Contractor Resources And Tips For Marketing Online

As a contractor starting out online, it can be difficult to gaining traction in the already saturated search engine of Google. If you're fortunate, perhaps your website already has a few years online when you start to push the marketing efforts. If not and you have a new contracting website, you have a long road ahead. In this article, we're going to give you some tips to get your contractor business off the ground.

One of your first steps needs to be Google My Business. Anytime you can use Google to enhance your marketing efforts, you need to. You'll be able to list your business in Google. Google also recently made changes that benefit local searches, so local rankings is even better than before. Once you submit your website and get your listing verified, this will strengthen your local rankings and marketing efforts.

According to some of the top SEO and marketing experts in the field, Google+ is one of the top SEO ranking factors. In total, 7 out of the top 10 SEO ranking factors belong to social media web metrics. Google+ was the leader in that department. Join Google+, build your profile and join communities in your niche. There's thousands of strong communities on Google+ that will allow you to promote your business.

As a contractor, one of the best things that you can do is share your work. I like what Meltini Kitchen And Bath does on their website. Your website should have pictures of your projects and work. Providing free information and resources are a great way to earn the trust of potential customers. It's also a great way to build your personal and business reputation. Not just any content, make your content great. This can be articles, videos or slides.

Houzz is another solid resource that will allow you to share your projects in front of an established audience. Since Pinterest and Flickr both have strong communities, you can share your projects here as well. And at the very least, you should have a Facebook business page.

Google is still your best resource. Take the time to look for guest writing platforms in your respected niche. Content marketing is still a powerful tool for reaching a wide audience. Many platforms are always look for expert writers, contact the webmaster and share your content. Try your local Chamber of Commerce. Here's a free contractor directory to list your business.

Research takes a lot of time but it can be rewarding. No matter what you do, it takes time to build an online business. If you keep at it, you'll get there. There's enough resources here to get you started.

A Guide To Wordpress SEO

Wordpress is one of the most used content management systems (CMS) in the world. There's a reason why Wordpress is popular. Wordpress is easy to use, has a great interface, has awesome plugins that bring your website to life and you can optimize your website with SEO. I've worked on several different platforms, Shopify, Joomla, Drupal, Modern Retail, Magneto. Out of them all, I prefer Wordpress and that is what I always suggest to my clients.

For new users, Wordpress can seem overwhelming. There's a lot to learn and there's a lot of great resources out there, but you have to constantly search to find what you need. Now, you can find everything you need to know about Wordpress SEO with our complete guide. If you're struggling to rank your Wordpress website or you are new to Wordpress, this will be your go-to guide.

Complete Guide To Wordpress SEO

Check Out Our New Blog At Hale Web Development

It has been nearly 6 months since I wrote a new post, we've been swamped at work. I felt guilty that everyone has been by and there hasn't been one single piece of new content up. It has been a great year for Hale Associations, it truly has. We've seen some great growth with client portfolios, we've been able to bring in some great new clients for 2015 and we're super excited about our own personal projects that we have going on. 2015 is going to be great.

Hale Web Development is our new blog. We need to step away from the subdomain, but we appreciated our time here. And I can't leave the blog that hosted us for so many years. We had several awesome new case studies to publish in 2015. It will be the first time that we're able to do so, so I'm real excited about that.

The new blog has some great articles, resources and information, so please take the time to go learn, study, or just check out our new platforms. Business News Today will also be launched very soon. I'm extremely excited about this new project and it's going to be open to everyone. Anyone out there looking to jump-start your career, feel free to contact us. We have several platforms that will allow you to publish your work in front of an established audience to get your name out there.

I can't believe it has nearly been 8 years ago when I first started as a freelance SEO. From that moment to where all of us are today, just incredible. And we appreciate all your support over the years. I learned from a lot of great people and I didn't always think that I could get along with other SEOs. That's just the nature of the business. However, I was wrong, I learned some great things along the way and I'm thankful for those friendships.

I will do my best to get back over to Blogger to write, but I have a lot going on. So please be sure to check out Hale Web Development.

We again saw a lot of different changes with Google this year. We learned that 7 out of the top 10 SEO ranking factors are associated to social signals. We know that Google is still cleaning up their links and we saw the beginning/end of Google Authorship. And Facebook is opening up the New Year with another big change to their news feed. This is just the beginning. We'll we ever see Page Rank again? And how does Google rate Page Rank now?

Hale Associations is now also affordable training in SEO, SEM and online marketing. And we still provide the same services that we have been for years. Don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions. We will always appreciate your support and we wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Wishing you nothing but success in 2015.

Facebook Marketing Stats To Know

Facebook Marketing

 

As many of you already know, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. Over 1.2 billion active users, no other social community even comes close to this type of audience. I know all of you have had mixed results on Facebook, some of you may have not advertised on Facebook. The ROI is there ladies and gentlemen, you just need to ensure your setting your Facebook marketing campaigns up for success and not failure.

 

I have a great read for you all today. Facebook Marketing Stats To Know

 

Are your social media marketing campaigns working? If not, we can help. The most important element of your social media marketing plan is the plan itself. How many of you are social marketing without a detailed plan? How many are not tracking results? Trial and error? This could very well be your issue. You need a strong developed Facebook marketing campaign, run your trial and errors.

 



Link Building Data And Analytics

Link Building Metrics

 

Link building is a crucial aspect of SEO efforts and your position in search engine rankings. Without the proper link building tools or SEO software, you can't properly evaluate your links. Every link has its own metrics. Each link has an age, value, strength, passing page rank, do follow or no follow attributes, a lot of important values. Without this information, your link building in the dark and that won't bring the results you need.

 

In the article below, you'll learn everything you need to know in determining the values of links. You'll learn the type of software that is needed and how you can evaluate each link you have.

 

Determining Link Values For Link Building

 

Be sure to visit our new blog at Hale Web Development



Free Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers, Google+ And More

Free Likes, Followers, Circles, Shares And More

Social media marketing has become an important aspect of SEO and general marketing. Social metrics now have a value. SMM gives you the opportunity to grow your network, interact with customers, generate leads and promote your business. If you're a new company or have a new social platform, that can be easier said then done. Many people have a budget that allows them to either pay someone for their social media marketing or they pay for SMM signal themselves. What happens if you don't have money to grow your social platforms? Now, you have an option and it's absolutely free.

