Google developed Sitemaps back in 2005 as a useful tool for webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. Google’s Webmaster Tools’...

Google recently released a significant feature to the search page dubbed “Search Plus Your World.” The idea is...

Google has always advocated that webmasters write unique and descriptive page titles and meta descriptions for the snippets. Google uses the meta <title> tag of a page for its search results titles (most of the time). The "most of the time" in...

2011 saw an overall rise in the amount enterprise-level companies and SMBs invested in digital marketing. Begin 2012 by setting up a strategic digital vision for your business to beat the competition this year. Lower marketing costs, drive more traffic...

A lot of things happened in the world of digital marketing last year. Interest in social media rose across all industries, enterprise level companies are seriously taking a look at their SEO strategy, and “Inbound Marketing” is beginning...

Since fast websites typically result in happy users, it’s no wonder why Google chose to include page load times as a factor in its web ranking algorithm. Google Analytics recently built in a Site Speed section, which gives reporting on how slow...

Back on November 3rd, Google rolled out one of its more important algorithm changes of the year with the “Freshness Update.” The algorithm aimed to provide fresher content for 3 kinds of content.

3 Types of Content Affected...

Last week, Carlos del Rio of Agillian gave an interesting

Search Engines. Keywords. Rankings. Traffic. Conversions.

Sometimes web professionals focus solely on these concepts without having a clear idea about who their searchers are, what they are trying to accomplish, and how your company’s website...

A month ago, James Gate of UK-based Skyrocket SEO conducted an interesting experiment on

Recently, Google announced that they were updating portions of the “Caffeine” update to help give users more recent, timely,...

People in search constantly talk about the pragmatic, concrete changes they can make to a website to increase its ranking in Google. Whether it’s optimizing the H1 tag, integrating keywords throughout the body content, or performing alt text...

As social media has started to become a channel unto itself, many people have been wondering what other connections SEO and Social have in common. Many businesses increase their brand’s visibility by creating profiles on social sites such as...

Recently, Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland.com wrote an article about the much maligned meta-keyword tag. It’s...

While we regularly focus on topics that directly address search marketing, it's important to remember other online channels that influence SEO and improve your overall online strategy. Social media has become an independent channel unto itself, but...

Many of Verndale’s SEM tips focus on implementing,

According to Forrester Research, images are 21 times more likely to show up in the first page of Google results. Although Google and the other...

Search marketers have developed an eclectic variety of methodologies for understanding search patterns and creating content targeted at specific user tasks. While in NYC for SMX...

Social media campaigns are being implemented every minute of every day, yet companies continue to sink resources into social without a clear idea of where they are heading and where they came from. In this week’s SEM Tip, Verndale suggests a...

How does usability and user experience affect SEO?

Usability and user experience have a second order influence on...

In this week’s SEM Tip, we answer two commonly asked questions in SEO.

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a value between 0 and 10 assigned by the Google algorithm, which quantifies link popularity and trust among other...

“How do I make my company mobile-friendly?”

That seems to be the topic du jour of the last few years as companies in all industries have tried to break into the new space with apps, mobile versions of their websites, or even completely...

Looking to increase site traffic from your audiences abroad? Then you should consider some international SEO best practices to maximize your site’s presence in search engines within different countries. Here are five tips to account for when...

As Google dominates the search market, people seem to forget that ranking among the search engines is not achieved through one uniform strategy. Last year, Microsoft...

Google has made over 200 changes to their core search algorithm within the last year. That’s a lot of things to keep track off! There are a couple changes within the last year that you can use to gain a competitive edge in your industry by partaking...

Every company with an SEO strategy has a scary monster haunting them from under the bed, namely link building. A manager of SEO may claim: “We need to gain at least 100 links from pages with a PageRank of 4 or higher,” and every marketer...

Are you a Google Adwords advertiser? Did you know that "on average, ads that appear above the search results, also known as "premium positions," tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the right-hand side," according to

A recent BrightEdge report confirmed that the Google +1 button is already used more than Twitter’s...

Google recently introduced the rel=author markup attribute, which allows content authors to claim pieces of content as their own by simply...

Where do your social pages rank? Page one? Page two? Examples of social pages that businesses use most often are a company’s Facebook page, Twitter page, and YouTube Channel page – all of which can rank in search engines, which helps maximize...

You work hard at getting visitors to your website, so why not work hard at keeping them there? Bounce rate, or the rate in which...

Images can be an important asset for organic search results if they are optimized effectively. They can also be a great way to encourage users to distribute your content. Choose an image that will appeal to your audience and reinforce your keyword...

