Everyone, from a corner coffee shop to an enterprise cloud provider, benefits from good SEO. But how do you get “good” SEO? Few people even understand the concept of search engine optimization, let alone what makes “good” SEO. You can attempt to go at it alone, but it will ultimately cost you more money in man-hours than it would have cost you to outsource.

Although many business owners consider themselves Internet savvy, the learning curve for optimizing a business for search engines and social media is always expanding. The better choice is to hire an outside firm to handle SEO, but how do you know if you are getting reliable service? To make it simple, we’ve broken down the top 10 things to look for before hiring an SEO company.

1. Transparency – A good SEO professional or firm will have no problem explaining to you exactly how his or her services work. You should know exactly how much time will be spent working on your SEO needs. The person you hire, should also reveal to you the techniques used to boost your website or business’s exposure online, rather than hide it from you. The goal is to help you become more informed so you can perform basic maintenance SEO without the help of a professional. They should fulfill all of the recommendations made by Google for companies looking for SEO.

2. Strategy – The company should have a strong grasp of overall SEO strategies and how to adapt them to your business and your needs. Don’t hire a company that is stuck on a single marketing strategy. Performing on-page optimization is a necessary part of SEO, but that’s only part of the entire process. Find a company that can provide you with a complete range of SEO services.

3. Reporting – Your chosen SEO professional should report back to you on a regular basis concerning the tactics being used to market your business. If there is something you don’t understand, you should be able to ask questions without being told to let the professionals handle it.

4. Experience – Experience is a key factor in determining which SEO company to hire. The Internet is constantly changing, so the longer someone has been providing SEO services, the better the chances are that he or she is staying ahead of the latest advances in search engine algorithms and social media trends.

5. Structure – An SEO professional should be structured and professional. No one wants to hire someone to do SEO work who does it “on the side.” Instead, the person or company you hire, should be structured and abide by deadlines.

Furthermore, you should have no problem contacting him or her when you need to, and phone calls should not take several days to return.

6. Budget – Be upfront about how much you are willing to spend, and demand a clear budget, broken down into itemized expenses. While you should expect to pay for good SEO, the company or person you hire, should have no problem revealing exactly how much of your money is being on marketing your business, and how much is paying for professional services.

7. Promises – Run away if you are promised top results in a search engine. While the goal is to give you the very best ranking you can get in your market, no one can realistically promise you a #1 ranking or fast results. It could happen, but it’s more likely that it will take at least six months to start seeing the long-lasting results of an SEO campaign.

8. Ranking – If the company’s good at what they do, you should see their pages high in results for SEO-related searches. Ask for examples of previous work they’ve done to prove their ability to achieve high rankings for you.

9. Testimonials – An SEO firm should be able to provide you with a list of satisfied customers, as well as testimonials from those customers. Ask for some references that you can contact personally to ask questions about previous customer service experiences.

10. Interest – Any company you work with should treat you with the same respect and priority that it treats bigger companies and more expensive clients. You should never be shoved aside for someone else with bigger pockets, so make sure that the company you choose shows genuine interest in helping you before you sign on the dotted line.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

10 Things to Look for in SEO – A SPN Exclusive Article

Content is King

As a small business owner or entrepreneur trying to broaden your internet target and get recognized, I’m sure you are aware of the value of new, fresh, recurring content on your site of all types. When it comes to written content on page copy or blogs and articles, you need to be able to write well, be informative and entertain, that’s obvious. That’s for your viewers. But if you can’t write as well for Google and the other search engines to maximize your subject matter for Search Engine Marketing, you are the proverbial tree in the forest that falls when no one else is around. This article provides a frequently discussed yet misunderstood technique to help you make your material applicable and explode your SEO online.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Perhaps you’ve heard of Google Adwords, Google’s primary pay for placement vehicle on their mother of all search engine returns. You might have run a campaign or I bet you’ve at least been petitioned by Google Adwords “experts” to run your campaigns for you to help you pay less per click, otherwise known as PPC.

