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

The Growing Importance of Site Speed....

Site speed. Or loading speed. In other words, how fast your website loads.

How fast does your website load?

Google is putting more emphasis on how fast a website loads. They feel that a faster loading web site enhances the user experience. And Google is all about the end user experience. Google has come to realize that people don't/ won't wait for a slow loading website to appear. If a site takes too long to load, most people will just exit out and go to another site in the search results.

You don't want this to be your site. A website that loads too slowly and hence provides a low quality user experience. If your site is slow, Google will lower your rankings. Lowering your rankings will cost you in the search results. Of course site speed is not the only factor in site ranking but it is becoming increasingly important to Google and plays a big part in where you will be found in search results.

Knowing this, we must do the things required to speed up your website. This is an integral part of
current SEO strategies. Also, increasing your site speed will be an ongoing task. You won't just optimize your site once and figure all is good now. We need to constantly monitor our sites to make sure they are still loading at a fast pace.

Some things that can be done to speed up your site are:

1. optimize your images for file size
2. minify your javascript, css and html code
3. leverage browser caching
4. avoid landing page redirects
5. enable compression
6. reduce the size of above the fold content
7. use CSS sprites
8. and lots more really....

There are a couple of online tools that can be used to look at your site speed. Google developers will use page speed insights. There is also Yahoo's YSlow and GTMetrix which will test both for you.

Page speed is getting more and more important all the time so it is worth it to spend some money on having your site speed looked at and optimized. Your Google rankings will thank you!

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

Keeping It Simple Yo.....

Keeping it simple. There are a lot of websites out there. Some are very complex and serve a certain purpose and some are very simple and serve their own purposes.

There are times when having a huge, complex website is a good thing. Some large companies have so much to say and provide for their intended audience that their sites must out of necessity be large and complex. They want to have everything on their website to serve their potential customers. Even though this is a good thing, these sites can be cumbersome and hard to navigate sometimes.

Most people just want to get on a site, find what they need and then get off. In these days of wanting everything now and wanting them fast, we must, as webmasters, take into account how the consumer uses these websites. I find myself researching things on the web and am amazed at how long it takes to accomplish this simple task.

I was looking into base layers the other day (something I can wear when it's cold and when I'm hiking) and by the time I was done, 2 hours had passed. I couldn't believe how long it took just to look into which type of base layer was the best and why. How much they cost and was the price of the higher end base layers worth the additional money or should I just go with a mid grade base layer and save the money. So many things to consider. My preference would have been to find out all these things is less than 2 hours. Maybe something like 10 minutes would have been nice.

So the question arises. Why would it take so long for such a small task? I found websites that I thought would give me information that I was looking for but found that they didn't really help me. It took me a while to find the correct website that gave me the answers I was looking for. This is what Google is striving for. To present relevant websites to people that are searching for certain things. So that they don't have to take 2 hours to find everything they want on the web.

So one of our strategies here at LMS Website Services is to keep it simple. Most of the websites we build are simple and to the point. Presenting the critical information to the consumer while resisting the urge to complicate things with a lot of worthless content.

Remember, most people don't want to spend 2 hours on the Internet looking for what they want. They want to get on, find what they want and get off. So a simple, beautifully made and presented website has value to the customer and to Google. Don't forget, we have to please the customer and Google at the same time. After all, the customers won't find you if Google doesn't present you to them.

In summary, you should have a website that is simple enough so the customer can easily find what they want in a timely fashion. It should look great (simple doesn't mean it looks cheap or skimpy). The consumer will judge you and your company by the presentation of your website. Remember, your website is an extension of you. It represents you. It's the first impression a potential customer has of you (and we know what they say about first impressions). Your website should also present to Google what you are all about so they can present "you" via your website to your potential customers. Your homepage should have your company name and phone number in a prominent spot which is easily found by the customer. It should have the basics of what you do so the customer will know quickly whether you can be of service to them or not. If yes then they will normally continue to peruse your site for all of the pertinent information that they require.

The end result will be a call to you to inquire about your services and how you can be of help to them in their particular situation. And that's all good.....

Nuff said for now, eh?

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