9 SEO Questions You Are Embarrassed to Ask

There are questions we are sometimes too embarrassed to ask about a subject in fear that if we do ask them, we will be ridiculed. Here we have 9 questions that some of us are just too embarrassed to ask about search engine optimization. 

1. Should my domain have keywords? While this seems like a good idea, the answer is no. Your domain should be easy to remember and true to your business name. Your shoe store, "Joe's Shoes for Less" might have the domain name, "www.joesshoesforless.com" rather than "www.cheapandlightlywornshoes.com". See what I mean?
2. What is the right amount of keywords per page? This is a great one to ask, actually! You don't want to be convicted of keyword stuffing. White hat SEO techniques are what get you ranked and one of those is optimizing your text without over-optimizing it. When you read other posts about this topic, you might find that they giv
   
   e a percentage for keywords to text; overall, use them when you need to and don't over do it. It's like salt, a moderate amount goes a long way. Our marketing specialists will often use one every 100 words or so; so, in a 500 word post, they use five or six keywords. 
3. What about links within text? Only include these when necessary was well. If you are referencing something and there is a link to it, then connect it. Of course, always in moderation. 
4. What is a robots.txt? This is a nifty page that gives search engine crawlers about the pages that a company's site indexes. Simply go to thisisyourdomain.com/robots.txt. 
5. What is the difference between indexed text and crawled text? When you publish content on your site, search engines will crawl the content and if they can, they will index it; think of indexing like filing. The content that is not indexed is not indexed because of prohibitions or it is not optimized. 
6. Why do I need alt text? Alt text allows search engines to know what is in an image. Also, if your image doesn't load, web visitors can read the alt text and know what should be there. A properly optimized site will feature alt text. 
7. How long does SEO take to be effective? This depends on many factors such as the competitiveness of your industry, the keywords you choose, how much you spend on SEO, etc. It often takes a few months for your site to be completely noticed by search engines, then another few months to get rankings, at least ones better than the 100th page of Google. 
8. Inbound links vs internal links? Inbound links are links from other websites pointing back to your own; internal links are links on your site pointing to other pages within your site. 
9. What are meta descriptions? Meta descriptions are the bits of text that appear below your page and link in a search engine results page. It explains what is in the page. 

Feel better now that you know the answers to these questions? I know I sure do! Whew! If you want your site to rank well on Google, then you need to know this information. Contact Integraphix for help with other SEO questions or SEO services. 

How Does Your Timing Impact Your SEO?

So you've written a great blog for SEO and now you published it… the next step is to gain that massive rush of web visitors because of the post, right? Yes. However, what do you do when they don't arrive?

Well, my friend, it might have to do with the timing of your post. Yes, this does include at what time of day you hit "Publish" but it is also more than that.

1. Publish when your target audience will see it. Your target audience will have times of day when they will be more active online and thus, will see your post. In general, the weekday morning will be a better time for people to catch blog posts but that is not standard for all demographics. It depends on the sort of lives they lead, the work they do, the time zone they're in/you're in, etc. Content marketing is about having good content and displaying it when people will see it most.

2. Should you pay for promoted posts? When you post your blogs, it is always a good idea to share the link to them and promote them on your social media accounts. Some believe that you should also dabble with paid posts so more people see them. This can be a good move if your demographic allows it to be but it can also be a waste of money. If your post is happening on a time that is more dead for readers, then deciding on the timing of a paid post might come in handy (in addition to organic finds).

3. Utilizing your network of peers. You just wrote a blog about something and you mentioned some influencers in your industry. A great idea is to mention to
them that they can be found in your latest blog post; however, it can be ruined when you don't remember to do this until the last minute. Remember to give them a heads up! "Hey, I'm writing a blog in a couple days and you'll be in it." You know, something along those lines.

4. Backlinks. The timing of your backlinks will make a big splash or flop too.  This is not when you put in a backlinks according to a clock but how frequently you put them in your post. For one thing, a reader will not like it as much but neither will search engine optimization crawlers. If you put too many links in the post, then you run the risk of stuffing, which is no good.

The idea of running a good blog can be too much for some. Just take a deep breath and relax. If you have a blog and need assistance making it better, then contact Integraphix. We have excellent professional copywriters who can assist you.

The Best Way to Help Your SEO

When it comes to having good SEO, you need to have this one thing down or else your search engine optimization will suffer greatly.

What is that one thing? CONTENT. Content, my friends. As an SEO firm, we operate offices across the country and one thing we can tell you is that people all over love to see good content. Of course, good content doesn't just soothe the soul of humans, it also soothes the souls of the search engines.

You have to write great content! This is the heart of your SEO efforts. What is great content? It is content that helps people, is captivating, relatable, interesting, and even sales-oriented. Great content shows your customers why they need your services and how you can better their lives. It gets people to realize they have a connection with your brand. Sure, you can write about your cat and how he is adorable but that will not work for your flooring site.

