For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with the authority issue, let me explain.

The goal of any search engine is to provide the best, most relevant search results for the user.  After all, who wants to get a list of car dealerships if they’re looking for pizza?  So, one way that Google accomplishes this is by giving websites a score based on the following factors…

a) how many other websites are linking TO this website?b) what is the quality of those other websites?
c) what words are the other websites using to link TO this website?

The more websites that link TO your site, the better.  The more websites that have high authority scores that link TO your site, the better.  The more links that are using your keyword phrases linking TO your site, the better.

Domain Authority vs. Page Authority

Now that you know the overall gist, you should also know that there are two types of authority scores.  Domain Authority and Page Authority.

Domain Authority – the overall score given to a website.  Basically an average of all the page authority scores.  Based on a 0 – 100 scale.

Page Authority – the score given to a specific website page.  Based on a 0 – 100 scale.

What Is My Website’s Authority Score?

You can use the following free tools to find out what your site is scoring.

Domain Authority Score Tool

Page Authority Score Tool

I would encourage you to do this for your online competition as well.  After all, it’s find finding out that your domain authority score is 52 but if several online competitors have a score of 81 then you know you have some work to do.

How To Increase Your Authority Score?

There are multiple “things” that you can do, just make sure to keep them all white hat (meaning don’t do anything to try to fool the engines).  If you do a search on your favorite search engine for ways to increase your domain or page authority you’ll get lots of information.

One article I found was by Neil Patel written back in June 2012 but it’s filled with lots of information and it’s a very good read so check it out.  Here’s a quick summary:

1) Make sure your website has a good architecture.  What I mean is that certain pages are in certain files.  If you’re a piano repair technician and you offer 10 different services for piano repair then make sure that each service has it’s own page on your website and that each page is in a folder called “piano services”.  The idea is to group like items.

2) Link these “like” pages to each other.  So, each of the 10 service pages should be linked to each other.

3) Use a variant of keywords in your content and in your text links.  If you’re marketing “piano services” make sure to also use phrases like “piano tuning” and “piano repair”, etc.

4) Write as much of your own content as possible.  The more unique, the more practical the better.  The whole idea is to continuously give out information.

5) Make sure to share your information on your social networks.  Social metrics are becoming more and more important so don’t dismiss them.

6) You can do all of this with videos as well.  It’s not just written content.

7) Be patient.  It takes time to build incoming links.  In fact, you must do it slowly.  It’s a red flag to Google if they all of a sudden see a large number of incoming links to your site.

Good luck.

I am SO PROUD to say that of all the websites I maintain (over 70 at this count) that only 1 was affected by the Penguin / Panda update and it was due to another service the client used that I was unaware of.  No black hat SEO here at Eckweb!!

But, that doesn’t help my new clients who were affected.  And believe me, the work to reinstate these accounts is HUGE.

So, if you were affected by Google’s last updates, get ready, cause more are coming.

A great article at searchenginewatch.com talks about these upcoming updates.

One that popped out to me, that can be worked on RIGHT NOW was their #6.

6. Authority

If Google’s algorithms believe you or your site is an authority in a particular area, they want to make sure those sites rank a little bit higher than other sites.

What does Google’s Authority mean?

Lately I’ve been including “domain authority” on the monthly reports for my clients because Google is paying serious attention to this number.  And now I’m glad that I’ve added it because it seems they are going to be putting even more weight on that score.

Domain Authority is basically a score based on the quantity and quality (note both, not just one or the other) of incoming website links. So, this means that you want quality websites linking to your website.  And the REASON that these other websites are linking to you is because of your content.

There has to be a reason they would want to share your website with their readers.  Just like I’m sharing the article from searchenginewatch.com here on this post.  There’s information in that article that I want to share with my readers.

Do you have any information on your website that others would find useful?  I know many of you do not.

