If you’ve not set your robots.txt file to exclude your image folder then you are probably receiving as much if not more traffic from Google images as you are from Google search. Why? Well Google reports that 15% of all queries made are conducted via their image search facility. So it’s possible to receive tremendous traffic from image search and in fact we’ve had clients who have come to us for SEO that are receiving more traffic via image search than content search.

So is the answer to exclude your images folder from being spidered? It could be but you can also take advantage of brand awareness and what we’ll call contact visits (visitors who start with an image search but will explore a site further upon landing from that image search). Brand awareness? Yes, with properly optimized images and rich media you can control how the image/rich media is displayed in the SERPs. Using relevant keywords in the file name and in the properties summary can have a dramatic impact on how your image or rich media file is displayed.

This same practice applies to pdf’s, word docs and almost any file you can place online. Taking the time to optimize your properties summary tab or file properties is a great way to increase brand awareness online.

In the past 18 months the volume of chatter regarding mobile search has grown into a low rumble and all indications are it will swell to a roar in the next few years. While the number of mobile surfers is not at a level comparable to pc based surfers it is growing and doing so at an alarming rate. So much so that Google mobile product manager Matt Waddell called it a watershed moment in a recent interview.

What does this mean to you?

Quite simply if you do not have a mobile version of your website in operation or on the drawing board you will get left behind. Mobile phones have now reached 75% penetration in the U.S. and 4 of 5 mobile phone users now request some sort of internet access when purchasing their phone. These kind of numbers combined with the increased energy from search engines to provide mobile friendly results (both in look and relevance, meaning why deliver search results that don’t look good and then send a mobile user a search result to a website that is not mobile friendly?) it does not take a rocket scientist to understand mobile search will impact the way people conduct business.

So the priorities of the business owner should now include a properly built mobile website to compliment their “pc” site and a presence in mobile search. Both of these tasks can be completed by The Info Group.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation with a webmaster or marketing person that ultimately I’m challenged on what it takes to implement a successful SEO campaign. Many times it starts with, “you just add a bunch of keywords to your meta tags and content” or “you just create a page for each keyword” or some other riduclous statement. As easy as it would be to just laugh or tell them good luck and walk out I seem to find myself instead taking the time to explain why their theories won’t work and really what the best path to take is.

With that in mind let’s take a very quick look at the very basics of good search engine optimization.

1. Keyword research - Take the time to find the keywords that are the most targeted for your website. Generic keywords are the first thing most people think they need for their site but the reality is most people don’t search for one word terms when they are motivated to take action.
2. Title tags - These are the most important of all of the tags. If you do nothing else to optimize your site, make sure you have a unique title tag for every page.
3. Meta tags - THe KEYWORD TAG IS NOT THAT IMPORTANT! In fact if you want to use the keyword tag place misspellings, zip codes, etc, in it. Your description tag is the second most important tag you can use. Use a unique description tag on each page.
4. Content - Content is King has been a mantra since I’ve been involved with SEO (circa 1997). Create content that is readable by a human using your keyword phrases naturally. If you try to create content for the search engines you will fail.
5. Internal linking - Make sure you have text links to every page in your site and that you link to pages within the content on your site. Hint, Click Here is not the best way to use a text link, think keyword phrase.
6. Code - Make sure your html and code is compliant and when possible reference your code instead of hard-coding it to your page.
7. Link popularity - Gain as many relevant links as you can because just like content, Links are King. Submit to web directories, create social profiles and update them regularly, write articles and submit them, issue press releases, create content that is compelling enough other websites will want to reference it, join forums and add your link in your signature, and post, post, post, be creative and above all … gain links.
8. Sitemaps - Create a user friendly html sitemap and at a minimum link to it from your front page. Create a xml sitemap and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo’s Site Explorer and MSN Webmaster Central.

Sounds easy doesn’t it? Well then give it a try and soon you’ll find it’s not rocket science but it is hard work and just like anything else you won’t be successful without hard work.

As competitive as the search engine market is, Google, Yahoo & MSN find common ground as they work to improve search results by allowing Cross-host submission of sitemaps. Read the post on Yahoo’s Search Blog.

Google continues to show why they will not be stopped in their quest to bring every bit of information to the web by announcing the release of Google Video Sitemaps. This feature is an extension of Google Sitemaps which allows website owners & managers to control the content that is spidered by Google. If you use video on your website this is the best way to allow Google to properly index it.