AddMeFast allows you to grow your social networks easy and fast. With a little work, time and effort, you'll be able to grow your social community in no time. All you have to do is like or follow another page and they'll like or follow you back. It's real simple. AddMeFast is one of the largest social exchange websites in the world. It has a massive load of traffic. You get points each time you like or follow another. In return, you use the points you earn to get likes and follows for your webpages.

AddMeFast has several options for Facebook. You can gain Facebook likes, free shares and free followers. On Twitter, you can gain free followers, get free retweets, free favorites and free tweets. AddMeFast doesn't stop there, you'll also find services for Instagram, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Sound Cloud and others.

As I said before, AddMeFast is absolutely free, it won't cost you anything to start growing your social network for free. They do have paid options. You can get unlimited points for a few hundred dollars a week. Sounds expensive but you can get a lot done with this package. If you don't have money, just use the free account. If you complete 20 actions, you get a daily bonus of 150 points. This is a great SMM tool for new websites, businesses or online accounts. Check it out here!

SEO Guide For Beginners

Search Engine Optimization For Beginners

 

Learning SEO can be a challenge, especially for those who don't know much about the internet and SEO terminology. Search engine optimization is crucial to all websites that want to be successful. Without SEO, you'll get lost in between millions of websites on the world wide web. Where do you start though? For beginners, you can start learning SEO from the guide below. Just follow the link and learn search engine optimization and begin to increase your rankings today.

 

Search Engine Optimization Guide For Beginners

Affordable SEO Services

High Quality SEO Services At An Affordable Price

 

When it comes to SEO, it's no secret, every website needs it to be successful. Search engine optimization is how you make a website succeed, without it, your lost at seas with millions of other websites. As a business and company, if you don't know SEO, you're at a disadvantage. You have two choices, you either learn SEO or you hire a SEO company, firm or freelancer. How do you know where to go? Do you get what you pay for? Should you hire a SEO firm or a freelancer SEO. IF you don't know, you may risk your website and business.

 

I spent most of my time through the years as a freelance SEO. I spent 5 years as a freelancer, learning from other SEOs, working for hundreds of companies during that time. When I founded Hale Associations, we started from the bottom. In the past few years, we've grown at a great rate and our reputation is great. In my line of work, reputation is everything and it has been the main aspect of our new customers.

 

Over 50 percent of the clients we take on have already had SEO services and bad at that. They took a risk, hired someone they didn't know and left their website in worse shape then they had prior. There's nothing worse then going behind and cleaning up such a mess. I'm sure other SEOs can relate. You have enough resources these days to find a quality SEO company, agent or freelancer. It's called Google my friend. Although you can find everything, this can give you a good general idea of what a company can do for you.

 

I know some SEOs companies that charge thousands of dollars a month, up to $5000 and more. More then likely, these companies are all automated and have software doing the job. Back in the days, this type of SEO was effective. Some is still today but you risk your website in the process. Google will eventually notice and you could lose your business and a lot of money. My point, just because a big company charges you more doesn't mean that their services are any better then the next Joe in line.

 

The great thing about blogs is the fact that many SEO companies and experts have one. This is where we promote our services, offer advice and tips, among other things. Personally, I don't write about SEO much because I don't want to give away my techniques and secrets. However, I don't care to help others out. I assume many others are in relation with that statement, we don't like showcasing the total package. Even so, you can get a good read on them and their talent just by reading their blog post.

 

Most people choose to go through a freelancer to save time and money. Unfortunately, this can be a risk as well. Again, it is your job and responsibility to research your freelancer, see if they have reviews or case studies. Ask for past references or projects. Schedule an interview and ask questions. There's enough competition out there for you to get quality services at an affordable price. Take the time, get a notebook and begin your search.

 

At Hale Associations, I always ask others to take the time to review our work, reviews and portfolio. You don't have to go through a major SEO company to get high quality SEO results. You don't have to go through a freelancer to get affordable SEO services. There's plenty of companies and experts out there that offer the best of both worlds.

 

I apologize for the late blog post. We're continuing to grow and we're moving our blog to a new domain, Hale Web Development. Our blog here will remain operational and you'll be able to access our new blog from here also. I want to personally think everyone for taking the time to read our blog and thanks for sharing our work. We're still offering all our web development services and still offer free quotes and evaluations. Don't hesitate to give me or the team a call. Thanks again!

Every SEO Needs Software And Tools

The Right SEO Software And Tools

Every webmaster needs to know aspects of SEO in now and beyond. If you don't know SEO or you don't have a SEO working for you, it's going to be tough to take your business or website where it needs to be. Having the right tools and software makes a huge difference in performance. If you can't track and analyze your data, you won't know where to focus your effort. On top of that, you'll be shooting in the dark.

 

Above, you'll see the SEO software that we use, WebMeUp. Not only do we operate WebMeUp, we also use Google Webmaster Tools, Hrefs and Moz. Trust me, you can't never have enough tools. I know how tough it is to afford your software, I was in those shoes before. However, you have to invest in tools. Google Webmaster and Google Analytics are great but they only get you so far. If you're not aware of these tools, their both free. If you don't have the money to invest, Webmaster and Analytics will certainly get you going. You can track SEO related data and user behavior data, both very important.

 

Again, if you don't have the right tools, how can you get the job done right? Think about that for a moment. Can you take an engine out of your truck without the right tools? Absolutely not. You may be able to get so far but you can't complete he job. If you have SEO clients, you obviously want to offer them the best services possible, right? Your clients deserve that, invest in the tools and resources you need. It's going to make your life as a SEO easier also.

 

Let's talk about WebMeUp. I'm not an affiliate with WebMeUp, they don't even have an affiliate program. It's just great software for SEO, including link building. I've been doing SEO for 7 years and I know SEO software can be expensive. On top of that, you have very little options with added features and prices. With WebMeUp, you do have options and quite a few. Basic options start at only $19.99 a month. You can customize your software features to your needs.

 

Below, you'll find my review on WebMeUp and exactly why I'm so enthusiastic about their software.

