The Energy Grid - Mark C. Robinson

Google site:www.YourSiteName.com to see what Google thinks your site is.
Google link:www.YourSiteName.com to see who is linking to you

Search Engine Optimization Analysis

Purpose: Drive targeted traffic to your website by improving your exposure and rankings on Google and other search engines.

Strategy: There are thousands of tricks and techniques to improving search engine ranking. Unfortunately, search engines constantly update their logic to weed out sites using these tricks and techniques, sometimes penalizing sites for using them. The best strategy is to look at the overall mission of the search engines: “To provide quality answers to users searching for information.” Although an understanding of the way search engines see the web is necessary, the first principle of search engine optimization is to have a well-organized site with quality content. Each page of the site, focused on a specific topic, is presented to the search engine as an independent source of information. Not only does this add search engine visibility, but it also provides a quality experience to your site visitors.

Typically, there are several areas where sites can be modified to generate quality traffic.

1) Preparation for conference and telephone conference to begin identifying and selecting keywords (2 - 3 hours)

Appropriate people in your company will choose the keywords you want to target and the pages you want them targeted to. Often, during this conversation, we will identify the keywords used by customers and major successful competitors. We may also want to do inventory searches on entirely new words you develop. Once keywords have been identified, time estimates for your next steps can be generated. Preparation for this meeting involves identifying successful competitors, researching your industry’s presence on the web, and reviewing your existing site, or plans for a site. 2) Develop a Keyword Matrix (2 - 3 hours).

Search engines will provide analysis of similar industry keywords. For example, if your site is about solar energy and you begin to create a matrix, other frequently searched, related keywords will be presented. This allows us to identify the words we should use to optimize your website. See sample below.

Each page will need to be re-written with the principals of search engine optimization in mind. Often, this involves working with your web designer to layout the pages in a search-engine friendly way and great the appropriate meta-tags needed for effective indexing.

4) Select additional aspects of the optimization such as pay-per-click advertising, link exchange, blogging, and more.

Pricing:
The more time you put into search engine optimization, the higher your rankings will be. Ongoing maintenance will further increase rankings. Generally, pricing is based on a $175.00/hr rate. Basic optimization often costs between $400 and $500. Full scale optimization with ongoing maintenance often costs between $2500 and $5000.

Guarantees:
Search Engine Optimization is a moving target and there are no guarantees that anyone can give around ranking and position. Changes to search engine policies around acceptance of new sites (called ‘sandbox’) and their methods of determining rank are a factor in your placement and may not be possible to manipulate. In this case, a focus on long-term placement can be set up and immediate traffic can be generated by pay-per-click programs.

Background and Qualifications:
Mark C. Robinson has been an innovator and a leader in the computer industry for over thirty years. He has started several successful computer-related companies including a magazine publishing company, regional consulting firm, Computer Empowerment Training Seminars, and software publishing. Robinson has been a featured speaker at events like Laptop ’88, Comdex, and several regional conventions.
He created and currently operates a top-rated eCommerce site in the pet industry, HandicappedPets.com, as well as 30 other related sites that all benefit from top rankings and placement in search engines. As a search engine optimization consultant, Robinson is highly knowledgeable, experienced, with excellent references available on request.

Testimonials:
Great News! You will notice that as a result of simply making the initial changes recommended by Mark… Go to www.google.com and search for “high temperature regenerators”. Guess who the first result is!? Same for Msn.com, and second on yahoo.com!

Sample Keyword Matrix

Link Exchange Services

Similarly, you may be seeing frequent offers for Link Exchange Optimization. Link Exchange is an important part of search engine optimization, but also a potential pitfall.Imagine the web as network of white strands going from site to site. A 'web' (if you will). If websites throughout the web link to you, Google knows that you are important. If you have thousands of 'white strands' leading to your website, you become a bright white beacon on the web.That was the original idea -- but like most good ideas, people started taking advantage. People started collecting huge numbers of links from anybody and everybody, counting on becoming important sites through link exchange. There are "Link Farms" that have thousands of links to everybody they can. Google reacted by paying attention to the Quality of incoming links.If a pet-related website has incoming links from shelters, rehab centers, and veterinarians then it could indicate that the site is important. If it has links coming in from totally unrelated businesses, it could be trying to cheat.The way Google deals with this is by looking at the number, and the quality of links on links pages that include you. For example, if you are a renewable energy company and BP Solar has a link to you on their page, that's good. If BP has a score of 10, then their link to you would be worth 10 points in your favor. If, though, they have you, and a thousand other companies listed on the same page, the point value to you would be 10/1000 - or almost nothing.

Ideally, consider trading articles about one another on your sites. You have an interesting article about them and they have a worthwhile article about you. This is part of a deep linking strategy that adds content to your site. Link exchange adds value to your site if done properly. It cannot be easily accomplished, though, by automated link exchange services or programs.

Basic Elements of Search Engine Optimization

Meta Tags. Meta Tags are special labels that go inside the HTML code. The three tags we’re concerned with are Title, Keywords, and Description.
If you look at the HTML code behind a well done page, you’ll see something like this toward the top.
<title>Handicapped Pets - For Elderly, Disabled, and Injured Pets - Products, Services, and Support</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="dog cat pet animal injured handicapped disabled care elderly old diaper hurt health healing cart wheel wheelchair k9 canine">
<meta name="description" content="We carry the products, and have the services and support for caretakers of special and handicapped pets. We can help you care for them. There are thousands of people caring for pets with special needs that include senior, geriatric, disabled, injured, recovering from surgery, terminal illness, or handicapped pets. This site offers products, services, support and resources for our best friends and their caretakers.">

Title: The title tag determines what appears at in the blue line at the top of the browser. It also determines the first line shown when most search engines list your page. The title tag is extremely important. Make it a descriptive title, begin with the most important word and have the title contain some of your target keywords. If someone types in “Injured Pets” in Google then not only will the title be shown, but the words “Injured Pets” will be bolded, adding more power to your listing.