You have to write unique content. This means no copying what other people write. One, that's plagiarism. Two, if you avoid that, it just looks tacky. Do your own research and find out what people want to read and write about that. Write stuff that is not on other sites or other pages of your site. As an SEO company, we can't stress this enough. People hate it. Search engines hate it.

Post new content frequently. Your site should have new content added to it on a regular basis. A site that adds new content is seen as more credible than static sites. Your rankings will see great improvements if you do this. Search engine rankings are sometimes hard to achieve, you want to do all you can to get them!

Need help creating great content? Then contact Integraphix who has a whole team of talented marketing specialists who write specifically for SEO purposes.

Why Optimize Images for the Web

In order for your website to rank well on the internet, it has to be optimized. One aspect of websites that have to be optimized are the images. When images are not optimized, that hurts the chances of being ranked well on search results.

Search engines like it when every part of your website is optimized; however, even just in regards to the images, when they are optimized, they are much more likely to be pulled up in the images tab on search results.

What does it mean to optimize images? There are 5 parts to an image that have to be optimized.

1. Alt tag
2. File name
3. File size
4. Caption

What do these do? Why should they matter? Well… 

1. The alt tag is what the search engines read to find out what the image is. Since they don't have eyes to see what an image looks like, they go by words. No alt tag? Search engines will have no idea what the image is, they like to know. This is a great text alternative when browsers are not able to render an image correctly. It will add lots of SEO value to your site. Using plain English is a good idea here.  
2. File name is what the image is labeled when saved. Why does this matter? Well, it is more information for the search engines to pull when a search is made. An image named "liow20u09508.jpg" will mean nothing when someone searches for a "Ford Mustang 2014", however, an image named, "2014-red-ford-mustang.jpg" will do you good. 
3. The file size does indeed matter. Why? Well, if your file is too large, then the image will take lots of time to load (load times impact SEO rankings). Make the image a small file size.  
4. The caption is more information for the search engine and is also good for human viewers. People will read this to find out what is going on in an image and this means less bounce rate (that impacts rankings). 

Don't know how to optimize your images? Then contact Integraphix, a Chicago SEO firm that services the whole country! Our marketing specialists have in-depth SEO knowledge and can help get your site properly optimized. 

Do Keywords Still Matter in SEO?

Keywords still matter in the world of Search engine optimization. Keywords are just as important to successful SEO now as they always have been. When it comes to content marketing, if you do not use keywords, then your content is not optimized; if your content is not optimized, then it is not easily findable.

There are people who think that the usage of keywords is outdated, keywords are still used by search engines to categorize content that they index. The search engines, especially Google, search for keywords in many aspects of content (we will discuss this in a bit). As search behaviors change, search engines rely on keywords more and more to find relevant information. For example, a major new search technique is "conversational search"; this type of search is like, "Where is the nearest dry cleaner?" This is in contrast of traditional search queries like, "Dry cleaner in C
hicago" etc.

Keywords will not improve your page rank. There are other factors that websites have to adhere to in order to get good rankings; a keyword helps your page be categorized after being indexed, like we previously mentioned.

So where do keywords need to be in content? 

• URL
• Title of content
• Document name
• H1, H2, H3 headings
• image names
• Image ALT tags
• Image captions
• Meta description tags (despite claims to the contrary)

Whether you are using written content for SEO or just to have another tool for marketing, make sure you use keywords. Great SEO means being found on the internet, so make sure you have quality SEO done. To get the best SEO techniques, then hire an SEO firm. Contact Integraphix for SEO services! 

10 Frequently Asked Questions About Search Engines

Search engine optimization is a great way to get your business noticed on the internet, especially for the smaller guys in the business world. The problem is that many people have not heard of SEO or do not know how SEO works and how it can help them.

In order to help people get an understanding of SEO and how it works, let's go through the basics. If you have heard of SEO or have no idea what it is, this blog is for you!

• How do search engines function? Search engines build an index of every single web page available on the internet by using "crawlers". When you type in a query into a search engine, the crawlers follow links via "href" or "src" to find the page or image relevant to your search. They base their relevancy on several factors. 
• I've heard of SEO and terms like Black-hat SEO & White-hat SEO? Yes, there are two kinds of search engine optimization available, one is good & the other is bad. White-hat SEO is the SEO that is the good one, you might have guessed. This type of SEO abides by the "SEO laws" set in place by search engines, mostly Google. The results are more long-term and are not hated by the internet community. Black-hat SEO is SEO that is the more sneaky, "illegal", and sleazy method of the two. Using black-hat SEO will get you penalized, maybe banned from the internet. 
• What are examples of Black-hat SEO?  
• Keyword stuffing: packing lots of keywords into pages. This is a no-no. You want keywords in content but not too much. 
• Cloaking: this is giving separate content that you give to web users. 
• Hidden text: hiding text that is keyword-rich in the background or off-screen. A common way for this is to make the text the same color as the background. 
• Doorway pages: pages created especially for crawlers. 
• Which factors will affect the rankings for my webpages? There are hundreds of
  