 

 



Search Engine Optimization Services

 

SEO Services By Hale Associations

 

Search engine optimization is crucial for your website. In a time where SEO is so competitive, having an expert SEO company is important to your success. At Hale Associations, we value and honor your business. We completely understand the importance of search engine optimization and web development. It doesn't matter if you're new to the online world or you've been established online for years, we have the resources to improve your rankings in search engines. Best of all, all of our clients receive 24/7 SEO support, free evaluations and free audits for the lifetime of your agreement with us. That's just a few of the benefits you receive at Hale Associations.

 

SEO services can cost upward of $2,000 dollars or more. For some companies, there's no room to budget search engine optimization services. At Hale Associations, we offer affordable SEO services. Our SEO packages start out at $599.99 a month. We can even do your SEO on budget. Granted, your results may take longer to turn around on budget services but it gets you started on your SEO issues. Although we recommend having a budget of $1,000, we can help with lower budgets.

 

Our SEO services at Hale Associations include all elements that contribute to SEO rankings. Keyword research, link building, meta descriptions, headings, titles, sitemaps, product descriptions and SEO writing are just a few of SEO services offered at Hale Associations. Hale Associations offers a variety of different web development services at affordable prices, such as web design, analytics, social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising and business planning. We're your leading source in web development and business management.

 

It doesn't matter if you're a small business or have a small private business, Hale Associations can help. Our team of web specialist and experts are here to help your website and business succeed. There's a lot of SEO companies and SEO experts out there that pass on your needs. You'll never be done like that with us. We are different, your project won't be passed along from one SEO to another. We follow a detailed plan that has shown proven results of success based on our case studies that date back 7 years ago when CEO Richard Hale began working as a SEO. Although there's aspects of search engines that we can't control, we can guarantee you that we'll increase your rankings and traffic.

 

If you're struggling with traffic and rankings, we can help. Contact us today by phone or by email. You can also visit our website for complete details. We always respond within an hour and can usually perform your free audit and evaluation in the same day. Call now (304) 752-3433 or (304) 601-6608. Send emails to haleassociations@gmail.com

Adding Custom Robot.txt In Blogger

Robot.txt In Blogger

 

If you're looking to add Robot.txt to your blog at Blogger, this article will guide you through the process and show you the correct text to add to your robot.txt. There's several different ways to optimize your blog in Blogger. Having a correct robot.txt file is an important element. I'm going to walk you through the entire process right now.

 

First, what is a robot.txt file and why do I need one to optimize my blog in Blogger? Your robot.txt file is important because it is a guide for the search engines. Your robot.txt file is going to tell the search bot what you want read and what you don't want included. The robot.txt file will help search engines read through your blog and index your blog. It's very important and every website should have a robot.txt file stored.

 

Now, the very first thing you want to do is go to your blog list and choose the appropriate blog title to add the robot.txt file. Let's do this now.

 

 

After you choose the correct blog that you want to add the robot.txt file to, you want to scroll down on your left menu to settings. You'll see a list of options under settings, you want to go to "search preferences." Click on the link.

 

 

After you follow the link to search preferences, you'll be brought up to a page that controls all search related inquires. It's important to note that if you don't have your meta description filled out, you should add it since you're already here. You'll need to turn this feature on. This will also turn on the description feature for each individual blog post. You'll now have the ability to add meta descriptions to all your post in Blogger. If you do to post a blog, if you look at the right side menu, you'll see a search option now. This is where you add your meta description in Blogger. Very important.

 

Ok. Next, you want to scroll down to the second to last option. You'll see an option field for custom robot.txt. This is exactly what you're are looking for. This is where you add your robot.txt to Blogger.

 

 

If you refer to the picture above, you can see that I've added a my code to my robot.txt file. I know the picture is a little hard to read. If you look below, you'll see the same exact code that you need to add to your robot.txt file. The ONLY text you're going to change is where it says yoururl.blogspot.com  You need to add your own unique Blogger URL to this field. Everything else will remain the same. Copy and paste the code below, change the URL to your own and you will now have the correct code for your robot.txt file in Blogger. This will help you search results and you can now add your meta descriptions to your blog post if you chose to add your meta description at the top of the page. Below, you'll see the code that you need for your robot.txt file.

 

The code below will read up to 500 post. If you have more then 500 blog post, you will need to post another robot.txt file and change the 500 to 1000. You continue to increase the number by 500.

 

Robot.txt Code

 

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /
Sitemap: http://yoururl.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

 

 

 

A robot.txt file is important to every website, just in case you found this article by error. The search engines will now know what to search on your blog and this will help with your rankings and traffic. Hale Associations offers several different SEO services. Contact us today for a free consult and evaluation. Thanks for visiting our blog.

 

 

 

 









March 2014 New Google Algorithm Update

 

New Google Algorithm Update March 2014?

 

 

At first, I thought my SEO software was lagging out. On March 25th, I noticed a drop in 18 of 27 accounts that we manage. After some research and talking to other SEO specialist, I've come to the conclusion that Google made an update. Is this the "soft" Panda update? Funny, we always practice white had methods and abide by Google policy. Even so, we saw drops on 18 accounts. There's not much about it at this time but we know something's going on.

 

I talked to dozens of SEOs in the past week and all of them were reporting lost traffic and rankings. Some of them manage 50 or more websites and saw decreases on all their accounts. The more research I did, I noticed that black hat SEOs were reporting that their traffic is up! WTF! How could this be? Well, it wouldn't be the first time. It appears that black hats have won another round.

 

Most of our accounts are a year or older. I believe I speak for everyone else when I say that seeing all your hard work down the drain because of a Google update is BS. What can we do? Throw the game plan away and start from scratch? Perhaps it isn't as bad as it appears. How can you practice exactly what Google preaches and still fail to please the search engine giant? It's not like we have another search engine to go to. Google knows we're along for the ride, so what gives?

 

I saw one of our prime accounts drop from 8.08 to 3.64 in website strength. Nearly all our accounts dropped from 3-4 to under 1-2. Why we search for answers, many of you may not even realize what's going on. Most webmasters don't have high dollar SEO software. Sometimes I wonder why we even do. Maybe someone can gladly comment and shine a light on this mess for us all. All I know is that we're not alone and some big authority websites have lost a lot during this new Google update.