Keywords: When the search engines were being created, Keywords were the most important aspect of a site. But people quickly began using keywords to get high rankings on subjects that their pages were not about. Most search engines no longer use keywords to determine topic. The best reason, though, to use keywords is to remind yourself what the page is about. As you create contact for the page, continually refer to your keyword making sure that they are repeated a few times in the text and headings of the page and that these keywords is what the page is really about. The other reason to use keyword is that many of the site-based search engines (“Search This Site”) do use keywords.

Description: The description will appear in the Google listing. It should be the best possible description you can write, about 80 characters long, using several of your target keywords.
Headers: Headers are large bold titles that appear at the top of most pages. In HTML, these titles are surrounded by <H1> and </H1> tags. When search engines try to figure out what the page is about, they assume that these headers probably have something to do with the topic. Don’t cheat here, though. You’ll get caught.
Alt Tags: Google can’t read graphics (yet). It can’t tell the difference between an egg and an elephant. For this reason, the graphics on your page need an “ALT” tag. You’ll see the alt tag of a picture when you hold your mouse over it for a moment.

Content: Last, and probably most important, is content. Google hires the worlds bet mathematicians and theorists to help the engine understand what a page is about by reading it. If your page isn’t about pets, Google stakes it stock on the fact that it won’t come up when you type pets – no matter what you have in the meta tags. The best way to get the highest ranking for a subject is to be the best webpage on that subject. Content is King!

RoboForms - This is how I remember all my passwords and fill in forma automatically. Great program!

Search Engine Optimization: Extremely expensive, Almost $900. Because I use this for many clients, it pays for itself.

Shopping Cart - I use this shopping cart for HandicappedPets.com and Nextek Power Systems.

July '06 News:

As many of you know, I recently attended the SES (Search Engine Strategies) conference and trade show in San Jose. Needless to say, being in the presence of search engine experts from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, as well as some of the industry’s most prestigious consultants was exhilarating. After 25 years as a noted computer professional, I am no longer surprised when I meet someone in the field who makes me feel like a novice.

The primary focus of SEO is in areas of Organic Search, Pay-Per-Click Marketing, and Tracking.

Organic Search.

This refers to the search results that the engines provide based on the search engine’s analysis of your page. Organic Search results are free and are based on the professionalism, content, and link profiles of your site. (Link Profiles: Who is linking to you, what they say about you.) The methods for getting high organic search rankings include keywords, title and description tags, linking, and most important, page content. Want to see who is linked to you? Google "link:<your website>."

Much of the discussion was about “White Hat / Black Hat “ techniques. There are several SEO firms that specialize in understanding the search engine software well enough to effectively ‘trick’ them into high rankings. This is a “Black Hat” technique and, although it may work for a short time, almost inevitably leads to being penalized. BMW was recently banned by Google for a time because of this.

An example of a Black Hat technique is filling your page with keyword-oriented text that is the same color as the background text so that users can’t see it but search engines can. Google hires the top mathematicians and strategic programmers – how long do you think it takes them to figure this out?

We “White Hat” SEO consultants use strategies like filling the pages with searchable, organized, high value content, using the technical tools that Google provides (Sitemaps), and keeping up with industry changes.

In any case, it is not difficult to get good organic rankings for industry-specific keywords. I was able to get a Page 1 ranking for “Solid State Transformer” with a one-page website and a simple article because it is a relatively specialized field. Specific keywords are easy to rank, general keywords, like “transformer” require a great deal of work.

Pay-per-click

Pay-per-click advertising is commonly known as the ads on the right side of the page when you do a Google search. These are becoming increasingly important as they are a large part of the business model that drives marketing on the internet. Google provides organic search results as a free service, pay-per-click as a business. It is altogether possible that the organic results will be pushed further and further down the page as time goes on. In the example (Figure 1: Google Results for Pet Diapers), about 25% of the page is devoted to Organic results. In an interesting note, the top sponsored result and 100% of the Organic results point to my websites. (Figure 2: Me, blowing my own horn).

search engine optimization

Figure 1: Google Results for "Pet Diapers"

Tracking:

The stars of the show were the result tracking methods. PPC ads and well as Organic Search listings can use capitalization, a call to action, bolded search-term match, and more to capture attention and drive sales. You can illustrate this by observing what you click on next time you do a search – it’s rarely the top listing and more often the best formatted. Imagine spending a great deal of time and money to get to the top and nobody clicks on you. Google, and others, provide excellent tools and methods for tracking the results of ad testing.

Google Analytics is a free service in which you establish ‘goals’ for search query. For example, when someone clicks on your listing, where do you want them to go? Contact Us Page, Newsletter Page, Purchase Page are all ‘goals’. Analytics will tell us not only how many clicks you get but also where the user goes on his way to the ‘goal.’ This allows us to know which ads and landing pages work best. Not only do we need to test the listings that point to your page, but also at the page that the searcher will land on when he clicks.

SEM:

Search Engine Marketing has become one of the primary marketing methods for any business. It has taken its seat beside (and possibly above) media advertising, direct mail, direct sales, and other traditional marketing tools. As a search engine optimization client, you have specific goals in mind for your relationship with search engines. The key to success here is to have clear goals that will generate the results necessary to fund their pursuit.