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By Jill Whalen in Featured

SEO2My husband and I were talking the other night about one of his pet peeves: When people start exercising and eating healthier, they usually measure their success by how much weight they’ve lost (or not) as shown to them by their trusty scale. It annoys him because, while losing weight is one sign that you’re doing things right, after a certain point, it can only tell you so much.

It reminded me of my own pet peeve: how people usually measure the success of their SEO work by checking how well their site ranks in the search engines. Yet, similar to weight loss being a poor main goal for your health and fitness regime, where your pages rank for specific keyword phrases is also a poor main goal.

Healthier Body – Healthier Website

Your principal goal when eating in moderation and exercising regularly should be to become healthier overall, and ultimately to live a longer and more satisfying life. And your chief goal with an SEO program should be to create a better overall website and make more money from it – which, incidentally, can also make for a more satisfying life! ;)

Writing articles nobody is really interested in about the history of your products is like eating lots of junk food. It’s empty calories. There’s no value in it to anyone (except perhaps the donut store) and it keeps you from eating the good stuff. Writing keyword-filled content just for the sake of search engines works the same way: It keeps you from adding true value to your website. While you can try to cover your big ole body in a floral mu’umu’u, let’s face it, you’re still out of shape underneath it all.

By David Jackson in Featured

SEO2The two most important elements that qualify companies to promote themselves as SEO experts are competence and professionalism. And the way you find out if a company is competent and professional, as well as legitimate, is to do your due diligence and check their credentials thoroughly, by exercising good old common sense and following these steps:


1. Verify Their Contact Information

If the company provides a street address, Google it to see if it’s a real address. If they provide a telephone number, call the number to see if it’s answered by the company or an answering service. If they don’t provide a telephone number, walk away. SEO is serious business. You need to have the ability to talk to whomever is going to be handling your account. You need to be able to ask questions, and you have a right to expect your questions to be answered in a professional manner.

2. Talk to Previous Customers

If the SEO company publishes testimonials on their website, contact a few of their customers and get their feedback. If the company can’t provide testimonials, walk away, or if the testimonials don’t have contact information, they’re probably bogus. Walk away.


3. Visit Reputable SEO Forums

Visit reputable SEO forums like Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Forum to find out what forum members have to say about the company. If an SEO company has a bad reputation, it will race across the Internet at warp speed. Conversely, if a company has a good reputation, you will find that out also.

By Nicole Beckett in Featured

spn_exclusiveDon’t let the $2 offers fool you – buying SEO content is a big deal, and it’s not something you can cut corners with. After all, on the world wide web, your content is the only way that people can find out more about you. Whether you want to build up your reputation, get people to sign up for your email list, or sell your product, you’re going to need SEO content to do it.

And it has to be good.

Thanks to the Panda updates, Google is taking a harder stance on content now than it ever has before. But even setting Google aside, people aren’t going to take you seriously if you can’t even string a coherent sentence together. After all, people look for all kinds of reasons to avoid spending their hard-earned money. Mix up “to” and “too”, and you’ve just given them the excuse they need NOT to buy from you.

Because SEO content is so important to succeeding out on the world wide web, you may be looking to outsource your writing. Maybe you’re not a very good writer. Maybe you just don’t like to write very much. Maybe you have a million other things to do, and you don’t have time to stare at a blank Word document.

Whatever the reason, paying a professional to handle your SEO content writing duties can be a very good thing for your business. It can also be a very bad thing.

Hire the wrong content writing service, and you’re stuck with content that doesn’t get results. Or worse, content that makes you and your business look bad.

By Scott Buresh in Featured

SEOptimizationYes, you read the title right. My company recently performed extensive search engine optimization on a client website, and the results were staggering. Within a month, organic search traffic had dropped by over 60%. Inbound leads from organic search had dropped by over 50%. And the client was absolutely thrilled with the results.

So when is less organic search traffic better? And when are fewer leads from organic traffic better?

Less traffic from organic search traffic can be better when the site attracts the wrong kind of traffic, and fewer leads can be better when the site attracts the wrong kind of leads.