 

So, what now? After 7 years of this, you do what we always do. Pick up the pieces, tell your clients and start climbing the charts again. This is the life of a SEO. If you're new to it, get use to it. We benefited from all the link changes last year, so perhaps it was our turn to get plugged this time. I'm sure we'll find out sooner then later. The recent spike of interaction notes that this change has effected a lot of companies and freelancers I would assume. I'll keep you posted as soon as I find a reliable source for information, "Google."



4-02-14 Update

 

I don't know about everyone else, but it appears that the chatter has calmed down and our results have returned since last week's episode. Very weird occurrence. Perhaps it was an April's Fools joke from Google? As of now, 16 of 18 websites have returned to normal and (5) have increased significantly since the drop. I haven't had time to get online and review anything yet, hopefully I can in a few days. I'll let you know what I find. I'll be monitoring my odd out websites to see if they rebound. We'll keep you posted.

Social Media Marketing Techniques

SMM TIPS AND TECHNIQUES

 

Social Media Marketing has several great benefits that can help you grow your brand, network and increase your SEO rankings. As more and more people operate and connect with one another on social media platforms, it brings a great opportunity for you to promote your business, services and products. For social media marketing to be beneficial to you, a plan and approach is needed. Anyone can make post with text, pictures, info graphics and videos. Anyone can follow, like, share, tweet and comment. The key is learn what works and what doesn't, usually involving test runs and careful analysis. The biggest factor for a business marketing on social media platforms is targeted the right audience.

 

This social media marketing video and post mostly pertains to those who are not familiar with SMM and those that are new to social media marketing. I believe another important aspect outside of an target audience is finding out which social platforms will benefit your company the most. Of course, this is going to depend on the type of business you have and what sector you operate in. Major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are a given but you may not have the time or budget to operate on all three social websites. What do you do? It only makes sense to use the social platforms that will benefit your business the most.

 

You have to forgive me for my videos. I'm still new at this, a little shaky but listen to what I have to say. I've been running a case study on the impact of social media influence pertaining to SEO results. The case study is only a few months old and I will post it once I'm done in the next few weeks. What is the influence score of social pertaining to SEO results? I believe it's 7-8 percent. My personal belief and according to my case study, I believe this can range from 3-15 percent, 3 being for small social metrics and 15 for being large social metrics. This is what my case study tells me about a new website with little SEO influence during a 6 month old span.

 

None the less, social media marketing is becoming more valuable in terms of search engine optimization. Authority is important when it comes to your social profiles. The link your promoting, likely your business URL, plays a role in the value of your social media accounts also. You build authority to your social media platforms by building your social network, just like building a website and growing rankings. The social media marketing techniques below will help you build that authority.

 

More SMM Techniques

 

• Be active on all your social media platforms.
• Make sure your post are descriptive and informative.
• Encourage others to share your post.
• Share, like, comment and engage on other profiles and communities.
• Follow respected and authority accounts within your niche.
• Update your social accounts regularly.
• Mix your post up with text, videos, info graphics and pictures.
• Don't be afraid to post something controversial.
• Link your other social profiles together if you can.
• Join communities and groups.
• Comment on post that are in your niche and in your expertise.
• Build links back to your website and share relative links.
• If you build a valuable profile, others will come.
• Have free giveaways or specials to draw attention
• Always be professional, your image is on display.

 

 

 

Remember, it's extremely important to know what is working and what is not. Once you know, you're going to save money and time, possible increasing your bottom line in the process. Run test and carefully document what works and what doesn't. If you do so, you'll find which social platforms work best for you and what type of post get the most interaction.

 



SEO Tips When Dealing With Broken Links

DEALING WITH BROKEN LINKS

Broken links can be a big nightmare for webmasters if the situation gets out of control. The good news, there's a ton of great link checking tools to help you find broken links. If you operate on Wordpress, there's several different plugins that you can use. Google Webmaster also has apps for checking broken links. Dealing with broken links can be a hassle, especially if your making changes.

We recently did some work for an old client and he told us that he went from 0 broken links to 9,000 broken links overnight. Big red flag, right? "What did you do," I asked him. "Nothing." You don't go from 0 broken links to 9K broken links overnight unless something big changed. When I finally went into our software and checked the backlinks, every link was a 404.

So, what did I find out? My client operates an e-commerce website and they did an upgrade. They added a new "shop" feature within Wordpress and it added "shop" to every URL. It caused the entire URL structure of the website to change and caused everyone of his links to bring up 404 codes. Although this wasn't my client's fault, his rankings did fall. If the change was overnight, he probably wouldn't have dropped traffic and rankings so much. Since it took him a month to call, he lost most of his linking domains and dropped 3K indexed pages on Google.

CHANGING YOUR URL? BETTER BE PREPARED

 

If you plan to change your URL anytime soon, you better prepare to make the appropriate link changes. This can cause a whirlwind of events that can plummet your SEO rankings, not to mention your user experience. In the case above, my client's entire website was down from broken links. All the major links that we acquired in the previous year was erased during the 3.5 week process. We saw a traffic loss of 76 percent and it took a full month to recover from the traffic. The rankings still haven't recovered.

 

Although my client wasn't at fault, it shows you what can happen when you have that many broken links. This is the same reason most webmasters never change their URL. You should always be sure to use the right URL before you start building your website. As you can see with this case, you never when something can happen. In this case, his e-commerce provider was at fault. I won't mention any names but I know the website has went down (2) more times since.

 

BROKEN LINKS AND SEO

 

Broken links are not good for SEO or user experience. If your website has broken links, they need to be fixed. Yes, your SEO rankings can be affected but your also missing out on traffic. If you continue to have broken links and your website strength falls, you may also lose valuable link partners and associations. Not to mention losing valuable traffic that can hurt your bottom line.

 

Be careful who you choose to do your SEO also. We've had a few different clients that had SEO services done and they went in and changed permalinks. Without thinking or perhaps lacking real SEO skills, they made a big mess that we had to clean up. Before you make any changes to your link structures, you may want to consider the consequences of doing so. 

Affordable SEO Services

Affordable SEO

If you're looking for affordable SEO services, we can help. Hale Associations has been offering affordable SEO services for 7 years. With SEO packages starting at only $150 a week, we're one of the most affordable SEO companies in the world. If you include our free SEO consultations, free SEO evaluations and our 24/7 SEO support, the value of our search engine optimization packages is that much more valuable.