Well, Google offers a free instrument to help you select keywords and phrases based upon how much they are searched every month and how much competition there is from other marketers. It’s called the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and while it is created for advertisers, it reveals plenty of tips about search engine optimizing your written content (or video tags) for your page copy and blogs. Contrary to what many believe, you do not have to have an Adwords account to make use of this tool, and here is the link, so save this:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

I could tell you about it, but why don’t I just show you. Check out this instructional Vlog video:

When I write I like to write for the readers. I’ve seen too much content composed for search engine optimization that really stinks to the point of being unreadable, cramming keywords into sentences. It’s awkward to write this way for me, and perhaps for you, because it just feels weird and you can end up with a write-up or website that seems bogus. Here are a few ideas for getting adjusted to it:

1. Use the Adwords Tool first and come up with 3-5 keywords (phrases) for your content, using high-traffic, low-competition keywords where available. Keep them on a list in front of you.

2. Lay out your paragraph or article in light of the phrases you selected for SEO. It may give a different slant than you first had or take you down a different path that you know interests the readers out there.

3. Write your piece sprinkling in the key phrases on your list where they click. Add a check mark each time you use a keyword, and you can use alternatives of a phrase to not sound too repetitive (spot gold, spot gold prices, spot gold pricing, gold prices).

4. Proof-read for sanity and information flow, and revise where needed.

That’s it! Get used to that process and it will get easier and easier.

Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms build competitive advantage in an online world of sameness. He is author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business, and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in the SmartShop. Get your FREE LinkedIn Profile Optimization eBook & Video Course, Video Marketing video and course, or Mastermind Groups e-course & video now.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Write Current Content and Explode Your SEO – A SPN Exclusive Article

You thought you were done when you optimized your site for Google, MSN, and Yahoo, right? Nope – the Microsoft Network, MSN, has partnered with Yahoo in a 10-year, $275 million dollar agreement and recently launched Bing. Having gone live in June 2009, it’s instantly very popular. There’s even talk that it may eventually replace Google as the most popular search engine because it is intuitive and offers users a number of search options.

Early reports also show that Bing users are more likely to click on advertisements than Google users. Time will tell and Google will most certainly have an answer to Bing’s growing popularity. While we can’t predict the future, all signs point to making the effort now to learn SEO for Bing.

Here are the top 6 ways to do that today…

1) Manage Length of Your Content

Make your content longer than 300 words. According to SEO experts, Bing algorithms seem to place a higher value on content that is over 300 words. That means longer blog posts, more content on web pages and longer articles.

2) On-Page Tips for Bing

Optimize your title tags for your keywords and use unique tags on each page. You may be doing this already for Google and Yahoo. Keep it up. Bing really likes title tags and pays attention to them when indexing and ranking your page. If you haven’t been paying too much attention to them up until now, it’s time to start.

3) Bing Linking

Linking is always important in SEO. However, unlike Google, when doing SEO for Bing, pay more attention to building backlinks from highly relevant websites. Also, Bing really likes outbound links and gives a bit more weight than the other search engines do.

4) Keyword Targeting

Bing’s own FAQ page suggests that you target no more than two keywords per page. We suggest you follow this rule. Usually you will want to target one main keyword you are trying to get ranked for and a more long-tail keyword which contains your main keyword in it.

5) Meta Tags

You may have let your meta tags slide over the years because rumor has it Google doesn’t really pay much attention to them. However, Bing recommends you use unique description tags on each page.

6) Continue All Other Good SEO Practices

Good SEO for Bing does have some differences than Google, but good SEO practices still need to be followed too. For example:

* Use H1 tags
* Use text navigation links
* Use keywords in your URL

There’s a bit of disagreement between experts. There are some reports that indicate Bing places value on longevity. The older your website, the more respect Bing seems to want to give you. However, other sources cite that younger, newer sites, have the advantage. Regardless, whether you’re a brand new site or a website that’s been around for years, put the above practices in place and be patient.

As an internet business owner it’s always good to pay attention to what the big three are doing, the big three being MSN, Yahoo, and Google. And when two of them team up then that most certainly deserves a change in strategy. As the months pass and Bing continues to grow, there will likely be some additions or changes to how SEO for Bing will work. They may change things up and decide one day to index and rank websites differently. Stay tuned for further developments.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO For Bing: 6 Killer Bing Optimization Tips For Your Website

Many site owners get discouraged with their SEO campaigns very quickly. Either they are expecting miraculous results inside of three months or they seem to focus on what their site isn’t doing as opposed to how it is improving. These attitudes are the quickest way to kill your SEO campaign and hurt your online presence in 2012.

