Google Continues It's Rampage On December 17th

If you are familiar at all with search engine optimization, you probably know that the last couple of years have brought some major changes to the industry.  Google has not only accelerated their updates to their algorithms, but they are also making bigger splashes with them as well.  This recent, as of yet unknown, algorithm update on December 17th, 2013 is no different.

As the head of the SEO department here at Foremost Media I often find myself seeing these changes the very day they happen across the data we collect from our many clients' rankings.  For instance, many SEO's out there keep repeating the mantra that "nobody noticed" when the new Google Humingbird algorithm was released a month before it was announced in September (It was implemented on August 20th).  Well, they do not speak for Foremost Media.  I can tell you at the end of August we were all noticing MAJOR rank volatility and were wondering what was going on.  Now, I can tell you that another major update just occurred on December 17th.  This time, I figured I better get out ahead of it before the internet starts buzzing with SEO's claiming that nobody noticed.

Whenever I suspect an update is occurring I check Mozcast.  Mozcast does a great job at telling us when something is going on.  While you can't tell WHAT is going on specifically, you can tell when volatility is up.  Well, it was up very heavily on December 17th.  In addition, on the same day, Foremost Media watched as rankings across a half dozen clients dropped for a couple select terms each.  We aren't talking your standard two or three position drops either.  We are talking about two or three pages. So, what happened?  We started digging.

Mozcast showed that on December 17th, this update caused exact match domain influence to drop a little, but heavily increased both partial match domain influence and diversity.  The first thing we noticed was that for about a dozen clients or so, we were seeing major rank declines for just a couple of keywords, usually isolated by topic.  It wasn't all bad news.  There was a little upswing, and in the case of one client their rankings skyrocketed.  So, the most obvious question from looking at this data was, "Were the terms that dropped, terms that were ranking do to an exact match URL?  The answer?  No.  There was no correlation.  Some were EMD, but some were also PMD or no match at all.  The interesting thing was that every drop was for an interior page of a site, whereas the client who got a big boost got that boost on the home page only.  Coincidence?  It could be.  I don't have enough data to tell for sure.  Let's look further...

Naturally, there are a lot of factors here.  However, If EMD became extremely volatile, that usual means (simplistically) on some level they are either increasing/decreasing the effectiveness of EMD/PMD, or the end result of their change was EMD volatility.  Since it doesn't appear that I can substantiate the former, let's look at the latter.  What could cause EMD volatility?  Well, while the most obvious cause is usually an alteration of EMD/PMD influence over rankings, it could be that the net result of whatever the change was is simply something that causes diversity in domain names and weakens EMD.  At this point, I am on a wild goose chase because there are many things that could correlate with EMD domain names.  I am inclined to think though that Google is still after spammers.  So, I will start to look in that direction.

So, naturally I took to looking at the link profiles of every page that dropped.  I am pleased to say that their profiles were all very weak.  Why am I pleased?  Because I am hoping this indicates that increasing the strength of the profile will help bring the rankings back to normal.  On the other hand, this opens another Pandora's box.  Since there was not direct correlation with any of the pages that dropped regarding partial or exact match domains, but the profiles were very weak, either Google is analyzing the page and matching it with the link profile in a new way, or this is all about the link profile.  I think it is the latter, and here's why...

At Foremost Media we use a number of very sophisticated tools that helps us with on-page optimization.  We have a very high success rate with these tools and in every case, my tools are telling me that the pages are still very well optimized.  So, I am inclined to say that this update has something to do with back link authority and how it is calculated.  It may have something to do with "Hummingbird", mainly because even with the declines in rankings traffic did not decline as a result (though the holidays made that harder to determine).  This might indicate that while the term we were tracking decreased, they gained equally in another term we were not tracking.

Of course, I could be completely off base.  Algorithm changes don't occur in a vacuum and the "butterfly effect" exists heavily in the sea of the web.  There are so many factors involved that it is very difficult to guess with any accuracy what the algorithm update actually was unless we are told.  Chances are, we will know in a month or so.  In the mean time, I will keep crunching data because I enjoy it.  I also didn't see anyone else actually trying to tackle the issue at this point with any meaningful data.  So take all this with a grain of salt, and please let me know if you have anything to share regarding this update (Nfitzgerald@foremostmedia.com).  If you're an SEO and you are reading this, know that the sky is not falling and SEO is not "dead".  This isn't the first time a major update has caused some havoc and it won't be the last.  Rankings will return and we will will continue to learn how to please the almighty Google for our clients' sakes.

Update:  We ran an experiment by changing some links that we had control over to a couple of pages on some affected sites, for the exact match terms.  We found that by either eliminating the link with the exact match or changing the destination of the link to the home page of the site, instead of the page of the site, almost completely reversed the rank drop.  In this case, it almost appears that this could be some sort of Penguin refresh or update with the way it is behaving.

