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So, you are the marketing manager of your firm, and you’ve finally decided to pull the trigger and hire the search engine optimization company that you’ve been talking to for months.  The budget has been cleared, the SEO firm is ready to start, and it should be just a matter of time before you start seeing a huge uptick in business.  Right?

Not so fast.

An experienced search engine optimization company will tell you that an ill-planned campaign can be a non-starter from day one.  This usually happens when there is no clear understanding of what will be required of the client to make the project run smoothly.

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Tags: search engine optimization, seo, Website Promotion

Building backlinks is an essential, yet tedious
job for most webmasters. Here are a few tools
and tips to make that job just a little bit easier…

I am a member of many online forums. Most of these
forums have to do with online marketing and site
promotion. Recently, I came across a post on Ken
Evoy’s SBI forum that truly caught my attention.

It basically described how to use Google Alerts
to build your backlinks. Now for those not familiar
with Google Alerts a little explanation is probably
needed.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free program run by Google
that allows you to keep track of any topic on
the web. You select your “keywords” or “urls”
and Google will alert you via email whenever
links/content containing your selected topics
appear anywhere on the web.

It is an excellent way to keep informed about
your own domain or name. It is also perfect for
keeping up-to-date on the latest information in
your market niche or niches. It’s also a great
way to find out what other people are saying
about you or your site.

For example: if you have a site on “antique cars”
then you would create a Google Alert for those
keywords. Google will alert you by email whenever
a new link/content related to those keywords
appears on the web.

This is a great way to stay informed in your niche,
but it is also a valuable source of potential
linking partners. Many of those links are blogs
that will allow comments with a link back to your
site.

Google Alerts will probably send you 10-20 links
each day, depending on the popularity of your
chosen keywords. Just go to these blogs/links
and see if you can leave a comment with some
valuable additional information on what’s been
discussed.

Don’t Spam

Please Note: Don’t spam; there are intelligent
people behind most of these blogs, and they will
recognize keyword spam when they see it. Your
main goal should be getting targeted traffic back
to your site and any link PR should be secondary.
Always put the reader or viewer first, especially
if it’s on someone else’s site. Don’t talk about
your site or your marketing - just join the conversation
and add your comments/opinions/suggestions…

Enhance their site and they will reward you with
traffic and a link. But you still have to keep
your own interests in the equation! You have to
make sure you get your targeted keywords in the
anchor text.

Keyword Market

First, if you’ve done your homework, your main
keywords should already be in your domain name
or url. Another way is to add your “keywords” +
“guide” to your sig or signature. Such as:
Name, Your Antique Cars Guide. If you’re an
expert in your particular niche, many webmasters
will kindly welcome your comments and links.

Since your main goal is the traffic, many
webmasters don’t worry if there is a “no follow”
attribute attached to the link. But if you are
concerned about this - one way is to look at
the source code to see if it has the “no follow”
tag. I usually copy the whole source code of
the page to my text editor and then do a simple
“no follow” search.

No Follow

There is also a great little free comment tool
called “Comment Kahuna” co-created by Jason
Potash which will search blogs and tell you if
they have the “no-follow” attribute or not, it
will also give you the PageRank of each blog post.
If you’re going to use blogs as a source of
your backlinks, I suggest you try Comment
Kahuna - it will make the task much easier
and it’s free.

Actually, while the “no-follow” issue may be
a concern for some webmasters, the savvy ones
will realize these are links/sites Google is
actively indexing and spidering, otherwise you
wouldn’t get the alert in the first place. You
must get your links into this whole mix of related,
relevant sites to help raise your own rankings.
Also remember the other search engines may not
even consider the “no-follow” tag.

Trackbacks

Likewise, creating trackbacks are another way
of linking relevant content. Keep in mind, a
trackback is simply an acknowledgement via a
ping signal that is sent from Site A (originator)
to Site B (receptor). Then the receptor often
places a link back to Site A showing its worthiness.

Again, I am mainly concerned with the quality
of the blog or link, rather than the linking
structure. I want the targeted traffic, and it
doesn’t really matter whether the link has
“no follow” because interested visitors only
see a link they can click for other helpful
information.

