If you’re savvy enough to be scouring the internet for strong marketing blogs like this, you probably have a blog of your own. That’s great! But it’s really only part of the picture.
Having a blog represents a strong element of your online marketing plan, but if no one sees your blog, it does you absolutely no good.
So, what do you do to add visibility to your blog? Get it ranking in the search engines.
Here’s a great article that details the top methods for adding visibility to your blog. I hope this helps!
Darren B.
Get Your Blog Google-Ranked In 30 Days or Less, Part 1
By Frederick Townes (c) 2008
Blogs have been around long enough to become standard elements
of the web landscape. They’re easy to construct and manage, they
create fresh, user-generated content and, if well-executed,
blogs draw crowds and the attention of search engines.
Whether starting out with a new domain name, or a domain that’s
been around for a decade, you can rank your blog on Google if
you just do what Google wants you to do. So here are 25/50 tips
to get your blog ranked by the world’s biggest SE.
50. Build your own or move to Wordpress. Wordpress
(www.wordpress.com) is a blog platform that’s open source
(free), robust, extensible and easy to use. Add Feedburner
(www.feedburner.com), which equips site owners to broadcast RSS
feeds and develop user metrics. Next, synch up Google Analytics
and a sitemap plug-in to simplify populating the blog and
developing useful, actionable metrics. Also, make sure your blog
is pinging www.technoratti.com and other social-ranking sites
like www.digg.com.
49. Don’t worry about page rank. PR is highly over-rated as a
yardstick of online success. Connectivity within a web community
and expansion through content syndication and guest blogging are
more critical to building site credibility than page rank. PR
will take care of itself over time if you do it right.
48. Make a difference, or at least have a clear purpose.
Differentiate your content on every post. Cover lots of
editorial ground.
47. Use a conversational tone. Dry, starchy academic writing is
strictly for the textbooks. Write words that people “hear”
instead of read.
46. Provide a “Tell Your Friends” link on your blog. Birds of a
feather do, indeed, flock together. So, if one of your regulars
shares an interest in philately, chances are s/he has other
friends with an interest in stamp collecting.
45. Study the competition. They’re studying you. Check out
http://www.spyfu.com/ to do a little undercover work on search
analytics employed by competitor sites and their visitors. You
can’t touch the content but you can’t copyright an idea, either,
so pick up some new paths of thought from others in your site’s
arena.
44. Remember SEO basics. Use provocative, keyword-rich title
tags, meta keywords and descriptions, and only link to
high-quality sites. Never over do it. Keep your posts relevant,
natural, accurate and, above all, current.
43. Don’t stuff blog post titles with keywords. It’s a form of
keyword stuffing and spiders hate keyword stuffing. The ratio in
headlines should be 40% keywords, 60% non-keywords.
42. Submit your URL to blog directories. There are “best of the
web,” and paid directories, like Yahoo, and free directories
like the Open Directory project at www.dmoz.org. Every directory
listing is another link to your site and another way visitors
can find you. Just google them to find more.
41. Create blog categories that contain keywords, i.e.,
Ecommerce, SEO, Affiliates, etc. for use with a “site hosting”
or “site design” blog.
40. Content quality counts. Research topics about which target
readers want to learn. Write something new, useful and relevant.
And don’t forget to regularly update older posts. Things change
fast on the web so last year’s “next big thing” is this year’s
hackneyed clich�.
39. Vary topics, content length, relevancy and posting times.
However, be consistent, as well. Keep blogging. It can take time
for a blog to catch the notice of a search engine spider.
38. Get guest bloggers. Add links from their blogs and establish
your site’s link community. There are people within your web
neighborhood with opinions and good information. Contact them to
invite submissions to your blog and your site in general.
37. Don’t use duplicate content. The only duplicate content
that appears in your blog posts are quotes, and they should be
identified with quotation marks.
36. Call posters by name. If Bob M. from Athens, Georgia, posts
to your blog, recognize his contribution with a “Thanks, Bob” at
the end of your response.
35. Make friends with other bloggers in your commercial,
business or NFP space. Ask to become a guest blogger, or seek
endorsements from the “names” within your site sphere.
34. Send a personal note to posters. Not all bloggers have the
time to do this but if you can send a personal email thank-you
note to a poster, you’ve increased the chances of that poster
becoming a member of your site community.
33. Encourage viral link building. Take a stand. Introduce the
coming paradigm shift in web commerce, provoke controversy. It
sells. Just ask Ann Coulter.
32. Ensure the blog is optimized for Technoratti. Claim your
blog, set an avatar and pings, use tags where appropriate and be
sure to ping various blog tracking sites.
31. Don’t place ads on your blog, yet. If you feel you must
(you’re seeing nice PPC revenues), determine that your site’s
HTML is optimized to position those ads at the bottom of each
blog page.
30. If your blog isn’t pulling, have the code reproduced so
it’s as semantic, accessible and code-to-content optimized as
possible. Also, hire a code expert to position content above ads
or any other content in the site markup.
29. Ignore Alexa. A lot of new site owners rely on Alexa for
site metrics but remember, Alexa is a popularity metric since
only Alexa toolbar users contribute data � and that’s a
less-than-universal test population.