SEO Copywriters

Can SEO copywriters help you with this?  Yes, to an extent.  Copywriters can put together information for you.  They do the research, they write the content and they optimize the text for the search engines.  But there are limitations.  The copywriter is not an attorney or a plumber or a wedding planner or a physician.  In other words, they are not the expert in YOUR field.  YOU ARE THE EXPERT.

So, yes, a copywriter can write the initial copy but then it’s up to you to fine tune it with the knowledge that you have.  That’s the difference between good content and great content.

Check Your Domain Authority

You can use this free tool at Moonsy.com to see what your domain authority is.  My recommendation is to also check several online competitors and see what their scores are.  It’ll give you an idea if you’re leading the pack or if you have some work to do.

The either get writing or contact an SEO copywriter to get started on your content marketing plan to improve your domain authority.  You’ll be ahead of the game when Google implements their next algorithm change.

You may find it interesting to know that there are basically 4 different types of SEO payment models.  What I mean is that SEO companies charge their customers 4 different ways.

Monthly Retainers – where the client pays a monthly fee for a specific set of services.

Contract Services at Fixed Prices – where the client pays a specific fee for a specific service.  This would be something like making changes to a website or adding pages, etc.

Project Based Pricing – where the client pays a specific amount for a specific project.  Usually a one time service, not an ongoing set of services.

Hourly Consulting – where the client pays an hourly fee in exchange for consulting services.

At Eckweb we provide all four types of payment models.  Our prices are much lower than the normal SEO agency because we want to work strictly with small companies but I was a bit surprised to find out just how low our prices were.

Typical SEO Costs

So, hold on to your hats but according to a 2011 SEOmoz survey of 500 consultants and agencies, the typical SEO costs are…

Monthly Retainers – $750.00 – $5000.00 per month

Contract Services at Fixed Prices – broken down by service:
SEO copywriting – $0.15 – $0.50 per word
Site content audit – $500 – $7,500
Link profile audit – $500 – $7,500
Social media site setup – $500 – $3,000

Project Based Pricing – $1,000 – $30,000

Hourly Consulting Rate – $100 – $300 per hour

If you’re a small business owner you’re probably thinking something like “…there is no way I can pay these prices…”

I agree – the majority of small businesses could not pay these fees and as a result they won’t be able to compete on the Internet and as a result of that they wouldn’t be able to grow to get to the point where they might be able to pay these prices!

Eckweb’s SEO Fees

I admit, I want to work with small business owners and as a result I do keep our prices lower.  We work hard to give you the best possible seo services and we have many clients who are doing very well on top search results.  So, here are our list of prices.

Monthly Retainer – $310.00 per month

Contract Services at Fixed Prices – broken down by service:
Website Maintenance: .75/minute
SEO Copywriting: $85.00 for 500 word article ($0.17 per word)
Site / Link Audits: $200.00
Social Media Setup: $250.00

Project Based Pricing - varies but averages from $1200.00 to $3200.00

Hourly Consulting Rate - $45.00 / hour

In Summary

In the article there’s a paragraph warning about agencies that offer “costs lower than $750.00/month”.  I certainly understand their warning and I agree with that warning BUT, I also have many friends and colleagues who are honest and sincere business owners who simply cannot afford these types of prices.  I want to target that audience.

Overall, it’s a GREAT article and if you’re a business owner, I recommend it highly.  Most website owners think they have an awareness of what SEO / Internet marketing is but the truth is, they’re just scratching the surface.  You may understand that your auto’s carburator supplies a steady flow of gas to the engine but that doesn’t mean that you have the same knowledge as your car mechanic.  There are MANY more factors, big and small, involved in your auto’s engine and the same is true with your website.

I found a great article on iag.me giving some details for using Hootsuite so grab a cup of coffee and sit back and read this great article.

Good luck!

