Search Engine Optimization & Marketing

Our goal is to be transparent about our methods and keep SEO from feeling like a shady industry dominated by snake oil selling conmen. Websites we create have the best SEO practices baked right into the code, however it’s important to create the content with search engines in mind. It helps to know the ins and outs of how search engines work. Google has put together a Search Optimization Starter Kit (PDF) which we’ve found extremely useful in educating website owners about the basics of SEO.
In our opinion the most important 5 items for SEO are:
- Update and create new content often
- Customize Page Titles, Tags & Descriptions for each page
- Post regular updates to social media accounts to broaden reach
- Automated XML Sitemap
- Automated Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Beyond basic site optimization, accounts on these sites should be standard:
- Google Webmaster Tools: https://google.com/webmasters/tools
- Google Insights for Search: http://www.google.com/insights/search/
- Google Analytics: http://google.com/analytics
- Bing Toolbox: http://bing.com/toolbox/webmasters
- DMOZ Open Directory Project: http://dmoz.org
- Alexa Listing: http://alexa.com/siteowners
- YellowBot local listing: http://yellowbot.com
Optional tools we use as necessary:
- Mint web site analytics: http://haveamint.com
- Google Adwords: http://adwords.google.com
- Google Base (for selling products): http://base.google.com
- Microsoft adCenter: https://adcenter.microsoft.com
- Pingdom loading speed test: http://tools.pingdom.com
- Valid XHTML http://validator.w3.org or HTML Lint http://lint.brihten.com
- Feedburner for RSS optimization http://feedburner.google.com
- PRWeb for press releases: http://prweb.com
SEO Checking Tools:
- Google Insights: http://google.com/insights/search
- Google Sets: http://labs.google.com/sets/
- Yahoo Site Explorer: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites
- Linkscape: http://seomoz.org/linkscape
- Blekko: http://blekko.com/ws/creativeslice.com+/sitepages
- PageRank Recovery Tool: http://www.virante.com/seo-tools/pagerank-recovery-tool
Social Media Optimization
- Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/pages/create.php and name it after 25 fans http://facebook.com/username/
- Connect posts to Twitter account: http://twitter.com
- Blogging sites should submit posts to Digg http://digg.com and Reddit http://reddit.com
- Retail business should register on:
- Google Local: http://google.com/local/add
- Bing Local Listing Center: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
- Yahoo Local: http://listings.local.yahoo.com
- Yelp https://yelp.com/signup
- Foursquare http://foursquare.com
- Gowalla http://gowalla.com
- HotFrog http://hotfrog.com
- Kudzu http://kudzu.com
- Best Yellow http://bestyellow.com/addurl.html
- Localeze http://localeze.com
- InsiderPages http://insiderpages.com