Digital Marketing by Patrick LaJuett

Doing a bit of searching this morning, and was quite surprised to not find a succinct weekly SEO checklist.  So I decided to take a few minutes to outline my approach.  Hope it helps! Monthly SEO Tasks 2019   Research: Industry, competition, target audience, target keywords. Tools: Google, Answer the Public, Word Tracker, Ubersuggest, Excel. Website Maintenance: Create backups, check for broken links, fix spelling errors. Tools: Plesk, Expression Web Weekly SEO Tasks 2019   Monitor Performance: Traffic analysis, CTR, keywords, sources, devices, demographics, funnels. Tools: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Data Studio by Google Website Audits: Check for valid HTML structure, URLs, metatags, mobile friendliness. Tools: Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, Varvy, Siteliner, Think with Google Create Content: Create core site pages, write Blog posts Tools: Blogger, Grammarly, Expression Web, Notepad, XML sitemap Social Sharing: Sprea...

How Do I Appear First in Google Search Results?   Here are best practices for improving your ranking in Google search results: Provide high quality content on your site. Google tries to find the best answer for our users’ requests; if you write the best material, you’re in the game.   Make your site mobile friendly. Many users search on mobile devices; Google’s search results favor pages that they think answer the user’s request with the best possible user experience on their platform.   Use informative titles and snippets. Good, clear titles and accurate meta tag descriptions help Google understand the purpose of a page and generate useful snippets in our search results.   Add structured data to enable additional search result features such as stars, event information, or site search boxes.   Make sure that you follow Google’s guidelines and avoid pitfalls that could affect your ratings. Patrick LaJuett manages a website design agency : + LaJ...

The How Search Works website gives us an inside look at how Google continuously works on improving the results of their search engine. http://www.google.com/insidesearch/ "Search. It happens billions of times a day in the blink of an eye. Explore the art and science that makes it possible." I have looked at the How Search Works site before.  But a recent video (below) from Google's Matt Cutts, prompted me to revisit, as he revealed some interesting nuggets. Matt Cutts  is the head of Google’s Webspam team. So it seems appropriate that he would be most excited about the Fighting Spam page. Here are a couple of interesting points he touches on. 1. Quality Raters:  People, not robots, determine which changes are implemented (1:48) When talking about search algorithms, he also mentions "quality raters".  These are folks who look at results pages side-by-side, and rate them based on the usefulness of the results for a given search. 2. The s...

Google Snippets in Search Results Snippet Discovery I recently discovered a unique occurrence of Google snippets that appeared in a Google search engine results page (SERP).  It happens to be one of my portfolio pages, so naturally, it peaked my interest. A Google snippet is a description of or an excerpt from the webpage.  A snippet refers to the description portion of a Google search listing. Take a look at the SERP snippet below: Note, the snippet is made up of an element count (40+ items), the meta description, and four excerpts from the page. Page Rendering in Browser Here's what the portfolio page looks like when rendered in the browser: Underlying Page Code In this case, it appears as though the Google bot has gone into the page code, and parsed out the top four image descriptions.  What's interesting is that the page contains an html table with alternating rows.  Images, followed by the company name and location. ...

I recently received this question from a client needing SEO help: "I have a website for my company XYZ...the site is a Google Site. For some reason, my site is not indexed at all. Can you help?" Diagnosing the Problem Using Google Webmaster Tools, it became quickly apparent that Google was aware of the website (site was verified and an XML sitemap was uploaded).  But for some reason the search engine was not indexing it. The first thing I looked at was the robots.txt file to make sure no-follow wasn't blocking the Google bot.  Seemed OK.  Next I took a look at the page's source code...here's what I found: Page Source (Before):   HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow, nosnippet Last-Modified: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 19:27:23 GMT ... This is a problem!  Digging deeper...when I looked at the Google Sites Sharing and Permissions settings, it was set to " Anyone who has link can view ". This was ...

The Brief: Create a website that is easy to find via keyword search Site will attract new customers and sell products The Method: Design wood grain theme using Adobe Fireworks CS3 Utilize Google Apps platform: Google Sites, Gmail, Google Docs Implement E-Commerce: JotForm with secure PayPal backend Search optimization: Keyword rich page titles and descriptions, micro-blogging gadget, XML sitemap, Webmaster Tools, Analytics. The Result: Website features custom UI which ties into the client's wood crafting theme E-Commerce enables client an inexpensive method of reaching and selling to national client base Patrick LaJuett manages a website design agency : + LaJuett.com , where he supports clients as a Web technology consultant and search marketing strategy advisor.

Why Duct Tape Isn't a Long-Term Fix for Poor Search Rank Most of my clients, know just enough about SEO to be dangerous. Not meant to be a put down, as I probably know less about their field than they do mine.  They've heard the term SEO, they're not ranking, and they need to do  something .  That something, is to talk with an SEO...this is where I come in. I sit down with a client and they give me the lowdown. Then they throw some questions at me and hope I can give them a sensible answer.  I try my best.  It goes something like this: It's Broke Our Website is "better" than the competition, how come it doesn't rank?  Well turns out the competitor (whether by accident, hard work, or both) has established themselves as an industry authority.  Or they've been lucky...it happens.   Can't you throw a couple of keywords into the meta tags?  Sure, that's a good start, but you need some substance behind it.  Something for...

Just press the Rank Me button Inspired by the April Fool's post over at  Bing's Webmaster Blog Ah, if only it were that easy.  Everyone wants to be number one in search ranking.  The problem is, they don't want to put in the time, money or effort. So what can one do?  Well, you can go the route of pay-per-click, and many do.  But in my opinion, PPC should always run in parallel to a solid organic SEO campaign. Patience is a virtue, so I recommend a slow and steady approach to search engine optimization.  Follow the Webmaster Guidelines, and cultivate quality content over time. Patrick LaJuett operates a website design and marketing agency where he supports his clients as a Web technology consultant and search marketing strategy advisor.

How to Organically Optimize Google Sites for Search Here are the simple or baseline steps I take when performing SEO on a Google Sites website.  It is not a complete list of Google Sites SEO techniques, but the minimum that I recommend.  I hope you find it helpful: 1. Use keywords in Google Sites Name (i.e., Jeep FC-150 | 1959 Forward Control) 2. Make sure Page Titles are unique (i.e., Jeep FC-150 Specs) 3. Use keywords in Page Descriptions (i.e., Collection of Willys forward control Jeep print ads...) 4. Create a custom footer with name of company (i.e., Copyright 2013 My Jeep FC-150...) 5. Add a new Announcements page populated with interesting keyword rich posts* 6. Enable the auto-generated sitemap page in the links configuration 7. Register a domain with name of company, geographic identifier or service description (i.e., jeepfc150.com) 8. Map custom domain to Google Site 9. Submit sitemap.xml to Go...

From Danny Sullivan over at http://searchengineland.com "The Penguin Update launched on April 24. It was a change to Google’s search results that was designed to punish pages that have been spamming Google. If you’re not familiar with spam, it’s when people do things like “keyword stuffing” or “cloaking” that violate Google’s guidelines." Bottom line, follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines .  In other words, don't bite the hand that feeds you.