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What to Do When Keywords Plateau in the SERPs

By Jeffrey Smith in SE Optimization

Have you ever wondered why certain keywords rise faster than others? or what to do when Keywords plateau in the search engine result pages?

After performing SEO on thousands of websites over the years, you are able to discern distinct patterns that all affect why a keyword ranks and where.

For example if a website is older than 4 years old, it has gained a natural degree of trust (if the tags were follow, index and not blocked by robots.txt). Sites that have gained trust for example have certain privileges that younger websites do not (they react to link building with less effort due to trust).

Although these observations are based on personal trial and error, circumstances such as:

• keyword discovery time (how search friendly the site providing the link is)
• the age, authority and link from the site providing the backlink (if the link is to the domain name or anchor / keyword)
• the amount of topical content on the target site
• if the page was static or dynamic
• how prominent the keywords are (a) within the site and (b) in relation to the page in question

Topical relevance is a plus (having clusters of information on a topic) however, sometimes there is no way around waiting for certain factors to age and rise above their algorithmic quarantine like repression in the SERPs.

I have seen phrases that had hundreds of thousands of competing pages acquire a ranking with moderate effort and other keywords or phrases with ten thousand competing pages take months (even though is it a less competitive phrase).

The point is, if a keyword plateaus (gets stuck after rising so far) then you can always look at some of the primary metrics used for producing rankings to assess which action to take to remedy the situation.

For example, if you are able to get a keyword to appear from off the grid (not in the top 1000 pages) and have it scale 900+ positions then fizzle out and get stuck somewhere in the 30’s (on the 4th page of search engines). Then it is time to review the timeline and conditions you utilized to create the proper finesse to allow it to scale the last few pages and reach the top 10.

Performing things like:

• determining how many inbound links are flowing to the page from internal links
• determining how many inbound links are linking to the page
• which percentage of the keywords leading to the page overlap with the target phrase
• if you need to refine the on page factors such as titles, meta data, increase the density of the keyword, adjust the prominence, add bold or H1 tags
• going back to older links and flowing fresh link weight to them to pass more link weight to your pages

So, we know that the ratio of links in to links out to a page and the site, the age of the site providing the link, the age and authority of the aggregate sites and what amount of link juice they pass, the on page factors, the amount of internal links and the quality of the content all have an impact on the algorithm.

However sometimes, if you just let things take their course (the real ingredient of SEO, time and synchronicity) you will find that even the most competitive keywords eventually give way and rise to the top if you are aware of the nurturing process.

The takeaway here is (1) start with a stable platform that is easily crawled by search engine spiders (2) get the on page factors as solid as possible from the onset, build each page to rank for a specific range of 2-3 keywords and variations and (3) build links moderately over time (12-35 inbound links per page) to acquire a keyword that is competitive.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

The Easiest and Most Effective Ways to Optimize for the Search Engines

By Daniel Pereira in SE Optimization

Fortunately, I have been blessed due to the fact that I am in no way a webmaster, but I have been able to achieve high search engine rankings for a number of keyword phrases that I need to dominate in my niche markets. You can get great search engine rankings by following a few simple techniques and then by focusing on creating your site for real people. I share this information with you today because I constantly see programs that will help improve your search engine rankings, but I honestly believe that most of them aren’t very effective.

One example of the programs in which I don’t waste my time is the many link building programs across the web. Even though link building can be very important, my suggestion is that you just let inbound links come naturally. If you have a good website, then people will link to you. Also, if you get the chance to set up a simple affiliate program, then even more people will link to you.

I recently read an article that said that some websites with Google page ranks of 7 or higher will actually let you pay them thousands of dollars per month in order for them to link to your website. All I can say is: WOW! You better hope that the search engines don’t find out! If you haven’t heard, there can be some serious consequences for websites that have been discovered buying or selling link placement.

O.K., so I would like to cover a couple of things that you can do to get easy and effective SEO without spending a dime. Also, by following these steps, people will eventually start to naturally link to your website. Let’s start off by further explaining the power of having a blog on your site. A blog is a really easy way in order for you to build tons of good content for your website and to start getting more links. Many bloggers discover that they can get a lot of free exposure to their blogs in a short period of time.