Here are four things to keep in mind as you outline your 2012 SEO campaign:

Everyone Knows “Just Enough” SEO to be Competitive

For small businesses looking to optimize their own websites, there is a veritable treasure trove of free tips, tricks, guidelines, opinions, etc. available at the click of a mouse. Mid-sized companies (with the budget) can cherry pick from hundreds of SEO consultants/experts/gurus to come in and train their marketing staff, or just outsource their SEO campaigns entirely. Building an SEO campaign isn’t like advertising in the Super Bowl, something that only the biggest brands can afford to do – everyone has access to all the information they need to create a successful SEO campaign, which means that everyone knows just enough to make it that much harder for your website to stand out.

There are billions of websites, with more being created every day. We share billions upon billions of pieces of content each day, which means there is a lot of noise for your site to contend with. The search algorithm isn’t perfect (even though the search engines are constantly seeking to improve it) and there is no “magic formula” sites can follow to guarantee their success. A little SEO goes a long way, which is why it’s important that you always try to keep your SEO campaign going strong.

Strive to be Better, Not Just a Copy

If it always seems like you are two steps behind the competition, take a good look at your campaign and be honest with yourself. Did you create this campaign based on your unique needs, wants and goals as a company? Are you leveraging your online assets to their fullest? Are you determined to find new link opportunities and opportunities for online growth? It’s very tempting to look at a successful competitor and assume that if you just do what they are doing, soon you’ll be as successful as they are. Well, you know what they say about assuming… If you want to topple your top competitors, how are you going to do that if you just focus your SEO on repeating what they have done? Following in their footsteps pretty much guarantees you’ll always be two steps behind.

Also, just because certain SEO tactics are producing good results for your competition, that doesn’t automatically mean it will do the same for you. You might inadvertently hurt your SEO and online brand by copying the competition.

You Can’t Win the SEO Race if You Don’t Try

It’s easy to get discouraged and feel like your SEO campaign isn’t taking your brand anywhere, but that doesn’t mean progress isn’t happening! Depending on the industry you operate in (such as travel, auto or legal), the competition might be extra fierce. Your SEO might be at the tipping point of producing really great results, so don’t stop now! You can never know for sure exactly what the competition is doing, so don’t assume you’re miles behind. You might be gaining on them faster than you think and pulling the plug now will just unravel all your hard work done in 2011.

Don’t Focus Too Much on the Competition

If your top competitors are engaged in implementing and executing a strong, focused, white hat link building campaign then they have earned their success! But that doesn’t mean that you can’t carve out a competitive niche for your own brand and develop your own successful SEO campaign. Constantly comparing your online success to that of your competition can be very disheartening after a while, and it makes it that much easier to set your campaign up for failure. Think of it this way -let’s say you just started running and are working your way down from a 10 minute mile to a 7 minute mile. If you measure your progress against your neighbor who runs marathons for fun, you are only going to see yourself as a failure. The same concept holds true for SEO. Don’t create benchmarks based on what the
competition is doing (They get 10,000 visitors a month, so we need to get 10,000 too!), base them on what your own site is doing and how it is improving (growing from 1,500 visitors to 1,750 this month).

With 2012 just around the corner, now is the perfect time to outline your SEO strategy for the coming year. Just remember these four things and you’ll have a much more pleasant SEO experience.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Don’t Give Up on Your SEO in 2012! – A SPN Exclusive Article

With the way the economy is today, many business owners have turned to the online advertising and marketing campaigns and strategies, such as search engine optimization (SEO), for a much needed boost in online company and product visibility, which translates into an increase in revenue and profitability. With each day that passes, more businesses are becoming aware of the importance and advantages of having an online presence to supplement whatever revenue streams they have already had in place. The immense increase in the number of corporate websites online today that display their various products and/or services, has translated into a fierce and competitive market of business owners trying to ensure that their websites are ranked in the top positions of search engines. This is the major contributing factor as to why so many of these business owners continually look for ways to distinguish themselves among their competitors, in order to gain a high ranking position.