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I need another social media network like I need a hole in my head- Thanks Google Plus

There are a lot of folks out there that say Google+ can't compete against established social media giants like Facebook and Twitter and at first glance that appears to be true. But I'm here to tell you that Google+ is here to stay and now is the time to start using it. As a busy marketer you may not like the idea of yet another social media network to update but below are 2 reasons I think you should consider it:

1. Authorship - If you use Google regularly I'm sure you've seen those little head shots next to search results. Below is an example of one that comes up for our company. Bottom line is adding Google Plus authorship tags to your content can result in better visibility on the search engines. A recent article from Search Engine Watch reported that Matt Cutts from Google even stated we have “seen authorship becoming more and more important when it comes to search results and visibility in those results.”
   
   
   
   
2. Better visibility for brand searches -  Not long ago a Google search for Foremost Media would return our website, Facebook page and LinkedIn profile which was all good stuff but you also would see pay per click adds above and to the right of our native search results.  With a good Google+ company page our brand is now able to dominate the entire top of fold search results for Foremost Media on Google.  See the screen shot below:

   

   Google Search Results for Foremost Media

   
   

Don't forget to add us to your Google Plus circles!

Upadate 9/2/14  It's amazing how quickly things change in the world of internet marketing.   Google ended its three-year experiment with Google Authorship yesterday, but the use of Author Rank to improve search results will continue.  http://searchengineland.com/google-authorship-dead-author-rank-202254

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The latest buzz in the online marketing industry has been around Google's announcement last month that they had changed their algorithm to "Hummingbird".

What is Google's Algorithm?

Google, as well as other search engines, have a code and a list of things they look for to determine which sites should rank for which terms. Robots crawl sites to determine how well they fit into the requirements. There are over 400 different criteria that are looked for to determine where a site ranks for a key phrase. 

Since the beginning, Google has been making modifications to this algorithm in order to improve their results and deter spammers. The Penguin and Panda updates are a couple of major modifications Google has made to the algorithm in recent history. Both of these updates simply made changes to the algorithm that was already in place. "Hummingbird", however, is an entirely new algorithm that has replaced the old one. 

Why did Google change to Hummingbird?

Google has said that the main goal of this new algorithm is to make the search engines more human friendly. They want to be able to answer complex questions and respond to more conversational searches.

One of the other major changes Hummingbird has made is to include the Google Knowledge Graph in their search results. The goal is to instantly give searches the answers they're looking for. For example, if someone was typed in "how many calories are in an apple?" Google now answers the questions right away and provides information about apples in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

This type of result is now showing up for a wide variety of searches including comparison searches, general animal/food/event searches and more. To see more on what is showing up in the search results try some of the following searches: "poodle vs yorkie", "nfl schedule", or "beer". 

What does this mean for rankings and SEO?

Hummingbird replaced the old algorithm over a month ago and so far rankings have not been drastically affected. It appears that all of the same factors are still important to ranking well and not much has changed. 

However, the algorithm is changing the way 90% of searches will appear. The biggest affect of the algorithm change for businesses will be the amount of clicks that are going to be lost due to the knowledge graph information. Sites that were previously getting a lot of traffic for searches like "calories in an apple" or "dogs" are now going to see significant drops in the number of clicks they're getting. Viewers will no longer need to go to websites to get the information they need.

Because of this loss in organic traffic it's going to be more important than ever to start finding new ways to get viewers to your site. Having a great content marketing strategy is going to become more and more necessary as things keep changing. Providing viewers with information and advice they can't easily find elsewhere is going to be extremely important in order to help maintain traffic. Social media and other online advertising plans will also be helpful.

As can be seen by Hummingbird, Google is certainly beginning to make changes that are affecting businesses drastically. It's important to keep an eye on the changes that are being made and to take a proactive approach to ensure that your business keeps seeing sustainable growth.

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Pinterest Will Soon Allow Advertising

CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann, announced the other day that Pinterest is going to start promoting paid pins in the future. Last week, Silbermann put up a blog post and sent emails to all Pinterest users informing them that Pinterest is going to begin using "promoted pins". They are not accepting payment for advertisements yet, but simply testing the waters first to see what will work best and what the user response is. These promoted pins will begin appearing in search results and category feeds at first and according to Silbermann they will be unique based on each user's behavior history.

Pinterest seems to be playing this up as a way to help keep users satisfied, even though it is clear that their goal is to finally start making big money off of their 46 million visitors (ComScore, 2013). In an effort to help users accept the change Silbermann opened his post by making an emotional appeal and talking about how he and his child have fun together because of Pinterest. He then said that he knows users use Pinterest in the same way and it would be a shame to see the site go. Then, attempting to make readers happy, he also highlighted that Pinterest is determined not to have banner ads because he knows users don't like them. He makes it seems like they are doing this satisfy users, but in reality it's been proven that integrated advertisements are much more successful than banner ads (AdRoll, 2013). He also stated that the ads will be tasteful and relevant, and that they are interested in hearing feedback about the promoted pins. 

As of right now, it seems that Pinterest advertising could have major benefits to many e-commerce businesses and will help companies get their products seen. It is clear that Pinterest is taking this step with caution to avoid losing their growing number of users. Only time will tell whether these advertisement will be successful in helping users find things they are interested in or if it will scare users off.