Let me share an example: For one of my sites, I got “slapped” by Google for the critical keyword phrases that I needed to advertise my business. This means that Google wanted to charge me between $5 and $10 per click for those keyword phrases. In an attempt to fix things, I decided that I should add a blog to that same website. After only a few weeks of posting, Google had started ranking my website naturally for the same keyword phrases that they wanted $5 and $10 a click for! Why did Google change their minds? Well, it was due to the simple fact that I started easily creating pages and pages of quality content through the blog that focused directly on those keyword phrases. When it comes to SEO, content is king, and if you can start to grow a nice blog, then you will grow content fast.

At times Google and other search engines will start naturally visiting your website in order to spider, index and rank your pages, but this can sometimes take months to happen unless you follow this next huge tip. This tip is to provide Google and Yahoo with sitemaps to your website. It isn’t very hard to figure out how to do this, and your website will start to get spidered and ranked pretty fast, all for just providing the search engines with a “map” to your website! Just go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools in order to start submitting a sitemap to Google, or for Yahoo you can head on over to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. If you don’t know how to write a sitemap, then there are also programs across the web that will do it for you.

One last piece of simple SEO advice that I have to share with you is that you should still include titles and meta tags in the html of your web pages. You are also going to want to make sure that you “theme” these pages. Even though the search engines don’t rank your websites according to the titles and meta tags like they did in the past, the search engines will still use these titles and tags as a “guide” in order to see what type of content you are providing. When you provide these titles and tags, you will want to make sure you use similar keyword phrases within the body of your web page. For example, if you had a web page on grocery savings, you would want to maybe have the title say “The Grocery Savings Zone.” You would also want to make sure that the content on that page mentioned grocery savings a few times, and you would also want to have your meta tags include phrases similar to grocery savings.

Following these 3 simple techniques for SEO together will prove to be most effective. As you grow your blog, your new posts will be easily spidered, indexed, and ranked because of your sitemap submissions. Also, by providing titles and meta tags on your other web pages, you will easily allow the search engines to discover the main themes for your site. Before you know it, you will see high search engine rankings for a number of your pages all because you followed a few basic and effective techniques.

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Daniel Pereira is an expert at driving free traffic to your website. For 2 free eBooks, free weekly conference calls, and a free mini course, just head on over to http://www.TheFreeTrafficFormula.com . You can also visit “The Free Traffic Blog” at http://www.TheFreeTrafficFormula.com/blog

Everything you need to know about the future of search engine marketing you learned in the 1990s

By David Berkowitz in SE Optimization

That’s an overstatement, of course, but the basics of SEO and SEM — the very first things you probably learned  — now are more important than they’ve been in years for bringing people back to your Web site. It’s all thanks to the new browser wars among Firefox 3, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, all of which are generally evolving in the same direction. All three, for instance, support searching from the address bar, where you normally enter a Web site URL. Chrome encourages this the most, as it doesn’t even have a search box, but the same feature is on all the browsers. The searches all are conducted through the default search engine you select (IE8, for example, doesn’t hold you to Live Search).

More importantly, these address bars all offer suggestions as you type. Generally, these are based on which sites you’ve previously visited, how often and/or recently you’ve visited them, and potentially some other factors. Firefox sticks to your browsing history, but Google will sometimes recommend other sites it deems relevant, while Microsoft occasionally recommends a page from one of its properties. The history is what marketers and publishers have the most control over, so that’s where the focus needs to be.

The opportunity here is retention. If someone has visited your site before, however they found it, you want to increase the odds that they’ll come to you directly rather than search again and potentially check out competitors. Ideally, you want to be found through search once, and then save the consumer the need from ever running that kind of search again.

For starters, you should optimize page titles. All three browsers rely on them. For instance, I ran a search that I tried when planning my honeymoon: “travel India.” I clicked one ad, leading me to a landing page entitled, “Private Guided Travel in India & Nepal: India, U.A.E., Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan.” I searched again and clicked on another ad where the landing page simply had the tour operator’s name. Now, whenever I start typing “travel India” in the address bar, that first tour site comes up, and it will also come up if I start typing queries relating to any of countries listed in the title. The site for the other operator never comes up. The same effect shows up across all three browsers.

Another important factor is the filename. I went to my blog and clicked on a photo of Usher from the Service Nation event in New York a couple weeks ago. The filename is usher_at_service_nation_nyc.jpg. Now, when I type “Usher” in my Firefox address bar, it leads me right to that image. With IE8, it actually goes to the blog post where that image lives rather than the image alone, even though I hadn’t actually visited that post in IE. Chrome doesn’t bring up the file in its suggestions at all, but that will most likely change over time. These browsers have a way of looking more alike, even as they stake out their own identities.