1) First and foremost, select specific keywords to target.  So many small business owners make the mistake of just putting up website pages and not paying attention to the words on the pages.  So, here’s the quick and dirty on keyword selection and placement.

a) Go to Google and type in a keyword phrase you would like to be found for.  Make a list of the top 5 websites.  You can exclude directories like Yelp, etc.  The idea here is to get a list of the competitors for your keyword phrases.  Go to Ranks.nl and type in the URL for each of those websites.  (You don’t have to fill out the “Pay special attention to…” box)  You’ll get a list of keyword phrases they’re marketing.  Look at the list of 2 and 3 and 4 phrases.  Make a list of these phrases and when you’re finished doing this for each website URL, choose the most common phrases.

b) The idea now is to choose ONE keyword phrase for ONE website page.  When you’ve assigned a keyword phrase to that website page you can then insert that keyword into the title tag, into the description tag, into the header tags (h1, h2, etc) and into the content of the website page.  I strive to put the keyword phrase near the top of the page, in the middle of the page and at the bottom of the page.

This may not be ALL that you do for keyword placement.  It all depends on how the competitors have their sites structured but it’s a good start to getting your website page optimized for a specific phrase.

2) Next is your site’s authority.  Basically it’s a rating of the importance of your website based on content, incoming links and a variety of other metrics.  You can read more about it at seomoz.org.  But basically, you want to get a high score here.  Again, it depends on your competition.  If your online competitors all have a domain authority of 60 or more, then your goal is to get at least 60.  A new client that we are working on has a website marketing appliance repair services in Lancaster, Ca. and his domain authority at the moment is 21.  His main online competitor has a domain authority of 31 so our goal then is to increase his DA number by 10 (at least).

I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s NOT.  And it takes time so do not expect it to happen in just a few weeks or even months.  It takes time and I’m here to advise you that if you trust a company to shortcut your way through this process, you may end up getting your site black listed in Google so PLEASE, do it slow and do it right.

3) The next important factor to consider is a mobile version of your website.  Many SEO authorities are reporting that by 2014 the majority of users to your website will get there via some type of mobile unit.  Whether it’s a tablet or a smart phone.  You want your website to be as user friendly as possible for those users.  So, whatever platform you are using for your website, make sure that you can create a mobile version of your site.

4) Because more websites will be accessed via mobile units it’s important that your website loads up quickly.  So, page speed is an important factor.  You can check your page speed (and that of your competitors) here at Google Developers.  Personally, I’ve found that the majority of other websites are NOT complying with this specific factor as much but it makes perfect sense to me that the faster your website loads, the easier it will be for your users.  It’s just too easy for users to click on your link, wait 3-5 seconds and if nothing happens, move on to the next site.  I know that’s what I do.

5) Microdata (aka Rich Snippets) are becoming more important and it may not be easy for you to implement this on your site.  I know how to do it for custom sites where we can manipulate the coding but on many of these programs that create websites, I’m just not sure how it’s done so please check with the support or manual for your specific website design program.  Anyway, you can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to see how your competitors are using Microdata.  If you need more information about Microdata take a look at A Guide To Rich Snippets, Schema and Microdata.

6) Social media is impossible to ignore these days.  You just can’t and although I still get small business owners telling me that they don’t know anything about social media and they don’t want to know anything about it, well, I have no words for that.  Except to say, “You have no choice.”.  You can get some information about social media influence on a website by going to Site Trail.  If there is any social media influence on the site you’ll see it near the top of the results.  Try it first with a very well known company like Microsoft.com and you’ll see the Social Media Analysis near the top.  Then try it with your own site and your competitors’ sites.  If you don’t see a Social Media Analysis then it likely means that there is none or that the influence is so small that it’s not being recorded.

Well, these are just the bare bones of what you need to do to optimize your website.  Of course, there’s so much more but frankly, I have to get to work.  But good luck and of course, if you find that all this work is just too much to handle, then consider Eckweb for your small business Internet marketing.

But then again, would the amount of traffic coming to those other websites be even MORE if their load time was improved?  I tell you there are times I feel like a scientist, just when I find an answer to one question, another pops up.  SEO truly is a combination of art and science.

Anyway, back to my topic on website page loading speed.

