Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Social Search and Sharing affects SEO:

Posted on: December 21st, 2010 by Purple Rock Scissors 1 Comment

Bad news for spammers and link farmers.

It’s our job as marketers to monitor the changing search engine optimization trends so we can apply them for our clients to keep them front and center. One development that is gaining momentum is the importance of social links when it comes to search engine rankings.

Bruce Clay, renowned search engine optimization pundit, recently said at this year’s PubCon conference, “Likes are the new links.” Just what does this mean, and more importantly, how does it affect business’s search engine ranking?

Internet search engines began with good intentions and methodology. The more links you have, indicating that your website’s content was relevant, the better your rankings in organic results. Over time, people have gradually been abusing this algorithm, striving for quantity of links and letting quality suffer. There became many roads and doorways to websites that simply did not deserve the attention of users.

Links bias search results, and the trust score of links are dropping. Link farmers and brokers will gladly sell you links, but doing that can hurt your ranking because they are not trusted, not organic and most likely not relevant.

Well the tides are turning, as netizens catch on to these spammy tactics. Social sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been in cahoots with search engines Bing, Google and Yahoo in order to improve the search experience for web-goers. These social media outlets have fostered the growth and importance of site “likes”, recommendations and referrals. This form of sharing is far more valuable than unknown sources linking to you, and the community (along with search engines) is likely to trust and reward these links over any other.

It’s said that within the next 6 months to a year, the “like” information and tweets will be heavily integrated into search engine algorithms. This will guarantee sites with the most social interaction, a higher position on the search results page. Ultimately, this means that SEO will no longer be about who can buy the most links but rather who can earn them. The way nature intended it to be.

Google Analytics – Measure, Analyze, Grow

Posted on: December 16th, 2010 by Purple Rock Scissors

Ever wonder who is visiting your website, how long they browse, where they linger, how they got there? These questions and others can all be answered by incorporating Google Analytics into your digital strategy.

Learning about your online traffic patterns lends itself to higher conversions, higher search engine rankings, increased ROI as well as an overall better experience for visitors on your site.

Highlighted are a few key items offered with this helpful tool. Learning the whole system requires much dedication and exploration, so we will convince you here in a nutshell of its utility.

Advertising ROI

Google Analytics allows for integration with Google’s PPC search platform AdWords and Microsoft’s AdCenter, complete with an array of other tracking capabilities. Track sales, conversions and visitors, as well as trace transactions back to ad campaigns, as specific as particular banner ads or keywords. This allows us to identify the best sources of revenue and capitalize on those elements.

Mobile tracking

Search and website activity are increasingly stemming from mobile devices, and this trend will only continue to rocket. Google Analytics offers tracking not only to these devices, but also specifically shows traffic patterns from individual devices, like iPhones, Androids, iPads, Blackberrys and more. You will realize the how important mobile websites and mobile application development are to your marketing strategy.

Customized reporting

With all the collected data, our marketing team compiles it into decipherable reports, customized with the information that our clients care about. These reports aid in the investigation, diagnosis and cure of any web issues, all with numbers to support it.

Visualize data

With easy-to-read graphs and the new In-page Analytics, you are able to visualize reports and numbers in the context of a webpage. This means you can view your website within the window of Analytics and get an interactive, illustrated representation of the click statistics and more.

Considering all of these benefits, there is no reason not to utilize this exceptional tool. Here at Purple, Rock, Scissors – we live and breath numbers for our clients. It’s how we are able to keep our clients happy and truly prove the value of our marketing services.

Tebow Time!

Posted on: September 8th, 2010 by Purple Rock Scissors

Purple, Rock, Scissors recently launches the digital campaign for Tim Tebow, one of the hottest new quarterbacks in the NFL. The campaign launch marks a leap for Tebow, arming him a digital megaphone to reach out to his troops of die-hard fans and foundation supporters on social networks including Facebook and Twitter. Upon launch, Tebow’s official Facebook Fan Page is already at 200,000 users and growing!

Stay tuned for more things Tebow, and keep in touch with Tim @TimTebow and become a fan on his Facebook Fan Page.

Relevant Links

Keyword Research 1 Oh 1

Posted on: September 8th, 2010 by EJ

Only using automated tools to generate keyword lists? If so, you are missing a lot.

Don’t trust the tools. The fact is: searchers are human, keyword tools (and search engines) are computer programs.

Good keyword research combines the logic and vocabulary of the human mind, with the semantic structure and order of a computer program.

Unfortunately keyword research tools, including Google Adwords KW tool, only report high volume “broad match” keywords and ignore punctuation, plurals, and grammar. The keywords returned by these tools are high volume and are usually obvious suggestions related to your search topic. But do they directly related to your product? service offering? or place of business? (most likely not)

If you only copy and paste what comes out of any one single keyword research tool your search strategy will be filled with holes.