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Google Stabs Business In The Back

If you do a lot of web surfing, you probably have seen Microsoft's Ads that say "Don't get Scroogled".  "Scroogled", of course, being a derogatory term for "Google".  Naturally, Microsoft is trying to gain market share in the search business, but I am starting to think they are on to something.  Google has made a move recently that they are pushing as "good things" to the general public, but I suspect are anything but.

If you have been advertising in Google Adwords, you probably noticed that in late July, Google forced everyone into their "enhanced campaigns".  Now, on the surface, this can almost seem like a good thing.  "Enhanced campaigns" provide automatically mobile optimized support for your ads.  In the past, mobile advertising was a bit more difficult for the average business owner.  Now, the mobile side will pretty much just happen as a result of you creating an ad.  Actually, you will be forced into mobile advertising.  So, this sounds like a good thing, right?  Well, not really.  While there are workarounds (we will talk about these later), advertisers are being forced into advertising on mobile compatibility with the auto-upgrade feature.  How is it good for Google?  You need to remember that Adwords is a big auction house.  People bid on keywords and essentially fight for ad space.  What do you think happens when millions of new ads flood the mobile and tablet advertising market?  Starting to see the big picture?  Yes, that's right.  Google makes more money.  Now, making money isn't a bad thing.  So, why am I claiming they "stabbed business in the back"?  Because along with the push to mobile to make Google more money, they raised business's costs and threw some of their money out the window.

The push for enhanced campaigns begins with Google creating automatic bid adjustments based on information it has about what other people are doing in the marketplace that are advertising similarly to you.  Does this mean it is the best thing for you?  No.  Every business and marketing strategy is different, naturally.  What it does do though is it forces the less savvy advertisers into a position of being forced into advertising on mobile.  Mobile can be good for businesses, but mostly for business to consumer purchases.  For Business to business advertisers, it typically doesn't perform as well.  So, many "B to B" companies are now advertising on platforms that are relatively ineffective for them because they are not savvy to the changes, and pretty much just throwing money out the window (or to Google).  The other issue with this is based on all of our client data.  Around the time that Google forced the push, our clients had a spike in their average cost per click of five to seven cents per click.  From everything we can tell, this was entirely a market adjustment and has not entirely ceased.  While we can make adjustments for our clients, you can't completely beat the marketplace.  So, everyone's ads just became more expensive, reducing everyone's return on investment.  So, what can you do?

1.  Enhanced campaigns allow for you to make manual bid adjustments based on device.  If tablet advertising is no good for you, adjust the bid adjustment for tablet advertising by -100%.  This will effectively shut it off.

2.  Also, make sure DO NOT pay too much attention to the "bid simulator" feature.  It is ball park at best, but is almost never correct.

3.  Use the bid adjustment feature to target geographies and demographics better.  In other words, if you find that your ads perform better in a certain state, increase the bid adjustment for that particular state and reduce the bid adjustment for poorly performing states.  Do the same for demographics.

4.  Take advantage of the advanced calling features if mobile is good for.

5.  Google will always tell you to use sitelinks, but they are not always good.  They are always attempting to increase click through rate.  This is not always a good thing.  An ad can effectively screen out bad clicks if worded correctly.  So, CTR is not always reactant of ROI.  So, pay attention to your conversion rates and determine what your true cost per conversion is.  Then, determine how increasing your CTR may effect ROI.  If you believe it will, then use some of the sitelink features to increase the ROI.  

6.  Look at alternative ad platforms.  Bing ads is good, though they certainly make it harder to work on then Adwords as the tools aren't as advanced.  The Yahoo Network is another alternative.  If you do your homework, you can find some great direct opportunities with banners on nice vertical sites.

The last alternative is that you can hire a professional search engine marketer.  I know, I know.  It sounds like a pitch.  Here's the issue though.  If you don't, chances are that you will spend more money in campaign inefficiencies that it would have cost you to hire someone in the first place.  Especially, if you are spending $600 or more per month already.  Essentially, in those cases you are getting someone to manage your ads for free.  At Foremost Media, our average client has sees a reduction in the average cost per click of almost 50%.  So do the math, and if you can afford it, hire a professional.

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Put Some Sizzle In Your Business Blog- 10 Tips From Foremost Media

A business blog should strike the right balance between information and promotion. Blogs should answer questions, be interesting, discuss trends – the good and the bad – and dispense tidbits about your company and what you can do.

It should be an extension of your marketing strategy and it needs to pack enough pizzazz to keep readers coming back. And, it should be a done on a regular basis.

