We don’t spend a penny on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising for Jtree.net.
Thanks to sound Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices, we outrank our competitors in the non-paid (organic/natural) search engine results for every keyphrase in the search engines that matter.
If we didn’t rank well organically, we would have to spend approximately $170/day on PPC advertising to make up the difference (see chart).
Our stellar organic search engine rankings have allowed us to save money, boost our ROI, increase our online reputation and eliminate reliance on expensive PPC advertising campaigns.
The $170/day we save equates to over $60,000/year in online advertising savings! Despite the immediate short-term benefits of PPC advertising, SEO should always be in motion in regard to strategic long-term objectives.
In order to celebrate this very special occasion they are throwing a party – and you are cordially invited!
Come show your support for the talented ladies involved in Boise’s diverse ecosystem of tech!
The Girls in Tech Boise jamboree just so happens to be sponsored by our client, Solution Pro. This special event takes place on Thursday, June 24th at the Owyhee Plaza Hotel Patio. See you there!
We warned you back in 2009 (Google doesn’t usually make a lot of noise for nothing) and now it’s official – Site Speed is now one of over 200 signals used to determine your website’s ranking in the GOOG.
Since the Site Speed signal is relatively new, other signals like relevancy are weighted more heavily than Site Speed. Google is also careful to point out that Site Speed signals are only effecting less than 1% of keyphrase rankings for visitors searching Google.com in the English language. For now.
Pay close attention – Google is slowly warming us up to Site Speed becoming a key signal in the future, which raises some important issues:
Keeping the Man (‘s rankings) Down
Does this mean that large corporations with expensive high-speed website hosting will eventually dominate all search engine rankings? This could prove to be a difficult barrier to entry for new businesses that vitally need exposure in search engines to survive.
Will Content Remain King?
Obviously, the importance of Site Speed will increase over time. The question at hand is – how much? If a slow website with a ton of related content can’t outrank a similar website that has much less content simply because they pay less for website hosting, we’re in trouble.
To remain fair, and keep search results reliable, Google will have to find a balance between efficient websites with slow web hosting and inefficient websites with high-speed web hosting.
How to Test Your Site Speed
Once in Google Webmaster Tools, click on a website, then click on ‘Labs’ (left-column) and finally ‘Site Performance’ to use Google’s Site Performance tool. Here’s another tool you can use to test your Site Speed.
Benefits of Increasing Site Speed
The obvious – not having it work against you in the form of ranking penalties
Bandwidth Efficiency – the faster your site loads reduces the amount of bandwidth required to load it (lower web hosting cost)
Usability – site visitors like fast loading websites; helps increase stickiness and decrease bounce-rates
Environmental – faster, more efficient websites increase the efficiency and resource management of the world wide web as a whole
Jtree Site Speed Service
Continuous monitoring of how fast your website is responding has always been important. Now, it’s just more important. Jtree.net offers Site Speed Monitoring starting at only $199/month, where you receive weekly monitoring reports about:
DNS Lookup Speed
HTTP Availability
Host Ping Speed
Site Download Speed
In addition to the reporting, you’ll also receive suggestions about how to improve lackluster performance. Contact us to get started or learn more. If you’ve noticed site speed issues by using the tools above, give us a shout, we’ve been successfully speeding-up web content for businesses for over a decade.
“Jtree.net continues to provide us with outstanding service for our startup websites BuildSwap.com and Olympian Eric Fischer’s Skodeo.com. We currently outrank HomeDepot.com, Amazon.com and other authority websites for our top keyphrases in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Not only do we have page one rankings, but even page one – position one rankings. The proof is in the pudding.”
-Nathan Burningham, Owner and CTO at Streamline Technologies
We have some of the coolest clients, no doubt. That’s why when one of them makes the Olympic Ski Team, we’ve gotta make some noise – W00T W00T!!
Congratulations to Erik (The Flying FISH) Fisher of Skodeo.com!
Erik Fisher and Ted Ligety - Team Skodeo!
The 2010 Idaho Olympic Ski Team Roster
Jeret “Speedy” Peterson, Aerials – Bogus Basin – Boise, ID
Hailey Duke, Slalom – Brundage – Sun Valley, ID
Erik Fisher, Downhill – Bogus Basin – Middleton, ID
Nate Holland, Snow Cross – Schweitzer – Sandpoint, ID
Graham Watanabe, Snow Cross – Sun Valley – Hailey, ID
Morgan Arritola, Cross Country – Sun Valley – Fairfield, ID
Sara Studebaker, biathlon – Bogus Basin – Boise, ID
Patrick Deneen, Moguls – Silver Mt – Kellogg, ID
Nick Cunningham, Bobsled – Boise, ID
Simi Hamilton, Cross Country – Sun Valley – Ketchum, ID
We’ve been kickin-butt for Skodeo.com for almost a year now, and have been able to outrank authority website competitors by achieving page 1 results for their top keyphrases with our On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO services.
