Want More Traffic And More Incoming Links…

Posted on 29. Sep, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in Blogging, Search Engine Optimization

Try blogging! Over the past few weeks I have watched a lot of SEO videos and read a lot about using blogging as an search engine optimization tool. This may be old news for some of you, but for most of you, especially beginners, this is going to be very new and enlightening.

In my opinion, blogs serve three purposes.

1- To voice your opinions and ideas about the current industry that you are blogging about. In our case it is about SEO and internet marketing principles and strategies that we have developed, tested, and proven to work.

2- To increase the amount of traffic coming to your website. You see, the search engines love blogs! I would say probably even more so than normal HTML websites. Blogs, whether they are run by Word Press, Blogger, or any other blogging software make it easy for people like you and me to add new and fresh content to our sites without having to hard code anything. I’ll tell you what, Google loves websites or blogs that have new content and they come back to your site frequently to see what’s new. Because blogs are so easy to post to, you can save time and add new content all of the time.

As the search engines see new content and new internal links they will begin to rank your posts in their results. Blogs can generally get ranked pretty high with relatively little work in niche markets and with long tail keywords that you might not be focused on targeting at the moment. If you are using Word Press as your blogging software, you can use plug-ins like the Related Posts plug-in to supercharge your internal linking structure and get ranked even faster and get even more traffic.

3- For SEO value. It is no secret to anyone marketing on the internet that incoming links fuel search engine optimization and make or break your organic search rankings. It is vital that when adding new content, like blog posts, to link to other blog posts within your blog or related pages on your website. Yeah, it’s great to have a sweet internal linking structure down in your footer or side bar, but it has been proven that links within the body of your text have more value than those in other areas of your website.

Links are not the only reason why blogging helps your SEO efforts. It has also been proven that sites with over 100 pages do better in the search engines. It all goes back to the idea that you need to add new content to your website or blog regularly. The experts in the SEO industry suggest that you are adding content to your website every single day. This is why blogging is so great for your SEO efforts.

If you don’t have a company or site blog, you need to get one. Word Press blogging software is free and relatively easy to set up on your domain. If you don’t have the ability to set up a blog attached to your website, get a free blogger account. Anything is better than nothing! Take action today and work hard to add content every day! It will pay off.

4 Ways to Get Links Today

Posted on 28. Jul, 2008 by Rachel Perry in Search Engine Optimization

Links are key to a good SEO campaign. It can be difficult to know where to start though because there are so many different avenues to explore. Linking increases the power and influence of your site faster then any other tactic in SEO, so its importance is undescribable. Here are some quick ways to immediately start your linking campaign. These tactics aren’t an all inclusive list and they are only the beginning of your strategy but they will help.

Create A Squidoo Lens- With Squidoo you are creating an outside site that is sending your site an incoming link. Therefore the more time you take to create a lens that has quality and good volume content the more power your Squidoo lens will carry, meaning the more power your incoming link will have. Now you can take 15 mins and whip up a lens with a few paragraphs containing a link or two to your site. However that incoming link won’t carry as much power as if you created a lens that actually gets traffic. Don’t go overboard and spend more than an hour, but take the extra time to create a quality, topically relevant lens which in turn creates you a quality link.

Submit to the D-List- The D-List is a list of blogs that have Do-Follow link value in their comments, meaning when you comment your name can become a link to your site. Courtney Tuttle offers a list of do-follow blogs, there is a list of links to these blogs there so it is easy to click down the list and make comments. This is a valuable resource but must be used with caution, don’t spam through comments. Go in, genuinely read their posts. Then use the keyword you are trying to rank for as your name and put your sites URL in the website box. Make a comment that adds to the post. This will not only ensure that your link is left in their comment section (instead of removed as spam) but it will also build a positive reputation around your keyword link.

Write an Article- With an article, you are writing the content that will go on another site, meaning it will be relevant content that will point back to your site. Write an article on one of the keywords you are trying to rank for. Make it completely relevant and interesting and then link one or two of those keywords to pages on your site. Then submit the article to a variety of article directories.

Submit to Unspun- Unspun is a site where users can create their own ‘Top 10’ lists and then vote on which item in the list is #1. The lists vary from topics like the” Best Skin Care Products” to “Hardest Disability to Overcome” so you are more than likely to find a list that fits your topic. The 2 coolest parts about unSpun are one; if you don’t find a list that fits your topic then you can create one. And two, you can add your link under the item on the list that fits your topic. On the actual list page the link is no follow but if you click on the item in the list it will take you to a page where your link has followed value. It can take some time for this page to be seen by Google but every link counts so it is worth the 5-10 mins it takes to add your URL.