Here are 10 tips to put some sizzle in your blog:

1. Write “how-to” articles. They put you out there as an expert and give the consumer confidence in your business. Include a tip list; they punch up an article by giving information in short readable pieces. If you are having trouble getting started – think of the most common question a consumer or potential customer might have and answer it.
2. Use an event in the news as a jumping off point. Does that event affect your customers or will it have an impact on your business? Is there a myth or scam circulating on the internet or social media that concerns your business or the industry – write about it.
3. Keep posts timely – don’t write about winter car care concerns in the beginning of summer or talk about spring spruce-ups in October.
4. Start a debate - A friendly debate about a product or business policy shows you are willing to discuss all sides of an issue. It also can demonstrate your knowledge and dedication to your business or craft.
5. Go multi-media – use a slide show to demonstrate something or how about a podcast? Make a video showing a step-by-step creation of a product. Use humor – but use it wisely – off color jokes or making fun of a business competitor is never a good idea.
6. Get People Talking- Generate a buzz about something coming up by writing a “sneak peek” post. As an added bonus, it will keep intrigued readers coming back.
7. Use graphics and fact lists. Posts containing graphics, fact lists and polls with results are great for generating shares on Facebook as well as on other social networking sites.
8. Interview customers and share customer feedback. Testimonials and success stories connect you with your audience.
9. Talk about charity work or volunteer work. Profile an employee who is very involved in charity work. Make staff profiles a regular feature because they give a human aspect to your company.
10. Reward your readers – offer a product giveaway to blog readers or promote a new service or product to blog readers before the general public.

Google

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Email Marketing Outperforming Social for Driving Sales

Email marketing is simply the most cost-effective digital marketing channel for your business.

That's not really news to us, but we always like to see data to back it up. Wired has a nice look at some new data released by Custora, a predictive analytics platform.

The report shows that while social channels get all the hype, "it’s a relatively antique tech that appears to be far more important for selling stuff online. . . Over the past four years, online retailers have quadrupled the rate of customers acquired through email."

The number of customers earned through Facebook has stayed small and flat and Twitter, meanwhile, doesn't register at all, according to the report.

Customers acquired through email opt-in are also more valuable — they buy more and more often. Organic search and paid search scored higher than email, according to the Custora data.

In late 2012, Bloomberg noted all the reasons email simply can't be beat for retailers.

What does it all mean? Social channels such as Facebook and Twitter definitely have a place in your marketing toolkit. But when it comes to earning new customers and driving revenue for your business, email remains a top digital channel and one whose power seems only to grow.

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Understanding Duplicate Content

"A client asked me the other day about duplicate content and how it would related to the SEO of their site. Duplicate content refers to content on your website being found to be very similar to content on another page, either on or off the site, and then penalized for it by the search engines. The client was concerned about the percentage of duplicate content on their site, as it related to category pages using bits of product pages as their content. The funny thing is that most SEO's think in terms of only percentages when it comes to duplicate content. It actually doesn't work that way anymore.

Prior to 2011, the algorithms were much simpler in how they operated and scanned for duplicate content. At that time, you could avoid any duplicate content penalities just by making sure your content was 30% unique or more. This seemed to be the cut off at the time. However, after a number of algorithm changes by Google, this all changed.

I'll use made up phrases as an example.

On page 1 we have the following sentence: "The [sick] [dog] went to sleep."

On page 2 we have the following sentence: "The [ill] [canine] went to sleep."

I put terms in parenthesis that are similar. So, the old algorithms would consider both of these sentences to be 33% unique, which would have been fine, because 1/3 of their text was different from each other. The new algorithms would look at it a little differently. They would pass by both pages and note the percentage of difference and similarity in the content. They would then use their latent semantic index engine (essentially an intelligent synonym database), to catalog the terms in both sentences. Next, they match the terms against their existing database to determine if "sick" and "ill" are synonyms. After that, they use assigned "similarity scores" that influence how unique the content is perceived to be to help score the content overall. For instance, the terms "sick" and "ill" might be considered very similar to each other, whereas "sick" and "flu" are perceived as less similar to each other. These individual synonym scores influence the algorithm's perception of the "uniqueness" of the content. Even more interestingly, the semantic database changes daily, and so do the "similarity scores". Google might have learned 100 new synonyms for a word tomorrow, and this will change everything having to do with that word set in the database.

Google will also catalog the different parts of the site. The algorithm is intelligent, and it is very good at understanding the structure of your site. So, for instance, you don't have to worry about the content in your navigation bar being perceived as duplicate because Google knows that it is common practice for websites to have the same menu/navigation across multiple pages. Another example is that if you cite something from other websites or people, the citation will indicate to Google that the content is SUPPOSED TO BE duplicate content. You still won't want your whole page to be citations, but a little is ok. Your primary concern should be the uniqueness of the "body" of the page and making sure that you write it from scratch.

Google made these changes in order to combat marketers that were using small synonym databases to "spin" content in order to produce vast amounts of content without having to write it. This is great news because it means original content is worth even more than it used to be, because the "cheaters" can no longer easily cheat. The bad news though is that Duplicate content issues have become far more prevalent. Make sure you consulting your SEO professional so you don't have any duplicate content issues. Even now, this is one of the most widely ignored aspects of SEO."

About The Author:

Nick Fitzgerald - Vice President Of Online Marketing at Foremost Media, Inc
Nick handles the implementation of Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Management, Reputation Management, and Online Advertising Management for Foremost Media Customers. Nick is an expert in the fields of search engine optimization, online advertising, and reputation management.

