ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Most people understand that in today’s market, a website has to rank near the top of Google to be competitive, but the fact that it is not an easy task to get there can escape many of them. The most common question when it comes to getting a top search result placement on Google is: “How can I get my website to the top ranking on Google with free SEO?”

Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, has an answer to this question.

“Search engine optimization is like any other demanding industry in business,” says Husayni. “You don’t do it part time if you want to be successful.”

After all, when it comes to SEO, there is a big learning curve while acquiring skills, and it is an ongoing process, a fight to stay current. There are thousands of sites on the internet with tips, lists and tutorials about SEO techniques, including the Master Google website and blog, but search engine algorithms get updated regularly and without warning.

“The only constant about SEO is that it will change,” Husayni says. “One update can turn everything you’ve been doing on its head.”

Learning the basic concepts of SEO might not cost money, but there is still a cost. When a company or individual is wondering about whether they can do SEO on their own, they should carefully consider these questions:

• Do I have the time to keep up with frequent updates to algorithms and new techniques by reading blogs, breaking news and articles online?
• Do I have the skill level to research and write quality content for my site, including press releases and articles?
• Do I know where to submit articles and press releases or how to share new content on social networking sites?
• Do I have a good working knowledge of computer coding languages to manage and update the code of my site in order to implement new techniques while staying within Google’s Quality Guidelines and Terms Of Service?
• Do I have the stamina to continue doing this these things on a consistent basis?

If the answer is ‘no’ to any of those, the company or individual should consider hiring an SEO professional instead. Husayni works with small businesses frequently. In fact, it was his desire to help small businesses be able to compete with their larger competitors that have bigger budgets that got him into SEO in the first place.

“You may not have the budget for a full-scale SEO campaign if you’re just starting out, but some time with an SEO consultant to get you started may be within your budget and well worth the expense,” says Husayni. “Call the office for a free consultation to find out.” Click here to contact us about our services.

SANTA MONICA – To allow blog comments, or not to allow blog comments… that is the question for many bloggers, this one included. While a blog is a great place to send ideas out into the world, the subject of exactly what we expect to get back from it is one that is constantly being discussed, especially when it comes to moderating blog comments. So, the question is this: do blog comments have SEO value?

I am not the first person to investigate this issue. The picture above, ”Paper Blogs”, by Bookwyrmish, was featured in a recent post on the same subject, by Alexander B. Howard, the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media. Howard cited two different experts arguing two sides of the issue. One argued that it was a waste of time, while the other said that he enjoyed interacting with customers, but Howard took the time to emphasize his own valid opinion that a blog should be a chance to build a community, not just to preach, which is why comments are so important.

“From where I sit tonight, whether you choose to have comments or not speaks to whether you want to create an online community,” Howard says. “which requires a human’s touch to manage and moderate, or to simply publish your thoughts publicly online, without making the necessary commitment of time and patience.”

Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, agrees with the need for a quality blog with equally as useful comments. Without an interactive base, readers have no reason to read and comment on your posts, and that will leave you link-less, without the SEO opportunities that every business needs.

“You cannot just sit and wait for others to link their sites to yours,” Husayni says. “That simply won’t happen. In a world where there are thousands of new sites built everyday, your prospective site visitors have no way of finding you to read your content [without search engine optimization].”

As for just how often to moderate your comments and how many posts you need to put up per week, consider these things to be a part of your overall marketing efforts. Stay white hat with these for optimal SEO. What exactly is white hat marketing? It includes quality content, site optimization, guest blogging, internal linking, and more. In our recent post, we defined white hat marketing and compared it to other practices. Check it out: Best SEO Practices: Black Hat vs. White Hat Techniques and the Gray Hat Area.

SANTA MONICA, CA – Here at Master Google, we are not afraid to admit it: SEO is a lot of work. White hat techniques require real effort. After all, the things that white hat SEO requires are all big commitments (which is why a team of specialists is key).

Let’s take a look at a few of the basics of white hat content: quality content, site optimization, link baiting, guest blogging, internal linking, and semantic markup. The differences between white, gray and black hat marketing efforts are described to perfection in the form of a clever picture titled SEO Wars: What Color is Your Lightsaber, featured in a recent article by Angie Schottmuller of Search Engine Watch.

