A long time ago, back in the dark ages of 2008, we wrote an article about building your SEO content. We know, because we recently practiced a little bit of the due diligence we preach so much about, and performed a content audit. Although it’s easy to say, “Things have changed a lot” or “SEO changes quickly,” we got a good view of how much things have changed by digging through our dusty archives.

Building Your SEO Content

The original version of this article, “Building Your SEO Content” (no longer available), was written in simple terms anyone can understand. Write articles rich in content and key terms. Even then, we were cautioning businesses to keep the terms to a minimum, and not overpower the content with SEO. Yet, we also spoke about things like article directories and Ezine sites.

Yes, indeed – many things have changed. One of the biggest things to change is our own approach to content development and marketing; you can’t help but grow your understanding when you put things in practice on a daily basis.

Content Domination
We recently wrote about content domination – using content to stay ahead of the competition. However, the focus of the article was on the competition itself, not on your readership. –And really, what good is dominating in the SERPs if your readers aren’t satisfied? What good is doing anything if it doesn’t translate to growing your readership and sales? To be honest, it doesn’t do you much good at all.

How Much Can You Reasonably Expect Them To Read?

With content domination, it’s easy to get into the habit of pouring out content in a flood. You can, however, ending up washing your readers right out of your pages, articles and blog posts. For example, sometimes Mashable puts out several articles in a day, and you think, “Wow, I wish I could do that!” Not everybody is a Mashable. In fact, most people aren’t.

Here’s the deal. Mashable has a wide audience, and they cater to that audience. They have people who follow specific sections rather than everything that comes across the wire. Therefore, when they post several articles in a day, they’re targeting sections of their audience. They don’t expect all their readers to read every article.

What about you? Are you bombarding your readers with content? Are you putting out three or four posts a day, without targeting specific areas of your site? For that matter, do you even have specific areas of your site?

For example, at the top of our blog, you’ll see five categories. Were we to start posting every day, we would:

• Offer an option for readers to subscribe to individual categories.
• Create a single post, per category, per day.
• Provide an option for readers to receive weekly (rather than daily) updates.

In other words, as we increased our output, we would also increase our readers’ ability to control that output.

Control your output

Using Various Types of Content – Where Should I Put This?

Right now, you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute. If I have to be careful about how much content I put out in a day, how can I possibly dominate?” That’s a great question, and we have a great answer.

Have you ever noticed that there’s more than one type of content? For example, pages (such as about pages, FAQs, whitepapers and so on) tend to hold long-lasting information that doesn’t need tweaking often. Blog posts, on the other hand, tend to hold information that doesn’t last as long, while press releases and news pieces have a short period of freshness.

When you’re publishing high amounts of content, you have to keep these “types” in mind. By creating a content strategy that allows for freshness issues, you can provide the copy needed without overwhelming your readers. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Define the freshness of the content.

Decide whether the information is long lasting, and how often it might need to updating. If it’s long lasting information, consider creating a page rather than a blog post or article.

Step 2: Define the purpose of the content.

Understand that building content for SEO purposes should never be the main goal of any piece of copy. The goals should always be to:

1. Create a constant, growing source of information (your website and online presence)
2. Create copy that informs, entertains and helps the reader in some way
3. Create copy that causes conversation, engagement and interest

With this in mind, the next step is to define whether a specific piece of copy’s main goal is to grow the amount of information available on your site, keep your readers informed or create engagement.

Step 3: Separate content pieces into freshness categories.

You can choose how to name your categories, but the categories should define the freshness of the content. We use static (long lasting information), transitional (medium freshness use) and dynamic (timely pieces or those that will need updated quickly).

For the most part, your work is done. Static copy generally makes strong pages. Transitional makes for strong blog posts; dynamic makes for good news releases or occasional blog posts. However, a final step will help further define your content output.

Step 4: Check your work.

For each piece of copy, follow the checklist before publication:

1. Will this piece expire within a week? If yes, it’s a news piece. Go to #4. If no, go to #2.
2. Will this piece expire within six months? If yes, it’s a blog post. Go to #8. If no, go to #3.
3. Will this piece need to be updated regularly? If no, it’s a page. Go to #5.  If yes, go to #8.
4. If this is a news piece, can it be used as a press release? If no, it’s a blog post. If yes, stop and use it as a press release.
5. This is a page. Can it be made into a whitepaper and/or case study? If yes, stop and use it as a whitepaper and/or case study. If no, go to #6.
6.  This is a page. Can it be made into a FAQ? If yes, use it as a FAQ. If no, go to #7.
7. This is a page. Can it be made into a static article? If yes, make it a static article. If no, and the information can’t be included in a pre-existing page, it’s a blog post. Go to #8.
8. This is a blog post. Make sure it’s highly readable, easy to understand and interesting. Read aloud for grammatical and spelling errors. Go to #9.
9. This is a blog post. Schedule for the appropriate category. Go to #10.
10. Rinse and repeat.

Want to save this checklist? Download the Content Freshness Checklist (PNG infograph).

Watch, Listen and Learn

As you watch the SERPs, your rankings and your traffic flow, don’t forget to also watch the conversation. Which blog posts brought the most inbound links and social engagement? It’s easy to be caught up in ranking and traffic, but without engagement and conversation, all the content in the world won’t do you much good. By paying attention to the topics, tone, headlines and so on that bring the most interest, you can apply what you learn to future posts, articles, and whitepapers.

Remember, the main goals for any business’ content marketing are to increase authority, trust and engagement. When you have those, the traffic will come on its own.

Over the past year, we’ve seen an emerging trend among big business clients. It’s disturbing, this trend, because it points to the fact that a lot of businesses believed the SEO hype and didn’t pay attention to what the actual practitioners were saying. So we’ll say it again.

SEO is not the end all, be all of online marketing. It’s a layover point on the way to success; not the final stop.

No Way Out

Look at a car, as an example. It takes a lot of parts for a car to work and get from point A to point B. You can have all those parts but the wheels, and the car still won’t go. That’s what you’re looking at with inbound marketing. SEO is the wheels, but you still need the rest of the car to make it go.

Emerging Trend in Big Business Websites

Several potential clients have come to us lately with a big, fat, noticeable problem. They talk about needing optimization. They talk about keywords, traffic and links. In other words, they use a whole lot of SEO lingo to describe what’s happening. But they miss the boat.

When you’re getting 2 million hits for over 2,000 relevant key terms and phrases… When you have over 300,000 links to your site with relevant terms as anchor text on strong pages… In other words, when you have the kind of traffic site owners dream of, SEO is not your core problem. (By the way, these aren’t numbers picked out of the air – these are actual numbers for a site we recently reviewed).

That’s not to say your site couldn’t use more optimization, but it does mean it isn’t the core issue. The traffic is already coming in. It’s already relevant, interested traffic.

So what boat are they missing?

Somewhere along the line, these (and many other) business owners got the idea that traffic means conversions. They assumed that more traffic meant more people buying. As we have seen by the trend of potential clients, this is far from true.

Search Engine Optimization vs. Selling Your Product

To be blunt: SEO alone will not sell your product. It doesn’t matter if you have 2 million visitors if no one wants to buy your custom-made banana peel high heels for $300. It can’t make your product look interesting. It can’t make your prices worth paying. It can’t make the shipping costs look attractive, your services needed or your site usable.

If you have a crappy product, site or service, SEO brings publicity to your crappy product, site or service.

Touch, Taste, Hear, Smell, See

Touch, Taste, Hear, Smell, See

When you walk into a store to buy something, your senses are engaged. Think about that new car smell, or the smell of new clothes and furniture. You can touch these things, run your fingers over material and feel how soft or smooth it is. You can see the shine on the chrome bumper of a car or the dazzle of sequins on a dress. You can hear a clock chime, a car motor purr or a toy chirp. The only sense that isn’t engaged in most cases is taste.

On top of that, consider the way things are displayed. Cars are parked at an easy to get in angle. Jewelry is displayed on velvet backgrounds. Clothes are hung on the wall or draped around mannequins.  In grocery stores, products are lined in such a way to move you through the whole store for those impulse buys.

See

Online, the only engaged sense is sight. We can’t reach in and touch the products. Therefore, your website has to make up for the missing elements through sight. Somehow, you have to grab that buying instinct with only what the person can see. How do you do that? By grabbing them by something far more powerful than the physical senses: emotional desire.

Tapping into the Powerful Emotion of Need with Content and Calls to Action

Need is a powerful emotion, but it doesn’t have to be there initially. What has to be there is the potential of need, or the “I want” syndrome. Does the visitor digging through your hand-made cuckoo clocks really need one? No, but they want one.

So what builds that emotion? How do you turn want into need?

Buyer Psychology

It sounds sneaky. To some, it even sounds underhanded. What it really is, however, is marketing and buyer psychology.

Buyer psychology isn’t a myth. There’ve been enough repeatable studies to point towards science and fact. By guiding the buyer through “converting” content and calls to action, you’re allowing them to convince themselves they really need your product. How do you do this?

Well, we’ve covered this topic a lot over the past year, probably because of the trends. Here are a few posts that go far more in to depth than we have time for in this article:

In Presenting Your Product as a Masterpiece: You Can’t Market a Piece of Junk, we covered how to use product descriptions to sell. In short form, this means including the features, benefits, values and display pictures in an easily digestible, attractive format.

Online Marketing: Are YOU Practicing Converting Conversation explains how online conversions are much like a relationship, and must be careful managed. This article includes four rules for practicing the art of converting conversation. Are You Outstanding or Just Standing Out is the follow up, with several ideas of how to stand out from a constantly building din of online stores.

Finally, Has Your E-Commerce Shopping Cart Ran Away With Your Sales gives several solutions for shopping cart abandonment issues.

Sneaky Marketing or Good Business Sense?

If you think it’s sneaky, the way products are marketed, consider this. Did you really need that new T.V., car, shirt, shoes, etc. you bought? If you still had clothes, you didn’t need a new shirt or shoes. If you had a car, but it wasn’t pretty, you didn’t need a new one. As for the T.V., you don’t really need one of those at all. It’s not necessary to your survival.

All of these products were bought, by you the consumer, because you or the seller convinced you that it was a need – even though it was really a want. That’s how a consumerist society flourishes. So again, we say, you have to guide the buyer from the first step of clicking on a search result to the final step of clicking that last button on the buy.

The Final Word

It’s frustrating – for the client and for us – to see all that traffic disappear into the NetherNet. SEO brings traffic; it does not, necessarily, bring sales. Creating content that is buyer-value focused does. Creating calls to action that really mean something (buy now just means spend money) brings sales. SEO brings traffic so the sales are possible.

You don’t have to join the businesses suffering from too much traffic and not enough sales. Adjust your focus to included value-added content!

So, did everyone have a good brouhaha good time for New Year’s? Are you ready to delve into 2012’s planning, marketing and magic? I don’t know about you, but around the office here, we’re ready to do more with less. We’ve taken a step back – but not a backwards step. – And if that isn’t enough double speak, I don’t know what is.

2012 Happy New Year

It’s 2012 – Are You Ready?

This is our 4th post of 2012. As far as the Mayans are concerned, this is the end. In the technology world, some people are predicting (rightly so) the year of the Mobile. Others have embraced QR codes as the second coming. Times are changing, my friends.

We even *gasp* went so far as to DARE not send out a blog post for one day (whether it will affect our readership or not remains to be seen). However, after a busy year, it was time to refuel the energy levels and decide how, what stories, which lessons and so on make sense for 2012.

Transitioning into the New Year

If you have a small company or a Fortune 500 and have yet to grasp that social has to be a part of your compass, brand, energy, purpose and (yes) daily language, you’ve been sleeping under a rock. We deal in a world of language and communication. Like it or not, text and keywords are how you, we, the world, formulate important concepts.

Yet, those concepts change, simply because life changes. We then have to formulate new words, new key terms and new text to define those changes.

For this particular blog post, we’re going to look back over the years at our most popular posts and what they’ve offered our readers. What concepts have changed? Experience leads to innovation and change of thought; do we think differently at the end of the year than we did at the beginning?

Are Social Media Tools Relevant to SEO?

Written in 2009, we covered a topic that was cropping up all over the place: social media and SEO. The end conclusion of the article was, “While social media in and of itself isn’t that helpful with SEO, the resulting links are.”

We’ve seen incredible results from a mixed campaign of SEO and social. Social seems to act as a magnifier of marketing efforts, due to the inherent viral nature of sharing. After the past two years in search, algo changes, G+ in Google, Facebook in Bing and so on, the picture is becoming much clearer.

In short, SEO and social media need to have seamless integration. It’s no longer about “the resulting links”. Individuals without websites are showing up in the results pages because of a Google Plus or Facebook profile. Some business owners have made one network or the other their home base, as it were.

Seamless Integration

The takeaway for you: If you’re using social media and have a website presence, make sure you connect the dots. The lines are fading between social media and SEO; having those connections ensures that you don’t lose out on your marketing efforts.

Merging Keyword Strategies and Effective Copywriting

No matter how you slice it, you need keywords, and this article does a fairly good job of explaining that. However, a lot of things have changed since we started the SEO Article Archive – patents, signals, Panda, copyright issues, citations… Because of this, the understanding of how keywords work needs to be clearer. (Read: Semantics and Relevance: Even Keywords Need Support Sometimes)

Key words and phrases work much like marketing words do in advertising. The next ad you listen to on the radio, pay attention to how many times they say certain words, and which words they repeat. The repetition of these words send signals to your brain, much like using keywords sends signals to the search engines.

The takeaway for you: We’ve written several articles since this time about how to effectively merge keywords into your site, copy and campaigns. Again, they connect the dots between your topic and those searching. Make sure that the terms you’re using are actually relevant to what you’re trying to convey and accomplish with your site.

Morphing Facebook

When we wrote this, Facebook had made an attempt to take over Twitter’s traffic (say that three times fast). They’d changed a lot in order to do this. Obviously, it failed. Odd, then, that they’re doing the same thing now that G+ is out.

How much have they changed over the past few years? We can’t even count the ways: ticker on the side, FB timeline, sharing abilities, lists… it goes on (and on, and on).

They’re the number one social platform. They have a larger user base than most countries have people. People use them for business and personal, fun and work. Why can’t they be happy with that? Ah, c’est la vie. Facebook will always be Facebook…

Always Another Platform

The takeaway for you: There’s always going to be another social platform; there’s always going to be the next best thing and the next shiny tool. Unless you have many clones, there’s no way you can keep up with all of them. Don’t try; pick the ones you can build a community on, and stick with them… unless they turn into MySpace (in which case, run).

You’ve already established your community and your story… why would you stop and start all over again.  Don’t be a foolish; learn how to listen and grow your audience.

“Big Brother” Google Step’s on SEOs

Before you ask, no – we don’t feel any different. We’ve seen example after example over the past few years that show us how Google feels about our profession. So what’s another year without fear in the SEO community?

Google isn’t all cherries and ice cream. There are enough lawsuits targeting them around the world that they should be enough to give you a taste of reality.

The latest includes things like moving search to https. Oh, sure, they call it a privacy issue; yet, we know they’re still tracking the key terms. They’re just being selective about to whom they’re giving that data to: i.e. the advertisers. As well, they’re testing PPC now, giving people the ability to fill out a “request a call” form from the SERPS. In other words, they’re trying to make it so no one ever leaves the search results pages.

The takeaway for you:Google is in business for Google. Before you put every cent, and every effort, into marketing with Google, remember that. Also, remember that they have control over your account; if you do something against their terms (whether you do it knowingly or not), they can shut your account down. Be very careful to observe the rules.

Google Is Always Watching You

How to Write an SEO Article

This is a good old stand by and, although we’ve written several updated and in depth versions, it’s still one of those good “foundational” articles. Having said that, however, it’s written from the article submission frame of mind… and that, friends, professional SEO specialists, and readers, has changed drastically.

For one, many article submission sites were hit by the Panda update, which pointed to a dearth of quality content. As well, many have lost their appeal to the visitor, lessening the impact that article submission once had.

Today, we look more towards content marketing (in truth, it’s a lot like article submission… but… not). With content marketing, your articles are written with an actual site and that site’s audience in mind (for example, guest posting for our blog). Rather than submit the same article to umpteen different directories, like many have done in the past, content marketing is a single, well written – nay, crafted – piece of art that you hang up in another person’s gallery.

The takeaway for you: Content marketing is more involved than article marketing, but can also bring better returns in terms of traffic, authority, publicity and, yes, ranking. Pay close attention to the sites you visit in your industry. If they offer guest article spots, give your site a marketing and publicity boost; offer a crafted piece of art!

Cutting It Short, Because Time is of the Essence

We were going to cover our top 10 posts of all time. We stopped at five because 1) we’re long winded and we’ve hit our self-imposed maximum word count and 2) because your time is of the essence.

We can’t do with you what we normally do with clients. With clients, we sit down and talk about their project – and then we shut up and listen. Since we can’t do that, we share with you what we do, and give you a starting point. Therefore, it’s time for your homework assignment – and since you’re busy running a company, you’re going to need all the time you can grab to complete it.

Create Your Masterpiece

Look at your top posts, landing pages and guest blogs and compare them with the “you” you are today. Were you able to tell your story? Can people say three things about you just by following you and reading? Have you branded yourself?

What are some of the things you can take away from them? What are some of the lessons you can share with your readers? What has changed since those top posts were written? This is good practice for you, in terms of paying attention to the content you’re putting out; you’ll be surprised at the amount of information and ideas that occur to you.

Our 2012 predictions, by the way, since everyone who’s anyone is giving them…

The world is not going to end. SOPA will have forced some underground groups to get a nice network. The housing market will still suck, and the 1% will still ignore reality. We, however, will keep steadfast and continue to shoot with both barrels while taking names along the way!!

It started two years ago, back in 2010, with the idea of honoring the women in SEO. Top SEO Women of 2010 was our way of supporting the ten women listed, such as Donna Fontenot, Dana Lookadoo, Debra Mastaler,  and Ann Smarty. They’re women we know, interact with and are friends with. Gabriella left a closer, saying that she might add to the list later. – And then something happened…

Top SEO Women took off, and turned into something more than a list of great women. Top SEO Women of 2011 received even better reception, and listed women like Lyena Solomon, Melissa Fach, and Debra Mastaler. We went a step further, developing a logo for our new project.  –Yet, in the comments, people were mentioning how their choices would have been this person, or those people. Some, we’d never even heard of.

An idea began to form – why not use Top SEO Women to bring other SEO women to light? Debra Mastaler, for example, is very well known, as are the other women listed above. What about the others? Although SEO is (or seems to be) a male dominated industry, that doesn’t necessarily mean the only female optimizers are the ones we know about, does it?

For 2012, we opened up Top SEO Women to nominations. Readers obliged, to the point that we had to stop at thirty nominations. Over 1400 responded during the polling period – from where this all started, as a short list of women we knew, that’s a fantastic jump. We’re extremely pleased that it’s done so well, and appreciate the responses, nominations, comments and votes from everyone involved.

2012’s Top Women in SEO

SEO has evolved since its inception, and that truth is pointed out by the list of women in SEO who were nominated for this year’s awards. Included in the list were link builders, copywriters, bloggers and more – all who contribute to the industry in some way. All of the nominees are excellent at what they do, and we’re honored to have been able to include them in the nomination list.

With all that said, here are the top women in SEO for 2012, as voted by the public at large:

Heather Lloyd-Martin, Third place winner

Prizes: 3 month membership with the SEO Training Dojo, $50 Amazon gift card

For someone who “fell” into copywriting, Heather Lloyd-Martin has come a long way. She started as an advertising sales manager, occasionally writing copy for clients. Although sales was in her blood (her family also had a sales background), writing copy was an aside.

By 1997, Heather’s copywriting skills had greatly improved, and she started writing for websites as a freelancer. That was the end of the story – or it would have been, if she hadn’t been on the Women Talk Business discussion list. Jill Whalen contacted her to discuss integrating keywords into website copy, and SEO copywriting was born.

A first gen search marketer, Heather is a 20+ year marketing veteran. She’s the CEO of SuccessWorks, and trains corporate in-house SEO copywriters. She’s a board member of American Writers and Artists Inc. Online and on the advisory board for Search Engine Marketing Association of Portland (SEMpdx), as well as a frequent speaker for SMX (Search Marketing Expo) and other notable search conferences. She also developed the first SEO copywriting certification program, and has become one of the most well known SEO copywriters in the industry.

Follow Heather for great insights into creating strong copy:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• SuccessWorks, SEO Copywriting Blog

Mariachiara Marsella, Second Place Winner

Prizes: 6 month membership with the SEO Training Dojo, $75 Amazon gift card

For the past 9 years, Mariachiara Marsella has immersed herself in all things web marketing, having been a copywriter, analyst and now a full time SEO.

She began as a local newspaper editor in 1999, but after winning a short story writing competition in 2002, turned toward writing full time. By 2003, she found herself writing web content, and becoming more intrigued by optimization and search.

Since then, Mariachiara hasn’t looked back. She dived into web marketing, gaining as much information as she could. Intelligent and a quick learner, she went from writing web content to becoming a web analyzer, to a web marketing manager in four years.

In 2007, Mariachiara started working for Fullsix, in Milan, as an SEO specialist. Two years later, she was teaching SEO and web marketing at Delta Comunicazione in Rome. Since 2010, she’s been the online marketing manager for PMI Servizi, creating SEO/SEM strategies, coordinating teams of web programmers, developers and designers, and, in general, doing what all good SEOs do – taking her clients to the top.

Follow Mariachiara for great insights on the Italian digital market:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• PMI Servizi blog

Eren McKay, First Place Winner

Prizes: 12 month membership with the SEO Training Dojo, $100 Amazon Gift Card

Eren Mckay started college for physical therapy but decided that it got in the way of taking care of her 3 children. So she put that on hold for a while. When her kids started growing up, her attention turned towards creating an online business.

She didn’t want to be trapped in a 9 to 5 job and realized that the way to earn the freedom that she desired for herself and her family was to learn SEO. She spent countless hours studying, researching, testing and implementing SEO tactics in order to find out what truly worked and would continue to get results in the future.

Knowing how to rank pages and multiply those efforts through outsourcing and systems would enable her to create a passive income business model. This would eventually give her more time and freedom to focus on what really matters: her friends and family.

She currently has a personal blog called Embracing Home, where she sometimes writes when she finds the time to do so. However her main focus is on creating profitable niche sites.

Follow Eren McKay for great insights into the world of online marketing:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google +
• Embracing Blogging

Honorable Mentions

We can’t leave out the rest of the top ten; it takes a lot of work to be in SEO, and these women should definitely be recognized for their work:

• Sadie Sherran, from SEO Creative
• Lindsay Wassell from Keyphraseology
• Leslie Carruthers from The Search Guru
• Julie Cheung from Manual Link Building
• Raquel Franco from SEO Femenino
• Maria Pia De Marzo with Web in Fermento
• Vanessa Fox from Nine by Blue

Our thanks to the SEO Training Dojo for their prize contribution, and congratulations to the winners of Level343’s Top Women in SEO for 2012!

Logo for 2012

For the Top SEO Women of this year who would like to sport the logo, you can click on the image, then right click and save as. We provided the highest resolution; feel free to set the size you need for your site. If you need a .png version, please contact us. For those who would like to support the Top SEO Women with some link love, please link to this post. Thank you for your support!

Next Year

Last year, we added a logo. This year, we added a couple of prizes. Top Women in SEO is still growing from infancy, however, and we’re already looking forward to next year. We’re currently working on refining the nominating and voting process, and all that “rules and regulations” stuff to ensure a good run. If your company is interested in sponsoring the Top Women in SEO 2013, please contact Level343

So, you’ve finally decided you want to learn all you can about SEO. Now what? Where do you go? How do you know that where you are is the right place to be? The last thing you want to do is waste your time and money buying into a bunch of SEO bull. So… where do you go to get the real low down? You find a a room full of SEO and patent geeks! Of course, when you first step in, it’s going to sound like a foreign language. You might hear things like:

The Long & Winding Road

“…it can be a pain in the rear, but it’s good for sessionized data. Log data – not so good.”

“Splice that keyword data into declines and trends; you can see what new words peeps are looking for and get some kind of direction…”

“…like the source, internal, external… whether or not it was an apparent query refinement…”

You’ll spend a lot of time with a puzzled look on your face but, eventually, the light bulb comes on and it all starts to make sense. Because, you see, the only way to really learn SEO is to pick the brains of the warriors…

SEO Reading: Lots of Meals, but It’s Mostly Just Chicken

In SEO Fast Food: I’ll Take #1 Ranking with That, but Hold the Fries, Gabriella wrote about the various types of SEO companies in relation to the ratings of restaurants. As informavores on the hunt for bite-sized snacks of information, you’re looking for steak. Yet, a lot of blogs and articles out there, no matter how they’re dressed up to look like steak, are really just… chicken.

A few bring out the good meals and fine wine when it comes to information for beginners, such as the Google Webmaster Central Blog and Bing Webmaster Center Blog, but what about when you’ve read all you can? Where do you go next? Where ARE the rooms of conversating search professionals, geeks and pundits, filled with prodigious commentary unintelligible to the common mortal?

Where’s the Beef? Where the SEO Experts Go

If asked where the experts go to get industry news, discuss topics, read about search patents and so on, you’ll get a list of places to visit. What you’ll also have is an (almost) absolute guarantee that these places will only be serving the tastiest, most filling meals for your informational taste buds. When taking the advice of the experts on where to go, however, keep a few things in mind:

• Don’t mind the mess – these sites aren’t always going to be pretty. Some search geeks are so obsessed with search; they’re completely lost when it comes to design. They’re like the absent-minded professors of the search world.
• Carry a dictionary – or, at the very least, have search up and ready. If you think “long-tail” refers to a species of animal, you’ll be wearing out your search engine of choice before you’re through the first article.
• Take small bites – you WILL get overwhelmed if you try to digest years’ worth of accumulated knowledge on optimization. Read a little every day and chew slowly.
• Ask questions – because you’ll need the answers to gain further understanding. Questions are your saving grace, and most (if not all) are willing to answer them.

With that said, here’s a short list of sites for beginning to advanced optimization learning:

Search Engine Land – Without a doubt, SEL is a top notch online publication. Here, you can find tons of information and news on the extremely broad topic of internet marketing. Categories include: SEM, SEO, PPC, Social Media, How-To’s, Google & Search and Indepth Analysis. SEL is well worth the bookmarking and daily intake.

SEO Book – Created, managed, and mostly written by Aaron Wall, SEOBook is a comprehensive blog full of search geekiness. You may not always agree with what Aaron has to say, but he’ll always make you think. Warning – he fills his posts up with handy, informative links. You could, quite possibly, get lost in the reading.

SEO By the Sea – Owner/Author Bill Slawski is a true search patent geek. He’s the guy optimizers go to when they don’t have the time to search the patents themselves. The amount of pure information found on this site -in terms of search and SEO –  is nothing less than phenomenal. When you’re ready to advance in SEO, this is the place to bookmark.

Webmaster World – The tagline says “News and Discussion for the Web Professional”, and it doesn’t lie. Code, content, presentation, hardware and OS technologies, analytics, ecommerce… Webmaster World has it all. Best of all, it’s a heavily moderated forum, and you’ll always find someone in there to talk shop with.

And Then There’s the SEO Training Dojo

Most of the above places are blogs; a few have forums.  Yet, none are quite like the  SEO Training Dojo. On many a professional’s site or blog, you’ll either find a link to the Dojo under “Places to Visit” or some form of a “Proud Member” badge. In fact, you’ll find the SOSG (Seriously Obsessed Search Geek) badge at the bottom of this blog. The SEO Dojo is chock full of people on the road to becoming SEO warriors: beginners, advanced optimizers and top notch experts alike.

SEO Dojo Members

This isn’t just a training platform, however. Within the Dojo are hundreds of members who love what they do and want to share, engage and grow with like-minded people. If you’re interested in really digging into optimization, this is the room full of SEO and patent geeks. When you enter the Dojo, you’ll learn about SEO whether you want to or not. It’s kind of a “survival” kind of thing, because you’re in the ring with people like:

David Harry – AKA the Gypsy. The Dojo’s creator and an original SOSG, Dave is buried in all things search. He has more patent information stored in his head than Microsoft has in their whole portfolio. He’s been involved in design and search for over 12 years, pandering to his obsessions of information retrieval, machine learning, research papers, patents and anything else he can get his hands on.

Terry Van Horne – AKA Webmaster T. Terry’s been buried in the search world since… well, since before there was a search world. You can find some of his earlier writings as far back as 1997 (the year Google Search was created), if not further. Founder of SEOPros.org, Terry is one of the original SEOs (OS), passionate about industry standards and contrary as they come!

Debra Mastalar – President of Alliance-Link and a practitioner for almost 12 years, Debra is one of the most well known link builders in the industry; she’s also one of Level343’s Top SEO Women of 2011. Her words of wisdom have been shared at SMX (Search Marketing Expo) and SES (Search Engine Strategies Conference), and she’s provided several training sessions for SES and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). If you’re having problems with your link building, Debra’s the woman to read, follow and otherwise learn from.

