In a video published Dec. 4, 2012, Bonnie Hixson, owner and executive editor of Progressive Dentist Magazine, interviews Ali Husayni, owner and CEO of Sinai Marketing Inc. (Mastergoogle.com) and Rita Zamora, social media marketing expert, regarding the most common questions in these two important fields.

Hixson: For someone who is just getting started on a new strategy, say going in to the New Year, what’s the first step they should take to ensure what they are doing in terms of SEO is effective?

Husayni: My first advice for a practice is to find an expert in the field of search engines whose specialty is Google, since it receives 75 percent of the U.S. search market compared to Bing and Yahoo!, which get 11 or 13 percent. Then, if you are developing your own team of SEO writers and SEO optimizers, the SEO expert can help you train your team and develop a strategy that will help you succeed within a few months.

Hixson: Thank you. And Rita, how about you? What’s their first step in making conscious decisions on managing social media?

Zamora: First of all, becoming informed. Then deciding how they will manage it over the long term and knowing that they don’t have to manage multiple platforms if they don’t want to. If they really get to know Google+ and they love Google+, then stay with that platform and get familiar with all the opportunities there are to experience with them.  Forget about Twitter and Pinterest. Do what you enjoy; that’s where you’re going to get the best benefit. Just know that you don’t have to set up a platform on every social media community option that is available. Just inform yourself and start off one community at a time and as you master your skills in those communities, you can always add on additional social media tools as you go.

Hixson: So, more focused effort from one platform at a time so that over time, as you integrate with different platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest, it will be more effective.

Zamora: Yes. And make sure that at least one person in your office is really intimate with those communities. Even if you just have someone co-managing those efforts, you still have someone internally who is a big part of that, which is really huge.

Hixson: The last thing I would like to address- that I think you both have a great perspective on from two positions within the industry- is content. I think most people would agree that content is king. As a publishing company and with our magazine, we need to stay relevant and make sure the content we produce, accept and relay is helpful and important.

How do you make recommendations on what type of content is appropriate for social media?

Zamora: I think it ultimately has to represent the practice’s brand. I like it when their content shows a little bit of their human side. Whenever a practice shows something that other people can relate to- whether it’s a doctor’s hobby, a volunteer effort or a community organization they support- it shows people things they might have in common with you, and that’s where you can benefit greatly from social media. At the end of the day it really has to represent the business’s core values or their brand. In other words, if they are really professional and conservative on their website, that’s fine. You don’t have to mirror that on social media. However, you don’t really want anything that goes against that grain and is too whimsical or silly. It’s good to have fun on social media platforms and be a real person, but at the end of the day it still has to represent your overall brand.

Hixson: Ok. Ali, in terms of SEO, how do they decide what type of content is relevant on their page and how do they connect their social media presence with their online presence?

Husayni: Websites normally serve the clients as the place to display the majority of your branding. Social media is the connection between the practice, patients and community, and a business should post to it regularly. The website is different. The website needs to be a place where information can be found; a place where people go to research the business, it’s expertise and examples of their work, etc. Google’s recent Panda and Penguin updates are putting more emphasis on keeping or engaging your site’s visitors. In other words, if your site is able to keep its visitors on it for longer periods of time it tends to rank better on the search engine, which is a brand new phenomenon. It’s important to not only keep original, organic text on your site, but to provide videos and images that are engaging and will keep your audience on your site for longer periods of time and further interest them in your business.

Hixson: Ok.

Zamora: Wow. This is good information. I’m thinking of a lot of questions I can ask Ali at our next video interview regarding the information he just shared.

Hixson: Absolutely. This is just a very basic starting point for opening his discussion on social media and SEO and how they play a role in building a strong online presence.

If you would each give everyone your contact information.

Rita?

Zamora: You can find me on my website Ritazamora.com, on Google+ at Rita Zamora Connections, Google my name or find me on Facebook and Twitter under my name.

Husayni: Similar. My name is very unique, although the spelling is different. My website is Mastergoogle.com and I will be more than happy to answer the questions anyone may have.

Hixson: Great. And of course you can find us on theprodentist.com, Facebook or Google plus. We look forward to continuing this conversation soon.

Husayni: Thank you Bonnie.

Zamora: Thank you.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – We all desire to reach that coveted top spot on Google search results. It’s no easy task, but it can be accomplished. Being in the top three is almost as important as being first, as most people are likely to check out the top three results before choosing the most desirable.

Courtesy of jeromecastaneda.com

Here we want to provide a general overview of how to get to the top three spot on Google for a specific keyword. All of these steps will need time and attention to realistically get your business to the top of Google.