Reviewing these optimization basics won’t likely cause a huge difference overnight. As I mentioned in my end of summer roundup, it will take some time to learn how much these new browsers encourage direct navigation. Yet it’s somewhat reassuring that you probably already know the tactics that will put you in the best position with the new browsers, and they’ll provide other benefits for your landing pages whether you’re focused on SEO or paid search. While it may be frustrating needing to focus on a new round of browser wars, they can make you feel smarter for having learned all the tricks already.

David Berkowitz is director of emerging media and client strategy at 360i. You can reach him at dberkowitz@360i.com, and you can read his blog at MarketersStudio.com

“SEO On A Budget” Tips

By Jennifer Horowitz in SE Optimization

I am often asked if small businesses have a chance at competing in the search engines and the answer is a resounding YES.

It is true small businesses face some challenges that large companies may not. Small businesses typically have smaller budgets, less staff and more pressure as they try to get as much done as they can with a small team. It is true that those things do present a challenge however they do not preclude you from getting top rankings. There is actually an upside here as well! Many people do not realize it, but these small businesses also have some advantages.

Small business usually have less red tape and are free to try different things out and see what really works for them. They can experiment.

They can usually get things done quicker - with decisions not getting hung up in a bureaucratic mess internally.

So many large companies have more money to spend but it doesn’t get spent because they are so hung up on every detail and getting every little thing approved.

The truth is SEO doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg - there are ways you can get things done and get into the top of the engines without blowing your budget.

And the truth is any action is better than no action. So even if you can’t afford the Cadillac version with every bell and whistle you can still get some things done and begin to better position your site.

Tips for getting top rankings on a budget…

1. Find a company that specializes in smaller businesses that will work with a budget of $300 - $500 per month.
2. Find a company that offers custom packages so you don’t have to pay for things you don’t need - get a custom package that meets your needs and maximizes your budget to get the best results that are most suited to you.
3. Learn to do some of it yourself - you could try Blogging, link building or article syndication yourself and save some money there.
4. Find a company that is reputable with proven results so your budget isn’t wasted on a company that won’t deliver.
5. Contact an SEO Firm sooner rather than later - especially if you are redesigning your site or making changes on your own. Some site owners dig themselves into a hole with sites that are not able to get indexed and ranked. The longer you sit in this hole, the more it may cost you to dig out.
6. If you really can’t afford any professional services, buy a (reputable) book and some basic consultation or a site review to get you started and handle your SEO yourself. It may not be perfect but with the right guidance you can make some progress on your own. Please note that this option doesn’t help if you are only fooling yourself - if you don’t really have the time or knowledge to get in and work with code, then you won’t get anything out of this option. Be honest with yourself when considering this option.

The most important thing you can do is take action and find out what you can afford and what you can do yourself. Don’t assume that nothing can be done. You’ll miss out on opportunities and rankings that could be yours.

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Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Since 1998 Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

The Importance of (KPIs) Key Performance Indicators for SEO

By admin in Jerry Bader's Blog

When it’s time to determine how effective an SEO, advertising or marketing campaign is, the need to establish KPIs (key performance indicators) as benchmarks to measure goal conversion, time lines and tactical objectives is necessary

Performance benchmarks exist for a very specific purpose, to measure conversion and marketing objectives, but KPIs also allow us to extend beyond one-dimensional thinking and truly develop long-term strategic and pivotal advantages.

Sometimes your website has all the right ingredients, but lacks proper execution. Increasing landing page conversion by 15% for example is one KPI. Improving lead generation, product inquiries or phone calls by 43% within a specific time-line using four new marketing methods.

Such examples of performance are based on gap analysis (from existing performance levels of where you are and where you want to be) however they provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of a campaign.

For example, if it is implied that you will increase traffic, increasing traffic alone is not a (KPI) key performance indicator. If the traffic is not converting into sales, then you need to look beyond the surface level and delve deeper into the root cause (the content and the offer) that produce the effects. Often it resides in usability, how obvious navigation is, how obvious is the conversion objective is, or if the message diffused from too many competing elements.