Anthony Verre – AKA the Milwaukee SEO. Tony is the co-author of eProfitability, an eBook on understanding the search landscape for C-Level executives and upper level management. He holds Qualifications for Google AdWords Individual and Google Analytics Individual; individuals with these qualifications have to retest every 18 months to retain them. He’s been in search for at least six years, is a definite SOSG, and as nice as they come – though extremely blunt. Don’t ask his opinion if you aren’t prepared to receive it!

Barry Adams – A regular contributor to State of Search and Search News Central, as well as the Senior Internet Marketer for Search at Pierce Communications, Barry’s another Dojo member who’s been involved in the Internet since before it was cool. Of course, SEO was an afterthought until about 11 years ago, but as these things go, he can still be considered an early adopter. Barry’s a Dutchman, SOSG, Mensan and top notch SEO; he swears a lot, but we’re pretty sure it’s not his fault.

All-in-One Community, Marketplace and SEO Shop

The Dojo is a thriving community; it’s also a strong community, where B.S. and ego is (mostly) left at the door. It’s devoted to search, and everything involved in search. In the dedicated chat room, we’ve discussed Google, the impact of social signals, Panda, key terms, link targets and too many other topics to name. (If you want to hear the things we complain about, you can always visit the SEO Bullshit blog – the optimizer’s place to rag and rage. Be warned, though… the language ain’t pretty.)

Along the way, we’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of professionals in our industry and make great contacts. For many a professional, these contacts sometimes become co-workers on various projects; no optimizer can do it all, and the SEO Dojo is excellent pool of qualified resources. Copywriters, marketers, patent geeks, optimizers, coders and any other profession you can name come together to learn, grow and produce search geek goodness.

As an added benefit, many of these people are also the creators of a number of tools, used by SEO professionals and beginners alike. Because of their belief in the Dojo and enjoyment of the community, many have become sponsors, providing a slew of tools, products and services at discounts for Pro Dojo Members. At last count, the discounts added up to over $1000 in savings, and the amount is still growing.

Heavy Resource Lists

Among all the goodies offered by the Dojo, you’ll find an extensive video library encompassing all things search. You also find a long list of tools used by a number of practitioners, productivity resources, links, articles and much, much more. It is, after all, called the SEO Training Dojo. No matter what level of learning you have, there’s something for everyone.

A Discount for You

We have a disclaimer to make. We realized we couldn’t say enough good things, so we did the next best thing. As careful as we are about recommending and supporting sites, products, services and so on, we’ve become one of the Dojo’s sponsors. Yes, we’re that proud to be members of this great community.

With that said, the SEO Training Dojo recently celebrated its 2^nd birthday, and we wanted to share with our readers. Until December 1^st, you can buy a Dojo membership for 25% off, using the coupon code LEVEL343. We hope you take advantage of the discount to find out about this wonderful, thriving community of search!

*Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement, and there are no affiliate links within this article. We do not receive money or special privileges from the SEO Dojo for our support. This article is simply a show of support for a program that we feel is well worth the time, money and effort involved to be a participating member. With rare exceptions (a few Amazon links to books we have read and recommend), Level343 does not provide affiliate marketing links on this site, and has no plans to do so in the future. Thank you.

While talking to a friend of mine the other day – small business owner trying to grow her business like anyone else -, I had that line going through my head. You know, the one from A Few Good Men – “You want the TRUTH? You can’t HANDLE the TRUTH!” You see, my friend has big dreams; she wants and expects big things from her website…

The TRUTH About Your Small Business, Brand and Marketing Power

Can You Handle The Truth?

There’s a lot to be said for drive and ambition. Drive and ambition can take you a long way towards whatever your idea of success is. BUT, there’s a lot to be said for “keeping it real”, too, and today I’m going to throw some realism your way.

You CAN’T compete with big business.

When you run a brick and mortar company, it’s easy to keep your head out of the clouds and your feet comfortably situated on the ground. However, there’s something about taking your business online that tells you, “I’ve made it! I can conquer the WORLD!” (insert mad laughter here)

You start dreaming about taking business from places like Wal-Mart, Overstock and JCPenny’s. You begin to think you’re bigger than the biggest dog on the block – until reality comes crashing down. Nothing worked the way you thought it would, and you’ve spent more money, time, or both to find this hard truth out.

Marketing Budget

That’s because you think you’re in competition with these mega corporations. You aren’t, because you don’t have:

•  their massive marketing budgets,
•  the millions of satisfied customers,
•  the years of brand name building,
•  their infinite (or close to) resources.

You simply can’t compete on their level! Don’t throw your arms in the air and give up, though, because there is something you can do.

Dream Big, In Small Doses: Branding & Inbound Marketing

You’re small, yes, but you’re not insignificant. You just have to tweak your thought processes a little. You have to learn how to dream big, but in small pieces. No matter how big your dream, remember the following:

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Your brand won’t be either. It takes time to build a brand. It takes customer satisfaction, authority, and the knowledge of who you are. People will have to learn what your business is all about, and you start with things like:

• A strong brand statement
• A plan for managing your reputation
• Content development strategies to increase your authority and brand recognition

You have to start somewhere. Rome started with some dirt…

Your website is just a business card.

If you’re new to the online world and your site barely has the bubble wrap off of it, it’s nothing more than an online business card at the moment. It has a chance to grow, but it takes time. You’re not going to get online and receive tons of traffic the first day – life isn’t that neat, nor is it that convenient. Just as you would with a brick and mortar store, you’re going to have to work to build up visitors.

• Create a blog, and decide how much time you have to put into it. How often will you be posting? Be conservative; once you start a schedule, people will very quickly learn to expect blog posts from you on those days.
• If you don’t have enough time for blogging, pinpoint a few places for posting occasional articles to share your particular expertise with others.
• Showcase your services or products, much like you would in a department store. How visible are they on the site? Did you just throw up a picture (or worse, a one-line description), or did you put thought into how the product looks on the page? The art of proper display is still everything!
• Make sure your site URL and social info is on everything you put out that pertains to your business: business cards, letter heads, emails, and any trade show products, for example. Don’t miss these great opportunities to turn offline meetings into potential customers and relationships.

Your business card needs to be passed to other establishments – online.

What does that mean? It means Google Places; it means Yahoo Local, Yelp and HotFrog. It also means getting to know your neighbors, potential coworkers and competition. Therefore, just as you might introduce yourself to the business owner next door in a physical mall, you’d do the same online:

• Make your social icons and accounts highly visible, giving individuals a chance to reach out and connect more closely with your brand
• Visit blogs in your niche or relative niches
• Introduce yourself and ask about them
• Add your business to local directories
• Treat Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, HotFrog, Bing and other sites as if they were allowing you to put a business booth up – because they are:
• Videos
• Photos
• Maps
• Testimonials
• Phone number
• Address
• List of services

You can learn more about these topics by reading Local SEO: Are You Hitting Your Traffic Corridor and Local SEO Is Like Real Estate: Location, Location, Location.

Growth is Your Main Goal

Sales and growth are your main goals.

When you get online and start reading about all this SEO stuff, it’s easy to get stuck in the idea of traffic. You have to have traffic to your site if you’re going to succeed, right?

The reason why optimization has grown to encompass so many skill sets is because traffic, in and of itself, does you no good. Traffic gets you nowhere if your visitors don’t buy. Otherwise, they’re just putting wear and tear on your merchandise by handling it and putting it back on the shelf.

This is the number one reason why SEO is changing into inbound marketing (a whole other post by itself). Inbound marketing focuses on your main goals: sales and, through sales, growth. Yes, it’s done by traffic, but it’s targeted traffic – and that makes all the difference.

Don’t obsess over whether you get more sales from one of your search place pages than you do from your website. Pay attention, yes, but don’t obsess. If you implement the tips above and your sales are growing, you’re doing well!

Meet the standards of SEO first – then worry about the rest.

In this instance, we mean “standard” practices first, before getting into indepth SEO. What are some of these standard practices? A short list includes:

• Check your URLs. Are you being listed for www and non-www versions of your site? Are your URLs reader friendly or full of dynamic parameters? Are they easy to remember?
• Make sure your meta data is strong – relevant, readable, clickable titles and descriptions.
• Ensure your anchor links aren’t there just for SEO. Don’t add a link to increase optimization; add a link because it helps the user. Where should they best be placed?
• Check your content for proper, semantic, heading usage (h1, h2 tags, for example).

Just making sure these things on your site are correct, relevant and strong can make as much as a 50% difference in your traffic and conversions.

Your Budget Isn't A Suggestion

Your budget isn’t a suggestion.

You have set a budget, right? If not, set an annual, bi-annual and monthly budget. In this budget include your SEO, social and marketing. How much can you afford?

Then, ask yourself, “How can I work within my budget to achieve what I want to achieve?” Can you break your marketing into phases? How? Many inbound marketing companies will work within your bi-annually or yearly budget – IF you let them know you have one.

No matter how much you may want to spend tons of money on this product or that service, you have to face facts. The fact is that your budget is all you have to work with. When it comes to inbound marketing, it’s important to remember that it takes time. The less money you have the more time it takes, but it’s never instantaneous, no matter how much money you throw at it.

Don’t strain your budget on products or services, hoping they’ll skyrocket you to the next level. We get lots of people contacting us that know they don’t have the budget for a full campaign, but aren’t willing to go for anything within their constraints. Be realistic about what you can afford, and work within those confines until you can do more!

The Truth Hurts, But…

You own a small business. You aren’t Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or any other Mart. You’re just you. –And yet, it takes a special kind of person to take the steps needed to become a small business owner. It takes your drive, ambition, courage and dedication to keep it going. That all translates into your business, your marketing and your brand – and that’s a brand I can get behind!

Social media killer

You know that song Video Killed the Radio Star? Someone should have been making sequels. We could have had Facebook Kills the MySpace Star or YouTube Kills the Quicktime Movie Star. Or maybe just the Internet Kills All the Non-Internet Stars.

With Facebook becoming more ubiquitous by the moment and SEO becoming the go-to formula for long-term internet success, will they soon leave behind other forms of marketing and advertising?

What’s to become of print advertising, radio ads, email marketing software, commercials, journalism or even snail mail?

-And, why has the Internet taken over? Simple. Its widespread accessibility, ease, and entertainment factor make it a desirable destination for just about anything.

The Age of Internet Marketing

Just as technology changes, the way we use it changes as well. Websites used to be all businesses needed for recognition on the Internet, but now that’s not enough. The way we once used internet marketing is coming to an end.

Sales and marketing have changed over the years from selling just products to selling the ideas, lifestyles and image that come as a result of using their products. This monumental shift means that advertising on the internet became key for reaching a target audience and for putting forth the cutting edge image that puts customers in a buying mood. What monumental shifts can we expect in the coming years?

SEO versus SM

Though it may have started off slow, Internet Marketing has taken off. Facebook now garners more weekly traffic than Google. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world behind just China and India.

With 800 million users now on Facebook, businesses are using and will continue to use social media to recruit. Eighty-percent of companies are already using social media to recruit new employees and of that percentage, 85% use LinkedIn.

The Rise of Social Media

Ubiquitous social media sites like Facebook or Twitter mean that businesses of all sizes promote themselves online for free and this trend will only continue in the future. Businesses no longer need a domain name, fancy website or full-time graphic designer. They can create a Facebook page or Twitter account and easily be found by anyone looking to engage with their brand.

Social media makes it easy to establish the online presence of your brand. On Facebook or Twitter, giant companies like Coca-Cola or Johnson & Johnson are on the same playing field as Fred’s Froyo Stand or Natalie’s Nail Salon. They have to generate followers, of course, but the basic bones are the same.

In the next 10 years, 40% of our current Fortune 500 companies won’t be around anymore, which is mind-boggling to think about. The future of business is difficult to predict, but as more arise and as it’s easy to get exposure, what’s the best way to stay on top?

With everyone fighting for digital relevance through social media and more archaic forms of Internet marketing, what’s to be done to beat your digital competitors? The answer: SEO.

The Rise of SEO

The Rise of SEO

Many companies like to think they don’t need SEO to be found. But, the history of changing Internet trends suggests otherwise. Businesses have been told over the last 15-20 years that they needed websites, blogs and social media sites. Many didn’t listen at first, but soon realized their blunders. This pattern is now becoming the case with SEO.

With the rate that search engines Google update their algorithms, the only way to stay ahead of the game with a digital presence on Facebook, Twitter, WordPress or anywhere else is through the use of SEO. If people can’t find you online, your business will not flourish.

The Verdict

So, what does all this mean? Will social media and SEO really trump other forms of media advertising? While there is no way to predict the future with absolute certainty, following the cues of history tell us that SEO is going to be the next big thing in Internet marketing. Soon, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and websites won’t be enough to help potential customers find you on the web. Like it or not, the future is now.

Collective Intelligence

Science fiction stories often talk about the “Collective” – or “intelligence”, if you will – where the mass of mankind’s knowledge is accessible through a telepathic thought. While much of science fiction is still just fiction, we’re a whole lot closer to the idea of the Collective then you might think. It’s already here, in the form of the Internet.

“Big deal,” you say? Ah… read on, oh lucky visitor!

Humanity’s Mass Mind

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players…
William Shakespeare

Consider how much knowledge is now at your fingertips! Marketing data, medical studies, scientific papers, blue prints: anything you want to know, anything you want to learn, can be found on the Web. Not only that, but the Internet has become a collection of peoples’ thoughts, opinions, studies and experience on any given subject. So much so, that it’s become a mass mind – a living, feeling, learning creation.

We all play a part…

The fascinating thing is that each of us plays a part in helping this creation grow. By writing and posting new content, we add to the collection our own thoughts, experience and knowledge. Even if the topic is the same, with few exceptions, each person’s content is unique, because our views on our personal experiences.

How amazing! How wonderful! How fantastic! With prolific online authors, you can search their names, and learn all about them. It’s almost like reading their minds – it’s all there for us to digest.

Collected Information Leads to Collective Intelligence

Mankind & Evolution

All this information pouring into the online collection has begun to serve a greater purpose than one individual learning new things. This collected information, humanity’s mass mind, is leading to new forms of Collective Intelligence (CI). In turn, Collective Intelligence is leading to mankind’s continued growth as a species – to learning new things that no one has ever known before!

What is collective intelligence?

The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence describes CI as “groups of individuals doing things collectively that seem intelligent.”  (emphasis ours)

Crowd-sourcing, collaboration, and the wisdom of crowds are all minimalist forms of collective intelligence. It’s seen in nature, in the hive mind of bees or in the way ants colonies work as a unified entity. The key word in the MIT definition is seem. For any collaboration to be a true example of collective intelligence, it has to lead to new levels of intelligence. In other words, something more than what was before.

Why are we bothering to discuss this?

That’s a darn good question. We have a darn good answer.

Collected information and collective intelligence are changing the way we live, act, react and interact. It matters for SEO, because optimizers need to learn how to capitalize on it. It matters for marketing, because social is a big part of collective; your target market’s wants, needs, thoughts and opinions are right there for you to gather, in big, bright, bold words. It matters for business because of all of the above and then some.

Look at the applications we’re building! We’re creating our home security systems online. We’re pulling an entire company’s data stream into one central location in the cloud. We’re gathering information from around the world in a matter of a few seconds.

The world is growing in leaps and bounds – the way we interact with computers and people (social, blogging, search, surveys, comments, programs, applications, research and development, marketing, etc.) has changed in such a way that we’re ALL a part of that growth.

Intelligent Emergent Behavior

5 Real World Examples of Collective Intelligence

Everything you put out there, everything thought, opinion or bit of knowledge, is a contribution towards the future of mankind. You never know what will spark of the next round of innovations and ideas.

Listen – do you really think the people behind every successful business, every great piece of technology and every standard scientific process knew their ideas would be successful, great or become a standard? How many of these things started with just a spark? It might not have even been the “inventor’s” own thought – it could have just as easily started with someone else’s comment…

The thousands of real world collective intelligence examples should be taken as inspiration. They are just the beginning of what’s possible. We’ve barely started, yet there are literally thousands of real world examples of collective intelligence in use:

Google

Google is an oft-used example, yet it’s important to specify the search engine itself, not the search engine’s output:

Google’s Output – The feedback that comes from any given query is subject to misinformation. Anyone can write about anything… and we do. Therefore, it’s important to point out that mass authoring isn’t synonymous with mass authority. Just because many people write about something doesn’t mean we learn from that writing.

Google- If you’ve ever seen the list of patents that went into creating Google, you’d quickly notice that the patents don’t always have the same creator’s name. You’ll see names like Mayur Datar and Ramanathan V. Guha, but you’ll also see Alexis Battle, Barbara Engelhardt and so on. Not all patents were created by Google employees for Google, and most patents were created by a team of inventors. What we end up with, then, is a search engine designed, built and added on to by hundreds of people. Unique in its overall abilities, it was the only one of its kind when first created: intelligent design developed through collective intelligence.

Google +

From the time that Google Plus hit the online world, it’s been an example of collective intelligence. They opened a bare bones project, not to the masses, but to a specific audience – the geeks and coding freaks of the Internet. They gave these individuals the ability to give automatic feedback on all areas of the system.

G+

Why? In order to turn out a strong, working product when it’s released for everyone to use. The company wants the best social platform out there, and who better to finish the creation process than the very people they’re targeting?

Open Source Projects

Anything “open source” can be considered a strong example of collective intelligence. Open source projects are developed by the people for the people; open source is a completely organic approach, if you will. In fact, some amazing products have come out of the Open Source Initiative. The list includes several well-known products, such as:

• The Apache server
• WordPress
• Drupal
• MySQL
• Mozilla Firefox
• Many, many more

BRAIN

BRAIN, Behaviorally Robust Aggregation of Information in Networks, created by Hewlett Packard, is a fascinating example of collective intelligence. According to the creators, “Existing processes tend to be either too data-driven, and therefore lacking the perspective of human insight, or too ad hoc, and therefore inconsistent with the data. “

BRAIN was developed to gain more accurate information for prediction markets using data side-by-side with team surveys. It’s worked for HP, and other companies, such as IBM and Ford, have implemented prediction markets as well.

KuiSchi

Knowledge Unifying Initiator for Science and Technology, or KuiSci, is “a meeting place for discussion among scientists and technologists, a place for presenting national and global scale problems, a forum for brainstorming, skill and expertise exchange among scientists to harness the collective solutions. KuiSci is a place for innovative work creation. “

History of Mankind

On to Bigger and Different Things

We’re in a technological space we’ve never been in before – not in the entire history of mankind. We’re able to collaborate globally in ways that have previously not been possible. Open source projects are changing medicine; social networking is changing how we learn in a classroom. –And, the power of the collective is changing how we do business.

That’s not so bad; change is the beginning of growth. Although no one knows how things will turn out in the future, we do know that it will probably be something totally unexpected – something different. Something no one has thought of before. As content developers, marketing managers, application developers, search engineers, SEO geeks and so on, it’s our responsibility to make sure we follow a mantra of respect, honesty and communication. Maybe “Respect, honesty and communication for the betterment of mankind” should be part of the 10 Online Commandments (wonder how well that would go over?).

Over the next several weeks, months and so on, we’ll be talking more about Collective Intelligence and how it applies specifically to marketing your online business, branding, users’ opinions, etc. In the meantime, put your thinking caps on; if you have any questions or comments, you know where to put them (in the comment box, people…)!

Ready. Set. Jump Into Metrics.

You’ve taken your website through the evaluation process. Maybe you found some things that need to be changed; maybe you were lucky and found that your site was already well prepared. Either way, you’ll eventually have to dig in to the metrics and make sure things are happening like they’re “supposed” to.

Maybe it’s too soon for some of you to roll up your sleeves and jump into metrics. However, monitoring things, at least once a quarter, is always something we recommend with any new business (or any old business, for that matter).

How good are your metrics? How good is your social media and SEO ROI? Do you know?

Tracking Direct Campaign Benefits

One of the biggest reasons to look at your metrics is because your campaigns can go off track without you knowing it. For that matter, if you implement a campaign without watching the results, you wouldn’t know if it ever did what it was supposed to.

With website statistics, you get a chance to find out if your campaigns are giving you direct benefits. For example, how many people came to your site, and where did they come from? Are you getting more visits from Twitter or from your Facebook page? How many referrals are you getting from other sites that are talking about your content?

Not only will you need to know the answers to these questions, but you’ll also need to be able to compare the information.

Why?
Social media and content campaigns are two big parts of many marketing efforts now. With this in mind, consider the number of social networks. As well, consider how many sites you could guest post on. Can you possibly use them all? No. Therefore, we always recommend trying a social network and a few content sites first, then watch the results for at least three months.

Comparing Metrics for Informed Decisions

For social networks, you compare the new one to the results from networks you’re currently using. Based on the information you receive, you can then decide whether it’s worth incorporating that network into your campaign. Metrics you might compare are:

• Traffic from the networks
• Bounce rate per network (make sure you have the 10 second GA rule in place before putting any weight at all on this metric)
• How many mentions, RT’s and conversations you had per network, per post

In this way, you can find out how much exposure you get. You can use products such as TweetReach, HootSuite or Kloutto track your reach and exposure on individual tweets. As well, Facebook Insights can give you metrics on the health of your FB page.

What Are Your Social Metrics?

What about content placement sites?
Well, mainly, you’re looking at the number of referrals. The other metrics you’d track depend on what you’d planned for a particular post. For example, if your article only has a link to your home page, you want to look at whether they went anywhere else on your site. If your article has a deep link, perhaps to an article, you’ll need to look at how much time they spent on the page, whether they went anywhere else and so on.

Points to Ponder
It’d be nice if the above were all you had to keep in mind. Just look at the data and compare numbers, right? Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than that. You also have to look at what the post was about, how it was written, how long it was and so on. You need to be able to keep track of how you send out the posts as well.

For example, are you asking questions before or after the link? “How do you feel about XYZ – weigh in! [link]” In other words, are you giving them a reason to click on Twitter? Do you give them something to respond to on Facebook?

When you guest post, do you push the post as well, or leave that up to the host site? In other words, how involved are you in your content?

The Metric Called “Relationships”

Once you have something to look at – once you have all your data in one spot – you can look at how the metrics relate to each other.

Conversions are a good example. If you have analytics set up correctly, you’ll have a goal funnel in place. With a goal funnel, you can see the whole process – from the time they reach your site to the time they (hopefully) convert and then leave.

In this way, you can see how many from Twitter vs. how many from Facebook (for example), actually went through the entire conversion process and out the other end. -And, this data can help you understand which sites, networks, etc, bring stronger results in terms of meeting your main goal.

Yet, with all this data and all this knowledge, decision making, et all, there are some things about building relationships that you can’t track using analytics metrics. For example, the data doesn’t tell you about Joe, who’s running in the same site circles as you. Joe likes your content; he recognizes your name and company every time he sees an article you posted, no matter where you posted it.

Here’s another good example:

We had a potential client contact us for a big contract – one of our first big contracts, at that. About three months in, during a conversation about social media, the client said, “Well, yeah, that’s where I found you guys.”

As it turns out, they’d been following our Level343 account for several months – just one of the thousands of followers and monthly visitors to our blog. When it came time to optimize their site, they immediately thought of us.

Trust... never break it.

Why?
Because, unbeknownst to us, we’d created a relationship with them. Of course, that was the plan all along, but you don’t know if you’ve succeeded until such a thing happens. For this person, we’d managed to do what everyone aims for with social media and content development: create a sense of trust, a sense of authority, and a feeling that they “know” us.

How Do You Track Social Relationships?

“Social” relationships don’t come just from social media. They don’t even have to be someone you’ve spoken to or interacted with. Social relationships are any relationships you’ve built throughout the business and marketing processes. For example, they can be someone:

• You met at a conference
• Who’s a regular of a site you guest post on (but may never have actually visited your site)
• Following you on a social network
• Who has visited your blog
• Who’s a friend of one of your vendors
• Who’s a friend of a client/former client
• Who was forwarded one of your newsletters

With all these possibilities, how can you possibly figure out where they came from? Simply put, you have to ask:

Trust is more than an emotion

• In your contact form, have a “how did you hear about us” question. Offer 3 – 5 options of places you’re actively marketing, such as a newsletter, on Twitter, on Facebook, through a friend, through a client, etc.
• If you don’t have a contact form, you can provide a brief survey that includes the question.
• If they call you on the phone, ask them.
• If they’re buying products, add the question to the buying form.

For that matter, you can offer them incentive to answer the question and/or continue the conversation on social networks and/or subscribe to your newsletter:

Example:
Are you following us on Twitter? Enter your Twitter ID for a chance to win [product name, discount, etc].

Example:
Subscribe to our newsletter to get exclusive offers and discounts!

Take it from us, tracking your traffic and conversions isn’t hard, but eventually you have to delve into the returned data to be able to do anything with it. Otherwise, you’re just throwing actions and energy into a bunch of “stuff” and hoping something works. This is what we call “counterproductive” campaigns.

Use the data. Use the metrics. Use the relationships and everything that comes along with them. Knowing where your traffic is coming from and what referrals convert the best will greatly enhance the return on your campaigns, as well as the return on your investments! 

Are you Overwhelmed?

When you first hear about SEO, you hear about a bunch of things, right? It all comes falling down on you at once: on page, content creation, link building, meta data…. No matter who’s writing about what, almost every article gives the impression that this SEO step (whatever that step is) is crucial to a campaign and must be done.

Every optimizer has a favorite area, and that area is the one they tend to evangelize the most. Yet, of all the things that need to be done for a complete campaign, one has to wonder what the most important really is. Is there a part of SEO that can be considered the immediate priority?

Obviously, the answer is “yes”, or this wouldn’t be much of a post. So what is it? What should a company, especially one on a tight budget, focus on most?

On Page Optimization

If your company has never been involved in the optimization process, the very first, immediate priority is on page optimization. Your website is the backbone of any outreach effort and needs to be as tightly focused as possible.

However, you can’t just write a few meta tags, throw in some key terms and call it a day. Under the “on page SEO” section are many subsections, and each deserves focus and attention:

#1: Keywords, Research and Analysis

Just as your website is the backbone of outreach efforts, your chosen keywords are the foundation of your SEO campaign. This is, quite simply, the most fundamental part of optimization. Targeting the wrong key terms might bring you traffic, but it won’t bring you quality traffic – and really, quality traffic (i.e. interested, converting traffic) is what you want, right?

When you bring in a professional SEO specialist or company, you don’t want to assume you know what terms you should be targeting. We’re professionals for a reason; if you don’t let your SEO provider at least look over your key terms and make recommendations, you’re cutting off the campaign before it even starts.

Further reading on this topic:

Finding Keywords for SEO: How Long Does This Take?
Are Keyword Density Percentages Killing Your Content?

#2: Competitive, Research and Analysis

Things you can do

Researching the competition is important, because you may find yourself choosing other key terms based on how much of a heavy weight the competition is. For example, Overstock is a heavy weight (yes, even after being punished by Google) for several generic terms. Therefore, in general, if you plan to sell furniture you might want to be a little more specific than just targeting the term “furniture”.

Competitive research tells you what you’re up against to reach the top 10 results (your real competitors), and how much work will be involved. Work transfers into man-hours, which transfer in to money, so you can get a gist of how expensive a campaign might cost based on competition, as well.

Further reading on this topic:

Who Are Your REAL Competitors?
Competitive Intelligence: Getting the Skinny On Your Competition

#3: On Page Content

Once you know what keywords you’re targeting, and who the competition is, it’s time to put it to work. “On page content” refers to anything on the site, from meta tags to titles, headings and the body of text itself. Knowing how to merge keywords into your content without making them stand out to the reader can be difficult. It takes practice, but it can be done!

Further reading on this topic:

Semantics and Relevance: Even Keywords Need Support Sometimes
Writing Organic SEO Content: How To, Definition and Terms
The #1 Traffic Builder – Hint: It’s Probably Not What You Think

#4: Technical SEO

What does the lifeline of your site look like? How well do the pages work on your server? Do you have 404 (page not found) errors? Are you using too many redirects? Does it take forever to load your site?

Technical SEO covers things that don’t deal with content, such as those listed above. Before you ever go off site for any optimization campaign, you have to make sure it’s ready for visits. Don’t ignore the recommendations your professional SEO provider passes along. Every little bit counts, and this includes the technical bits.

Further reading on this topic:

Technical SEO: Tools and Approach

At the end of these “steps”, you’ll have a tightly focused, optimized, clean, fast site. Then, you can start looking at the actual outreach programs, such as link building, guest blogging and so on.

Read from here:

Building Campaigns Around Key Words and Phrases: SEO, Marketing, Social Media

Conclusion

There is no single part of optimization more important than keyword research and analysis, and there’s no one section of optimization more important than the on page. Not only will on page optimization give you strong relevance but, done right, it will also give you a site that people want to visit.