Every website needs SEO also known as search engine optimization. SEO techniques are used to develop your website, build traffic and grow your online presence. There's hundreds of search engine optimization techniques that can be used to grow your website. The key is evaluating your website and determining the specific needs of your website or blog.

Trusted SEO Services

If the need has come for you to hire an SEO agency, you need to make sure they can provide you with the SEO services you expect. You want to choose a SEO company that provides exactly what they offer. At this day and age, everyone is called a SEO. However, a title doesn't make you a SEO expert. You have to be careful who you trust and depend on to help your website and blog grow.

Over the years, Hale Associations has provide SEO services to hundreds of websites and blogs. We've worked in dozens of different niches and we've optimized websites according to their needs. As SEO continues to change, you need to make sure the SEO is changing with the times. In 2013, we saw the landscape change and the effects of negative link building that hurt thousands of websites. It's changes like that can make your website successful.

SEO In 2014

SEO is always evolving and one of the most important aspects is keeping up with all the changes that involve search engine optimization. SEO in 2014 is not the same as in 2013 and before. Hale Associations continues to only use white hat SEO methods with great results. Google made a lot of changes in 2013 and these changes molded the landscape going into 2014 and beyond. If your search optimization services isn't up to date, your results may not be as effective before.

The biggest element of SEO that changed in 2013 was link building. Link building was tough before Google made all their changes in 2013. Today, link building remains to be one of the toughest aspects of search engine optimization. So many webmasters were hit in 2013 with link penalties that damaged their rankings and website. Many webmasters have abandoned their websites and moved on.

High quality content remains to be the best way to increase your search engine rankings. I read a great article the other day on content and how content ranks in search engines. Everyone has a different opinion in regards to content building. How many articles should I publish? Should I keep my blog updated daily or weekly? How long should my content be? The article I read discussed the content that ranked on the first page of Google. How many words did the average article have that ranked on the first page of Google? Can you guess? 500? 1,000? 1,500? These aren't even close. Try 2,600.

Years ago, you could publish a few hundred words, build a few links and rank at the top of Google. In 2014, most of you won't unless you have an authority website. The point, SEO is always changing and you have to keep up with these changes. If you're hiring an SEO, make sure they know what their talking about. Make sure they are aware of the constant changes in SEO. Don't make the mistake of hiring someone that takes the title of SEO, It's your responsibility to make sure you get a real SEO expert.

Our Promise

At Hale Associations, you receive affordable SEO services from real expert SEO specialist. You get the comfort of working with a small SEO company that has your best interest at heart. Big major SEO companies can cause your website and business to be lost in the crowd of hundreds and thousands of clients. At Hale Associations, you're always put first and your business will always be in the hands of real professional search engine optimization experts. You'll never have to wait days and weeks for an answer to your questions, our customer service staff ranks among the best in customer care.

We're always here to help you succeed and we have the experience and trust to help you grow your website in the quickest most effective way. To get a free consult and evaluation today, be sure to give us a call at (304) 752-3433 or fill out our contact form above.

SEO Tips And Techniques-Relative Associations

Learning Search Engine Optimization

 

Learning search engine optimization is crucial to all webmasters. Having a basic understanding of SEO and SEO techniques will help you build a successful website. At Hale Associations, we enjoy helping others by providing SEO tips and techniques. Today, we're going to be discussing relative associations. We always appreciate your feedback and time, don't forget to leave us a comment.

 

RELATIVE ASSOCIATIONS FOR SEO

 

Let's talk about relative associations and how it can increase your SEO rankings. Do you know why we're discussing relative associations rather then just associations? This is due to recent changes with Google. One SEO told me that relativity is the new PR. I thought about it for a few minutes and it actually inspired me to write this post. When your building links or associations for your business or website, you have to make sure it's relative and related. Hale Associations is in the SEO niche. Yes, we can play around with keywords such as social media marketing, do follow links and many other terms related to SEO. However, if I'm building links, I don't want to build links to unrelated or unassociated niches.

 

As of March 2014 and looking forward, you want your link building efforts to go to related associations. Joining business associations related to your niche is a great way to build website authority and strength. If I take my SEO business and I'm wanting to build links, I want to build links in business associations for SEO. If you have a real estate website and you're trying to build links or built your authority, linking to credible business association list and directories in real estate is a great way to so it.

 

STAY WITHIN YOUR NICHE

 

I know it can be tempting when your running your link building campaign and you come across a PR7 website that is unrelated to your business or website. You look up the link and it's a do follow link. Of course, this will not hurt your website but don't make it habit. So many webmasters fall in this trap. They go for all the high PR non-related associations and directories. Your website is not worth the risk, you keep this up an you're going to get penalized.

 

Business association links are great for your website and great for building trust. You just need to make sure their related. Don't get yourself in trouble. I don't care if they have categories or not. A good quality niche directory listing can do a lot of for your rankings. Stay within your niche and you're going to be fine.

 

CHOOSING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

 

You need to make sure you're choosing the right keywords when you start going through Google searching for niche business associations and directory listings. You can use a lot of different SEO techniques when your link building or searching for quality directories. I believe the most important SEO tip I can give you is choosing the right keywords. You want to choose your best keywords, the keywords that have a good high score and plenty of traffic. I recently brought on a new SEO client and his main keyword is IT Consultants. I've been doing SEO for 7 years now and I know IT Consultants, IT Consulting are great keywords. I went to Google search, searched for "IT Consultant Business Associations." Plenty of great results, quality IT associations and many of them were free. I signed him up to around 10 or so, all were do follow and we seen good results in a few weeks. Remember, some links can take weeks to post.

 

Point taken, you can find quality associations in your niche, do follow links for your link building efforts and they can increase your website authority. This can be extremely beneficial if you have a new website or struggle with rankings. Choosing the right keywords is important, so make sure you're choosing the right set of keywords or phrases.