The definitions of gray and black hat seo practices are also made more clear by this picture. The gray hat area of SEO techniques include: spinning/rewriting articles, reciprocal links, buying old/expired domains, and Google bombing/washing. Black hat techniques include: keyword stuffing, link farms, hidden text, cloaking, scraping, doorway pages, comment spam, and paid links/content+.

Keep in mind that both gray hat and black hat areas will hurt you in the long run, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google. Heed the warning of Google’s anti-spam strategy: they can distinguish between black hat and white hat SEO techniques, and your rank will rise and fall accordingly.

“The only thing not changing with SEO is that it’s always changing,” Husayni says. “Be diligent in keeping up with those changes as [you handle your] site’s SEO, or partner with a qualified SEO provider to handle that task.”

After all, the battle lines between white hat, gray hat, and black hat techniques are drawn quite clearly, so pick an SEO practice and stick with it, urges Schottmuller, using Star Wars as an analogy.

“Will you uphold the righteous values of quality content and serve as a SEO Light Jedi, or do you long to be a master of deception as a SEO Sith Lord?” Schottmuller says. “Perhaps you’re a SEO Dark Jedi – once believing in white hat tactics and now thirsting for the dark side. Or perhaps you’re a SEO Jedi Fashionista – knowledgeable of both sides, but discreet in practices to keep up appearances.”

Our strong suggestion: do your search engine optimization efforts justice by sticking with white hat techniques.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Some people assume that there must be some secret trick or magic involved in the search engine optimization of a website, but, according to SEO consultant Ali Husayni, on-page SEO consists of basic techniques, several of which he explains here.

“Search engine optimization is the ongoing process of making a website appealing to search engine spiders and readers alike through the site’s content, relevancy and popularity,” says Husayni, who is president of SEO firm Master Google.

One aspect of this SEO process is called on-page optimization, which entails altering a website’s code to make it search engine friendly, explains Saeed Khosravi, the operational manager at Master Google. While the internet has list after list of tips or tricks for doing that, sorting out the tried-and-true SEO techniques from outdated and detrimental ones is a never-ending process.

“Google’s algorithm is updated frequently, so what worked last month might be obsolete today,” says Khosravi.

The reason the search engine algorithms change frequently is because they are making adjustments to more effectively mimic the human behavior of reading, analyzing and organizing content. Husayni says some updates are intended to thwart exploitative SEO tactics used by black hat companies.

One of these big updates rolled out in the U.S. in Feb. 2011, and Google began “rating” websites on their content and user-experience. According to a recent article by Search Engine Land, the focus of the updated, named Panda, was to reduce the prominence of websites that have thin, low-quality and duplicate content. It also targeted sites that come up short based on other site-quality metrics, such as high advertisement-to-content ratios.

Where To Get Started:

Husayni says what he has said from the beginning of his career in the industry: that an ethical SEO company works with the Google algorithm instead of trying to take advantage of it. Here are some simple, current, effective and aboveboard methods that Husayni uses with his clients, ranging from the medical field to real estate to heating and cooling:

Easy to understand navigation. This includes the top menu, footer links, breadcrumb navigation and HTML sitemap. Do not make content hard to get to or structure the site in a way that only makes sense to experts in the industry.

Automatically updating sitemap. Set the XML sitemap to update automatically to keep the navigation current and the latest content easily accessible to search engine spiders and readers.

Utilize header tags to organize information. According to 3Schools.com, Header tags are used to define HTML headings with <h1> defining the most important heading and <h6> defining the least important heading. Using tags helps lay out textual information for the reader.

Link to other useful places within the site. This is also called friendly interlinking. Website content is supposed to be helpful for the reader. Linking to a page that expounds on a topic, issue or technique mentioned on a different page builds an internal link structure that benefits the business, the reader and the ranking on SERPs.

Use consistent URLs. Stick to one version URLs, redirecting all the other versions to the preferred one. For example, redirect non-www to www, https to http, and the one without trailing slash to the one with trailing slash.

Be informative with URLs. A short, keyword-rich URL is much more useful to readers than one that uses an ID number or another ambiguous parameter. Keywords need to accurately explain the page’s contents in a succinct way. This information shows up in the SERs and helps a reader decide if the information is relevant, which means Google is also factoring this into their algorithm.

