The SEO Girl

I took the Inbound Marketing University exam last night, and here’s to hoping I passed! The course was a series of webinars on internet marketing, primarily SEO and social media, presented by SEO greats like Rand Fishkin and Chris Brogan (my heart’s aflutter for those two!).

I find out the results next Wednesday, July 8th. I feel I knew most of the questions, but I’m still nervous!

They’re having another IMU course in August , just go to the Inbound Marketing University site and fill out the form for more info. It was definitely worth my time – even if you’re an online marketing veteran, a little refresher never hurts!

BodyC.com is owned by Body Central, a women’s clothing company specializing in affordable trendy clothes, what I like to call “Friday and Saturday night wear”. I receive their catalog on my doorstep ever few months and I’ve actually ordered a few dresses from them in the past. Their web site has come a long way, and although design-wise it can benefit from some updating, it is pretty easy to navigate. It definitely can use some SEO love, so here comes The SEO Girl to the rescue!

SEO Copy – You’ll notice that the homepage and category pages lack text, and are predominantly images. Search engines can sadly not read images (only their alt tags), so it is important to balance out an image heavy site with SEO copy. Body Central can use a paragraph of SEO copy on their homepage describing their trendy women’s clothing, excellent customer service, etc. Same goes for the category pages – I’d like to see one to two paragraphs on each category page talking about the specific type of clothes on that category page, why they’re so great for every body type, what fashion magazines they’ve been shown in, etc.

SEO Friendly URL’s - Click around the different categories on the site, and take a look at the url’s. They’re quite lengthy and contain a bunch of random letters and numbers. SEO friendly url’s are typically shorter and include a keyword phrase in the url, such as http://bodyc.com/women’s-tops/halter-tops.html . Search engines do often give a site prominence for keywords when those keywords are in the url. The hyphen (”-”) between each word tells search engines that there is a space.

Category Names - Take a look at the top navigation categories: “New Arrivals”, “Tops”, “Bottoms”, “Dresses”, “Shoes”, “Accessories”, “Sale”. These are essentially telling search engines your site should be ranked for “tops” or “bottoms”, which are of course very general keywords that don’t at all describe your product line. Better category names would be “Women’s Tops”, “Women’s Bottoms”, “Women’s Dresses”, and etc. These more specific category names more accurately describe what Body Central is about, and the site is much more likely to rank well for “women’s tops” and “women’s bottoms”.

Facebook - There is a Body Central Facebook Business Page, but it’s barely updated. The site could be adding say, 3 products from their “Sale” section each week as photos to the business page to get people coming to their site and buying the sale items. Facebook Fan-only promotions and coupon codes would also be great for their social media presence and site. There should also be a link on their homepage to their Facebook Business Page. Take a look at the Wet Seal Facebook page – they do a great job of adding product photos and creating a community of over 7,000 members.

Just a few quick tips for the site, but they really can go a long way to making BodyC.com more SEO friendly and better able to take on their competition. The women’s clothing industry is such a competitive industry and I’d really like to see Body Central thrive.

Want The SEO Girl to review your site? Email theseogirl@gmail.com!

I have worked with a few law firms for SEO, and let me tell you, it can be one difficult niche. I typically set up and post to a blog for my clients and syndicate press releases on their behalf, but in all cases with the law firms, these strategies were prohibited by the client. Same goes for social media – the clients had to be very careful about the information released, and unfortunately, we could not employ all the techniques I would have liked. Here’s some ways to get around the usual “red tape” law firms experience:

• Keep The Keywords Local – Chances are the law firm serves a local area. Rather than targeting “Pennsylvania Malpractice Lawyers” as a keyword, keep it to a specific location, such as “Philadelphia Malpractice Lawyers”. Choose keywords that expressly relate to the areas the law firm serves. If you’re using keyword research tools and finding local keyword variations are not widely searched, research the more general term, such as “Malpractice Lawyers”, and simply add all the name of the town/city to the front of it.

• Local Link Building - I actually found link building to be fairly simply (well, “simple” relative to link building is a bit of an understatement) for law firms. Look for local sites in their area, including:
  • Chamber of Commerce (May require a fee to be listed, but adds credibility to the law firm’s page, and worth it)
  • Community directories
  • Local libraries, non-profit organizations
  • Restaurants, shops, etc

• Be Interactive - You’ll need to approach the “social” element a bit differently. Many law firms do pro-bono work, are involved in community events, have speaking engagements, and volunteer their time to local schools and organizations. Ask the law firm to keep a running list of these events and photos of each. After each event, contact their local newspapers about the event and include the photo and a link to the law firm’s site. Most newspapers now have online counterparts, so you’re nearly guaranteed a link and traffic from the newspaper’s website. Sure, there’s more of a human element, but it’ll take just as much time as updating a Twitter and Facebook page would.