28. Build credibility. Publishing authorities on your site’s
topicality usually does the trick. Once blog credibility is
established, identify trends, solve new problems and gradually
expand the topic range of your blog.
27. Buy or build a screamin’ hot blog design and submit it to
design galleries. Hire a site/blog designer, or bring your
vision to fruition. This enables your blog to appear five or six
demographic iterations from your home site, expanding the site’s
reach outside the immediate site community. This creates new
marketing channels fast.
26. Develop some friendly contacts on social media sites and
participate in the community. Ask contacts to promote your blog
content. Also ask for contributors. People love to express their
opinions.
To learn even more about making the most of your site blog,
check out Get Your Blog Google-Ranked In 30 Days Or Less, Part
2. You’re going to love it.
================================================================
Frederick Townes in the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design. W3 EDGE is
a Boston web design company (http://www.w3-edge.com/) that
specializes in search engine friendly design, Internet marketing
(http://www.w3-edge.com/solutions/internet-marketing/) and
conversion optimization. Contact them today for a free quote and
more information on how to make the most of your online presence.
================================================================
If you’ve never attempted a serious article marketing campaign, you’re not alone.
Most people trying to make money online, either through a business website or through straight internet marketing, feel like they just don’t have the time to write articles. They try to discipline themselves into writing one article a week, but the articles always seem to get pushed down the priority list.
I don’t blame them. I’m one of those rare individuals who really likes writing articles. I like blogging and article marketing. I like doing a google search for my name and seeing the number constantly growing, due mostly in part to my articles. I like seeing my articles come up in the search engine rankings. I really enjoy it when my articles are reproduced online.
Call me vain, but I’ve always felt like writing was one of my strengths. It’s about time I got paid for it!
If you’ve been struggling with generating the website exposure you need for your business or personal needs, contact me. I’ve just opened up a couple more spaces in my rotation for two new clients who need some article marketing done. I’d love the chance to work with you and your business to generate the traffic and back links you need to be successful online.
Be good!
DarrenB.
I hope you enjoyed Titus Hoskins last post. Like I mentioned then, Titus ha such a great, straight-forward way of looking at websites, website marketing, and search engine optimization that I get so much from every article he writes.
Here’s another great article from Titus about eight basic elements of search engine optimization. Most of these are quite simple to achieve, even if you have limited web design experience. And if you know nothing about how to modify your website, just shoot me an email and I’ll help out!
Enjoy!
8 Useful SEO Techniques Every Webmaster Should Know
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008
Every webmaster should have some basic understanding of
these simple SEO techniques if they want to achieve Top
Rankings for their site. The more you know about these
Search Engine Optimization techniques; the better your web
pages will fare in the different search engines, especially
Google.
Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your
main priority because conquering and dominating your chosen
keywords is often cited as one of the major determining
factors in the success of your online site or business. You
must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you
and your site.
These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics
and help you reach your online goals.
1. Title Tag
The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and
it tells the search engines what your page is about. When
you open your page in a browser these are the words at the
very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title
tag is crucial to ‘on-page optimization’; it should include
your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less
if you want your title to appear in full on Google.
Many SEO experts create web pages in a three-prong
approach. They place the title in:
- the title tag - on the webpage itself - and in the URL
for that page
Sometimes they will just pick the main keywords from the
title and place them in the anchor url instead. For
example: www.yourwebsite.com/keywords.html
2. Meta Description Tag
The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page.
Your description will show up in all the search engines so
you have to be careful to write precisely and objectively.
It should be about 140 characters or around 20 words. Make
sure to include your keywords but don’t spam - don’t repeat
your keywords more than twice - using variations is helpful.
Keep in mind, successful webmasters make their descriptions
stand out from the crowd and entice the surfer to click
their link. It is also the first contact with your
potential visitor or prospect so make a good first
impression.
3. Anchor Tag or URL
The anchor tag is used to form links within websites or
from site to site. This tag should have your title or the
main keywords from your page title to be the most effective.
Anchor text is also important to know - these are the
underlined, clickable text or words in a link. <*A
HREF=”url”> anchor text <*/A>
If you want to check Google for all web pages containing
your keywords in the anchor tags.
Just type into Google Search:
allinanchor:yourkeywords
4. Finding Backlinks
One of the keys to higher rankings is building quality
links from relevant, related quality sites. The search
engines, especially Google, count each link as a “vote”
for your site or content. Many experts suggest you include
your main keywords in the anchor text of these inbound
links in order to rank high.
If you want to find the number of backlinks your site has.
Just type into Google Search:
link:yourURL
and it will give you the number of backlinks you have.
Google doesn’t give you all your existing backlinks, so you
can try Yahoo! to find a more exact number.
Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL
5. Checking Indexed Pages
If is very important for you to know what content the
search engines have indexed from your site. You can also
check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any
titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.
You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by
using the site command.
Just type into Google Search:
site:yourURL
Another way to look at your pages in Google is to type in
“http://yoursite” and “www.yoursite” with the quotation
marks to see the exact number of listings for each.
6. Checking Google Cache
You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by
using the cache command. You will also discover when it was
last retrieved.