Put unique page titles and descriptions in the code. The page title shows up at the top of the browser window, but the title and description also show up in the SER. Accurate, informative and short information helps a reader decide if the page is what they are looking for.

For example, search for “Google free optimization,” with Google on your browser. In my search, the Master Google website listed as the third result after the ads. The page title and description, as well as the URL, all provide key information about what the reader will find on the actual page.

These SEO tips are designed to make a website easier and better for the user, not just make a page rank higher on Google’s search engine. Husayni says that on-page optimization is only about five to 10 percent of the total SEO work, so he will explain more on his blog in the coming months about the other components needed to create a site Google will love.

SANTA MONICA, CA – The need for SEO exists when done correctly, especially along with extensive experience and knowledge, goals, and a dedicated team. Those things are a must, or search engine optimization efforts will ultimately fail, says Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google. SEO matters for small businesses because the audience is there, they just need to be found. Because bad SEO can have serious adverse effects, let’s start with a few SEO fails.

Be Aware of Common SEO Mistakes: SEOFailBlog.com wants you to know that they’re watching for a variety of mistakes. From incorrect footer links, to a Google related searches fail, SEO Fail Blog puts the spotlight on bad practices.

Understand the Audience of New Platforms: Google+ is an amazing new tool for communication, but one that clearly wasn’t appreciated by Steve Yegge, an employee at Google, when he accidentally told the world about his misgivings with the new platform a few months ago. In a memo meant for Google employees on Google+, Yegge forgot one important thing: to click private instead of public post when sharing a blog. Read the now infamous memo on TechnoBaboy.com. One of the most shocking excerpts is of Yegge’s complaint that Google+ is simply a “prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership, down to the very lowest leaf workers. We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood.” Yegges was quick to post an apology. Let us all be considered warned about checking our settings twice.

Impatience With SEO Results: Quality takes time. Do not fear if a project has taken six weeks and the results are minimal. As you build links and prominence with Google, the people will click, according to Husayni.

“If people expect huge results in a very short period of time, they are bound to be disappointed,” he says. “Search engine optimization is an ongoing process that takes time, especially if the website has been in trouble for bad SEO practices in the past.”

Effectiveness with SEO pays off, after all. As it relates to Google search results in the orthodontic field, Husayni notes that, depending on location, there can be an increase in yearly income ranging from $50,000 to as much as $300,000.

“Americans performed 15.5 billion searches in 2010, and around 80 percent of customers research a product or service before making a purchase,” Husayni says. “So it doesn’t matter if you are offering dog grooming services, consulting or selling exotic cars, you want potential clients to be able to find you.”

SANTA MONICA, CA – What do Facebook and Justin Bieber have in common? They are both at the top of their categories for the number of search inquiries directed at them in 2011. The categories are part of an in-depth analysis of the top search terms of 2011, published by Experian Hitwise, a part of Experian Marketing Services.

The biggest search engine victory, though, was achieved by a search engine itself. According to Experian Hitwise, Google properties made for 11.98 percent of all U.S. visits, which is a 22 percent increase from 2010. Facebook properties accounted for 8.93 percent, and Yahoo! properties accounted for 6.81 percent.

As a stand-alone, the fastest-moving search terms of the year mainly focused on big events, disasters, and changes that happened on that specific day. The terms included: Hurricane Irene, Les Paul, Nick Ashford dies, Apophis Asteroid, Sheen dumped, Hurricane Irene path and Amber Cole. Looking at the top public figures and the top five searches in the movie category is equally as amusing (and maybe even a little scary to some degree, in some cases).

Top public figure searches:

1. Justin Bieber
2. Casey Anthony
3. Kim Kardashian
4. Nicki Minaj
5. Selena Gomez
6. Charlie Sheen

Top five movie titles:

1. Star Wars
2. Transformers 3
3. (Twilight) Breaking Dawn
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
5. Fast Five

Looking at the top hits for 2011 is fun and provides some insight, but the analysis goes much deeper when comparing the results of 2011 with 2010. A few important differences, as noted by the Experian Hitwise study: Facebook was the top-visited website for the second year, making up 10.29 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2011, which is a whopping 15 percent increase from 2010. Google.com ranked second, with 7.70 percent of visits, which is a 7 percent increase for them, trailed by YouTube with 3.17 percent, and Yahoo! Mail at 2.95 percent with Yahoo! at 2.47 percent.