• Meta Tags – Meta tags are of course not as important as they used to be. However, with a law firm, be sure every page of the site has as unique a meta title, or page title, as possible, in a format such as Philadelphia Medical Malpractive Lawyers: Philadelphia Law Firm . A searcher may be looking for a similar phrase and find the law firm’s listing on a page with 9 other search engine results, so make sure your’s targets exactly what they’re looking for, and has the law firm’s name in case the searcher recognizes the name. Same goes for meta descriptions – include 2-3 sentences about the specific service on that page of the site.

• Stay Professional - I typically stress that it’s important to have as creative and engaging SEO copy on your site as possible. With SEO for law firms, simply keep it professional. State the facts of important cases they won, the services they offer, and how those services can benefit the reader. Of course, make sure the copy is SEO friendly with local keywords, but don’t try to “wow” the reader with intersting content. Convey the message of the law firm, and get to the point.

If you’re not in the same location as the law firm and don’t have a firm grasp on the local area, ask the client to provide you with a list of businesses they work with, restaurants they frequent, and social activities they’re a part of. These pre-existing relationships can dramatically help with link building and overall get the word out about the law firm.

I like input. Anyone have tips on SEO for lawyers?

So, alas, I was without Internet connection for two days, and a very wonderful friend uncovered the mystery issue and voila! I now have Internet once again. I honestly don’t think I could survive if someone took away my laptop, Internet, cell phone, ipod, etc for more than a week. I know that’s sad, but it’s true for me. Same goes for a certain Victoria Secret’s lipgloss.

I’m very excited – The Geek Girls Network, one of my very favorite technology blogs, added The SEO Girl blog to their “Geeky Favs” section today! Thank you so much to all on the site, I appreciate it. Readers – if you haven’t been to Geek Girls, you must check them out. These ladies are absolute tech gurus and extremely intelligent, bright, and always interesting.

More posts to come now that my Internet is back up and running! No more staring at blank walls, watching water drip…

Q: Hi SEO Girl, I’ve been starting to work on my site’s SEO, and was wondering what I should focus on more, content or getting more links? – Andy, NC

A: Hey Andy, great question! My answer isn’t exactly as black and white as you’d like, I’m afraid. Both are, in my opinion and SEO experience, very important. The mantra of SEO in the past was that “Content is King” – I don’t believe this as true anymore. Yes, your site should have homepage and section page SEO copy, as well as an “Articles” or “Resources” section where you can craft interesting content that would propel a site owner to actually want to link to your site.

A synthesis of great content  that your readers can actually use, such as “how to” articles or advice is very important, but seeking out quality links is just as important. When I say “quality” links, I typically mean a link on an established site that receives a solid amount of traffic each month. You can seek out newer sites, too – just stay away from anything spammy looking. Look for non-competing sites and blogs in your industry and give them a call – show them you’re an actual person, and genuinely take an interest in their site. Taking the 5 minutes for a phone call will likely impress them beyond belief. Embracing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and interacting with other users can help attain more links to your site, as well.

Hope that helps! Ask The SEO Girl your SEO question by emailing theseogirl@gmail.com

I’m all about change and constantly looking to the future, and I firmly believe in the quote “Change is the only constant”. You’ll start to see a few new recurring features at The SEO Girl blog:

• Ask The SEO Girl – I often get emails from readers with SEO and social media questions. I’m still always available at theseogirl@gmail.com to answer questions, but will now be sharing some questions and answers right on the blog. Email your SEO or social media question to theseogirl@gmail.com with “Ask The SEO Girl” in the subject line!

• The SEO Girl To The Rescue – I’m always wondering around online, and as a happy SEO geek, often spot ways to improve a site’s SEO. I’ll be randomly choosing a web site to review and making a few SEO and social media suggestions for the site. Sure, I may annoy a webmaster or two, but constructive criticism should always be welcome. Want your site reviewed? Email theseogirl@gmail.com with “The SEO Girl To The Rescue” in the subject line.

