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.

It’s been roughly 8 months since I last checked in on the blog. Sorry, but my other sites take up most of my time. So had did we fare despite not blogging for over half a year. We must have gone down in the rankings right? Actually, it’s quite the opposite. Despite no SEO efforts, this blog has managed to hit the first page of results for Long Island SEO. While I’m an SEO veteran, I use my tools to push my commercial sites up the rankings. I suppose one day I’ll find time to push this site up to a #1 position. Sounds like yet another New Year’s Resolution. In the next few months, I might even find time to do some SEO consulting and hope to do it here on Long Island. I love talking SEO, but only share so much here in the blog. I have plenty of stories of how I’ve changed my business and simply outpaced my competitors. For now, please feel free to utilize the nine sites that occupy the rankings for Long Island SEO. I’m sure they’ve worked real hard at getting their rankings and deserve your business. If are in the market for an SEO specialist in the Spring, check back here and I might start taking on a client here and there. I wish you the best of luck in your SEO efforts! Stay the course and I’ll see you at the top!

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.

Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the process of developing properly coded or optimzed web pages and content to increase the amount of search engine result pages (SERP’s). Ranking high in search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo can be a direct result of a site that has been optimized for search engines. Higher rankings will result in more traffic and increased business. It is critical to employ search engine optimization when developing your web project.