Here are our favorite search engine optimization and online marketing related posts this week:

From SEOMoz, a great checklist for website optimization reviews (alternatively, you could try our free SEO tool to start your evaluation process). 

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Ernest Hemingway is generally regarded as one of America’s greatest writers and he certainly was an amazing, creative storyteller - a talent that would come in handy when crafting a successful search marketing campaign. Like our Chicago SEO company, Hemingway was from the Windy City; he was born in the suburb of Oak Park. Also, he might have approached SEO and online marketing (especially the copywriting) in a similar fashion - The Papa would have understood that a few quality articles are worth more than dozens of keyword stuffed blog posts.

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Before our Chicago SEO firm or our Chicago web design company starts work on a project, we create a unique plan (every client and their search engine optimization and search engine marketing needs is different, after all) and define our goals. Besides getting our clients on page one of the search engines results, we also tailor our strategy to fit their market, because while there are some SEO techniques that apply to every campaign, every industry has its own idiosyncrasies. These unique elements are especially important to consider when working on off-site SEO, or search engine marketing.

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Creating optimized content that pleases both the search engine spiders and the human visitors is a major part of search engine optimization; however, it is only part of the battle when it comes to conquering the search engine results pages.  This is because once you write that copy, compose that perfect blog post, or shoot that amazing video, you have to promote it.

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You already know how important proper keyword selection is for your search engine optimization and search engine marketing strategies, however, once you have your keywords selected you need to know how to use them - and most importantly, how to use them often but without “keyword stuffing” or other tactics that are not human-friendly.

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Keyword selection is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization - in fact, it can make or break your search engine marketing efforts.  While choosing keywords that are accurately reflect your business (and your location, if applicable) is certainly essential, it is important that your keywords also reflect the terms that people use to search for what your company offers.  In other words, keyword research is really market research.  Here are the five steps to keyword greatness:

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Here are our SEO company’s favorite links of the week:

From ElegantSEO in SEOMoz’s YOUmoz section, an article on defensive SEO and eight good habits that will protect your rankings.

Search Engine Land has a great round up of four small businesses and their success with SEO and search engine marketing.  The main point of the article is similar to SEOGroup’s own approach: every business is different and therefore needs a different strategy.

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In honor of the holiday, this week’s “what if _____ was an SEO?” will not be focused on a particular individual, but rather our nation’s great patriots.  After all, “a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government” (Edward Abbey), and SEO companies must always be ready to defend their clients against poor rankings and low positions in the SERPs. 

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There are an insanely high number of social media sites out there - just keeping up with all the new developments in that sphere can be a daunting prospect. However, the content and user information on most of these sites shows up in the SERPs; for instance, if you search my first name, my LinkedIn profile is on the first page. Something similar happens for your business if you use your company name in any of your social media profiles. Furthermore, placing links to your website on social media sites is a key component of a solid search engine optimization strategy.

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You’ve probably seen at least one of the recent articles how Flash websites and SEO are no longer mutually exclusive; however, Flash elements aren’t exactly search engine optimization friendly all of a sudden either.  The real changes that Adobe’s recent announcement about how they are teaming up with Google and Yahoo to make Flash sites able to be indexed by search engines are somewhere in between.

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