Following up on an old SEM tip regarding Google’s Rich Snippets, the search engine giant, along with Bing and Yahoo! announced...

According to the Search Engine Journal, mobile searchers are much further along in the buying cycle than expected. Not only that, but searchers...

Are you using online video to promote your business? Online video is a fantastic marketing tool that many organizations are using to reach millions of people for minimal cost. YouTube has been the leading video-sharing platform used by many businesses...

As you work to improve your site’s “trust” in search engines by building strong PageRank, keep in mind that it’s also beneficial to build “trust” for other websites...

Looking to execute an effective search engine optimization (SEO) campaign? Keyword research is a critical aspect of every SEO campaign and carefully selecting the right keyword phrases is critical to making your site visible to your search audience. ...

Achieve better visibility on your target local search terms by making sure your Google Places page is fully optimized. Besides the fact that it is free advertising, the Google Places listings...

It’s not a secret that search engines pay attention to keywords in the URL as a relevance factor and keywords as part of the actual domain name is also a powerful factor. If your domain strategy isn’t strictly focused on your brand name,...

Using SEO keyphrase-centric blog tags when tagging your posts can both improve usability and improve search engine rankings. Categories are used to divide blog posts into specific topics, making it easier for users to follow a particular subject. Focus...

The more information a search engine can provide the user, the more a user can tell if the search result is relevant to his or her search query. One thing that search engines use to provide more detailed information is a

Businesses with corporate blogs receive 55 percent more traffic than businesses without one, according to a Mashable article on corporate blogging. While a well-maintained...

Make sure your marketing plans are properly aligned with your search engine optimization (SEO) initiatives. SEO typically falls under the umbrella of marketing for good reason as its main focus is promoting the website. But, many general marketing...

While the meta description has somewhat lost its significance as an algorithm ranking factor,...

In order to ensure that search engine spiders are pulling the most relevant posts to users’ queries, Google must fine-tune their search algorithm regularly. One of the most recent updates they made in February was to discredit websites with “low...

How fast is your website? If you aren’t sure, then it’s time to take a look at how quickly your pages are loading. Load time is a fairly new ranking factor in the search engine algorithm, which rewards higher rankings to websites that load...

It’s no secret that social media has begun to influence search engine rankings, but a recent

As you develop your keyword strategy, try targeting long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are phrases that are three to four words long as opposed to more generic or head terms that are only one to two. For example, if your website is marketing “patio...

In concert with our recent post on Black Hat SEO and the J.C. Penney debacle earlier this week,...

Even with crawling advancements, Flash is still not really SEO-friendly, but we understand that there are very good reasons to use Flash, so in order to rank well...

Essentially, a search-friendly website is one that is “crawlable” by search engines in that it makes strong use of HTML, rather than non-friendly content types like Flash, JavaScript, or text within images. A search-optimized website is...

According to Google, 97% of people research online before buying locally. Google...

Are you looking to reach potential customers abroad? It’s no surprise users all around the globe use search engines (mainly Google), but the search results, and consequently SEO strategy, differ from country to country. While it’s largely...

Google is going even further to expand its URL shortener, “goo.gl,” with the most recent launch of goog.gl API (application programming interface) access....

Have you come up with a New Year’s resolution for 2011? How about a blogging goal? Could you blog once a day or once a week for the entire year?  

WordPress recently issued this very challenge to bloggers, asking them to write...

2010 marked some of the most significant changes in the major search engines’ algorithms within the last decade. Two themes dominated the updates that search engines (mainly Google) took on in 2010 - Speed and Social. Along with the launch of...

Will your Twitter stature affect your website’s rankings? In short, the answer is “yes,” according to a recent article written by Search...

When Ms. Rodriguez reported her shocking online shopping experience to the New York Times, Google immediately took...

With the launch of Google Instant, users can now scan a results page while still typing in a search query. How does this affect SEO? Google Instant really reinforces the need to have the primary keyword...

Get the credit you deserve using one of Google’s new meta tags for Google News. Google recently announced that they are experimenting with two meta tags - syndication-source and original source - which will give publishers the ability to take...

The Alt attribute is used in HTML to specify alternative text (alt text) that is to be rendered when the image to which it is applied cannot be rendered. For SEO purposes, the Alt attribute should state the purpose of the image, which helps search...

Organizations around the world are generating lots of content and putting it on the Web, but what happens when a faulty blog post is posted or confidential information becomes exposed accidentally? One top method for removing URLs from Google would...

Do you find yourself lost in web measurements when using Google Analytics? If you’re more of a visual person, then you’re in luck. Google recently introduced a new feature in beta called

In March of this year, Google introduced Remarketing, which allows search advertisers the ability to ‘remarket’ to users who once came to your site...