Other Linking Options

Since we are on the topic of link building,
another useful way to build backlinks is to
use Google Search or Google Blog search. Now
if you’re looking for niche-related blogs just
type in:

“(Keywords)” “powered by (blog scripts)”

For example, if you’re looking for some
“antique cars” related links on WordPress
blog, you would search for:

“antique cars” “powered by wordpress”

And Google would give you a whole list of sites
on antique cars.

Now if you want to find the links that will
allow comments, just repeat the Google search
with:

“antique cars” “powered by wordpress” “leave a comment”
-”no comments”

Remember the “-” means posts that have no
comments will not be displayed.

If you’re concerned with PageRank, Number of Backlinks,
Alexa Ranking… of particular posts you can download
and install the SEOQuake plugin. This handy SEO plugin
can be attached to your browser and will give you helpful
SEO information on the link or links you’re viewing.

Please Note: If you’re using SEOQuake in FireFox you have
the option in Preferences to tick a Line-through “nofollow”
and “noindex” links. Really handy tool to find those “nofollow”
links…

Used in conjunction with Google, it can sort thru all
these blog posts and give you the ones with the highest
PR? Highest traffic? Highest number of backlinks? The
more knowledge you have, the easier and more effective
your link building will become.

Just remember, finding quality backlinks is probably
the most tedious job for most webmasters. It takes
time and it takes patience. By using Google Alerts
you can have relevant keyword related links emailed
to you each day. Use this information to help build
your backlinks in relevant related niches. Do this
consistently over a period of time and your site will
get noticed and ranked higher.

Tags: , backlinks, building links, comment kahuna, google alerts, link building, seo, seoquake

With SEO it’s all about the cache. Crawl frequency determines how changes impact your site. Without an updated cache, there are no significant changes or rankings to report to search engines.

Do you see why getting the attention of spiders is important? They are the gatekeepers between your content and the world. RSS is one method to toggle spidering, social bookmarking is another, but the fastest way to increase your cache rate for content is to (1) increase posting through using consistent time periods to introduce new posts or pages and (2) build inbound links to internal pages to create spike in network activity necessary to attract the spiders (otherwise known as a ping). Pings from your site are a digital invitation to search engines update changes.

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Tags: cache, crawl frequency, seo

There are many companies on the Internet, who are promising that if you give them lots of money, they will guarantee you top rankings in the search engines. Buyer Beware!!!

Let Me Cut To The Chase

We all want to be on page one of Google’s search engine results (SERPs). After all, the higher our websites rank in Google, the more money we will make. Every single one of us who have built commercial websites are looking to make money and perhaps even to get rich doing whatever it is we do at our websites.

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Tags: se positining, search engine rankings, seo

Were you aware that search engine spiders love fresh content and the more frequently you update your content the more frequently spiders traverse your site?

The advantage of adding fresh content frequently directly impacts your topical site synergy. By creating islands of topical (related) information on a subject provides each page with an opportunity to pull its own weight and rank on its own constitution as a contributing factor to your traffic and exposure.

Without updating your content, or having aged content on your site that could benefit from a content and link audit you are implying to search engines that proper on page factors are not a top priority.

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Tags: SE Positioning, search engine spiders, seo, seo spiders

Every website owner strives to build a steady flow of traffic to their website and there are many various methods available, some more successful than others. But there are some that will not result in your quest for targeted website traffic. Picking a proven strategy will make a difference and you will avoid costly mistakes in time and money.

Listed below are 4 website strategies that you should always avoid is you want to build a steady flow of targeted traffic that could subscribe not just to your list but emerge as a paying customer.

1. Buying Traffic. This is where a website owner pays for links to their website. The trouble is these links could be placed on another website that does not compliment the product or service offered. The end result will be visitors to your website (it will generate some traffic) but the quality of that traffic will be poor. Poor quality website traffic is unlikely to subscribe to your list or buy your product or service. Spending more on links may just be wasting money as the concept is rather flawed in the first place.