Just type into Google Search:
cache:yourURL
7. Finding Associated Keywords
Keywords are the heart of the Internet, you must dominate
the search engines for your chosen keywords if you are to
succeed online. So make sure you have your main keywords in
the Meta Keyword Tag on your page. Many experts suggest you
place your page’s main keywords in the first and last 25
words on that page.
You must also be able to find and use variations of your
keywords to completely conquer your targeted niche. To find
what other keywords Google has associated with your main
keywords, just use the tilde ~ command to find associated
phrases in Google.
Just type into Google search:
~keywords
Variations will be highlighted in bold print.
8. Finding Titled Keywords
If you want to find competing sites that have your keywords
in the title just use the allintitle command.
Just type into Google search:
allintitle:yourkeywords
In summary, if used consistently, these basic SEO
techniques should help improve your rankings and keep you
in the picture with regards to your standings in the search
engines. Your site’s stats or raw traffic logs will also
confirm the rise or fall of your keyword rankings. You must
have complete knowledge of both your site and your keywords
in the search engines, especially Google. Since Google will
deliver most of your quality traffic, you must optimize for
it and be aware of what is happening to your site and
keywords within Google. This is yet another example where
knowledge equals success.
===========================================================
The author is now a full-time web marketer who regularly
sells 1000’s of dollars worth of affiliate products/services
each day. He owns and runs numerous websites, including two
sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing
tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com or
http://www.marketingtoolguide.com
2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed
if this resource box stays attached.
===========================================================
Here’s a great article from Titus Hoskins about the changing landscape of internet marketing and the different tools any successful internet marketer should be using in their business. If you haven’t read much from Titus Hoskins, you’re really missing out. I get so much advice through many different lists to which I belong, but Titus’ email is one I never miss. If there’s one email a week I sit down and read all the way through, it’s his. And I’m not making any money from his posts! It’s just good, helpful information.
Enjoy!
New Internet Marketing Tools
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2008
New Internet marketing tools are coming online each and
every day. Why should you care? Mainly because these new
marketing tools can have a dramatic impact on your online
traffic, leads and sales. So much so, your online
competitiveness can greatly depend on you finding and using
these new marketing tools before everyone else does.
And as Internet marketing grows more and more lucrative, it
is becoming more competitive each day, so staying aware of
what’s happening has become vital to your online success.
More importantly, if you’re a full-time marketer like me,
your livelihood will largely depend upon you being able to
keep on top of all the new ways of marketing on the web.
With these considerations in mind, I would like to list
some new or relatively new marketing tools that have been
effective for me in my online marketing. Some of these are
marketing software, others are SEO strategies, marketing
tips and the like… all have helped me achieve my online
goals.
Here are some new marketing tools you can try:
1. Real Link Finder
Neil Shearing’s “RealLinkFinder” is a handy little
link-building tool you can use to increase your link
popularity and SE rankings.
It lets you find targeted blogs that don’t have the
“nofollow” attribute tag so your links will count in all
the search engines. Great way to build targeted links
related to your site’s main keywords or keyword phrases.
This is one “No Cost” link-building tool you should try:
www.reallinkfinder.com
2. Peel Away Ads
Simple ads which sit at the corner of any webpage, when a
cursor hovers over the pulsating image - the page peels
away to reveal your ad or promotion. Might seem a bit
gimmicky, but like the pop-up or fade-in, they do work. You
do get more sign-ups and sales. www.pealawayads.com
3. Video Marketing
Using videos as marketing tools has now become commonplace
on the web. If you’re not promoting with videos, you are
losing a large portion of the online traffic or surfers
currently on the web.
Even using videos to explain your site or product will
increase your conversions and sign-ups. Viral videos
embedded with your links or site url can produce results
when placed on YouTube or Google Videos. If you need help,
one recent commercial product has been from Simon Grabowski
(GetResponse) called TalkStream, which lets you put
streaming audio and video on your sites. Just google to
find it.
4. Social Media Bookmarks/Tags
One of the most significant changes in recent years has
been the rise in importance and use of social bookmarking
sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati… these sites are
now commanding huge traffic numbers and should not be
ignored in your online marketing.
You must connect your content with these sites. This is
very simple to do since social media sites use tags, which
are more or less simple keywords that help classify content
and links. If you’re using the popular Wordpress blog
software, each category will be considered a tag.
You can create a simple tag in technorati by using this
code:
<*a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]”
rel=”tag”>[tagname]<*/a>
<*a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/new+marketing+tools”
rel=”tag”>new marketing tools<*/a>
Remove the *asterisks in actual codes.
5. Add this Button
One of the easiest ways I have found to tap into the whole
social media bandwagon is to put the Addthis button on your
webpages and let your visitors bookmark your content for
you.
This button is free and only takes seconds to set up on
your pages. In case you’re wondering if this button works,
I recently received 70,000 visitors to one of my sites in
one day from these social media sites. Granted most of this
traffic is transitory and not permanent - the huge traffic
numbers will only last as long as your links/bookmarks are
on the front pages of these popular sites.
But where there is smoke, you can make fire.