The Beauty of Convenience

I’ve heard PDFs might be bad for my site SEO, and I have a lot of them. I’ve considered switching them to pages, but it’s a big endeavor. What should I do?
Pete R., Davenport

That’s a great question, Pete. Thanks for writing in. As a short answer, we don’t recommend spending the man-hours and/or monetary resources turning your PDFs into HTML pages just for SEO. There are better ways to go about it…

Consider the Convenience

No matter what change or addition you’re considering for your site, the very first questions to ask are “Will this help my visitors” and “How will this help my visitors?” Before you do anything, consider why you used PDFs in the first place. Generally, the answer is “convenience”:

Your convenience – Usually, you upload the PDF because it’s good collateral to have. It was originally created as a brochure, PowerPoint, etc, and it would take time you don’t have to convert it to a good looking, onsite page.

The visitor’s convenience – With a click of a button, visitors can:

• Read your whitepaper, report, etc in easily-digestible pages
• Read without distracting site themes, ads, etc.
• Save to their desktop, mobile phone, etc. to read later if they don’t currently have the time
• Print the PDF if they prefer reading hard copies

If you look at PDFs from the viewpoint of convenience, they’re good assets to have – when warranted. For example, a web page with over 4,000 words may not be as well read as a PDF of the same word count. It’s just not as convenient.

- And remember, you should always put your visitor before the search engines. Having said all that, let’s look at the SEO aspect.

PDFs, SEO and DAO

Search engines can, and do, crawl / index / rank, PDFs. Therefore, having them indexed is also not a problem, in general. What is a problem, for both visitors and search engines, is failing to optimize the PDF. Here is where basic knowledge and DAO comes in:

About Digital Asset Optimization

DAO (Digital Asset Optimization) is a specialized subset of SEO. PDFs, videos, Excel sheets – anything that’s able to be uploaded can be considered a digital asset. It utilizes every possible way of tightening the relevance of an asset allowed by the creating program (such as Adobe PDF or MS Excel). For the rest of this article, we’re going to cover a series of points on how to optimize your PDFs (using Adobe Acrobat) – for the visitor’s sake, as well as the search engines.

• Optimizing for size – Many people simply create the PDF and save it. 1, 2, 3 done. However, a large PDF with many images and pages is naturally going to be bulky; bulky files mean slow loading, and slow loading means loss of interest. Compress PDFs before exporting. You can do this by going to Edit > Preferences > Documents > Save As Optimized for Fast Web View. *

*Note: if your PDF is mostly usable forms, Fast Web View is not recommended.

• Limit the extras – Fancy fonts and images are great for your brochure, but aren’t so great for your PDF. Try to limit the amount of “extras” – not so much that your PDF looks like plain text, but enough so it’s not 4MB.

• Optimize for SEO– You can optimize a PDF in the same way you would a regular HTML page:
  • Use Alt tags for images
  • Use key terms in the file name
  • Use links in your document where warranted
  • Add meta data* – this is easy to do, with no coding knowledge necessary. File > Properties > Description. Make sure you fill out the information areas allowed, including:
    • Title
    • Description
    • Author
    • Keywords

*Note: More options are available by choosing Properties > Additional Metadata, including copyright status, notice and URL reference.

• Optimize for Accessibility – Choosing Advanced > Accessibility, provides further options, including adding tags and screen reader functionality. Tags help you ensure strong categorization. Adding reader functionality ensures those who wish to can listen to the text being read aloud, rather than reading (sight-impaired visitors, for example).

• Optimize for Indexing – If you’re planning on your PDFs being indexed and ranked, don’t upload to some obscure folder 15 links deep on your site. Keep it close to the root directory (example: http://mysite.com/pdfs/filename.pdf), and link to it with pages close to the root.

• Don’t forget to write protect – You don’t want people taking your hard work and claiming it as their own, right? Properties > Security and Advanced choices allow you to set your particular level of copyright protection.

PDF or HTML? Which Is Best?

PDF or HTML

Even though PDFs are extremely popular, HTML is still more preferred in most instances. Consider, again, why you choose PDF over HTML for each instance and decide which is more viable. As you can see from the above, if you already have a lot of PDFs, a better use of your time may be to ensure your documents are optimized rather than switching them to HTML.

As you create more PDFs, you might consider creating an HTML version. Oh, not a copy and paste, but a short intro with a link to the full PDF. Give them enough so they can make an informed decision about whether going to the full PDF will be fruitful for them. In this way, you can increase the relevance of the PDF, as well as “pre-qualify” the reader somewhat. This also ensures they aren’t going to be surprised when their computer takes over and loads a PDF.

Additional Reading

Optimizing PDFs for Search has an excellent outline on how to optimize PDFs for the viewer
Creating Accessible Acrobat Documents is an internal outline, developed by Minnesota Management & Budget, for creating accessible PDFs. It’s an excellent checklist for most PDFs (other than the option for Fast Web Viewing, which we discussed above).

Conclusion

PDFs have their place on the Web and are convenient. However, there is still no file more visitor and search-engine friendly than an HTML file. Before deciding on a PDF, make sure that it’s really going to be convenient for your visitors, and not just a case of “lazy webmaster”.

Don’t forget: if you have a question of your own that you’d like to see answered in a blog, you can drop it in the comments. You can also send us a question on Twitter using hashtag #343SEO, or send it in an email. Until next time, may you always have success.

We've Come a Long Way

Call this a press release. Heck, call it a chatty letter. You can even call it bragging, because we’re proud of the things our company is doing. We’ve come a long way, baby.

The founder of Level343, Gabriella Sannino, is an Italian transplant. She’s lived in the U.S. for more years than she’d care to say (and we have an NDA clause that says we won’t spill the whole “age” thing), been in more countries than you can shake a stick at and speaks five languages fluently.

Her educational background is in marketing and communications; transitioning from print media to online media was easy. During the dot com era, she worked with high profile clients as an account executive at a San Francisco boutique agency. She went from medium-size agencies to working in the corporate life and hating it. She finally quit and came here to where she belongs, running Level343.

Gabriella’s spent the past seven years making up for corporate skirts, heels and briefcases, emerging into Web 2.0 at a new level. Italian rocker and rebel, she loves what she does. Her favorite pitch, which we’ve used once or twice in our blogs, “Communication is the new currency.” On the other hand, her elevator pitch sounds more like, “Today’s brand marketing is an evolutionary mix of SEO, social media and traditional marketing principles. We guide the way; all you have to do is walk it.”

We love her; we hope you do too, because she’s worth it.

The support staff of Level343, on the other hand, is much less traveled. Gabriella fondly refers to them as her “American hillbillies”. Whether hailing from Missouri, Tennessee, Florida and other “small”, non-coastal areas, we love our cows, horses and gardens. As opposite as we are, and from different walks of life, we’ve made it work.

With the exception of two men, we’re all women. Contrary to occasionally popular opinion, this doesn’t make us less functional – i.e. there is no gaggle of hens, here. We’re workaholics, schmoozlholics, coding geeks, writing wonders, etc. We’ve gone from a copywriting company to a full service SEO and copywriting company, thanks to our wonderful team members, partners, associates – and you, dear reader, who kindly shares our links, comments on our blogs and engages with us.

And now…

We’re Going to Italy!

Enabling Technology Bologna July 9th, 2011

Now we get to do something awesome. Now we get to do something beyond the business. Now, we get to do something exciting!

Look up, right above this section. You see that picture? It may not look like much, but it means a whole bunch.

On July 9^th , Gabriella and three handpicked speakers will be giving a seminar on Enabling Technology for Small and Medium Businesses to Italian professional men and women. This is a big opportunity for us; we’re especially excited about the fantastic speakers that have offered to give their time and share their knowledge.

Agnese Vardanega, for example, has a Ph.D. in Methodology of Social and Political Sciences. She taught social research and theory at the University of Rome, and currently teaches Techniques of Social Analysis at the University of Teramo.

Then there’s Cesarino Morellato, aka the DAO Daddy, who’s been teaching Digital Asset Optimization since 2008. He’s been in the business since 1998, and performed over 1,000 SEO projects.

Finally, we have Dr. Sante J. Achille. After getting a degree in engineering and working for companies such as the European Space Agency, he fell in love with the web. The second World Wide Web Conference spelled doom for his career in engineering. He resigned, started his own company, and has been in search marketing ever since.

We also have two great sponsors aside from Level343: Raven Tools and SEOPros.org Much thanks to them for working with us!

Please Hold for a Lesson About Social

Let’s be blunt, shall we? We’re relatively new in Italy especially in the search industry, compared to Agnese, Cesarino, and Sante. So how did we get where we are? You’ve probably guessed it by the title of this section: through social.

Now, social doesn’t mean just places like Twitter and Facebook. It means being sociable; it means socializing. Gabriella, as the face of the business, spends hours doing just that. She talks to people, through social platforms, through places like the SEO Dojo, through guest blogging, making contacts… you know, connecting.

Other team members do the same. You might call it schmoozling; we call it making friends. We like what we do, we like to share information about what we do, and we like to talk to people who do what we do. It’s a win-win-win situation for all involved.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

The most exciting thing about the Enabling Technology seminar is what we’re going to be able to do with some of the proceeds…

April 6, 2009, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the small, city of L’Aquila, Italy, damaging thousands of buildings and leaving more than 30,000 people homeless. In light of more recent earthquakes, such as Haiti (2010) and Japan (2011), this may seem like small potatoes… two years old, small city, old hat, old news.

Giampaolo Giuliani

Yet, two years later, the earthquake could have just happened. In many places, rubble still fills the streets and buildings stand empty with gaping holes in their facades. A blog by a freelance writer living in Basilicata, Italy describes current conditions, “It’s sad; the soul and identity of the city is still in rubble, two years later.” Yes, they’re rebuilding, but it’s a slow, arduous process.

We’re still trying to figure how the proceeds can best be used, but we’ll figure it out – especially with Sante’s help, who lives in L’Aquila.

Now, our humble seminar won’t change the world. It won’t change Italy; it won’t even change L’Aquilla. But it’s a start. Maybe one person can’t make a difference (although I wouldn’t bet on it), but we can try… and keep trying.

Traffic Boost

It was down to the wire. We needed a big boost in traffic and we needed it yesterday. Everyone waited impatiently as the boss read over the copy; the copywriter rubbed her raw fingers, staring down at the still smoking keyboard she had ruthlessly pounded in a race against the clock. The optimizer, bouncing on her toes, stared at the boss and chewed a fingernail down to the nub. The boss gave a quick nod. “Send it to the client.”

With a sigh of relief and the first line of approval passed, the copywriter jabbed out a quick email, attached the copy and sent it flying through the lines. Leaning back, she gave a half-hearted grin to the optimizer, who switched to destroying another nail.

Five sweaty, painful minutes later, a reply came back.

I like the tone and the information. It’ll spread like wild fire – but what about the keyword density? I think you could fit “Kansas city real estate law firm” in there at least 10 more times. And don’t split it up. I want at least 10% density for the whole term. Nobody will notice.

Keyword density…

…the bane of existence for many an optimizer and copywriter. Somewhere, somehow, people got the idea that there is some magic number for the times a keyword should be used in a piece of copy. The idea has stuck. Oddly enough, they apparently haven’t found out what the actually number is, however, because everybody seems to have a different percentage.

What is keyword density

Rushing around

For those that don’t know, keyword density is a percentage value, based on the number of times a key term is used vs. the number of other words in a piece of copy. The “talked about” density ranges from 2% to 9%, depending on who’s doing the talking. To give you an idea of what that looks like, consider this:

At an 8% density, a single keyword would have to show up eight times in a piece of content approximately the length of the first two paragraphs of this article. Eight. Times. Now, you might think, “well, a single word… that’s not so bad”, but what if it’s actually a key term?

When the idea of keyword density became big for a while, we had clients who wanted a high keyword density percentage for terms like real estate law firm and used car deals. Trust us when we say, no matter how good the copywriter is these words will not look natural used several times in a single piece of content.

Sacrificing SEO

A while back, we wrote a post about organic content. In the comments, a reader said, “I don’t quite understand the phrase ‘Sacrifice SEO before you sacrifice the content quality’, could you elaborate?” This question ties in perfectly with this article.

We don’t, and never have, advocated any type of crappy content. This includes keyword stuffed articles. High quality articles retain more traffic, every time, than a bunch of overly SEO’d content.

By “sacrificing SEO”, we mean don’t choose SEO over user experience. In this case, it means don’t be so worried about keyword density that you forget someone is going to read your article. Don’t use a keyterm again just because there’s room for it. Your readers will notice, will consider the copy as content spam and will not stick around for more.

Never force the usage of a term. Let the words flow like music, baby, and let your readers dance to the tune. One commenter summed it up this way, “…if you’re in a situation where you could put out lower-quality content that would rank better, or have a better quality article that might not “rank” as well (due to lack of spammy keywords, etc.), you should put out the better quality article. Your audience and the Internet will thank you.”

Ranking isn't everything

Ranking isn’t everything.

Don’t scoff, it’s really not. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you get, none of it counts unless you retain at least a portion of your visitors. That’s the idea behind organic SEO – to bring in, and retain, visitors. Because:

• People who come back are more likely to associate your business with a product or service
• People who read your blog on a regular basis are more likely to think of you when they need a product or service
• People who read your blog on a regular basis are more likely to trust your opinion
• People who come back are more likely to bring others to your site

Guaranteed, these same people who could become word-of-mouth cheerleaders, will ignore you if you spin out spammy content. Even those that don’t recognize keyword stuffing and don’t know anything about SEO… they may not know what it is, but they know bad content when they see it.

Conclusion

If you’re writing articles and blogs about your topic, key terms will naturally show up in the copy. It just happens that way. If you can’t figure out how to “fit them in”, you need to change the focus of your article. Because, yes, Virginia, people will notice when you force keywords to fit. Keyword density is just another number. If you worry about it too much, you could end up killing your content and, ultimately, your traffic.

Google coming through

“It’s Google’s game; we’re just playing it.”

~ Igor Tossell, The Globe and Mail

There’s been a lot about SEO in the mainstream news lately, from the Wall Street Journal to The Globe and Mail, and even the New York Times. Last week, we posted a rant, (If You’re Going to Write About SEO, Get It Right) showing off a little bit of spirited irritation for the inaccurate and often sensational portrayal of an industry we love.

It’s no wonder some of these places might not be completely accurate about SEO, especially if you count the Huffington Post as “properly SEO’d”. For the longest time, almost every article started out with something similar to, “If you searched for [key term], you’d find [large number] of searches. What does that say? That a lot of people want to know about [key term].” You’d also find a long list of key words “artfully” disguised as tags.

These methods worked, getting the Huffington Post ranked for a many an unusual term. Therefore, people interested in SEO (but not having much knowledge) nodded and said, “Yup, that must be SEO.” In fact, a similar method was made in a NYTimes article about websites not fighting fair for the term “Mother’s Day flowers”.

Which just happens to be the very first three words on the page.

Standing all alone by themselves.

In a single sentence.

Hmmm… Was the NY Times trying to take over the SERPs for a highly targeted phrase around the same time as Mother’s Day? Just a thought; not, of course, an accusation.

Pardon the digression. The point of this article is to shine a little light on some misconceptions.

SEO and Google Gaming

Many online places have written about SEO from the view of someone who doesn’t actually practice it. You can tell, because very seldom will an actual optimizer use the term “gaming the system” or “gaming Google” to describe optimization (although the number is rising as the term becomes just “part of the lingo”).

The more Google changes the SERPs, the harder it becomes to rank for terms without at least nudging the guidelines a little. However, that doesn’t mean the basics they outline have changed. In fact, when you’re looking at the Google SEO starter guide, what you actually find is some good, common sense information.

Now, keep in mind that Google doesn’t care about your business. Google cares about Google’s business, and Google’s business is relevant results.

Visitors, Google’s users, want relevant results. They’re on a hunt for information; they don’t want round about titles and descriptions where they have to guess what’s on a page. They don’t want to come to a page and find out the information on it has nothing to do with what the search snippet promised.

Tips from Google’s SEO starter guide include things like:

What do you think?

• Choose a title that effectively communicates the page’s topic
• Write a meta description that informs and interests users
• Use simple-to-understand URLs with relevant words in them
• Use mostly text for navigation
• Keep your on page content organized around the topic
• Create anchor texts that makes it easy to tell what content is being linked to

This is a short list of steps that fall under search engine optimization – and it’s followed by SEOs everywhere. It’s the closest thing you’ll probably find to an “optimization template” in fact.

This isn’t “gaming the system”, people. This is focused marketing.

SEO – Laser-focused Marketing

Search engine optimization is all about relevance. You have a site that covers everything about home improvement. You want to rank for home improvement, and hire ABC Professional SEO Specialist to take care of that for you. The first thing they’re going to do is find out what your business is about and what you hope to accomplish for your site.

Somewhere along the line between the first step and the campaign creation, they’re going to check the pages of your site for topical relevance. Almost every optimizer will have a story about the client that “over optimized”, and put every descriptive tag they could think of on a page. Our job, as the professional SEO, is to clean it up and categorize into as few, tightly focused categories as possible.

Further reading on this topic: Building Campaigns Around Key Words and Phrases: SEO, Marketing, Social Media Information Architecture – Content Layout is Everything

In fact, our job – the real job of optimization – is to make sure everything is relevant to the search, that each page and everything surrounding that page is tightly focused around a single topic (aka key term). As a visitor, who isn’t thinking about SEO, it can be helpful to see things like informative page titles, a beginning paragraph that summarizes the article, or concise wording in links.

Why Oo Why ?

So why do people call it “Google gaming”?

Well, for the most part, people in the industry don’t use this terminology to describe SEO. Why? Because it takes hard work, constantly staying updated in an ever changing industry and applying it all. When “gaming Google” is used, it’s generally used to describe blackhat SEO (SEO that doesn’t follow Google guidelines).

Everyone who steps into SEO as a business eventually has to decide how far they’re willing to go – what they’re willing to do outside of Google’s guidelines – to achieve rankings. They have to decide if they’re going to “game Google” and risk their client’s online businesses, or do the hard work of the whitehatter. To be honest, most choose “grayhat”- a fine line between black and white.

As a side note, it’s important to understand that black hat SEO isn’t illegal; it’s just against the guidelines Google sets up. –And, as the search engine continues to ignore legitimate sites in favor of content farms, content scrapers and the like, more white hat SEOs threaten to change sides, or at least push the line a little. Plain and simple, keeping to Google guidelines and providing client results is increasingly getting harder; for many, “gaming the system” is beginning to look pretty good.

Further Reading

If your website isn’t doing well in the SERPs and you can’t figure out why, Google released a list of 23 questions to ask yourself when looking at your site. It’s post-Panda, so this should give you a good idea of what the search engine is looking for now.

SEO Isn’t Google Gaming

If you want to think of SEO as gaming the system, that’s fine. If you prefer to say SEO is a bag of tricks, that’s fine, too. However, if you don’t actually get the truth about SEO and what it does, you’re going to lose this “game”. It’s focused marketing, often on a microscopic level. It’s micromarketing; it’s targeted marketing. Through SEO’s various subsets (SEO copywriting, link building, coding, etc) your site becomes more visible – to the search engines and, most importantly, to your prospective buyers.

Design by Virginia Reyes

It’s March 31st, which means National Women’s History Month is coming to a close. What a perfect time to talk about our 2012 Top SEO Women awards 2010, 2011! First, though, an introduction…

Interesting Facts About Women Online

A while back, we came across some amazing statistics. As women, they made us feel all warm and fuzzy in side. As marketers, these statistics made us set up and pay attention. The foundation of these statistics is… (drum roll please) women rule the Internet.

Now, the last thing we want to do, especially on a post about the Top SEO Women of 2012, is wave the whole “race of the sexes” thing around. However, the statistics discussed in an article by Aileen Lee on Tech Crunch, Why Women Rule the Internet, are worth paying attention to.

Here’s an overview (you can read the whole article by clicking on the above link):

• The majority of social networking users are women
• Women spend 30% more time on these sites
• Women are responsible for 55% of mobile social network usage
• Gilt Groupe estimates women drive 74% of revenue to the company
• The U.S. Census says over 80% of consumer spending can be attributed to women
• When it comes to the consumer web of the likes of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Twitter, women are the majority of users

In fact, the sites listed above, as well as Opentable, Yelp, Docstoc, Flickr, Myspace, Ning, Bebo and others, women rule the space. In online marketing, social media marketing and SEO, women are slowly but surely taking over spaces traditionally “ruled” by men.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program…

Top SEO Women of 2012 – Nominees

Our nominations are open until April 30th, so you still have an entire month to nominate your favorite female SEO. We’d like to have a list of 20 – 25. So far, your nominees are:

1. Linda Sevier of Pagetender LLC
2. Raquel Franco from SEO femenino
3. Heather Lloyd of SEO Copywriting
4. Anne Handley at Marketing Profs
5. Melanie Nathan of Canadian SEO
6. Vanessa Fox of Nine by Blue
7. Lindsay Wassell at Keyphraseology
8. Ana Martins with SEO Debrigadeiro
9. Chiara Marsella Working out of Rome
10. Gabriela Mori  from São Paulo Brazil
11. Renata Tibiriçá from Brazil
12. Kathryn Katz from Florida
13. Maria Pia De Marzo with Web In Fermento
14. Leslie Carruthers at The Search Guru
15. Manuela Sanchez with Elink Builder in Brazil
16. Mindy Gofton of I-com.net
17. Jennifer Horowitz from Ecombuffet
18. Lisa Myers from Verve Search
19. Joanna Buttler from Search Engine Chocolate
20. Hannah Rampton from Browser Media
21. Julie Joyce from Fish Media
22. Julie Cheung from ManualLinkBuilding
23. Sadie Sherran from SEO Creative
24. Kaila Strong from Vertical Measure
25. Eren Mckay from Embracing Home
26. Joanna Lord from  SEOMoz
27. Patti Fousek of Creative Mind Search
28. Michelle Robbins of Third Door Media

NOMINATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED!
Please visit 2012 Top SEO Women Finalists for a complete list and to vote for your favorite!

0 - to - 100 in your social

After an intense week of social networking that ended with a conference, (Distilled in New Orleans) I think I finally have a better understanding of what I should be doing. It’s taken a long path to get me here; I thought I’d share it with you, our readers, in the hopes that you’ll gain some usefulness.

Sometimes, I think about hiring someone else to do my social networking – some social media guru who can turn each tweet into gold. According to the analytics, according to the numbers, I’m doing it wrong.

A WTF Moment…

For instance, when you’re unfollowed by over 300 people in a week, it’s a big hit to the ego. This happened, although I haven’t changed anything. I engage with my followers, share great links, and continue to add great people to my Twitter and Facebook lists.

Now, around Level343, everyone can attest social is a big topic for me. This is one reason we love to include various social networking blogs. Every so often, we even send them out as guest posts. I’ve been an avid troller of top Twitter analyzers, in fact.

Now, let me be really honest and quite opinionated; none of us get it. I don’t’ care if it’s a paid or free tool, not one of these things has been truly able to capture how well we’re doing with our social networks. How can I tell?

Signs of Movement, Authority and Influence…

• We often receive wonderful emails from our readers.
• We close new clients on a monthly basis.
• At conferences, people recognize me and talk about the impact we’ve had on their lives and work.
• In short, there’s been a lot of positive movement and recognition as authorities in certain areas of the online marketing industry.

And yet… and yet, I look at Klout, Twitalyzer, the top respected analytics (or at least the ones everyone says they use), and my accounts suck. Not only do they suck, but also they tell a tale of miserable failing.

To Hell With the Numbers

To hell with numbers

What I’ve noticed is the RT’s you get, how many new followers per week, how many FollowFridays you’re mentioned on – they don’t matter. I don’t care what the numbers show. Why?

The metrics by which they’re choosing to grade me are not of value to me.

Let’s take influence, as an example. What does it really mean for these programs? Not too much in the grand scheme of things. A better measure of influence for us seems to be things like:

• Amount of incoming traffic – Is it going up?
• Amount of visitors – Are there more return than new? If yes, good.
• Comments – Are readers commenting and engaging?
• Engagement – Are followers responding in conversation?
• Clients – Do we have any?
• Potential Clients – Are people contacting us for work?

See, we put out approximately 15 – 20 pieces of content a month. We get excellent returns for those pieces, especially when you consider how many writers work on our blog. Depending on where they’re posted, we get anywhere from 30 – 300 RTs, 40+ comments, lots of good link love and meet wonderful people who read and like them.

The Big Picture

This may not seem like a lot to some people, but we have to look at the big picture. The big picture is a 2000% growth or more in all areas of our site over the eight, nine months. It’s working with the type of clients we’re looking for – the ones who respect our opinions and expertise. It’s people coming to us for thoughts about XYZ or asking us how to do ABC.

This isn’t braggadocio; far from it. This is simply pointing out that, no matter what the Twitalyzers or Klouts or InfluenceXYZPrograms say, we’re doing something right. Could I buy followers off eBay? Could I manipulate or otherwise game these systems to artificially hike my scores? Could I fake these results? We all know the answer to these questions.

The Total Answer, Bright Light, Shining Lightbulb of Understanding

Thinking about all this, it hit me. I could fake those results and get the numbers I really want to see. Not only that, but nobody would know the difference! How can these signals continue to be as important as they’ve been knowing that?

So what’s the real answer, then, if it isn’t numbers?

Well, as much as we use social strategy as a way to get numbers, we need to change what we look at. We’re building a community, not just a way to funnel money to our site. If you really want to build a brand, as I wanted to do when I first started engaging through social media, you have to have a face.

People have to know who you are to be able to really like what you say.

Real influence is changing. For example, You’d think the New York Post is influential wouldn’t you? Yet, for every 45 articles they put out, they might get one link back (or one citation). Other places, you can post two articles to get a link. Some places, a single article can get tons of links, in the form of quotes, citations, or ongoing conversation about the article.

What’s Important to You?

What's important to you

As a CEO, brand strategist, etc, what’s important to you? Is it having high numbers? Do you want blind influence, or do you want people who actually engage with you, come to you for help, or merely to say hi? To me, this is more powerful than numbers can ever be.

So, it finally comes down to building a community instead of faking one. You can have a ton of fake storefronts to make something look like a huge town (metaphorically speaking), but a stiff wind can blow it over, right? Think about your favorite influence measurement tool – could it withstand a rough smack?

In other words, if you lost 300 people in one week, what would happen to your numbers? Would you freak out if your numbers dropped dramatically?

Conclusion

We need to find other ways to measure how we’re doing in social. How can you really measure if what you’re doing is working? Can you really trust these numbers – should you?

Let’s finish this article up with this: look for other ways to find out how you’re doing. Don’t forget about the people who follow, read, and learn to respect you. They aren’t just numbers. They’re your business cheerleaders.

What do you think? What signals should we really be using to measure our social standing?

Spam vs Comments

Most SEO professionals have very definite ideas about the Internet. For example, many believe SEO is essential for any website to succeed – whether the business is limited to delivering three blocks or thirty makes no difference.

Some say the optimization techniques they use are the only techniques out there that work. Some will act with disdain if you even mention something outside of their “belief” system; SEO isn’t just an industry, it’s a religion.

Don’t believe me? Ask an SEO professional:

• If optimization is manipulating search (blasphemy)
• The difference between white hat, gray hat and black hat SEO (moral, average, immoral)
• How often you should check your SEO campaign (ritual)

The problem is devout SEOs only seem to see things in black and white…

Recently, the topic of comment spam came up – one of those “black and white” things. Out of curiosity, we looked at the information available online about the difference between comment spam and linking in the comments. Amazingly, no one really addresses links in the comments as anything other than spam. Although we may be called heretics, we’d like to take this opportunity to forward a different version of the story.

Comment Spam

Now, it’s easy to say, “There’s a fine line between comment spam and comment links.” However, once you sit and really think about it, the line isn’t so fine. The line is quite clearly defined, in fact.

Comment Spam in the Wild

This is from our own blog comment queue as an example of the truly crappy comment spam – all links with no attempt at all to look like a comment. However, Danny Sullivan wrote an article last year entitled Some Advice For Free Essay Writing Services – Write Better Comment Spam with several fantastic examples of comment spam in the wild.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is comment spam…

“… very weird comments appearing on your blog. The comments usually don’t make sense and they link to bizzare domain names. These comments are probably spam left by people (or automated spam bots) in an attempt to increase the target domains visibility on the search engines.” [WPDude, the WordPress Coach]

“It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards.” [Wikipedia: Spam in blogs]

“Comment spam is the term used to describe comments that people write as comments on blogs and forums that provide no content or comment of any value and are posted simply to provide links back to other sites.” [InsiderTactics: What is Comment Spam]

“Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are often irrelevant to the context value of the post.” [WordPress.org: An Introduction to Blogging]

“…many of whom use scripts or other software to generate and post spam. If you’ve ever received a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you’ve encountered comment spam.” [Google Webmaster Central]

So, from the above sampling (and you can be sure most descriptions of comment spam are similar), you start to see common denominators:

• Usually don’t make sense
• Random and/or unrelated
• Provide no value
• Useless
• Often irrelevant

In other words, the type of comment spam we all know and love to bitch about.