To give you some background, this particular client offered a highly-specialized service to B2B companies. The reputation of the company and the quality of the service commanded a high dollar figure per engagement. They were THE major player in an industry that they had practically invented. However, their prior search engine optimization company did not factor in any of these very important considerations while optimizing the website.

The firm in question was clearly from the “traffic-at-any-cost” school of search engine optimization, and they never engaged the client with the type of questions that you would expect from a real business partner, including the most basic questions, such as “Who is your target market?” They were not a marketing partner – they were a traffic delivery mechanism. They were not actively involved in the client’s success, because to them, increased organic search traffic was the sole measure of success.

By Alesya Krush in Featured

SEO2I bet all SEO’s have faced this problem at least once – a client looking up their target keywords on the Internet and seeing different website rankings than the ones stated in the rankings report. How do you explain to clients that you are not trying to cheat them?

Users may get different search results for one and the same search term because of their:

1. Web History

Personalized search results are no secret to anyone. We know that nowadays search engines (particularly Google and Bing) custom-tailor your search results based on the queries you make, websites you visit and search results you click. What’s interesting is that your results get biased by default, unless you specifically opt out.

Search engines collect users’ browsing history in 2 major ways:

(1) by tracking signed-in users’ activities and
(2) by planting cookies into signed-out users’ browsers.

By Jill Whalen in Featured

SEO2When I teach my SEO classes, I begin by telling the students all the things that SEO isn’t. I’ve always felt that it was important because they’re often expecting to hear some secret formula for SEO success. And why wouldn’t they, with all the myths and outright wrong/bad information that constantly swirls through the SEOsphere? When I finish telling them that everything they thought was SEO really isn’t, they stare at me with their mouths hanging open. So I tell them what SEO actually is:

Making your website the best it can be for the search engines and your site visitors.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to alter their blank stares. After all, it’s an incredibly open-ended definition of SEO. Still, it’s the only one that truly encompasses what good SEO is all about, as well as why you need to do it. While my method of SEO has always been based on that principle, more people are coming around to it in the wake of Google’s Panda Algorithm.

Pre-Panda, many people built thriving businesses using the following basic SEO process:

* Buy a keyword-rich domain name that encompasses the products you want to sell.
* Build a templated website around it.
* Link internally to the product pages with descriptive anchor text.
* Use those same keyword phrases in the Title and H tags.
* Submit the website URL to lots of directories.
* Drop links to the website in other people’s blogs and forums.

By Steve Shaw in Featured

linksIf you’re wondering if you’re submitting articles in a way that optimizes your potential for links, I’ve got a short checklist for you:

1 - Have you done research for your keywords?

This step is crucial in your article marketing strategy, and it’s really not that hard. You can use Google’s free keyword tool to research some phrases associated with your niche. From the keyword tool, you can gather how many people are searching for this particular phrase (that’s the demand).

Then, take the phrase and do a Google search on it, putting the phrase in quotes. The number of results is the supply–that’s how many web pages are competing for that particular phrase.

You’re looking for phrases that have high demand and relatively low supply. Some of the more popular phrases associated with your niche may already have high competition–just know that it may take longer to make headway with those words.

2 - Have you developed a list of main keywords that you’d like your website to rank highly for, and are you hyperlinking those phrases in your resource box?

When writing your articles, you should be working from two different lists of keywords. The main keyphrases are shorter–usually 2-3 words long. They have more competition, but the payoff for ranking highly for them is greater.

These are the words that you would like your website to rank high for. In your article submissions, target these words in your resource box, as opposed to the article.

3 - Also, have you put together a list of longer keyword phrases (long-tail keywords) that you focus on in your articles and titles?

The long-tail key phrases are usually 3-8 words long. They have less competition, but also less reward. Still, they can be attractive because with relatively little effort you can get your article to rank for that term.

It’s the article that you want to rank for the long-tail term, whereas it’s your website that you want to rank for the main keywords.

4 - Does your resource box (author bio) hyperlink your main keyword phrases?

