Once you settle on a URL format, you shouldn’t change them. Over time, Google will start to index your site and the pages will hopefully rank for keyword phrases you are targeting. If you change the URL, you risk losing your position and ultimately customers. So why did I change my URL’s today? Well, in the case of the Long Island SEO blog, this is not my primary business. At some point, I may transition to SEO and put my years of experience into helping businesses on Long Island achieve their SEO goals. For now, my focus has been on driving traffic and maintaining a highly successful network of sites. There are just not enough hours in the day.

Over time, I’ve gotten much better with site management and SEO. While I may have said it years ago, I think I may take on a client or two. One at a time, with a laser focus on driving traffic to their site. Today I’ve updated the architecture behind the blog, removed a nasty script that made it’s way into WordPress and updated my URL’s. For those of you who are considering a change in your URL structure, be sure to set up 301 redirects. This will ensure you retain your rankings. If you do change your URL’s, I’d highly recommend you use the structure I’m using here at Long Island SEO. Good luck with your SEO efforts and keep climbing.

As I noted yesterday, this site came up on page 5 or a ranking of #41 for the keyword phrase Long Island SEO. I checked today and we’ve got a slightly better position of #39. This leads to the question of monitoring your SEO progress. While you might see changes on a daily basis, checking your rankings can be somewhat of an addiction and a source of agita. It’s not uncommon to see daily swings in both directions. For most, it’s perfectly fine to check your rankings on a weekly basis. Monthly reports are also ok. SEO, whether done on Long Island or nationally takes time and most importantly patience. If you plant seed, you cannot expect a full green lawn the following day. If you’re a sod type of person, then your only option is PPC (pay-per-click). Plant the seeds for organic search engine rankings and your patience will pay off. The grass is always greener for those who have good organic search engine rankings.

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged on the site and it shows. Not only on the blog itself, but in my rankings. A quick search of Google finds Long Island SEO on page 5 or 41st overall for the keyword phrase Long Island SEO. That’s poor, but that provides us with challenge. Today I’ll start work on improving our position. Let’s set a lofty goal of making the 1st page of Google. I’d like to be first overall, but we’ll leave that for the next challenge. For now, let’s see if we can move Long Island SEO from page 5 where the tumbleweeds are present to page 1 where the real action happens. The first step in any good SEO campaign is on page content, so here we go.

In the past few months, I’ve met with a number of Long Island business owners who are just now thinking the web as a method to promote their business. For some, it’s strictly an online brochure, something that essentially works as an extension of their business card. Out of this group, most said they would like to generate more business via their site. They all had taken the first steps in creating their site and in some cases overpaid for a number of services. While they all realized and understood the importance of coming up in search engines, it simply wasn’t part of their plan nor budget. For a Long Island business, SEO is probably the most important part of their online presence. What good is a beautiful or useful website if no one outside of your immediate family has ever seen it. Sure, you’ve got it listed on your business card, but I’m assuming they already had an opportunity to secure that new business. Simply building a website is important, but SEO is more important for a Long Island business. For example, let’s take Landscape Designers on Long Island. You can’t get through a few pages of the local Long Island Pennysaver and you’ll notice more than few ads. Pennysaver is certainly a good, cost effective way to advertise your Long Island business. Well, what about people who are searching online? Of course, you could pay for ads, but that could get expensive. A quick check of Google finds that Landscape Design By Lee heads the pack. It’s certainly not one of the best designed sites, but it’s effective. Thanks to Lee’s 1995 counter, we see a count of 65,000 hits to his site. Not bad for a local Landscape Design company. These local Long Island business owners have taken the first step in having a site built, but it’s the SEO that’s most important. Just ask Lee and his 65,000 or so prospects and it’s cheaper than a weekly Pennysaver ad.

I’ve been so busy promoting my site and working on a web design project that I haven’t had the opportunity to look back on past projects. Well, I just bought a new Powerbook and I spent most of my weekend cleaning up my Inbox. As a result, I came across emails sent regarding a design project I worked on almost 4 years ago. Now four years is an eternity in web design, let alone search engine marketing. Or is it? Perhaps, this was just what the doctor ordered. Four years of search bots strolling through my now antiquated design. This was back in the days when tables were in vogue and CSS wasn’t a Dreamweaver feature that anyone particulary cared about. This was a new business startup and business wasn’t brisk out of the gate. The first thing I did was check the site to see if it was still live. Sure enough, there is was in all it’s tabled glory.