6. Blogs RSS Feeds
Likewise, you must have a blog and RSS Feed associated with
your site or product. It is vital that you take advantage
of this technology to get your content broadcasted across
the web and around the world.
RSS is only simple code that syndicates your content to all
interested parties; it originally stood for “Rich Site
Summary” and was a way of summarizing your content and
broadcasting it. Most people now refer to RSS as Really
Simple Syndication. You need a “newsreader” or aggregator
such as Newsgator, Google Reader, My Yahoo! or Feed Demon
to access all your feeds.
One little blog traffic tool I find helpful is John Reese’s
BlogRush, which helps syndicate your blog posts on other
blogs. www.blogrush.com
7. Expert Marketing
Another effective way to market online or off is to
promote/prove yourself as an expert in your chosen field.
Creating articles, ebooks, websites on a subject that
interests you will make you an expert. Once you gain
credibility as an expert, your marketing will become much
easier.
Some obvious places to help build this credibility would be
Ezinearticles, SelfGrowth, Ideamarketers… I have found
these places are excellent for getting your name and your
content noticed.
8. Long Tail Niche Marketing
One of the most effective ways to market online is to use
long tail keywords in your niche market. This simply means
instead of targeting very general and very competitive
keywords, you target less competitive long tail keywords in
a smaller niche market.
I have found this tactic especially good for affiliate
marketing, and the trick is to find the exact long tail
phrase someone is using in the search engines and then
construct content/url to match it. I find Brad Callen’s
Keyword Elite software program extremely helpful in finding
those long tail keywords.
9. Guru Fast-track
One of the fastest and quickest ways to earn large amounts
online is to hook up with big marketing GURUs and use their
huge contact lists. If you have a high quality info
product, then JVs (joint ventures) with these savvy
marketers can be a very viable option for you to try.
These marketing gurus or experts are valuable marketing
tools you can use to your advantage. Granted, their
aggressive marketing methods do turn many people off, but
there’s no denying their methods do work.
10. Micro-List Marketing
Micro-List Building is one of the most effective online
marketing tools you can use. Quite frankly, I have found
building a large opt-in list is not the real key to online
wealth but instead creating small micro lists for each of
your promoted products to be much more effective. You can
have hundreds, even thousands of these different
micro-lists. Use an unlimited autoresponder program like
Aweber to handle and manage all these lists.
Studies have shown interested customers may not buy on the
first visit, that it may take up to six or seven reminders.
So keeping in contact with an interested customer, one who
is looking and in the right mindset to buy, will definitely
increase your sales.
Here, rather then the hard-sell, the emphasis should be on
collecting contacts in order to give them helpful
informative content on the product they’re interested in
buying. Supplying quality content should be your main goal;
let the selling take care of itself. If you get the first
part right, the sale will come naturally.
In conclusion, you must remember when dealing with such a
complex creature as Internet marketing, in most cases
there’s no one single marketing tool that will do the job.
Instead you need a whole orchestra of tools working
together in order to make your online marketing the most
effective. So why not try some of these tools in your own
online marketing and see the results for yourself. You have
everything to gain.
===========================================================
The author, a former artist and teacher, is now a full-time
web marketer who regularly sells 1000’s of dollars worth of
affiliate products/services each day. He owns and runs
numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing.
For the latest web marketing tools try:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com or
http://www.marketingtoolguide.com
2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed
if this resource box stays attached.
===========================================================
I’ve you’ve read anything of my SEO Tips and Tricks, you know how important links back to your website are to your search engine rankings. These “backlinks” are what help designate your website as a valued resource in the eyes of the search engines.
Once upon a time a webmaster could simply agree to trade links with any other website, and the search engines would increase that website’s rankings. Today, that just doesn’t work. The search engines can distinguish between links that are related to a website’s content and links that are totally off-topic. Real estate agents are still suffering from the effects of this. Many agents I knew had collaborated with other agents around the country to exchange links. And for a while this worked. Then Google got smart and penalized these agents for their unrelated links. Yes, the links had to do with real estate, but would someone who was searching for real estate in Denver really care about a realtor in New Jersey? Or so goes the thinking of the search engines.
Hence the rise of Article Marketing!
Well written articles can be submitted to respected online magazines, called ezines. These ezines almost always let you include an author’s bio at the end of the article. In this bio, savvy article marketers include at least one link back to your main website. The search engines love these backlinks!
Try to get in the habit of writing at least one or two articles each month. I use ezinearticles.com for all my article submission needs. They seem to draw the most amount of traffic. Write your articles, craft your author’s bio, and submit those articles. Get in the habit. Set aside a specific day each month to do this writing. You can even hire others to write articles for you if you are one of those who hate writing.
Whatever you do, you absolutely must be using article marketing in order to advance in the search engines.
Good luck, and get out there!
Darren B
Many of us have taken a shot at creating our first Facebook account already. Or perhaps we’ve been blogging with our businesses for several months. If so, you’ve already taken your first steps into the world of Social Networking!
This new world can be challenging and daunting for the uninitiated, but have no fear. I’ve found the perfect article that will help you jump in with both feet. Enjoy!