The resource box links that use key phrases as anchor text are very powerful–these are the phrases that you want your website to rank highly for. To do this properly, be sure that you alternate the keywords you use (hyperlinking the same words each time can have some negative SEO consequences).

For the second link in your resource box, you can link your written out URL. Having this spelled out website address helps readers to remember where your site is located (maybe they’ll think about visiting it when they no longer have your article in front of them).

5 - Do you submit articles regularly, month in and month out?

“The secret to success is constancy of purpose.” That’s true about just about everything in life, and it’s true of article marketing too. A key component to your article marketing success is just submitting articles on a regular basis.

It can take a few months for the first impact to show up in the search engines–it takes Google several months to calculate your links and the various other factors that go into determining where your website will show up in the rankings. Just be steady in your article submissions, and you’ll see better results.

Submitting articles is very user friendly–you don’t need to be an SEO expert or any sort of technical wizard to do this. It is a big help, however, to take a little preparation and have a strategy that maximizes your potential for backlinks and the quality of the links. Even if you’re a beginner, you can do these 5 steps listed here and make a big difference in your success.

Steve Shaw is a content syndication specialist. Do you own a blog? Need content? Join thousands of other blogs and get free high-quality, niche-focused, human-reviewed content from quality authors sent on auto-pilot – and it’s all 100% free! Go to http://www.autoblogit.com for more information.

By Nick Stamoulis in Featured

spn_exclusiveBy now, most site owners realize the importance and value of SEO in the development and growth of their site. A properly optimized site is going to rank better in the search engines, see more targeted traffic being directed over, have a higher conversion rate and much more. However, SEO is incredibly long term and nothing can rush time. It takes time for a site to build a good trust factor with the search engines and until that happens, most of your off-site SEO efforts are going to produce minimal results.

If you recently launched your site and are already looking into SEO, here are 5 things you should focus your time and energy on.

Learn the Basics of SEO for Yourself

There is no shortage of blogs, whitepapers, articles, reports, e-books, webinars, videos and more that can teach you the basics of SEO. It is imperative that you as the site owner arm yourself with as much SEO knowledge as possible during the first year of your site’s life. The more you know about SEO, the less likely you are to be conned by a black hat SEO company and the less likely you are to make black hat SEO decisions by accident. A good place to start is with the Bing and Google Webmaster Guidelines. Consider those two sources as your SEO line in the sand; what they say goes. Look for other reputable blogs and sites that can help you learn more about SEO and how others in your industry are using it to their advantage.

By taking the time to teach yourself the basics of SEO (you could take an SEO course or spend time with a consultant as well), you’ll be better prepared to take your SEO to the next level after your site has aged a little and earned the trust of the search engines.

By Lee Dobbins in Featured

SEO2Anchor text is perhaps one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization but it is also one of the least talked about.

This one element of SEO is important to understand because it can help your page get ranked for a target keyword and also help you evaluate your competition more precisely.

The latter is critical and, in fact, if you don’t take anchor text backlinks into proper consideration when looking at the competition for a keyword you could be missing out on some hidden gems that are easy to rank for.

What Is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the hyperlinked text you see on a webpage. It is the visible words that you can click to take you to another page. Anchor text html code looks like this:

<xmp><a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>Your Anchor Text</a></xmp>

On most websites, you typically see this as blue text that is underlined and when you click on it with your mouse, you are taken to the corresponding url.

By Jason Monroe in Featured

spn_exclusiveNot too long ago, a visitor to my blog posted the question: “What’s more effective, off-page or on-page optimization?” He had just finished optimizing his webpage using SEOPressor, and was understandably annoyed that the expected increase in traffic had failed to appear.

Unfortunately, the most definitive answer I have to his question is – it depends.

If you want to increase your site traffic by ranking well for lots of less competitive, long-tailed keywords, then on-page optimization is your best bet. If you are choosing to improve your ranking in the Google search results for shorter, more competitive keywords, then you should optimize off-page.

If you simply want a healthy and profitable website, then you need to engage in both kinds of optimization.

Google Ranks Pages Based on Content, not Sales Pitches.