Humans search as they think, and Geo-targeted, action based, and proximity modifiers are all a part of the common searcher’s vocabulary. Pin-point your audience by optimizing your search campaign for the variations of your core-keyword, which are most directly related to your business, not just the most searched variation of the keyword.

Build comprehensive keyword list(s) by combining your list of broad core-keyword list(s) with modifier tokens such as

Examples:
Proximity modifiers
“near the”
“around the”
“by the”
“near a”

Action Modifiers
“make a”
“build a”
“get a”
“buy a”
“find a”

Location Modifiers
in Orlando
in Florida
in Tampa

How do you find out which modifiers are used more often than others? Stayed tuned to keyword research 1 oh 1 to learn more.

This post is part of a series related to keyword research and advanced keyword research.

Purple People Greeters

Posted on: July 19th, 2010 by Purple Rock Scissors

One-eyed, one-horned, hiring Purple People…yeah

 If we had trumpets, oh how they would be sounding gloriously to welcome our five new team members: EJ Garcia, Kristina Doyle, Erin Butler, Aaron Martin, and Jason Williams. As the workload for Purple, Rock, Scissors has rapidly mushroomed, we realized the need for growth in personnel as well. Not to mention adding some fresh estrogen to the office.

Annexing a whole new digital marketing branch to our studio, EJ, Kristina, and Erin specialize in search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and interactive social media. With this new facet, we, as well as our clients, will accumulate a new, holistic understanding of the digital realm.

On the front-end development squad, we bring on Aaron and Jason, experts of complex website buildup. Their unique skills and experience will certainly prove to be great assets to the firm! Not to mention, this is a great addition to our collection of “Aarons.”

Here at Purple, we are thrilled to expand our work and recruit new foosball players, eh hem, adept cybernauts.

 

Florida Hospital Goes Under the Scissors

Posted on: July 19th, 2010 by Purple Rock Scissors 1 Comment

What is a hospital to do when it needs some love and care itself? A little marketing medicine, if you will. Florida Hospital for Children, with its impressive new additions and renovations, recently approached Purple, Rock, Scissors to expand their online marketing efforts. In order to better publicize the recent unveilings, including the Walt Disney Pavilion at Florida Hospital for Children, as well as to ensure future success, there is a vital need to build a clientele foundation.

One facet of the campaign is the establishment of a social media profile in order to heighten brand equity and awareness. This consists of creating a holistic social strategy, as well as redesigning website funnels, for not only greater recognition, but also functionality. Since there are lots of branches of Florida Hospital to muddle through, the Children’s department must formulate an identity geared toward child comfort and parent convenience. With this department becoming readily available through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, each of the branding and positioning goals can be attained.

The Facebook page will resemble the hospital’s own website graphically: color schemes, pictures, and even font. Bobby Jones says, “It is important that images are kept consistent, and the Disney-themed environment certainly aids this purpose. Uniform imagery and identity amongst all interactive portals builds brand trust.” In addition, Twitter can distribute updates, events, and material from their newsletter to all followers, such as the recently featured “Free Asthma Screenings.” As for YouTube, videos embody endless opportunities, be it special stories on individual patients, physician introductions, or hospital tours that feature the one-of-a-kind lobby. These applied media hold the power to produce leads, on-site conversions, and in the end, more satisfied families.

The key to this power is in Campaign Strategy and Online Reputation Management. Purple, Rock, Scissors is helping profile administrators appropriately post and respond to their social media audience. Efficiency and recency. Responses to all interactions – wall posts, friend requests, and tweets – will make a difference to the mom trying figure out why her son is coating the carpet with puke. With Purple promotion, Florida Hospital for Children will hit the ground running with social media.

For those frantic and curious parents with more questions than they have Band-Aids, search engines prove to be a go-to source for a quick fix or often long term facility selection. Considering this, Purple, Rock, Scissors will also generate website traffic through Google, Yahoo Search, and Bing.com targeted text ads. With a facelift and some internal anatomy adjustments, the optimization of the webpage’s visibility and funnels will significantly increase the amount of leads from the site. The conversion funnel needs to be simple, quick, and informative to direct inquirers to where they need to go. More qualified leads will be born, and boy aren’t they just precious! The end product: improved functionality, convenience, and blood pressure for everyone.

No recovery is needed after our painless procedure. Florida Hospital for Children will soon be reassured that they came to the right team for online marketing help! Now…scalpel, please.