Link building isn’t impossible, it can just be difficult to know where to start or where to try next. These 4 ideas are just starting blocks but they can help get your site ranked, indexed and become more appealing for future link trades.

Title Tags – Are Yours Effective or Defective?

Posted on 08. May, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in Search Engine Optimization

Title tags are one of the most important on site optimization factors that will help a web pages ranking in the SERP’s. It doesn’t take long to optimize a title tag and the long term results of doing so can be hugely beneficial. So put on your moon boots—we’re going exploring! Keyword Research The first place to start is with your keyword research. I like to “clusterize” my phrases which means to group like phrases together. The short version of clusterizing your phrases is this:

1. Decide upon the main phrase of a web page or blog post
2. Type it into a keyword tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
   
3. Choose a handful of the most relevant phrases to be in the cluster

For a more in depth explanation on how to clusterize, read this post: Clusterize Your Phrases Once you decide which cluster is assigned to the URL you are optimizing, then you are ready to create an effective title tag. Title Tag Best Practices At this point, I want to explain some “best practices” for title tag creation.

1. Prominence – Place your most important phrase closest to the beginning as possible.
2. Density and Long tail – Use long tail phrases and/or a combination of phrases within the cluster to help increase density of main phrase as well as help the page rank for long tail phrases
3. Use plurals and singulars where applicable
4. Realize that the longer the title tag, the more diluted the strength of each word becomes

Let me give you an example that keeps all four points from above in mind. Lets look at a blog post that talks about a forex trading course. At the time of this writing, the title tag is “Forex Course – Forex Trading Courses – Easiest Forex Course Videos”. Here is the cluster of phrases that I chose to rank this page for:

1. Forex course
2. Forex courses
3. Forex trading course
4. Forex trading courses
5. Forex course videos
6. Easiest forex course
7. Easiest forex course videos

As you can see, I put the main phrase of the cluster first to give it the most prominence.

I used two of the sub phrases from the cluster which, in one way or another, includes all of the words from each of the seven phrases in the cluster. Doing that increases my keyword density for the main phrase “forex course” and helps me rank for the sub phrases at the same time.

I used both singular and plural for the word “course”. Wordtracker showed me that “course” was searched for more than “courses” and so that is why I placed the singular version first—to give the higher search volume phrase the most prominence.

I limited this title tag to just 3 phrases so as not to dilute the density of every phrase included. I typically don’t do more than 3 phrases in a title tag.

Take Aways Keep all these factors in mind when you are creating your title tags for every single page. And yes, every page should have its own unique title tag.

Also, realize that these are just guidelines. Every phrase has different amounts of competition and there is no set way that works the best in all situations. Sometimes I find that one or two phrases works best and other times I use four or five. The only way to know is to test. Analyze your competition to get ideas? Yes…and then test.

Let me say it again in bold, you should always test different title tags to help rankings improve. If you tweak a title tag and your ranking drops, you can always change it back to the original title tag and get your rankings back as soon as the Search Engines re-index the page.

One last thing. After all this talk about testing different title tags, don’t get too obsessed. You ABSOLUTELY need to focus on BUILDING LINKS TO THIS PAGE. No amount of title tag tweaks will get you to the #1 spot without link building.

10 Questions to Ask an SEO Company

Posted on 29. Feb, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in Search Engine Optimization

When choosing an SEO company you must be very careful and do your homework before signing a contract. Don’t limit yourself to just one option and make sure you are looking at the big picture (return on each dollar you invest), not just the price they quote you. I have compiled a list of ten questions you should ask your SEO company before signing a contract.

1. What type of techniques do you use to achieve rankings?
2. What type of risk is involved with this method?
3. What will happen if our relationship is dissolved?
4. Can you show me examples of past work?
5. What was the client’s ROI?
6. What type of volume increase in traffic is reasonable to expect?
7. How long until I start to see results?
8. What would you expect from our end to aid your work?
9. What were some of your top search ranking achievements?
10. Do you offer any other internet marketing services to supplement your SEO offerings?

Asking each of these questions should give you enough knowledge about the company and their services to make an educated decision. Remember, you are only investing in SEO to gain a competitive advantage in your industry; you need the greatest return that you can possibly get.