 

BUILDING LOCAL LINKS IS EFFECTIVE

 

Building local links within local business association listings and directories can be a great idea for your website. In terms of SEO, you really can't go wrong going local. Of course, the bigger your city, the better your results but it doesn't hurt to build local for your SEO. You always have local citations you can do also. If you do live in a small city or community, think about building it under the closest city to your business. Hale Associations offers freelance SEO services to the world. Even through I do, I still promote locally. It doesn't hurt. I'm located in a city with a few thousand people. There's not many people searching for SEO services in Logan, West Virginia. Although this is true, we still offer services here and we're a local business. That has value in terms of SEO and a justified business decision.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

Association list and directories, local or niche related, it is an effective SEO technique. Remember, stay within your niche. Targeting less PR website is ok. If you have all links from PR4-7, Google will get you. Your linking profile, including anchor links, it should be diverse with a bunch of N/A and PR0 website and less higher PR websites. You don't have to pay for great quality business association links, it just takes some extra time searching and doing all that SEO type of work. Nothing wrong with building local, it has more value then a link or article.

 

As always, thanks for visiting my blog. If you have any questions, want to add to this article or you want to throw me under the bus, leave a comment! Hale Associations provides freelance SEO and web development services. If you're in need of our services, give us a call or send us an email. If you enjoyed my article, please take the time to share it. I enjoy helping others with SEO and web development solutions. I hope you've found this article useful and thanks for your time. 

Grow Your Social Network Channels Fast And Easy

GROWING FAST SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS

 

 

If you're looking to grow your social media channels fast and easy, there is an option. I usually don't recommend this for SEO purposes but if you just want to grow your social channels for the numbers, this is a fast, quick, easy way to grow a social network. Add Me Fast is a social exchange where you can gain quick new real followers by following the same accounts that follow you. It's simple, easy and Add Me Fast is legit.

 

Social Media Exchanges are a great way to grow a social media platform. However, if you choose other social exchanges, you have to be careful. There's quite a few that are rigged and their not worth your time and effort. Add Me Fast is legit and I've never had a problem with them. They have a new interface and the website is much quicker then before. I believe it is the 2nd most popular social media exchange website online.

 



At Add Me Fast, you'll be able to grow your Facebook followers, Twitter followers, Google+ circles, Instagram followers, Pinterest followers, Vine followers and much more. It's a simple system how Add Me Fast works. If you're looking for Facebook followers, you'll go and like other Facebok pages. In return, others will like your Facebook page. You get points for each successful like or follow. You also get a daily bonus if you do 20 actions.

If you want to grow your social network fast, Add Me Fast is a great free way to do it. Sign up for Add Me Fast now.

Social Media Marketing Techniques

Social Media Marketing Techniques

 

When it comes to social media marketing, there's hundreds of social media marketing techniques that a marketer can use. Your social media marketing strategy can be developed with these same social media marketing techniques. Before you make your social media marketing campaign, there's some very important elements to remember. Every social media platform is different. It doesn't matter if it's YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Google, every social website has pros and cons. The second aspect depends on what type of business your promoting and marketing. One company may have success on Facebook while another fails. Don't spend your money, time and effort without considering these two points.

 

With everything above considered, our first social media marketing technique is to find which social media platforms best benefit your business. Before you even consider an approach, you need to find which social media websites will benefit your company. Most major companies promote on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are the two largest social media platforms. The daily traffic exceeds in the millions. Nearly every business can benefit from marketing on these two social channels. Although you probably already know this, I would suggest everyone promotes on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Now, the rest of your social media marketing efforts should depend on what type of business you have. For example, let's use LinkedIn as an example. LinkedIn is a huge social media website, but it's designed to benefit professionals. If you're a business that does freelance work, LinkedIn can be a benefit to you. If you're trying to sell products, you're better off pointing your social media marketing campaign elsewhere. Not to say you can't sell on LinkedIn, just that you have to market where you have a higher chance of making sales. Point is, you need to find social media platforms that benefit your business.

 

Every social media marketing campaign that you have should be different since each social website has different features, On Twitter, you're limited to 160 characters in your tweet. Include your URL or a picture and it's that much less. On Facebook, you have up to 2,000 characters. On Digg, all you have is a link. On YouTube, you can add keywords. On most social media websites, you can add hashtags that play the role of a keyword. These are very important and how your post can be found. Most social websites allow you to use hashtags, just make sure their relative to your post.

Interaction is a very effective social media marketing technique. It doesn't matter which social communities to choose to promote, you have to be interactive on them all. This gives you or your business a whole new level of customer service. If someone has a question, answer it. This lets your followers know that your business cares. Customer feedback can extremely helpful to your business, it should always be considered as a main priority.

Every post you make can be shared and go viral. Another SMM technique used in social promotions is asking your followers to share. Encourage others to share your post, pictures and videos is another effective social media marketing technique. Take the time to read and share other post that you like. Again, if you're supporting others, it's possible that they will support you as well. Every share is important because it opens your post to a whole new audience, increasing the chances of your post to be viewed.

When it comes to social media marketing, you have to develop a strategy for posting. This will depend on your targeted audience and your specific goals for social media marketing. Everyone should have a unique strategy for their business. If your a company that sells paintings, most of your post should be pictures. If your company promotes white board marketing, most of your post will be videos. Determine which posting methods will benefit your business more. I good mixture of videos, content and pictures will give you the best results.

You want your social media platforms to be useful to your followers. You can do this with great content, helpful post, giving your fans value from your social profiles. Think of creative ways to bring in more fans and keep followers coming back. You can have contest, special discounts and special features that draw people in. Using creative apps are a great way to bring people coming back. You have to give your followers value. If you do so, they'll keep coming back and you'll grow your social networks.

Hale Associations provides a variety of social media marketing services. We also provide web development services, such as SEO, SEM, PPC, hosting and web design. Get a free quote and evaluation today by calling (304) 752-3433 or (304) 601-6608.



Best SMM Tips-How To Gain Twitter Followers

BEST SMM TIPS-HOW TO GAIN TWITTER FOLLOWERS

If you're looking to gain more Twitter followers, here you'll find some of the best SMM tips for Twitter. If you're new to social media marketing techniques and general social media marketing (SMM), each social media community is different. Some social media marketing strategies can work for one social platform while others will not. If you're planning to start a social media marketing campaign, you should base your plan on your specific niche and the type of social website you plan to market on. An important tip to remember.

Twitter is a very popular social media website and it's a popular platform for SMM. Nearly all the major companies in the world have a Twitter account. Most of them promote and reach out to their fans and customers daily. Twitter and other social media websites give you the opportunity to interact on a personal level, a whole new feel to customer experience. If you plan on a SMM campaign on Twitter or any other social media accounts, daily interaction is important.