2. Traffic Exchanges. These are websites that ask you to sign up and start surfing where you agree to look at other websites and get rewarded for doing so in the form of visits to your own website. Just remember, it will take you an enormous amount of time looking at other websites to build you reward points. This encourages surfing just for the sake of building points. Do you want visitors to your website coming for the sole reason to build their points? This is not the quality traffic that you are looking for. Some traffic exchanges cost money to buy into a higher membership level promising better quality traffic. You are unlikely to see an acceptable return on your investment using this method.

3. Banner Ads. You will have probably come across websites with flashing ads and graphics and you have probably now realised that they are now fewer in number. They have probably had their day. You placed banners or graphics that were clickable on a high traffic website and they took the viewer back to your website. Too often the banners or graphics were not related to the product and were used too often on the same website. It not just confused the viewer but could annoy them as well.

4. Safe Lists. These are lists that you sign up to and agree to receive emails from other website owners. In effect it cut out spam. You have to pay for the service and in return are promised that you will receive a torrent of targeted traffic to your website. Often, the torrent turns out to be a trickle and those that do pay your website a visit are mostly likely not who you are trying to target. This can be costly for you and should be avoided.

For every one poor website traffic strategy there are lots of genuine ones that are proven to work, don’t cost you anything and are easy to implement. Website traffic strategies andsearch engine optimisation go together as the higher up the search engines your website is the more traffic it is likely to generate. If website owners are paying big money to use Google’s Adsense, then this proves that a high search engine placing will bring traffic to your website. But there are other methods available that are free to gain high search engine placings that anyone can use.

By using the proven methods for website traffic generation a website owner will always have a better chance of targeted website traffic flowing to their website rather than use these outlined methods that will cost you time and money but result in very little if any traffic, and mostly unlikely any targeted website traffic that a website based business requires to thrive.

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Michael Tasker started an online information product business last year with the aim of making some extra money. His first ebook has just been published I’m No.1 In Google! where every detail is explained in easy non tech language how his website made it to no.1 in the search engines. Just follow these steps for your website’s traffic generating success. http://www.goodbyemoneyworries.com/google

Tags: seo, Website Promotion

Social Media, Social Networking, Leveraging Web 2.0 - it’s known by many names and it’s all the rage!

Let me start by saying I am a fan of social media, I personally choose to participate in social media. However when you read about social media, you often only hear one side of things - the message is clear - Participate or miss out! And while I do believe that is true, I think it’s not always that simple.

There is so much to read, so many different opinions. It can be overwhelming. First you have to decide which sites to participate in and then you have to create your account and learn how to participate. It’s often confusing.

I am not saying this is an excuse not to participate. In fact I am writing this article to provide some helpful tips so you can participate. .

I think attention to the details is really important, so I want to cover all the small items that people aren’t really talking much about.

Facebook: I started on Facebook as a way to connect with old friends. I had all kinds of games and the crazy apps (applications) that Facebook offers. When I started networking for business I realized that all my business connections were going to have access to all of this personal information - photos, wall posts, they’d know which Sex and the City character I was most like (if you’ve spent any time on Facebook you’ve likely seen this app on people’s profile).

I understand that using social media to open up and connect with people is one of the benefits. Allowing prospective clients to get to know you helps build trust and relationships.

But do I really want people to see every little silly app I mess around with? Do I want them to see the crazy pics from high school that have been posted?

Ultimately I decided to clean off some of the silliness that wasn’t really important to me and I left the rest. I figured if I’m opening the door and letting people peek in, there is no point in censoring anything. So I jumped in and started adding “Friends” that were business connections.

Of course if you are only using Facebook for business, then you don’t have to think about these issues. If you do plan to use it for both - just spend a few minutes thinking about what you do and don’t want to share.

Twitter: Make sure you think about what name is best for you. I chose EcomBuffet (my company name) but have now realized that people are searching for me by my full name and not finding me. I would have been better off choosing my name. Not a major issue, but something to consider if you haven’t picked your name on Twitter yet.