Semantic search has been mentioned for several years mostly within the intellectual community however with Googles recent patent application, semantic search is now here. Is this good or bad? As with any SEO topic you will find people on both sides of the aisle. Here is a fairly impartial article to educate you further.

I saw the first upgrade to a clients Analytics account last night and couldn’t wait to log in today to see if I had been dreaming. Business owners everywhere have just had their dreams answered when it comes to tracking your online marketing efforts. Whether you participate in SEO organic marketing or SEM paid search marketing or Interactive Marketing or … get the point, Google Analytics has taken the effort out of understanding how your marketing dollars are working for you.

When you login the improvements are immediately noticeable with an upgraded layout and graphical look from the charts which include much more interactive information on mouse-over to the overall information available on the page. For ecommerce and goal capturing users, the ability to understand what keywords and what campaigns are working has been taken to a new level. Help features are prominent and organized by 4 main categories instead of the single help link at the top of the page in the previous version. (you can still view the old version while in beta)

If you participate in online marketing and are not using a statistics package, you have no excuse now! As with almost everything Google does, Analytics is free. This version is a very nice step forward and I guess I should stop wondering why Google shares are what they are.

It’s is common knowledge an effective organic SEO campaign involves a linking strategy.  Linking has become an intregal part of search engine optimization thanks to Google.  They were the first engine to place a value on links that point to a website and reward those who establish credible links. 

However, this part of their algorithm has also generated a number of unexpected results.  For instance search the keyword chicken and you will find a site called Subservient Chicken in one of the top listings, why?  Links pointing to the site alone.  Try the keywords miserable failure and usually the first link is the White House website and in particular the page dedicated to The President.   

Just for fun I thought I would include a few more, search Google for these terms.

1. National Disgrace - Webpage of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig
2. Terrorist Sympathizer - Television personality Bill O’Reilly
3. Waffles - John Kerry, former Presidential candiate
4. swivel eyed loons - UK Independence Party Official website (UKIP)

While this post is a bit light hearted it does show the value of link building when optimizing a website.

We’ve seen first hand what a malicious minded person can do when a site we were running an SEO campaign for had their entire content hijacked. Luckily the web developers were able to shut the unwanted intruder down and regain control of the content. Today our blog had several attempted comment posts that were obviously the product of an automated bot. Again we had controls in place to not allow the comments to be live and the only discomfort was the time it took to delete them.

Internet security overall is under attack every minute of everyday and with websites playing a growing role in the everyday operation of business security is a risk that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Those attacks are usually associated with credit card theft or identity theft. Would it surprise you to know there are a staggering amount of SEO related attacks?One such way devious, black hat SEO types are trying to circumvent the system is through XSS attacks.

Here is an interesting post on XSS attacks or cross site scripting and how you can work with your hosting company to protect against them.

For the sake of this writing I�ll assume a basic understanding of meta tags, what they are and their importance.� With that in mind let�s focus on properly constructing a title tag.

For any gains you might want to acquire in the organic rankings your title tag must be, well, optimized.� Now by optimized I mean simply it must contain the keyword or phrase you are trying to obtain for that page in an order that provides maximum effect while utilizing the limited number of characters that each search engine recognizes.� For example, Google only recognizes up to 65 characters while Yahoo & MSN recognize 70 and sometimes more.� For this example let�s use smashed cups and crushed cups as our two key phrases.

To simply optimize a title tag for these phrases you could place them in that order and call it a day.� � Believe it or not this is an optimized title tag that would serve well for those phrases in conjunction with a proper on-page and off-page optimization strategy.� That being said the tag would be great for the generic searches of those terms.� Let�s say the intent of the page is to actually sell smashed cups and crushed cups at a discount.� If that is the case you might try something like this. Although you lose the company name you are able to tell the visitor and the engine exactly what the page is about, keep your generic terms in play and bring in the keywords buy and sale all while staying within the Google maximum character count.� Now if you went ahead and added the company name you would fall outside of the Google character limit but still be safely inside the limits for Yahoo & MSN.

Optimizing a title tag to be effective involves more than placing keyword after keyword in it.� Character space is limited and thus every character must count.� As with any optimization technique, be creative but be sensitive to both the user and the engines.