Check out the Top 10 most-visited websites for 2010 vs. 2011:

Top 10 in 2010:

1. Facebook.com
2. Google.com
3. Mail.Yahoo.com
4. Yahoo.com
5. YouTube.com
6. Msn.com
7. MySpace.com
8. Mail.Live.com
9. Search.Yahoo.com
10. Bing.com

Top 10 in 2011:

1. Facebook.com
2. Google.com
3. YouTube.com
4. Mail.Yahoo.com
5. Yahoo.com
6. Bing.com
7. Search.Yahoo.com
8. Gmail.com
9. Mail.Live.com
10. Msn.com

Taking a critical look at both the 2010 and 2011 search terms, especially in relation to search engine optimization, makes for an important task for 2012, and that is meeting the challenge of knowing what’s current and anticipating what is on the horizon, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google.

After all, SEO helps a website’s visibility by making sure that the site’s language gives an optimal chance for it to be found when a web surfer performs a search.

“The key is to recognize your key audience and think like them,” Husayni says. “For instance, if Sinai is working on dental website marketing for a client, we have to think in terms of what words people use when they search for a dentist. Then we build the client’s entire Google marketing efforts around those 100-200 words.”

© 2012 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

Google’s climb to search engine prominence over the years has been subtly dotted with algorithm adjustments in order to stay current. In November, Google supplemented last year’s caffeine indexing system with the freshness update, making an algorithm that favors content that is both recent and relevant.

“Different searches have different freshness needs,” says software engineer Amit Singhal on Google’s official blog. “This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

Although the freshness update is estimated to impact 35 percent of searches (at least one result on the page), it will only be noticeable to the average user among 6 – 10 percent of searches. In other words, the update is more effective than will be noticed.

So how is freshness and relevancy measured by Google’s standards? SEO expert and Master Google founder, Ali Husayni, points to respective topics.

“For ‘news’ items, the later a page has been created and content developed, the better rank it will have,” Husayni says. “For other topics such as ‘historical events,’ Google may include old pages along with new analysis.”

Account Director at Punch Communications and Huffington Post blogger Philip Keightley explored the same question in a recent post.

“What constitutes relevance? In Google’s eyes, hundreds of factors, with freshness being a recent development,” Keightley says. “What constitutes freshness? Real-time social networks such as Twitter and to some extent Facebook and Google+ have added additional tools to Google’s armory, since it can now crawl the content from these networks and deduce which content people are interested in, what it is and if it is relevant for its search results.”

The freshness update has not only affected search results, but has already begun to affect the methods of developers and writers as well. Former Master Google writer Kristen Peters has expressed how the freshness update influences her approach.

“Google’s freshness update has certainly affected our writers’ methods here at Master Google,” Peters says. “We always knew that content was a huge part of optimization, but this development has made it all the more important to write quality blog posts more often and has encouraged us to keep an eye on industry news, as the timeliness of the content is also a crucial component.”

Keightley shared thoughts on the immediate future as well.

“This presents a number of opportunities to marketers, regardless of their size and ammunition,” Keightley says. “Essentially, by creating a digital social object, whether that is in the form of an application on Facebook, a microsite or even a blog post, the buzz around that content will have a far greater benefit in search.”

Husayni does not believe any one component to a site warrants particular care and attention, but notes the importance of general consistency as with such formats as blogs.

“Blogs seem to be an important part of any site because they get updated on a regular basis,” Husayni says. “I suggest site owners should write for their sites on a regular basis. The more fresh, quality and relevant content they post to their sites, the better chances of exposure and inclusion on Google search results they will have.”

© 2012 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

SANTA MONICA, CA — I know that we all thought we were done with hearing about “making a list, and checking it twice,” but when considering either having or being a guest blogger, ’tis the season to make a list of steps and goals along the way. What should that list look like? From targeting a market, to joining a group that shares blogging opportunities, planning ahead of time will make it easier to decide what to post and where to spend your time maximizing link building, an important search engine optimization tactic.

