Are Domain Names For Individual Cities a Good Idea?

Being found in local search results is a great thing if you are trying to increase your business in your area and surrounding cities. Google gives you a leg up being found in the city where your business is physically located. But how about the cities surrounding your local city that you also service?

Most business's that I handle always want to be found in the cities surrounding their home city. How can this be accomplished?

Probably the best way to be found locally (but outside of your home area) is to create landing pages that are optimized for each individual city that you would like to rank for. What are landing pages? They are pages of your website that people will "land on" when doing a search for the services you provide. For example: let's say I need to rent a dumpster and I live in Holly, MI. I would go to the Internet and enter in search something like this- dumpster rental company, Holly MI. Google will then compile results based on my search criteria and present them in a well ordered fashion, starting with the most relevant (based on their own algorithms). How does Google decide which websites to show and how high in the search results? Well that's a totally different subject but suffice it to say, they have lots and lots of algorithms that compile results based on their own search criteria and what they deem as relevant. Some of them they will let us know while others are kept a state secret. So we use our best "guess" in those cases but based upon current knowledge of how Google works we can usually come up with a strategy that works within Google's framework and get websites to the top of the rankings.

But this blog today is not about the importance of landing pages but about putting the specific city name in a domain name. What do we mean by that? Well let's say we own Billy Joe Bob's Plumbing LLC and we reside in Milford, Michigan. Google will impute to us a high ranking for anybody searching for a plumbing company in Milford, Michigan. However, in Brighton, Michigan not so much. So how do we get found in Brighton, Michigan?

Landing pages is one way. Another way is to put the city name in your domain name. I have found that Google will give you more page rank if the city is in the domain name. So, using our example from above, if Billy Joe Bob wants to be found in Brighton, he can purchase something like this: Brightonplumbingcompany.com. Having the individual city name in your domain name will increase your relevance for any search using that city. Now remember, content is still king in the world of search results so whereas you will get a boost from having "Brighton" in your domain name, the content on your webpage is still the most important factor.

Think of your individual search results as an accumulation of a bunch of different factors. The main factor is probably page content. Factors such as: page content, keyword density, using specific keywords in general and which ones to optimize, meta tags, title tags, header tags, meta description etc. There are many factors which determine your page rank. Down the list of important factors is having a city name in your domain name. Now, if you have a city in your actual company name then that will be a great factor in your ranking in your home city. Google gives great importance to a company that has a city or state name in it's actual company name. Something like: Michigan Plumbing Company. Every time someone searches for "plumbing company Brighton MI", Michigan Plumbing Company will get some consideration because it has Michigan in it's name and the searcher put "MI" in it's search criteria.

So, is putting "Brighton" in your domain name a good idea? Well, in general I would say, it depends. You will get a boost from having Brighton in your domain name but it depends on how you use it. Remember, content is king and a keyword in a domain name is just one factor (and not the most important factor) in Google's ranking system. If you purchase a domain name with Brighton in the name then the best way to optimize this strategy is to have a one page site that you will land on when people search for a plumbing company in Brighton. That way you can optimize the content with the domain name. Then link your one page optimized city site to your main company website. Google's search bots will follow and index the links between the two web pages and the main webpage content will impute into the one page optimized city site.

This is one strategy that should be part of a bigger overall optimization plan that works in harmony to get the most from your SEO. Another way to link the two domains together is to redirect one domain to the other. This is not as good as having a one page site optimized for a certain city and linking it back to your main domain name but it will still show a path to Google that the cites are linked. How do you do this? First, you purchase the domain with the city in it (Brightonplumbing.com) then you redirect it to your main domain name (Billyjoebobsplumbing.com). Now you have two domain names for your company but really only one website to represent it. While not having a one page website attached to that second domain name (which is the best way) you will still get a boost from any search that includes "Brighton" in it's search criteria.

So, to sum up, having a city name in your domain name works great if you are physically located in that city. If not, it still will give you some SEO juice but works best if used in tandem with a one page city optimized webpage. Remember, with there being a myriad of factors involved with a website's page rank, the best strategy to use will include using all methods together to create a well balanced strategy that will get you found on the Internet. One factor alone will not suffice to get your found.

Nuff said for now, eh?



Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

Do You Have a Backup of Your Website?

Backups. Do you have a backup of your website? Backups are important ! If anything was to happen to your website then you would have a way to restore your website to it's original form.

So many things can happen to your website. Your host company's server could crash. A hacker could break into your site and install malicious code and you would have no idea. Or they could crash your site. If a hacker wants to break into your site, there really isn't much you can do about it. You could have all the security measures in the world for your website but if a determined hacker wants to get into your site, they will.


If something bad were to happen, what would you do? If you have a backup (located off site from where your website is hosted) then you can just upload all of your website files and overwrite the existing site. This will normally take care of the problem and should restore your site to it's original look. But it's important that you keep an updated copy of your site on your local computer and not on the same server that your main website is on.

Backup early and often. You want to make sure that if you were to lose your website that the backup copy is the most updated form of your website. Otherwise you will be reinstating your site to an outdated version. So make sure your backup is a replica of the most updated version.

Are you backed up (you know what I mean)?

Nuff said......



Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

Some SEO Stuff (Keywords).....

Understanding keywords and keyword search.....

Being found high up on Google search can be easy or extremely hard. It depends on so many things. Today we will focus on keywords, keyword phrases and search terms.

For example: let's say we own a plumbing company. So we do a keyword search to find the most searched for terms in the plumbing industry. Keywords and keyword phrases such as plumbing, plumber, home plumber, plumbing repair, toilet installation, drain cleaning and so on....(anything somebody may use as a search term when they do a Google search).

As we look for the most searched terms we can then know which keywords and keyword phrases that we should populate our website with. If there are 96,000 searches a month for the keyword phrase "home plumber" and only 1,200 searches a month for the keyword "plumber that will come to my home" then of course we want to use the keyword phrase "home plumber" over and over again in our content. Here is where I will mention keyword density. Keyword density is basically how often a keyword appears in the content text of your website compared to how many overall words are there. If you have 100 words or phrases on your website and the keyword "plumbing" shows up 10 times then your keyword density is 10%. The more your target keyword shows up in your text the more relevant Google finds your website for that particular keyword. So if someone searches for a home plumber and you have "home plumber" listed numerous times on the home page of your website then Google says "Hey, this site is really about home plumbers" and they rank you higher for that search term and display your website higher in the search results. 

You must understand that "home plumber" is not the same keyword as "home" or "plumber". If someone searches for "plumber" then your site will register because you have that search term but Google's algorithms knows that your main keyword is really "home plumber" and not plumber so you will get less SEO juice. You will still get some but not as much as someone searching for "home plumber". Google knows what you are trying to get across and will index you accordingly.  You may appear on the first page of Google search results for someone searching for "home plumber" but on page three for "plumber".

So if you want to rank for "plumber" and for "home plumber" then you need to optimize both terms and increase your keyword density in your content for both.

Now here's where you can't get greedy. Let's say after doing a keyword search you find all of the keywords and keyword phrases that most people will use to find your company. Then you cram your website with keyword phrase after keyword phrase. You go for the world record of keywords jammed into one home page. You think that will ensure you are found number one on every Google search. Well, not so fast.

Google is not stupid. They know when someone is trying to job the system. If they perceive that your website content doesn't read naturally, that it has so many keywords and keyword phrases in it that it is an obvious attempt at ranking high in search then Google will penalize your site and your website will plummet in the rankings. So there is a balancing act between having enough keywords dispersed throughout your site and having it read naturally.

So, you need to find the correct keywords and keyword phrases to populate your site with. Then you need to have them in the text of your site and have them appear often and appear in a natural way.