I’m reading an article this morning from WebProNews.com about page load time and they do report that “…page speed algorithim impacts rankings for less than 1% of search queries.”  So, it is a very small factor in all the hundreds of factors that Google takes into consideration but the name of the game is to cover as many factors as possible.

The article then goes on to give 3 examples of how addressing page speed affected websites.

• Keri Morgret from SEOmoz reported that a site with load time issues saw “quite the drop in organic referrals from Google” when the page speed algorithm was pushed live.
• Work Coach Cafe reported a 40% growth in traffic after addressing site performance issues.
• Smartfurniture.com reported that rankings for 7 of its top 10 keywords improved after site speed was increased.

So, although this particular algorithim doesn’t impact rankings often, when it does, there is definitely a significant effect.  Look at it this way, if your website and the competitors’ website both ranked 90/100 in all other seo factors, the tipping factor may be that your website loads faster than your competitors.

How Much Time Should We Spend On Page Speed Issues?

The truth is that with every website there are certain factors that we can control and others that we cannot. Websites in WordPress cannot be manipulated as easily as custom websites (or at all), websites with databases are confined to the restrictions of that database, design issues, flow issues, graphic issues. These are just a few of the restrictions that SEO webmasters come across when trying to optimize a website. So, there’s no doubt that page speed is something that we have some control over, even if it’s just to reduce the size of the graphics.

Page Speed And Your Users

When I first started working on page speed it was for the website users. I read report after report that if the page doesn’t load up within 2 seconds, the user moves on to the next site. So, what’s the point of all my hard work to get the website in the top rankings only to lose the user when the actually click through to the site? So, I began working on page speed issues. This article lists some interesting research on how page load times impact user experiences…

• A Google study found that “slowing down the search results page by 100 to 400 milliseconds has a measurable impact on the number of searches per user.”
• Shopzilla achieved a 25% increase in pageviews and a 7-12% revenue increase by speeding up its site.
• AOL presented data showing that page load speeds can impact pageviews per visit by up to 50%.
• A 1 second delay can decrease conversions by 7%.
• 75% of users said that they would not return to a website that took longer than 4 seconds to load.
• Nearly half of users expect webpages to load in 2 seconds or less.

At the end of the day all any of us can do is to try to get our websites to meet as many of the requirements as possible in order to achieve top ranking. Whether it’s domain authority or keyword relevance or page speed, you want to reach for the top numbers in as many different ranking requirements as possible. But take a moment to read this great article, it just may give you some insight into why your SEO webmaster is working until 2 am every day!

Be Careful When Choosing An SEO Firm

Reason is that there is no regulation, licensure or any form of oversight for SEO firms. Anyone can literally hang a shingle and claim themselves as an “SEO Company”. So, at this current time, it’s the consumers (the website owners) that have to check and double check.

An article from SEJ (Search Engine Journal) just came out talking about this very subject so please take some time during your lunch break (because I’m sure that’s the only time you have left in the day) and read through it.  Hopefully you will not find out that your SEO firm is engaging in any of these practices.

Personally, I would think that these types of companies have, for the most part, gone by the wayside but sadly, that just isn’t the case.

Not A Designer – But A Consumer

So, with that being said, although I am not a web designer I am a consumer. I purchase almost everything online. From groceries to furniture and everything in between, it’s mostly all purchased online. So, I do visit many websites and I shop from just a few so my comments here are from the customer perspective.

Okay, now that I’ve laid down the groundwork here, let me explain what I’ve been noticing.

It seems to me that the older the website owner is, the more “packed” the website pages are. Obviously not everyone will be able to make that assumption but I can see this trend in my own client base and of course I can see some website owners on their own websites.

Anyway, what I mean by “packed” is that there is so much information or graphics or stuff on a website page that it makes it difficult not only to decipher what the page is about but it makes it difficult to find more information. As a consumer, I am not going to read the information on a website page (I’m being brutally honest here). I will read the headlines and if I’m making a large purchase I will read reviews on other websites (and then come back to make the purchase) but I will not read every word of every sentence on the page. Especially of those words are difficult to read if they are overlapping a graphic or are embedded in some kind of flash animation or if the text colour is too light or neon pink!