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Top 3 Latest Tips for SEO

1. Good quality, in depth content

You hear it again and again that “content is king”. The truth is that content is the most influential part of helping your website rank well.  Well written, interesting content will keep viewers engaged and increase the time they spend on your page. How long visitors stay on your page influences your rankings in the search engines. The more your content is shared, the better you will rank as well. Writing informative, in-depth information will help encourage visitors to share your content. In general you should try to have at least 400 words on each page of your website, but the longer the better in most cases. Longer articles tend to get more shares (according to a recent article by Moz) and help to make it easier for search engines to determine what your page is about.

2. Be social

Not everyone realizes that social media efforts play a part in SEO. The effects of social media on rankings are debated because Google always keeps their exact algorithms secret, but Google has indicated that social factors are playing a bigger role in SEO. A high number of social shares and followers is thought to help boost search engine rankings. Being active on social media sites will bring more traffic to your site, (leading to more sales) which will also help improve rankings.

In order to be more active make sure you at least have a page set up on each of the major social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.). Help encourage people to visit your site by sharing recently updated content to your followers. Making content easy to share on your site can help as well. Make sure you have social sharing buttons located on your website in places that are easy to find. Viewers that want to sure your articles, pictures, etc. will be a huge help to your efforts.

3. Mobile

In the past few years more and more users have started accessing the internet through mobile devices. According to Marketing Land nearly 40% of internet usage takes place on mobile devices. With such a high percent of users on mobile devices it is obvious that it is extremely important to have a mobile friendly site. Currently there are several options for developing mobile friendly sites. You can create a mobile version of your website that users are redirected to when they visit from a mobile device, you can implement a responsive design to your site, or you can convert your site to an app for mobile devices.

Recently Google made an announcement that mobile website usability will soon begin to play a role in rankings. Websites that are not mobile friendly will begin to take a hit on their rankings. Google hinted that websites that use responsive design are the best option and they also suggested that sites that redirect to mobile versions will be most likely to take a hit on their rankings.

Foremost media offers social media packages as well as website design. Contact us today for assistance or for more advice on how to get your site ranking well.

Posted By Jon Ballard

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All Hosting Is Not Created Equal

The Foremost Media Data Center In Omaha Nebraska

One of the common questions I get from new customer is why does your hosting cost more then many of your competitors?

Below is a bit of information on how our hosting works:

All of our sites are hosted on a cloud server configuration which in non technical terms means that your site is actually sitting on more then one sever.  If a server were to fail or slow down the other severs in the cloud would take over.  Unlike many hosting companies we greatly limit the number of sites on each cloud server.  Giving you site more resources and better performance.

Although we build our sites to be hosted anywhere we prefer to host what we build for three main reasons:

1. If there is a problem with your site you have one call to make.  Over the years I've seen a lot of developers blame the hosting company  for performance issues or other problems with the website and it's not uncommon for the hosting company to point fingers at the developer.  We don't want that to happen to our customers.  If you build a site with us and host with us you only have to call one person if something goes wrong.
2. Our servers our built and optimized to run only sites we build giving us better performance and better ability to update should a security risk arise.  Most hosting companies host a lot of different CMS systems on their servers from a wide variety of developers.  Did you know bad coding on a site that is not yours but happens to be on the same sever can slow or even crash your site?  We only host sites we build.
3. We are able to monitor site performance and resources and respond before there is a issue.  We have techs on call 24/7 monitoring all our sites and servers.  On the rare occasion that there is a problem with your site we will typically know about it well before our clients.

Here is a bit of background on our data center where our sites are hosted:

Our sites resides in a Tier 4 data center in Omaha, Nebraska. This facility is free from natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and power shortages that plague other datacenters throughout the world.  Below are a few of the key features of our Data Center:

• Carrier Access
  Four local SONET fibers provide redundant carrier/neutral fiber access (AT&T, Level 3, Qwest, and COX) 
• Internet Access
  Route Science manages redundant, Tier 1 internet bandwidth with fully redundant, Carrier-class Cisco core routing and switching 
• Network Monitoring
  SNMP management tools monitor all critical infrastructure components 
• Fiber
  Four fiber carriers with diverse points of entry 
• Network Providers
  Meet-me access to major carriers (AT&T, MCI, Qwest, Global Crossing, Alltel, Sprint, Cox and Level 3) 
• Carrier Services
  OC-3, OC-12, OC-48 and above
• Internal Cabling
  Cable management trays throughout the building use copper and fiber access to carrier bandwidth 
• External Cabling
  Dual points of entry into the building with multiple CO redundancy and fiber access

For your reference here are the differences in data center ratings Again, our center is a certified Tier 4:

Tier Level	Requirements
1	Single non-redundant distribution path serving the IT equipment Non-redundant capacity components Basic site infrastructure with expected availability of 99.671%
2	Meets or exceeds all Tier 1 requirements Redundant site infrastructure capacity components with expected availability of 99.741%
3	Meets or exceeds all Tier 1 and Tier 2 requirements Multiple independent distribution paths serving the IT equipment All IT equipment must be dual-powered and fully compatible with the topology of a site's architecture Concurrently maintainable site infrastructure with expected availability of 99.982%
4	Meets or exceeds all Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 requirements All cooling equipment is independently dual-powered, including chillers and heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems Fault-tolerant site infrastructure with electrical power storage and distribution facilities with expected availability of 99.995%