When looking to fine-tune performance, determining metrics such as time spent on a page, the keywords used to deliver the traffic, which related keywords are relevant and overlapping. Determining the existing bounce rate or engagement metric for the page and what calls to action exists on the landing page in question.

Managing those factors allow you to create a base-level KPI analysis to improve performance individually or across all of these metrics simultaneously. However, without analytics or performance tracking, you are just grasping straws when it comes to delivering or reproducing consistent or future sales volume.

The necessity to specifics is all part of the SMART model:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Result-oriented or Relevant
• Time-bound

Combine this with the KISS model (keeping it simple) and the who, what, where, when and how factor and you can essentially craft a series of objectives for each landing page in your site by assigning unique, yet attainable benchmarks.

The real value of KPIs are the ability to reproduce the effect, or know which affect your adjustments are having on traffic, conversion and visitor engagement. Without knowing where to look, or how to measure the outcome, you are destined to repeat past performance over an over again.

The only horrible thing about that is, what if that performance (such as an exceptionally high bounce rate) could have been avoided from a simple SEO intervention from installing analytics or testing another offer.

In closing, without key performance indicators, such as a 110% increase in search engine traffic or other distinct objectives, your SEO will not reach its full potential.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

10 Easy Search Engine Optimization Tips

By admin in SE Optimization

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page.

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop” occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

Typhon Vision IT Consulting is a full service computer consulting company. An all in one source for all your IT needs. Servicing the Toronto GTA and surrounding areas. Providing Search Engine Optimization, Traffic Generation, Data Recovery, Technical Support, Network Design and Maintenance and Web Design.

Search Engine Optimization Secrets Of A #1 Google Ranking

By Willie Crawford in SE Optimization

It doesn’t matter how great your product is, what a bargain your price is, or how beautiful your website is - Without traffic none of that matters.

So at its most basic, the biggest determinant of your web businesses success is “getting eyeballs looking at your webpages.”

When looking at where the traffic comes from, it begins with others linking (or pointing the way) to your site. Since most people automatically turn to the search engines when looking for something online, that naturally tells me that the most important links that you can easily get are probably from the search engines.

Since Google is currently the search engine getting the most use online, and therefore the one that generates the most traffic, that also means that you need to focus on getting a front page, or ideally a number 1 listing, at Google.

However, your search engine optimization efforts should involve structuring your site, and your other search engine magnets, so that it bring in BUYERS from Google.

At its most basic, and simplest, getting a number 1 ranking at Google that leads to an endless stream of sales boils down to three parts. They are:

1) Targeting The Correct Keywords

2) Optimizing A Page For Those Keywords

3) Getting Links From Sites That Google Loves

Let’s look at each of these.

First, you absolutely have to target the correct keyword. Your webpages and everything that you do needs to incorporate the keywords that your buying customers are actually typing into the search engines.

You don’t want to target the phrase digital camera, or printer cartridge. Instead you want to target a specific model of digital camera or printer cartridge, and you may even want to target people in a specific location looking for a specific model of printer cartridge.

That kind of targeting means that the people who find you are searching for something very specific, and when they find you by typing in that very specific search term, they click through and buy.

Next, you need to optimize your webpages for those keyword phrases. That generally means that you need the target keyword phrases sprinkled throughout your webpages. It also means that you want to use your target keyword phrases in your title and description “metatags.” You also want to include your keyword phrases in anchor text on your webpages (the blue underlined text in hyperlinks).

You basically want to include your keyword phrases in all of the parts of your webpages that tells the search engines what your webpage is about. This includes places such as italicized or bolded text, your menu items, and even alt image tags.

Finally, you need to get sites that Google thinks are important to link to you. Ideally, these sites include your keyword phrases in the anchor text when they link to you.

Many who study search engine optimization full-time are convinced that the external links pointing to your website are THE part that makes the biggest difference in most cases.

Having an authority site link to you is like having a respected authority in your community give you an endorsement. They are telling the search engines, and the rest of the world, that they recommend you. By using your keywords in the anchor text, authority sites are also telling Google (and other less important search engines) that that is what they consider your site to be about.