Google launched its URL shortening service through the Google Toolbar last year and this week gave it its own website. We...

As the dust begins to settle with the launch of Google Instant, conclusions on how it will affect SEO and overall search behavior are becoming more defined. For info on how it affects PPC in AdWords, this...

Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of visits in which users left your site from the entrance page. For example, if 100 people entered your site and 20 of them left without proceeding to view another page, the bounce rate would be 20%. Keeping users...

An interesting discussion has been active in the SEO community for about a week regarding a possible Google algorithm update pertaining to links from social networking sites being used in rankings. The discussion began on Webmaster...

Since so many of our clients are Google Analytics customers, we had to share Google’s announcement from earlier this week regarding verifying a Google...

If you’re embarking on a web design and development project, your web analytics data should be playing a major role in the process. We live in a user-first web environment where...

Google Webmaster Tools helps diagnose your website visibility performance issues that Googlebot...

It’s no secret that the most heavily weighted factor in the major search engines’ algorithms is the number of quality external links pointing to your site. Obtaining a high quality link to your site is seen as a ‘vote’ by search...

One way to enhance your website’s rankings is to maintain well-written, search-friendly copy. You can achieve high rankings with copy that consists of targeted...

Google Blog Search launched in 2005 and allows users to search the blog universe to find out what people are saying on any subject matter. Mainly, Google Blog Search includes blogs that publish a site feed...

The big news for Google’s YouTube is certainly the momentous win over Viacom’s copyright infringement lawsuit; but YouTube’s announcement last...

If you advertise with PPC Ads using Google AdWords, you should leverage the new AdWords reporting integration with Google Analytics. Last month, Google announced...

Yesterday, Google announced the completion of their new web indexing system, Caffeine. This major algorithm update provides 50 percent faster results and changes...

One of the most debated topics in PPC advertising is whether or not to bid on brand keywords. Brand keywords are search terms that are unique to a business’ brand(s). There is not a universal answer to this question, instead it depends on various...

An important part of conversion optimization, form optimization aims to improve the rate at which users complete filling out all of the fields within a form. Users abandon forms for various reasons, but mainly because...

If your website has video content that you want to promote, video optimization should be at the top of your list. Since search engines are still not at the point where they automatically convert audio to text, it’s important you supplement the...

Google launched a major overhaul of its SERP this week with a three column, colorful...

Google has been updating the SERP to include "rich snippets", which provide users with...

Today, Google announced that their Local Business Center is becoming Google...

Google made it official on Friday that site speed is now a factor in their algorithm. Google's focus has always been centered on user experience,...

We have talked before about the importance of optimizing for the small screen (i.e., mobile-enabled handheld devices). With the weekend's launch of Apple's iPad, you can...

Google announced last October a proposal for making AJAX crawlable and earlier this month that proposal went into action. AJAX (shorthand for...

Search engines display a brief description of a returned website in their search results to help users get an idea of what that webpage is about before clicking through. There are a few different ways search engines generate the text in the description....

Social media is without a doubt part of almost every marketer's strategy today. However, the term social media is still somewhat unclear to many. Many marketers make the mistake of limiting social media to popular social networking sites like Twitter...

It's pretty much common sense to monitor the traffic your website receives from your social networking channels like Facebook, Twittter, and LinkedIn within your analytics platform. But, it's also important to measure how much traffic your social...

I come across a lot of broken links while I am online. Whether it's a link from Twitter, Facebook, an email, a press release, a blog post, or a PPC ad, it’s frustrating as a user and it's bad news for the marketer. It's somewhat ironic because...

Many PPC advertisers take advantage of implementing keyword insertion into their ad copy's title. Keyword insertion allows you to have the search engine automatically insert the searcher's query into the ad text. Using this feature helps make your...

As part of a three part series, we are discussing optimizing analytics and have talked about tying search engine visibility data with keyword-level traffic data and Conversion Optimization. This week, we will conclude with Referring Traffic Campaign...

As part of a three part series, we are discussing optimizing analytics and talked last week about tying search engine visibility data with keyword-level traffic data. This week we will discuss Conversion Optimization, and next week we will conclude...

A couple weeks ago, we talked about optimizing analytics, which can include tying search engine visibility data with keyword-level traffic data, Conversion Optimization, and Referring Traffic Campaign Tagging. Today we will detail the first tactic,...

Enhance your Google AdWords PPC ads with an ad extension that showcases your business information. Ad extensions expand a standard text ad with additional business...