Comment Links

Now, the problem with links in the comments is that they’ve been so abused “commenting” has become a curse word in SEO. Through the years, this practice (as an SEO technique) has been beaten into the dirt. Therefore, many ethical optimizers now say, “If a link is in a comment, that comment is spam.”

SEOs, webmasters – pretty much anybody who comes in touch with SEO -, seem to have forgotten about people. If you use the word link for example, you must automatically mean link building for link juice to help raise the ranking of your website through this SEO tactic.

However, comment links are very different from comment spam, in that they:

• Are used to continue a conversation
• Make sense to the context of the article
• Provide value to others
• Are useful
• Are relevant
• Are on topic

Example, again from our own blog:

Comment Links in the Wild

Other, non-SEO related meanings for the word link:

• the means of connection between things linked in series
• a fastener that serves to join or connect
• connection: the state of being connected
• associate: make a logical or causal connection
• connect: connect, fasten, or put together two or more pieces

A link is used to make a connection.

Your friend wrote an article about home repair; he mentions plumbing and a particularly touchy problem he’s having with the toilet flange. This reminds you of the time you had the same problem (or a similar one). You wrote a blog after that, describing your experience and how you solved the issue.

You post a comment in your friend’s blog “Hey, I know exactly what you’re going through. Solved this issue about 4 months ago – wrote a blog about to help others; it might help you. [link]”

Your friend would follow the link, read the blog and either a) return to their blog to reply to your comment or b) post a comment on your article page. Others visiting your friend’s blog would do the same – if they chose to comment.

They might write articles or otherwise mention your blog post about how to fix a toilet flange. They might find out they like your blog and bookmark it for future reading. They might even remember something they read or wrote and post that link in your friend’s (or your) blog, thus continuing the conversation and building a stronger community.

Now, here’s the question: why did you post that link? Did you post that link because you were greatly concerned with your SEO campaign and wanted to gain better ranking by posting your article? Or… did you post that link because you had something to share?

Ooo, ooo – Maybe, because the original article made a connection for you, or, a logical association!

Conclusion

As human beings it’s logical to want to share. When you read an article that moves you in some way (with humor, with anger, with sorrow), occasionally you are compelled to comment. Some of us are compelled to comment a lot, like the members of the Level343 team.

If, by the time you finish reading this piece, you’re still not sure about the difference between comment spam and comment links are, ask yourself this question: Did I come to the article to post a comment and build links?

If that’s the reason for you being on an article, you’re in danger of committing the SEO sin of comment spam. However, if you’re at an article to read it, are moved to comment, have written or read a piece that you want to share with others, and so post the link with your comment, this is not spam. This is communicating, engaging and building a community.

Hmm… Why is it that much of SEO keeps coming back to intent?

Now, let’s open up this conversation. What about you? Do you think, as some people (including SEO professionals) do, that links in a comment automatically make it comment spam? Is there ever a legitimate reason to share your own links on another’s site?

Symphony by Ben Hein

If you’re kick-butt professional with tons of referrals and your website is just a business card, you may be thinking a positive online reputation is something you don’t have to worry about it. In fact, Darren Slatten, world’s greatest SEO, master of reputation mis-management (titles he gave himself) and wanna-be comedian (title we gave him), wrote a very pointed article about reputation management in 2009.

Darren finishes the article with the point, “Reputation management is like link-building. If people value your shit, you don’t need to worry about it.”

That’s a nice quote. Reputation management is like link building… but there’s a problem. We can’t all be Darren Slatten. – And, since we can’t all be Darren, the rest of us might want to make sure our online reputation doesn’t tank.

Being proactive is one of the best ways for an online professional to keep strong muscles on a powerhouse reputation. Build your online reputation and keep it strong with the following tips:

Tip #1: Add YouTube RSS feeds to your feed reader.

Why? The Comcast video search goes a long way to giving the answer.

• Video is big and anybody can make one.
• Video can easily go viral.
• One bad video can bring about “bad video offshoots”, causing negative publicity and reputation to spread.

Bonus Video Management Tips:

1. Set your feeds up with relevant tags, such as brand names, company name, head officers, etc.
2. Have an action plan for how you would address negative video feedback – before it happens.
3. Make sure you post the video “in response to” the negative video. This ensures that people seeing the first will also see a link to yours, giving it more visibility.
4. Don’t forget to fill in all the available boxes for details – meta info, description, tightly focused keywords, etc. This also gives your video response more visibility in the video SERPs.

Tip #2: Subscribe to Google Alerts.

Why? Google Alerts can show you what’s being indexed in the SERPs for:

• Your name
• Your company name
• Your brand name
• Specific products
• Your website and/or URL
• Other specified, important key terms

Bonus Alerts Tips:

1. Set your Google Alerts with carefully thought out terms.
2. Be specific with your terms: if you search for, say, “real estate”, you’ll get a slew of alerts you don’t want.
3. Again, have an action plan for addressing negative feedback.

Tip #3: Monitor realtime social media using hashtags and regular terms.

Why? Twitter is a daily conversation. People share dreams and disappointments, including reviews like “[Company] products suck!” or “Still trying to reach [Company] customer service rep. after three hours.” Not only does Twitter give you a chance to monitor, but it also gives you a chance to provide instant customer service.

Bonus Realtime Tips:

1. Use realtime search to find key terms your products /services /brand /company might come up in.
2. Set email alerts for these terms.
3. For company and branded terms, set the “how often” to “as-it-happens”.
4. Be prepared to respond instantly to “as-it-happens” realtime alerts.
5. Have an action plan for responding to other alerts.

Tip #4: Have a loose content strategy prepared for damage control.

Why? It’s harder – and less effective – to create an ORM campaign in the middle of the crisis. Content is the heaviest hitter when it comes to ORM.

Bonus Content Tips:

1. Create a loose outline; “if this happens, we’ll do this.”
2. Consider creating mini sites where content can be placed as soon as it’s written.
3. Once a site is created, occasionally feed content into it to keep it “active”.
4. Use each site as an “insta-posting” site, should damage control be needed.

Tip #5: Spend time creating strong, loyalty-based relationships.

Why? The obvious answer is, because it’s good for business. The less obvious answer is because loyal customers make a more convincing argument against negative brand reputation than company mouths.

Bonus Relationship Building Tips:

1. Make sure your services/products meet the promises you make about them.
2. Offer quality customer service and more than one way (email, phone, Twitter, Facebook, etc) for your customers to contact you.
3. Don’t be afraid to address potential situations online. If you see a negative remark about your company on Twitter, address it immediately – live and in front of everybody. “I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience. Please tell me how I can help.”
4. Always take the higher road. Never respond with a negative comment, no matter how much you might want to.
5. Make sure your social relationships know you’re human. Don’t try so hard to be professional that people wonder if you’re a bot.

Conclusion

While reputation management is like link building, think about how hard it is to get organic links. Anyone who has ever started a blog, posted great content and waited for links to come in knows what I mean. Links – and reputation – only come to you after you build your online business. Until then – and even after then – it takes hard work to get enough reputation muscles to flex.

In the mean time, if you’re not Darren pay attention to the above tips. Why? Because a strong online reputation does matter.

What problems have you run into with your ORM? Share them with our readers in the comments!

SEO? What's SEO?

SEO as a part of a digital marketing strategy cannot be ignored by any marketing organization. SEO, though a subset of online marketing, has a completely different character of its own. People are more likely to click on an organic search result compared to a listing under Ads. The website owners are allocating increased budgets to digital marketing, and ranking for organic search is one of their primary goals.

Well planned and chalked out SEO campaigns require sizeable budgets and every business would surely ask for the return on the amount invested in the SEO campaign. Complete ROI from any SEO cannot be calculated with 100% accuracy, as any good SEO campaign gives you good web visibility in addition to the SERPs, establishes your online brand, helps you to establish an online reputation and have a global reach. The total benefit from all this cannot be converted in metrics.

But, you can get an adequate idea about the ROI by first and foremost deciding the primary objectives of the SEO campaign.

Do you want your SEO campaign to result in :

• Increase in direct sales?
• Generation of more leads?
• Driving more traffic?
• Building you an online brand ?

The answer to these questions will make things easier for the SEO as well as you. The SEO will know what he needs to focus on and you can also know which metrics to keep track of, in order to to measure the success of the SEO campaign.

A complete web centric SEO campaign, which focuses on achieving organic rankings by etching the right quality digital foot prints on the web for your website, will – in the long run – give all the above mentioned benefits. If the priorities are set then the whole campaign has a direction and can be geared , monitored and managed accordingly.

Options...

If the priority is to achieve an increase in direct sales or generate more leads then the SEO (along with working on the on‐page and off‐page optimization for ranking on the SERPS) has to also focus on the following issues :

• Are the landing pages well-designed for the targeted keywords ?
• Do the landing pages have the requisite info. so that the visitor can make a decision to buy?
• Does the website have easy online payment options?
• Does it have simple and small forms to fill to register?
• Are the leads generated being attended to and getting the necessary info from the staff when they call or email? This is important,  in case the visitor needs to confirm something before buying.
• Are all inquiries via phone or email, generated as a result of SEO, being recorded?
• How many of such leads converted into sales?

All this is possible when the SEO and the client can work with a mutual understanding; there will be a lot of data in this case, which the client company will have to give to the SEO to calculate the ROI and gauge the success of the SEO efforts.

If the priority is to drive more traffic and to establish an online brand then the focus should be on :

• social media integration
• A well managed and maintained blog. As regular posts on informative topics related to your industry can surely drive the targeted traffic and also with the help of social media you can promote the post and generate a good WOM.
• A high engagement level on Twitter and Facebook
• Sharing views on other blogs of your industry which put forward you viewpoint and establish your identity.
• Posting guest posts and thereby reaching out to other communities in your industry

Eventually, a genuine and well planned SEO campaign will undoubtedly give the website all the above mentioned benefits. However, setting priorities and an immediate objective helps in designing the path to follow so the SEO can focus on the priorities of the client.

Brussels By Night: by Ben Heine

It used to be you only had one search to target – the main search page. If you wanted to rank for a specific term, you could only rank on the regular SERPs. Now, you have plenty of places on the search engines you can target. Images, blogs, discussions, real time search, Places and videos are just a few places outside of the normal SERPs. You don’t just grab the traditional SERPs anymore; now you grab hold of any search you possibly can.

However, having said that, keep these things in mind:

You can’t (or shouldn’t) try to optimize for everything.

Pick vertical searches that have an affect on your market. For example, we recently checked real time search for “Italian real estate” and found little conversation about it. This points to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, FriendFeed and Twitter aren’t the best places to target for this particular market.

Blogs, however, brought back a lot of information, as did Videos and Discussions. What does this tell us? The conversation isn’t happening for the Italian real estate market on Twitter. It’s happening in discussion forums, on blogs and through video presentations. We might include these areas in our next campaign for the client.

Videos don’t optimize like websites.

The meta description of a video doesn’t seem to matter in terms of ranking. This doesn’t mean you don’t fill it out – just don’t expect a huge spike in ranking because of it. However, testing has shown that the title and page title DO matter, and need to be as detailed as you can make it in a short amount of space.

You also have to decide whether you’re going to host the video on your server or post it on places like YouTube. On top of that, if you decide to host the video on your site, you’ll need to create a video site map and submit it to Google. Unlike regular content, Google won’t index the video unless you tell the search engine “video content here”.

Track and organize your content offerings.

If you have PDFs on your site, you need to have that written down somewhere. If you have an Excel sheet, that information needs to be wherever the info on the PDF is. The same can be said for eBooks, infographics and other images, videos, blogs, articles, whitepapers, product writeups, radio shows, pod casts, webinars – you get the picture.

Each one of these content offering types can be optimized – and should be. It may take a few extra minutes, but that little bit of time per piece can add up to big traffic if done right. Mark what the content is, where it went and how it was optimized. Don’t let a piece go out without this information.

Inventory your content and decide which type brings more back.

Some types of content creation can take an enormous amount of time (video production, for example). Before you jump on the bandwagon of this type of content or that, see what you have so far. Look at how well these things performed.

For that matter, look at the competition. What are they putting out? Can you compete, and would it be worth it if you tried? You don’t want to break your budget trying to hit all the search spaces your competitors are hitting, so discretionary spending is important.

Be meticulous.

This goes along with the “track and organize” bit. You don’t have to make sure you hit each search space once a week. However, you do have to make sure each time you hit a search space that you do so with completely optimized, user-friendly content. Before you send anything out, make sure all the t’s are crossed and I’s dotted. It might even be helpful to create a checklist to go down for each type of content.

Always have goals in mind.

You could pour content into the dark whole of the Internet and hope something floats to the top. You could, but there’s a better way. Set up goals for your content. What do you want it to do for your business, and how do you expect it to achieve those goals?

Create a content strategy, outlining what, where, when, why and how, along with a few choice benchmark metrics. “My site has [number] traffic. I want to double it within 6 months. I’m going to do this by 1…2…3…”

Anytime you have a chance to fill in a descriptive area, do so.

Did you know Excel allows you to add information in the Properties tab? So does Word, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe PDF, for that matter. Any time you create a new piece of content, look for a Properties option. If you find it, fill it out!

Save the file name with “descriptive” in mind. For instance, “10-content-development-steps.doc” is a lot more descriptive than “document1.doc”. When you upload your content, use the same information as you did inside the program, and be descriptive in the page title and URL, as well, if possible.

Conclusion

It’s funny. In 2006, people were talking about vertical search in terms of search engines separate from Google and Bing. In fact, marketers were warning that Google and Yahoo seemed to be ramping up for some seriously competitive vertical search spaces. Well, they were half-right. Because of all the changes over the past 5 years in search engines, SEO, marketing, social media and so on, it’s hard to remember this is still a young industry. If you count ARPAnet (1969), it’ll be 42 this year. If you wait until ARPAnet changed to TCP/IP, it’s not even 30.

With the growth in the past 25+ years, does it make you wonder what’s coming up? For that matter, what have you done to keep up with the constant changes? How has your site changed with the Internet? Share your stories with our readers!

Walking the line

The line between reaching the search engines and reaching visitors is incredibly thin. Trying to reach search engines with SEO can alienate both, while trying to reach just the visitors can leave your site unseen in the SERPs. What’s a webmaster to do? How does it all come together for a strong return on investment?

In this article, we’re going to explore several areas that go into strong website ROI. Strap on your calculators, pens, pencils and notepads, ladies and gents – here we go.

Internet User and Site Statistics: 2000 – 2010

Used to be, you could put up a website and at least get a small, though steady stream of visitors. Yes, there was competition, but not near as much as there is today. How many businesses are online? How many are your direct competition? How many are actively walking that thin line?

Internet User Growth

I’m not sure anyone really has those statistics; especially since any site drawing in a little money is considered a business. However, while we don’t know the number of businesses, we do know the average number of people. Consider these statistics, taken from InternetWorldStats:

Internet User Statistics

Imagine what will happen in the next ten years. Many are online buyers, some are just web surfers, others are researchers, but they’re all out there looking for something.

Online Site Growth

What we also know, somewhat, is the number of sites on the Web, thanks to the Netcraft Web Server Survey:

Netcraft web server survey

• In 2000, there were less than 25.6 million sites.
• By the end of 2010, there were almost 256 million.
• In 2010 alone – from January to December -, Netcraft reported almost 49 million new sites added to the Web.

The Netcraft statistics are only based on those servers who accurately reported their site numbers, so the numbers may actually be higher. Imagine what the site count will be next year?

Walking the Line Between Search Engines and Visitors

Where do these Internet statistics tie together? With such a strong growth in sites on the Web, it becomes obvious why business owners use search engine optimization. So much competition is vying for important search space; who wouldn’t use whatever they can to get ahead of that competition?

What isn’t clear – especially with the huge number of people using the Internet -, is why so many people forget the visitor when implementing SEO…

Don’t Forget the Visitor

Search engines are not your best friend. They’re a tool, to be used like any other tool. When you forget about your visitors and target the SEs instead – well, it’s like trying to talk your hammer into buying your roofing repair services.

Online business is like competing with each room in a physical competitors building. You’re not just competing with the whole site; your fight breaks down to the individual pages of the competitor’s site.

So, let’s say you’ve implemented SEO on your site and are ranking in the top five. Your potential visitor will enter a search query and find your site listed with 9 others – sort of. They’ll see a title, a description snippit, a link and a site preview image.

Depending on the term(s) used, however, they may also see:

• A map of nearby locations
• A list of local links
• Reviews
• Images
• Videos
• Book Results
• Other potential search terms
• More stuff than you can shake a stick at

They see all this stuff because the search engines don’t care about your site. They don’t even care about your competitor’s site. What the search engines care about is growing and making money. To do this, they bring what their algorithms conclude are the most relevant results for a search query.

Oddly enough, this is what your potential visitor cares about, as well – the most relevant results for their search query. What you have to do is convince them that your site is the most relevant. Is “keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword” in the title tag going to do that? How about “Keyword is keyword, but keyword, keyword, key term, phrase isn’t” in the description? I’m sure you already know the answer.

So how does it all come together? How do you pull in all the necessary parts of the online formula for ROI?

1. Target the visitor first – always. The search engines come second.
2. Use the keywords in the title, but in a way that they make sense to the visitor. A whole bunch of words separated by commas isn’t just messy and often confusing; it’s unprofessional. You’re running an online business – show you’re serious about it.
3. Use a piece of your content with your keyword/phrase as your description – this helps with SEO, relevance and readability Example taken from this article: “With such a strong growth in sites on the Web, it becomes obvious why business owners use search engine optimization. What isn’t clear is why so many people forget the visitor when implementing SEO.”
4. Go ahead – use keywords/terms in the title on your page. After all, if you’re optimizing correctly, your primary term for the page should show up in the title anyway. Just don’t stuff them! There are people reading this page, for cryin’ out loud. If I see “Keyword, keyword, keyword” for a page title, I’m going to click away. IMO, if you blow me off to target the SEs, you don’t care about answering my needs – so I don’t care about giving you my money.
5. Yes, use your terms in your content. However, if your terms don’t fall naturally in the content then, honey, you’re not using the right terms for the topic. If you find yourself going through and putting your key terms in after you’ve written the whole piece – well, you’re not optimizing, in my opinion. You’re still keyword stuffing.
6. If you can’t figure out how to write the content and implement SEO without ruining how it reads, hire a professional. If the professional turns in something you wouldn’t want to sit and read on another site because it’s stuffed with crap and keywords, don’t use it! Fire the “professional” and get a referral from a serious optimization/copywriting company.
7. Don’t allow things based solely on whether it would help your SEO campaign. Ask first if it would help the visitor. Here’s an example: if you want to do a link exchange with a relevant company, that’s all fine and dandy. However, instead of throwing it up on a page called “links” (and I’m rolling my eyes here), try using it in content in a way that’s relevant and useful for your visitors.
8. Don’t get stuck on the whole “they aren’t linking to me, so I’m not linking to them” idea. If a link is relevant, use it. If you ask the other site to link back and they say no or ignore you, don’t remove the link. If it was relevant enough to use before they said no, it’s relevant enough now. Base your outbound linking on what’s useful for your visitor. Anything else is petty, and there’s no room for it in professionalism.
9. If you’re ranking on the front page of the SERPs and not getting traffic, you’re not appealing to potential visitors. The search snippit is your potential visitor’s first introduction to your site. It has to give a great first, second and third impression.
10. Use link bait titles sparingly. Just because a title is shocking, engaging, interesting enough to bring visitors, doesn’t mean the content is enough to keep them there. Mislead people enough times and they’ll never trust your headlines again.

When trying to reach a high level of ROI, you have to take all the elements of the online equation and put them in order of importance. Visitors should always come first. Strong content and relevant topics are a good way to target them. Search engines come second, using a dose of SEO, but never forgetting the visitor.

It’s difficult to balance everything you need for strong search engine placement, happy visitors and high ROI. However, if you keep your main focus on the visitors and relevance, the rest will follow.

What is Information Architecture, or IA, and why is it important? Who does it? Who should?

If these questions have been buzzing around in your head, getting in the way of daily thought, this article is just the thing for you. On the other hand, if you’re only interested in creating a user-friendly, converting, professional, etc. site, read on, oh grasshopper.

The Science of Information

IA isn’t a typo that was supposed to be AI (as in, artificial intelligence). IA is an actual science. You can even go to college for it. I especially like the way Information Architecture for the World Wide Web describes it:

“The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information.”

An intranet is an enclosed system of information; to put it simply, it’s a private area, accessed only by specific people, such as employees using a corporation’s intranet. Now, bear with me, because I’m about to share a wild idea…

Imagine your website as an enclosed system of information. You have your business, and you want to build your website as a personal business hub. For example, let’s say you sell tools. You have tools for home repair, car repair, boat repair; you know your website is the perfect place for any DIY fanatic.

How are you going to lay out the information on your website? What are you going to do to keep visitors there? What are you going to do to bring them back?

This is where information architecture comes in, and it all starts with creating a blueprint – a diagram of how you’ll build the site to make it easy for visitors to:

a) Find necessary information
b) Navigate easily to other, related areas of the site
c) Read, ask questions, buy tools

Creating Your Site Structure

Now, information architecture is more than just usability, but usability is part of it. You need to figure out the best way to lay out your site to make it more usable for visitors, easier for search engines to crawl and in a way that makes sense.

How are you going to place your important areas? Here are three examples on how menus can be placed:

Once you figure out how you’re going to lay your pages out, you then have to figure out how you’re going to lay your menu out…

Top Navigation Nightmares

Will you have a “home” link to the home page? If your visitor is on a page, will the link to the page still work or will it become a “non-link”? Will you have a contact link or just a phone number? Before creating your top navigation structure, you’ll need to answer these questions.

Second Tier Navigation

Often called “dropdowns”, there’s always a question whether second tier navigation is a good or bad thing. If you can create a nice, clean top navigation without making dropdowns, more power to you. However, if you have way too much information to share, some form of secondary menu is necessary. After all, a main navigation with 30 links just wouldn’t be reasonable, would it?

So… how would you lay out your information? Look at the image below, created using the example of a tool shop. (get a bigger view: Information Schema / Content Layout)

While this information layout is pretty basic and not researched or extremely thought out, it should give you some ideas of how to structure your layout. The main categories (1^st left hand column) might be part of your main menu. The next column your second tier.

Anything after the second column, however, you may have several links. In this case, it may be best to create a secondary menu on the side, or a page for each menu section. Think hard about it. Try to develop a mockup of any way you can think of to lay this information out; it’s much easier to judge a visual representation than try to see it in your head.

Conclusion

The architecture of your site content shouldn’t be taken lightly. Not only can this help search engines provide more relevant results when you show up in the SERPs, but it can also make it much easier for users to understand and navigate the site. Remember, there’s no such thing as “intuitive navigation” – not really. However, the closer you can come to it, the more often your traffic will come back to gain information, look for products – and convert.

Shocking...but, true

Shock, gasp and amaze… but many people seem to think “search engine optimization” is just another word for the I.T. department. Surprisingly enough, it’s not. It’s another way to say, “Get your website on the front page of the search engines”, which sounds nothing like “I.T. department”.

When your website breaks, you call a coder. When you need a graphic design, you call a designer. When you need a fancy new program, you call a programmer. When you need site traffic… well, wouldn’t you know it, you call for SEO.

Who are we?

We’re the wonders of the Internet-verse, spreading high-ranking cheer to our clients. Yes, we might do some coding, but it’s all in the interest of SEO. We love the challenge of finding your golden keywords. We like to dig into research and data… it’s like reading the stars for astrologists. We breathe this stuff.

SEO Around the World

Now, SEO is fairly well known worldwide, sort of. At least, the term is. Its meaning seems to be flexible, however. Depending on whom you ask and where you are when you do the asking, dealing with SEO means the optimizer can:

• Design a website
• Write good content
• Fix broken code
• Code a website
• Use an analytics program
• Create videos
• Use every computer program known to man
• Understand any type of the thousands of coding languages

I’d go on, but it’d be an endless list just ask our project manager.

What really needs to be clarified is that it all depends on the optimizer. Yes, ladies and gents… if you have a single optimizer (rather than a company), you’re limited to what that optimizer knows how to do. If you use an SEO company, you’re limited to what that company’s employees can do. This is a truth no matter what country you live in.

For instance…I have an optimizer. That’s not her main job. However, can she fix a broken website, update code, write great content, knows the abc’s of SEO etc. – as long as it’s written in one of the languages she’s familiar with. Whereas, my love has always been business development, content strategies and creating marketing campaigns for clients. That’s what I love to do period.

Can I understand analytics when I see them? In general, yes – and I’m learning more every day. However, when I want verification that I understand what the data is saying, I go to someone who specializes in analytics. That’s what they DO. It’s what they breathe. Me, I’m just a little ‘ole marketing who knows some other stuff.

Hiring an Optimizer Doesn’t Mean You Hired a Website Wizard

For the most part, even on page optimization doesn’t take knowing a whole bunch of code. And, for the most part, the places you need to change in the code are really easy to find once you know what to look for. However, if you expect your optimizer (or optimization company) to provide coding services, you’d better check if they can before you hire them.

If you’re afraid your eCommerce website might not be as secure as it needs to be, go ahead – ask your SEO if they have any recommendations. Often, what you’ll most likely get is a recommendation to check with an Internet security company.

One of the reasons, I feel, that SEO gets such a bad rap is because people who aren’t in the business really don’t understand what the business entails. For that matter, some people in the business don’t understand what it entails. You might hire an optimizer, so glad that you finally have yourself a website wizard; only to find out that what you really have is… well, a really good optimizer.

Before you hire someone to do your website optimization, think about what you’re really expecting. If you’d like to combine your needs (say, design and optimization) check with the person or company first. Ask if they can provide the services you need.

SEO and I.T. aren’t the same things, and trying to convince an optimizer that they should also be able to do x, y, z is a useless endeavor. It’s like comparing apples and pears, then trying to tell a fruit vendor why a pear should taste like an apple. Instead, describe what you want to achieve. Let them tell you whether they can achieve it…Simple right?

Tons of sites – really, lots of sites – claim to be able to give you the Secrets of SEO (add a whole bunch of exclamation points here). Just download this eBook (giving away your name and email), buy this special report (giving away name, email and cash) or order this course (same, same), and you, too, can know what the experts know.

The secrets… those almighty tips, tricks and techniques to get YOUR site ranking above all the rest NO MATTER how much competition you have. Here’s the number one SEO secret:

This stuff is crap. It’s so much crap it stinks higher than a garbage dump. Even flies are scared.

The Truth

Every SEO who can call themselves one and be truthful (key word here) about it has a few things they cling to, and these things aren’t always the same… but secrets? Come on, people. This is the Information Age.

I mean, “secret” implies something most people don’t know. Secrets are kept under wraps, right? So how is it that all of a sudden all these people seem to have a slew of SEO secrets to share with you? How many secrets can there really be? Yet, you see:

• SEO Secrets – top Secrets a SEO company will not want you to know
• SEO Secrets – all you need to know to reach the top of the search engines
• SEO Secrets Revealed!

Notice a trend yet?

Look… I don’t want to just break this barrier down. No. I want to stomp on it, crush it until it’s so much goo under my boot heel. There’s nothing in these eBooks, reports and courses you can’t already find – free, I might add – on the Internet.

In fact, some of this SEO secret crap you pay for will give you opposing views, if not be completely full of disinformation. Mostly, what these people have done is gather public domain information (online, free use), stuff it into an eBook or report, and slap a price sticker on it.

A side note on SEO courses and certifications…

You can spend the money on an SEO course and you might learn a few things, but, for heaven’s sakes, don’t pay the money just to be certified. As of yet, there’s still no governing body for search engine optimization. As of yet, there’s no such thing as real certification. Claiming you have an SEO certification on a job interview will most likely get your resume dropped into the trash pile. No joke.

You can’t go to college for SEO. You can go to college for things useful to SEO, such as Information Retrieval, Data Structures and Algorithms, and Natural Language Processing. However, you can’t go to an accredited college and get a Bachelor’s degree in SEO. Ain’t happenin’.

Where to Go for REAL SEO Secrets

When you want to learn about SEO, don’t waste your money. If you’re going to throw cash, pay attention to where you’re throwing it. Here’s a list of places to go if you want to learn search engine optimization:

• SEO Chat – Articles, forum, tons of great info
  • free

• SEO Training Dojo – Articles, forums, tons of great info in the Study Hall, 30% some of the best tools in the business, SEO community, weekly study sessions, case studies, in depth search geek info and more
  • $30 a month membership ($250 for a year, $50 savings bonanza and $1k+ in bonuses)
  • Disclaimer – we’re members so we’re partial, but the information you gain is well worth the money you spend!

• SEOMoz – Articles, SEOMoz toolset, Webinars, SEO community, marketing information
  • $99 per month, plus SEO tools

Free Article Resources

• Search News Central
• Search Engine People
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Land

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So, the next time you see a site offering the “Secrets of SEO”, pause before you click. Get your skepticism in order before you look at the page. If they say, “for only $20.99” or “guaranteed to get you to the #1 spot” or anything like that, click away. It’s crap.

