1.  SEO Friendly HTML

The html of your website is very important for search engines.  Editing HTML is the most ‘easy’ of the three components in my opinion, takes  the least amount of time, and is the only seo component that actually has some closure at some point in time.  The key focus on the HTML is to make sure it is SEO-friendly; but what does that mean?  More often than not it means fixing HTML items that are actually hurting your SEO strategy rather than helping.  The most common issues I see are too much javascript, a flash-only site, weak title tags and meta descriptions, use of graphical text in headers rather than HTML text, poor setup of navigation elements, empty alt-tags, spamming or trying to trick the search engines, very slow load time (large graphics are usually the culprit), and more.  The good thing with ‘fixing’ your HTML for SEO purposes is that once its done you don’t have to worry about it too much except for a few extra minutes when you add new pages to your website.  This step usually requires an SEO expert who has HTML knowledge and maybe a specified HTML programmer or web developer if necessary.

2.  Content for Search Engines AND Visitors

After you have patched up your HTML the next step is to ensure you have enough useful information/content/copy on your website.  You should note the emphasis on ‘enough’ and ‘useful’.  If you only have a three page website with a few paragraphs yet you offer hundreds of different products or services how would you expect the search engines to really understand what your website is about?  Once you have identified the core content your targe audience is seeking make sure it is put up on your website.  After that stage the door opens up uto endless possibilities of methods you can produce relevant and useful information for your current and future clients.  Some simple ideas are adding a blog to your website, adding a press release or news section, setting up a FAQ, having a client testimonials page, have a photo gallery with a description of each photo, post reviews of other products or services that are relevant to the industry you are in, setup a monthly industry newsletter, and more.  Content development should never really end unless you start to get thousands upon thousands of pages which most people do not achieve easily. This stage will involve an SEO expert and some good copywriters or strategists.

3.  Link Building

Link building is probably the most critical and overlooked strategy of SEO.  It is also the most difficult and avoided because of its difficulty to achieve.  You have total control over your HTML and copy on your website; you can update and add those to your hearts content.  However this is not the case with incoming links to your website.  You have no control over who links to you and how they link to you; unless you happen to own some other websites.  There are  many different strategies to gain links to your website and the most successful is link baiting; but also the most difficult to attain.  Link baiting is creating something so noteworthy, sought after, or impressive that other people link to it from their websites or blogs naturally – without you even knowing it.  Other methods of link building include directory submissions, viral  video distribution, commenting on blogs, buying links, link trading, social media bookmarking, etc.  This is the most difficult stage of SEO and  also never seems to end, I have not found a website yet that has ‘too’ many links (unless they are bad ones)~

SEO Components Summary

Remember to focus on HTML, Content, and Link Building and your SEO campaign should be successful.  Ignoring one of these three components can hold you back from your true potential to success.  I recommend tackling them in that order (easiest to hardest) and focusing on seo copywriting and link building on a regular basis after the HTML is squared away.

As mentioned before, we (me and my employer) reviewed three transcription services for three different podcasts which were approximately 20-35 minutes long each. They quality on all three were very good, the price was $20-35 per podcast, which I consider very good as there are other higher end services for around $100/podcast which are not much better than these three. The quality, price, and turnaround time on all three were so comparable that I can not pick a clear winner and plan on trying them all out one more time to see if I can find one that is superior.

Transcribr Podcast Transcription
Cost – $1/minute
Turnaround Time: 4 days
Format: They sent over an HTML document. In the left column it has the time of the podcast, in the right column each paragraph starts with the speakers name which is bolded followed by the text of what that speaker said.  I was not too fond of the HTML format compared to the others, but some people may find this more convenient than a word document.

Connecticut Secretary Podcast Transcriptions
Cost – $35
Turnaround Time: 2 days
Format: They sent over a word document with the speaker names in a left column and the text in the right column. Very easy to read and organized well in my opinion.

Tech Synergy Podcast Transcribing Service
Cost – $0.80/minute
Turnaround Time: 1 day
Format: I received a word document from them. In the left column is the speaker’s name and in the right column is the text. Every once in a while they have a break that shows 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, etc.

The footer on my employer’s company website contained a copyright statement and sometimes some other links. Some websites have a two line footer where one line has links and the other has only to the copyright. Adding a company description to your footer is an easy way to implement an seo strategy that is simple and doesn’t take a lot of time. Here is the example:

Previous footer: © 2007 Twelve Horses

New SEO-Friendly Footer: © Copyright 2007 Twelve Horses – A Web Design, Development & Search Engine Optimization Company in Reno & Utah

It usually works best when you have the text-only portion of the footer fit on one line. Here is why this is useful to SEO:

1. Our website is focused on providing web design, web development, seo or search engine optimization, email marketing, and social marketing services. Although this is a very long list sometimes you have to pick and choose what you can fit in a footer. The above example ensures that every single page of the website contains the keyword phrases of ‘web design, development, and search engine optimization’. This will help the search engines recognize that our website is related to those keywords since they appear on every webpage. This SEO strategy not only assists search engines in recognizing the services we provide but also educates human web visitors as well. If a website visitor can not determine what our website offers they general do one of two actions: leave or look in the footer for an ‘about us’ link. Having this company description in the footer ensures that if they do glance at the footer they will be able to know what the website is about without having to click to another page.

2. The above example also contains ‘Reno and Utah‘ in the description. We have our main office in Reno, Nevada with a secondary office in Salt Lake City, Utah. Having these terms in the footer lets the search engines know what geographic area our website provides web services in. You may be wondering why the footer contains Reno (a city) and Utah (a state). Through some keyword research it was discovered that people in Salt Lake City generally search for ‘utah [keyword]’ rather than ’salt lake city [keyword]’, possibly because Salt Lake City is too long and time-consuming to type and ‘Utah’ only has one major metropolitan area which is Salt Lake City. On the other hand the state of Nevada has several metropolitan areas such as Reno, Las Vegas, etc. which are spread out from each other. From keyword research we discovered citizens of Nevada are more likely to type in the major metropolitan area they are in compared to just ‘Nevada [keyword]’. This also provides website visitors information on the geographic area the company is based in by glancing at the footer.

I hope this information was useful.