Do Your Homework
There’s a lot that goes into search engine optimization, and it’ll take time to learn all the aspects of the game. Visit SEO blogs or spend time perusing articles here on our Master Google blog. Familiarize yourself with SEO lingo so your research makes sense.

You might be interested in speaking with an SEO consultant to outline optimization strategies. Master Google offers SEO consultation, and other companies offer similar services as well.

Delegate an SEO Expert
Assigning one person the roll of SEO expert may help your team reach the top quicker. Give your SEO expert time to research ways to get your business to the top. There is simply too much involved in SEO to let your assistant spend 20 minutes a day on SEO.

Once your chosen SEO expert has done preliminary research, he or she may assign certain segments of SEO to other employees. Delegate certain people to write blog posts, connect on social media, build inbound links, monitor Google Analytics, and conduct keyword research.

On-Page Optimization
Look at your HTML to see where your site could be optimized. SEOmoz has a helpful rundown of perfectly optimized pages that will acquaint you to the process. Learn what page descriptions and headings are best for your site’s optimization.

Use the text-based browser Lynx to see how your site appears to Googlebots. Googlebots can’t read Java or images, so you want to make sure your efforts aren’t wasted because of something this simple.

Gain Links
You probably know enough about SEO to gather that links matter. Trustworthy inbound links will improve your Google search ranking. Our SEO expert team has put together an exhaustive list of directories, both free and paid, where you can submit your site. We’ve also gathered the best article and press release submission sites that you can use to your benefit.

Beware of link farms. Instead, look for good, quality links that readers will trust. If your site is trustworthy to readers, then Google will reward it as well.

Search Engine Watch shares a helpful article with 131 link-building tactics. Here’s one of many tips.

“Search for sites that should link to you but don’t,” Julie Joyce writes. “If you find a blog post entitled ‘Top 100 companies that sell green widgets’ and you sell green widgets but aren’t listed, contact the webmaster and point this out. Nicely, of course.”

One whole section of Joyce’s article is dedicated to content creation. In that vein, let’s move on to blogging.

Start (or Continue) Blogging
We’ve talked so many times about the importance of blogging for SEO. New content published freshens your website, and Google’s search algorithms include a freshness factor.

Creating new content can be hard, especially if you aren’t used to writing. Don’t panic. Study the trends in your industry and stick to what you know. If you need help brainstorming ideas for new content, browse through our list of common types of blog posts.

Set up a blog schedule and stick to it. Determine how many posts you can commit to each month, and stick to your goals. Keep your audience and focus in mind; don’t write about things that aren’t related to your business.

Sharing is Caring
Now that you’ve optimized your on-page content, started blogging and got some quality inbound links, share your content across social media platforms. Learn some basic tips for Twitter to help increase your SEO reach. Remember that Google+ is important since Google search results now include personal results.

Set Goals, Evaluate Your Efforts
Make sure your SEO expert or SEO team is setting goals and executing specific tasks. Learning Google Analytics will help you measure the fruits of your SEO efforts.

Patience is a Virtue, Seriously
Getting a top spot on Google takes time. Be wary of companies that promise results in a short amount of time. You won’t get to the top of Google in 24 hours. Don’t expect to be an SEO wiz overnight either, and don’t expect unrealistic results. Put an SEO plan in place, execute each step thoroughly, and then watch your analytics closely.

Of course, don’t sit back waiting and do nothing. Keep reading about SEO, follow relevant blogs, make new contacts, and write new blog posts. We’ll be here with more tips along the way. Feel free to let us know how your SEO journey progresses.

TAMPA, FLORIDA- We’ve all been there. Out of town on a business trip in a city we’ve never seen. It’s dinner time. How do you find a good restaurant? Let’s say you own a barbecue restaurant and you want to make sure anyone in your town searching for barbecue finds you. You’re up to date and have a Web presence. How can you make sure your restaurant shows up at the top of the list?

Master Google’s Saeed Khosravi says there are four steps you can take to put your business at or near the top in a local search:

Step 1- Set up and verify your business listing on Google Places.
“Without a doubt, Google Places combined with search engine optimization is the most important Google service for small businesses,” says Master Google CEO Ali Husayni. “Why? If your site is among the top five listings on Google Places, your customers will find you.”

Step 2- Make sure your business addresses and phone numbers are properly listed in your site. This needs no explanation.

Step 3- Add your site to the online yellow pages sites. Some of these sites are data providers for Google Places.

Step 4- Encourage your clients to place reviews for you on your Google Places page and empower your Google Places listing by adding images and videos.

When you list your business with Google Places, customers, friends and family can then rate your awesome food and excellent service for all on the Web to see.