Now, you may do everything right and still find yourself on the 2nd page of Google search results and you wonder why. There are many many reasons for this. Let's name a few here:
1. Other companies in your profession also have a webmaster who knows these things and they have optimized their site too.
2. Other sites may have more quality back links than you do (other websites that link to their site).
3. Other sites may have a longer track record with Google and thus has Google's trust and thus will almost always show higher up in search results (this can be combated)
4. You may be located in a city with lots and lots of competition. They all are trying to be number one on Google (and everybody can't be number one!)
5. You may be in a city with no competition and therefore easily rank number one because nobody else is in your area (landing pages can work really well here to get a site ranked high in a certain geographical area where there is little competition)

Lastly, I would like to touch on keywords that have low search volume. Normally you would like to rank for the most often searched for keyword or keyword phrase. If your website ranks well for a large volume search term then you have a great chance of showing up more often in people's searches. But keep in mind, the higher the search term volume, the higher the competition. If you choose to rank for a low volume search term then maybe you will always show up high in the rankings for that particular keyword. Since it is a low volume search term, very few will optimize that keyword or keyword phrase. If you are the only one that optimizes that low volume keyword then you will always show for that keyword or keyword phrase because Google finds your website relevant for that low volume keyword and doesn't find other sites relevant at all. Not many searches but no competition either.

Nuff said for now, eh?

Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

Google's New Algo and How It Affects You.....

Mobile Friendly Ranking Factor.......

Google is rolling out a new ranking factor for mobile. On April 21st, 2015 Google is adding an algorithm to it's mobile ranking system that will benefit any website that is "mobile friendly". Google realizes that more and more people are searching the web with their mobile phones and tablets so Google wants every (or the most possible) website to be mobile friendly.

What does mobile friendly mean? It means that when people search and find a website on their mobile phones, the website will "fit" into the screen size. Google realizes that people will scroll up and down on their phones to peruse a website but they don't like to scroll side to side. Traditional websites were sized to fit the desktop. They didn't fit the screen size of tablets and mobile phones.

In recent years webmasters have started to install a mobile friendly template onto their sites so that when people found them on their phones, the site would "fit" within the parameters of the phone screen size. One drawback to this solution was that the mobile template (the overall look of the website) was, in many instances, different than the main website itself.

So webmasters started looking for a different solution. What they came up with (and what Google prefers) was a responsive style website. What needed to be done was somehow the website itself would have to realize what device was trying to access it's files and then present the website in a manner that was consistent with the device itself. In general, this is how it's done. Within the core coding of the website itself, code would be imputed that would control the way the website was presented on the end users device. So, for example, if someone on a cell phone was trying to find LMS Website Services, then the site would realize "Hey, a cell phone user is trying to load me". This would trigger the code behind the scenes and the website would reconfigure itself and move certain elements around so that they fit the mobile phone screen size in a pleasing manner. No scrolling side to side. No small text to try and read. The text would re size itself also to make it more readable on the smaller screens.

Does Your Website Fit All Screens?

In the past, a website that was not mobile friendly would rank just as high as a site that was mobile friendly but as of April 21st, that will not be the case. Google wants all websites to be mobile friendly and they will rank (and show in search results) mobile friendly sites higher (everything else considered being the same). Google's intent, in my opinion, is in the end to only present mobile friendly sites in their search results. They want the user experience to be enhanced and a non mobile friendly website showing on a mobile phone is, in their opinion, not a good user experience. So now that mobile friendly appears in Google's algorithm (affecting page rank and position in search results), this would be an important time to reconfigure your website to be mobile friendly if it isn't already.

So, is your website mobile friendly? If not, your position in Google's search results is going to be adversely affected. As the times change, Google changes so we must change. Get your website mobile friendly. It's important!

Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

Smush It....

Continuing in the vein of site speed concerns, this week we'll tackle image optimization.

Back in the day, lots of websites had text only. Or content. They were mainly for informational purposes only and how they looked was a secondary concern. These days websites are used for anything and everything so how they look can be paramount. The use of images, videos and any other number of features is what makes a website look great. People won't spend much time on a website that has text only and looks boring. People want to spend time on a website that is visibly entertaining. A website that will stimulate the senses.

So the use of pictures is a great idea to beautify the appearance of any website. The problem arises

Optimize Your Images

when the pictures are too big. A website with lots of images that are 2400px by 2100px will load slowly. Even if the image has been scaled down by the web application, the original image is still huge. So when a browser downloads a website with lots of large pictures it takes a lot longer to load.

Every picture on your site should be optimized to load quickly. One way of doing that is to only store images on your site that are the actual size that you want presented on your website. Even then the image can be smushed (optimized) so that it takes up even less bandwidth and space. So when the web browser loads your website it will load much smaller and thence much faster.

