I recently came across a great article by Six Revisions on how to optimize your site for Google Panda. Panda was an update to Google’s search engine algorithm in early 2011 and there have been many updates to Panda since then. The article discusses the following tips to make your site be seen as high quality in the eyes of Google Panda.

• Design for engagement and user experience
• Use proper spelling and grammar
• Focus on quality content
• Avoid too many ads
• Avoid duplicate content
• Less is more
• Ensure high-quality code

Read the full article and see the description for each tip over at Six Revisions.

Pay per click advertising works through search engines to place an ad on the top or to the right of the results feed for certain key terms. The ad normally consists of a title, short heading and a short promotional blurb about the deal or company. Google AdWords is Google’s program that controls your search terms and places your ads in results. For more information about Google AdWords you can watch a great video below.

The great thing about the pay per click program is that you don’t actually pay until someone clicks on your ad. It’s helpful to not have to pay a monthly fee whether or not you are getting traffic. Instead you determine an amount to pay for certain keywords per click. Pay per click advertising is only worth it though if the sale gets from click to close. For the businesses that make a sale this means that customers are usually directed to their site for about 5 cents each, depending on the price of the keyword.

Pay per click advertising is even better than high search engine rankings because the ads can go up in just a few minutes while changing your web page content to improve your rankings, even with the help of a search engine oriented text company, can take weeks.

Pay per click advertising campaigns can be very effective if your ad is well written and if your target site helps to complete the sale with the customer. Without these elements, pay per click advertising can get very expensive and is simply a waste of your valuable time and money.

A little over a month ago I wrote a post about why you should care about Google+. At the time that I wrote that article Google+ was just for personal use and was actually discouraging businesses from signing up yet. Everything has changed now, though, with the launch of Google+ Brand pages.

The brand pages look similar to an individual’s profile but they also have a box by their name that symbolizes they are a page, along with a 10 word description about the page. Some companies were very quick to get the brand pages and have some great customization with it so far. A few examples of my favorite designs by brands are by The Muppets, Coca Cola, and by Google itself.

I found two great tutorials online that show you how to create a Google+ Brand page as well how to create a profile banner to complement your branding.

So as a business owner already spending time on your social media presence with Facebook and Twitter, why should you also set up a Google+ Brand page? There are some key differences between the social networks that you should evaluate and see if they are beneficial to your target audience.

• Google+ is more content driven— Facebook is full of games, happy birthday messages and photos of friends and family, which make it more of a personal social experience. Google+ on the other hand is more professional and focused on informative content.
• Live audio/video chats— Google+ has hangouts that directly engages fans and can provide exclusive content. The Black Eyed Peas recently hosted a session backstage prior to a concert that allowed the fans to connect with them and tell some insider secrets of the band. The Muppets are another great example of a hangout and you can actually see the highlights from their hangout session below.

• Integration throughout Google— Google recently added +1 buttons into their Image Search so that there is a deeper integration with Google+, Places, Maps, Web and Image Searches.

Ultimately, it is up to your target audience and where they are that determines what social platforms you join. So do your research on your target market and make sure you are constantly marketing toward them.

Google Alerts is a great tool to help you stay up to date on the latest news, technologies and trends. Another great benefit is that it helps you monitor what your competition is doing along with monitoring what people are saying about your business. With Google Alerts, you get an instant email notification whenever something happens in your niche or topics that matter to you. Best of all it is very easy to set up!

To set it up simply go to http://www.google.com/alerts and enter the topic that you wish to monitor. Then select how often you want to be updated and where to send the email notification.

Your SEO keywords are the words and phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your site in search engines. It is important to do research on how people are looking for the products, services and information you offer so it is easy for them to find you. You can test out your keywords with Google and get statistics on their popularity that will help you figure out the best keywords to go for.

Developing a list of keywords is by far one of the most important steps in any search engine optimization process. Your keywords are then used for developing your content for your site so it is well worth the time to ensure your SEO keywords are highly relevant to your audience and their searches.

How to pick the right keywords

If your keyword strategy is only targeting the highly popular and competitive terms, your odds of success are small because you are competing with so many big companies for these words. The best keyword strategy would actually be to target keyword phrases that are more with medium popularity and where there is little competition. Here are a few tips on how to pick the best keywords for your site.

1. Use phrases not words— Let’s say your company sells dog collars. Instead of putting your keywords as dog and collars, group it together as one phrase. Keywords are meant to describe what you sell or offer, so your goal should be to describe them as best as possible.
2. Better description of content— The main thing you want to avoid is having keywords for products or content your site does not include. While people will come to your site they will quickly become frustrated because your site isn’t relevant and leave.
3. Use repetition but don’t overdo it— While you don’t want to repeat the same keywords over and over again—for example dog collars, puppy collars, pet collars— it doesn’t hurt if the phrase as a whole is varied. An example of varied phrases is dog collars and dog collar comparison. Remember though to have only keywords that are relevant to your content.

I have my keywords now what?

After you have researched and decided on your keywords, the next step is to implement them in your content. Here is a list of places you could put them:

• Using the keyword in the title of the page
• Using the keyword in the URL
• Using the keyword, and variations throughout the page copy
• Using the keyword in the meta tags, especially the meta description
• Using the keyword in any image file paths and in the images' alt text
• Using the keyword as the anchor text in links back to the page from elsewhere on the site

The main thing you want to remember with your keyword usage though is to not overdo it. “Keyword stuffing” is when you load your webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate your site’s ranking in Google. Google and other search engines actually penalize you for this overuse of keywords and can remove you from searches. As a general rule focus on creating useful content that your keywords fit appropriately into.