Google says 73 percent of activity online is in one way or another related to local content. What’s more, according to ComScore Networks, Americans conducted 15.4 billion searches in March. If 35 percent of all searches are local- half of what Google says- then more than 5.3 billion local searches were performed in March. That doesn’t mean they were all looking for smoked ribs, but you can bet a lot were.

With more than 70 percent of local consumers using the Internet to find good local businesses, the time for having an expert search engine optimization team on your side could put your business in front of thousands of potential customers each month.

Increase your bottom line with SEO and Google Places.

Since most people find the companies they support through Internet searches, making sure that your business website stands out above the competition is very important. Although many purchases are done electronically these days, the time of brick and mortar business hasn’t come to an end (At least there’s no mention of that in the Mayan calendar.) MIT Technology Review says for every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, more than five are going to offline purchases that are influenced by online research.

Having an SEO expert on your team just makes sense for many reasons- most of all, your bottom line. The time your SEO team spends optimizing your website is more time you can put into your business in other areas to make it successful.

The rise in popularity of Google Places also means attention must be paid to making sure your Places listing is optimized and easily found by people searching for your type of product or service. We can help you with SEO for your website and your Places page. Contact us for guaranteed results.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA—If you are just beginning to focus on your website and know that you want to use the principles of search engine optimization but aren’t sure where to start, you have come to the right place.

“The first step to a successful SEO campaign is to identify the kind of help you need and find an SEO veteran with a proven track record,” says Ali Husayni, who founded his SEO agency in 2004.

Courtesy of dealsextra.com.au

Each business is unique with varying levels of technical experience, budget and personnel, but Master Google has a solution compatible for each one. Some companies want the guaranteed results Husayni offers with a full-scale SEO campaign so they are free to focus on other aspects of their business, but other companies have a different vision for their SEO.

Master Google’s consulting services are a good option for clients who are looking for in-depth analysis of their site, rankings and an SEO team. It’s an ideal choice if they need search engine optimization tips and solutions for specific problems like finding out why rankings tanked after an update. Consulting services can also be used to help companies locate, hire and set up an in-house SEO team.

Coaching is for the businesses that want to be hands-on with SEO and have a working knowledge of HTML, but feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available and need help setting up a road map for an effective search engine optimization campaign. They want to avoid getting sidetracked by insignificant issues or techniques that will eat up a lot of energy and time.

“With so much wrong information out there on the Internet, I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to have an asset like Master Google on your side,” says Don Gerig Jr., a client who hired Husayni for SEO coaching services.

Gerig manages his family’s business American Dream Realty, a Santa Cruz company with a client base primarily from Internet traffic.He and his brother Matt Gerig, the marketing director, had studied HTML coding and SEO for a while but kept finding contradictory information on what worked with the search engines and what didn’t. When they moved their website to a new hosting platform, they knew they needed professional coaching to become more competitive in the market.

“I did a lot of research and, after a lot of frustration, I finally found Master Google. I knew I had to have the best, so I immediately hired Ali,” says Don Gerig.

Master Google spent about 20 hours working with the American Dream Realty team and after a few months of continued support, the hard work paid off. The site’s traffic soared to the highest levels in their market where they now rank at the top of Google for their main keyword: Santa Cruz Real Estate.

Husayni says companies that invest in SEO coaching gain these three benefits:

1.    Avoid Incorrect, Insufficient Or Outdated Information

SEO is constantly changing with algorithms being updated frequently and without notice as search engines work to improve results and fight spam techniques. That means good SEO must adapt to the changes, discarding obsolete practices, avoiding black hat techniques and implementing new strategies to stay on top.

“Using outdated information and techniques or making a simple mistake because of insufficient information can waste your time and worse, have a profoundly negative impact on a site,” says Husayni, an SEO expert.

A veteran SEO coach can show businesses what they need to do for success and then teach them how to find reputable sources to stay up-to-date about developments, technologies and strategies as well as how to implement the information on their own.
“Knowing how to stay current is crucial for the long-term success of a marketing campaign,” says Husayni.

2.    Get SEO Working Right Away

Learning SEO, like any new skill set, takes time and practice. But with Master Google, the process gets started right away. The websites’ SEO is working and the rankings are getting better while the business owners are learning how to use the techniques.

Some aspects of SEO are done once, like certain programming tasks and structuring the website so search engine spiders can easily crawl the content, but a lot of SEO is ongoing, such as link-building campaigns and writing press releases and articles. The SEO coach shows them how to do the one-time tasks, explaining what they are as they are done, and the ongoing tasks can be done together.