This factor is so powerful that I have personally often gotten a number 1 position on Google for my most important keywords by just tapping into one free website optimization tool… one authority site! In fact, I recently did an interview with David Preston, an expert at teaching offline businesses to tap into the web in ways that most of their competitors never even dreamed of. In the interview with David, we discussed in-depth, how I easily get free front-page listings at Google in a day, and how I often get #1 listing for my ideal keywords in just hours. You can get the MP3 audio of the interview that I did with David at: http://WebsiteSearchEngineOptimizationSecrets.com

I mention David and that interview because he taught me another CRITICAL part of effective search engine optimization. He taught

me how to focus my efforts on the buyers with lots of money to spend… customers who have already budgeted that money for what I have to offer.

So there you have my very simple three-part search engine optimization formula for getting a free number one ranking in Google in as little as a few hours. That fourth part, focusing on the buyers actively looking to spend money is a bonus

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Willie Crawford is an Internet marketer with over 12 years of experience at generating massive website traffic, and sales using viral marketing techniques. One of his favorite traffic generation tools is rebrandable PDF’s which he creates using the software at: http://ViralDocumentToolkits.com

Optimize Your Website and They Will Come

By Susan L Reid in SE Optimization

What’s the big deal about search engine optimization? Isn’t it enough that you’ve put up a website, purchased some Google AdWords, and sent out an email to everyone you know announcing your site? In short, no. There is an art and science to search engine optimization (SEO), and it is critical for web-based businesses to know, understand and utilize if they want to drive quality traffic to their website via the Internet.

Where do you begin, though? How can you possibly know whom to trust or what to do first with so much information out there on SEO? Do you buy links or not? Pay per click or go organic? And what about those SEO companies who are aggressively promising #1 rankings? When it comes to search engine ranking, there are a lot of rumors and myths about what will increase your rankings and what won’t.

Debunking Some Popular Search Engine Ranking Myths

- Pay per click (PPC) ads will either help or hurt organic rankings. (Organic simply means the process by which web users find websites having unpaid search engine listings.)

Debunked: PPC is categorized differently than organic listings. There is no effect, one way or the other, on ranking.

- Websites are banned if they ignore Google guidelines.

Debunked: While it’s a good idea to read Google Webmaster Guidelines or Google 101: How Google Crawls, Indexes and Serves the Web, you are not banned if you ignore their guidelines.

- Websites are banned if they buy links.

Debunked: Sites are not banned. The links just aren’t counted.

- Copy must be a certain number of words, use a specific keyword density, and contain bold or italicized keywords.

Debunked: It used to be thought that there was a magic number of words used or certain times a keyword or keyword phrase should be repeated. Not so. Same with bolding and italicizing. They don’t do anything for ranking.

- Duplicate content will get your website penalized.

Debunked: It will just get filtered out and not counted.

- Reciprocal links won’t count.

Debunked: Every link counts, to a certain extent.

- SEO companies can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work.

Debunked: Run if an SEO company tells you this.

According to SEO expert Jill Whalen, SEO isn’t magic and isn’t a crap-shoot. “SEO is about making your website the best it can be for your site visitors and the search engines.” Want to help the right kind of people find your website? Then you need to design your site so search engines can find, crawl and index your pages.

Seven Ways to Get Your Website Crawled

1. It’s better to have one main website with numerous domains pointing to the main domain, than to have mini-sites or multiple sites with similar content. Mini-sites and multiple sites with similar content do not increase search engine listings and are frequently viewed by search engines as SPAM.
2. If you do have several stand-alone websites, make sure each serves a different target audience and has unique content with different domain or sub-domain URLs.
3. Search engines need to be able to follow internal links. To make that happen, use tags, text links, image links, and CSS menus. Spiders have difficulty with JavaScript menus, pop-up windows, drop-down menus, and flash navigation.
4. Choose keyword phrases that are most relevant and specific to what your web page is about. Think from the perspective of someone searching for what you are offering on your site. Ask, as if you were they: What would I search for if I am looking for something on your page?
5. Validate your keyword phrases through either paid or free services, such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, or Google AdWords.
6. Check for keyword competitiveness. Take into consideration the size of your business. In this case, size does matter. If you are a major player with a major brand, you can play in a larger competitive pond than a smaller company just starting out. Know what size pond is right for you, and check for competitiveness by putting: allintitle: “keyword phrase” in your browser and check the number count.
7. Once you have your keyword phrases validated and checked for competitiveness, use them in anchor texts, clickable image alt tags, headlines, body text copy, title tags, and meta descriptions. Meta tags aren’t all that important for crawling.