Tebow Work Recognized by OMMA

Posted on: July 19th, 2010 by Purple Rock Scissors


We’re pleased to share that our work for the Tim Tebow Foundation (see the press release about our work) scored the attention of MediaPost’s OMMA Magazine, a publication dedicated to covering the business of online media, marketing and advertising. In May, the magazine published a case study about our innovative digital marketing campaign for the Tim Tebow Foundation, quoting our founder, Bobby Jones, as well as our clients with the Foundation. 

“Only four weeks before the ad aired, the Tebow family hired digital agency Purple, Rock, Scissors. Its job: create a site for the new Tim Tebow foundation and craft an online campaign to channel all the attention from the TV ad into traffic to the foundation site.

Almost overnight, the shop created the Tim Tebow Foundation Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages, and reached out to influential blogs. The goal was to establish the Foundation’s authenticity and accumulate a big fan base. "The idea was to go where the people were; people were already out there talking about the ad," says Bobby Jones, agency CEO.”

Check out the full story HERE.

Google Chrome How-To: Encrypt Your Searches

Posted on: June 27th, 2010 by Rabbit

Google Chrome has quickly become my new favorite browser. It’s simple, fast, and minimalist. The location bar — also known as the "one bar to rule them all" — accepts input intelligently; navigating to URL’s or searching based on your input. By default your search input is passed off to Google standard search (google.com) but Google also offers encrypted search over SSL (encrypted.google.com). The encrypted search is incredibly fast! It operates exactly the same as the standard search but all of your communication with Google is secured and private. I will show you how to encrypt your searches by default through Google Chrome so you can secure your information without having to think about it. 

1) Launch Google Chrome and open the Preferences dialog.

2) From within the Basics tab click the "Manage" button in the "Default Search Engine" section.

3) A dialog will pop up that shows all the search engines that Google Chrome has installed for you. These entries pop up as you type the associated keyword in the location bar. We’ll need to add an entry for Google Encrypted Search so click the "+" at the bottom of the dialog.

4) You’ll need to enter 3 things here:  Name, Keyword, and URL.

  • Name: Google (Encrypted)
  • Keyword: google
  • URL: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%s

NOTE: Make sure you use HTTPS (with an "S")

5) Click OK. Now, you’ve added the search engine but you will only be able to use it if you type the "google" keyword in the location bar first. We want to use it by default so find the entry that says "Google (Encrypted)", click it once, then click the "Make Default" button.

6) That’s it! Let’s test out the result. Close all the dialogs and get back to the main Google Chrome window. Start typing a search query into the location bar. You should see a suggestion pop down that contains the phrase "Google (Encrypted)"

7) When you search you’ll notice the location bar is highlighted to indicate a secure connection and the Google logo has an "SSL" lock. Now when you search all your communication with Google will be secured by default. Enjoy!

 

Content is King

Posted on: June 3rd, 2009 by EJ

Good SEO relies on content.  Fresh, accessible, natural, content.  Without it no matter how much time or money you spend on SEO, your rankings will not improve.  Good content is what drives users to your site, and gets people to link to you.  It’s that simple.

Here are 5 tips for keyword integration in your copy:

1. Titles

The most important place your keywords should appear is in the title meta tag of your page. If you are a PRPL client with an SEO retainer, chances are we did this research for you.  If you are using blogging software like wordpress your post or page title will be automatically transformed into both title tags and either an H1 or H2 heading tag as well. Remember, your headline should wrap your keywords.

2. Opening

I have always found it useful to repeat the targeted keywords in the opening sentence, as long as it can be done in a way that is appealing to a reader and reinforces relevancy. Since many search engines use this initial copy as the description of the content, you may want to make sure you are accurately selling the searcher on clicking through as well.  If you are using a meta description this is what the search engine will display in lieu of that copy.

3. Subheadings

Another important place that keywords can appear is in subheading that aid the reader in navigating down the page. A subheading that matches up with the targeted keyword phrase should work as an introduction to the next topical section of the page. Subheading are typically created using the H3 tag.  The term ‘subheadings’ in this subheading, for example, is in an H3 tag.

4. Related Words and Synonyms

Good copy should naturally result in words that are related to, as well as synonyms for, the keyword phrases you are optimizng for. Rather than mindlessly repeating the same words ad nauseam, also known as keyword stuffing, assume that search algorithms are advanced enough to look for proper contextually-related words that support your targeted keywords.

5. Specificity

One of the hallmarks of great copy is specific, descriptive words in lieu of bland general terminology. Specificity aids the reader by clearly demonstrating relevancy, allows for more dynamic copy, and provides opportunities to increase the general on-page keyword frequency. Make sure to employ your specific keywords when feasible within the context of the copy, rather than relying on generic wording.