Whether you're tracking website traffic with Google Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture, or another Analytics platform, make 2010 the year you optimize your analytics data. Optimizing analytics can include tying search engine visibility data with keyword-level...

Press releases help generate awareness and can drive significant search referral traffic if optimized and distributed appropriately. This year, place emphasis on leveraging SEO with your PR initiatives. Utilizing SEO...

Last week, our tip focused on page load speed and how signs point to Google using the amount of time it takes pages on your site to load as a factor in their algorithm. We want to continue the discussion this week because Google has made this...

There has been a lot of talk about Google Caffeine, a major algorithm update that is set to slowly roll out early next year. One significant update that is rumored is Page Load Time being factored into the algorithm. Last year, they announced...

Google launched “Real-Time Search” this week, which adds a “Latest results for: (search term)” section in the SERP, much like the “News Results” section. The Latest Results section brings in data from Facebook, Myspace,...

If you are regularly adding new content to your site, you may want to consider implementing a dynamic XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is a list of all URLs that you would like indexed by search engines. A dynamic XML sitemap is created through your...

Improve your organic rankings by asking those who link to your website to refine the link's anchor text. Many times, a link to your site will have your company or website's name as the anchor text, or worse, it might read "click here". First, compile...

Unless you have manually set rules within your Analytics program to exclude traffic from your organization's IP addresses, your traffic data includes visits from everyone - both members and non-members of the organization. To get a better understanding...

If you are running a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign within Google Adwords, you probably know about the option to advertise on the Google Content Network. Google has relationships...

Landing page selection and testing is key to a well-managed PPC campaign. One PPC landing page selection tactic that integrates both paid search and natural search is using the top-viewed content in your Web Analytics to choose landing pages. By...

Gaining a full understanding of your site's performance in natural search requires sound reporting. You should be measuring SEO performance by using two metrics: Visibility and Traffic. Visibility measures how often your site ranks on a set or...

Many websites benefit in SEO by designating sections of their content to sub-domains. Sub-domains are domains that are part of a larger domain. For instance "realestate" is the sub-domain of realestate.about.com. Search engines recognize the keyword...

If you are engaged in web 2.0, bring it front and center on your site. Your Twitter updates, Facebook page, and corporate blog should be mentioned on your homepage. The whole concept of hosting these channels revolves around engaging your audience....

Adding new and fresh content to your site is food for search engine spiders. It makes sense why search engines reward site owners who frequently update their content because new and useful information is typically sought by users. By making more...

The much anticipated launch of Google Wave is just two weeks away and many marketers and developers have already been thinking about ways to leverage Wave as part of their web strategy. In case...

Google Insights for Search which allows you to compare search volume patterns on keywords of your choosing, launched just over a year ago and there have been steady updates since....

Negative keywords are keywords added at the ad group, campaign, or account level that dictate which search terms will prevent your ads from displaying on. This is essential if you have keywords set on broad match. Since broad matched keywords allow...

It may seem odd to optimize a page that search engines frown upon when landing on, but a 404 page that employs SEO tactics can help the situation when it does happen. For a variety of reasons, search engine spiders often access an unavailable page...

Have you recently launched a new website, corporate blog or just added new content? One of the quickest ways to drive immediate traffic and gain exposure is to launch a PPC campaign. Your new content will need to obtain inbound links in order...

Since the announcement of the Microsoft–Yahoo! search deal a couple weeks ago, more details have emerged on how advertising will be managed following...

Google Sitelinks are links under a listing that typically appear on a branded-search for your site, which allow users to access deeper beyond the homepage. These links are automatically generated by Google based off of a variety of factors –...

Obtaining high-quality inbound links to your site is central to SEO efforts, which is why it is important to know who is linking to you. Performing a “link:yourdomain.com” search in the major search engines will return a sample of the...

If you're running a PPC campaign, you probably keep a close eye on your conversion rate — the rate at which your PPC traffic performs a desired action on your site. The key to improving your conversion rate is sound testing. Landing page, ad...

It is critical during any new development or site upkeep initiative where pages are being renamed to implement 301 Redirects. Simply using Redirects to transition old pages to new holds very little value other than for providing a quick fix. When properly...

Inclusion in the three main directories is a key factor within the major search engines? algorithms. Yahoo!, DMOZ, and Business.com are human-edited directories that Google pays careful attention to. The first step is to find out if your site is listed...

Google recently added a reporting dashboard to its Local Business Center. The new dashboard was created to give business owners an added incentive for verifying their businesses in Google. New reporting metrics offer business owners information on...

Search engines are not able to crawl the content inside of images, but you can help them understand what the image is about with some simple optimization tactics. Apply Alternate Text (ALT Tags) to your images to help search engines associate keywords...