Better yet, look no more. Come back here, go to the sites above, read and follow links to find other resources. Build your own set of resources for real SEO information. Recognize the crap for what it is.

Often, it takes a month or two to see any real changes due to your SEO campaign implementation. However, if you’re moving into the fourth month with a case of “nothing’s happening” blues, you need to make some changes – but what changes need to be made?

The Benchmark

Before you started your campaign, you should have created a benchmark cheat sheet. The benchmark is the set of metrics you’re using to define your goals. It answers, “Where am I now”, so you can find out “Where am I going” later on.

For example, if you’re trying to increase your traffic, your cheat sheet should have all the relevant metrics on it, such as:

• Targeted, relevant keywords you’re currently ranking for
• How many inbound links you currently have
• How much traffic your site is averaging per month
• Your daily traffic count (unique and return visitors)
• How much direct, search engine and referral traffic your site is averaging per month

Don’t forget the benchmark; you’ll regret it later if you do. Because, if you don’t put down where you’re at before you start the campaign, all you’ll know if it goes wrong is.. well, that it went wrong. You’ll play hell trying to figure out where.

Comparisons and Changes

If you have your benchmark metrics and set goals (say, you want to rank on the front page of Google for Keyword A within six months), it becomes easier to find out what the problem is.

Comparing benchmarks with current analytics…

You can’t really see what’s happening with a site without a comparison to previous months. All you’ll see is an overview: your overall traffic is rising or dropping, you’re getting hits from more keywords, etc. By comparing your benchmark data with your current analytics, you’ll get a much better picture of your site dynamics.

For example, if your search engine traffic drops instead of rises, you need to look at the data for the keywords and meta information changed by your SEO campaign. Compare these changes to your current analytics. It may very well be that your SEO campaign is working well, but you’ve targeted a keyword with little to no search value – i.e. people aren’t looking for it.

So, while your site is now ranking in the top ten position for Keyword A, you’ve lost search engine traffic for Keyword F. Before your campaign, Keyword F may have brought you more traffic because it was searched more often – even if you never intentionally targeted Keyword F in the first place.

You might be tempted to quickly change the keyword focus…

Before you do, however, make sure you really want to. Look at the relevance of Keyword A vs. Keyword F. For example, we seem to be ranking really well for “dead end sign”, because of an image we used for the Article Archive. The chance of anyone hiring us who searched for “dead end sign”, however, is slim to none.

In this case, if A is more relevant than F, you may be getting less traffic, but you’re getting more targeted traffic. Thus, you have a higher possibility of gaining traffic interested in what you’re selling.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Internet really is like a net. Everything attached to your site can affect how your site ranks, your traffic, your ROI, etc.

A real world example…

We recently had a client who wanted to rank better for some high competition keywords. We started tracking their site and created a set of benchmarks. Right before we actually started the campaign, however, their traffic took a deep dive. Why?

In looking at the analytics, we found they’d lost a large amount of referring traffic. Google put up their faster indexing, cleaning out the closets. So… picture a net like a spider’s web. The outer ring is sending links to the next ring in, which sends links to the next ring in and so on, until finally you have the set of sites linking to yours.

Some of the sites on the outer ring no longer exist, although the link count does. As the index cleans those dead links out, the next ring in begins to suffer. Some of those sites fall off the map and the next ring begins to suffer. By the time the waves got to our client’s site, the damage was serious. It took a bit of work and time to even out the mess.

The moral: A single site linking to yours and sending a large percentage of traffic your way could disappear overnight; the competition is fierce. What you’ll initially see in the analytics, however, is that your traffic has seriously dropped. It’s up to you to dig down into the data and find out you lost an important link – and then replace that link with something else.

In short, nobody said SEO was easy – and if they did, they’re lying. It’s a down and dirty, thankless job full of pouring over data, building campaigns, tweaking campaigns and pouring over more data. However, if you take the time to learn the basics of analytics and creating/tweaking/testing SEO campaigns instead of rushing in to plug a hole, you’re a lot less likely to have a sinking ship.

Holiday Competition

The holidays are upon us; fall is here. As an eCommerce business, whether you’re selling services, products or information, you should already have a holiday plan in mind. What works the best? If you don’t already have a plan, what are some things you can do to take advantage of the holiday rush?

Out of curiosity, we asked some of the big hitters in PPC and SEO to share their holiday tips. Here are some fantastic ones we’d like to share with you:

Ruud Hein suggests a slightly different approach. “Start early. Start earlier. In general, live six months into the future with your content. Early Christmas searches (trips, food, things to buy, etc.) start in summer. Not only that, but six months of aging is better than six weeks. So, fall is here; it’s time to work on your spring campaigns.”

• Prepare now
• Make sure you have strong marketing lingo
• Offer something special for ordering
• Reduce prices if needed
• Begin social networking
• Keep your blog updated
• Spruce up your ads and site design

Bonnie Burns says, “Just like brick and mortar stores change their window and sign to attract crowds, you need to do that to your site and online visibility. You’d better also be using good SEO processes, though, because competition online will be massive.”

• Offer pro bono advice to a lucky reader
• Plan for a great sale season in organic results
• Have a PPC plan in place to unload stock if necessary
• Have sale items to drive traffic from Thanksgiving to December
• Have a link plan to set up targeted items for deep linking

Deep linking is targeting pages deeper in your site that might not otherwise get traffic. Terry Van Horne pointed toward press releases and other deep linking strategies “which I would be working like mad on this time of year… When I was doing CMS and shopping cart development, I pretty much figured I was done on US Thanksgiving. For eCommerce, you’re busy building your link equity into the money page.”

• Assess last year’s campaign
• Update and fine-tune next year’s business plan
• Know what the target audience is focus on for the holidays and create your campaigns around it

“I’m insanely busy because businesses are gearing up their holiday campaigns,” Angie Nikoleychuk of Angie’s Copywriting says. “Many people are getting shorter tempered, less patient and in a hurry. But for each business, the holidays are going to be different.”

• Send out greeting cards to those clients and/or customers you have email or address information for
• Decorate for the holidays
• Try to tailor your ads to seasonal themes when you can
• Have a holiday giveaway
• Schedule weekly drawings for gifts a month or so before the holiday
• Track everything you do with Analytics and Adwords
• Create one landing page per add, test the pages and don’t forget the call to action

Angie was kind enough to give us an update with wonderful extra’s with her Online Business Holiday Checklist

Our favorite analyst, Massimo Paolini, says, “Increase your involvement with Web Analytics during the busy season, even if the temptation is the exact opposite. The web is great, because it allows you to fall faster than any other medium and therefore adjust faster as well.”

• Focus your site on what’s converting
• Split test something measurable and meaningful to your bottom line

Along with his contributed tips, Andy Beard adds, “Go for the quick wins… If you’re not scared silly of relying on Google, think about expanding to use remarketing.”

1. Set up analytics so you have all the data you need – custom profiles for segmentation of data and actually taking action on all those cool analytics tutorials you have read.
2. Focus your site on what is converting – navi…gation, index/noindex etc
3. Split test something measurable and meaningful to your bottom line
4. If you are not scared silly of relying on Google, think about expanding to using remarketing.

I found it interesting that the most common thing these experts pointed to was “giving”. It seems, during the holiday season at least, consumers expect even businesses to get into the spirit of giving. The next question is, if you don’t have a giveaway, special “buy one, get one free” offer or something like this, are you the Grinch that stole Christmas?

Thanks to all the experts who pitched in on the conversation. These are great SEO and PPC tips to start (or tweak) an online marketing campaign. Join the conversation on our Facebook Fan page for more great tips!

On Page SEO

Um. No. You see… well, let’s start from the beginning.

On page SEO is that stuff you do to your website. It’s the meta tags, the image alt tags, the content headers. It’s the careful thought put into content, keyword placement, how you write your anchor links and what words you use. On page SEO is necessary for several things, including SERP ranking and visitors seeing your page as relevant to their search (see, it’s not all about the SEs).

Off page SEO is all that stuff you do that doesn’t include actually touching your website. There are a million and one ways to perform off page SEO, but it all comes down to a term you may be more familiar with: link building.

You need link building. Why? Because the SEs look at a website with few links and shrug their shoulders (metaphorically speaking, of course). This is especially true if the site has been around for a couple of years. Logically speaking, a relevant, useful site should have at least a few hundred links by that time.

Links point to your site and say, “yo, SEs, this site says it talks about a, b, c, and we agree.” The search engines take those links, add them up and decide how relevant your site is to a given search term. You need these links, so no, you can’t blow them off.

Now, here’s a hint: you need quality links. We’ve talked about quality links before, but let’s be a little more in depth, shall we? Especially since I love coming up with examples. Let’s use our favorite example of Miami shoes of the golfing variety:

You own a website that sells shoes. It’s based in Miami, but you’re trying to expand your business to a national (or at least state) level. As well, golf shoes are your most expensive type of product, and you want it known that you sell high quality golf shoes that last. While you can go out and try to push 15,000 links through directories for a ranking hike, you can always try it an easier way.

Now, you know and I know there are tons of golf resorts advertising online, as well as tourist sites, review sites, sites that talk about golf, city guides and so on. Links from these sites would be closely related to your content: this is a big plus. On top of that, however, many of these sites are probably popular, and can bring extra value to the links.

With relevance in mind, you could also try:

• Photo sharing: sharing your product pictures and make them public using places like Photo Bucket or Flickr
• Use social bookmarking to promote your website, but be careful to choose proper tags
• Submit articles about how to make golf shoes comfortable or which ones are all the rage now
• Submit your products to various social shopping networks, such as Kaboodale or Google Product Search
• Get into document sharing with Google Docs and other sharing websites. You can share product brochures and other information, thus branding you further

Of course, there are always directory submissions, social networks and blogging, among other avenues.

Whatever you do to increase your off page SEO factors, take the time to make sure your linking campaign is well thought out. It’s a campaign, not a forced search and seizure of the Internet landscape.

Understanding Competition reports

You might pay an SEO company to give you a competition report or you might have a program that runs one for you. That’s all well and good, but what if you get back a bunch of numbers and columns you don’t understand? Even if you do understand them, how do they translate to your strategy and campaign?

This article is a quick review to help you along your way. Of course, we can’t answer them for your keywords, but the principal remains.

The project is XYZ Private Investigators. We want our clients to rank for as many high search, high quality, and relevant key terms as possible. First, we look at how many searches a term gets, and then we check the competition out.

Although KEI is a number, we seldom use the KEIs provided by any program used, because the formula is skewed. For instance, keyword A may have 5 million results pages with the term in the page somewhere, while only 13,000 have the term in the title and description. The KEI doesn’t take into account the difference.

In the image below is a list of key terms relevant to the client’s site and service, ranked by the number of titles with the keyword. For the purpose of this exercise, we’re using WebCEO. It’s not exact, but it does in a pinch.

Key terms

The first thing you’ll notice is a bunch of numbers. What we’re looking for is the optimal formula of high searches with medium to low competition. For optimum targeting, we need less PR and links as well.

Understanding the Columns

Note: WebCEO almost never matches the data you’ll get from Google AdWords, which is why I like to compare the two. We’re going to just use WebCEO data here, but don’t forget to cross check with other platforms when running an analysis for an actual campaign.

Let’s look at the columns. The first and second column have to do with how much people actually search for a term. The second column gives a visual representation of how competitive the term is.

Pages

“Pages” can mean that the term is anywhere on the page. It could be in images, the content, headline… it could be an afterthought of the author and the term would show up. In a check with Google, “private investigation” comes up with 9,780,000 results. We’re not really concerned, because the real number – the competition – is in those pages with the keyword in the title.

Titles

This is the real competition; 346,000 pages have the keyword in the title. Most will have either the keyword in the description, in the URL or both. Out of our chosen terms, this seems to be the term with the highest amount of competition. We now need to find out the quality of the competition, and we base this off the first and second SERPs position.

Links for #1 and #2 Results

When the competition report talks about links, it talks about the links going to just that page. According to WebCEO, the #1 ranking page (not website), has 37 links going to it. 37 other pages on the Web link to this one. They could be from other pages on the site, but they could also be from other important sites. Without link research, we’re just guessing – i.e. researching to find out exactly who is linking to the page. The #2 ranking page has 186 links going to it.

Traffic Rank:

The traffic rank is based on Alexa.com statistics. Alexa runs their numbers backwards. For example, a site with an Alexa rating of 7 is in a much stronger position than one with a rating of 1,000,000. So, in this case, the first site should be easier to beat than the first (if based on traffic rank alone).

PageRank:

PageRank is somewhat self-explanatory. However, as you can see, higher PR does not necessarily mean higher ranking.

Delving into Keywords

Based on just the keyword analysis, private investigator is a term worth pinpointing, as are “private detective” and “private eye”. Consider that the search engines work on relevance, not just a single search term. Placement in this competitive field will be tough, but it isn’t impossible.

Using terms relevant to private investigation can also help your placement. It doesn’t always have to say “private investigator” in the title. You might write about private investigation services and use the term “investigations” a couple of times.

The position you’re in is one of being between the rock and the hard place. Any term you target will have some serious competition. Geo-targeting will bring the numbers down a little, but the competition will still be tough. Basically, you’re going to have to build a big balloon that says “Private Investigator stuff here!” to the search engines.

Now, whether you do that by writing on topics relevant to investigations, such as fraud or surveillance, or by writing particularly about the subject is up to you. The long story short is, you’re going to have to carefully look at the competition, see what they’ve done and try to figure out how you can do it better.

Using Geo-Targeted Terms:

I wouldn’t use them in the titles of every post. Since private investigation laws change from state to state, however, any information you write would be specific to your area anyway. Because they may not fit another area, you should have the geo-terms in the content somewhere.

If you set a tag line to your post title for something like (just an example) “New York’s Private Investigator”, you’ll already have the two main words you want to target, and it’ll be in the search engine title of every post. It’s a thought, and something I might try if it was my campaign.

Special Issues You May Run In To

For many of the terms in the example, Wikipedia.org and government sites are the main competition. Frankly, they’re often hard to beat out of first place. Despite it being considered as a poor resource, Wikipedia is one of the most often referenced sites on the Web.

You have two choices: try to beat them out or try to join them (and any linking neighborhoods) by getting a link. For government sites, you had better have everything in tiptop shape.

The other thing to remember, before you get discouraged, is that most people looking on Wikipedia or government sites aren’t looking to hire a service. These are informational sites and very seldom sell anything – if they ever do.

Although there’s a lot more that goes into keyword research, hopefully this will help you understand a little bit more about the competition and how to decide which keywords will bring the best value.

The World according to Google

“Search engine update” can mean an infrastructure overhaul, indexing changes, user interface changes – even minor tweaks. Some updates don’t affect rankings at all, while other updates call for mad scrambling before rankings plummet.

Google Instant, however, is a whole other animal, and it made “instant” waves in the SEM and SEO world. Currently, there are over 4.2 million pages available to learn about, talk about, bitch about or laugh about this interesting little change in how the Big Daddy Search Engine of them all has “changed lives”. Although we’ve never done a mashup, it seemed like a good time to start.

Is Google Evolving Too Quickly? Peter Young asks this question, pointing out that Google may be pushing one too many changes on the user. I didn’t realize it until I read the article, but Google has pushed out 9 rather big changes over the past three months. Interesting read for those who wonder if the SE is overdoing it.

In My Knee Jerk Reactions to Google Instant, Christina Keffer of LunaMetrics has some interesting thoughts about whether the longtail or short tail key terms will be affected. The article is a good exploration of potential changes in how SEOs set up campaigns. The comments are worth reading as well.

Whether or not Google Instant kills long tail traffic is still a matter up for debate, testing and data analysis, but David Iwanow has an interesting post over at Search Engine People: Google Instant AdWords Trouble. If David is correct in his thinking (and he goes pretty in depth, so he may very well be), companies using AdWords for long tail terms are going to have to rethink their strategies.

An article over at SEOChat nicely covers the issues. Google Instant Changes the SEO Game sums it up pretty well with, “In short, nothing has changed – but everything has changed.” Terri Wells does a good job of covering all the basics without taking an actual stand. Why is “no stand” a good thing? Because nobody actually knows how search will be affected – yet.

Dave Davies has an excellent article on Web Pro News, named simply Google Instant and SEO. However, there’s nothing simple about it. Quite simply, this is an in depth discussion, well thought out, and covers the searcher, Google and SEO perspective. A must read.

And a few others on the side…

For everything that Google does, there are those for and against. The two I like the most, although there are thousands out there for both sides:

Google Instant an Instant Headache for SEO Jockeys and Parents, provided by Techno Buffalo – Definitely against, but then, the author (Leslie Posten) is a daily researcher on the Internet.

In An Instant, Google Reminds Us That It Is Still Awesome, provided by Business Insider SAI – Definitely for, this article is a glowing “review” of how one user received Google Instant. It’s important for optimizers to remember that both sides exist, so we can better optimize for each.

Lastly…

Because I’ve always loved mashups (at least on subjects I’m interested in), and because it feels like a continuation of this post, I felt the need to add Google Instant Instantly Makes Waves Around the Web. aimClear provides 62 recently published posts out of the millions, covering user field guides, tutorials, commentary on and affects of Google’s newest update.

Enjoy!

Related articles by Zemanta

• New White Paper Analyzes Impact of Google Instant on SEM and SEO (thesearchagents.com)
• How Do You Feel About Google Instant? [Google] (gizmodo.com)
• 40 Google Instant SEO, SEM & Analytics Resources (seoptimise.com)

SEO Myths

Writing about SEO isn’t easy, especially when there are so many different views of optimization; “views” includes some of the awful shenanigans being passed off as… drum roll please… the all mighty Search Engine Optimization.

It’s almost the end of 2010. What used to be myths have been tried and tested. They failed. Many are just plain lies now. I’m sure many of you have seen the spammy emails… We get at least ten a week, and anywhere from three to ten SEO sales calls per month. To them, I say, at least research the people you’re contacting will you?

So it’s not easy to learn about SEO. I get that; it’s constantly changing. How can you learn about something that’s so elusive? You read, listen, test and, ultimately, make mistakes that teach you a thing or two. However, the biggest thing to walk away with from any information on SEO is that Content + Links + Activity equal PERPETUAL ACTIVITY. Fresh content, strong links and human activity will get you results.

Spam is the worst enemy of the search engines. Because there’s so much of it, most engines will continue to update their algorithms in order to fight an uphill battle. You have to grow and change with the search engines to get the reach you need.

With that in mind, let’s discuss some of the things “everyone” believes about SEO.

• Getting free Google traffic is a complex process. It takes tons of time, manual labor and infinite patience. You’d have to be a Buddhist monk for this kind of work.

• Google’s algorithms can’t possibly be understood by anyone short of God – and even he has problems.

• Google ranking is better left to those who spend ten hours a day researching and studying optimization. Ranking on your own is beyond your ability.

Now, it may be over simplistic, but SEO falls into three areas: content, links and activity. What’s on your site, who’s linking to your site (and who are you linking to), and what kind of activity is happening.

SEO Myths

As you step into the world of DIY SEO, keep these things in mind. Likewise, remember the following list of SEO myths. They aren’t true. Period.

Proper headings can get your page ranked…

Getting high rankings doesn’t depend on your use of headings. Do proper headings help? Yes – especially for readers. However, if you just have your headings done, but don’t do anything else, your rankings will tank. You can trust me or test it, but if you test it, please do yourself a favor. Test it on an insignificant page.

Submit your URL to thousands of search engines for better ranking…

Search engines don’t need your input. They don’t need you to go to their site, put in your URL and tell them the site is there. They’ll get around to indexing your site on their own. In fact, listing with the search engines can actually slow the process. A better use of your time is to be listed on a few popular, relevant sites.

Optimize for one keyword per page…

This is a waste of space and can ruin your content quality. Think about it. If you’re only using one keyword, your content will look spammy.

Instead, you choose your keyword or phrase and then choose supporting phrases. We’ve found for us that three to five key terms per page have the best effect. The number one point to take away from this is “supporting” terms. Target the phrases you can, so that page can be found for several searches rather than just one term.

Again, test a page on your site. Optimize for a high number of keywords and watch the results. Cut down on the number of key terms until you get strong, relevant results. Testing each page this way may seem tedious, but your site will do much better in the SERPs.

Search engine is a way to trick the search engines…

Listen. If you’re tricking the search engines, then you’re also tricking your visitors. If you’re tricking your visitors, they won’t convert. True SEO is relevant content, quality backlinks and a busy site.

SEO can get your site banned…

Believe it or not, this is “somewhat” of a myth as well. Careful SEO won’t get your site banned. It’s only when your site sets up red “spam” flags that it becomes a worry.

You don’t need SEO…

This is one of my favorite ones; I argue about it with my editor. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a niche market or not. Consider how many millions use search engines. Even if you get conversions from other areas, not targeting search engines can lose thousands of visitors and potential customers.

There’s no cookie-cutter method to learning SEO. The Internet is so fluid; what worked yesterday may not work today. This is one of the biggest reasons we constantly pushing testing. How do you know something will or will not work if you don’t test it first?

Don’t just look at an article and put things into action throughout your site. Try what you read on a page, first. If it works, great, try it on another page. Three times is the charm, as they say. However, if you haven’t tested before site-wide implementation, you may very well end up watching your website crash and burn.

In conclusion please, stop your nonsense if you don’t know something don’t spew what you have heard others say. Read from the experts, don’t be afraid to ask questions after all we are here to answer them.

Every time Google gets a wild hair and decides to change something about their search engine, it’s like a green flag for negative posts about SEO. The laughs just roll in:

• SEO is dead
• SEO is cheating
• How I got screwed by SEO

As an SEO, I can honestly say it irks me, to put it mildly. Not because these posts down an industry I’m proud to be a part of – I have a thicker skin than that –, but because of all the hours we have to put in… again. The countless hours where we assure clients that their money and our efforts aren’t being wasted… again. Hours of talking on the phone, explaining that, no, SEO isn’t dead, when we could be doing what we are paid for… again.

Rather than spend countless more hours doing the same after the Google Instant update, I figured I’d just write it all out, right here, where everybody can see it. I’ll even address one issue at a time. If it hits a chord with you, bookmark it; after the next update, you can refer back to it.

SEO is dead

For the last time, SEO isn’t dead. Just like the Internet, SEO is a constantly changing, fluid industry. When search engines change things up, so do optimizers. You change your content output rate or how you do link building; you test your pages and tweak your campaign. What you do NOT do, however, is cry “foul” when the SEs do something you weren’t expecting.

You’re not going to know how to address all changes as soon as they happen – but that’s why we’re SEOs. We stand on the front line, dig into the possibilities and then test, test, test.

Now, I understand knee-jerk reactions. When I saw the first instance of Google Instant, I admit I was nervous. Gabriella and I watched the conference, discussing what it meant for us and for our clients. However, we didn’t just blurt out how we initially felt. We figured out the possibilities and then took a tentative stand – tentative, because it’s going to take a little testing to see what it really does. We didn’t go yelling out our worries, though. Why not?

Maybe some optimizers have missed it, but we have an obligation. Site owners look to us (as in SEO companies) to ease their fears, explain what changes mean and assure them we’re on top of it. Period. We do NOT go around yelling, “SEO is dead” every time a search engine company blows their nose or scratches a proverbial ear.

For those of you who are site owners, the past year’s updates will mean changes to the traffic on your website. Whether those changes are good or bad depends on how your site and SEO campaign has been managed up to this point. The important thing to do is not panic. Watch what your analytics data says, test your pages and find out what works to keep you above the fray. As long as you’re willing to adapt, your site traffic will even out again.

SEO is cheating

This sentiment normally comes from those who believe SEO is simply manipulating the search engines. Somehow, optimizers managed to dig through the countless numbers of Google/Bing patents and algorithms. Somehow, we’ve figured out how to actually change (i.e. manipulate) how those unbelievably massive, complex search engines read our clients’ sites – like somehow we have the magic key to giving clients an unfair advantage in ranking.

Bull, and may I politely add “crap”. If SEO is manipulating search engines, then copywriting is manipulating marketing. Nobody says copywriting gives marketing an unfair advantage, yet SEO is constantly ridiculed.

Let me make this perfectly clear. SEO is not search engine manipulation. In fact, if you have the time and dedication, you can do some of your own SEO simply by following Google’s Best Practice guidelines. What about things like cloaking? In many cases of what’s loosely called black hat, the search engines aren’t being manipulated, the visitor is. Do I agree with it? Do I like it? No, but then, that’s why we at Level343 don’t do those things. Hint: MOST optimizers opt not to use black hat techniques.

Lastly on this point, when a copywriter does a good job and brings in conversions for a business, do you yell at them when you find out? Do you say it’s “unfair manipulation”? No, you find out who they are and go hire them yourself. The same should be said of optimizers.

How I got screwed by SEO

If you’re writing a post about how you “tried SEO” and found out it was all a scam, I want to see the name of the company who scammed you and the price you paid. Why? Because a large number of people writing posts like this did one of two things: a) did it themselves and took the wrong advice or b) went for cheap instead of good. Not all, but many fell for the “$29.99 SEO a month” line.

Less money doesn’t mean the best deal. Time is money, money is time and SEO is time intensive. There are very few instances I can think of where a legitimate optimizer would provide services at this rate, and those instances are very rare.

Instead of kicking my industry in general, share the details of the company. Not all used car salespeople sell lemons; most have tons of happy customers who know they got a good deal. Some snake oil salespeople really do sell… well, snake oil. Not all big corporations are out to screw the little guy. My point? Not every optimizer is a scam artist. In fact, most of us are just like you: hard-working business people just trying to make a living in any ethical, legitimate way we can.

So – before the next search engine update, whether it’s Google, Bing or XYZ, I kindly ask those writing posts like the above to stop knocking my industry. I’m proud of my industry. I love what I do, its intricate challenges and, yes, even all the number crunching. SEO has been around for over 20 years, and it’s still hanging in there. Let’s not call the funeral parlor and bury it just yet, m’kay?

Search Competition

When doing your own search engine optimization, you can always find plenty of articles on how to research keywords. You can find tons of tools as well, such as WordTracker and the Google keyword tool. What you get is a list of potential keywords, information on how often they’re searched and, basically, whether they’d be a good choice for traffic.

Sounds helpful, useful, informational and all those words ending in the “ul” sound. Now, here’s the question – have you thought about how many others will be using the same optimization methods and tools? When I say “others”, of course, you realize that I mean “millions of others”.

How do you compete and get your website in those precious first slots of the major search engine SERPs? Go for the long tail.

Erm…
Even those who’ve been doing their own SEO for a while may be somewhat clueless when it comes to targeting search terms. You see, you have the basic, garden-variety short tail keyword phrase, like “website design”. Then you have the not-quite-so-common long tail keyword phrase, like “website optimization services for real estate websites”.

About the short tail…
The short tail has one or two keywords, tops. It’s generic, like “shoes” are generic until you start getting into brand names. The short tail doesn’t care whether searchers are buying shoes, selling shoes or just looking at shoes; all it cares about is whether “shoes” is in the search query.

About the long tail…
The long tail has more than two keywords. It’s not generic. It’s long, detailed and accurate to a “t”. It’s a mouthful, but darned if it won’t bring targeted traffic. The really cool thing about the long tail is it doesn’t just care if “website optimization services” is in the search query. It also cares about:

• Website optimization
• Optimization services
• Real estate websites
• Real estate website optimization services
• Real estate website optimization
• Real estate optimization services

In other words, it cares about variations of the search query as well.

Pros and Cons
Both options have pros and cons. For example, the short tail gets more searches than long tail – major pro. However, it’s harder to be ranked high for short tail – major con. Why is long tail easier to rank for? Fewer people are optimizing for them. Period.

So why would you want to go to all the trouble of optimizing for long tailed search queries if they have fewer searches? Two serious reasons:

1. More exposure at the top of the SERPS
2. Searchers are more detailed, which means searches are more targeted

The Two Camps of Searchers
Searchers tend to be either lookers or buyers. Lookers search for free stuff, information, are “just looking” or are bored. You’re going to have to work hard to convert lookers into buyers.

Buyers, however, are looking for a purpose – they already know the product and are there to buy it or they’re performing pre-buying research. Let me be clear: you want these people on your site. Let me also be clear: they tend to use the long tail, because they’ve already defined what they want (Example: Nike golf shoes, size 9, Miami Florida).

Which Keyphrase Type Do You Go For?
That’s easy to answer – both. For example, if your short tail is “website optimization”, you obviously want to rank for it. However, you increase your search exposure if you sit down and think about the end user. If they want to buy, what other words might they add to that short tail? The list you come up with is your list of long tail key phrases. Optimizing for both gives you potential high ranking for numerous searches.

A well thought out keyword strategy containing key words, short tail phrases and long tail phrases will not only have you ranking high, but also will having you ranking high in several places. Take your time; don’t rush. Once you get started, you want to keep the momentum going. Now get out there and make me proud!