This is where companies that offer SEO consulting services come in. SEO or Search engine optimization helps business owners increase their websites’ visibility and ranking in search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, by using various techniques and methods that ultimately result in an increase in website traffic (highly qualified and interested visitors) and online generated revenue. To find the right SEO service provider, it is critical to not only look at different companies, but to also see what types of SEO consulting services each of them offers. In order to find the right match, not only in terms of the provider, but also in terms of the service, it is important to look for a specific SEO consulting service that covers all the basics and uses only standard, and approved (also known as white-hat) methods and techniques. Stay away from SEO companies that offer rapid and guaranteed search engine rank results; more often than not, this will be a sale for them, but in the long run result in negative outcomes, such as being completely blacklisted, and banned from the most popular search engines.

So what kinds of services are included in SEO consulting?

On Site Optimization - Also called On Page SEO is when SEO consultants take a look at the inner workings of a website. Items such as page structures, internal links, programming platform, meta tags, etc., are all examined and optimized to ensure that the actual website is SEO friendly, and is geared towards getting high rankings on the agreed upon targeted keywords.

Off Site Optimization - This is one of the more important aspects of the different SEO consulting services, as it helps distribute information about your website, product and/or services throughout different social media platforms, resource hubs, targeted directories and various other appropriate authoritative sources. The more links that a company’s website has on various authoritative and relevant websites, the more attention Google and other search engines will give it.

Keyword Research - Identifying the most relevant keyword phrases that consumers use to search for your products and/or services is the key in determining which keywords your company’s website should be targeting. Optimizing for obscure, low search volume, or highly competitive keyword phrases will not only cause an SEO campaign to fail in ranking high in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, but it won’t properly direct the desired traffic to your site.

Content Creation – SEO consulting services shouldn’t just be about link building but should also focus on the creation of compelling, interesting content that will create interest among readers, consumers and incidental browsers, which in turn, will translate into additional revenue or start a surge of traffic resulting from these people sharing your content on their social media platforms and blogs.

Custom SEO Content Management - unfortunately, SEO isn’t a one time thing wherein you submit your content to information hubs or directory listings and be done with it. Proper SEO consulting services experts will tell you that SEO is an ongoing process which needs customized management depending on one’s SEO goals and intended results based on additional revenue and website traffic.

SEO consulting services when properly leveraged can exponentially increase a website’s potential to attract new consumers, no matter what the product or service it has to offer and more often than not, encourage these new visitors to share their experiences with other people through different social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

So now that you have the right SEO methods in place and have selected the team of SEO consulting experts to manage and keep track of everything, how will you know if these strategies and techniques are working for you?

Monitor website traffic. There are quite a few traffic monitoring tools that can accurately tell you if an increase in traffic has happened. Additionally, some of these tools like Google Analytics can tell you exactly which keywords in your SEO campaign this increase in traffic has stemmed from. Some monitoring tools also tell you how long each visitor has stayed on your site, which link or location they came from and various other important metrics to determine if additional traffic is being directed to your site. SEO consulting service experts should be able to help you determine and interpret the various metric results that these tools generate.

After you have the compelling content in place, and your website has been properly optimized externally and internally (on page and off page SEO tactics), visitors will undoubtedly begin clicking on your link which is now displayed within the top results of search engines. You now know that your SEO campaign has resulted in an increase in traffic, but what’s really important is that this traffic translates into additional revenue and profitability. That is your goal and that’s what you have to closely monitor to check if it’s being met.

Finally, it’s not difficult to add new features to your website that will positively affect the user’s experience, and increase conversions (sales). If you’re selling a product, asking your customers how they found out about your product, and if they had a good experience browsing through your website, is one of the simplest ways of finding additional ways to convert new visitors from your SEO campaign into paying and repeat customers.

Good SEO consulting service experts should be able to help you optimize your site and help you reach your goals, whether it’s an increase in daily traffic or an increase in revenue, or both.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO Consulting Services – A SPN Exclusive Article

I see it everyday. Someone wants to start a new blog, e-commerce site, or other site, including non-profits. The excitement is mounting, you start to see pieces of the puzzle come together, and the next thing you know, you’ve made the ever-important connection string from your database to your file manager – your site is now live. Did you forget anything along the way?

