Blogging is an integral part of your SEO Campaign

By: Cade Lee

It seems that every time the topic of blogging comes up, customers ask us, “Why is a Blog important?” If I were to ask them if they wanted to originate business online, they would undoubtedly answer “Yes”. If I asked any prospective customer if they wanted to be on the first page of Google, I know I would get the same positive response. Everyone would like to attract attention online which is exactly why it makes it that much more difficult for anyone to draw a crowd online. There are several strategies of course to bring in the crowds; some of them are not the most ethical or considerate to say the least.

Many website owners and SEO professionals alike will try all sorts of gimmicks and tricks to obtain a page one ranking. I cannot say that we haven’t attempted everything to obtain a page one ranking as well. I think any good SEO company will need to experiment as much as possible (not with client projects), to understand the algorithms and search engine rankings better. So, with everyone vying for the 1^st page of Google or any one of the other major search engines, what can really differentiate you from the pack?

Over and over again, our blog has been one of the most important resources and reasons that we continue to be on the 1^st page of Google for relevant search terms to our site. We have had many comments on our blog, some positive and other’s negative. Overall it was comments we were looking for to begin with. We wanted to be noticed and we were able to do that most efficiently with our blog.

It was our intent to draw traffic to our site by providing quality, informative and useful content on our blog. I wished that I could say that we started publishing our blog and it brought in a flood of traffic to the site that was simply just not the case. Here were some of the best methods we used to attract attention with our blog:

1. Build useful applications or programs: I already know what you are thinking, “I am not a programmer and I would not know where to begin”. I understand this as we felt much the same way. The thing is that you have access to something in your arsenal, something that someone else would find useful. In our case it was a simple toolbar that we had created to help us keep track of SEO sites, resources and blogs. We distributed this toolbar to as many freeware or shareware sites that we could. We hosted the program on our site, so as we attracted visitors to the software, we were able to bring many new visitors to our site.
   
2. Providing Resources: By providing good and useful information online you are able to prove yourself as a trusted advisor. We have many clients that are in the “services” industry and over time we have had heard the same objection over and over again. “If I provide information for free to the public, what reason would they have to come and see me”. Granted there are a group of “do-it-yourselfers” that will take whatever information you can give them and run with it, these are usually not the customers that a “services” company would be looking for to begin with.
   
3. Create Unique and Useful Content: Following a most recent event or providing timely content can be very useful for readers of your blog. Whether you are utilizing creative content or image, even video, make certain that your blog stands out with originality. This is difficult to do. Often times, for us we will come up with an idea or theme for a new post or blog after we have read the thousands of e-mails that we get every day. Giving our opinion on a certain technique or software that we have been solicited for makes for interesting and useful content. At the end of the day you will just want to make certain that you spend time here making your presence different.
   
4. Covering an unpopular topic or controversial opinion: We had completed a blog article, “Do you need a web designer?”, you could imagine that many web developers and designers were very interested in what we had to say. The article title might have been a little misleading as we were not recommending that a company “not work” with a developer or designer, we were simply making the point that most designers do not take search engine optimization into consideration when creating a website. What could you do to make your title more alluring?
   
5. Utilize Anchor Text inside your blog. As you go through your content, make certain to link appropriate text to resources that would be useful for your audience. This is a good time to link to your site as well. So for example, throughout our blog you will notice that we utilize “Denver SEO“, Denver SEO Company“,”SEO Company” or “Denver Internet Marketing”. These obviously are some of the keywords that we would hope to appear on the 1^st page of Google for. You do not want to “keyword stuff” or spam throughout your blog, but using some keywords sparingly can definitely help and boost your rankings. Make certain that you use “alt text” when utilizing anchor text in your blogs as this can add some benefit to your SEO.
   

If your current SEO company is not doing this for you, then you might want to take a more active role in your search engine optimization. Your blog or blogs will have a lot to do with your campaign, so make certain that you invest the time necessary to differentiate your blog and make it useful.

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By: Cade Lee

I have read several articles and discussion on forums about “Keyword-Rich Domains” over the last several months and I though it important to mention a couple of things to be wary of when going out and spending a fortune on domains that seem like they might make sense for your business and major keywords. I should begin with what a “Keyword-Rich” domain is for those that are new to this and have never heard the term before.  A “Keyword-Rich” Domain is simply a domain name containing the major keywords relevant to the site and SEO campaign that you are targeting. So as an example, in our industry many of the SEO professionals in Denver target the keyword “Denver SEO“. When you search for “Denver SEO” you will notice that www.denverseo.net is the 5^th result. Digging deeper this site has a PR of 3 compared to many of it’s competitors who have earned a page rank of 4 or higher. This domain does have some age as it was created on May 03, 2006 so it is around 3 ½ years old. According to Google, there is one backlink from a web design directory, after further research we were able to determine that the domain has around 523 backlinks. When we compare this to some of the other competing websites that are ranked just below this website like www.hyperdogmedia.com, which has a PR 4, 2 backward links according to Google and according to our research this domain has well over 2085 backlinks. So how is it that a site like Hyperdog’s is ranked below DenverSeo.net? According to some SEO professionals it would be due to the “exact match bonus“. There are many other factors that go into the rankings, but this is definitely a factor as it has been discussed by many internet marketing professionals.

