We’ve been at our present Hanover location for 7 great years, but now it’s time to move on. By mid-January we will be installed in our new and improved space in the neighboring town of Norwell, just 3 miles down the road from where we are now.

“Why the move?” you say. Happily, we’ve gotten bigger and better over time, making our Hanover office inadequate for serving our needs and the needs of our loyal clientele. You will find Biyn’s new Washington Street location to be quite an improvement over the old… in size, comfort and functionality. We think you’re gonna’ like it!

Due to the fact that most of the following items are self-explanatory, I will limit my explanations.  However, if you would like an in-depth explanation of any, feel free to drop me a note on this blog and I will respond to your request.

External Linking

These are links from other sites pointing to your site webpage. These links could be very helpful if they are from relevant sites that deal with related subject matter. On the negative side, the keyword they use to link back to your webpage could also diminish your page ranking.

Directory Submissions

Submit your site URL to the various internet directories like Yahoo, Dmoz, etc. Some of them are free while others require payment in order to be listed in the directory.

Social Bookmarking

Have your site bookmarked  by various social internet communities.

Press Releases

By sending out press releases containing your web address, you can increase online PR for your website.

Newsletter Writing

Write articles and submit them to link sites that offer regular newsletters to their readers.

Blog Reviews and Promotion

RSS Feeds and Backlink

Forum and Blog Signatures

Public Relations

New England Data Service (NEDS) and Biyn Development LLC recently formed a partnership forged out of common value and interest in providing the best possible service to our respective clients. NEDS is an industry leader that provides state of the art data center managed services to small and medium sized businesses. Their solutions are focused on solving the numerous technology challenges that confront organizations. Their services support a scalable, high availability network that provides security, stability and uptime for critical servers, applications, data, and Internet connectivity. NEDS core services include; online data backup, colocation, managed hosting, dedicated servers and T1/T3 Internet connectivity.

Remember Who “Owns” Your Site

In my previous article “Projecting the Right Image on the Web” I encouraged you to “give away” your website to the users - your customers - for it is they who seek out your site for something they need or want. And so, it is important to give them what appeals to them and is most relevant to them.

Talk TO Them, Not AT Them

Talk to your readers, not at them. Use words and phrases that are eye-catching, direct, clearly stated and, above all, relevant. Your tone of voice should be immediately appropriate to the audience’s relationship with the site. Don’t be cryptic. Don’t assume that you have their undivided attention, because you probably don’t. On the other hand, don’t be overly verbose, either, because that is the surest way to lose their attention. It is not easy to grab and hold someone’s attention online, so you must work diligently to develop the skills needed to accomplish it This is why we have said to “give away” your site to your readers. Find out what they want and give it to them.

Begin immediately with all the essential information. Then follow with further details. This allows the reader to see the point and purpose of a page instantly so that he/she can make a quick decision as to whether or not to read on. Make the opening paragraph on every page the most important and fill it with appropriate keywords and phrases that will ensure optimization of your site.

Keywords & Phrases

Your careful choice of keywords and phrases announces to the search engines what you do. Writing copy based on your keywords and phrases will help optimize the page, A well-optimized page requires a minimum of 250–350 words. But simply peppering your site with keyword phrases, though affording you a higher position in search engines, will lose you as many customers as it attracts, if not done in a readable, attention-holding style. In other words, if your site is ponderous and weighty, readers will abandon it quickly out of disinterest and boredom, regardless of whether or not it has the keywords and phrases for maximum optimization. The trick here, then, is to write keyword-rich copy without compromising sustainability through readability. Accomplishing this task requires knowledge and skill. Here are some suggestions on how to pull this off:

Keyword-rich Copywrite Without Readability Compromise

Attaining this requires some pre-planning.

1. Find out what keywords your customers use when searching for your site. These are the words you’ll want to use to describe your product or service.
2. Use only the most important keyword phrases. Don’t include every keyword phrase on every page. Focus on just one or two on each page.
3. Be specific and concised
4. Use keywords or phrases in links whenever posible
5. Use keyword phrases in headings
6. When you’re done, test for keyword phrase density

Here are some tools you could use to find out what keywords phrase people use to find your site:

1. Google Free Keyword Tool
2. SEO Book Keyword Research Tool (free)
3. Trellian Free Search Term Suggestion Tool
4. Word Tracker (free 7 day tail or paid version)
5. goRank Keyword Analyzer (free)

Internal Link and Inter-connection

Another helpful technique is to make use of Internal linking between documents. This is to be used contextually and be relevant to the targeted page and phrase or another section on the same web page

Add a Blog to the Mix If Possible

Blogging is an excellent natural way to obtain higher search engine placement, if you can make the time for it and remain consistent and focused on subjects of interest to your readership. Here are some ideas on how to write an effective blog.

All the above have been internally focused. Next, let us move on to the external factors that also contribute to your site SEO, also referred to as Off-page Optimization.

Meta Tags

Meta Tags are information inserted into the “head” area of web pages. They are placed between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. The data they provide cannot be seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, Meta elements provide information about the webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use, the page refresh rates. etc.

Example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
        <head>
    <meta name="keywords" content=
"Define keywords for some search engines" />
    <meta name="description" content=
"Define a description of your web page" />
            <title>Title</title>
        </head>

For more in-depth infomation on Meta Tags visit this site …
Next, we move on to the Title Tag element.

The Title Tag

Simply put, the title tag element defines the title of the document.

Let’s make one thing clear upfront; the title tag is not actually a meta tag… and the title tag is regarded as one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. For instance, adjusting only the title tags of your pages may generate quick and appreciable differences in your page rankings. And because the words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP), changing them may result in more clickthroughs if the right title is applied

The title tag is considered to be one of the “big three” in search engine algorithmic weight scail. In importance, it equals that of the text content on a webpage, It is the single most important piece of information the search engines use when deciphering your webpage. For that reason, including your target keyword phrase or phrases in your title is very desirable.

Things to Remember When Creating Your Title Tag

1. All titles should be typed in Title Case (or Proper Case). An excellent resource for learning title case capitalization rules is Writer’s Block - Writing Tips - Capitalization in Titles.
2. For nonfiction or reference websites, titles should be written to clearly indicate what is available on the page.
3. Every page should have a unique title that reflects its content.
   
4. The title should be self-explanatory and clearly communicate the contents of the page to the reader, thereby giving the reader a context.
5. Home page titles should clearly indicate what is available on the page, and for the purpose of web credibility, they should clearly indicate what organization is represented on the page. By this I mean that it would be beneficial for you to include the name of your organization in the title tag of your home page. Failure to do this could significantly lower your Web credibility.

Now that we have dealt somewhat extensively with the various tag element within the head tag, we shall now move on to the body contents, starting with text (copywrite).

Writing for Web and SEO

The phrase “content is king” is only true if the content is relevant and clarifies the subject at hand. When writing for the web, there are 2 primary audiences being addressed — the person reading and the search engine bots or spiders. Catering to both can make writing for the web a bit more of a challenge. Remember this, however: What is good for the searcher is most likely good for the search engines, but what is good for search engines might NOT necessary be good for the searcher or human reader.

So, start with a good understanding of your audience and of what you must do to attract and hold their attention. Then, be absolutely certain that you have an excellent grasp of the subject matter under discussion. Be systematic in your approach, knowing what key phrases and words to use, and be as natural as you can, without overuse of technical jargon that will confuse the “average” reader. And, finally, get right to the point. Choose your words carefully. Make everything as clear and concise as possible. Verbosity is a no-no that will lose your audience very quickly. Simplicity rules!