Depending on the Content Management Solution (CMS) you have chosen, upon the initial launch of your site, there are several “add-ons” you’ll want to install right away. I’ll use the ever-popular WordPress blogging platform for this example. Chances are, you don’t want to run your site these days without a single plug-in. Your initial choices should be related to site security, SEO (I am biased!), and site mapping. Other social items can be added or changed along the way according to your theme lay-out. But what is even far more important than this? Blocking search engines.

Unless you were able to completely design and develop your new site on a developer’s server that is not crawled by search engine bots, surely your site is not prepared. Important basics like the “About” page, “Contact”, and other critical information have not been written, or if they have, not yet installed. Before I use a different CMS, I will stick to WordPress for the conclusion of this example. The first thing I ALWAYS do right away is go to “Settings” and “Block this site from search engines”. This allows you to finish your basics or even the entire site structure before letting it go live. Now onto perhaps a little trickier CMS, Joomla.

This Content Management Solution is ideal for those that want a nicely designed, and feature-packed e-commerce solution. However, Joomla needs a bit more “commanding” from the developer. Anyone that knows me or has ever read articles written on SEO basics in the past by me, know that my personal rule when initially checking a website of ANY kind, is simply viewing the page source. In doing so, you see what the search engines bots do. That simple. I immediately go to the meta title, description, and keywords. My most recent experience actually got a well-deserved laugh.

Our company is located in a nice office park with many people with companies like us, small businesses with few employees. We have become “business friends”, and often joke with each other in passing. I knew that my neighbor was in the process of building another website to compliment one that has been around for some time. Each day, I would poke my head in the door and ask him how it was going. “Looks great”, he said, “Take a look”.

I have gotten so far into SEO that – while the site appearance is important – that is not my initial concern. (I leave this to those that are Photo Shop experts). I immediately ask my neighbor to right-click and select “view page source”. I started laughing. About two weeks previous to this encounter, I told my neighbor, “You are still developing your site, you are adding new products every day, the “About” tab is a “dead link”, “You need to hard-code into each page the “noindex, nofollow” attribute until you are ready. As of now, according to Google, you are “Joomla, a free open-source content management solution…” Oh, and you also sell antennas!”.

I had told him that with each passing day, his site is steadily “bleeding”. It would have taken him (or me) literally ten or fifteen minutes to code the “noindex, nofollow” attribute into each page until his site was ready for its big debut…and now we have to stop the bleeding.

He has since hired me to perform all of the SEO work on his site. It is not quite ready for launch, but I have done my due diligence as his newly hired SEO agent. I spent fifteen minutes adding the “noindex, nofollow” attribute to all pages until his site is ready.

Don’t let search engines crawl your site until it is ready!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Prevent Your SEO Bleeding Before It Starts! – A SPN Exclusive Article

More than once in the six years that I have been providing SEO services for websites, I have had the opportunity to discuss with individual business owners their search engine optimization needs.

Now and again, I run across an individual business owner who is quick to say that SEO is absolutely worthless. When confronted with such an absolute statement, I like to press for details.

It has been my experience that people who speak in negative absolutes will have a horror story to share.

In this article, I am going to detail some of the stories I’ve heard, which frequently tells more about some of the people in our industry, than it does about the effectiveness of search engine marketing.

Problem Number 1 – “I rank number one in Google, and yet, I have never earned a dime from my website…”

When I first heard this story, I was very surprised. After all, if your SEO company did good keyword research, there is no reason why you should not be getting traffic and a few sales from a top ranking in Google.

I pressed for more details. I learned that the company who built the website also did the search engine optimization.

It only took a couple of minutes to learn that the website design company optimized this fellow’s website for the name of his company. There was no other optimization performed on that website.

Lesson 1 – It is rather pointless to optimize a website for the name of the company. The only consumers who will be searching for the name of your company are existing customers.

But, if your company is unknown to the general public, then the people who would like to buy your products or services will not be able to find you among your competitors.

If you sell widgets in Tulsa Oklahoma, your future customers will be typing “Tulsa Oklahoma widgets” into their favorite search engines, trying to find your business. And if your prospective customers cannot find your business, your business does not exist in their minds.