There are varying opinions about how often you can Twitter (or tweet) and not annoy people. Some people say once per hour, others say once a day. There is no hard rule about this. You do want to consider it carefully though. If you tweet too often, people may get annoyed and stop following you all together, or just remove their cell phone updates. That means when you have important updates, people aren’t going to get them at all or as quickly as they could have. You want to find a balance. For me, I have been tweeting about once a day. On some days when I have more to share, I may tweet a few times day. Every time you tweet, ask yourself if it is really information people will want to know. If you are sure every tweet is useful and serves a purpose then you can tweet a little more often. If it’s fluff and all self-promotional, then you should probably do it less (or not all some may say).

Social bookmarking buttons: There are so many buttons you can add to your articles for people to bookmark or vote for your content. Digg, StumbleUpon, RSS Feeds, TwitThis etc - My concern is that we are adding so many different options and people become so accustomed to seeing them that they ignore them. And with so many buttons people may get confused and just ignore them. I don’t know what the solution is for this yet. I previously wasn’t using any of these buttons. I realize I am missing out because of that, so I am now going to selectively use them. I don’t have a perfect plan in mind, I am just going to play with using some of the more popular ones and see what happens.

MySpace versus Facebook: There is a lot of confusion about the MySpace versus Facebook issue. The general consensus is that MySpace has been trashed and isn’t worth the time. That isn’t entirely true. There are still people making money off MySpace. The key to remember is that MySpace is a younger crowd with a lower income and Facebook has a higher income and is older. The best thing you can do is study both - see what others in your industry are doing, see how you see yourself fitting in and most importantly, come up with a plan. So many people just jump in and set up a profile and then don’t know what to do next. Just being there doesn’t mean the money is going to pour in. You need to engage people, you need to come up with something that people will want to see, hear or read.

Is it too late to join now? The answer is no! Studies show that most of the social media sites are growing in popularity and traffic and participation is increasing month over month. Just remember, the rules change as these sites evolve, so be sure you are current on what is and isn’t acceptable participation.

Check it out; see how you think you can fit into the space. But remember its not all about how you will benefit. If you don’t have something to offer (information, resources, insights, news etc) then people aren’t going to be interested.

How does all of this really help me make money? Consumers are much more educated and demand much more than they used to. We are all hit with so many sales messages daily; we start to tune them out. What used to work doesn’t work (or at least not as well). In order for your business to succeed and grow, you need to adapt.

People are looking for more information and companies they can trust. Selling has become more about creating trust and building relationships.

Social media helps you connect and establish trust. Any one social media activity may not lead directly to a sale in any given moment, but it helps you establish a presence online; and in your prospects mind. If you get yourself out there and share information, you will increase your following and have a base of people that trust you that you can market to.

That covers it for now. Keep the questions coming in!

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Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for 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

Tags: facebook, seo, social media, Web 2.0

Creating a website is a fairly simple or very complex exercise depending on your needs. The best way to start is always go simple. Create a standard design that you will use to run throughout the website. The reason for creating a stock standard look and feel is so that the visitor very quickly gets used to navigation on your website and is able to find exactly what it is they are looking for. With a standard design it is also a lot easier to help drive home the branding of your service or product.

CSS, that’s Cascading Style Sheets, is a great way to keep a constant look and feel of a website consistent. Even better than including style to each page you can create individual files and simply include them in your pages. While the benefits are too many to remember at the moment, I see the greatest benefit of using CSS being the fact that you can make a single change to a single file and the changes will be global. You update one page and all your pages are updated in a single move.

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Tags: seo, website design

Google is all about linking. And if you want to snatch a top spot in Google’s search results you need to link like a pro.

But don’t worry. Linking is a whole lot easier today than it was a few years ago. Experience has taught us a lot and with the information in this article you won’t need to worry about endless trial and error. We have a repeatable process that anyone can do, as easy as 1, 2, 3.

That said; let’s take a look at the linking strategies that Google will give you the most credit for…

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Tags: Linking Strategies, links, reciprocal linking, seo

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

Tags: SE Optimization, seo