Twitter is considered to be a major social media network. Although not widely used as Facebook, don't be surprised to see Twitter surpass Facebook in the near future. You can use Twitter in a variety of different ways and our SMM tips will help you gain Twitter followers and grow your Twitter network.

Following Other Twitter Accounts

When you first start out on Twitter, you'll have the opportunity to follow some of the most popular Twitter accounts. Afterward, you'll have complete access to Twitter once you confirm your email. If you're creating a new Twitter account, you're going to need to follow others. Now, can you follow anyone? Sure. Is that a smart choice? No. You should be careful who you choose to follow. If you're promoting a business, who you follow can have some effects on your business and the way people view your business. If you're out to get as many followers as you can, you may suggest following a bunch of people.

One SMM tip about following others is keeping within your niche. If you own a business on home furniture, you should try to follow writers, bloggers or leading professionals in within your niche. This is important starting out, not as important with older accounts. Be careful not to follow your competition, right? This SMM tip is useful because some of those you follow will follow you back. Not only that, it's possible that they may even retweet your tweet to their followers. If they have 20K followers, your tweet has a high potential of being view a lot of times, possibly retweeted again.

Another social media marketing tip about following Twitter accounts is to follow accounts that do have a lot of followers. Again, this gives your tweets a great chance to be seen. Some of the people that you follow will follow you back. Getting them to retweet your tweets is another story. If you do show your support by retweeting, you have a higher chance of them supporting you. Take the time to retweet and support others, some will return the favor.

Keeping your reputation in mind, one of the quickest ways to gain followers is by asking others to follow you. You can write on your profile "Will Follow Back" and this will help you gain quick followers. If you follow others that follow you, this will also help you gain followers. Always try to support those who support you. You don't have to and again, keep your reputation in mind. However, if you want quick and easy followers on Twitter, this is a great way.

Another SMM technique you can use to gain quick followers is the follow back hash tag. Hash tags are used as keywords, the Twitter search engine uses an algorithm to find relevant hash tags. It's similar to the Google search engine and SEO. If you use your hash tags in your tweets such as #FollowBack or #WeFollowBack, you're going to get a lot of quick followers.

ReTweeting Tweets To Gain Followers

This SMM strategy is very effective in gain new followers. In most cases, if you're retweeting other tweets and supporting others, you have a good chance they'll do the same for you. It's suggested that you target Twitter accounts that have a high level of followers, but this article is how to gain Twitter followers, not how to market in Twitter. When you take the time to send out retweets, it's appreciated. In return, many will retweet your tweet and others will choose to follow you. It's an effective SMM technique to gain Twitter followers.

Be thankful and appreciative to your followers. Show them all that you care and appreciate them taking the time to follow you and retweet your tweets. You can do this by sending a tweet out with their account on it. You can say what you would like, but a simple thank you for following would be fine. Some will do the exact same for you, so it's a smart SMM technique to use. Don't be surprised to gain a few followers per tweet when you use this SMM method.

As you may or may not know, you'll end up seeing a lot of accounts promoting "how to get followers." If you've noticed, most of these Twitter accounts have a lot of followers. They commonly use the #FollowBack or #GetFreeFollowers hash tags. Again, if you're looking to gain a lot of Twitter followers, this is a great way to do it. If you have your reputation in mind and you don't want your social accounts to look like spam, you may not want to use this method.

Gaining Twitter Followers

As you can see, there's a lot of different SMM tips and techniques to gain Twitter followers. There's even more when you get into the specifics of marketing in Twitter, which we'll cover later. You do want to be careful how you choose to gain Twitter followers. Never pay for Twitter followers, you don't have to. If you use these SMM tips for Twitter, you won't have too. In the end, it will be a waste of time, money and effort.

It's important to have as many Twitter followers as you can. Most people that use Twitter use it to promote their services, products or their work. Always be careful what you post also. Always keep your business in mind as well. Thanks for taking the time to read our article on gaining Twitter followers. At Hale Associations, we do offer social media marketing services. If you need your business, products or services promoted on Twitter or other social accounts, be sure to give us a call!
Hale Associations also offers web development services such as SEO and web design. Get a free quote and evaluation today!




Hale Associations
(304) 752-3433
(304) 601-6608
haleassociations@gmail.com

 

Search Engine Optimization Techniques For 2014

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION IN 2014


Search Engine Optimization or (SEO), we all need it so you should take this opportunity to learn it. Search engine optimization techniques are used to rank your website higher on Google and other major search engines. We use SEO techniques to bring in more organic traffic and to rank for keywords. Web development has to include SEO, right? In 2013, Google handed down algorithm updates that changed the landscape of SEO forever. The biggest adjustments were focused on links, which is one of the biggest ranking factors. In the same year, thin content was weeded out making the demand for high quality content even more important. Knowing what we know now, how do we plan to use search engine optimization in 2014?


Writing Quality Lengthy Content

Content has always been important in terms of SEO and ranking. There hasn't always been a need to write lengthy content. A high quality article with a few hundred words and a good link could rank high in early 2013. Now, content needs to have both quality and length. I ran my own personal experiment in late 2013 with content over 1,000 words and content below 1,000 words. I never published any articles below 700 words. Keep in mind, all of the content was associated, within the same subject. I equally used keywords in all 10 articles. I gave each article 6 months to perform, this gave them plenty of time in searches. I used the same valued links on all 10 articles.

Every article with lengthy high quality content performed better. This including higher rankings and high traffic. Without a doubt, my content with 1,000 words or more performed better then my articles below 1,000. All 5 articles below 1,000 were aimed around 800 words. You wouldn't think 200 words would make a difference but it did. The 5 articles above 1,000 words ranged from 1,050-1,350 words. There's no possible way to run a test like this and get 100% validation due to outside forces I have no control over, but I believe I reached 80% to say the least.

Writing quality content is and will remain one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Don't get lazy on your content, on yourself. Don't publish content to keep your blog updated. Don't throw in filler content to get to 1,000 words. You don't need every article to be 1,000 words, this is impossible. However, you do want to write as many words as you can without making your article boring. You still need to apply your keywords to each article, including your title, headings, descriptions and Metadata. Be unique with your content and make it useful to others. If you're just starting out with a website or blog, content is going to help you rank and develop your website. If I had to say a cut-off, you should strive for 500-600 words to be safe, but never below 400.