Problem #2 – “I had a company build a website for my business, but I have never received a single customer for my business, through my website…”

Are you sure?

Asking this question is not meant to offend you, but rather to get more details as to how you track incoming business.

If you are the average off-line business owner, who has built a website to promote an off-line business, chances are real good that you probably have never received a single customer from your website.

However, if your website does not request your prospective customers to let you know how they found out about your business, then chances are that people who did find you through your website would never tell you that.

If more than one person answers the phone at your business, chances are just as good that someone may have mentioned finding you on a website, but no one conveyed that information to you.

In your business, you should have systems in place to track and record where new customers have found your business. To do otherwise is like driving your car in the fast lane during rush-hour traffic with a blindfold over your eyes.

Lesson 2 – If you are not asking your customers how they found your business, you will never know what kind of advertising is producing profits for your business, and which advertising is sucking the wind out of your business.

Problem #3 – “I spend a great deal of money on PPC listings (pay-per-click) to get my business in front of search engine
users, because after spending tens of thousands of dollars on SEO, I could not rank in the search engines at all…”

What keywords were you trying to rank for in the search engines?

“Travel. I have a travel business based in Oklahoma City OK that caters to business professionals…”

Have you ever noticed the caliber of companies who rank on page 1 in Google for the keyword: travel?

Those are companies who spend millions of dollars per year to market their businesses online and off-line. Do you have a marketing budget that will allow you to effectively compete with Travelocity, Expedia or Priceline?

Besides that, where do the majority of your customers work and reside?

“Oklahoma City of course.”

If that is the case, why would you spend your limited marketing budget to target consumers who would never buy from you, because they are outside your local marketing area?

“I never really thought about it in that way…”

Most of your competitors are making the same mistakes that you are. That is to your advantage, because when you start to market your business in a more realistic and cost-effective manner, then you will be able to compete with your competitors, while spending far less money than your competitors are spending.

Lesson 3 - If you operate a local or regional business, do yourself a favor, and stop trying to compete in the national marketplace.

Final Thoughts…

Listed inside this article are three lessons that could potentially help your off-line business to find new customers and to generate new sales, as a result of your online advertising.

Depending on the average ticket price of purchases in your store or service business, how much could an extra 20, 50 or 100 new customers bring into your business each month? You do the math.

More consumers are ignoring their phone books and searching for products and services online. If you don’t want to compete for those consumers, your competitors will thank you. We primarily provide Local SEO Services to businesses in Oklahoma and Texas. But we are happy to serve any brick-and-mortar business in the United States. Author: Trey McMartin. http://MysticMountainMedia.com/

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SEO Lessons from Local Businesses

If you’re like me, you probably spend a big part of your time searching for things online and being amazed at some of the SEO articles that pop up. And, if you’re like me, you probably wonder how these “authors” expect you to take their poorly-spun, uninteresting, fluffy “article” seriously!

Remember, writing SEO articles isn’t about “churning out” as many as possible, as quickly as you can. After all, bad SEO articles do serious damage to your credibility – and, ultimately, your bottom line.

Instead, you need to look at SEO articles as a tool that helps you build a brand, helps you market your business, and helps you set yourself apart from the competition. When used correctly, SEO articles actually do a lot of work FOR you.

If you’re writing SEO articles properly (or paying someone to write them for you), the finished product should be doing these 3 things for you:

1. Establishing You as an Expert

When people get to the end of your SEO articles, they should say “wow!” They should be chomping at the bit to visit your website to see what other kind of gems you have to offer, or to learn more about your products and services. They should see you as a “somebody”, instead of like all the “wannabes” out there who just want to make a quick buck off them.

Remember, people look for all kinds of reasons NOT to spend their hard-earned money. But by writing SEO articles that show off your knowledge and expertise, you’re giving people the push they need to crack open their wallets and buy what they need – from you.

2. Getting Syndicated

Writing SEO articles isn’t about using the article directories to get traffic and links. Instead, use the article directories as a platform to get your articles syndicated (or “republished”) on other websites.

