The Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition is where top dealers go to stay ahead of the curve and gain the latest marketing strategies to influence the modern consumer: the digital one.

CF Search Marketing will be at the Digital Dealer May 7-9^th, in Orlando, Florida - Booth 540.  Call us today at 1.800.217.0762 to set a time to meet. For more on this exciting conference go to the official Digital Dealer website!

Google gets confused just like the rest of us….

Local Search is a strange place, but one thing seems to be clear: One of the single most important factors in Local SEO is something you might hear cryptically called “NAP Match” or “NAP consistency.” 

NAP stands for “Name, Address, Phone.” Making sure that the NAP is consistent between various local directories, and especially that it is consistent between your website and Google/Bing/Yahoo/Yelp (otherwise known as the “Gang of 4″) is one of the basic best practices of Local SEO.

(You can find this and other information contained in David Mihm’s incredibly useful local search ranking factors survey.)

Search for your most important keyword phrases. Carefully study the top 10 results. Which are the best written titles? Which are the most captivating?

Which grabs the reader and compels him or her want to click on the link? Is it the #1 ranked result?

If it’s not your listing, and especially if you’re having problems with click throughs with this keyword phrase, how can you change your title to make it more intriguing and designed to pull in traffic? We’re talking about click throughs here. You can often beat the top ranked sites if you have a more appealing and captivating Title tag

Make a list of title changes, being sure to include your keyword phrase in the title. Set it aside and don’t look at it for two days. Then, bring it out again and study the list again.

Begun culling down the list. Get others’ opinions.

Try a new title, and see if your click through rate will improve.

Little changes can make a huge difference so keep a log when you make these types of changes so you can measure the impact.

A lot of Content and Links displayed on a webpage may not actually be visible to the Search Engines, eg., Flash based content, content generated through javascript,  content displayed as images etc.

Try this tool which Simulates a Search Engine by displaying the contents of a webpage exactly how a Search Engine would see it.

http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php

Although some search engines can parse Java script right now, there are none that can really read it and make sense of it. By reducing the use of Java script on your page it will allow your content to move higher on the page where the search engine robots can crawl it easier.

Here is a free tool allows you to determine the percentage of similarity between any two pages online.

http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

The one place where some duplication is permitted, is when you work with genuine news stories. Real world news is 100% white hat and search engines understand that some content like news – is meant to be syndicated across the Web.

The 14th Digital Dealer is coming up May 7 – 9…and CF Search Marketing will be there – we hope you will join us! We will be located in Booth 540.  Call us today at 1.800.217.0762 to set a time to meet.

Over the years there has been a lot of confusion about SEO and how search engines work. One of the things that comes up all the time is the subject of search  engine spiders or as they are sometimes called search engine robots.

When a search engine robot visits your Web page, it is important to understand a few things if you are hoping to get your Web page indexed. Search Engine Robots are simply software programs that come out to your Web page, capture certain data and then return that data to the search engine from where it came.

Do Search Engines “see” your entire Web site as a whole collection of pages or do you think they only see the whole world as a collection of individual pages?

Actually, the truth is neither “if you are thinking” based on how a search engine robot sees the world.

Think about this now.

A search engine robot does not see a  world of pages or a world of Web sites.

A search engine sees its world made up only of URLs or (Uniform Resource Locators.)

This is one reason why search engine spiders cannot some times find their way out of what is called a Spider Trap. For example in some dynamic sites, you will  often have variable strings at the end of a URL that are session identifiers and  while the URL may be unique, the search engine does not realize it may be on  exactly the same page over and over in a loop and may not be able to get out.

Do search engine spiders help determine what your rankings are? This is another wrong idea that some people have. The search engine spider has one sole job and  that is just to crawl content capture certain information and links and take it  back to the main search engine.

How smart are search engine spiders?

The answer is they just are not very smart at all. They cannot think.

In fact most search engine spiders are updated very rarely with some powerful new feature. The reason why is because as most technology advances, the demands on a SE robot remain the same basically. They still only do exactly the same job they have always done. There are some spiders that are a little better than others at being more thorough and crawling more complexly.

But all things considered, why keep rebuilding something if what you have now works great?

