taking advantage of Google to get sites to rank well in searches. This means buying inbound links (the number of inbound links to a site is one of the factors Google looks at when determining the rankings) from link networks and really optimizing pages on websites with keywords to make them stand out to the search engine.

Before Penguin, this worked really well. By throwing money at SEO companies, a website owner could get to the top of the Google pages without having to worry too much about the quality of the actual content on the site. This could happen quickly as well – instant results for the money spent.

Penguin has changed this cosy black hat situation. Many of the linked networks of sites that were set up specifically to fool Google have been delisted from the search index and all the links devalued. Over optimized sites have seen their rank drop considerably.

This is great!

Why? Because the website owners using white hat SEO find themselves not having to compete with so many people trying to beat the system.

White hat SEO is all about working within Google’s guidelines, of producing great content that is designed for real people to read – not the GoogleBot. It is about getting natural inbound links to the site, real people linking to the content because it is good, helpful, answers questions, provides solutions, is entertaining, is fresh and updated…

This isn’t a quick fix – it can take months (or longer) to get to good ranking positions, but it is time well spent. In the case of our sites, we have pages that are several years old that still generate good traffic and leads.

By building your site with great and useful content, you get ongoing returns, whereas with AdWords you have to keep paying to get results!

So if your site has been hit by Penguin and plummeted in the rankings, should you abandon SEO and switch to AdWords?

In the short term it would help, but the key is to get your site fixed. Find a real SEO company who can clean up your link profile (you can ask Google to re-evaluate your site when this has been done) and work on your content. Start a blog (or improve it if you already have one), become more active in Social Media, build a mailing list and produce good quality newsletters  for your clients and prospects.

Plenty of good productive things to do without giving all your marketing budget to Google.

It is a great time to get more involved in SEO – as part of a balanced marketing plan, that probably includes some AdWords too!

What’s your online plan for your small business? Maybe the FedoraWeb balanced idea is for you!

The post AdWords or SEO? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

If you’ve received phone calls, email or faxes (yes really!) from SEO companies promising to get you right to the top of the Google rankings, you’ve probably encountered one of these Black Hat practitioners. Come to think of it, until quite recently most SEO fitted into the Black Hat category – probably why the industry has a somewhat seedy reputation.

So we have a choice of Black Hat or White Hat SEO – which is best for you?

How does Black Hat SEO Work?

Pretty simple really, it works by trying to cheat Google and the other search engines.Back in the day that Google rankings depended heavily on keywords, the Black Hat SEO would stuff the web page with as many keywords as possible – often hiding them in text the same colour as the page background. As Google got more sophisticated, our intrepid Black Hatters followed suit. Links became important in getting good Google so the Black Hatters set up whole networks of sites that could share links and post links to clients sites.

This link network idea worked really well for a while, until the Google Web Spam team decided that it wasn’t into their interest to allow SEOs to manipulate the search results like that (only Google is allowed to do that kind of thing!). The result was the Penguin update which saw many of these link networks devalued or even delisted from Google’s index.

A lot of businesses, particularly small ones that had been seduced by the Black Hatter’s wares lost a big part of their web traffic which obviously relates to a real drop in income. Not good!

Does Black Hat SEO Still Work?

Unfortunately, it does to some extent. There are still plenty of high ranking sites that show up in the search results that are clearly not there on their merits and a check of their backlinks shows that most are very spammy. Google moves slowly sometimes and it is going to take a while until all the Black Hat stuff is sorted – maybe it never will be completely.

So what’s the alternative, especially for a small business with limited resources?

The answer is (of course) White Hat SEO!

What is White Hat SEO?

Personally, I think of White Hat SEO as Sustainable SEO. Sustainable because the results are going to continue to work even if Google decides to make changes in the search algorithm.

White Hat SEO is all about getting a site to rank well in Google on its merits, rather than by trying to cheat the system.

This means producing how quality content that addresses the needs of potential visitors.

• Optimizing the pages correctly
• Using Author and Publisher Tags
• Setting up a Google Plus page for your business
• Earning real links from other sites (rather than buying them!)
• Being active in Social Media
• Taking advantage of local search opportunities
• Create clear “calls to action” so that visitors to the site move to the next step in the buying cycle.

And (perhaps most importantly) recognizing that SEO is just one part of your overall digital and traditional marketing and ensuring that everything works together.

As you can see, the White Hat approach isn’t easy and it is not going to give instant results. Is it worth it? Well, there is a reason my logo is a White Hat!

Need help with your small business marketing? Contact me here!

 What Are The Hats?

Ah, thanks for asking. These two fedoras are both in the traditional style, but are both modern – made in the last year or so.

The white one is from Deckard Headwear. Unfortunately, Matt Deckard has been forced to put his hat business on hold since the manufacturer closed shop after being in business over 100 years – I guess not enough people buying fedoras these days!

The black hat is a custom one from Art Fawcett at Vintage Silhouettes. I’m lucky in that I have several of Arts hats – each one is indeed a Work of Art!

The post SEO – Black Hat or White Hat? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

This isn’t a new idea, but I watched this TED Talk today and it seems to be very relevant to how we can go about optimizing our marketing.

Needless to say, a lot of marketing people have already given a lot of thought as to how these ideas can be exploited – mainly using Google + as a way to be able to generate web traffic in a rather artificial manner.

See this post over at the Distilled blog as an example – this is where I found the TED video.

I believe strongly in the free and open Internet (even if Father Christmas is more likely to be true!) – what about you?

The post Living in a Filter Bubble appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

So what does this mean and how can we use this to our advantage?

For me, there are two important things when it comes to online marketing. One of these, is clearly getting people to visit a website. Once they arrive, it is also important to have something that fulfills their need.

Fulfilling the visitors need is what content marketing is all about. Give the reader of our site what she is looking for and she is likely to want to do more with us – sign up for our emails, download our whitepaper, buy our product.

A lot of the visitors to my sites arrive by web searches. If my pages appear in the search engine results and they click on them, they oversee arrive at my site with a certain aspiration. The SEO side of my marketing has now done it’s job, the Visitor has arrived.

If the content on my website matches the needs of the visitor, there is good chance of her staying a while and generating a lead for my company.

What kind of content?
People often ask me what the kind of content is that should be used on a website. The short answer is, whatever the customer wants!

For example, the visitors needs could be met by a video, by a white paper, by a product review, a specification; the list is endless!

Effective content.
What content is effective? That’s easy, content that is in line with the expectations of the person finding it. It also must be easy for that person to find it in the best place.

This means that website content needs to be produced with a knowledge of what is going on inside the head of the potential reader.

If needs to be optimized so that the user can find it and it must provide what the user is looking for along with a clear call to action to get to the next step.

This is what Inbound Marketing is all about!

The post Why Content Marketing? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday

The only problem is that since the marked up information goes into the site’s HTML, it is rather difficult and time consuming to do.

We have been using Schema markup on one of our sites and it is painful – even using a WordPress plugin.

Enter Google’s new Data Highlighter Tool. This is part of Webmaster Tools and provides a simple way to mark up data on the site that just about anyone can do.

Check out this Google video on the process.

More info on the Google Webmaster Blog. At the moment, the Google Data Highlighter Tool seems to be focused on pages that are about events. I’m sure that other types of pages will be added if the concept proves to be successful.

I’m certainly going to be trying it out – how about you?

The post Google Data Highlighter – poor man’s Schema? appeared first on FedoraWeb. David Holliday