Promoting Harmony

I have a secret you may not know. The Article Archive is based on the idea of promoting the Level343 website, gaining more clients and enticing to visitors to engage with us. I mean, we’re a company that actually sells SEO services. We want people to RT our conversations on Twitter, fan us on Facebook, talk about us to others (in a good way, of course) and happily refer us to all their friends without even thinking about it.

It’s a beautiful dream, isn’t it? It’s not just our dream, either. And yet, even those who achieve this dream still complain. They moan, mumble, grumble and whine. Why?

“I can’t get anybody to comment on my blog!”

The amazing thing to me is that commenting seems to be one of the ways you “know” a blog is hip. People drop by and say, “ooo, good point”, or even, “if you say so”, and all of a sudden your blog is “in”.

It Takes Time for the Word to Circulate, But…

Look. I don’t care if you’re staring at a blog you’ve had for four years without a single comment. It takes time. However, if you just posted the articles and figured people would find their way, you figured wrong. IF the purpose of your blog is to build an actual community and create relationships, you have to be the one to start the conversation.

In the process of researching, we’ve come across several blogs that held the potential of being thriving communities. For many, there was an air of expectation and breathless waiting, but crickets chirped in the background. Why? Because nothing was actually happening – yet.

In one in particular, the content was great. After talking to the site owner, I found out that the blog was getting plenty of visitors, but had no comments. It turns out that the site owner never tried to engage – anybody, anywhere. She simply figured that somebody would comment eventually.

You Have to Engage…

Will quality content bring out visitors? Yes. Will it bring out comments? Not necessarily. Quality content will only bring out the initial comments if you manage to write something in just the right tone so the individual feels they simply must respond.

Are you going to do that with keyword stuffed articles? We all know the answer is no, and I’m sure I’ve beaten that topic into the ground often enough. For the sake of those who may never have read here before, let me rinse and repeat. Keyword stuffing doesn’t help your SEO, and it certainly doesn’t help your visitors. It sucks to read, is difficult to understand and doesn’t even entice the reader to try to understand. Don’t do it.

I digress. If you haven’t been lucky enough to hit that tone, you’ll have to take a deep breath, step into the masses and engage. Meet with people online through blog commenting and social networking. Answer questions willingly and freely (it’s the nice thing to do). Don’t spam people (it’s the annoying thing to do). Commit to building relationships instead of numbers (it’s the right thing to do).

Because Visitors Are People Too

It all boils down to the fact that visitors aren’t numbers – I don’t care what your web analyst or optimizer says. Visitors are living, breathing people who like or dislike your writing, blog, personality, services and/or website. They have feelings and are more than willing to share them with anyone and everyone willing to listen – on at least three or more social media sites.

If they don’t like you, don’t know you or feel like you’re a sociopath with no care for the world, doom on you. However, if you manage to create a bridge of information and trust between you and the community you’re building, the people in that community can become your personal cheerleaders.

One Person You Engage…

I’m not kidding; you’d be amazed what the power of one person who really likes and trusts you as a business individual can do for your business. Think about it. If that one person is active in social media and feels like you’re an important part of his or her online world, they’ll start to RT and pass your links around… let’s imagine with a math equation, shall we?

Your personal cheerleader, who is actively engaging in social media, is being followed by 2,000 people. They send out a link from your blog to their 2,000 people. Maybe 10% will look at the link:     2000 * 10% = 200

Let’s say those who open the link average 30 followers each; they forward the link to their Twitter feed. Maybe 5% of those open the link:

2000 * 10% = 200 * 30 = 6,000 * 5% = 300

Now, that 5% also averages 30 followers each and they forward the link. Their followers may not know your cheerleader at all, so maybe 2% open the link:

2000 * 10% = 200 * 30 = 6,000 * 5% = 300 * 30 = 9,000 * 2% = 180

Cheerleader + First Open + Second Open + Third Open = (1 + 200 + 300 + 180) = 680

Can Turn Your Blog Into an Active, Ranking Community

Your one cheerleader brought you 680 visits because they trust and like you. How does that transfer into SEO and better ranking? Bloggers who like you and like your content will blog about you. They might just add a link, write a blurb or write a review. They might mention you in passing: “My friend, Gabriella, over at Level343 (link) told me once…”

As well, they will comment on your blog. All it takes is a few articles with comments on them before more comments will come rolling in. Now, you may not be bombarded, but you will get enough to say, “Yeah, I’m getting comments”.

As you continue to build relationships, you will also build links. The wonderful thing is that these links happen naturally, organically; you don’t have to force them. While it takes time, a few cheerleaders for you and/or your services can turn your blog into a ranking, active community.

Can you do it? Can you engage and encourage others? Can you step into the online community with rings on your fingers and bells on your toes? Yes. Now that these questions have been answered by an expert, it’s time to ask yourself a question: will I?

Code in a Pop by: Darwin Bell

When are you going to wake up, catch up and step into “the now”? “The now” isn’t a fad; it’s not going away. It’s not just an idea grandma came up with in the middle of a late night soap opera.

These aren’t the days of Basic programming, Windows Paint and NCSA Mosaic. Flash is dying, slowly being buried under HTML 5 – don’t argue; it’s happening. Mobile web is shaking desktop browsers. Design programs are exploding with brand new features. Between HTML, XML, CSS, Java, Ruby, Perl and others, there are over ten web programming languages.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are no longer in the safe days of the Commodore 64’s. We’re past the times of IRC or BBSes and delving into the days of Craigslist, instant messenger, graphics to the nth degree and more. Forget about the safe days. Step into “the now”.

Designers, you don’t need to know optimization, but you do need to know user interface! It’s “the now” of web design, and it’s essential to providing your clients with a worthwhile website. If you design beautiful works of professional art, bully for you. However, if those professional works can’t be navigated by the end user, you’re developing wonderful, beautiful pieces of crap that clutter up the Internet.

User interface isn’t an opinion. It isn’t an option. Your clients want those websites for a reason – to convert visitors into paying, reading, engaging, interested, viral consumers. What happens when a visitor can’t find their way around the website because the buttons are all hidden behind beautiful artwork? Boom – epic fail.

Lastly, let me point out that if you don’t know a single thing about creating a website beyond design, you need to start asking the programmer, “Can you do this” or “Can we use this font”. Here’s some news for you. Just because you think Optima looks lovely as a paragraph header, doesn’t mean the visitor will see it. In fact, chances are they won’t. Check out web safe fonts before you go dinkin’ around in the font vault, will you?

Programmers, let me wake you up to a few terms you may not know. Search. Engine. Optimization. Ease of use. Site speed. Clean code. Java includes instead of java scripts. Compression

When you’re turning that gleaming professional design into a shiny new website, keep these things in mind. Clean code and site speed aren’t suggestions. The more useless crap you have on your client’s website, the worse a job you’ve done for them. Don’t be lazy – clean up your leftover code before you go!

-And what’s with the fifty lines of code in the header? Why must you have eight different CSS sheet references? Why can’t you combine them into one file? The same goes for Java script. You don’t have to overload the header. Be kind – combine.

Last, do you like money? Would you like to keep making it? The best way to ensure you keep bringing clients in is by doing that little extra to help them. Take the time to use those header and alt tags. They aren’t there just to annoy you. I promise.

Now, I’m not saying any of this because I don’t like designers or programmers. I’ve been on both sides – I’ve been the designer dealing with the programmer, the programmer dealing with the designer and the optimizer dealing with both. I’ve made some of these mistakes and fixed some of the mistakes others have made.

It’s not easy to create a professional website the equivalent of a *Bugatti Veyron, but it can be done. Of course, if you do it all yourself, you might think it’ll be easier; it won’t be, because you’ll have to remember it all, too. To make it succeed, the designer, programmer and optimizer have to work together.

SEO – it’s in the now. Design? Yep. In the now. Three programming languages combined in one website? Oh yeah. Your clients want shiny, clean, search engine-friendly, visitor-friendly, conversion-making, online Bugatti Veyrons. Why not give them what they want… that’s now, too.

How'd ya like me now?

*Incidentally, the Bugatti Veyron is the most expensive new car in the world – $1.7 M, 987 hp and over 250 mph.

Online reputation By: Miklos Teknos

“Any press is good press”, right? Not necessarily. Bad press – negative publicity – is becoming a prevalent problem for online companies. Anybody can write something about your company, from anywhere, about anything. They don’t have to have a name; “Anonymous” is a very popular identity for posting on forums, sites and blogs.

Is Bad Press a Problem for you?

It may be time for reverse SEO. With the Internet and social media, bad press can turn into a public relations nightmare. How do you control the damage?

A while back, I had a run-in with a potential client. He didn’t like my prices and, although we had no contract, he somehow felt he’d been gypped. He chose a well-known complaint site and posted a complaint against me for “how poorly I treated clients”. For a month, anytime someone searched for my name, one of the first things they saw was the complaint. Now, granted, some of my actual clients came to bat for me, but the damage was done.

In this case, reputation management was easy – sort of. I contacted the complaint site, showed them the correspondence and they took the complaint down. However, it took another month for the complaint to disappear from the SERPs; it was listed, but when you clicked on the link it redirected to the home page of the complaint site.

For those two months, there’s no telling how many potential clients I may have lost from that one untrue complaint.

Controlling Negative Publicity

Reverse SEO pushes the bad press from the front page of the SERPs, lowering its exposure to the general populace and cutting down on the potential impact to your business. It might take everything from creating social media profiles to optimized press releases to high-quality link building, but suppressing negative publicity can be done.

It’s very seldom that a company manages to go through the business cycle of life untouched and pristine. It happens to everyone, whether the claims are legitimate or not: resentful employees, competitors, etc. can quickly destroy your online reputation. Because these complaints are easy to make anonymously, they’re hard to control, and harder to take care of in a private setting.

So tell me readers have you been in a similar situation? Maybe you can share with us how you handled it or what you would suggest… If you have a suspicion that negative publicity may be coming, don’t hesitate to take on reverse SEO. A little bit of preparation goes a long way!

Speed is key

I can’t call it a skill of SEO content writing, so I’ll call it a learned tactic: beating writer’s block. Let’s face it; writing engaging, entertaining works of art to awe humanity is a crapshoot. Sometimes you hit the bull’s eye; most times, you aren’t even close to the target first time around. The readers are calling, though; your fans are waiting. What do you do? If you have a treasure trove of SEO content, you dig into it. If you don’t have one, it’s time to build one – and fast.

Lesson #1: When you feel creative, use it!

When the juices are flowing and you’re Mark Twain (or pick your favorite writing hero) incarnate, don’t pause. Don’t worry about the mundane things like SEO, keywords or word count; just write. Let the words flow from point to point – or even just wander around. This is your treasure trove. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be there.

I’ve ended up with 3,000 word documents with brief paragraphs of coherent thought. The good news is that, when writer’s block strikes, I can scroll through these documents and take excerpts at will. It really is a treasure trove.

Lesson #2: When in doubt, outline.

What if your muse has gone on a permanent vacation? What if you forgot to feed them cookies? No worries; there’s always the ever-trusty outline. Start with your main topic, which is – or should be – the topic of your site. Consider what you like most about your topic, write it down, and turn it into a title. Then ask yourself the question, “Why do I like this thing the most?” Bullet these things:

Topic: SEO

What I like: the intricacies

Starting Title: The Intricacies of SEO

• SEO is challenging
• It’s almost never the same from client to client
• There’s always more to learn
• It’s like a puzzle
• Just about the time you think you have, the search engines change the rules

What you have at the end of it is a brief outline of your next blog post or article, keyword already in use. With enough of these outlines, a day of writer’s block can still be prolific. Write a brief opening paragraph, a brief conclusion, and then expound on your bullet points.

Lesson #3: When even outlines won’t come, write headlines.

Sometimes, the world is just against you. Sometimes, even free flow writing and outlines won’t work. If this is the case, write headlines. You may not be able to use them now, but add them to your treasure trove.

Then again, enough headlines can often help kick start the creative muse. Rather than worrying about not being able to write a whole article, focus on creating beautiful, engaging or exciting headlines:

When SEO Goes Wrong

The BP of SEO

Top 5 Reasons NOT to Build Links

You CAN Get Top Listing in the SERPs

You get the picture. Right or wrong, the headlines you create could be the beginning of an excellent article. What you’ll often find in this case, however, is the title needs to be rewritten after the article is done. Just remember that, and reread the article once it’s done with the headline in mind. If it doesn’t fit, fix it.

Lesson #4: Writer’s block can be broken with the right medium.

Maybe you’re just so used to typing that you haven’t tried a pencil and paper lately. I know a woman who still uses a typewriter for writing drafts (she’ll be devastated when even novelty shops quit selling them). For me, it’s often a smooth pen that just rolls across the paper and a college-rule spiral notebook. When you’re stuck in one medium, try others.

The real key for creating a content treasure trove is try, try and try again. The failures go into the trove for safekeeping until you’re once again free to create. Never throw anything away, because you never know what your next great content creation will be!

Starting your search

One of the search terms that hit our site was “minimum amount of time to find keywords for SEO”. Somewhere out there, someone is trying to find out the shortest amount of time this part of the campaign will take. Sadly enough, this means they’re probably not taking SEO seriously, or believe optimization is a quick fix.What’s the minimum amount of time it takes to find your keywords? It depends – ain’t that helpful?

Type of Product

Some products are so universal that your best bet is to geo target. “Black golf shoes size 9, Miami, Florida” is a good example. Sometimes you may even have to break it down to your zip code area; it all depends on how much competition you have. What state doesn’t sell golf shoes?

With products that are widely known and widely carried, keyword research could – quite literally – take days. Yes, you know you’d like to rank high for “golf shoes”, but that term alone brings back over 58 million results. You’re going to spend some time trying to find mid- and long-tail terms to help you rank.

On the other hand, if you happen to sell wind turbines – Whisper 500 Wind Turbines at that – you don’t have a whole bunch of keyword research to do. The main prospect you’ll be facing is finding out the terms people would use to find the Whisper 500. It could take a bit of research, but probably not as much as “golf shoes”.

Type of Business

Is your company B2B or B2C? It does make a difference. If you’re B2B, where is your company in the product life cycle? Is there only one term that would fit your company’s particular place in the life cycle? If there is, your keyword research may be almost over. Tada!

Is there more than one term that could fit your company’s product or service? You have to delve into the mindset of corporate America. CEO’s would search differently than the R&D division, for instance. You’ll want to gain as many possible surrounding search terms, to gain a larger part of the search market.

What if your company is B2C? Once again, you have to move back to the type of product, how much competition you have and how wide the demand is.

Search Stats

You have a product and you know it’s in high demand, but when you look at the search statistics, it looks like no one is using your product’s term. What gives? You may have a long bit of research ahead of you. If you have a high demand product and no one is searching for it by name, you’ll have to hunt down the answer to “What term are they using, then?”

So, can any SEO really give you a “minimum” time requirement for keyword research? I don’t think so. I can tell you that, with rare exceptions, you aren’t talking about just an hour or two. Consider that the right set of key words, terms and tails can go a long way in making or breaking the success of your online business. Do you really want to rush the most fundamental part of your SEO campaign?

At the beginning of June 2010, Google initiated the Caffeine update: a complete search engine restructuring. Google Caffeine indexes content at a faster rate. i.e. every day, globally. Since the Google update, many sites have noticed a moderate to severe drop of traffic.

In the past, the updates of Google’s search engine could take weeks or months. Old content, whether the content was still accessible or not, remained listed. This, in turn, gave site traffic and ranking, even if the page no longer existed. Google Caffeine focuses on fresh content, merged with the search engine’s previous aim of relevance.

SEO Response
Studies show the higher the ranking, the more traffic a site gets. Due to Google Caffeine, ranking now requires a higher amount of new content. You simply cannot assume that your competitors are unaware of SEO, or that they have a completely static website. With faster indexing, your fresh content is no longer fresh after a week, and can quickly be replaced in the SERPs with competitor ranking.

Example:
Day 1: You post an article on your site. You rank well for that article (1^st place), bringing in more traffic.
Day 3: A competitor posts a similar article. This article, once indexed, can knock your ranking down.
Day 5: Another competitor posts an article, which knocks your ranking down more.

Within a week, your fresh article that helped you rank in the 1^st position is now on the second page and quickly being buried.

If your site has turned into a sieve and you’re losing traffic, you need to find out why before you chose which way to aim the largest part of your efforts. For instance, one client was getting a greater percentage of search engine traffic – simply because their referring sites had dropped off the SERPs map.

If referring site traffic is slipping away quickly, turn to link building and get your site back up to par. However, if you’re losing traffic from search results, you’re most likely slipping down the ranks and need to beef up your content.

Link building has been a constant technique that helps with ranking. However, when one is able to link to fresh content (vs. older content), this tells the search engine your site is still viable and active. It’s still relevant to your search term and still interesting to visitors. In other words, it’s still worth ranking in the search engine results.

At this point in SEO and search engine placement, site optimization builds the foundation, but linking and fresh content is absolutely necessary to stay on top. Now, more than ever, SEO is a continuous need, with a heavy emphasis on content and links. Fresh content can now provide ranking within 32 hours, rather than waiting for the ranking to improve over time. However, it is essential to keep this boost going, rather than letting it fall behind, to keep traffic and ranking at a high level.

Topic Focus
When creating content, in terms of bringing, and keeping, visitors, it should be more information based, with low-key sales. The more information on your topic that you have within the site, the better the overall ranking (and individual page ranking) the site will experience. In addition, this type of content provides additional opportunities:

By all means, don’t neglect your sales. However, keep your sales pages as sales pages and your informational pages as, well, informational pages.

Conclusion
With the Google Caffeine update, fresh content added to your site is imperative, along with relevant links to the new content. It’s no longer a choice if your site is going to stay high in the rankings for non-branded terms.

If you’re a fellow SEO, feel free to add more information, argue or agree. We always love to hear from our contemporaries. For site owners, what have you experienced since June 14^th? Severe traffic drops? Better traffic? Better or worse ranking? Tell us about it!

3nhanced.com

Among other things, I love WordPress as a site platform. It’s a beautiful thing for SEO, especially if you use the Thesis theme (hint, hint). WordPress is a:

What else? Let’s see… how about the 10,000 or so plugins that can help you make your website a better visitor experience? From SEO to image galleries, calendars to videos and more, the gallery of WordPress plugins spans almost every website need. Some are free, some are paid, but – with a few exceptions – they’re all worth looking at.

Now, part of SEO is (at least in my mind) making sure your website is easy for search engines to read. Not only does it need to be visitor friendly, but the more you can do with your site to make it easy for the SEs, the better you’ll do. Yes, there are WordPress plugins for that, too:

1. Redirection

Purpose: To redirect one URL to another
Why?
Redirection creates 301 redirects, which is most especially useful in the dynamic, ever-changing world of site design and blogging. Old blogs become less useful, old pages may be removed. You may even change the URL of a few. From a simple-to-use dashboard inside of WordPress, you can quickly add any number of redirects for better site usability and searchability. No more 404s!

2. Google XML Sitemap Generator

Purpose: To keep your sitemap updated as the site/blog changes
Why?
Easy to use, quick to setup, the Google XML Sitemap plugin generates search-engine friendly sitemaps. You can update the sitemap with the click of a button. As well, you can remove any pages you don’t want on the sitemap, making it easy to manage and keep updated.

3. NoIndex/NoFollow

Purpose: To easily set no index, no follow or both attributes per page
Why?
The NoIndex/NoFollow plugin serves the purpose of completely blocking search engines from a page, such as in the case of a log in page, or non-indexation of a page, such as in the case of “thank you for ordering” pages. This is a valuable plugin, making sure the pages you don’t want being found by the general public aren’t in the SERPs.

4. Broken Link Checker

Purpose: To find and show broken links for easy retrieval/changing
Why?
This is an excellent tool in terms of SEO, search engine crawling and visitor usability. Broken Link Checker scans and notifies you of broken links, then gives you the option to remove the link, change or leave a line through it. Combined with the redirection plugin, this is a useful way to keep your site updated and let the search engines know the site is staying updated.

5. Header-Footer

Purpose: To add script to a single page
Why?
A lot of times with WordPress, certain java scripts may only be used on a single page, yet they sit in the header of every page. This adds unnecessary lines of code in the other pages. With the Header-Footer plugin, you can keep your global scripts global and your single page scripts on the single page. Ultimately, this means a cleaner (in terms of code) and faster website.

6. WP Total Cache

Purpose: Caching files
Why?
Two words: site speed. WP Total Cache gives you the options to minify your HTML, CSS and script files, reducing the overall file size of your site. In turn, this reduces the load time of your site. As well, the plugin caches your images and pages according to the times you set, which is comparable to adding a rocket booster on your car. Can you say fast?

7. Google Optimizer

Purpose: Creating pages with better performance
Why?
Even high performance pages can be better; Google Website Optimizer makes it easy to create tests, comparing one version of a page to another to see which performs better. With the Google Optimizer plugin, you can easily add the tracking scripts needed for this fantastic testing tool.

Do you have a favorite WordPress plugin that makes it easy to keep your site updated? Tell us about it!

You’ve done your SEO; you’re keeping an eye on your site analytics, networking, writing content – all the things a good webmaster does to show his or her site tender loving care. These methods seem to be working, because you’re getting great traffic and a good number of conversions. Why question success?

You don’t really need to know why visitors are coming, just as long as there are visitors and conversions, right? It must be X, Y, Z, because you’ve done X, Y, Z, so let’s leave well enough alone, shall we?

No, let’s not, and here’s why: there’s always room for improvement.

Imagine – you have a 20% conversion rate and are getting 3,000 visitors a month. What if you could raise your conversion rate to 30% and get another 1,000 a month? How much better would you be doing? How much more “successful” would you consider your website? Are you interested in finding out?

Many SEOs are perfectionists. We use the three Ts, always seeking to improve, always seeking to create a tighter, stronger, traffic bringing, converting website – and you should too.

Warning: This is a rather long article, but contains a great amount of information. We dithered over whether to break it into two parts; it seemed more convenient for our readers to have all the information on one page. If you don’t have time to read it, do bookmark it and come back later.

The Three Ts for Improved SEO

Improved site optimization is outlined by the three Ts: Tweaking, Testing, and Tracking, in that order. Using this formula can slowly but surely increase your traffic and conversions. You can download our SEO Improvements Sample Sheet used for this article.

SEO Tweaking

Before you change anything, you have to know what to change. You don’t just go in and willy-nilly move things around. The best place to start in on any low performance pages. First, however, you have to qualify and quantify what you’re going to use as the metrics, or the definition, of a low conversion page. 100 unique visitors or less? 3 conversions or less? A bounce rate of over 30%?

Once you choose your metrics, dig into your analytics program and create a list of pages that match the metric for low conversions. It’s helpful if you lay it out in a spreadsheet, like this:

Spreadsheet: Low Performance SEO Pages

Compare the first on list of low performance pages with a similar high performance page. Compare:

• Meta date: Title and description
• Page layout: How does the low performance page (LPP) look compared to the high performance page (HPP)?
• Information value: Does the LPP have more valuable information than the HPP?
• Content: Does the LPP have shorter content? Longer content? Is the HPP more clearly laid out?
• Tone and style: Does the HPP speak more to the visitor than the other? Have you addressed needs in the high performance page, yet not in the low performance page?
• Links: Is it simply that the HPP has more links pointing to it than the LPP? Is it getting more traffic because it has better exposure?
• Ranking: Does the HPP rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for its keyword than the LPP?
• Competition: Does the LPP have more competition for its key term than the HPP does?

Once you’ve defined the differences, it’s time to begin tweaking your chosen low performance page. Again, you don’t simply go in and change things, however. You move to the next T.

SEO Testing

It’s important that you don’t remove your current page and replace it with a brand new rebuild. Even though you’ve compared your LPP with a similar HPP, you still have to find out if the differences are the problem – or which difference is the problem. Google Website Optimizer is a great program for this. GWO allows you to create a test page, while keeping the original up, so you can compare how the variant (testing page) performs against the original.

Go back to your spreadsheet and mark the possible changes for the LPP, using the information you gained by comparing the low and high performance pages. The great thing about MS Excel (other spreadsheets may allow the same), is that you can link to other files on your computer from within the spreadsheet for easy reference.

Spreadsheet: Tracking Changes

When using GWO, it’s best to start with one change rather than many. Choose which change you’ll start with, and create a website page similar to your LPP; the only difference should be the change you’ve chosen to implement. Make sure you add <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” /> in the header, because you don’t want the search engines to index your test page. Once your page is created with the appropriate robots tag, publish it.

Sign into GWO and start a new experiment.

Google Website Optimizer: Creating a New Experiment

Now, the steps are pretty clearly laid out, but don’t hesitate to ask a coding friend, talk to your webmaster (if you have one) or hire a web coder. If you hire someone to help set up the code, it shouldn’t take more than 10 – 20 minutes per test, and they need to know the difference between the <head> tag and the footer. To get the best bang for your buck, have several tests ready. Most coding, including ours, is charged by the hour.

Once the experiment is setup, start it. GWO will then start delivering your variant (testing page) to visitors at a steady rate. Depending on how much traffic your page gets, you can find out whether your change makes a difference within a month.

While you’re waiting for the data to gather don’t just sit back and wait. You have other low performance pages to work on. You may have other changes you can make that won’t affect the testing pages, such as link building. As well, you can create any number of experiments with GWO.

Eventually, whether it takes a month or three months, your first experiment will finish. A finished experiment will have a declared winner: which version brought the best conversions. If you have more than one testing page, remove the losing pages from your website, keeping the winner. The winner becomes your new “original page”.

Start a new experiment based on the next needed change. For instance, if your first experiment was based on the page layout, the next experiment might be based on the content.

SEO Tracking

While the experiments are going on, your analytics program will still be keeping track of your chosen metrics. You should be, as well. Again, go back to your spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet: Keeping Track of SEO Improvements

Once the first experiment is finished for a low performance page, keep track of the results by putting in your metric statistics at the end of each month. Each time you finish an experiment, make the declared winner your new “original page” and track the results for at least three months.

Rinse and repeat.

Continue with the three Ts until your page falls out of the Low Performance Page category. Move on to the next page (s).

The three Ts of improved SEO are vital to a continually growing, high conversion website. By tweaking, testing and tracking, almost any page can become a powerful tool for the success of your online business. If you’d like to know more about testing your SEO and website pages or need to hire a professional SEO company to provide these services for you, please contact Level343.

A shot of Google Caffeine

Google Caffeine… just the name may spark worry. It seems every time Google comes up with something new, rankings bob up and down like a sinker on a fishing line with a hundred-pounder on the hook. I’ve always wanted to use a fishing metaphor with SEO…There I said it.

So, what’s Google Caffeine? What’s it doing to your website? What part of your SEO campaign do you have to change this time to make up for the waves in Internet Land?

Relax. It’s not as bad as you may fear, but it is a healthy wakeup call for webmasters and SEOs alike. Now, optimizers at least, have known Caffeine was coming and some have already changed their strategies to account for it. For webmasters doing their own SEO, however, here’s your heads-up.

What’s Google Caffeine?

Google Caffeine could aptly be called a search engine structural overhaul. See, when you’re searching the Internet, you’re not getting all the pages that are currently on the Internet for your term. Search engines are indexes; how old the results are that you get depends on how fast the search engine refreshes its index. Up until Caffeine, the Google index has been plodding along, constantly a week or two behind.

Now, search engine companies are a competitive bunch. You’ve probably read about the big three, which is now (basically) the big two: Google and Bing/Yahoo (Bingoo?). So, Google did what Google does and took a step to improve their search engine by introducing a dose of energy: Google Caffeine.

Google Caffeine really is a shot of energy, or indexing speed, to the big daddy search engine. Its indexing is umpteen times faster than before and providing fresher, more relevant results – or so the marketing says…

“Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.” (You can read the full release about Google Caffeine on the Official Google Blog)

Egads! Sounds official – what’s that mean for my rankings?

Don’t panic. For the most part, your rankings will do what they always do: go down when you don’t SEO and go up when you do. However, if you reread the quote above, you’ll notice a word used twice: content.

What Google Caffeine ultimately means for you is more competition for your content. If you’ve noticed, Google indexes videos, blogs, twitter, articles, news and images. Your content has to compete with all types of content, not just with similar content.

As well, it’s refreshing the index faster, which means – more competition for your content. You’re not just competing with new content, but with old content that’s still relevant and being linked to. With Google Caffeine updating the index on a continual basis, it’ll be a bit harder to rank based on a few blogs here and there.

I’m doing well with my SEO and I want to stay that way. What do I do?

We’ve always said, “Content is King”, and we’ll say it again. Content IS king. Even more so now, you can’t afford to let your content creation fall by the wayside.

If you want to stay in the rankings, you have to admit the possibility that your competitors want to do the same. You have to admit that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t the only one building links and optimizing your pages. You also have to admit – at least to yourself – that the one thing you really have above your competitors (besides a superior product or service, of course), is the quality of content you provide your visitors.

Many webmasters, when faced with the possibility of keeping up with content demands, decide it really isn’t that big a deal. Here’s your warning, given with all sincerity and concern we have for our readers and clients: you can’t afford to think that if you want to stay in the search engine results. Build your SEO content, keep building your content, and always make sure it’s top quality.