Skodeo.com is THE place to buy and sell, new and used sporting goods and sports equipment. Which is why we are STOKED that the founder will be ripping up the slopes, Olympian-style!
It didn’t seem possible, but the dust has finally settled, and in 2009 Jtree.net experienced over 50% growth compared to 2008. Prospering during an economic downturn was no easy chore. It took long hours, dedication, education and wouldn’t have been possible without talented staff, partners and incredible clients.
Our stellar search engine rankings for our own website in 2009 continued with helping not only drive new business and growth, but with reinforcing our reputation for being able to dominate organic search results for a given market niche.
Twitter Philo to Continue
We have a fairly unique Twitter philosophy that is employed with our @seoboise Twitter account. We follow back only after being followed. Period. No sketchy following thousands of people in hopes of a follow-back, or any auto-DMs for that matter either. Online marketers have a bad enough rep on Twitter to begin with. We think it’s been a success nonetheless, check out our follower graph below.
Hit the Ground Running
For the culmination of 2009 we unveiled a brand new Jtree.net website, expanded service offerings and rolled-out fresh blog posts as a warm-up to 2010. Almost immediately, we plan to reveal a brand new logo to complete the Jtree.net branding experience.
Cosmetic issues aside, our new Off-Page SEO service offering is something you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve always been a few steps ahead, so this should come as no surprise.
Off-Page SEO is geared for obtaining instant and ongoing quality backlinks for your website or blog for 12 months. It’s designed to reinforce your online reputation in the search engines without having to pay for every click.
When Google posts about something that could be a major factor about how web pages are ranked, it’s always a good idea to listen. When Google blogs, releases news, speaks on camera and blogs some more about the same thing – it’s time to do more than just take note.
Just like the fuzz, the big “G” typically likes to warn us before a smack-down is coming. In this case, it’s a potential Search Engine rankings smack-down.
In a nutshell; G-unit is telling us that slow websites could soon be ranked lower regardless of other factors like number of quality backlinks and On-Page SEO. They have even provided a site performance tool for testing any website you have added to Google Webmaster Tools. What this tool does is show how fast your site (or blog) loads in comparison to other sites/blogs, in addition to some tips (not always useful) to increase load-times.
Note: Once in Google Webmaster Tools, click on a website, then click on ‘Labs’ (left-column) and finally ‘Site Performance’ to use Google’s Site Performance tool.
Google allows you take it a few steps further by providing access to their open-source anti-latency tool AKA Page Speed. A Firebug/Firefox extension that runs several best practice tests on your web server (the physical location where your site is stored) and front end code. Page Speed takes a deeper look at issues related to the overall load-times of your website and provides suggestions for increasing speed.
If you’re not into the Google tools, you’re in luck. Here’s another tool that tests your page speed. This tool can help you identify slow loading items for removal, and is a little more useful than Google’s site performance tool in terms of identifying items that can easily be removed or streamlined.
Benefits of Increasing Site Speed
The obvious – not having it work against you in the form of ranking penalties
Bandwidth Efficiency – the faster your site loads reduces the amount of bandwidth required to load it (lower web hosting cost)
Usability – site visitors like fast loading websites; helps increase stickiness and decrease bounce-rates
Environmental – faster, more efficient websites increase the efficiency and resource management of the world wide web as a whole
Monitor Site Speed (load-times) the Easy Way
Continuous monitoring of how fast your website is responding has always been important. Now, it’s just more important. Jtree.net offers Site Speed Monitoring starting at only $199/month, where you receive weekly monitoring reports about:
DNS Lookup Speed
HTTP Availability
Host Ping Speed
Site Download Speed
In addition to the reporting, you’ll also receive suggestions about how to improve lackluster performance. Contact us to get started or learn more. If you’ve noticed site speed issues by using the tools above, give us a shout, we’ve been successfully speeding-up web content for businesses for over a decade.
Starting last Friday (Dec. 4), Google is now returning personalized search results regardless if you are signed-in to your Google Account. In the past, you had to be signed-into a Google account with ‘web history’ enabled for personalized search to work. Now, it’s the standard method of delivery for everyone. What that means is instead of returning results that are relevant to the average person, results will be returned based on their relevancy to – YOU.