SEO can be both intimidating and exhilarating. Intimidating because it seems as if just about everyone has an opinion on what it takes to get a high ranking in Google, so it’s hard to know what to believe. Exhilarating because, once you understand the method behind the madness of SEO, you see the art and science of it. Then it becomes fun and easy to come up with a strategic plan about where to place keyword phrases, how to write copy, and what size pond is best for your company to compete in. Optimize your website, and they will come.

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Business Coach & Consultant for entrepreneurial women starting up small businesses, Dr. Susan L. Reid is the Award-winning author of “Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success.” For ideas, tips, and support for your business journey, sign up here for our free e-Zine.

SEO Opens Doors

By Jeffrey Smith in SE Optimization

If you are a small business, SEO can open doors to competitive keywords, lucrative markets and competitive verticals. However, to take your place, you’ll need to chip away one page at a time building quality content and authority along the way until you reach the threshold.

Employing a solid content development strategy (persistently waged in tandem with link building over time) is the key to acquiring even the most competitive keywords.You have more control over your own rankings than you may think. In case you are pondering a new topic to develop, for new ideas on popular topics, you can use Google Trends (to hunt for keyword gold), see what is suggested as a related search, or see which keywords appear in the auto-suggest in search engines, use keyword research tool to cross-reference keywords that have high search volume. Once you establish your list of buzz words, tactfully weave them into your site content through using articles, blog posts or new pages.

The true competition for SEO is creating relevance within your own site instead of being concerned about fighting for search engine positioning with other businesses. Relevance and relevance score is the new bottom line.

The underlying purpose of Google’s search engine algorithm is to reward quality content. The pages imbued with trust and quality are the pages flush with hordes of relevant traffic from search engines. The logic behind the algorithm is simple, the happier we are, the more we consume, the more we consume the happier every business in the umbrella thrives from commerce.

Instead of looking at your site as a static online business card, transform it into an interactive brand statement instead. By using your site to make your brand statement or give back the web with great content, your site will serve as a resource for others. By establishing authority in your niche, you are employing one of the most fundamental search engine optimization strategies as a base (becoming a thought and market leader). Why react to trends when you can influence them? If you push beyond the reactions of others, you will find something unique. It is from that level you must function.

This tactic when combined with traditional search engine optimization techniques such as link building and social media is just like picking the low hanging fruit until the tree falls over as a result of effective on page and off page SEO.

Why rely on one page alone when you can create several relevant pages?

Each page with strong internal links and strong external links can rank competitively for multiple keywords. Just as the old saying goes, “don’t put your eggs in one basket”, the same applies for keywords and the number of pages you create to reinforce a theme.

Adding fresh content consistently to your site ensures that your pages (a) fend off competition and (b) appear as a the most relevant result as a consequence of topical relevance.

If you are looking for things you have control over, the rate and quality of the content you publish is the first and foremost step for building authority for your site and your business.

Three concepts to communicate here are:

1) Add New Content Using Semantic Synonyms for Main Keywords
2) Encourage Word Stemming through Building Anchor Text Links with Diversity
3) and Managing Your Keywords Bloom Rate to Expedite Authority

Semantic Synonyms - Writing on topic content and using overlapping keywords and key phrases to cement relevance for your site. Use site architecture and content to influence how your content is accessed from humans and spiders alike.

Word Stemming - Word stemming is the process of ranking for a series of semantically related phrases. This phenomenon occurs in tandem to the proper ratio of on page linking and occurrence of key terms augmented by external links from other pages.

The combination is, ranking for multiple phrases instead of just one. So if two or more of your optimized keywords appear in a search query, the likelihood of your page being returned as a relevant result is amplified through saturating the combinations of the keywords. More about word stemming and keyword modifiers (supporting keyword variations) here.

Keyword Bloom Rate - draws a parallel with managing the rate in which a keyword gains and loses popularity and rankings.

It is awareness of the rise and fall (of keywords) that provides insight, but more importantly, it is timely introduction of link building with specific anchor text and fresh content that can supplementing rankings indefinitely.

Knowing when and how to freshen up your site and with which key phrases is crucial to maintain rankings. A more in depth discussion is available from a post entitled tilling keywords from the past to plant future growth. Foresight, planning and strategic execution never worked so well together.