How To Start A Social Marketing Campaign
By Jack Humphrey (c) 2008
Social marketing is a relatively new, often misunderstood
form of online marketing that is reaping huge rewards for
website owners who incorporate it into their marketing
plans. I work with clients and customers who, while being
very new to social marketing, are seeing results in the
following areas:
1. Higher search engine rankings for their top keywords.
2. More rankings of additional keywords or “long tail”
keyword phrases.
3. More link popularity from sites linking on their own
accord.
4. More link popularity from social media sites.
5. More activity on their blogs, such as more commenting
and interaction.
6. Direct traffic from incoming links on social media sites
(One good StumbleUpon.com submission can net thousands of
visitors alone.)
7. Fast traffic increases and steady growth in unique
visitors month after month.
8. An increase in subscribers and sales. Social traffic,
properly acquired, is very warm to your message and
products.
The problem for most people when thinking about social
marketing, after getting a taste of all the hundreds of
sites there are to interact with, is becoming overwhelmed
and paralyzed into inaction.
They assume established social marketers gained their
“social authority” in a short period of time. This is
simply not true. Although the opportunities for driving
serious traffic and rankings from hundreds of social sites
exists, it is an embarrassment of riches.
And it cannot be conquered over night. It is a gradual
process you manage with all your other responsibilities and
grow as time allows.
What I encourage my clients to do is set aside enough time
each day to get one more link, participate in one more
conversation, or sign up for one more account on a social
site.
A little goes a long way and social marketing is not an
“all or nothing” situation. Eventually you will have
established yourself on the major social media sites you
need to be on. And you will have a schedule that allows you
to keep up with your other work while adding this extremely
powerful marketing method to the mix.
10 Steps For Starting a Social Marketing Campaign
1. Schedule a bit of time each day to do some new things.
Don’t just say you are going to do them. Write the time
into your day and follow through.
2. Sign up for the major social news sites: Digg.com,
Propeller.com, Mixx.com. Don’t submit anything to these
sites until you have filled out your profile completely and
submitted news from elsewhere on the web to generate a real
presence and avoid being labeled as a spammer.
In fact, BE a real presence and don’t try to push your own
content onto the networks you belong to. It should feel and
be natural and you will know what “natural is on each
network by participating, commenting, voting and getting a
general sense of what members think is good and bad
content. Watch their comments and votes and you will know
how to proceed with your own site’s content from there.
3. If you don’t have a blog, you must install one
immediately. This is not an option. It is an absolute
necessity on today’s web. I recommend Wordpress which can
be downloaded and installed by you or your webmaster.
Wordpress download: http://wordpress.org/download/
Option #2: Check with your web host to see if they have
Fantastico available to you and, if so, that it installs
the latest version of Wordpress. If so you are very lucky
because the software can be installed by you very easily in
just a few steps with Fantastico.
4. Once you have your blog set up, join the following
networks. (These are blog communities that will help you
generate visitors, authority, and links and most bloggers
belong to them.) MyBlogLog.com (install the widget on your
Wordpress blog), and BlogCatalog.com. (they also have a
widget to install)
5. Join groups, make friends, and interact with other
bloggers on these networks. Especially the people who would
be most likely to link to your blog and send you traffic
who write about similar things or have an audience similar
to yours who’d benefit by knowing you. You can even start
your own group, promote it in the network, and send
“shouts” to the group when you have announcements or need
attention to a new post.
6. Once you have established yourself on all the sites
above, meaning you have a decent profile in each that shows
you’ve been active and involved, move on and search for
networks that are geared toward your particular market
niche. There are a lot of new “vertical” social sites
popping up that focus on much more narrow markets and their
membership is far warmer to your kind of information than
on the bigger, more general networks above.
Add a new site to the mix as often as you can and repeat
the steps for becoming established there as mentioned in
Step 2 above.
7. Join a group dedicated to social marketing to pick up
tips from other social marketers and find new places you
can sign up with to continue building your social
authority. New sites pop up every single day. Follow places
like Go2Web20.net to find new opportunities to connect with
your market.
8. Remote blog. Join blogger.com and put content there that
is good, just not good enough to go on your main blog. This
serves two purposes: 1) you get to use more of the great
content you find as you travel through all the social news
sites and 2) it gives you another place to link back to
your main site and pass on traffic and link popularity over
time.
9. Track your progress diligently. If something you are
trying on a social network isn’t working, you need to know
that in order to save time and move on to something more
fruitful. MyBlogLog.com (above) has a tracking system which
will show you where your traffic is coming from so you can
avoid time wasting efforts and focus more on the sites that
are really pulling in good traffic for you.
10. Don’t freak out! This is only overwhelming if you act
like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet with no self
control. You have other things to do and this needs to fit
into, not dominate, your current business and marketing.
Social marketing, once you’ve established some authority,
will replace some things you are currently doing to promote
your site. Many people completely drop their paid
advertising or PPC campaigns once they see the organic,
natural traffic and search engine rankings pile up from
social marketing.
Until then, just take it one step at a time and do some
social marketing. A little goes a long way and before you
know it, you will reach a point where a lot of traffic and
lots of search engine rankings are piling up because you
simply started doing something each day.
There’s a lot you can learn about social marketing. And not
all of it can be found on free blogs.