• SEO For Your Industry – I believe there is no “one box” style to SEO, and although the core SEO strategies are relatively constant, there are different SEO and social media techniques for every industry. I’ll be chatting about SEO/SMO tactics for different industries in this feature.

Have any features you’d like to see? Leave a comment and let me know!

I love blog comments – they show the author of the blog that people are actually reading and want to take the few minutes to actually respond to what the author had the same. We all have such busy lives, so taking those few minutes really means a lot. But alas, there are always those persistent blog comment spammers. Why oh why must you spam my comments?

I received my very first blog comment a few days ago, and was so excited when I saw it so delightfully appear in my blog’s dashboard…only to realize it was complete spam and submitted just for a link back to their site. I of course promptly hit the “Unapprove” button.

It mystifies me on on why blog comment spammers exist. Most blogs “nofollow” links inside comments anymore, so they’re typically not receiving any rankings benefit from it. There’s the traffic aspect of it, but if your actual comment says (paraphrased) “gobbleygook”, then chances are no one is going to actually click through to your site.

I do leave comments, with a link to The SEO Girl blog, on various SEO and social media blogs from time to time. But here’s the difference – these are blog posts I’m actually reading, find interesting, and leave a thoughtful, yes thoughtful, comment on! I’m not entirely a purist – I do have “more blog readers!” on my mind when leaving the comment, but I hope that my comment piques their interest enough to make them want to come and visit my blog and see what other rambling tidbits I have to say.

I love comments, I love real people, and I love conversations, so if you’re real and like to actually converse as well, leave me a comment from time to time

I must say I feel for Twitter direct messages (DM’s – you can privately message other Twitter users following you). My Twitter inbox at Twitter.com/The_SEO_Girl has become so filled with automated direct messages that it would be nearly impossible to go through the DM’s and see if any of them are legit. I never read the automated messages – they’re always a clever sales pitch, or in most cases, a ridiculous sounding one. Here is my plea, my cry for help – stop the automatic DM’s!

If you want me to go to your site or read your blog, reply to one of my posts – this shows me that you’re actually spending time on Twitter and am a real person talking to me, not just an automated message. I like real people, and chances are if you genuinly talk to me, I’ll want to find out what you’re about and actually will visit your site or blog.

Please, I beg you, cease the automated Twitter DM. Keep it pure.

I was watching a very interesting online presentation by David Meerman Scott today, and a metric he noted really caught my attention:

“The back button is the third most used web feature.”

How true – I use it so frequently throughout the day, rarely thinking of why I didn’t like the site and wanted to be elsewhere. It can be difficult to view your own web site objectively, so ask a friend or family member with a reputation for brutal honesty to tell you exactly what they don’t like about your site, and what they would prefer instead. Understanding your web site’s weaknesses and working to correct them can keep the back button from being the first used web feature on your site.

Never let your hard-earned SEO efforts go to waste with bad usability on your web site. Whether you’re professionally e-mailing surveys to your past customers and asking them for suggestions (in exchange for say, a coupon code!), or sitting down your best friend with a piece of paper and a glass of wine, it’s vital that you learn where your web site needs to improve.

Be strong, young web site caterpillar.

I know this might sound a bit snarky, but I always have to chuckle a bit when an SEO company outs itself as perhaps not knowing as much about SEO as they say they do. 1Choice4YourStore, a Yahoo! Store developer, blogged about a test they were developing to see how fast they could get indexed by Google, in their post “This is to prove how quickly we can get into google”.

Now, anyone who knows their stuff in SEO, and I would hope anyone selling SEO services would (pipedream, I know), would know that getting indexed by Google really isn’t that difficult anymore. The hard part is getting ranked by Google for competitive terms. When you have a new site, you should submit it and verify it through Google Webmaster Tools, but it’s most likely going to be just a matter of days before it’s indexed and ranked for it’s own url. If it takes longer, you could be facing penalization issues, but that’s another blog post.

The focus in SEO should be on the qualified traffic and revenue your site is receiving from your SEO efforts. We’re in the modern age, and there’s no longer much of a need to worry about your site not getting indexed. Once it’s indexed, worry about it being ranked for the competitive terms your audience is searching for. The Google Keyword Suggestion Tool is a great place to start.

Moral of the Day: Beware “Oh my gosh! Check out this crazy experiment that shows we know little about SEO!”.

And that is my evening rant. Goodnight, my wonderful readers

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