The new design and template is called Excellence from Blogoh Blog. Our previous theme, named Silver Light, was also by the same author. We were so satisfied with their work we decided to repeat and reuse.

We hope you enjoy the new look for Birmingham’s Premier Search Engine service.

Area firms help sites on the Web get noticed Sites tweaked so search engines can find them

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

WILLIAM THORNTON

News staff writer

Twelve years ago, Alli Denning was the marketing director for a Connecticut commercial real estate firm offering to lease apartments to college students.

“We had all these folks coming to Yale from all over the world, and we thought, wouldn’t it be cool to use our Web site,” she remembered.

A lot of companies had that idea then, but it was a different World Wide Web in those days. Google didn’t yet exist. Search engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista and Infoseek were where surfers went to find information.

“I started looking into it, got fascinated, took some courses, and I was off,” Denning said. “And still if you go online and put in New Haven apartments, that site comes up.”

Denning now lives in Mountain Brook and offers her service — search engine optimization — from her home, as well as web design. Many Birmingham-area firms also offer optimization as part of Internet marketing services, some of them one-person companies.

Having a Web site is now considered an essential marketing tool for virtually any business. But getting your site noticed is a challenge, with the Internet now used for everything from family picture sites to blogs to porn.

Search engines are the main way Internet users find sites without knowing specific addresses. The engines themselves run on algorithmic computer programs called spiders, or web crawlers. The programs plow through millions of pages on the Internet, pulling data, following links and gathering information that they then send back to the search engine.

“That information sits in a holding pen, until the search engine decides if it’s meaningful information or spam,” Denning said. Google, Denning said, dominates about 70 percent on the search market, largely because it prides itself on sifting through the spam.

The trick then is to convince a search engine — most of the time, Google — that a site has good data.

Chris Estes, a 26-year-old Pleasant Grove native, has run Birmingham SEO Service for the past year, working part-time with clients in the restaurant management and travel industries. Like Denning, he learned the process while working for another company in information technology development. When he moved back to Birmingham, he started his own company.

“So much of a company’s brand and awareness are paid advertising,” Estes said. “What people don’t realize is that search engine optimization is a way to cut your costs while at the same time promoting your brand.”

David Clark, the sales and marketing vice president for Birmingham-based Zeekee Interactive, said big brand names, like Nike, don’t have to worry about optimization. A consumer is going to know their name. The need is with small or medium-sized businesses trying to make a name for themselves.

“A lot of companies put a lot of time and money into their corporate Web site, and then they think that’s it,” Denning said “The really important part is whether or not people can find you online, and then whether or not you can convert them into being a customer.”

There are several ways to do this, through coding and Web site design. Clark said some company Web sites need streamlining in order to be more effective.

“But it’s a balance,” Clark said. “The most search engine friendly sites look the worst because it’s nothing but text. The more text you have on your site pertaining to a search term, the more it helps your search engine rankings.”

Making sure the site is spider friendly and using targeted keywords in the site’s content makes it easier for search engines to accurately index a site. If a site draws visitors or links from other sites, a search engine considers that site to have vital information.

“It’s about how the information is delivered to the eye, the content, the words,” Estes said.

Email: wthornton@bhamnews.com

May all of your dreams come true. We wish you all the success and best wishes for 2009.

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For some great insight and how to using press releases for link building and product awareness you should read Why Does Your Company Need SEO Press Releases?

While search engine optimized press releases haven’t been around as long as some older SEO techniques, they are still incredibly beneficial to an SEO campaign. Most of my clients are reluctant to use their press releases and often wonder why they even need them.

What I tell these clients is that search engine optimized press releases are one of the quickest and easiest ways to start generating more backlinks, higher keyword rankings, visibility and traffic for your website.

And here’s why:

Backlinks:

A properly optimized SEO press release will include your top keywords as well as links to your website. Once the SEO press release is distributed, it can get picked up by a wide range of news search engines, related web sites and channels including major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! Each time your press release gets picked up, it is reproduced on that site along with all of your keywords and links. This generates a good amount of quality backlinks to your site that will increase the page rank and link popularity of your website (especially when the backlinks are from news sites with high page ranks of their own).

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More Visibility:

When your press release is distributed, it will be linked very quickly (news stories are more time sensitive), giving you early visibility on news sites, news searches and standard search engines. Many news web sites also archive stories which can help to deliver long term link value, rankings and visibility.

Increased Traffic to Your Website:

The more information you show that you know, the more trustworthy you become; well written content will always add credibility to your website. When your press releases start appearing in Google news and Yahoo! news for your keywords, potential customers searching for your product or business will see that you are a credible source of information in your industry and that you can be trusted. Prospects with Google alerts for your keywords will automatically receive your press release in their inbox, which will generate additional interest and relevant traffic to your site as well.

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Wordcamp sounds like something for a spelling bee practice. But in fact it is conference for open source giant Wordpress being held right here in Birmingham, Alabama. Wordcamp is held in cities world-wide. This is the first wordcamp in Alabama and the Southeast.

So this Weekend come and join us and other WordCampers at the Martha Moore Sykes Studio @ the Virginia Samford Theater (& Caldwell Park – weather permitting)