3.    Help Establish A Clear Strategy & Avoid SEO Distractions

Establishing where a business wants to go with their SEO campaign and the steps they need to take to get there can be difficult to do when they are still learning about the different techniques. A coach can help business owners set goals with a realistic timeline and equip them with focused techniques that will help their businesses achieve that.

“What a good SEO company does, whether they are doing all the SEO work or getting you set up, is start you out correctly by honing a clear strategy and then focusing on meeting authoritative guidelines with an emphasis on good content,” he says.

© 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.

TAMPA, FLORIDA — It was this statement from Matt Cutts that instantly made me perk up and take note: “Normally we don’t…pre-announce changes, but there is something that we’ve been working on…to try to level the playing ground a little bit.”

I heard this during a podcast from SXSW in March, and Cutts, the head of Google’s Web spam team, was talking about SEO techniques that Google views as “over-optimization.” You can listen to the podcast at Search Engine Roundtable.

Earlier in the session, it was explained that all SEO experts weren’t bad; that a good SEO expert was like a coach who helps you figure out how to present yourself better via your website. That’s when Cutts, whose job is to hunt cheaters, showed his hand.

In the coming weeks, Google plans to start identifying sites that are overdoing it when it comes to SEO, compared to the people who are just creating great content and trying to make a fantastic site. This is a particular area to which Cutts’ team continues to pay attention.

“It’s an active area where we’ve got several engineers on my team working right now,” he said. “We want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level. And so that’s the sort of thing where we try to make the Googlebot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive.”

That way, people who don’t use SEO techniques won’t suffer from having their sites buried in search results by people who abuse SEO- whether they throw too many keywords on the page, they exchange too many links, or whatever else they may do to “go beyond what a normal person would expect,” Cutts said.

There are lots of people who seem to think that Google hates SEO, but that’s not the case, he said. It can be helpful by making a site more easily crawled, which increases the site’s user-friendliness.

Still, there are people who take it too far; black hat SEO techniques that do too well.

“We’ve been working on changes where if you’re a white hat or you’ve been doing very little SEO, that you’re going to not be affected by this change,” Cutts says. “But if you’ve been going beyond the pale, your site may not rank as highly as it did before.”

Matt Cutts warns over optimizers: changes are coming.

Google isn’t the only search engine that recognizes the need to address the SEO-on-steroids techniques that some people use. Duane Forrester, senior product manager with Bing’s Webmaster Program, also took part in the SXSW session and reiterated “over-SEO is always a problem.”

Ali Husayni, Master Google’s CEO, welcomes the change to Google.

“When Matt described an ethical SEO professional who makes sites user-friendly and more crawlable, he could have been describing us,” Husayni said. “We use only white-hat techniques because we understand that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.”

“What’s interesting in Matt’s approach is that he mentioned two of the most common black-hat SEO techniques: keyword stuffing and link-exchange,” Husayni said. “So by over optimization, he means black-hat SEO. Unfortunately, Google has recently lost its handle of such practices as I explained in our recent post. So, Matt is on the right track here.”

Husayni predicted that this next Google change will further weed out bad SEO providers and enhance our clients’ rankings on Google.

“When you’re doing everything above-board, you don’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “But when you’re trying to cheat the system, Matt’s team at Google has shown time and again that they will catch onto you eventually.”

ORANGE, CA-One year after Google updated its search capabilities with Google Instant, the experts at Master Google said that the tool—which some forecasted to be the death of search engine optimization—is just another change within a continuously evolving industry.

Google Instant, first launched in September 2010, is a feature that guesses what a user is searching for as it is typed into Google’s search bar, providing real-time search results that adapt to the final word or phrase entered.

“It shows you what most people are looking for, based on your initial few letters or words,” Ali Husayni, SEO expert and founder of Master Google, said. “You can then select the most sought after keywords from a drop-down box menu.”

At last year’s Google Search Event in San Francisco, company vice president Marissa Mayer predicted the new tool to save users two to five seconds per search, equating to 350 million hours saved collectively each year.

For a searcher, Google Instant means a more productive and personalized search. For SEO experts, it means another small adjustment to take into account.

“We want our clients’ sites to come up on Google for keywords or phrases that people are actually looking for,” Husayni said.

Because Google Instant’s real-time results are based on the popularity of certain queries, Husayni said it’s possible  to see a shift in keyword usage down the line.

Similarly, right after Google Instant debuted, Google search engineer Matt Cutts said that, while the results will remain the same for a particular query, “it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time.”

For this reason, Husayni said that the team at Master Google will continue to keep a close eye on regional keyword statistics using the Google AdWords keyword selector tool.