It’s always interesting to look at a project that you’ve worked on over 4 years ago. I Googled the title of the site and we’re #1. That’s easy. Problem is that most people won’t be searching for this title. I had correctly added Meta Tags and the site design was good for the time. In terms of SEO, this site was archaic. A number of his keywords were specific to his business rather than term or keywords that a human would type in Google. I have sites of mine that have benefited from being around for awhile. That plus, I believe that my content just happened to be written with countless keywords related to my site. While I focus on these elements now, I chaulk part of that success to dumb luck. The rankings for those sites increased because of the content and gone up because I’ve since taken several steps to get them correctly SEO’ed. The point is that age will help your search engine rankings, but you cannot rest on your laurels and must keep up with trends with respect to web design and SEO. If your haven’t updated your site design and content, then it’s time to roll up your sleeves to achieve higher SERP’s.

Long Island search engine optimization is an appropriate title for this blog. There are a plethora of businesses and individuals, outside of Long Island, who do not practice any form of search engine optimization. Over the weekend, I passed by a house that I was interested in and decided to look for photos when I arrived home. I didn’t catch the name of the realtor’s website, but felt confident that I would be able search Google and find it without much difficulty. I figured that any real estate company, whether on Long Island or not, must have a website that was designed for both functionality and search engines. I was dead wrong. I did a logical search: name of realtor and Long Island. I came across a few directories and a hospital. I eventually found the website in question by clicking through a local directory. Most visitors will not go the extra step to find your website. Matter of fact, this was an instance where I was looking for a particular real estate broker and didn’t have luck. I can only imagine how or where they would rank if I did searches for “Long Island Real Estate” or “Sell My Home On Long Island”.

So, where did they go wrong. Simply creating a website will not guarantee people will find your site. If your site is not properly designed for search engines, then it’s chances of being found are slim and none. The process of making your site search engine friendly is called appropriately enough “search engine optimization”. A site that is well designed and is visually stunning is key to keeping customers and site visitors. If done right, you’ll also reap the rewards of return visitors. In the competitive online world, it’s simply not enough to do one and not the other. The key to success online is to design a site that is optimized for search engines.

Okay, so what is Long Island SEO. Well, it all starts here. These are my daily or weekly, depending on my schedule, musings regarding effective search engine optimization. On a daily basis, I find myself spending 50% of my time with the SEO of my sites. You’ll find that Everything Treo ranks very well in all 3. If you search for Treo Forums in Google, you’ll find that I rank #1. These fluctuate daily, so hopefully Google will not make a liar of me. For those of you who are new to the game, SEO stands for “search engine optimization“. See, without SEO, chances are good that no one will find your website – no matter how well designed and how good your information is to a potential customer or client. In the online world, there is no “build it and they will come”. Word to the wise, don’t have Kevin Costner build your website. It might look fabulous, but Google won’t be impressed.

On the subject of Google, be prepared to bow at the alter of Google. It is and will be the reigning champ of search engines for now and the foreseeable future. Those who deserve an honorable mention are MSN and Yahoo. Both are very relevant, but I’d be surprised if they account for more than 10-15% of your traffic. SEO is the key to a successful online marketing strategy. Keep in mind, that it goes beyond SEO. A mix of offline promotions, PPC (pay per click) and online search engine marketing will help your business succeed in the online world. I’m am in no way discounting design. In fact, design will play a key factor in how the bots (short for robots) see your site. If your lucky, these robots will report back to Google, MSN and the like that your site is the source or authority for a particular area. A well organized site, correctly optimized for search engines will make a world of difference. Does your site use CSS? Do you have the correct ALT tags? Not simply ALT tags, but keyword driven alt tags.

Since this is my first post, I’ve asked a number of questions and offered very little in the way of insight. Obviously, this was not the intent of Long Island SEO. As I continue with this blog, I hope to shed light on issues that plague websites and strategies to get your website to the top of search engines.

Welcome to Long Island SEO. From here on in we start blogging!