All images should be scaled down to the optimum size and then smushed (optimized) to even a smaller footprint before loading them onto your website. This will ultimately speed up your website which will help your Google rankings.

Nuff said......

Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

Stuff about CDN's.......

Some general information about CDN's.

As we continue down this road on site speed and how fast your website loads we will explain in very simple and general terms how a CDN works.

Using a CDN will provide faster site loading time and some added site security. CDN (content delivery network) is technically a network of servers located in strategic areas around a region or the globe. All websites are loaded from the server where the site files are located.

Let's say, for example, you are searching for a company that sells wholesale flooring products. For our purposes we'll say this company is located in China. They have a website that is hosted by a company located in China (this hosting company is where the website files are sitting). You, being in Atlanta Georgia, are trying to find this company's website. Without a CDN, your computer will go over the Internet and pull these website files from the hosting company in China. So what you see on your computer is a website that was pulled from China.

Now, that's a long way for that website to travel to get to your computer. That takes time. Sometimes too much time. Most people will not wait for that website to load if it takes too long and will try a different company.

A CDN is a host server that will store most (not all) of that website's content (including images and text) in a location closer to you. Let's say that the CDN is located in New York. So now, most of that website that you are trying to load is located in New York and not China. This website will now take much less time to load since it's coming from New York. The idea is for search results in Google to load fast and for all of the websites served up to load fast thereby increasing the user's experience.

CDN's aren't for everybody. If you own a small plumbing company in Fenton Michigan, then you really don't care if your website loads fast for someone searching for a plumber in Beijing! However, Google still uses site speed as a ranking factor so even though your website may not need a CDN to serve your potential clients, you may want to use a CDN anyways.

CDN's cost money so any choice to use one must be leveraged against the increase in traffic that may or may not occur. Spending money on a CDN to increase your site speed ranking that doesn't lead directly to an increase in website traffic and hence more business for you should be carefully considered. High traffic sites should probably use a CDN whereas a smaller, locally owned company who is just trying to service his small local area probably doesn't need to spend the money. Of course every case is different and should be considered on an individual basis.

Now you probably know more than you ever cared to know about CDN's, eh?

Nuff said......





 Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

Site Speed Continued.....

Continuing in the same vane as last week, we will look at site speed issues again this week.

I just came across a blog that did a review on free (not really free) or cheap (not really cheap) website creation companies that offer a "build it yourself and save money" type of business model. They will push the fact that you don't have to have any knowledge of coding. You can build a website with the drag and drop method.....

Lots of things wrong with this.

1. You are restricted to what they offer when it pertains to customization. You can't customize your website any way you want because they only offer certain looks and layouts. This can be a huge problem or no problem at all depending on what you want to accomplish with your website.

2. Lots of extra code is included in every website you build because all of the tools you use to make your website are coded into the website behind the scenes. This creates a low quality website with lots of clutter in the code. This can affect your Google rankings, site speed and other loading factors.

3. What about keyword search. They will offer some SEO tools but how do you know how to write your on page content. Probably one of the most important factors in Google rankings is your on page content. Which keywords are most searched for in your industry and how do you include them in your content? How will Google perceive your keywords? What about keyword density? Have you ever heard about that? Which keywords do you want to rank for? These low cost, DIY website creation companies won't help you with any of this will they?

4. What about Gzip compression, image sprites, optimizing your images for site load speed, smushing your images, parsing your javascript, minifying your CSS, HTML and Javascript, leveraging your browser caching etc, etc, etc? What are these low cost website design companies doing for you in these areas? These are all important issues in site speed performance.

A great site to use to check your site speed is GTMetrix. They will measure your site performance using Google's Page Speed Insights and Yahoo's YSlow.

This is all important stuff when it comes to Google ranking your site and how relevant your site becomes to certain searches. Anybody can build a website but can anybody build a website that will have built in value? Just because you have a website doesn't mean you will be "found on the Internet". Building a website the right way takes knowledge. Knowledge of what Google wants. Knowledge of how to get your site shown on the first page of Google. Otherwise, really, what is your site worth if it can't be found because it was built cheaply without any of these considerations in mind?

Next week CDN's.......(what the heck are CDN's? Tune in next week and find out....)

Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com