In the beginning, Google personalized search basically meant that if you modified your search results with the “up arrow” and “X” buttons provided by Google (see image), future search results would include those past modifications.
Please note that this result has not been personalized, we really do rank #1 for “boise internet marketing”, and a number of others .
Currently, Google is customizing your search results based on what you’ve clicked on in the past. For example, if you regularly search for “blue widgets” on Google, then proceed to visit the 2nd listed search result instead of the first – eventually the 2nd listing will move up to the 1st result position. This stored personalization only effects your search results. Non-personalized results will remain the same regardless if thousands of other people have the same personalization. For now.
How Will I Know if My Results are Customized?
A “View Customizations” link will be displayed at the top-right of search results that have been personalized. Clicking the link allows you to view what’s been modified, as well as turn off the personalization service. More from Google about this…
Initial Thoughts
This could be a benefit to the user (web searcher) if implemented correctly. Our preferences are vastly different from each other, it only makes sense that improving the relevancy of search results would be driven by a personalized approach. The important thing to remember here is IF implemented correctly.
If this takes hold, it would seem that the same amount of traffic that exists for a particular search phrase would then be divided up. Meaning; focusing on ranking well for 1 and 2 word keywords/phrases would be less important than long-tail targeting (keyphrases composed of multiple words).
As with most personalization-type services, Google makes it fairly easy to opt-out (in spite of automatically opting you in). Signed-out searchers can click on “Web History/Disable Customizations” to turn off personalized search results.
Google isn’t exactly trying to be invasive with a shift towards personalization. They are attempting to improve the quality of their search results by serving up the most relevant content to the user while fending off black hat spammers/affiliate marketing attempts to subvert their ranking criteria at the same time.
As an SEO, I have opted-out of the personalization. My viewing pane has to remain unbiased in order to uphold the relevancy of research results.
Backlinks are linky votes of confidence, and are core to any serious Off-Page SEO campaign. Backlinks represent links from other websites that point to your site, and are very important in regard to how well your website or blog ranks in the search engines. The more quality backlinks a site has translates into better search engine rankings… in a nutshell.
Backlink Intel
Google typically only reveals LESS THAN 1% of the actual backlinks for your site that they are giving you credit for.
Yahoo! typically only reveals LESS THAN 5% of the actual backinks for your site.
The main reason why backlink sources are not revealed is simple; Blackhat SEOs can use that information for shady intentions. All the more reason to hire a professional SEO; which have the tools to track backlinks beyond what is readily available to the general public, and experience to formulate viable Off-Page SEO strategy. Plus, we tend to have a ‘knack’ for knowing all of the good places to get ‘juicy’ backlinks.
Backlink Checker Tool
Curious about who’s linking to your website or blog? Use the backlink checker tool below to find out. Note: Pay close attention to the PageRank of backlink locations (URLs), this is a quality indicator of the site linking to you. Generally speaking, you want backlinks from websites that have a higher PageRank than your own site or blog. You can check your PageRank here.
Tip! Enter your competitor’s website address to find out where they are getting backlinks from.
Tip! Enter your Twitter, YouTube or other social network profile URL to find out if people are linking to you.
A good SEO is worth every penny. Getting a website to rank on competitive keyphrases is a very difficult task which requires an ongoing effort from an experienced SEO. If your business depends on the web, ranking well for keyphrases that potential customers will use to find you is crucial to your ROI.
Everyone claims to be an SEO these days. Web design/development companies and consultants are hastily adding it to their service roster, despite having any real clue as to what SEO really is. Marketing and Brand Management agencies have done the same, adopting a technology they know little about.
That leaves the SEOs themselves… the consultants and companies fully devoted to SEO, PPC and Social Marketing. Many of which drop the ball on keyphrase targeting, monitoring and/or reporting. SEO is so much more than just marketing. It requires a fundamental understanding of the technology that powers the web.
I recently posted about how to hire an SEO that can actually rank on SEOBoise.com. Consider reading it if you have even the slightest interest in SEO, especially if you or your company is considering hiring an SEO.
The 6 rules below are designed to help thin the crowd when searching for a knowledgeable SEO.
Josh (the post author) is the founder of and consultant for Jtree.net; a Boise, Idaho based SEO, PPC and Social Internet Marketing consulting firm that has provided services to over 50 companies and agencies over the last 10 years.
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When Google posts about something that could be a major factor about how web pages are ranked, it’s always a good idea to listen. When Google blogs, releases news, speaks on camera and blogs some more about the same thing – it’s time to do more than just take note.
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