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!

Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 6 – 8 p.m. in our studio in space 59 of the Williamsburg Outlet Mall, 6401 Richmond Road, Williamsburg VA 23188.  To reserve your seat, call us @ 757-250-3197, or email us by September 13, 2011.  Cost is $45, payable by check, Mastercard, Visa, Discover or PayPal . 

When most people hear the word “Panda” they either think of a cute black and white bear that “eats, shoots and leaves” or a big black and white bear with big teeth, but Google’s new Panda search engine is different. In this case, some businesses fear Google Panda, not because it’s a big bear with big teeth, but because if your website has not met Panda’s regulations, your site could get slammed or, in Google-speak, “Pandafied”.

Unfortunately for businesses, Google will not release exact regulations for Panda. However they did release some guidelines to follow to build a high-quality website. So, if you’ve been following their rules, then you should have nothing to worry about!

Google Panda uses Google’s new ranking algorithm, which takes in many different factors to determine a site’s ranking on its search engine. Google Panda looks at EVERYTHING to ensure Google only returns what it considers high quality websites in its SERPs (search engine results pages). Although the changes are not always noticed, Google is constantly tweaking its new ranking algorithm. From time-to-time Google performs a massive search engine update that can slam (“Pandafy”) your business’s website, and even completely remove it from its search engine.

PageRank of a website is important to search engines as well. PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is also another factor in producing a high-quality website. SEO can be tricky though. For instance, Google does not approve of “keyword stuffing”, a manipulative attempt to load a website with keywords in order to raise the site’s ranking in Google’s search engine. When adding keywords to content, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately.

Google’s goal with it’s new Panda update is “To give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible”. But is it working? Have you noticed an increase or decrease in your website ranking lately? If you’ve noticed an increase, good for you! If you’ve noticed a decrease, you’re site could have been “Pandafied”! Here’s some helpful tips to improve your ranking–or keep it:

1. Create well-written content and articles. If you’re not an expert on the topic, research reliable resources to glean the information you need–and remember to always cite your sources!

2. Create interesting and creative content and articles. Are pages on your site the sort of webpages you, yourself would want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

3. Use meta-data correctly. Sometimes you can “overdo it” when adding keywords. For example, when creating keywords, come up with as many high-ranking words that relate to your business or industry by using Google Adwords: Keyword tool. If keywords aren’t relevant to your website, don’t use them! And NEVER use your competitors’ names in your meta-data.

4. Avoid excessive ads and links to other websites unrelated to what your website is about. Excessive ads and irrelevant links are not only distracting and interfere with the main content and intent of a website, they are a surefire way to get it Pandafied!

How about it–do you think you’ve been Pandafied?  If so, let us know.  We’ll be happy to audit (check out) your website and give you some tips to get cool with Panda Rules!

What’s your website grade?

For those of you who would like to know how your website is performing, and what steps you can take to improve its performance and search engine ranking, go to websitegrader.com, a free website analysis tool, enter your website address, and click “Generate Report”.  The cool thing about this site, is you can also check out your competitions’ websites and see how they rank.

Google Places–location, location, location!

If you haven’t yet claimed your Google Places Map listing, you better do it quick.  Now, whenever you “Google” a type of business, say, “web design in Williamsburg VA”, the Local Business Results appear at the top, center, and can completely take up the page, which means those of you who might have once occupied the prime real estate of the first page of a Google search, now have been pushed to the second page–unless of course you have claimed and optimized your Google listing.  For more on this, click here.

Be ever “Alert” with your reputation

Want to know if someone’s trashing you online, or if you have a dissatisfied customer?  Sign up for Google Alerts.  It’s a free service in which you can set up email alerts for your business name, domain name, owner or CEO name as well as names of other high-profile employees and any trademarks or branded terms you have, like names of products or services you’ve created. When Google’s spiders encounter these terms as they crawl the web, Google emails you a notice, along with its URL.  If you find some bad reviews on you or your business, contact us and we’ll give you some pointers on how to combat them.

For more SEO tips and how-to’s, go to Google Webmaster Central, or come to one of our DIY SEO workshops!

2010 SCP highlights

Thanks for making 2010 a banner year for SCP!  In addition to the dozen+ workshops we gave on DIY SEO, Blogging for Beginners and Social Media, as well as the HUGE article on us in the Daily Press, we managed to squeeze out a few projects:

New websites

Food for Thought Restaurant, Fine Signs, Uncle Richie’s Roast Seasoning, CXAnalytics, Charlie’s Antiques, Beez Scooters, StayFold, Cason Custom Homes, Signature Stone

*New videos/animations

StayFold, Cason Custom Homes, Success in the Saddle exercise series, Sumitomo Corporation of America, Swank Motion Pictures Inc., VA Fashion Week, Virginia Enterprises Inc., Extinction Rising novel

*Note–we are presently upgrading all our videos into new, state-of-the-art players–we’ll have links to them for you in our next newsletter.

Upcoming Workshops

Admission – $45/person by check, cash or Paypal.  Seating limited.  Please email or call 757.250.3197 no later than the day before each workshop to reserve your seat.

