Your website isn’t some old rotten medicine a decade or more old, is it? Come on now! Would expired (probably poisonous) medicine heal you or make you sick?

Millions of website designers and SEO’s like us are making an effort to update and fix old websites to attract visitors and encourage them to come back and visit a healthy, friendly website–that won’t make Panda sick!

According to Search Engine Watch, if you think your site HAS made Panda sick (i.e., your ranking has suddenly dropped or you believe it might have been removed from Google’s index), check for the following:

• To see if your site is still indexed, search Google for your site like this: site:yourwebsite.com. If you get results, you haven’t been removed. If you’ve been removed, go to Google Webmaster Central to find out why and apply for re-inclusion once you’ve cleaned up your problem.
• Do a Google search for “yourwebsite.com” with your URL in quotations. You should be in the top 10 results. If your site appears back on page four or five, Google has most likely penalized you.
• Have you bought or exchanged links from/with low-ranking websites?
• Have you or someone else worked on your site recently and possibly did something to make Panda “sick”?
• Look at your site objectively. Better yet, have someone else go over it for you and give you feedback.
• Are you giving Google the information it needs in your site’s metadata and content to crawl and rank it for the search terms (keywords) you’re after?
• Is your site easy to navigate and user friendly?

For more tips on how to keep your site (and Panda!) healthy, contact us for a free “mini-audit” of your website!

Absolutely! Many companies boost their search engine rankings with their own YouTube channels–after all, Google owns YouTube, and is returning YouTube videos in relevant searches.

By creating and optimizing your own YouTube channel, it allows your brand name to appear in natural searches for keywords that can associate directly to your company.

Now, how do you start? There are FOUR Steps:

1. Choose Your Topic – Share your knowledge by producing useful information about your products or services. Engage your viewers by being unique and creative while considering what other expertise you can offer, whether it’s how to paint a room, plant roses or pairing wine with food.

2. Record Your Videos–You can either hire a professional video production company, such as Smellycat Productions, or you can use any high-quality camera, but even an iPhone or Droid Phone will work. Not everyone is a professional editor or has the budget for one, but as long as you’re engaging your target audience, they’ll cut you some slack on editing if the information is top-notch!

Make a list of 5 to 10 valid points that you will speak about during the video and try to keep it to three minutes or less.  After that people lose interest quickly. Make sure you include a link to your website on your channel and the video.

3. Optimize for VSEO–After you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube, you’ll be asked to enter a title, description and tags. This is where your VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimization) begins:

• Always include a link at the front of the description back to your website, followed by a carefully crafted paragraph using target keywords pertaining to your video and what you do.
• The video description would show in the search results on Google. It’ll determine which keywords or phrases your video should show for in a search results page. Remember to keywords that give context to your video, so Google can figure out exactly what the video is about.
• Finally, for tags, use your best keywords. As in website search engine optimization, stick to 10-15 keywords. For keywords with more than one word, use double quotes, i.e: “casual sneakers in Williamsburg VA”, “basketball sneakers Newport News VA” or “men’s shoes in Hampton VA”.

4. Build a Base of Viewers–“Seed” your video beyond posting links to it on Facebook and Twitter or other Social Networks. This gives YouTube the context as to what your video is about and start a steady flow of traffic to it.

To do this, search YouTube for the exact phrase you want to rank for; then click on a video that comes up and post your new video as a “video reply” to those.

Next, start building links back to your video (backlinks), and optimize those with keywords. The more high-ranking websites that link back to your video on YouTube, the more that video will appear in relevant searches.

Creating your own channel does take some time and effort, but the results are worth the time by all accounts. If you don’t have the time but want the results, don’t forget Smellycat Productions specializes in video production, especially on the Internet, and can set up a YouTube channel for you!

You need to get optimized ASAP!

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO is the process of increasing the amount and quality of traffic to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the organic search engine results page (SERP) of a search engine. The higher the site ranks in the search engine, the more chance it has of being found by visitors. Most people don’t go through pages and pages of SERPs (search engine results pages) to find a website if they can find what they need on the first page , hence the best organically optimized web pages are those found on the first page of a SERP.

You could either take the time to learn the process of SEO–and believe me, it would take a LONG time, or hire a professional Search Engine Optimizer. If you’re planning a site redesign or planning to create a new website, and you don’t have or want to take the time to learn and apply the process yourself, you should hire a professional SEO.

According to Google, good SEO’s provide useful website services such as:

• Review of website structure and content
• Technical advice on website development, for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript, etc.
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

But, beware! A Search Engine Optimizer can either damage your site and reputation, or improve your site by increasing visitation and your bottom line.

When deciding on a SEO, some questions Google suggests asking are:

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search optimization business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?
• How do you measure your success?
• What’s your experience in my industry?
• What’s your experience in my country/city? OR What’s your experience developing national or international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you?
• Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

For more information on SEO, Google Search Engine Optimization, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Basic are three great sites that will help you learn more about SEO. After all–who better to learn from than Google?

In conclusion, choose your SEO wisely, Be suspicious of companies that are secretive, or do not clearly explain what they’ll be doing or why, and remember–No one can guarantee first page placement on Google in an organic search. If a SEO guarantees you this, he or she is lying.

Want to learn more? Come to our next:

Do-it-yourself SEO (search engine optimization) & Social Media Workshop
Thursday June 23rd, 6 – 8 p.m.
In our studio in Space 59 of the Williamsburg Outlet Mall
6401 Richmond Road
Williamsburg, VA, 23188

Workshop Admission – $45/person, Visa, MasterCard, cash or check. Seating limited.
Please email or call 757.250.3197 no later than the day before the workshop to reserve a seat.

Join us for one of our next Website Optimization and Marketing Workshops and you will learn:

• How Google and other search engines look at your website and rank it
• How keywords, content, backlinks, blogs and social media play vital roles in search engine ranking and helping people find your website
• How to know exactly how many people are visiting your website and how long they are staying
• How to manage your reputation and what people are saying about you online
• How to turn your website visitors into business leads

AND…How you can do 90% of the work yourself!

Thursdays in June, the 3^rd, 10^th, 17^th & 24^th, 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Williamsburg Outlet Mall, 6401 Richmond Road, Space 59,

*ADMISSION FREE, FOR BUSINESS OWNERS ONLY

*Regularly $45.00

Seating limited. For reservations, email info@smellycatproductions.com or call 757-250-3197 by the Wednesday before each workshop.

See what others are saying the workshop:

“Thank you both so much for the workshop…It was incredibly informative and interesting and I got much more out of it than I could have hoped for.” Marilee Taylor, embroiderlogos.com

“Smellycat’s website optimization workshop has finally given me the tools to understand and communicate with the numerous advertising companies that approach my business constantly. The greatest revelation from the workshop was that I can do myself what they were trying to sell! That alone will save my business hundreds of dollars!” Heather Urick, stayfold.com

“WOW! We were just blown away by the website optimization workshop! Smellycat made it simple to understand and implement by ourselves.  For the small investment of our time, we are reaping the rewards everyday!” Patti and Dave DeBlass, schmidtsflowers.net

“…I took away some very useful and actionable information, even on aspects I never even considered before such as inbound links, blogs, online directories and social media.  Thanks again for a very educational session!” Bob Phaneuf, iwantmusicnow.com