Did you know that’s what the article directories were originally created for? Internet marketers have turned the article directories into “link machines”, but each one of them was actually created in order to be a resource for webmasters who needed free content to publish on their own sites.

When you get an article syndicated, it is republished on websites that have targeted traffic. As an added benefit, you’re getting a much higher-quality backlink than you will ever get on the article directories. After all, on the article directories, your SEO articles are going on their own individual page that has PR0. Sure, the directory’s home page might have a much higher PR, but your articles aren’t being published on the home page, are they?

But when your articles are syndicated, they’re winding up on other websites and blogs that have a higher PR. In fact, one great SEO article can fetch you dozens of high-quality links just through syndication! But if you’re publishing low-quality (or even so-so) articles, don’t expect anyone to republish them on their own site.

With a little bit of searching, you can actively look for places to syndicate your articles (like on blogs in your niche, or simply by striking up relationships with other site owners in your niche and syndicating each other’s content). Or, you can simply publish great SEO articles, use things like Twitter and Facebook to get the word out about them, and wait for people to pick them up on their own.

Typically, I do the latter – simply because I’m too busy with clients’ work to actively syndicate my own stuff! Luckily, though, I see SEO articles that I published more than a year ago showing up on new websites and blogs every day! I’m not doing a thing to promote those articles, but they’re still making their way to targeted traffic and fetching me new links. Now that’s what I call working FOR you!

3. Selling Your Products

If you’re writing SEO articles that are chock full of information and interesting to read, they do the selling for you. In fact, many marketers refer to article marketing as a way to “pre-sell”, because good articles offer readers answers and solutions, without any strings attached.

How is that possible?

By showing people that you’re an expert, you’re convincing people that you’re the one they should do business with. You don’t need a bunch of big bold sales copy or a thousand red exclamation points to convince them. Your knowledge alone will do it.

It sounds painfully obvious, but great SEO articles are meant to be informative. Giving readers answers and solutions in a well-written, compelling SEO article is a great way to get people to trust you – and ultimately buy from you.

Unfortunately, that’s something that many marketers have lost sight of. Instead of building up credibility with informative articles, they think they can get a “quick sale” from a sub-par article. It just doesn’t work that way!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

3 Things Your SEO Articles Should Be Doing For You – A SPN Exclusive Article

As we all know, SEO is evolving by leaps and bounds every day. As we all chase after Google’s meticulous algorithm updates, we continue to find ways to help companies increase their Internet profile, though some of those methods often go under even our radars. Here are a few advanced techniques for SEOs looking for innovative ways to secure links for clients.

LOCATION BASED SEO
The key tenet of SEO is always and has always been relevance. How is your content relevant to the searcher? In the nebulous wilderness of the Internet, it can be hard to find relevance that goes past identifying a searcher’s interest and presenting them with information about that interest. What becomes important is location.

The explosive growth in smartphone sales and innovations in location-based search have led to an expansion of location technologies. Companies like Groupon have capitalized on this by offering street-specific deals through their mobile application Groupon Now. SEOs can also utilize this powerful metric in developing content for clients.

Specific location adds relevance in the eyes of Google. If you were creating content about what to do in Chicago, it would behoove you to mention actual locations within the city. Reference places like Navy Pier, Millennium Park or any of the numerous museums, as long as you do it by name. Not only does this deepen the topic for potential searchers, it increases the amount of searches in which your content will place.

AUTHOR STATUS
Author clout is becoming increasingly important in Google’s SERPs; the more a certain author has written about a topic, the more clout they will get in search engine rankings. For example, if you and Paul Krugman both write posts for the same blog about economics, he will be ranked higher because he has a long web history of writing about economics (not to mention innumerable links and comments). However, if Krugman and I both wrote posts about Tamagotchi I just may come out on top; my expertise and cataloge of writing about digital egg friends goes back to the early days of the Internet.

Successful SEOs will look at the potential of author clout and begin cultivating relevant experiences in order to build that up for future results.

FACEBOOK COMMENTS
In a shocking twist of events, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that the search engine Now has the ability to execute AJAX/JS to index some dynamic comments. PC World states: “Google bots can now see comments you’ve posted in public forums, which include websites that use the Facebook commenting system, as well as public pages on Facebook itself. Remember–these comments were public to begin with, just not easily searchable.”

