July 20th, 2009
Of all the SEO keyword implementation strategies that I have used throughout this summer working at Netvantage, one of the simplest is the use of the Alt Tag. However, I have noticed that with most websites, this strategy is rarely used. Either developers don’t know how to add them, or they aren’t aware of them and the potential value that they could add to a website. I’m going to explain both.
First, what is an Alt Tag? An Alt Tag is simply a title to any image or graphic on your website. If you scroll your mouse over the image on the left in Internet Explorer, an Alt Tag will appear. With a bit of Search Engine Optimization in mind, you can use this to integrate a keyword or two into that title, increasing keyword saturation. While other implementation strategies require rewriting or adding new content to increase keyword saturation (which is more than likely still necessary), Alt Tags are any easy way to get an extra keyword or two on the page, with minimal hassle. Keep in mind, however, that Alt Tags’ main purpose is to assist the disabled, so screen reading programs can identify what the image is, so make sure that you still have an accurate description of the image in the title, not just keywords.
How do you add an alt tag? This does require a small amount of coding, but have no fear! I’m no computer science major, and I didn’t have any problems entering in an Alt Tag for the first time. All you have to do is go into the code of your webpage that contains an image and locate the text alt=”” (and if it’s not there you can just add it). To add your title and keyword, simply type it in between the quotation marks and save. Voila! You’ve just added an extra keyword to your page!
Sean Dunn | Netvantage Marketing Intern | Summer ‘09
Tags: Alt Tags, Best Kept Secret, Keyword Saturation, seo strategies
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
July 6th, 2009
Recently, I have been doing research on Bing, the new Microsoft search engine. They call it a “decision engine.” It’s aim is to provide more specific results with more specified search options to help you make every day decisions. Bing is replacing Live Search, Microsoft’s previous search engine that failed to penetrate the market.
There is a lot of advertising dollars backing the new search engine, and it seems to be making quite a wave. Speculations say that it may not beat out its number one competitor, Google, but it may come close. It features shopping applications, images, video and even can show you a brief summary of the website if you hover over the link before clicking, called “Quick Preview.” I have been trying it out for the past couple of days, and so far so good! Thanks Microsoft.
I do not think that Bing will completely replace Google, but I believe that it open the door to more options. With this new “decision engine” comes more resources. If you would like to try it out, visit Bing.com
Brittany Hickman | Netvantage Marketing Intern | Summer 09
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June 26th, 2009
A theme around Netvantage the last couple of weeks has been using our client’s resources for the benefit of building links. Kind of going off Adam’s blog post a couple weeks back about existing resources, I thought for my first blog post I would expand on another existing resource that has proven to be beneficial for us in acquiring links, a testimonials page. If your site has a testimonials page, it’s easy to whip up a quick email, personalize it a bit, and send it out to the people or companies who provided the quote, requesting a link on their site.
This is an excellent strategy for a few reasons. First of all, the link we are trying to go after already knows about our client and obviously was happy with the product or service, otherwise they wouldn’t have offered a testimonial. Second, when the recipient receives the email from us, they recognize the name of the company, and in most cases have gotten right back to us within the day. This is great because it can be frustrating sending out email requests and having to wait days, sometimes weeks before a reply email comes to the inbox. Third, and maybe one of the best parts to this strategy, testimonial pages can be an excellent opportunity for a link exchange. With the company name already on the page, all we have to do is link the text to the respected website. A win-win!
By: Brad Gakenheimer | Netvantage Marketing Intern | Summer ‘09
Tags: link exchanges, requesting a link, seo strategies, win-win link building strategy
Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »
June 16th, 2009
Welcome to our brand new intern blog at Netvantage Marketing! Here the interns will be able to post thoughts, questions and innovative new ideas. We hope that this blog not only helps us, at Netvantage, but provides an outlet for interns across the country.
Cheers!
The Intern Bloggers
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