Tips you should be aware of with spiders, crawlers and SEO and search engine  optimization:

1. A spider is designed to crawl the Web. The smartest way to keep spiders  consistently coming back to visit, is to focus on content freshness. Add new  articles, pages, FAQs, good useful information to your Web site on a consistent  basis – instead of doing major updates. Instead of adding 20 new articles all at  once, try adding only 1 article a day (everyday) and watch what happens.
2. You do not need to include a robots revisit tag to your HTML. It does not work and the robot will come back more consistently with you adding fresh content, you may see it stay longer and actually dig deeper into your Web site.
3. Do you want to know one reason why Blogs are so busy and actively crawled by  the spiders? It’s because Blogs are often very fresh content sometimes being  updated several times per day.
4. Remember that spiders and crawlers do NOT need to be submitted to for them to  find you. There are actually good reasons not to use submission software but you  are wiser to link to a new site from a Blog or another site that you know is already being indexed. Remember that you will still need to submit to directories though because there, you are dealing with human editors and not robots.
5. Make sure your Web site has a nice Site Map and then have at least one link to your site map on every page. Matt Cutts has said for example that this is one of  the things that people most often forget. Remember, you have no idea whether a  search engine spider will come in on your home page, or on your about us page or  maybe even a policy page. But regardless of which way it comes in, it will be able to crawl ALL of your pages if you’ve created a good site map

Do you think that it is best to get into Google immediately as quickly as you can?

Think about it for a minute. With Google, off page factors are VERY important.

Suppose Google’s search engine robot visits you right away. But unfortunately, none of the other search engines have visited your page so even if you have some  good links, nobody really knows it. Perhaps you need to think of a reverse  approach and first submit to a few free or paid directories. Then you could begin getting your page indexed by some of the other spiders first, then finally when  Google comes in it sees some nice off page factors and link reputation for which  it will reward you for.

As Google prepares to unveil yet another major Penguin update, we are left reflecting on previous releases and anticipating the potential impact of the upcoming one.

The last official Penguin update was October 2012. Matt Cutts – Google’s head of search spam – did not give a specific date for the upcoming one, but it will certainly be within this year (and likely earlier than later). Describing the release as “very significant,” Cutts has prompted a flurry of digital speculation.

Penguin is well-known as a link quality filter that sits on top of the core algorithm and runs sporadically. Search Engine Watch describes the expected update as “a ‘next generation’ coming that will have a major impact on SERPs,” bringing many changes to the way the search filter currently works.

With so much uncertainty surrounding the imminent release, the Internet is abuzz with possible Penguin criteria. The concept of “link networks” is at the top of the list. “Link network” spam refers to groups of connected bad links – exactly what you want to avoid. As Google gathers more data on this spam, they will be able to analyze where it’s all originating and extract those networks. This also takes into account link velocity and trust – if your site is acquiring too many links too quickly, their quality will be questioned.

A heightened (official) importance on social signals is another possibility. Search Engine Watch reports that “many SEO pros believe that social signals will play a more significant role in the next iteration of Penguin.” Already a beneficial factor in improving SEO, social networks can greatly increase visibility and credibility. Sharing quality content across the web is exactly what Penguin promotes.

Anchor text is also mentioned as a way to determine whether a link is legitimate or not. Google has already been tightening the allowed percentage. If it does play a part in the next update, it’s likely that this criterion will evolve.

Link building is an important part of digital marketing, and Google’s Penguin update strives to aid in your quest for trustworthy links. As social media becomes more intertwined with SEO efforts, it’s important to ensure that all of your assets are optimized.

While theories continue to swirl in the digital sphere, one truth holds constant: quality matters. If you are taking a genuine, strategic approach to link building, you won’t have anything to worry about. If you are unsure about the quality of your links, contact us for an audit.

Links within web copy tend to have more value than links in navigation. If a related site links to you and also includes one of your target keywords in their Title Tag, then the link on that will have more benefit than if the title of the page is unrelated.

Initially, Google used to devalue links in some Social Media sites like keyword rich links coming to your site from Facebook, but these days they seem to be carrying more value than they used to. Also, remember that a link within a caption underneath an image tends to have a little more value too.

In our link building activities for our clients, we try to stay focused on getting links from informative pages or Blogs that is related to the content that is being linked to. Other great places to get links from are authoritative Web sites. Here, however, you need to write very useful content of an engaging, useful nature in order to get them to link back to you.

CF Search Marketing is proud to announce that we are now a new Chrysler Digital Preferred Vendor for SEM & SEO.

Visit our site – http://chrysler.cfsearchmarketing.com/signup.html -  and you can take advantage of this tremendous opportunity, simply fill out our form and CF Search Marketing will contact you to setup and launch your campaign.