Do-it-yourself SEO (search engine optimization)

January 13, 4 – 6 p.m.

January 27, 3 – 5 p.m.

Business blogging and social media for beginners

Laptop required for this workshop.

January 20, 3 – 5 p.m.

February 3, 3 – 5 p.m.

What’s new:
Now, whenever you “Google” a type of business, say, “web design in Williamsburg VA”, the Local Business Results appear at the top, center, and can completely take up the page.

They’ve moved their Google Places Map to the right and, as you scroll the page, the map floats to the top and hides their income-producing Adwords ads (we’ll see how long that lasts!).

Reviews now appear with each listing, or to the right if it.  You can read them with a single click, or click right to the Place page for that business.

Phone numbers are now displayed prominently to the right of each listing, and listings can display Google tags and a lot of other info.

The Impact:
Reviews and citations are now way more visible.  Not only does Google show the number of reviews, it also shows third-party sites like Yelp, Insider Pages, etc. and how many reviews are on those sites.

Traditional, or “Classical”, SEO is a big factor: Google specifically says that traditional SEO factors will heavily affect who shows up for local searches, and Google will apply the local data to create the results.  We found a great article that offers a ton of good info and more advice on this, @ How to Rank Higher in Google Place Search.

If you have satellite offices in different areas, be sure to add these locations to you Google Places account, AND optimize all your listings, wherever they are.  Think of them as mini websites (aka “microsites”) for your business or organization, driving traffic to your main site and to your business!

“Hi, I hope all is well. I am currently working on a story about why people multitask and what experts say about multitasking. Do you have any friends who say will have Facebook up, check e-mails, talk on the phone and watch TV all at once? Do you know anyone who you consider a heavy “multitasker,” if so, please let me know asap. E-mail laprayam@yahoo.com with the contact info (phone number, e-mail address, etc.)…. Thanks!”

How about it–any “uber” mutlitaskers out there?

Google LOVES blogs, because their content is always changing. A blog can really push your website higher in the rankings, but only if it’s part of your website, like ours is, as opposed to using a third party like WordPress.com to host it.

We prefer the WordPress blog publishing platform. It’s content management system (CMS) easy to use and offers tons of free customizable templates (themes), many of which come search engine optimized and equipped with RSS feeds and “Subscribe” features (conversion forms) that allow subscribers to receive automatic updates whenever you write new blog posts.

When you start a blog, don’t blog about your business. Write what would interest others, within the context of your industry. For instance, if you sell carpet, don’t blog about your carpets–blog about interior decorating and carpet care tips. If you do create a blog, make regular posts to keep the search engines coming back.  And don’t forget to use relevant keywords liberally!

Like blogs, if you create profiles on the popular social media sites for your business, you need to keep the content fresh to keep followers engaged. If you use a content “auto-poster” for your blog, such as ping.fm, whenever you write a blog post, a link to it will automatically post to your social media pages.

This is your chance to become an author, and promote your business or organization. If your article is informative, other websites may re-publish it, providing more inbound links to your website!

Add your blog to popular blog directories, following the same procedures we outlined in DIY Website Optimization, Step 5 – Inbound Links and Directories for adding your website to online directories.

Okay, fellow bloggers out there, what advice and tips have you??

The most important of all the hundreds of online directories is Netscape’s Open Directory Project., DMOZ. Many search engines use this directory to find new, quality websites for their searchers. Before you submit your website to it, however, make sure you’ve done everything you can to make it a quality site with good, helpful information.

It’s likely that your business is already listed in any number of online directories, and the directories are just waiting for you to claim your listing. To find out, do a search on your company name and click on whatever comes up that has your name in it. Then do a search for your URL (yourcompany.com). Note–many of these directories will try to sell you a premium or “enhanced” listing first. Bypass these and look for the “free listing” or “add your company for free”, or similar wording.

After you’ve searched for your company name and URL, and claimed your free listings, perform searches for “directories”, “on-line directories” and “business directories”, go to each and search for your business name, claim it if it is already there or add it, if it is not there.

If your company donates money or items to a charity, give them your website address to include in the “Sponsorship” page of their website. Consider creating a page on your website dedicated to other companies you do business with, and offer to list their company logo and website address in return for them listing your business and website address on their website. This is called reciprocal linking.

Does your website need a 301 redirect? Search engines often regard “www.yoursite.com” and “oursite.com” as two different websites unless you take specific measures to signal to them that they are the same site. The best way to handle this is to setup a permanent redirect (or a “301″ redirect) from one of these sites to the other.

To learn about either of these for your website, go to websitegrader.com, a free website analysis tool, enter your website address, and click “Generate Report”.  The report will show you when your domain age is expiring, and whether you have a 301 redirect in place.  You can either contact your domain name registrant to renew your domain name for more years, or have your webmaster do it.  If you find that you need a 301 redirect, you can either contact your website host, or ask your webmaster to do it for you.

Or you can contact us, and we can assist you.

Do you have other web tools you like to use or would like to suggest?