The gist is, it is better to build relevance over time through layering your content. By managing the bloom rate for your new content you essentially control how often certain segments of your site are augmented, for which terms and add additional link weight to your site (if you inter-link your pages with strategic keywords). Building links for your website from within while crafting compelling content and authority for your website is a superb foundation for a long-term link building campaign.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

The Cynical SEO Drama Queen

By Jennifer Horowitz in SE Optimization

It is time to look at those SEO questions from the folks who need help and guidance. Let’s take a read of some of the Dear SEO Drama Queen email, which floods her box every day.

Dear SEO Drama Queen: I want a number one ranking for my web site. The keywords are clothes, sneakers and hats. I read so much out there on how important it is to be on Google. Can you promise me a #1 ranking for my 3 keywords? Thanks, BA

Greetings BA: Of course I can guarantee #1 rankings on Google for those very generic keywords that compete against millions of other sites. AN SEO who couldn’t isn’t worth their wait in gold. It’s easy. First, I need you to purchase about 100,000 shares of Google stock. Once you are a major holder, we can then bribe Google to either place you on top or we will sell their stock to Yahoo. Let me know when you have made the purchase. Best, SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen: I contacted an SEO company and they stated their fees are $300 a month for 6 months. They stated they needed to access my site, make changes to code, write content, and help me decide on keyword phrases, build link shares and on and on. I think this is a rip-off as I have seen SEO for $25 a month and they do not need to work on my site or have me make changes; they just submit the site to 1000’s of engines. Should I go with the less expensive company? Thanks, ST

Greetings ST: Cheaper is always better. Why should actually do anything to your web site. Do not use your valuable time on making your site better when you can have someone do everything for $25 bucks. I mean, why should you suffer, it is only your business, so do not put in the effort if someone can do it cheap. Let’s face it, your $25 bucks pays for them to spend a minute of time placing your URL in an auto program and pressing a button. Sure, it’s 1000’s of engines no one sees, and sure, just because Yahoo, MSN and Google need you to manually place in a code before accepting, and sure, even though your site doesn’t even need to be submitted in most cases, why pay for an expert when you can go cheap and get the site submitted. Heck, save the $25 bucks, let the engines find you on their own and go to the movies instead. Best, SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen: I wanted to make fast money online. I joined a program that builds my site and even provides me with products to sell, submits my site and stated the money would be coming in. I selected mattresses, even though I know nothing about them, but they promised I could make $1000 a month with just a few sales. I paid their fee, went into the online builder and selected my site template, pressed some buttons and now have a site. But I cannot be found at all….even when I search by my domain name. HELP! ZK

Dear ZK: Oh my! You mean they lied to you? Shame on them. You take the time to select a product you know nothing about, pick a web template you believe looks good and expect the money to be rolling in. Heck, they even promised to submit the site to the engines. Sure, maybe the site is not designed to be search engine friendly. Sure, your site is held deep in their subdirectories with all the other ‘want to get rich quick’ clients; sure, you never need to do another thing to promote the site….and yet you still cannot be found. I am shocked, appalled even. But surely, they would not lie to you. Maybe you should buy more sites from them for other products you know nothing about and maybe one day, you will get found and make a sale. Best, SEO Drama Queen

Dear SEO Drama Queen: After much reading and searching, I found an SEO company that has a good standing in the SEO world. They were expensive, but promised to deliver. I paid the fees and the process began. But, I was expected to work on the site as well. I was expected to provide keyword rich content or actually pay them to write content for my site. I was expected to even make my site easier to read by engines, change navigation schemes and work on marketing lingo and something they called ’site stickiness’ Why am I paying them when I feel like I do all the work. This must be wrong and I am getting ripped off? I have seen other SEO companies that promise top rankings. They say I do not need to make any changes and they will add 100’s of pages to my site. What should I do? Worried, LM

Dear LM: Get your money back now. How dare this SEO Company expect you to actually work with them on making your site more SEO ready? I mean it is your site, you should have some say in it, and if you do not want to make changes that will help the SEO achieve their goals…well then do not. Go with that other SEO Company. Let them add 100’s of hidden pages to the site. That way, in 3-6 months when Google realizes what has been done, any rankings achieved will be dropped…but do not worry, you will have 3-6 months of great placements and make lots of money. Then you can remove those bad pages, send an apology letter to Google and repeat the process again. I am sure that will be just perfect. Do not follow that other SEO Company as they expect you to work with them in a team effort, and as we know, there is no ‘I” in team Best, SEO Drama Queen.

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Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for www.EcomBuffet.com Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more: http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

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