1. Understand the Importance of an Inbound Link. Inbound links are one of the key components to quality SEO, because it tells Google that your website is trusted and important. More links make you an authority. To further understand the anatomy of a link, see the full explanation in a recent article by Andrew Pitre on HubSpot’s blog. And remember, not all links are created equal.

“If you were to get an inbound link from a domain with lots of its own inbound links, like the New York Times, for example, you would get more authority transferred to your domain than if you got a link from my friend Brian’s blog,” Pitre says.

2. Target Blogs With Keyword Research. If you’re looking for a guest blogger, please skip ahead to the next step.

For the writers: what do you want to write about? Think of words or phrases that you currently want to be found under in a Google search. Search for these keywords on Google and determine the list of websites that you wish to write for. To further expand your horizons, use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, which will give a thorough list of the keywords from the previous month that relate. Another Adwords column also displays those keywords’ popularity for the last month, a very valuable tool in deciding which sites are worth your time.

Another option is signing up for a service like WordTracker.com, according to Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google. WordTracker’s function is like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, in that it helps you find and evaluate keywords.

3. Join a (Free) Service Like Blogger Link Up. BloggerLinkUp.com is a website that connects blog writers with website owners who need blog content. Each week, a newsletter is sent out with lists of requested blog posts, and writers wanting to be a guest poster. The form is the same, whether you are a prospective guest blogger or a website in need of a guest blogger.

4. Make Yourself Uncomfortable With Your Guest Blog Efforts (Within Reason). What makes you uncomfortable about writing or hosting a guest blog post? Change can be scary, but we need to try every serious idea we have at least once, urges Cathy Stucker, the founder of BloggerLinkUp.com, in a recent post.

“The problem is that too often we don’t try a second or third time (or even a first!) with marketing activities which seem difficult,” Stucker says. “I was terrified the first time I gave a speech. But I got up and did it anyway. You can, too.”

So, forget your fears, and remember, the worst thing that can happen with new content is that, well, you don’t receive any at all. Go get it.

© 2012 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA — How do updates impact search engine algorithms? Richard McCreadie, a computer scientist at the University of Glasgow, U.K., researched the subject at great length, and this recent article in The New Scientist summarizes his findings well.

The most promising news is that of a Panda update, a search engine algorithm update from Google, which was initially released in the U.S. in February of 2011. It restructured parts of the algorithms to integrate a rating system of sorts for websites. One effective part of this update was penalizing content farms, which are typically sites with thin or shallow content, or sites with a poor content-to-link ratio.

Danny Sullivan, an SEO guru who heads up Search Engine Land, took to a recent article to define content farms as companies or people who look for popular searches in a particular category and generate shoddy content tailored to those searches, usually spending little time, effort and money to do so, with the sole goal of getting clicks.

McCreadie’s research further shows the ever-increasing intensity of the war between search engines and content farms, and, luckily for users, search engines seem to be prevailing. Ali Husayni, the CEO of the SEO service company, Master Google, agrees that search engines are winning, and improving the user experience in the process.

“This win against content farms is good news for reputable SEO firms that adhere to white-hat techniques,” Husayni says. “Many sites were hit hard by this update, but none of our clients lost rankings.”

This reinforces the point that Master Google’s SEO is on the right track and that good SEO services will continue to be in demand. Some critics of SEO have said that the industry is dying and losing relevance due to social media and networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, but Husayni is adamant that they are wrong.

“The industry is constantly evolving and SEO has grown to encompass much more than on-site optimization. It’s really only five or ten percent of the total work,” Husayni says. “As long as we continue to grow with it, SEO will continue to be relevant.”

The vast majority of SEO is generating useful, high-quality content on a regular basis, technical research for keywords relevant to the company, and a long-term link building campaign to get the new information out to the readers who are searching for it.

Google’s search engine algorithms are constantly being refined to get more effective at mimicking human readers’ behaviors. Husayni says he is just glad that the updates continue to weed out the SEO companies that give a negative reputation to the industry he is so passionate about.

© 2012 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google is credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this press release is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.