  factors that are used to determine how relevant your pages are to things; of those factors, these are the most important:
• Backlinks: these are links on other sites that track back to yours. The more of these your site has, the better. 
• On-page factors: the page's title, formatting, good content, images, optimized images, optimized title tags, headers, etc. 
• The age of your domain: the older, the better. 
• Frequency of updates: the more you update the page, the better. This can be done with posts, refreshing existing content, etc. 
• I've heard of Google Panda & Penguin. What are they? These are updates to Google's algorithm that determine search rankings. Panda improves the rankings of high-quality sites and Penguin punishes the bad websites, like ones that use Black-hat SEO. 
• Why doesn't my site show up on Google when I search my keywords? One of the most FAQs on SEO. Check to see if your site has been indexed on Google by doing: site:webdesign.tutsplus.com. Site not indexed? You might need to work on the site's authority, publish good content, and do good backlinks. 
• Can pages protected by passwords be indexed? No, the search engine crawlers will be blocked. 
• Does traffic affect my ranking? No. The traffic that makes its way to your site is not a factor that impacts ranking. Sites that get lots of traffic get that from good SEO or because they're just that well known. 
• My search results differ from my friend. Why? This is because of search personalization, which is based on search history. Your history is tracked via cookies and your Google+ profile. You can disable this if you'd like. 
• When should I see results? This is hard to say because it depends on things like how well your site is optimized, the amount and quality of your SEO, etc. It can take weeks or even months to see results. Think of it like a train; it takes a long time to get chugging but once it does, it lasts. Therefore, do not get upset or frazzled when it doesn't work right away, be patient. 

Want to do SEO for your business? Then hire a Chicago SEO company to do it for you. As a Chicago marketing company, Integraphix has worked with SEO since it started. 

How To Run a Social Media Program That's Effective

Social media has become one of the leading efforts for marketing for just about every company. Think about it, when you hear about a company, one of the first things we do these days is check them out on social media. However, when you have a social media program that is not working, is it actually harming your company? Is your company wasting time and possibly money?

So how does you company run a social media program that is worthwhile?

• Think strategy- Do not go at social media like you do a gym membership right after New Year's. You know what I mean, we get super excited and say we'll do it right. What really happens is we go in blind, get overwhelmed by the lack of immediate success, then we get out of there, never to return. You have a much better chance of being successful if you plan out your routine. Do not just choose the platforms you want to use because you like them and are comfortable with them; think of which ones your consumers use the most. Think about what you're going to post and when. 
• Think about the content- This is often something that is overlooked and it does not make sense why that's the case. When a company is not able to have a solid content game going, they miss their chances and their potential consumers. Make content that is relevant to your audience, relevant to the times, and makes you sound like an expert. 
• Remember, it takes time- Just like the unmotivated gym-goer after a week of their new resolution, getting fit takes time and so does successful social media. The heavy lifting is when you are designing and installing the processes towards your social media. 

Of course, if you would rather have a Chicago SEO firm handle your social media marketing, then contact Integraphix. 

5 Ways SEO Can Help a Small Business

A good product or service that is appealing and can sell itself is something that every company wants. However, not even when your company has a product or service that is fantastic, it doesn't always get noticed by itself, without doing much promotion. For those products, there are several marketing tactics that a business can use to promote; one of those tactics is search engine optimization. A marketing strategy like SEO is great for any company, no matter what the size is; small companies of less than ten employees experience the same benefit as a company of 500+ employees, recognition and traffic to the site.

More than 3/4s of online shoppers use search engines to guide their decisions on where to purchase an item online; this means that if your site is not utilizing SEO, then it is missing a large segment of shoppers in the marketplace. When you are a large business, getting recognized is how your business continues to gain sales; when you are an entrepreneur or small business, it is how you survive. Here, we have 5 ways that SEO can help an entrepreneur and small business.