Jessie smiling

Every once in a while, something happens where you have a choice: gloat, or be the bigger person and keep “I told you so” to yourself. Every once in a while, you just can’t resist gloating… Take, for instance, the whole issue of site speed. Google officials spoke from on high recently, passing down the word that yes, site speed does matter. Allow us a proud moment of HA!

Back in 2009, we wrote a few articles about site speed. We also wrote an article or two about having clean code and being W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) compliant. Needless to say (thus the gloating), we got a lot of flack about the issues. Plenty of SEOs, from industry professionals to widely read do-it-yourselfers, guffawed at us and said that neither matter to the search engines. Again, a proud moment of HA!

Now let’s move past the gloating and childish (but gleeful) “I told you so” and on to what this has to do with your website.

The first question is: do the search engines really care about site speed or how clean your code is? Yes – and no.

As we wrote a few weeks ago, Google says that site speed (how fast your pages load) WILL make a difference in your rankings. Now, whether that difference ends up being large or small still remains to be seen.

Clean code, on the other hand, doesn’t help your site rankings. So why do we talk about it? A few reasons. Clean code means that (if done correctly):

• Your website is running properly.
• Your design displays as you intended.
• You have no broken, useless links.
• You have less code for search engines to dig past at the beginning of the page before reaching the content.

Now, the second question is: do your visitors really care about site speed or how clean your code is? The answer is a resounding yes.

Why Does Site Speed Matter?

Imagine that you’re using your website to sell products. I can see it now; it’s happened to all of us. You click on something you want to buy and it takes forever for the page to load. By the time the page has loaded, in fact, the phone is ringing, the baby’s crying, someone came to the door… You get the picture; it’s not pretty.

Statistics say that most visitors won’t wait more than 5 – 10 seconds for a page to load before going somewhere else. Now, you may have fast Internet, firing along at T1 speed. However, a lot of people are still limping along with DSL or, heaven forbid, still using their phone lines. This means that, if it takes you 5 seconds to load a page with your T1, you can bet that many on DSL, broadband, etc. are busy answering doors, phones and rocking the baby instead of buying.

While the difference site speed makes to Google remains to be seen, the difference it makes to visitors is a long-standing fact. It makes a lot of difference.

Site Speed Checkers

In case you haven’t run into articles about site speed yet, here are three places to get site speed checker tools:

Web PageTest isn’t an add on; it’s a website that scans yours. There’s no extra stuff on your computer and, while the returned information can be a little technical, gives a pretty good overview of how fast your pages load. You can view your individual website or compare your website results to others.

Google Page Speed is a Firefox add on that evaluates your site performance. It also gives you suggestions on how to improve your speed. Google Page Speed provides a few tests based on “best practices” (one of the elusive words Google likes to throw around… like “intent”).

YahooYslow is another Firefox add on that gives you answers and solutions on how to clean up your pages. From removing unused CSS to specifying your image dimensions, giving your site caching abilities to extra files, it’s a great tool to grade your website performance.

Why Does Clean Code Matter?

If you look at what having clean code means, the reason why it matters to visitors should become clear. You have:

• A properly running website
• A properly working design
• No broken, useless links

A beautiful website is useless if it doesn’t work. Helpful links are useless if they don’t go anywhere. When you have clean code, your website gives visitors a much better experience, which is why it matters.

Where do you check your validation? W3C Validator

The Pet Peeve – User Interface (UI)

Since we’re waving our “know-how” around, I’d like to add a pet peeve as a final thought: a website’s user interface. Although it’s often overlooked, the UI is a part of your overall site performance in regards to visitors.

For instance, when you have a guest coming for a weekend visit, you probably take a few minutes to show them around, explain where the towels are and where they can put their stuff, right? Your website is basically the same, except they don’t have you standing around, showing them where your important information is. Instead, they have to depend on your navigation.

Depending on the size of your site, you have many options for helping your users navigate. The breadcrumb trail is an excellent example. Like Hansel and Gretal of the story, breadcrumbs show a visitor where they are and how they got there. For example, a breadcrumb trail may look like:   Home > Products > Pickles > Dill

Remember, the first time a visitor comes to your site, they’re going to be looking all over the place for the information they came to find. Spell out the parts of your site; give them clear, actionable things to do; highlight the most important parts. Visual clues are a wonderful way to draw a visitor’s attention to how they should interact with your site.

Take a minute after reading and look at your site. Ask yourself these questions:

• Is my navigation user-friendly and visible?
• Is it confusing? What can I do to make it less confusing?
• Do I have more than one navigation on my pages? Why? Can I show these navigation lists in a better, more appealing / less confusing way?
• Is my navigation placement consistent throughout my site?

At the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, the biggest thing to remember is that your website is not about or for you. YOU aren’t your target market; the search engines aren’t your target market; the visitor, however, is. When the competition is as fierce as it is today, you can’t afford to forget that. Look over your site or hire someone from your target market to look it over; prepare for the visitor!

Daniela Jung

A lot of people ask, “How can I SEO my site?” Here, we break it down to the basics of how to do just that. Keep in mind that this is merely an overview that you can use to get an idea of what needs to be done to your website. Once you have ascertained the areas that need work, create a campaign that outlines how you plan to touch up those areas.

Step 1: Keyword Research & Analysis

The keywords and phrases you use are the basis of your entire SEO campaign. Get them wrong, and no matter how much work you do, you can lose a lot of potential customers. Keyword research allows you to find out how your visitors find information and a better understanding of how to focus your content.

A few basic ideas to understand before starting research and analysis:

1. “Geo-targeted” simply means adding your area. If you choose to geo-target, you must also decide whether you want to geo-target your immediate area (such as zip code), city, state or country.

Example: rather than “Google analytic specialist”, you would use “Google analytic specialist, Mississippi”. The state’s name is your geo-target.

1. Although the difference isn’t as large as it used to be to search engines, there is still a difference between singular and plural keywords. When researching keywords, pay attention to which version has more people searching for it. However, don’t forget to look at whether you can naturally use the form you choose.

Example: “specialist” may return more or less search results than “specialists”.

1. The order of words in the search term matters. When doing your research, pay attention to how your keyword tools list the words. Some always list them in alphabetical order. The closer to the beginning of a title, description or heading, the more prominence (or weight) a word will have to the search engines.

Example: “seo professional” brings back different results than “professional seo”. In most cases, you will not rank the same for both key phrases.

1. Keywords, key phrases and long tail keywords are three entirely different terms:

Keywords – generally one or two words with a high search volume. The problem with using only keywords is that the wider the term, the less chance of getting targeted traffic.

Example: Someone searching for “golf” may be looking for courses, clubs, shoes or clothes.

Key phrases – generally two or three words that help narrow down the overall search term.

Example: “golf courses, Mississippi” or “golf clubs, Mississippi”

Long tail keywords – multiple keyword strings of at least four or five words with an extremely tight focus on your specific product.

Example: “high quality golf clubs, equipment, shoes and accessories”

The long tail keywords not only include the long tail, but also can be broken down into several other quality search terms.

Example: the long tail keyword example also has “high quality golf clubs”, “golf clubs”, “high quality golf equipment”, “golf equipment”, etc.

The easy part of keyword research is creating a list of possible, relevant keywords to use. You know your industry, or should, and you know what your site will be about, or should. The hard part comes when you start researching to find out what terms the visitors use. Remember, most are laymen – that’s why they’re looking for you.

As an example, we’ve dithered back and forth over whether to use “organic seo” as one of our key terms. We know what it means, but what does it mean to people searching for seo providers? Is it a positive addition or a negative one? These are things you’ll also need to consider while researching.

The best place to start is with a key word. Ask yourself, “What is my industry?” Then, ask yourself what visitors might call your industry. Develop keyword clusters, or groups, about a topic or subject using the answers. The main keyword in each group becomes the main keyword for your site’s high-level directories.

Step 2: URLs, Meta Titles and Descriptions

URLs - Using keywords in urls is a fairly easy concept to understand. Not only does this help the search engines get an idea of what the page is about, but it also helps the visitors. Which would you be able to understand better, example.com/1234/5678 or example.com/golf/clubs? If possible, always use the main keyword for the page as the page’s url.

Meta Titles – While the meta title are someone important to the search engines, they’re even more important to the visitor. You see this part at the top of each search engine result. Using keywords in the title is all well and good, but make sure the title is enticing to visitors and relates to the search term they used, not necessarily the search term you think they should use.

An important thing to remember when writing meta titles: Your keyphrase does not have to be exact. For instance, if your key phrase is “Google analytics specialist”, your title can be written as:  Google Specialist |Analytics & Ranking. Even though the keyphrase isn’t in the exact order, you will still rank for your key phrase. Play around with word order, but don’t sacrifice the reading quality just to make the search engines happy. Lastly, never use the same title tag on more than one page.

Meta Descriptions – Description tags must be informative, enticing and clickable. The first view visitors will have of your site, the description is your business card. The worst mistake you could ever do is stuff it full of keywords. This is marketing at its most powerful: don’t waste in on search engines that can’t buy anything.

Step 3: Check Your On-Page Optimization

Look over your content. Does it match the key words/phrases you’ve chosen for each page? Did you spend so much time trying to target search engines that you forgot about your visitors? The rule of thumb for content optimization is this: If you’re forcing your keywords to fit the content, either change the content, or change the keywords.

No matter how many visitors you get, it won’t do any good if they don’t convert and follow through with what you want them to do. Your description may get them there, but the content does the work. It’s imperative, for the purposes of growing your business, that your content is visitor-friendly. Yes, use your keywords or phrases in the content, but always – always – use them as they fall naturally.

Over 200 factors go into determining where your site falls in the search engines. On-page (or on-site) include:

• Information in the title
• Information in the description
• Information in the page and paragraph headings
• Page content
• Page speed (how fast your website loads, as of 2010)

Off-page (or off-site) factors include:

• Number of pages linking to you site
• Relevance of pages linking to your site (in terms of content – theirs and yours)
• How reputable the pages are that link to your website
• What words those pages have used to link to your website
• How long that link has been pointed at your website

If you haven’t already, add Google Analytics to your page. Take three months and watch what comes back from the reports while doing keyword research. Once you’ve gathered all the necessary information, spend another month creating an SEO campaign based on the reports. Your campaign can include anything from changing keywords, titles, descriptions and content to article marketing, link building, social networking and more.

In conclusion, remember that good SEO takes time, patience and basic knowledge (and good advice!). It’s trial and error, even for the best of us. You may find yourself with #1 ranking for a search term that no one searches for, which doesn’t do you any good. If something goes wrong, take a deep breath and dig into research again. If you can’t figure it out, remember we offer SEO consulting when all you need is a guiding hand. Yes, a shameless plug, but there it is.

Don’t forget to drop us a comment and let us know how your campaign is doing!

(Editors note this post has been updated & changed)

As a copywriter for many years, I had no idea how to optimize an article for the web…But I knew enough to know that anything you write has to convert your readers. Sure different styles, whether using an emotional approach or informational approach, will depend on the goal and the target audience, but more than that goes into online writing. Suffice it to say that, for the sake of this article, I’ll just cover the most fundamental points… So let me just dive in.

Gather all the hard data from the client (strategy, goal, outline, outcome), and then think of the reason you are writing this article… You are offering a problem/solution no matter what situation or industry; you hear the arguments (or you have them in your head), the pro & cons then analyze (get/find the root ) in order to proceed on hard data..

The most fundamental basics of writing is this: each article should contain certain sections and components. Sure, some areas will carry more relevant information than others, but it should still give the reader the desire to want to know more.

One of my favorite conversion copywriters is Tim Ash. He says, “The preferred structure for most Web writing is the inverted pyramid. It uses the principle of primacy (ordering) to control saliency (importance).” Therefore, each section you write should have relevant information with an easy flow. Now, if you want the article to give you more traffic, you have to pay attention to your keywords. If your article is written well and with specific targeting, you will get the traffic.

An article should have the following components:

• Title
• Summary
• Body
• Resource Box

Once you have fulfilled the above requirements here are some things to keep in mind.

Check your submission: Your expertise and credibility in the article you are submitting will not hold any water if you don’t sound like you know what the heck you’re discussing. Check your spelling, grammar and punctuation, as well as how the reading flows; this helps with credibility. I always read copy aloud; it doesn’t matter if it’s a press release, blog or article. Read the article and make sure it reads well. Believe it or not, I catch a lot of mistakes when I read out loud.

Who is your Audience? What language will your audience understand? If they are in the medical field, use language they’re familiar with. Terminology and language that they know will give you more credibility than using laymen’s terms. Keep your use of terminology within, and up to, the understanding of your audience.

Never give away the whole pie: Give them enough information in order to entice them to clicking onto your resource box. That is where you can actually quantify your readers. If they want to know more then use the (–more–) tags available in most web blogs. This is very common in WordPress.

Have clear concise thoughts: This is the age of INSTANT GRATIFICATION, which means that, if you have a 1,000 word article, you have to keep it flowing. Give your readers important bulleted points, appropriate headings and sub-headings. They need to know that you understand what information they’re looking for, and that you have the answers. Get to the point and let them decide if your content is relevant enough for to stick around and read.

For professional help with your website or article content, please follow this link.

Do you want to submit your articles online? Here are some article submission sites you may not be familiar with:

http://articles.itpimp.co.za : If you want to share your knowledge with the world and promote yourself, products or services at the same time here is the place to do just that. Simply sign up and then submit your articles. We’ll do the rest for you and promote your free articles to all of our Publishers and Webmasters.

http://articles.narrowisthepath.com: Search for uplifting Christian content to use on your site, blog, or ezine. All of our Christian articles are available in either html or text format for easy implementation. Our continuously updated Christian RSS feed is ready to bring titles and summaries of our Christian articles to your website or reader.

http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/: We offer an articles directory where you can freely add your articles to our directory. Publishers from all over the world can then search our directory to find your article(s), and freely reprint them for use on their own sites or in their newsletters. To submit an article to our site, please use this form.

http://articles.webblogerz.com/: Article writing and submission list. Some are free some are paid.

http://biz-whiz.com/: Membership enables you to participate in community activities including review, discuss and submit your own articles, member to member messaging, polls, customise the look and content of this website according to your preferences etc. At Present, Membership is free, You are invited to Join and contribute.

http://ezineprime.hubprime.com/: EzinePrime™ is a repository of quality articles on web. An article directory and article submission site. Fresh new articles are submitted and reviewed here everyday. You can click on any article category to browse and read articles. You can use our search box or our Google™ Search to help you find the articles that you need. All articles here are 100% free. You can download or copy any article you need as long as you keep the resource box intact when reprinting or republishing.

http://hamazines.com/: Welcome to HandyMan Articles – There are currently 128 Great Articles in our Database from 2370 Authors

http://superpublisher.com/: Happily Promoting 104965 Articles from 19381 Great Authors. This also offers a Mass submit for $10

by Saul GM

In 2010, many of the “Big Boys” will be spending the same or less on their paid placements in the search engine results. Bad News for Google, Yahoo, AOL and Bing, but equally bad news for small business owners who have skipped out on paying for ads from the beginning.

Why is it bad news? Because the “big boys” (i.e big companies) are redoubling their social marketing efforts and pouring big bucks into SEO, potentially drowning out the less well funded competition. Don’t start breaking a sweat and hanging an html “Going Out of Business” sign on your website just yet, however. You can still get the social networking catch you need to keep yourself in business and not pay for it.

Search out the competition like a celebrity Paparazzo; be where they are and predict where they are going. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and MySpace are the likely hangouts for your corporate Goliath competition. Like David and his little slingshot, start casting stones where your competition is not.

There are smaller social networking opportunities, which can be better than the larger ones for reaching your specific customer base. Instead of casting a wide net in the ocean of networking, focus your efforts on the small coves where schools of your customers are hanging out, ready to take your bait. Xanga, Meetup, Xing, Hi5 and others are wide-open options to stake your claim of their market.

When you do stake a claim to a plot on the larger social networks like FB and MySpace, be unique. Your competition can’t be everything to everyone at all times, and you have the opportunity to fill in the gaps. Be online more often than your competition, post more and more useful information to your blog, incorporate different media into your online profile; make your page an experience and not a reflection of your website!

Getting Dirty: the pseudo immorality of buying links

There are a couple of purists out there who take real moral issue with buying links.  Is the practice of buying links really “dirty” or are those who can’t afford to buy links or have some primal fear of the SERP gods’ wrath peppering the discussion with conjecture and possibilities that never seem to materialize for dirty linkers?

The point of linking is to score points with the search engines and climb up some imaginary rope to the top of the results page.  If you have a new website it may take a very long time to reach page one, and no amount of linking, purchased or otherwise, is going to get you there if your web page is an abomination. For arguments sake your website is perfect but you are still nowhere to be seen on the SERPs , do you break down and buy links or do you wait for some benevolent website owner with high rankings to throw you a rope ?

Don’t believe all the hype about getting blacklisted by the search engines for having a few dirty links, in reality dirty links are the least of their concern when evaluating your website.  Google’s own words on purchasing links  “Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.” Buying a link is no more dirty than buying a button advertisement, the goal is one in the same, is it not?  You are paying for something in one place that you could get for free somewhere else, but if you really, really want THAT link and you’re willing to pay for it then by all means fork over the cash.

If your PR is perpetually low, and your scruples are fading fast and you’ve done everything the “right” way with no luck, dip your toe into the muddy waters of link buying. Beware, be spare, and be ready to trade that dirty link if and when an equally good link comes along to take its’ place.  Don’t feel the need either to atone for your SEO sins since it’s only the small business owner buying links that Google or the other search engines call “dirty”. Add a couple million dollars to your company’s net worth and the search engines would be calling you a corporation instead.

By: Philipp Klinger

Good riddance to bad rubbish. “No more waiting for slow sites to open and a faster web for everyone” is Google’s theory behind possibly updating their algorithm to give lower ranking to sites with slow load times. A few naysayers are crying foul because this equates to a preference for big businesses with fast site opening times and the capital to improve site speed when their Google rankings fall.

Is this necessarily a bad thing for those in SEO? Probably not. Improving the download speed of a website can be easily and inexpensively accomplished, and with already good SEO in place, just might skyrocket your page to the top of Google search results. Most smart website owners are concerned with Google rankings, and by simply adjusting a few minor webpage elements, could reap huge search result rewards. For faster load times try:

Getting rid of some images: Sure they look snazzy, but if your site ends up on page ten of the search results, no one is going to see them anyway. A hard and fast rule for faster load times is to keep the number of images below sixteen, compress the files and repeat images across website pages.

Lowering the Bandwidth: Try HTTP Compression of XHTML, CSS, and Java Script ; it will cut down on your bandwidth and result in faster webpage downloads.  The amount you’ll save in bandwidth alone could make this step pay for itself in the long run.

Sprites: All the big boys use them to reduce HTTP requests.  If you’ve ever been on AOL’s homepage, then you’ve probably interacted with these CSS Sprites. If you’re not familiar with CSS hacks, you’ll want to hire someone that is, to allow for different browsers in the code and not alienate website visitors. This is the more expensive option of the three mentioned, but if you have tried the other two and your website download times are still geriatric-ally slow, invest the cash in Sprite creation.

This is probably a good time to talk with your SEO provider to gauge how your site will rank after Google implements their newest algorithm.  You can also test your site speed and get suggestions on how to improve your download times from numerous free services.  Don’t, however, wait until your website falls off Google’s map and risk a lot of lost revenue before improving your website’s speed.  Being proactive could be the difference between finding your website on page 1 or page 101 in the search results.

Hello, dear readers! Welcome to the new dawn, the new day, the new millennium of do follow! Okay, okay, so the “do follow” attribute isn’t new… but it’s a change for us. Since it’s inception, the Article Archive has been a “no follow” or “external no follow”. We’ve been messing around with the idea of a change, but came up against the wall of DISQUS.

Darling DISQUS is a neat little commenting system. It’s great – you sign in to comment and people can read your profile, etc, etc, etc. This is, supposedly, an easy way of keeping track and managing your comments (easy way compared to the regular ole’ WordPress Admin comment system). We finally started looking for plugins to strip the “no follow” attribute from the comments.

After several trials and errors, we noticed that none of the plugins seemed to work. Meanwhile, all of our comments are being stored on the DISQUS system – which, it seems, sets the comments to “external no follow” whether you want them to or not. Unfortunately, the only way to take that irritating little attribute off is to uninstall DISQUS. Just as unfortunately, we lost some of our comments when we did uninstall the plugin.

The good news is that we finally found a beauty of a plugin: Denis de Bernardy’s  Do Follow. Now any links you put in your comments will be followed, like we feel they should be.

A little bit of the thinking behind changing to “do follow”:

1. We like link love.
2. We figure others like link love.
3. We’re building an informational blog, and links are a great way to share information.
4. People would be more willing to drop those informational links into our comments if they’re going to get a little link juice for it.

-And, like all great mathematicians, we added 2 + 2, came up with 6 and promptly changed to “do follow”.

There ARE rules, however (sorry, rebels):

1. Comments WILL be moderated before acceptance.
2. Comments MUST be relevant to the Article Archive topics or the current blog you’re commenting on.
3. Links will be followed before acceptance to check the end page. Spammy links will be deleted and the commenter will be black listed.
4. You WILL have fun, or we will MAKE you have fun.

Let the information sharing begin!

With television commercials validating the importance of online social media portals like Twitter and Facebook, the battle for domination in the social media marketing arena is leaving many feeling confused and dazed.  After all, as the language of the Tweet-osphere cuts communications to 140 characters or less, it also add a unique brand of instant marketing spoken only by the Tweeple of Twitter.

Realistically, there are as many reasons to invest in a good social media marketing campaign as there is website, but the top five reasons that you should be joining the social marketing and networking revolution include:

• Increased SEO and Rankings—Participating in online marketing efforts like Twitter, Digg, and Facebook add dimensions to your effort.  Moreover, when others in your online communities link to your posts or your blog content is Tweeted by members of your social media groups, you ranking increase with every single link.  Further, as search engines love new content, blogs are highly prized by search engines for fresh material.

• Exposure Equals Traffic on Steroids—Marketing is all about going where the people meet to share information about your products or services.  In this case, more people meet online in social media groups each week than pass through the New York subway system.  Imagine gaining exposure to every one of those people.  With social media marketing, that goal is obtainable with less cost than a billboard or an advertisement.  At this point, an important side note is to make sure you measure social media time as part of your ROI cost because time still equals money…even on the internet!

• Voice of the Customer Connection—Many business owners pass up the opportunity to find out what their customers (or potential customers) think about their products.  Through contests or online surveys, you can poll your market audience on subjects including pricing, features, or benefits of your products.

• Fluid Flexibility of Marketing Message—In traditional marketing, the expenditure of A/B Split testing is enough to stop most businesses from deploying several marketing efforts to see which one works best.   In fact, social media marketing is the best place to do A/B Split testing because your marketing message can be quickly changed to meet the reaction of your audience.  One of my favorite case studies about A/B testing is Geiko, from the Gecko to the Caveman to the stack on bills with all seeing eyes; Geiko is testing three different marketing campaigns for audience response.

It is easy to stand back and wait for the electronic dust to clear instead of stepping into the social media  fight; however, denying the existence and usefulness of social media marketing will put you in the same category as the person who thought the internet was just a “passing fade!”  With a minimal investment of time and attention to the creation of a good social marketing plan, you can boost your exposure, gain potential customers, and instill an efficiency in your marketing efforts that traditional marketing  cannot meet.

Lately, I’ve noticed an increasing amount of questions about SEO.  Not “What is SEO”, but more specific questions about the practice and providers.  A surprising number of people have misconceptions about what an SEO provider does, and many of these questions deal with the cost, the time, what’s involved and the results.  The main question, as with most products and services, is “What’s it cost?”

As anyone who has started the optimization “process” already knows, search engine optimization is not an instantaneous thing.  While it’d be nice to think that you can dip into your source code, slap a couple of keywords into the meta tags and call it done, that’s not reality.  Reality is much more complicated.

Many business professionals understand that time equals money, but when they try to transfer that to optimization, the translation gets lost somehow.  The same cannot be said for services such as website design, development or programming, which brought me to wondering what the difference was.  Then it occurred to me – results.

Website design provides quick, visible results compared to SEO.  At any time, a business owner can see what the designer has done with their site.  Therefore, while it may take time for the designer to complete the site, the time and cost that goes into the design is acceptable.

An SEO provider, on the other hand, can’t show immediate results as visibly – or as meaningfully – as a website designer.  We can say, “Look, we messed with your source code”, but if you have no programmer and no technical knowledge, you can only take our word for it.  We can say, “We found such, such and such a keyword to be best for your site”, but again, you can only take our word for it.  We can show you articles and blogs we have written and submitted to various sites, but they may not give you a dramatic increase in traffic.

In addition, many people understand that design, or “art”, is a talent – not everyone can do it.  Those same people, however, tend to look at writing as something that’s necessary, but not difficult.  I mean, everybody can write, so it never occurs to them to ask how many can write well.

Now, all of this “stuff” takes time; optimization really is a process, especially for new sites.  That time translates to cost, and depending on how much needs to be done, it can translate into a lot of cost.  If you run across an SEO provider offering a full SEO package for $300, which includes full site optimization, keyword and competition research, site submission, directory submission, blog posts, articles, press releases and more – they either have entirely too much time on their hands or you won’t get the results you expect.

And lastly, can you afford to spend all the time necessary following the SEO information on the Internet (because time is money), only to get no results (or bad results) because you followed bad advice?

The clarification of SEM vs SEO is pretty simple. Yet, for some reason and for many people, it is still very much needed. For example, just recently I read a top SEM guy equate the two. And there I was, thinking that he, of all people, should get it. But I guess not. I guess there is still uncertainty about what each one is and whether or not they are interchangeable terms.

So I would like to clarify. Maybe it really isn’t necessary, but here we go. Simply put: SEM and SEO are NOT the same thing. They are not interchangeable terms, able to be tossed about and equated without care. They are not “Spielberg” and “Great Movies”. Now, they might sort of look similar; they might even be connected in a way. But, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are not one in the same. The difference is very clear.

Granted, the difference isn’t like apples and oranges, where both are completely different things connected only under a certain subgroup. In fact, the comparison is more like apples vs. Fuji apples. SEM is the apple; and SEO is the Fuji apple. That is to say, in the broader category of SEM lies the subcategory and type of SEM known as SEO. Let me explain further.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the broad category of tools that a company will utilize in order to bring more traffic to a website or more attention to a product. It increases the “magnitude” of a site, attracting as many searches as possible.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is more specifically the tool of increasing the search-ability of a website (or optimizing) so that it can more readily be found in all search engine listings, including organic and natural listings.

SEM includes SEO but is not limited to it. That is to say, there are more tools in the SEM belt than SEO. These include such things as Paid Inclusion, Traditional Ads, and Pay-Per-Click Advertising, all of which focus on a different marketing medium than traditional SEO. Unlike SEO, for example, they are faster tools, able to bring traffic to your website quickly. They get the message and increase your visibility immediately.

SEO, on the other hand, builds up the content of your website, making it readable, informative, and helpful. All of these make your site relevant and desirable, which, too, increases traffic, though slower than the other tools. Overtime, however, SEO has proven just as, if not much, much more, effective in bringing traffic to your site, leading ultimately to SEO’s popularity and importance.

The final word: SEO is the best tool in SEM’s belt. You cannot have effective, long-lasting SEM without quality SEO. Now, there are no questions about that.

Google Special Agent

I like Google, I really do.  As a “white hat” Organic SEO company, Level343 has supported Google again and again.  When Google pushed for SEO guidelines, we backed them.  When they made it possible for people to see others’ houses on Google Maps, I thought, “Well, why not?  Just make sure your yard’s clean.”

A while back Google said it’s best to put “nofollow” on paid links and anyplace else you don’t want the crawlers going to.  Then, two days ago, Matt Cutts (part of Google’s Search Quality team) says don’t use the nofollow tag on anything but the paid links.

On his blog he points out that they’re changing the way things work at Big Brother Google again, because people are using the nofollow tag as “Page Rank Sculptors”.  Basically, people are trying to manipulate how PageRank flows through their site.

Now, this isn’t a big deal in and of itself.  In my mind, it’s just another instance of Google doing what Google does, as always.  A week or two ago, however, I came across a little tidbit of news that was plain shocking.  Although I’ve held my tongue up until this point, I just get more incensed the more I think about it.  In fact, it rubs me the wrong way so much that it moved me to post on Gabriella’s blog for the first time.

At the You & A conference with Matt Cutts , Cutts admitted that Google profiles SEOs!  Of course, this was a few weeks ago, so you can read about it all over the net:

Google Profiles SEO As Criminals – Outspoken Media

Google Profiles SEOs – Wolf Howl

Will Google Judge You Guilty of SEO – Grok Dot Com

SEOs Are Not Criminals – Huomah

To sum up the (justifiable, in my mind) outrage pouring through the Internet highways and byways, many SEOs, if not all, are as disgusted as I am.  Michael Gray, a well-known SEO consultant, stated in sarcastic frustration:

“My advice to you don’t involve anyone with SEO experience in any of your link building tactics, have it run entirely by a public relations person, and you should be fine, Google lets them get away with murder … or at least giving away free cars, cell phones, and all expense paid trips in exchange for links.”