Link Building Techniques

Link building has been a longtime search engine optimization technique and it's a very important one to say the least. As for SEO, link building techniques have seen some big changes over the years, none more then 2013. If you were a link builder in 2013, you either saw a bonus or you were fired. Google came down hard on links in 2013 and these algorithms have changed the landscape of link building forever. Very few webmasters saw their ranks stay steady. Many crumbled under the new linking laws, never to be heard of again. Others were more fortunate while some even saw increased rankings. It was a busy year for SEOs and link builders in 2013 and their importance in 2014 will only increase.

Most SEOs know that Google wants natural link building. Does this mean that I have to quit finding link partners? Absolutely not. Getting a high valued link is one of the quickest SEO techniques to increase your rankings. In fact, your encouraged to find linking partners. However, there's a few rules you need to follow. We'll say you have a blog about baking. You've been writing on your blog for a year and Google has rewarded you with a PR2. Even with the valued PR, you're still not ranking your keywords on page one. You decide that a little more link juice will put you over the top. You find a website that has a PR6 and you're in luck, their selling links! You check your bank account and you have enough money to buy one! Problem solved, right? In a few weeks, you're sure to get first page rankings.

After a few weeks past, you see your rankings drop. Why? Come to find out, that PR6 website is a link building website that has no association to baking. Get the point? If you're going to build links, what ever technique you may use, you have to keep them associated. If you have a SEO website, you don't want to be linking to websites that are not associated to search engine optimization. This no longer works. 2013 changed link building techniques forever. Link building is still very important. You also have to keep an eye on who is linking to you now. Don't go on in 2014 without checking your links.

Over the years, I've found that writing quality online content is the easiest way to build links. Make your content useful to others. Again, don't write about anything and everything. If you write high quality articles or post, others will link to it naturally. Everyone is an expert at something. It doesn't matter if you're writing about the weather or art, make sure your content is useful. When the time comes to build links, make sure their website and content is associated to yours. This also gives you the opportunity to meet new people, perhaps generating new business depending on what you do.



Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing? What are you talking about? Social media marketing or SMM is becoming an important search engine optimization technique. We saw this in 2013 as SMM is now a ranking factor in the search engine equation. I've been saying I for years, SEO and SMM play hand in hand. Why would SMM play more of a role in search engine optimization? SMM ranks trends, what's hot and what's not. Everyone uses some type of social platform. It could be Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube or LinkedIn. The point, social media channels are still growing. All the major social media platforms have search engines. With more and more authority figures moving toward social media, it's likely to see an increased value in 2014 and beyond.

Your social network will be an important search engine optimization technique. You need to make sure your social channels are active, useful and updated. Will we see this change in 2014? It's very likely. It may take longer but I'm quite sure that SMM will play a much larger role in the near future. Remember, all of these social platforms are relatively young. They've only been around for a few years and they just recently became part of the search engine equation. As they become more needing and valued, you're going to want to make sure you're are adding to your social authority and value.

Just like it always does, most search engine optimization techniques will stay the same or similar. Something is likely to come along and change during the new year, but SEO is alive and well. If you haven't took the time to learn SEO or your wet behind the ears, learn as much as you can. Every successful website and online business has to have SEO. As more and more content is published, everyday that passes, it gets tougher to rank your keywords. There's plenty of trusted content and videos on SEO and search engine optimization techniques. Read, watch and learn.

Richard Hale is CEO and founder of Hale Associations, providing freelance web development services such as SEO, SEM, SMM, SMO, and PPC.

Hale SMM & Marketing Services

HALE SMM & MARKETING SERVICES

Social Media Marketing 101

 

 

 

I wanted to take the time to talk about Hale SMM & Marketing and the different services that we can provide you or your business. I've been an SEO and SMM for nearly 7 years now. SMM or "Social Media Marketing," is a great way to market your products or services. Social Media Marketing has a ton of great benefits. At Hale SMM & Marketing, we use multiple social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, and many more. As you'll see, Social Media Marketing can take your business to the next level.

 

What are the benefits of SMM? Social Media Marketing allows you to grow your network and community. Since social exposure does play a role in SEO, it's important to have active social channels. Marketing on Facebook and all the larger social platforms gives you an opportunity to interact with fans and potential customers. People want to know that your company or business cares about them. Customer service is crucial to any business. That aspect can be equally true when it comes to interaction on your social platforms.

 

Social Media Marketing is important to Web Development. On Facebook, customers are able to like, share and comment on your page. On Twitter, your post can be chosen as a favorite or retweeted. On Google+, fans are able to include you in circles, comment and share This interaction is important. Not only that, each post you make can create links that point back to your website or where needed. On Pinterest, this linking system can give value to your links, which is also important per SEO.

 

How often do I need to post? All of your social accounts should be promoted and marketed daily. For some, this may be difficult, especially if you have 10 social platforms to promote every day. At Hale SMM & Marketing, we promote your social channels daily. Not only that, we promote and post multiple times a day. Each link should include a useful URL pointing back to your services, products or useful information.

 

Is SMM expensive? Hale SMM & Marketing can usually handle multiple social accounts for around $100 a week. If you're looking for SEO, SMM is included in all SEO packages. All our services are freelance services. Professional companies can charge more or less. Your total cost for SMM services depends on your budget and how many social accounts have to be managed. The more accounts you have, the higher the cost.

 

What if I don't have social accounts? Hale SMM & Marketing can build all your social platforms for you. Again, the total cost depends on the amount of social platforms being built. The benefits of SMM services outweighs your cost or initial investment. Studies have shown that social marketing and customer service can work hand in hand. You just need to make sure that you're being active daily and interacting with customers.

 

Make sure that your social accounts are "useful." There has to be value to your social media accounts. If your social accounts offer no value to fans or customers, they won't develop correctly. This can be reviews of your products, useful content about your services or some type of free prize for interaction. Use your imagination, you have to draw interest with useful techniques. You should care about growing all your social networks. Hale SMM & Marketing can develop and maintain all your social accounts. If you're interested in our services or you have any questions, please be sure to leave us a comment. Thanks for your continued support and I hope this article was beneficial to you.

 

 

Richard Hale

304-752-3433

304-601-6608

haleassociations@gmail.com