Site Tag Optimization through meta tagging is an important piece of your site optimization process. Meta tags provide webmasters with a way to help search engines understand the content on a site, and they also help the engines rank sites in search...

In these times of a constantly growing and changing web environment, Online Brand Reputation Management is something marketers should take seriously. With the web 2.0 revolution and the ease in reading and publishing opinions, your...

Measuring online social media will mean getting a little creative in selecting which metrics to use. Some examples of this include: monitoring traffic from your social media channels by looking at the referring sites section of your analytics platform,...

If you are running PPC ads in the search and content networks, be sure to have a campaign designated just for each. Keeping your search and content network campaigns separate will allow you to optimize more efficiently by allocating spend better,...

Determining whether an engine is indexing your all of the content on your site is important to maximizing your search engine traffic. One way to find out which pages of your site are being indexed by a search engine is to perform a “site:”...

Many marketers believe they are invested in social media when in reality, they're not. A common example of this is asking a marketer if he or she has a social media plan, and the answer is, “Yes, I have a Facebook page!”. Being invested...

Your site's analytics software is not just a source to obtain traffic data from. Web analytics provide information on how your audience finds you, and more importantly, how they interact on your site once they land. Looking at important metrics...

comScore recently announced 35% of users now access the mobile internet daily, which is a 107% increase from January 2008 to January 2009. And according to a recent ABI Research Study, 70% of respondents use their mobile devices to conduct searches...

Many marketers forget to tie in Search with their offline marketing efforts, which presents a big opportunity for those who do. For example, if you learn about a product or service from somewhere other than the web and you want to learn...

Article marketing has become a very popular way of gaining back links for websites. There are many article directories on the internet such as EzineArticles.com, Infobarrel.com, and Squidoo.com that allow you to submit articles attached with your...

The best way to gain links to your site is the natural way – have others link to your content because they find it interesting or useful.  But, if your site is boring – it sells toasters for example – how do you get natural...

Not everyone has $500 to buy a link at Business.com or $300 to buy a link in the Yahoo directory.  Here are some free ways to get some quality links to your site:

The “nofollow” tag is a piece of code that when added to links tells search engines not to follow that particular hyperlink.  Adding the nofollow tag to your links can help you in more ways than one.  First and foremost, it...

A popular way to quickly gather inbound links is to submit your website to online directories. A directory is an archive of website links organized into categories. Examples include Yahoo, Business.com, BOTW.org, and JoeAnt.com. Keep...

If the URLs on your site are long and difficult to remember, you might want to rethink the way you name your pages. For example, http://www.yoursite.com/content/page.php?12345 is not a URL that looks good in the eyes of Google. Consider...

Search engine spiders naturally crawl your site by coming in and moving around via links. Because of this, you need to make sure every page on your site has a link from at least one other page. A good way to accomplish this is to create...

One of the first things search engines look at when ranking your site is the text within the title tags on your page. A clean, attractive, and keyword-filled title tag is most likely to rank well in Google’s search results. Remember,...

The textual content on your site pages is one of the biggest things that search engines look at when ranking your website. In order to make your content search engine friendly, there are a few things you can do:

YouTube.com gets millions of visitors each day and allows users to submit their own content. If you are not using YouTube now to market your products or services, you should really give it some thought. When submitting your video, think...

A good way to keep Google coming back to index your site is to consistently add new content. Google loves to index new things and they tend to give more authority to sites that are updated frequently. An easy way to make sure your site doesn't get...

Making insightful, informative comments on blog posts is a very effective way of driving quality traffic to your website. Almost every blog out there will allow you to not only post comments about the articles, but also post a URL back to your site....

An XML sitemap is a list of URLs on your site that you would like to have indexed by search engines. An XML sitemap is good to have, especially if your site navigation is confusing, because it provides the search engine spiders with an easy way...

“Link bait” is a term given to content that is created specifically to attract links from other websites. Content that is link bait is often funny, interesting, useful, late-breaking, or valuable. Successful link bait can naturally attract...

When looking for links for your sites, one thing to keep in mind is the “nofollow” attribute. Nofollow tags are added into the HTML link code and their purpose is to basically tell search engine spiders to not look at your link. If you...

A good thing about social media sites is that they are basically a free-for-all link post. Anyone can go in and post links that they find interesting or useful. As a web marketer, using social media sites to develop your back link count is a great...

Google has many different factors they use to rank web pages – title tags, incoming links, on-page text relevancy, etc. One of the most overlooked, yet one of the most important of these factors is the H1 tag. Google looks at heading tags...