A common question we get with clients is why specific content pages might show up in the search engine results pages (SERP), but not the home page. The answer to the question actually first needs to nip the whole idea that having your content pages showing up on the first page of any search engine is bad. There’s no reason to prevent the search engines from indexing your site’s content pages, so you shouldn’t try and stop them; valuable traffic frequently enters websites on content pages in the search engine results.

As much as it would be ideal to have your polished branding be the only entry point into your site, the reality of it is that there’s no way to make your home page specific to all the phrases you want to show up for. That’s what the SEO content pages are for, to increase your chances of being ranked on all those specific key phrases. That’s not to say you can’t target 1-3 specific phrases for your homepage, in fact we encourage it through use of the title, META, h1 tags, bold emphasis, URL optimization, content, etc. But you can’t expect your home page to ever be the most relevant result for the dozens of phrases you’re targeting with your SEO campaign. If you don’t want the specific content pages to show up in the results anymore, they can be removed from the site and eventually the search engines will phase it out of the natural rankings. But you will lose any ranking associated with it, because that’s a page that the search engines value highly enough to rank for a reason.

Pay-per-click is the only way to force the search engines to connect a phrase to your home page. Optimizing your home page for the 1-3 phrases that are most critical to your business is the best way to go about promoting yourself to the search engines for natural ranking.

It is a myth that submitting hundreds of search engines makes any difference in the search engine rankings. If you’re marketing with us, when your site goes live we submit it, as a courtesy, to four major engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and DMOZ. There are other smaller engines that you can submit it to, but these four account for over 90% of the search volume on the internet so they are the only ones we bother with. Aggressively re-submitting your site to any of them also makes no difference; one time is all they need to include your site in their indexes. Multiple re-submissions can actually get your site blacklisted from the engines if done to an extreme.

It’s very important that you have a lot of content on your website, whether your site is for a book store or something more visual like an art gallery. The reason is that the search engines can’t see content that is not written out! And how are they going to index your site for the things you want to show up when you are virtually showing them a set of relatively blank pages?

Our goal with SEO content is to establish your website as an authority, one that the search engines will happily promote, by making your site a great resource to web surfers. By installing lots of pages of uniquely branded relevant content, your business will be taken seriously by Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines.

For some businesses in some industries, all it takes are several pages of finely-tuned SEO content to see first-page results on the SERPs. By targeting specific key phrases with their own pages of content, we make sure that the information on your site not only educates your visitors (and helps persuade them to choose you for their needs), but that it also is indexed properly by the search engines so that more natural (organic) traffic will reach your site in the long-term.

SEO content is a “white hat” technique that only adds value to your site. We don’t recommend (or engage in) keyword stuffing of your content. The search engines are getting very good at figuring out what kind of content is copied and pasted, derived from other pages, etc. So those who have the best writing in their industry are usually rewarded, so long as that content is installed on your website properly, which is an art form in and of itself.

If you have any additional questions about SEO content creation, we are happy to provide you with a free initial marketing consultation. Simply fill out one of the forms on our site.

There are several things that will help your cause with Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines when you are picking out a domain name. There are also a number of things that are critical to consider for your branding. Marrying these two sometimes contradictory marketing facets can be tough. Ultimately, your domain will probably embody more branding or SEO optimization, but the best names do both. Here are four guidelines to help you ensure that when you pick a domain, you choose having taken both sides into consideration.

1. Is the domain name short?

The shorter your domain name, the more likely it is that it is easier to remember, quicker to type in, and faster for the search engines to see your content. Every character counts! Make your domain compact.

2. Is it easy to remember?

This kinda goes hand in hand with the first consideration. Still, there will be cases where your short domain is just tough to remember. Avoid abbreviating words in your domain name; that’s a common way to make short domains harder to remember than they need to be. Also, dashes can make the difference between someone finding you or finding your competition (by using the non-dashed version)! So if your domain contains dashes… well it better have some PRIME keywords in it to justify the damage it will do to people trying to find your site for a second time or off the top of their heads from a radio ad you placed.

3. Does it contain highly relevant keywords?

This is the most important thing from a search engine optimization standpoint. If your domain contains your most important search phrase, it already sets you up as a potential authority on whatever it is you’re in business for.

4. Is it an established domain?

This is often overlooked, but those who spend the time to hunt down an existing relevant domain (or entire site) with existing links and buy it out will be handsomely rewarded. Your new content will get indexed faster because of the trust built up with that domain to the search engines.

Hopefully these tips help you land that dynamite domain name you have been looking for that will not only brand you well, but also help drive some free natural traffic your way through SEO. If you have any questions, we do offer domain name consultation as a service to our clients. We’ll give you a free initial consultation if you fill out one of our forms.