Long and short, Cutts says that SEOs are “high risk” and “people who do things deliberately for links”.  Huh?  What?  He goes on the say that whether a link is above board or not is “a matter of intent”.  In other words, Google can now read your mind to find out whether a link is all about relevance or all about getting a “deliberate link”.  I think Lisa Barone said it the best in “Google Profiles SEO as Criminals” on Outspoken Media (link above):

“Google, you need to stop with the intent card.  You have NO WAY of determining someone else’s thoughts.  You don’t know the face of evil .  You never did.  And these days, that face of evil that you’re looking so hard for is YOU as you continue to push your way through the Web intimidating webmasters, applying double standards, and playing the game of misdirection.

“And in case there’s some confusion, your standard, back-up-against-the-wall response of, “you can do whatever you want with your site, but it’s our index” isn’t ACTUALLY an answer.  It’s you being a bully.  It’s an abuse of power.  And more importantly, it’s WRONG.

“Profiling a site associated with an SEO as being “high risk” is no more egregious and an abuse of power than a cop questioning that black kid who just happens to be walking down the wrong street.”

*Applause* Way to go Lisa!  Like I said at the beginning, Level343 is a white hat SEO company; we have done our best to make sure everything we do is above board so our clients don’t get penalized.  We push the need for strong, relevant content to our clients, our readers and anyone else who’s interested in optimizing their website.  Like Google, our main concern is the quality of your website; we want your visitors to come back for more – to come back for strong, informative content.

We don’t deal in link farms, paid links (except for advertising purposes) or any other kind of linking that could be considered black hat.  The fact that this doesn’t matter, that SEOs are considered “high risk” simply because we’re SEOs is a little too much for me to swallow quietly.

Michael Gray, Lisa Barone and several others are banding together to let people know about Google’s bad behavior.  Now, we’re chiming in, as well.  Pass the blogs and articles about this topic around.  Let other’s know that Google’s going above and beyond what’s right, accepted and legal.

Shame on you, Google.

Writing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) articles is the exciting mixture of developing keyword strategies that will generate a response from various search engines. SEO articles merge those keywords into unique copy writing material that engages and holds the reader. SEO copy writing creates articles that reach the marketplace in two ways. The first is by anticipating the search terms utilized by the readership. The second is by employing those search keywords to establish links from the reader to the destination site through the search engine.

Writing SEO articles is an expression of the site’s content in substantive keyword verbiage that draws the reader to the site. These articles also use an effective copy writing technique that encourages the reader to not only stay but also re-visit the site.

Writing articles requires resourceful, imaginative and original copy writing. Positioning and frequency of specific keywords can help boost site response; however, effective SEO copy writing does not stop there. The author must also apply the basics of good research and deliver the site’s material in a clear, concise and compelling manner that makes the reader return for the site’s content.

When writing with SEO in mind, the author must grasp the reader’s mindset as it applies to the site’s message. It is from within the reader’s mindset that the links between the keywords and the optimal copy writing material reside. If the author knows the product or material, he has the fuel to ignite the connection. The copy writing challenge is writing SEO articles that maintain the integrity of the product and promote the product through the application of the anticipated search entries or keywords.

SEO copy writing should be powerful, even infectious. If the author has performed the research and understands the site’s potential, the keywords become an integral part of the posting. Too many sites and too many articles are written to emphasize keywords at the expense of content. Successful article writing enhances the product and site by utilizing powerful keywords to express the product’s unique qualities through strategic and fluid copy writing techniques.

I recently read another blog by Robert Smith where Keyword strategies were defined in a comprehensive manner.

Spreadsheet: Low Performance SEO Pages

If you are going to crawl up the Google PageRank you have to be organized and you have to set up goals and tasks for yourself. This week or at least the next five working days you should spend some time following these easy steps I have been posting. This is going to take commitment and organization on your part. But at least it’s on your time.

Submitting to DIRECTORIES

As we all know that Yahoo is one of the most popular and most expensive paid directory’s around, yet in my humble opinion it is not the best. I am sure I have mentioned dmoz.org they have and carry more weight as far as I am concerned. On the other hand, they are a pain in the ass since it’s hell getting the editors to pay attention to your site. Now days too many other great directories to make DMOZ a priority. I have gathered a few directories that have some pull and while most are free some will provide an inexpensive service to get you rolling in the directory project.

domaining.in
getlistedrightnow.com
visitalink.com
dmoz.com
directoryvault.com
Freewebsubmission

This article would not serve you well if I were not to mention the paid submission sites. Needless to say there are any who will do this but the top things you should keep in mind when choosing one and using them is:

• Are they using manual submission?
• Are they showing you proof that they have submitted the site.
• And will they verify that your site has been submitted.

A Press Release campaign and Article campaign should be something else you spend time doing. I have listed several places for you to submit your articles and press releases therefore make it a point to put all of these tasks on your plate. I have been giving you lots of information including links to work this out. But my question is are you doing it?

One last thought you will not get top Google PageRank unless you do this for at least four months. Not one month then you run out of steam. You have to commit to your SEO tasks for at least six months and then you are going to see results.

I am not saying you have to hire a PRO however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

Tip #1 web copy sprinkled with target keyword phrases- primary objective should be to attract high-quality back-links, & easy to find

Tip #2 The keywords have to be strategically placed. They must be placed on certain parts of each page for optimal effectiveness.

Tip #3 The copy contains high search volume, low competition keywords. What does that mean? Use AdWords tool  to find keywords if on a budget… Otherwise get an SEO analysis done. Worth every cent you spend.

Tip #4 Focus on keyword phrases that are synonymous with your target keywords. This will give you a broader scope for an audience.

Tip #5 Make sure it’s clear to the reader how to buy your product or service provides them with benefits… Tough one if you cannot write. You would be amazed at how many websites forget about this tip.

Tip#6 Don’t make it obvious your copy is optimized. Nothing tackier than someone who is force feeding their stuffed keywords.

Tip #7 A great eye catching headline. Absolute MUST also contain your target keyword phrase so it gets the attention of search engines.

Spring is upon us, blackberries are budding with cute white flowers and its time to do some cleaning.  I’m not talking about your house, though; I’m talking about your website.  When was the last time you checked to see how your site was doing?  If you invested in optimization but haven’t looked at it for a while, is your site still optimized?  When was the last time you checked to see if your links work?

Just like your house, your website can (and will) gather clutter as the years go by, so it’s good to look it over at least once a year and make sure you’re still on track.  Now, this isn’t just about site optimization, it’s also about site quality, and the following information can help with both.

Website Optimization

Search Ranking Check
If you haven’t checked your ranking in the search engines lately, do so.  Go ahead – type in your keywords in the search bars.  Is your ranking better or worse than it was last year?  If it’s better, your site optimization is in good health.  If it’s worse, you need to add some new content or choose different keywords.

Content Check
How old is your content?  Has it been around since Ronald Reagan?  If your content has cobwebs, you’ll need to make sure it’s still relevant.  If it’s not, it’s time to – you guessed it – add more content.  If you only have a certain amount of pages you can use on your site and can’t add more content, rewrite what you have so that it becomes relevant.

Head Check
In almost every web page, or at least the index page, there is a <head> tag.  If you look at the code on your page, you should only see a few lines in between the <head> and </head> tags.  If you see a lot of code – java script ends up in here a lot -, check with your programmer and see if it can be called from a separate page.  Search engine crawlers only see about 100 kilobytes of data from your page; if your site is optimized but has a lot of code in these tags, you’re loosing a large part of your optimization benefits.

Header Check
Again, look over your code and web page.  If you have headers, make sure they have the header attribute (h1, h2, h3, h4…) and that your keywords are nicely nestled in the text.  If you have headers and you’re missing these attributes, again, talk to your programmer.  Those search engine crawlers put a lot of weight on the text within those tags.

Website Quality

Slow Pages
Slow loading pages are one of the main reasons visitors don’t stay on your site.  Nobody wants to wait for what seems like hours to look at a web page, no matter how interesting they think it might be.

One of the main reasons for slow pages is the size and amount of images.  If you have a lot of images, chances are that your site is loading slow.  A website auditor program can help with finding out which pages are slow and which aren’t.

Broken Links
Nothing is more irritating than clicking on an interesting link, only to be led to the “oops” page.  Check your links; if you have a links or partners page, go through and see if any have disappeared or moved.  Also, as time goes by you may add pages and take them away.  In this case, you want to make sure that the pages you’ve taken away no longer have links leading to them.

Orphaned Files
As you take pages away, sometimes all people do is remove the links from other places on the site.  This means you now have an orphaned file sitting on your server.  Orphaned files have no links to them at all.  A large amount of these can slow down your server time.

With a little bit of patience and time, you can once again have a clean, smooth site by paying attention to these key areas.  And if you come across something else while you’re working (which you probably will), take the time to fix those, too.  Remember, a healthy site is a happy site; Happy Spring Cleaning!

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Technorati – social media tools are swarming the net, becoming the main way to get in touch, keep in touch, socialize and monetize.

On places like Twitter, individuals and businesses alike have begun posting links to their blogs, sites and articles.  LinkedIn has a way to plug into your blog so once you post, it shows on your LinkedIn profile.  With Digg you can have a link back to an article on your site, or on an article directory, etc.  In other words, you can have a website, a blog and ten social media accounts, and have them all leading to each other.

The question arises, however: does all this do any good for search engine optimization?  And if it does, how much good does it do?

In reality, social media is just another part of marketing.  One of the reasons why so many businesses use the social media tools is because they realized very quickly that these tools give them the ability to talk to their customers.  In addition, these tools allow business individuals to reach likeminded professionals, make business contacts and any other kind of socializing you can imagine.

All this socializing does have some benefits for optimization, but perhaps not in the way you think it does.  Thousands of people post links on Twitter, for example, thinking that these posts will link back to their site, and raise PageRank and search engine results positioning.  However, Twitter specifically has a “no follow” for your links, which means that the search engine crawlers won’t follow the link back to your site; in other words, the links themselves have no optimization value.

Now, people are selling eBooks on how to gain followers and whatnot, pushing all the benefits and making the buyers think this book will grow their business, but how does social media work for site optimization, PageRank and SERPs?

1.    You post your links.
2.    People (not search engines) follow those links and read what you’ve written/posted.
3.    Of those people who liked your post/article/idea, some will talk about it and add a link to your site where the information is.
4.    The new links will generally have a “follow all” tag, telling the crawlers to follow them.
5.    Those inbound links will bring in organic traffic and add authority to your site, which, in turn, will raise your search engine result positioning and PageRank.

All in all, social media is like MLM (multi-level marketing):

You post ten links with no results on PageRank, placement or anything else; you may as well have thrown them into the wide unknown.  However, five people read your links and re-post (or link back) to those ten posts, and you now have fifty (free!) back links (not reciprocal!) leading to your site.  Five other people find those re-posts and re-post again – 250 back links, plus the original 50, adds up to a whopping 300 links leading back to your site.

All those links will normally be posted on sites relevant to your site, which gives your site authority, which raises your PageRank.  All that traffic and the resulting commentary can raise your positioning in the SERPS.

So – while social media in and of itself isn’t that helpful with SEO, the resulting links are.  How do you get people to repost, comment and write about your site, article, blog, etc?  That’s another blog entirely!

With all the listings on a search engine, the millions of websites and billions of pages, it’s not about strategy but about survival when I say that small businesses hoping to gain some notice online absolutely need SEO. It’s just a matter of fact. Small businesses with small visibility need all the help that they can get, and SEO is just the help they need.

Here’s an illustration from my own life. I was at a wedding recently, and it came time at the reception for the garter toss. Now the dance floor was full of eligible bachelors, each vying for the front row position so they could catch the good luck charm. One bachelor in particular was comparatively shorter than the others, and I knew from first sight that he had no shot.

It was true. There was no way he could jump higher, out-wrestle or out-will the other men to get that garter. The only chance he had was if the wind just happened to pick the garter up like the leaf in Forest Gump and gently land it in his waiting arms. Needless to say, neither he nor I were holding our breath.

Now, if you’re an eligible small business, waiting on the market dance floor to grab the searching user so you can have more success in the future, you don’t want to rely on happenstance. You need to have a strategy. You need help, and that help is SEO.

Why SEO?

SEO helps you compete with the “big boys” by boosting your page higher on the search engine lists than theirs. The size of a company doesn’t matter to search engines, and it doesn’t matter to users.  Users care about two things: where you are on the results page (because most absolutely will not go past the second or third page, if those) and how trustworthy your site appears.  Through SEO you can earn the coveted front row position.

SEO also costs much less than traditional advertising, which works well for a smaller budget. You can utilize many of the tools on your own without talking with a SEO specialist. As long as you have a little know-how and little more patience, you can begin optimizing your webpage with relevant content and media.

Yet, even when you use an SEO specialist to help run your optimization campaign (highly recommended), your budget can remain much less than trying to market on your own, and a little money goes a long way. By investing just a little into an SEO campaign, you can receive a lot of new and promising traffic.

Don’t be caught at the back of the line waiting for chance to choose you. Take hold of your own future and compete with all the businesses, whether large or small. SEO is what you need.

Once one realizes that SEM and SEO are not the same thing, and that the former is a broader category including the latter, then more questions arise: what, then, is the point of SEO? If there are other strategies, why shouldn’t we just use them? Is SEO necessary for successful SEM?

The answer, folks, is a resounding YES! SEM that includes SEO is the only path to success. Plain and simple. To flesh this out, we’ll look at some of the other strategies included in SEM and then weigh the pros and cons of not incorporating SEO.

Paid Inclusion, Pay-Per-Click, Paid Advertisements
One of the quickest ways to increase visibility and boost traffic is to use one of these three strategies. Each one is basically catering to the search engine by paying them to show your website.

Here’s how it works. The first strategy, paid inclusion, is when you pay the search engine to list your website. For some search engines this is the only way to get listed. Others simply present it as an option, hoping that you’ll pay them instead of using other strategies.

The second and third, Pay-Per-Click and Paid Advertisements, are similar. Both entail paying for an advertisement of your website and both immediately send out information about your company on the search engines. The first works with keywords; the price is figured by number of visits to a site through each link (i.e. pay per click) and the popularity of your chosen keywords. The second type of advertisement is more traditional, posting information about a website or a company and then figuring the cost by number of ads, successful or not.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Other SEM Strategies
The advantages and benefits of these strategies are in their immediacy. Immediately they bring attention to the website. There’s no waiting. The ads are posted. The website is listed. Once you pay, it’s done. Your visibility is increased and your traffic is boosted.

But then what happens? What happens if people visit your website and there’s nothing there of interest or help? What if you don’t even have a fully functional website yet, but have all the tools for traffic to come? The disadvantages then to these strategies are in the long term. They’re built for speed, not for sustainability. Thus, they need something else.

Advantages of SEO
They need SEO. SEO should always be the first tool used when working with SEM, and here’s why. SEO’s function is to make sure your website is both search engine and user friendly. It provides content to your site that’s both relevant and relatable, informative and important. It’s what searchers are really looking for. They might come to your site because of a Paid Advertisement, but they will stay because of SEO.

Ultimately, you might find that SEO will suffice on its own, without the other tools. But for now, my advice is that it must come first. SEM and SEO is the only path to a long-term success.

Matt (Cutts) Googlesaurus and SEOda take on Darth (Jarboe) Vadar in “SEO Wars”!

SEM, SEO and PPC support each other

These three acronyms, SEM, SEO and PPC can make all the difference to the staying power of your online business.  They stand for Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and are the true backbone of online business. These three little tools should be combined together if you’d like to raise your profits in the ever-growing, fast-paced Internet world. This article will explain what each of these components are and what they do.

SEM

The first of the SEM/SEO/PPC combination is SEM.  This is the one we all see in action, although not many of us recongize it consciously.  Search Engine Marketing has very little to do with search engines, and everything to do with marketing.  Those who perform SEM creating marketing campaigns just as they would for a physical store.

SEM professionals may recommend many areas, from pay-per-click ads to social media; optimization to advertisements; videos to white papers.  An SEM’s sole purpose is actually two parts: to get you noticed and to make your products enticing.  How they do that all depends upon that particular professional.

SEO

The second component of SEM/SEO/PPC is the Search Engine Optimization.  SEO is one of the top ways to get Google Ranking. Optmization is not about making the search engine see you as a site relevant to the search term, although many people see it as that.  Optmization is about making the engine see you as one of the top relevant sites.

Almost every SEO professional will include finding your niche and the keywords that fit that niche in any campaign.  The rest of an SEO campaign, again, depends upon the professional.

PPC

PPC rounds things off nicely.  Pay-Per-Clink links are clickable ads leading your chosen link.  Used correctly and well researched, PPC can and will send clicks to your website.  Those searching for goods, services or whatever else is covered by the ad will be led to that particular link (usually a landing page of some sort).

A strong PPC professional, knowledgable in writing short ads, finding strong keywords and good placement, can make a lot of difference in the quality of hits.  What keywords, ad placement and the length of text allowed for the ads all depends on how big your marketing budget is and what you want to achieve.

The Triad

SEM, SEO and PPC work together to make the perfect online marketing campaign.  The right professionals can create a knock-out marketing strategy; one planned to bring people to your website that are already interested in your product.  They’re not just “looking around”.

SEM is the beginning.  Marketing is all about strategy, of which SEO and PPC is just a part.  SEM says “This is what we have to do to interest people in your company and your product.”

SEO is a “targeted” marketing strategy, generally including everything from your website design (is it compliant? Did you use good practices?) to your content quality (is it well-written? Are keywords used? Is it relevant?).

PPC is a combination of ad placement/writing and SEO content in the form of landing pages.  A well-written, well-placed ad, combined with matching (and also well-written) landing page content, has almost doubled a site owner’s ROI in some cases.

Combined, SEM, SEO and PPC will definitely raise the amount of clicks to your website, your Google placement (ranking) and your website quality.  The rest is up to your product.

Page Rank is a system Google devised in order to figure out the relative importance or lack thereon of webpages on the Internet. It gives a rough idea of how many other websites link to any given webpage. There are also some theories that state it’s all a big hoax by Google itself, sort of a shell game to keep people’s attention away from what’s really going on. Others swear by it. How important is it? Well, that really depends on you and what you want.

First off, anyone who wants to make a living on the Internet needs to understand that Google treats information like mercy in an Inquisitorial dungeon. In other words, they don’t hand it out if they can at all help it. If you’ve got the free little tool on your browser that allows you to see Page Rank, remember that the Rank in question can be up to three months out of date. Google updates those about every three months, and there is no program known to the Internet community today that can reliably tell you someone’s real, current Page Rank. Page Rank works off an insanely complicated mathematical algorithm that’s based on the idea that any given page has a certain value. By linking to other sites, they transfer some of this value. They keep their own value, but the amount of value they have to give other sites is limited. If you are one of twenty sites linked too off a particular website, in effect you get one-twentieth of that website’s value. Of course, that’s only an approximation. Most people have to attend college for a science degree to really start understanding the core of the algorithm itself.

So, how important is it? That’s the real question, after all. Survey says not important enough to worry over much about, at least not in the beginning. What you really need to worry about first is your traffic. If you’re number one for your chosen keywords in the search engine results pages, Page Rank will come on its own in time as naturally as rain falls. If you provide a quality site, people will naturally link to you as a reference or resource. It’s certainly not worth giving money to worthless link farms that may even bring your Page Rank or worse, your place in the results pages down. The search engines don’t like “link farms” too much, they rightly see these link farms as yet another attempt to manipulate their results. As problematic as it may be, there are no quick fixes in business. Creating a business that will last takes time, effort, persistence and patience in addition to providing a quality product. Do that, become or hire a decent SEO copywriter, and the Page Rank will take care of itself.

To say you know how to write SEO vs.Writing SEO is another fish story. It’s amazing how many people and companies send you their clever copy boasting about getting you higher rankings on Google. Here is the truth, 2 things will get you ranked high on Google. Links and SEO copy, period. Basically the keywords will alert the search engines of what you do and the links on your page will show their importance. After all one word can surmise what the search engine looks for “relevance”.

I am sure you all have the plethora of information on how you can incorporate your keywords in the body of your article. From the Meta tags in your copy to the verbiage used in your HTML. Consider the Meta tags as road signs showing the search engine the way. Therefore make sure you use those tags in the body of your article.

However Google search engines are catching on to all these “tricks of the trade”. The basic skinny on this is to use your keywords within your article as much as you can without sounding like an advertisement or a blundering idiot. The question is how can you write copy without compromising your copy?

Here are some simple steps you should take into consideration including spend a coupe of hours a day giving your webpage a facelift. Remember people aren’t stupid they want to read something of interest therefore make sure what you have to say is of interest.

Step #1 page category.
Sit down and figure out a structure to your page. If you already have a site up you may need to re-work your copy, but try to offer benefits around your keywords. Print out your pages and find the keywords or phrases and then label them as such.

Step #2 Do some homework on what the user is searching for.
It’s apparent your competitor knows what words to use since they are on the top of the heap. Don’t be shy look at their keywords. If you want there are several websites that offer free word tacking analysis or some may even offer a free trial. Use them, place your keywords and track them. Simple enough, I have always said you copy from one its plagiarism you copy from many its research. Just make sure you see the results and what is said about each keyword you are using.

Step #3 Pick out the most relevant keywords.
Don’t over do it. Don’t keep using the same keywords over and over again. Either use a variation of those keywords or use them in a phrase. For example Lingerie can be used with words like sexy lingerie or lingerie for special occasions. Basically you are still using the keyword Lingerie but you are not focusing on that specific word.

Step #4 word Specific and phrases with links to your keywords.
This may be the most important bit of information I can give you. Use your links with your keywords. Keep it in your website obviously maybe link it to another page on your website where that keyword is being used. Don’t over do it. Good luck and come again tomorrow where I will give you more tips and tricks on how to slowly go up the ranking page.

One more tips about getting higher page ranking is to get good back links, below is a place I have found to be fair and honest about their link backs.

USA Web Sites: Nationwide and state by state directories for USA Web Sites.

A. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a marketing tool used worldwide on the Internet in order to get higher ranking. Simple enough right? Afraid it’s not that easy, in this discipline one has to look at various attributes of their website. From content to links, link backs and last but not least their structure. Once you have had a good look at your website content you have to remove any impediments that are preventing your site from achieving it’s rightful place in the search rankings on the Internet. Therefore the question is why do we need SEO?

B. Since we are still in the SEO infancy stage there are a lot of changes happening. The major understanding everyone is finally catching up on is that users searching have what they coin as “local intent”. Basically the user is looking for someone close to them especially if you are a retailer or a local hardware store.

C. Did you know that 63% of all search made by users are made with the desire for someone locally? That is why you will notice a lot of search engines are adapting the zip code feed in the searches. I am sure you have seen this, especially if you are looking for a doctor. This new attribution is more prevalent and will hone the searches specifically to the users local area and not across the globe to china.

D. Search Mobile is a new addition to your of local search -Think about this ingenious idea now with GPS installed in all mobile phones it will automatically give you your criteria search locally since it already knows where your location is by your phone.

E. Who needs SEO is anyone who is on the Internet. More than 80% of users will start with a search. Therefore any business that wants to get more clients or more users on their sites needs to understand and ultimately use SEO properly.

F. SEO is also beneficial to your business regardless of whether you are brand oriented or not. It’s comes from the old school of marketing and advertising basically, keep your name and brand out there. Regardless of whether you are Pepsi, Ford, or a local TV station.

G. Therefore the question is should SEO be written for search engines or for the user? This is a common misconception that if you write SEO style then your users will come. NOT! The consideration is you have 2 things to deal with:

1. People using the search.

2. The robots crawling your pages.

Now the question you should ask yourself is who is going to buy from you? Regardless of whether you are selling a local product or are going for an International market will be people. Therefore make sure your content is written for people with flow and information. The search robots will pick those keywords up don’t worry.

H. The common mistake is that when you have someone writing your SEO they will offer all the tricks and shortcuts in order to get you higher ranking. They ain’t cheap either. Therefore stay away from those companies. They may very well get you a higher ranking but Google will catch up and tear you down like the cheap tawdry hustler you are.

All kidding aside get a professional to do this for you. If they tell you they can do this for thousands of dollars in 30 days then step away and don’t look back. It’s not easy nor is it legal. Any SEO writer worth their salt will be lying if they did not warn you that this is a long process, and a step by step of why you need SEO. Not because they cannot write fast enough or give you enough articles in order to get a higher ranking, but it takes time and we cannot change that.

SEO help

There must be at over 1000 online business that say they can help you with your SEO copy. Not one company can do this overnight period! Google warns people of these Internet cowboys. In order to get SEO help you need to hire someone that is familiar with the process or keep coming back here and reading all the information I give. But remember I am learning everyday. You see this business is changing daily therefore NO one I stress NO one knows everything there is to know about SEO. If they tell you they do then guess what they are full of BS.

I personally have been doing this for over 10 years and I still don’t know everything. Some may even call me a content specialist. How you get help for SEO is still a work in progress. As a matter of fact I read an article where Google received emails from companies that were “phishing” for new business. In simple terms they are a scam they say something like “Dear ABC I was on your website and noticed you are not getting top listing on Google Blah blah blah”. Sound familiar? I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when they got that email! Below are some things to keep in mind.

There is no Guarantee you will get #1 Google ranking
Companies that guarantee you top rating on Google because of a “special relationship” with them are full of it. As much as I would love to bash Goggle for many things they are ethical. They have no priority for their submission. As a matter of fact the only way you can actually submit a site is through their http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl So move on partner and do this legally.

Be weary of companies that won’t explain how they can get top rankings
Have Joe or Sheila explain how they are going to do this. More often than not they will misrepresent or give you misleading information. Give you all these services that you can get for free if you took the time to search. Therefore have them spell it out, even in writing if they are willing to give you the guarantee.

Network and talk to other SEO companies
Always ask for references that is a good start. I actually had a company contact me and promise me the world as far as Google ranking. The problem was they could not explain why they were not #1 in Google. I don’t recall what the woman said but by the third sentence out of her mouth I was playing tug of war with my dog Lucy. You can see how interested I was.

Protect yourself Legally

• Have everything in writing if you are going to choose ABC Company to do your SEO work.

• Make sure you talk to clients they have had in the past.

• Make sure that Google has not removed their previous clients.

• Check their WHOIS info.

• Watch out for doorway pages.

• If you think you have been deceived by ABC Company contact the FTC including the BBB. If you want to file a complaint go to http://www.ftc.gov/ or you can call them at 1877.FTC.HELP

In order to get reliable SEO help you must do your homework. If it’s important for you and your company then take the time and research all your options. Keep in mind anyone offering this service won’t be innexpensive. Our prices are very competitive, we work within our clients budgets while providing valuable resources and ROI.

Everyday I try to give our readers free information. A lot of great ideas without a lot of money. I have gathered a list of sites where you can actually post and submit your press release for free.

Please beware that your press release has to be just that.  A press release must have these elements who, what, where, why, and when. A press release is not advertisement or shameless promotion. If you know how to write, then write well, you see most of these sites will check the content and refuse to publish your press release if it does not adhere to their rules and regulations. Nuff said.

Look I don’t make the rules but in order to get more web site traffic there are some things you have to follow and rules are one of them. I hope this is helpful. If you know of other places where we can submit our press releases for free then please let me know and I can add it to this list. Thanks for dropping by come again and I shall give you a list of free article submission sites. These are Free, small fee… or give us your first child fee.

24-7 Press Release
eCommWire.com
Free-Press-Release-Center.info
FreePressIndex.com
PR.com
PR9.net
PR-Inside.com
PRurgent.com
PRzoom.com
PressAbout.com
PressBox.co.uk
Free-press-release.com
Secure.prleap.com
sanepr.com
Prlog.com
1888pressrelease.com
PRrfree.com
Filecluster.com
AfreeGo
ThomasNews

Below you will find our latest updates… I have added a few new ones that were sent to me.

http://www.betanews.com
http://www.directionsmag.com
http://news.thomasnet.com/
http://www.nanotech-now.com
http://www.bizeurope.com/
http://www.free-press-release.com/
http://www.clickpress.com/
http://www.filecluster.com/
https://secure.digitalmediaonlineinc.com/
http://www.afreego.com/
http://www.ukprwire.com/
http://www.pressreleasespider.com/
http://www.itbsoftware.com/
http://www.itbinternet.com
http://freepressindex.com/
http://pr-gb.com/
http://www.nationalhomelandsecurityknowledgebase.com/
http://www.mediasyndicate.com
http://www.techprspider.com/
http://www.publicitywires.com/
http://www.seenation.com/
http://news.eboomwebsolutions.com/
http://www.afly.com/
http://emeapr.com/
http://www.prwindow.com/

http://www.pressreleasecirculation.com/

Drop me if you have any news one you would like to see on this list. Enjoy!