For the most part, the words are there for the search engines. After all, in order to get the customer to your website in the first place you need them to find you on the search engines.

But It Looks Great – I Know

Yeah, I know, the beautiful graphics, photos, visual appeal of the website is great. The neon pink text matches the logo and it just looks wonderful. I know. BUT – the point of your business website is to bring in business and to convert those visitors to clients. You can go as wild as you want on aesthetics on personal websites, wedding websites, baby websites, etc. But on business websites, the focus is business.

It’s Not Personal – It’s Just Business

My intention here is not to offend anyone, but if beauty is in the eye of the beholder then business is in the statistics. What I mean is that if the design is affecting the sale, the statistics on the website pages will show that.

I am not really sure why I see this mostly in older clients. If anyone has any theories please let me know but it’s an observation that just hit me today. Interesting.

Her response was, “Oh really, hmmmm.”

I never heard from her again. She didn’t believe me and she probably thought I was telling her a story but I was telling her the absolute truth and hopefully, whatever SEO firm she signed up with, they told her the truth as well.

Truth be told, I get this quite a bit.  Not just from small businesses calling in but also from existing clients.

Today’s Forbes Article

So, today I see an article on my reading list about this very subject. And to quote this article…

“The linking that supports your organic search engine results must itself be obtained organically through social sharing, guest blogging and similar tactics.”

It made me feel better that at least there are others out there who do follow the same philosophy that we do here at Eckweb.  It’s easy to get lost ini all of this with so many changes happening almost daily.

How To Tackle Incoming Links Today?

In the Forbes article the writer interviewed Ken O’Donnell from KO Websites and I love what Ken said…

“…there has to be a real business reason for the sites linking to yours to be doing so. In a sense, the SEO challenge has been simplified dramatically: Create interesting, consumer-focused, relevant and useful content for your site. Create a lot of it, and refresh it constantly, and people like you, or with whom you do business, will want to link to it.”

The article went on to list a series of steps which outline what is necessary for creating and managing incoming links.  (A list we will be going over for our clients and if we’re missing anything – we will be incorporating it.)  But take a look for yourself.  It’s a great read if you’re interested in your website’s Internet marketing.

On another note, these steps should give you an idea of how truly complicated SEO marketing has become.  And also how important social media and content building truly are these days.  Don’t neglect them.  Your business from the Internet will suffer due to that neglect.

So, in case you’re not quite understanding what Internet Competition is let me explain.

1) The competitor in your specific geography is NOT necessarily your Internet competitor.  Their building may be near yours, but on the Internet their website may be 20 pages away from yours.

2) When you do a search on Google, your browser should be automatically set up to search within your local area.  So, if you’re in San Francisco and you type in “podiatrist” then you’re supposed to get local results of podiatrists.  Not a list of podiatrists in Boston or Seattle.

3) You can change the local search on Google like this…

a) Go to Google and in the search box type in your query.
b) In the search results, near the top of the page you’ll see this…

c) Click on the button “Search tools” and you can type in a location or the zip code.  When you’re done typing that in click the “Set” button and you’ll see your search results change.

4) Now, I do warn you that this is not a perfect tool but it’s quite good at giving you an idea of the local competitors.  You’re seeing what visitors in that location are seeing.

Why Is Knowing Your Internet Competitors Important?

Because in general, Internet visitors will type in the service or product and not the location.  So, someone in Elmhurst NY will type in “podiatrist” or “local podiatrist” vs. “podiatrist in Elmhurst NY”.  The idea is to capture as many Internet visitors as possible and you want your website to do that.

Of course, a local website will absolutely market the local keyword phrases. But you don’t want local phrases to be the ONLY phrases that you target. Your website is not a flyer that you distribute at local stores. It’s meant to cast a wider net and bring in more traffic than local marketing. You’re paying the SEO webmaster so why not get the most that you can from those payments?