1. Reputation management. When your business is getting started, any amount of negative reviews, press, or other information can make a huge dent. If you are on the attack, being proactive, then you are able to put good news out there and create the first impression on your terms. 
2. Figure out what they are searching for. In SEO, you use keywords to allow search engines to pick up on your online content; when the search engines connect the keywords with you, you are posted as a result to those terms when people use them in searches. If someone searches for "Chicago tshirt company" and that's a keyword you use, then you have a greater chance of being seen by the searcher. It helps you understand what your consumers are looking for and how much they look for those things. 
3. Traffic to your site increases. When you do search engine optimization then you allow more people to see your site, thus, more people will go to it. A large company can get away with less SEO than a small one since they have a larger consumer base to know of and talk about their site/business. Getting this traffic to your site is free and can generate some real sales. 
4. Social media. Using social media is a great aspect of SEO because it can allow your business real time customer service, news, and promotion. You can create great links to other businesses and people in the community. The more your name appears on the internet, the better your SEO will be. 
5. Credibility. When you are shown on the internet and as an expert, then your credibility (ethos) will be given a higher rating by consumers. When a company earns the trust of a consumer, the brand loyalty is what can create long-term sales. 

If you want an SEO company that can help your business get noticed, then contact Integraphix. We are a Chicago marketing company. 

How are SEO and PPC Different?

There are two kinds of ways to get your site to be seen on Google, one is search engine optimization, or SEO, and the other is pay-per-click, or PPC. These two formats of promoting your site on the internet search engines are both similar to each other however they are different and in big ways.

How are SEO and PPC different?

• Where they are placed on search engines
• The potential for traffic
• Cost to rank 
• The involvement your site has

1. The first difference, where they are displayed, is the biggest difference that anyone can notice and not just those of us who work with SEO and PPC. See how at the top of the image, the first link has the "Ad" marker? These are links that were paid to be there and thus, are PPC. The links on the right side of the page have this too. In the past, Google had the PPC links where in yellow boxes but they have very much reduced the yellow and replaced it with the "Ad" icon. The links that do not have the "Ad" marker next to them are organic links; they are placed there as the result of good search engine optimization. 
2. Another big difference, the potential for traffic, is a bigger deal for those who work with these two formats as well as those who utilize them. Yes, you get to the first page of Google faster with PPC, however, most people do not actually click on the PPC links. Why? Well, ask yourself the question (if you don't). Likely, your answer has something to do with the fact that the paid ones are not as credible; they are only there because they were paid to be there & didn't earn their place. It's like the guy at work who is management because his dad owns the company, not because he worked hard, you know? Internet users are 5x more likely to click on an organic link. 
3. The third difference, the cost, depends on several factors. Google and Yahoo! manage their PPC costs differently. Yahoo! does it purely on ranking; if you give lots of money, then you'll have a higher ranking. With Google, it depends on your market, competition, etc. They both set up budgets for you and each time someone clicks on your link, that cost per click is deducted from your budget, likely a daily budget. 
4. The fourth and final difference, involvement of your site, is a big deal too. When it comes to PPC, you do not have to really work on getting your site ready; the more clicks you want, the more money you spend on it. When it comes to search engine optimization, you have to optimize your site to get it working. This means having lots of content, title tags, image tags/descriptions, H1/H2/H3 tags, keywords mixed into the content, images, etc. If your site is not optimized when you decide to do SEO, then you'll have your prep work to do. 

If you are interested in doing SEO, then contact Integraphix - an SEO company. If you want to first see how SEO could help you, we can do a free website analysis. 

Why Content Matters with SEO

Content in search engine optimization is not just something you do, it is the thing you do. Everything about SEO revolves around the content. There are several things to consider when talking about content for SEO but we will focus on the big three: keywords, quality, and freshness.

The Hummingbird update that happened was a big change for the search algorithm that Google put into place. There is more focus on keywords now than ever before once the Hummingbird update came; keywords are to be in the titles of things, meta tags, in the paragraphs, your keyword density, etc. However, in regards to keywords, more emphasis is now on what the article is about and how you are using the keywords within all the content.

In the past, Google studied the search trends around the world and realized they had to improve identifications among synonyms and concept grouping. What does this mean? It means you should have both synonyms that are related to your main keywords as well as keywords directly related to the topic. This has changed search engine marketing strategy for every internet marketing firm in Chicago, New York, San Franciso, etc.

What about the article quality? You now have to write articles that are longer and are much more meaningful. Back in the day, you could get away with articles that were only 250 words but now, that minimum has doubled. A lot of websites have seen themselves get hit by Google because they had too little content. Ideally, webpages of 300, 400, 500+ words do well, even some sites with 1500 word articles do well. The most important thing is how well your articles are written; Google likes to see how well your stuff is written since that impacts its search quality.

Fresh content is a big, big deal. If you are unable to create content from your own mind, then you will need some extra help; having content that you did not make up is not only plagiarism but it will also get you hit by the big ol' Google. Online marketing has a focus on creating fresh, fun content for audiences and for good reason. Write on things that other people are not covering, or if they are, take a new spin on it. Always putting up new content to your site will help you quite a bit!

If you are looking for a Chicago marketing company that can help with your SEO needs, then contact Integraphix.