Life has a funny way of getting busy…  I’m sure I’m not the only one out “there” who wants to keep their blog updated and just doesn’t get the free time to make it happen.

A recent project, which was quite consuming of my ‘freedoms’ has ended… successfully I might note.  That having been said, I finally have found the time to create a website that I’ve been wanting to for quite a while.

FindMyCampground.com - It’s basically a friendlier way to find campgrounds.  I have been an avid camper for many years.  Camping is just an amazing way to connect to nature and experience something new each and everytime you go.  However, I always found it difficult to find campgrounds.  The resources on the Internet aren’t very good in my opinion and have one major fault.  They don’t support the mass exodus from national online searching to local online searching.  This isn’t something new in “Internet Years”, but it is happening for sure.

That being said, I realized the potential to create a campground website which was local SEO friendly.  I’ve just recently begun to get local SEO links listed with Google and they are pretty good I must say.  Just try googling “Find Campgrounds, Richfield Spring, NY”.  Already, the site is listed as #8 on the first page.  ‘Nuff said…  now just to get the rest of my locations for the U of A listed on Google.

Check it out and let me know what you think!  http://findmycampground.com

Good times…

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SEO: Search Engine Optimization

SEO entails several different practices to optimize your website with the goal of raising your organic ranking on search engines.  Every search engine weighs these practices differently in assessing your organic listing on their website.  However, you should realize that SEO practices normally never raise your rankings overnight.  You should consider these longterm strategies and have patience…  This is not to be confused with SEM or Search Engine Marketing.  SEO is simply a subset of SEM practices.

As I noted in my “Clarifying the difference between SEM and SEO” article, SEO strategies can consist of:

• Keyword rich webpages
• Webpage titles inclusion of keywords
• Domain name inclusion of keywords
• Keyword use in ALT tags
• Keyword use in naming image files
• Relevant backlinks using keywords

My suggestion would be to take a step back and look at your website.  Think about the content it has currently.  Then think about the content you want to convey.  If your website isn’t “there”, then take the time to update it’s content first.  Starting with that will give you a better foundation with which to start your SEO strategies.

In my next articles, I will be discussing each of these SEO strategies.

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Search Engine Marketing?  Search Engine Optimization?

Two terms commonly spoken of and confused easily.  Really it’s quite simple though…  let me explain.

Search Engine Marketing is a whole group of activities focused with your online marketing efforts.  This INCLUDES Search Engine Optimization.  Let me say that again… Search Engine Optimization is just one part of Search Engine Marketing.

Now that I’ve conveyed the gist that SEO is just one piece of SEM, let’s discuss the two of them starting with SEM.

Search Engine Marketing, being your complete online marketing campaign, includes many possible techniques.  These generally will be dependent on your marketing angle, and the amount of time and money you want to commit to your project.

SEM can contain many possible strategies, include the following, but not limited to them:

• SEO (Yes, I pointed that out again as it is a highly important piece of SEM)
• Pay for Placement, which is mainly PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising
• Social Network Advertising
• Article Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Search Engine & Directory Submission Management
• Paid inclusive and trusted feed programs
• Reporting, Performance Monitoring, ROI

I’ll discuss each of these in greater detail in future posts here…

Now, let me point out what SEO is specifically.  SEO is the optimization of your website with the goal of increasing the value of your organic listings on search engines.  This is not a quick process, but it is definitely important as it is valued much greater than PPC campaigns.  Mainly this is achieved through the use of Keyword management.  This is achieve by the following strategies:

• Keyword rich webpages
• Webpage titles inclusion of keywords
• Domain name inclusion of keywords
• Keyword use in ALT tags
• Keyword use in naming image files
• Relevant backlinks using keywords

Again, I’ll not go into detail now with each of these, but in later posts.

So, this should give you an overview of what SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and what they generally are made up of.  I hope this article will give some clarification to many of us out there who needed it.

Cheers,

Bob

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I’m just getting Project Grant dusted off and started again here.  I’ve used this website for a multitude of various ideas over many years and as of late, it’s been for a personal email account.  Well, it’s time to change that.

I find myself musing over many different topics with website design and development during my daily grind.  That and a lot of good folk asking me for help with websites.  So, with that I suppose it might be good to jot this all down!

And there you are… my first post.  My my… Wordpress does have it’s uses.  I wouldn’t normally choose a tool to lean on for doing this, however, the little addition to my family is forcing my hand.  Time is not what it used to be!

To everyone out there, I bid a good welcome.

Bob Grant

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