Other companies that are in our data center:

• Ameritrade
• Ebay
• Wells Fargo
• Paypal
• Alegent Health

For more information on Foremost Media Website Hosting Services Visit Our Website

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5 Outdated SEO Strategies

Since search engine optimization began there have been many changes in the approaches people use to rank well. Over time it has become more and more difficult to rank well quickly. Since the search engines are constantly making new rules, each of the following strategies (or lack thereof) listed below are now outdated.
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1. Putting text that is the same color as the background

In the past this was commonly used as a way to add keywords to a website without writing them into the content. In the beginning this may have worked well for some, but the search engines quickly caught on. Google has posted information warning users against doing this at goo.gl/MTlIs. Any content that the average viewer cannot see but can be seen by the search engines is bad for your site. Overall, it is best to try to optimize for the viewers and avoid making it obvious that you are trying to rank well.

It is important to try to use the proper coding when adding image captions and JavaScript descriptions. Putting image information in as "alt text" is extremely important. Previously some people might have put this text behind the image itself and this may have appeared as deceptive to search engines. Adding alt text makes the page more search engine friendly while still allowing the image to be read by screen readers and Google Images. If JavaScript is being used on a page it is important to put the words that are in your Java into <noscript> coding. This will help the search engines read what your JavaScript says and is much more effective than putting text behind the image that cannot be seen. This will also be helpful for users that do not have plug-ins or who have slow connections.

2. Blog commenting to get back links

Blog commenting is not as effective as it used to be for getting backlinks. Since it was an easy way to quickly get a link to your site, many people were using this tactic. Bloggers, as well as search engines, have made blog commenting more difficult to do and less effective. Many more bloggers moderate their comments now than they used to making it difficult to get your link to show up on their blog. Most blogs also do not have "do-follow" links enabled. This means that your website will get very little boost from a link on the blog. In addition, even blogs that still give "do-follow" links have been spammed with hundreds of comments. After the Google Penguin update, links from pages with more than 99 outbound links are generally devalued. As a result, even "do-follow" blogs are of little value from a link perspective.

If you are going to utilize blog commenting for your SEO strategy it is important to make sure that the blogs you are commenting on have a high page rank and are somewhat relevant to your site. If you are using spammy tactics, like commenting on hundreds of blogs that are not related it your site, it is obvious to search engines and you may be penalized.

3. Repeating words over and over on a page (Keyword Stuffing)

Obviously, having the keywords that you are trying to rank for on your site is important. However, many people do this excessively. It is important to not overuse your targeted keywords on your website because it can look like you are spamming. Make sure the you are writing content that makes sense and incorporates your keywords a reasonable amount of the time. Generally it is best to use a targeted keyword about 2% - 4% of the time within your content. However this percent varies based on the market and how often your competitors are using this term on their sites. In order to gain additional relevance for a term, you can use synonyms for the term. Google uses a technique called Latent Symantec Indexing to determine which words are related to other words. Here's a trick. Type in your key phrase into Google. Now look at the bottom of the page and see what "other similar searches" or "suggestions" it has for you. If any are different various of your term, you could use those in your site as well and it will increase your website's relevance for both your targeted key phrase and the similar phrase.

4. Not tracking bounce rate

Tracking your website's bounce rate is extremely important. Search engines track bounce rates, as well as traffic to your site, to determine how relevant and useful your site is. They even give you a rank boost if they like what they see. It is important to have a low bounce rate because this means users are viewing more of your content. Writing better content and targeting more relevant words for SEO can help improve your bounce rate and thus increase your rankings.

5. Duplicate Content

Duplicate is the practice of using the same content over and over on the web and was often used to get relevance or backlinks for a website quickly. However, search engines do not look very highly upon repeated content. Google and other search engines want to provide a wide variety of results to viewers with the goal of delivering what is being searched for. Because of the search engine's desire for variety, multiple pages with the same content will are not likely to show up high in search engine rankings. The reason for this is that search engines will perform one of three functions when they see a piece of duplicate content. First, they may de-index all content except for the content it perceives as having the highest authority. Secondly, it may penalize or devalue all of the duplicate content. Lastly, it may do nothing. There are many factors that go into determining how the search engines will react to duplicate content. In short, just stay away from duplicate content. Original content is far better for your website's search engine health.

As times change so do SEO strategy's. When considering how to rank well in the search engines, think about how to make the viewer of your content happy. Next, think about the different ways you can spread the word about the content. For example, you could put out a press release or post to social media sites. Promote yourself in natural ways. Do not use spammy tools or short cuts or eventually you will get caught by the search engines. When that happens, you may never recover.

Do you need help with your SEO?  Contact Foremost Media Today.  Foremost Media Inc is a privately held company concentrating on all aspects of application and internet development and marketing from website design and visibility optimization to social media marketing.
Posted By Jon Ballard

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10 Ways To Improve Your Pinterest For Business Account

1.  Set Up A Business Page
If your page is not already a business page it is important to change it to one. It does not appear any differently to the consumers but you will get several benefits including:

• The ability to add more detailed information about your company. 
• The option to group your business into a category which will make it appear in more searches. 
• Access to analytics data based on traffic to your site and specific pin data (make sure you verify your site through Pinterest to get this data). 
• It will help increase your SEO rankings by making the page look more credible.