Google uses a mathematical formula to rank your webpage based on its relevance to a particular user. That formula uses information found both off your page and on it, which explains why both on-page and off-page optimization are important.

The off-page information that Google looks for is the number of people or reputable sites that have found your web page useful and have linked back to it. The on-page information they look for consists of navigation aids like well-placed keywords and article descriptions, as well as quality content.

Both kinds of information are important, and therefore both on-page and off-page optimization are important, but they are not equally important. It’s been said that on-page optimization only influences about 20% of your Google search page ranking, while the other 80% of that ranking is influenced by off-page optimization.

That piece of information should tell you where the bulk of your efforts should be applied.

Off-Page Optimizing: Choose Your Friends Carefully

Long before the folks at Google publicly confirmed this, I and a few other internet marketers were already aware of it; Google takes a lot of stock in other people’s opinions. Those other people, by the way are the webmasters, bloggers and researchers who choose to link to your site.

Google keeps track of who links to you and determines the quality of your site based on the quality of those backlinks. For instance, if your website sells high-end cookware and you have backlinks from sites like BetterHomesandGardens.com or CooksIllustrated.com, than you’ll be ranked fairly well based on those sites.

However, if that same site has a few backlinks to BubbaJakesRoadkillCuisine.com or VegansforMao.au, you may find your site being punished because of the association with lower quality websites. Guilt by association isn’t necessarily fair, but you need to keep in mind that this is how the internet works.

Consequently, whether your website sells one of a kind children’s clothing, offers free online car insurance quotes or acts as a resource for geocaching in Kentucky, it’s important to pay attention to off-page optimization. This will ensure that you’re keeping good company, and enable your site to rank well for the highly competitive keywords.

On-Page Optimization: The Principal of Low-Lying Fruit

Although off-page optimization will influence the lion’s share of your Google ranking, you can’t afford to ignore your on-page optimizing, either. When deciding where to place your page in terms of a search for a particular keyword or keyword phrase, Google will look in three areas on your webpage:

- The title
- The first or second paragraph
- The meta description

The title of your article should contain your primary keyword or keyword phrase. This should be a natural result of matching the keyword phrase to the content of your article. If you’ve targeted a keyword phrase which doesn’t seem to fit in your title, perhaps you should re-think your approach to the topic.

That keyword or keyword phrase should also be in your first or second paragraph. One of these paragraphs should also contain a concise but detailed description of the article.

This is simply a more stringent standard than the one set by your fourth grade teacher when he or she taught you to write an introductory paragraph for a term paper.

The meta description gives you a second, more targeted area in which to provide a detailed article description to your potential readers. Because this description will often appear as a blurb under your site name on the Google search results page, it will not only affect where Google places you, but it will directly affect the amount of traffic on your site.

While directing more traffic to your site will not immediately result in stratospheric Google rankings, it will bring other, more direct benefits. Direct site traffic is referred to as low hanging fruit, because it’s easy to gather and, while it represents only a small portion of the whole crop, it is certainly enough to live on.

One final way to bring in this fruit is remarkably simple and therefore is often overlooked; simply provide your readers with quality content. If you purposely write informative, understandable information which is meant to be read by humans and not just analyzed by a search engine, your webpage will naturally contain many long-tailed keywords which are less competitive and easier to rank well for.

Tying Up The Package

A well-written webpage which has been properly optimized on-page may not rank particularly well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, but it will rank better for the longer tailed, less competitive keyword phrases.

If you want to – and you should want to – help your page rank well for the shorter, more competitive keywords, your off-page optimization will be far more effective for that task.

Whether your site helps folks compare auto insurance quotes or provides them with a comprehensive index of every film Kevin Bacon has been in, the same rules will apply for improving your search engine rankings. Both on-page and off-page optimization is necessary to keep your webpage visible and visitor-friendly.

That’s one man’s opinion, anyway. I’d be interested in hearing yours. Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Jason Monroe is one of the young guns in affiliate marketing loving life in his mid-twenties with all the luxuries that come from being single. But even this young gun knows how to get serious when it comes to affiliate marketing, a career that was born from his innate tendency to be a research hound.

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