Because these comments are now more easily searchable, they can be used as forums to discuss clients and thereby build links to their sites. Webmasters using Java-based commenting systems will likely see a boost in their rankings thanks to user comments that will now be a key element of PageRank. Since comments are indexed, so are commenters, and so active users who comment often will be instrumental in increasing rank as well.

There’s a lot of interesting activity taking over SEO in The Year of the Panda, and it’s all looking like it will lead to the most relevant search results for users and better placement for clients.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Locating SEO – A SPN Exclusive Article

SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, can be difficult to understand if you are not familiar with it. Unfortunately many things you read about SEO on the internet are not always true. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions floating around the net and they can sometimes be hard to confirm or debunk because of the ever changing techniques and the complexities of the search engines.

Some of the most common SEO myths are listed below and with it, the information to expose the truth so you can concentrate on real SEO methods to improve your site rankings and increase your traffic.

1. The More Reciprocal Links You Have on Your Site, the Better Your Ranking.

Have you ever been to site that is nothing but a long list of links? These sites are called link farms or FFA (Free for All links) and they do nothing for your site’s ranking. They are usually just filled with spam and can hurt your rankings because they are probably in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines which you can find on the Google site.

You also do not want to link to sites that are not relevant to your site. For example: if you own a site that sells jewelry, don’t link to sites about home repair or other topics that don’t relate to your site. You want to find quality sites that can complement yours such as fashion sites, make-up sites, etc. So, keep exchanging links but be selective and choose only quality, content-filled sites that complement your site.

2. You Need to Manually Submit Your Site to the Search Engines.

Submitting your website pages to the search engines will not boost your rankings, or help your site get indexed any faster. The search engines find sites by a process called web crawling done by spiders or bots. It has little to do with you filling out those long forms and submitting to the search engines. What will get you indexed faster is a quality site with relevant links, good content and the wise use of keywords.

3. Cramming Your Site Full of Keywords Means a Higher Ranking.

Have you ever seen a site that repeated the same words over so many times, it barely makes sense anymore? This is called keyword stuffing. Unfortunately, many people believe the more keywords you can stuff into your site, the better. This is sometimes done to such extremes that the content sounds ridiculous and unprofessional, thus defeating the purpose of the keywords.

For example: Jewelry ‘n More has beautiful diamond rings that don’t cost as much as most diamond rings because our diamond rings are more affordable than other diamond rings. If you are looking for diamond rings, visit our site for diamond rings because we have more diamond rings at cheaper prices than any other diamond rings.

This is really an extreme example but this type of thing does happen. The best way to use keywords is to use different combinations of relevant keywords throughout your site’s content. There is no set number of keywords that will magically make your site appear in the number one position so do not over stuff to the point of redundancy. Your web copy should be natural, professional and informative.

4. Duplicate Content Can Get You Banned.

Fortunately this is not true. Using duplicate content on your site can cause problems if it is done in a “spammy” or exaggerated way. If you mix the duplicate content with other quality and relevant content, your site will stand a better chance of a higher ranking. What happens when duplicate content is found by the search engines? Well, once the duplicate content is discovered, the search engine will base their decision (which page to add to the search results) on how long the site has been active, the page rank, the amount of incoming links and other qualifying aspects of the site. Duplicate content is a part of the internet (as we have all seen) and there is no penalty for it.

Many people also believe that using reprint articles on their site will bring them a penalty. This is not so. While you don’t want ALL your site’s content to be duplicates, using quality informative articles on your site (that happen to be published elsewhere) is not a problem for the search engines.

5. Higher Page Rank Means Higher Search Engine Ranking.

Many people mistakenly believe that if you have a high page rank, you will also have a high ranking in the search engines. This is not so. Page rank is not as important as most people believe. The search engines use other factors to determine your ranking. You need to have a high quality site with functionality, relevance, a good linking system, good information, user-friendliness and purpose. Do not rely on your page rank to raise your ranking in the search engines.

I hope this information will help you in producing a more search engine friendly site. You can do it yourself but be sure to learn the facts and find out which SEO myths are true and which ones are not.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

5 Common SEO Myths Explained