2.  Use Targeted SEO Tactics In Your ProfileUse targeted SEO keywords in your business description section on profile. This will help you appear in more search engine queries for these key phrases. Search engines see Pinterest as a credible site so you Pinterest page may rank more easily than your website in some cases.

3.  Add The "Pin It" Button To Your Site
Add “pin it” buttons to your website next to all relevant images (ex. Products, tutorials, and pictures in blog posts). This will:

• Make it easy for website visitors to quickly share your content
• Help create more links back to your site

4.  Add a Pinterest thumbnail

Add a Pinterest thumbnail, as well as other social media thumbnails, to the header or footer or you website. This will allow your website visitors to easily find you on Pinterest.

5.  Add a link to Pinterest on your other social media sitesAdd a link to Pinterest on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media pages. This will help draw more of your current fans to your Pinterest page. Add links to other social media sites on your Pinterest profile as well. 6. If at all possible use the same profile image on all social media sites in order to maintain consistency and help consumers recognize your brand.

7.   Be Social
Use this URL: http://pinterest.com/source/yoursite.com/ to view what others are posting from your website and comment, like, follow them, or thank them. Doing this:

• Encourages consumers to repin your pins.
• Shows consumers you are genuine.
• Helps build consumer relationships.

8.  Pin Others Photos
Make sure you pin relevant things from sites other than your own. Find companies or people on Pinterest that are related to your business and repin some of their posts. This will help increase your number of followers and ensure that you are not bombarding your followers with sales pitches.

9. Tips to follow for pinning: 

• Pin once or twice each day (this can include repins)
• Saturday mornings are best time to post. The best time to post for weekdays is between 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. or after 8:00 p.m. If you want to schedule your pins you can at http://www.pingraphy.com/.
• Use hash tags for your business related keywords (ex. #recipes or #hairstyles) after relevant pins. This will help your pins be seen more often and will increase the chance they show up in related searches.
• Add prices to gifts and products by typing price in caption. This will ensure your pins show up in the gift section. It will also add price to the image which increases the likelihood it will be clicked on.
• Add your URL to caption. This will automatically link the image to your site and increases the click-through-rate. 

10. Ideas for getting more Pinetrest followers:

• Link your Pinterest account with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. You currently cannot link to a business Facebook account but you can temporarily link it to a personal Facebook page if you wish. Once connected you can follow some friends that may be interested in your business. Hopefully they will follow you back. After you’re done with this you can unlink the accounts if you want.
• Add in email addresses of those who you think would be interested in following your Pinterest page.
• Post on other social media accounts and let your fans know that you are now on Pinterest. You can even ask them to follow you or check your page out. This will help encourage fans to look at your page and hopefully follow you.
• Share some of your popular pins on other social media sites.
• Have a contest encouraging followers to pin things from your website and have a free give away.

Posted By Jon Ballard

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Essential Tip for SEO with HTTP Request Codes

HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web. Day to day activity on the Internet extensively uses HTTP request codes, telling the user-client (ie. your browser) how to react to the information being sent. Usually this happens behind closed doors, but occasionally something goes wrong, door opens, and your confronted by the dreaded 404 - "Page Not Found".

Understanding what the codes mean is essential to moving forward with your website. HTTP request codes can be easily broken into 5 categories, based on the first digit of the error code.

Informational - 1XX
Successful - 2XX
Redirection - 3XX
Client Error - 4XX
Server Error - 5XX

Informational (1XX) and Successful (2XX) function behind the closed doors. They are simply saying everything is in working order, continue with what you are doing.

Server Error (5XX) codes are the opposite. This collection indicates something bad is happening with your server. If you receive these, contact your host provider immediately.

Redirection (3XX) and Client Error (4XX) is where the magic of SEO comes into play. Websites are always evolving, and reorganizing, causing links to break. This is detrimental to the health of your site's SEO if not handled properly.

Pages that no longer exist are handled differently, depending on the CMS (Content Management System), or lack thereof, your site is using. The common HTTP Request Codes assigned to these pages are:

302 - A status code of 302 tells a client that the resource they asked for has temporarily moved to a new location. While allowing the redirect, it blocks all SEO power that any links pointing to the old page would provide to the new page once redirected.

404 - The most common code displayed, 404 tells the user agent that the requested resource could not be found but may be available again in the future. This will throw an error page, as well as stopping the flow of link power. In addition, the search engines will eventually remove the page from the search index, albeit slower than the 410.

410 - A 410 indicates that the resource requested is no longer available and will not be available again. This should be used when a resource has been intentionally removed and the resource should be purged. Upon receiving a 410 status code, the client should not request the resource again in the future. Clients such as search engines will likely remove the resource from their indices, stopping the flow of link power.

With all of these choices, it should be easy to figure which code fits the scenario best, but when you are talking search rankings, you need to follow all of the angles.