===========================================================
Jack Humphrey is the author of The Authority Black Book at
http://www.AuthorityBlackBook.com and the creator of a
powerful social marketing community at
http://www.socialpowerlinking.com .
===========================================================
Wow! What an article! I thought I knew a lot about SEO. Then Jill comes along and turns so much of what’s been standard SEO practice on its head. It just goes to show that in the world of optimizing websites for the search engines, it’s important to always be researching and learning what works and what doesn’t.
Here’s the article that helped straighten me right out… Enjoy!
SEO Basics in 45 Minutes
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008
As most people who read this newsletter will know, Jill Whalen
is a pioneer in search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First
Lady of Search, Jill founded the site HighRankings.com
(http://www.highrankings.com/) in 1995. Today High Rankings has
grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the US.
Jill’s company is dedicated to educating its clients and sharing
its knowledge with the industry at large through the High
Rankings Advisor newsletter, the High Rankings Forum and her
in-house seminars.
In her presentation for Webstock 2008
(http://www.webstock.org.nz/), Jill gave the audience a 45
minute tutorial in SEO Basics. First up, Jill discussed what
SEO isn’t. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed
included:
PPC Myths:
- PPC ads will help organic rankings
- PPC ads will hurt organic rankings
Tag Myths:
- you must have a keyword-rich domain
- you must have keyword-rich page URLs
- heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
- you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular
you need to use keywords that are included in your page
content.
Jill says that it’s actually better to use the keyword tag to
include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you
don’t have in your pages.
- using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.
Content Myths:
- page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up
the 250 word limit a few years ago and it’s stuck, but there
is really no set limit to please search engines.
- that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
- that you must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that
keyword density tools are ridiculous.
- that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase
per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases
that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating
one phrase over and over.
- that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You
don’t generally need to optimize for these - engines will find
them on their own.
- duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a
penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu
of the original copy (or what they think is the original).
Design Myths:
- your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com
validates!
- your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly,
graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
- you can’t use Flash. It’s fine to use Flash, as long as it
is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a
text-based site too if using a Flash site.
- certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is
legitimate, not just used by black hats.
Link Building Myths:
- that Google’s link: command is accurate. It’s not a useful
tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command
instead.
- that reciprocal links won’t count. From the right site,
reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
- that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results.
They’re not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so
ignore it.
- you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google
rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth
the money these days.
Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:
- that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a
link to your site, you will be found and indexed.
- that you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average
site. It won’t change your site rank.
- that you need to update your site frequently.
- frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true.
- that you need multiple sites. This won’t help in the engines
and creates more maintenance work.
- that you need doorway pages. Jill says this is so 1995!
SEO Company Myths:
- that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales.
The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that
people are actually searching for.
- that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not
possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored
spots.
- that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company.
Rubbish!
- that they have a “proprietary method” of SEO. They’re
lying!
- that they have a “special relationship” with Google. Again,
they’re lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO
companies that Jill is aware of.
- that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page
work. Run away!
Next, Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is
“making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND
the search engines”. She made the point that search engines
need to:
- Find
- Crawl
- Index
- Determine relevancy
- show results
So you should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing
your site.
Jill also made the point that search engines don’t know you. So
you should disclose what you sell and who you are in plain
language that naturally incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb
down your pages for users. What search engines want is good
content. If you’re not getting good traffic from your pages,
they’re broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages
speak to your target audience and solve their problems.
Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your
site. She recommended brainstorming with friends, family and
business colleagues and creating a seed list of keywords. Then
take that list and run it through keyword research tools such as
WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/) or Keyword Discovery
(http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/) and even Google AdWords
(http://adwords.google.com/) to determine the best keywords and
phrases to target.
Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:
1) General and highly competitive terms - not good choices.
2) Long tail - uncompetitive terms - generally no need to SEO
for.
3) Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose
because they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to
bring qualified traffic.
Next, Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended
putting them in:
- anchor text
- clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)
- headlines
- body text copy
- title tags (Don’t make your titles less than 10 words, she
says.)
- meta description tags
Jill finished up by teaching the group how to measure SEO
success. She said that high rankings are not the best measure of
success because you might be ranking for phrases nobody is
searching on. Instead you should be looking for increased
targeted traffic to your site and more conversions. Use your web
stats to give you the clues as to whether your site and your SEO
is working.
As for the future of SEO, well despite the rumors that SEO is
dead, Jill doesn’t think that the big engines will switch to
exclusively paid listings any time soon. In her opinion, there
will always be some free ways to get listed so there will always
be a need for SEO. In the same vein, a crawler-friendly site
will always get good results and off page criteria (e.g. links)
will always be important.
================================================================
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/)- an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
================================================================
I hope you’ve been keeping up with all the exciting changes happening in the internet marketing world. Social networking is taking things by storm! Just in case you’ve been under a rock, here’s a great article looking at why people are using social networks and how you might be able to fit into the social network stream.
Enjoy!
