Yahoo is very quickly becoming irrelevent

Posted by on April 4, 2012 No comments

It wasn’t that many years ago that Yahoo was the dominant search engine. In a short span it has gone from the top to the very bottom.  Today, Yahoo acknowledged that they will be laying off an additional 2,000 workers. This news confirms for most of us that Yahoo is stepping out of the “search” game. They have already handed off their search business to Microsoft and have almost no direction.

Yahoo is nearly irrelevant as far as Veterinarians should be concerned. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise considering that Bing has been delivering search results and advertising for Yahoo since 2009. This should serve primarily as a reminder for Veterinarians that just because today they rank well – doesnt mean they can be complacent and rest on their laurels. Marketing is a continued effort and as things change online (and they do!) you need to stay ahead of those changes.

Google is sending out warnings…

Posted by on April 2, 2012 No comments

Google is warning Webmasters about “artificial” and “unnatural” links. What this means is Google is cracking down on poor methods to develop back links to your website. Often times companies that promise to get you hundreds and thousands of backlinks, do this through inexpensive and often black hat companies.

Why is this an issue? If You have in the past used a less than reputable SEO company, they may have used this strategy on your behalf. If you have received this warning and even if you havnt, make sure you are not actively engaging in this kind of practice. You should be getting back links by providing good content and a resource to your clients and others on the internet. Its slow growing, but in the end, you will outperform your competition.

Copy of the warning google is sending out:

“Dear site owner or webmaster of ….

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team”

Social Strategies you can do right now that are very easy

Posted by on March 21, 2012 No comments

There was a great article posted yesterday on Search Engine Land that talked about some ahead of the curve strategies that people can implement to help with their Search Engine Optimization. I’ll break them down simply and specifically for a Veterinary practice.

1. Google+ is here, and its staying around for a while. Its a lighter version of Facebook and Twitter, but it still has serious SEO Value. This strategy should be as easy as making posts to Google Plus. Dont over think it, just utilize it in a similar manner that you would Facebook.

2. Add +1 Buttons. They are popping up everywhere and to ignore their potential would be a mistake. The more +1′s you get, the better its going to impact your performance on search engines. Its easy and once the link is put up, your done.

3. Get on Pinterest. This is the first time I have mentioned it on my blog, but its vastly becoming a great resource for SEO. Pinterest actually sends almost as much referral traffic as Twitter and now Google actually crawls pins and boards.

4. Post articles to social media. When you add content to your website, you need to post it on social media. It will help getting it indexed quicker.