Google has indicated that the 410 is treated as "more permanent" than a 404 and that it would be slightly better than a 404, but primarily in the sense that it will remove a 410 from the index faster than a 404. However, 301 is the ONLY redirect in existence that passes external link juice to a redirected page. As a result, while a 410 may make the Google servers slightly happier, because we indicate the page is gone instead of just an error, any of the links attached to the missing pages will not pass their link power to the site.

Using 301 on any page that was previously linked to is the only way to keep all of the link juice flowing to your site. While it may not be the code that best suits the situation, it will help keep your rankings high, and your old links actively bringing people to your site.

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Tips for a successful email marketing campaign

Email marketing is becoming more and more popular as the price of direct mail continues to climb. With the proper planning a email marketing blast can motivate your customers to make a purchase or persuade new customers to use your product or services.

1. Get a plan Stan- Behind every great email marketing campaign is a plan. A plan gets you where you want to go, sets objectives for your campaign andmaps out ways to meet the objectives. Much like a map, with out a good plan you will have know way to know how to get were you want to go.

2. Target your market- Before you can blast out your emailer you need to define your target market. The more targeted the email the better your results. Once you determine who you are going to reach, you can then tailor your email marketing message to that customers needs. Always remember the more specific the email peices is to your target markets needs the better the results of your blast will be. Breaking your email mailing list into market segments and then tayloring the message for them is much more effective then blasting your entire list a general message.

3. Make it good looking - Your email marketing peice should be atractive and easy to read in all the different mail clients.

4. Give a call to action.

5. Follow Up

Need help creating your email marketing campaign?  Give us a call today- 608-758-4841

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Credit Card Processing- How Does It Work Online?

One of the questions we often receive from clients is how online shopping carts handle credit card processing.  The main E-Commerce platform that we use can be setup two ways when it comes to processing credit card payments.

1. Authorization only: This state means that the credit card of the customer has been verified, but payment has not been processed yet. The capture button must be clicked in order for payment to be collected.  Until you click the Capture button in the admin section, the payment will remain as Pending and no funds will be transferred to your merchant account.  This method is usually only used when manually processing orders or if you have problems with cancellations.
   
2. Authorize and Capture: If you are using a payment gateway, such as Authorize.net or PayPal Website Payments Pro, this setting will authorize the card number and automatically transfer the funds into your payment gateway/merchant account.  Once an order is placed and the funds are transferred into your account, you will need to void or force a refund in order to cancel the order and transfer money back to the customers card.  This will usually take a few days to process.

Foremost Media can help your company with all your eCommerece website development needs.  Learn more about our services here.

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Common SEO Questions and Answers

Here is a common questions we receive from new clients regarding SEO and launching their websites: 

QUESTION: In your experience, how long does it take before a new site starts showing up in Google and the other search engines? I realize it probably varies, but I’m just curious about what kind of average to expect.

ANSWER:  Regarding your question, there are a couple answers.  Search engines work by sending out small programs called "spiderbots" to "take pictures" of websites.  In order to take a picture of a site, they need to be able to find it.  This is called being "indexed".  In order for this to happen, it is important that your site be submitted to the search engines.  This is relatively easy to do.  The search engines may also "find" your site if another "indexed" site has a link from their site to your site.  Now, once a site is "indexed" it becomes POSSIBLE for you to rank for keywords in the search engines.  However, it does not guarantee that you will.  To get "indexed" can take anywhere from a week to a couple of months.  

Whether you rank for keywords in the search engines is a different story. It is entirely dependent on a number of SEO factors and is not possible to give you a time frame for these because of the complexity of the factors as well as the volatility of the web as a whole . It's very important to start working on your Search Engine Optimization while your site is being built. There are many on-site factors that should be addressed as the site is built to give your site a leg up on the competition. After site launch you should include some on-going SEO services to keep your site moving in the right direction.

QUESTION: My understanding is that Google puts new sites into a sandbox for a certain amount of time to ensure the site is stable before even listing it among search results. If that’s the case, how long do you usually see a site in the sandbox? 

ANSWER: The "sandbox" is a theoretical SEO concept. The sandbox concept suggests that domain name age determines Google's trust of the domain name. It suggests that a lack of trust during the (first 3 months usually) when a domain is new causes an automatic suspension (or holding pattern) of rankings. In my experience, the "sandbox" is partial myth. I say partial because indeed the age of the domain is an SEO factor. Also, Google keeps an eye on how fast SEO factors are "throttled" and if you go too fast, you will find yourself in a sandbox-like situation. Those things being said, there is no real sandbox, just those factors. However, it is possible to overcome domain age to quickly rank if the other factors are optimized. Though, since they can't be done too quickly, it still takes time anyway. So, either way you cut it, for the purposes of your question I would say 3 months. I hope that helps. It's nice to talk to someone who knows a little something about it! Let me know if I can ever do anything for you.

Foremost Media has a team of dedicated search engine marketing professionals that can help you come up with and implement a online marketing plan for your website. Whether your site is brand new or has been around for a while and just needs some help, contact us today to get started!

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