The Sociology of Social Media
By Andrew Clough (c) 2008
While being hired on at StepForth Web Marketing
(http://www.stepforth.com/) our CEO, Ross Dunn, was interested
in how someone with a background in sociology could benefit his
company, specifically in understanding social media and how to
market to it. Sociologists look at communities and try to dissect
them as to what its participants have in common in addition to
trends or commonalities within the communities.
Sociologists study society and social action by examining the
groups and social institutions people form, as well as various
social, religious, political, and business organizations. In
essence it is the study of social interactions of people and
groups.
They like to watch groups of people and see how they interact
and function. Understanding the group’s values and ideas is the
key because once you understand a group one can participate
within it. Participation means that you have the ability to
communicate to those within the groups and spread or gain
information. The concept of a social media marketer is to gain
understanding of a community and leverage it to increase
awareness of their own or their client’s expertise. Social media
based communities are seen as the new web properties for
marketing campaigns. Driving traffic and developing information
users trust and use is the monetization of the social media
world.
This article is a general understanding as to what social media
is and its potential for reaching the public. In the future I
will be covering more specific areas within social media and
helping clients build campaigns that work for their specific
situation in this emerging marketplace. If you have any questions
please feel free to ask (andrew@stepforth.com).
Why People Use Social Media
Social Media is a web based venue that shares ideas, values,
and information. Social media sites are formed when groups of
people want to share information. They are used to keep up with
friends and colleagues, to exchange ideas, and get information
from those who might have an answer. Social media sites create
a community (a group of individuals) based around this shared
information. Many of these sites have gained huge followings and
therefore are seen as authorities in their particular area of
expertise (news, technology, sports, etc.).
Social media creates a community where like minded people can
interact, mingle, and explore. They provide information that’s
judged by those within the community to be deemed noteworthy. It
is interesting to note that social media sites have the same
basic format in how they propagate the content provided by their
users. Individuals are able to vote on the content or respond to
the content. In this way, social media sites seek to gain and
direct viewers. Social media is about giving control over
information back to the masses.
Information provided on these sites is judged on a combination
of criteria; its relevance, its quality, and the uniqueness of
its content. The information is seen as trustworthy and unbiased
because it is peer filtered. The information within these
communities will have influence on the people who view it and
can determine what actions they take regarding this new found
information. As social media sites prosper with large user bases
of interconnected individuals they provide a new platform for
finding web based information.
Social media is inherently personal. The users provide personal
information and ideas, respond to them, share them, and create a
social media personality. This is where social media marketing
comes in. Marketers want to know who you are and what you like.
With booming global communication and technologies social media
sites are seen as important venues for exchange. They embrace
ideas surrounding information like connectivity, word of mouth,
promotion of quality, and trust of those deemed trustworthy.
Social media sites are important because they contain information
users find interesting, timely and informative.
Marketing is the sharing of information to influence a consumer
to purchase a product or service. Social media marketers want
to get their messages out across the many mediums (video,
interactive, audio, etc.) on social media sites to the
individuals spending time on them. Social media sites also
provide a space for advertisers to promote and gain insight on
their products. These sites are seen as a great venue for
advertising because of their ability to reach individuals based
on their demographics, like age, location, and search profiles.
In both social media and marketing a niche is a smaller more
focused section of a broader market. Niche communities are able
to congregate within social media sites and share ideas and
fraternize on very specific topics. This idea is very important
to marketers and social media because they want to be able to
reach the appropriate market for their information. Niche
marketing is the process of finding and serving these specific
market segments and designing custom-made strategies to profit
from them.
Currently social media sites hold huge amounts of information.
Social media is a great tool for spreading information and adding
to it. Do people want more personalized, up to date and high
quality information? What kind of information do users actually
get in a current search inquiry? Is there a better way of
accessing all the information on the web? These are questions
social media is trying to answer. Social media sites are giving
the power back to the people for exchanging information; it is a
tool that helps society communicate and connect. Society values
unbiased, accurate information and access to it. Social media
provides personalized information and the chance for your voice
to be heard. Social media’s ability to influence one’s personal
decisions will give it huge potential to shape the society we
live in.
================================================================
Andrew Clough is StepForth’s Social Media Specialist at StepForth
Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in
1997. You can read more of Andrew’s articles and those of the
StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at
http://www.stepforth.com/, Tel - 250-385-1190,
Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198
================================================================
Many of you are out there experimenting with the social networks as a means to market your business. This isn’t a bad idea. Check out this article for ways and places to get started.
Social Networking with Training Wheels
By John Jantsch (c) 2008
Look, I don’t really think that the mySpaces and Facebooks
of the world are that important for the typical small
business as they stand today. There may be very practical
business reasons for some to actually use these and other,
what are called social networks, for business gain, but
most people that have jumped on the social network
bandwagon have found themselves left with a “is this all
there is” kind of feeling.
To those, I say this, the value of the current public social
networks for business folks is not what you can get out of
them for gain today, but what you can learn by using them
for practical gain tomorrow. That’s why SpacebookedIn makes
sense for you now.
The Facebooks of the world are busy teaching millions and
millions of business folks how social networks work, how
social networking works, how shared applications can be
viral and ever-present. The real payoff in my opinion is
that the wave to come after the Facebook bubble bursts is
the “personalized business network.” Once everyone of your
customers and prospects knows how to use what are easily
replicatable social networking tools, like building
profiles, sharing video and connecting based on mutual
interests, your job of building your own social business
network around your own very specific community of niche
will get a whole lot easier.