“But remember, this is just a new trend in search,” Husayni said.

The new tool merely effects the way that users interact with the search engine, not the way that Google ranks pages. The algorithm hasn’t changed, Husayni assured.

Even though Husayni doesn’t anticipate any drastic changes to SEO methods in the future, he said that Google Instant, combined with the power of Google Places, has already shifted search results to reflect more specific areas.

“Traditionally, if you typed in ‘orthodontics,’ Google would show results from all over the Internet,” Husayni said. “But if you search for this query today, Google will show you a list of three to ten different orthodontic services in your area, depending on where you’re based.”

These real-time, geo-centered results have made Master Google’s focus on both Internet-wide and local rankings stronger than ever.

“We can no longer just worry about the general search engine results. We have to be aware of the local results and get our clients to rank there, too.”

For more information about how Master Google can help your Web site reach the top of Google search results, please visit www.mastergoogle.com. For inquiries or to set up a free consultation with Ali Husayni, call Master Google toll free at 1-877-932-6559.

BOULDER, COLORADO – SEO company Master Google is in the process of filming some of its clients as they describe their experience with the company’s services. The resulting videos will be posted on Master Google’s testimonials page, as well as YouTube.

“We have a lot of clients for our SEO services who have been very pleased with the results we’ve gotten for them,” says Ali Husayni, SEO expert and CEO of Master Google. “We want to get the word out and there’s no better way than straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Clients who will be filmed include: Chris Metcalfe from Mavenlive.com, a site providing services for physical therapists; Peter and Dr. Jennifer Eisenhuth from Doctorjennifer.com, the website for her orthodontic practice in Minneapolis; and Robin Bingeman from Cryoserver, an email archiving software provider.

The clients will discuss how they discovered Master Google, what services the SEO Google company has provided, how the company has optimized their websites, and what they like best about the company.

“The videos will showcase some of the work we’ve done for our clients recently,” says Husayni, “and it will demonstrate to prospective clients what we’re capable of.”

The SEO company’s clients have found Master Google’s Google ranking services to be extremely valuable in promoting their business. Many of the clients have seen a huge jump in their website’s ranking on Google – and have been able to acquire a significant amount of new business.

Master Google is famous for its “Top of Google Guaranteed” package, which promises that the search engine optimization company will get a client’s website among the top five sites listed on Google when a user searches using that business’s main keywords. If Master Google cannot get the client’s site within the top five after a few months, the client’s fees will be refunded.

© 2011 Master Google. Authorization to post is granted, with the stipulation that Master Google are credited as sole source. Linking to other sites from this document is strictly prohibited, with the exception of herein imbedded links.

One of the primary tenets of SEO is this: always have updated content. When Google reads, indexes, and ranks sites based on their content, it examines more than 200 criteria to rate Web sites for every key word. One of these criteria is how often a site’s content is refreshed.

Fresh Content: Google’s Web site rankings give priority to Web sites that stay current on the events in their field of expertise and that can show they are doing new things. Fresh blog posts, additional pages, or re-written pages show that the Web site is up-to-date and helps to encourage visitors.

“Major search engines not only rank pages upon relevant content…but by fresh content as well,” writes Loren Baker on SearchEngineJournal.com. “Even after your site has been ‘optimized to the max,’ your rankings will increase to a certain level and then not go much higher. To get to the top and stay there, your site should deliver fresh, relevant content on a regular basis.”

“Here at Master Google, each month we create one or two new writings for every client and put them on their site,” says Ali Husayni. “You can also refresh your content by re-writing your homepage – or a different page on your site. You are providing your visitors with identical information, but you’re giving the sense that your Web site is current – and that will get it a better Google Web site ranking.”

How Much Fresh Content? The more frequently a Web site is refreshed, the higher it will move in the rankings. For example, news sites tend to receive high Google Web site rankings because they’re updating their pages several times a day.

“We can create new Web site content for our clients as often as they like, but the expense could outweigh the positive effect if we refresh it more frequently than 2-3 times a month,” explains Husayni.

Other SEO experts support this idea. On SEO.com, Scott Smoot relates this story: “I noticed a huge drop in my traffic from organic search…It provided a powerful example of the need for fresh content…I hadn’t updated for almost 4 months. I have no doubt that other sites competing for my keywords were updating more regularly. I went into my site and submitted a blog post… just a ‘sorry I haven’t posted anything lately’ post…The result was a complete return of the rankings and traffic (and then some).”

How Much Contend Must be Re-written? No one really knows. Google reveals very little of its page ranking formula – and that information isn’t included. “If we revise a Web site’s content, we strive to re-write 100% of it,” remarks Husayni.