2008 will be the year of the personalized social business
network. So, if you’ve decided to take a pass on the whole
social networking trend, I would suggest that you use this
handy list to start learning to ride this bike with the
training wheels on.
Ten ways to get started with Social Networking.
1) Read 10 blogs - sign-up for a Bloglines
(http://www.bloglines.com/) account and search for and
subscribe to 10 blogs about social networking - you can
return daily to your page on Bloglines to find and read
all the new content on your 10. Of course you can add blogs
about your industry and interests here too.
2) Comment on 10 blogs - posting relevant comments to blogs
you read is a very simple form of social networking. It’s
also a good way to get some extra visitors your site or
blog.
3) Join Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) - Join and
create a profile. Find and friend some of your existing
contacts using tools on Facebook. You’ll be surprised how
many people you already know have Facebook accounts.
Facebook has some real value for you because of the rich
set of tools and large amount of active users. This is a
great place to experiment with how people interact in social
networks. Once you get your feet wet you may also find that
Facebook is a great way to connect with business contacts
you may never bump into otherwise.
4) Create a mySpace (http://www.myspace.com/) page - this
service is really embraced primarily by musicians and the
younger set. It also happens to have a large underbelly
contingent so be warned, but it is a great tool for learning
how to build a presence outside of your web site.
5) Join LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/) - this is a
service that’s been called Facebook for business. It is
really about meeting and connecting with like-minded
business folks. It is a great service for people looking
for a job or to make connections with people who may be
out of reach without an introduction.
6) Visit Ning (http://www.ning.com/) - this is the largest
custom social networking service that allows you to create
your own community using a variety of tools that can be
branded to match your current site.
7) Create a Workbench profile
(http://workbench.ducttapemarketing.com/)- this one’s a
little self-serving as this is my new social business
networking site but it’s a good example of the personalized
business community that’s the next wave for small business.
Create a Twitter (http://twitter.com/) account - this
tool is pretty silly on the surface, it allows you to type
in 160 characters or less what you are doing right now. It
feels like a giant waste of time but a very large and active
community has grown around this kind of micro-blogging and
you should understand how people are using it.
9) Create a StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/)
profile - This is a social network built around discovering
and recommending sites that you like. Active stumblers can
send a lot of traffic your way
10) Create a Digg (http://www.digg.com/) account - this
site allows you to keep up to the minute with what’s
happening in the world of business. Users submit and vote
on what is believed to be the most important content.
You might also consider Mixx (http://www.mixx.com/),
Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/) and Flickr
(http://www.flickr.com/) as places to find and develop
niche related communities when you’re ready to really get
out there.
Think of mySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook as your labs - get
in there and experiment for the future. then start planning
your own personalized social business network.
===========================================================
John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning
blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most
Practical Small Business Marketing Guide. You can find more
information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com
===========================================================
Many of my clients first approach me about optimizing their websites for the search engines. They have received sound advice. They know that in order for their website to be a functional part of their business plan, they must generate some traffic. What many of my clients don’t realize is that optimizing a website for the search engines, also called search engine optimization of SEO for short, takes a bit of time.
A solid SEO guy, as I like to refer to myself, will take a bit of time to research the best keywords for their optimization focus. From there, it should take anywhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks for an entire website to get optimized. There’s always the chance that you’ll catch your SEO guy in the middle of a dozen projects that would push your SEO back a couple of weeks. Please be patient with your SEO crew.
Once your site is optimized for the search engines, though, don’t expect to see an immediate increase in traffic. I’ll never forget the real estate agent from Las Vegas who called my cell and angrily demanded to know why her website wasn’t on the first page of Google the day after I’d started optimizing her website. Needless to say, she knew just enough about SEO to be dangerous, but not nearly enough to be effective.
Solid ethical search engine optimization will take anywhere from two months up to six months in the most competitive markets. A good SEO guy will tell you this up front. Anyone who makes any promises that you’ll be on the first page of Google overnight is either lying to you or they are actually talking about pay per click advertising.
Pay per Click advertising, also known as PPC, is a totally different way of generating traffic for a website. I love PPC! I love the competitiveness of PPC and the ability to draw targeted traffic instantly. You can set an exact budget for your PPC and not worry about overspending.
Pay per Click advertising is the process of creating small ads and bidding on different keywords. This way, anytime someone searches in Google using one of your keywords, your ad will appear in the “sponsored links” portion of the search engine’s results. When some website marketer promises you top rankings overnight, they are either promising your PPC listings where you can always bid a crazy amount for a keyword and get to the top of the sponsored links, or they have some sneaky little toolbar they want you to install that shows you a modified version of the search results- always showing your website at the top!
A solid website marketing strategy incorporates both SEO and PPC. I consider SEO the long term solution to generating traffic. PPC is the more immediately gratifying solution. Utilizing both together helps generate immediate traffic increases while taking care of your long range website goals as well.
I only wish my Vegas realtor knew this from the start…
Darren B