According to some very savvy (at least in my opinion) internet marketing pros, an exact match bonus is awarded for just that, an exact match. Having a domain that contains most the keywords plus some stop words would mean less of a bonus or none at all. So utilizing dashes in between keywords, stop words or other characters tends to penalize any kind of exact match bonus you might have received. If we go back to our original search, you will notice that many domains rank higher for the keyword “Denver SEO” than www.denverseo.net, so with hard work and useful content it is definitely possible to outrank keyword rich domains. Another example of this is the keyword “SEO” which is a very competitive keyword with well over 190,000,000 results. You will notice that www.seobook.com outranks www.seo.com by two positions. Once again this comes down to content, and site popularity. While keyword rich domains are absolutely beneficial, it does not seem to be the most important factor in obtaining a solid position on page one of Google in the SERPs for the keywords that you are targeting. As a matter of fact, we have seen clients that have a portfolio of keyword rich domains only to have those domains not even rank. It is a fact that keyword rich domains can be a benefit if used properly.

In our experience some misuses of keyword-rich domains are the following:

• Domain Redirecting
  
• Domain Cloaking
  
• Domain Mirroring/Masking
  

Domain Masking or Mirroring: This is really hiding the actual domain name of a website from the URL field of a user’s web browser in favor of another name.” So in the real world this means that the webmaster has placed a mask overlaying the real domain name and usually it’s content as well. So, when someone uses the new keyword-rich domain name in our case, it is really forwarding to another domain without changing the address in the address bar. The user will continue to see the keyword-rich domain regardless of the URL they are visiting.

Domain Cloaking: Usually considered a black hat technique. To put it simply, the content presented to the indexing spiders is different to that which is presented to the end user’s browser. This can be done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. So ultimately if the visitor is identified as a “bot” or “indexing spider”, the server-side script will deliver a different version of the web page being called, usually content which is not present on the visible page. This technique is used to deceive search engines so they will display the page when otherwise the search engine would not display it.

Domain Redirecting: This is often times referred to as URL redirecting as well. Domain redirecting takes all traffic that comes through the new domain and redirects that traffic to the main domain. Redirecting is not necessarily “black hat”, however it needs to be done correctly so as not to confuse the search engines. If domain redirecting is done incorrectly than you could risk raising a red flag for duplicate content which would force the search engines to accept only one domain with that content. The biggest risk one faces with domain redirecting is raising a red flag that you are trying to “manipulate” the search engines to obtain a better rank with just the use of keyword rich domains.

Using any other method than redirecting such as domain mirroring, masking, cloaking or aliases can ultimately confuse the search engines as they will have indexed the same content under a different domain name. The major search engines will then select one of the domain names for that content which leaves your other domains out of the SERPs. So you would actually be leaving it up to the search engines to decide which domain will show in the rankings. This could mean that you would actually lose the page rank given to your original main site.

The other problem with Domain Cloaking, Mirroring and Masking is that the search engines suspect you are using “black hat” tactics to manipulate your rankings and all domains are banned. The safest way to redirect is using a 301 redirect or permanent redirect. All domains should be permanently directed to the main domain name which would be the central location online for all of the company’s products and brands.

In conclusion, before you go out and buy every keyword-rich domain that you can, make sure you do some research as to what makes up a good domain for the exact match bonus. After purchasing the domains, make certain that you redirect correctly so that you do not suffer the wraith of being banned from the major search engines.

Cade Lee is a Denver Internet Marketing Professional with Iniquitous, Inc. Iniquitous, Inc. is a Denver SEO Company specializing in search engine optimization and internet marketing.

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Can alt text really help your SEO campaign?

Often times as I read through all of the resources online for internet marketing, I read about the importance of “on-site” optimization. We have discussed it ourselves in the past (onsite optimization). Something I don’t think we had discussed was the importance of keyword use in the alt text or title tags. Granted many have disagreed with the importance of alt text or title text in the SEO community. It is important to understand that there is not a SEO professional that I have met who knows the algorithms intimately. So while there are many opinions that using alt text or title tags does not provide a benefit to your search engine campaign, I would respectfully disagree as I will prove with an example.

We should probably begin with the explanation of “alt text“. The entire purpose of alt text was to give a description of the image if the image could not be loaded properly as well as a resource for the handicapped (especially the blind) so that as their “text reading” program described and read the page, they would be provided with a description of the image. The attribute can be applied to many different forms of media including video, but is primarily used for images.

So, why bother with alt text on images? As previously stated, alt text will provide screen readers and text readers with a description of the image, this also applies for the spiders that index the content of your website. By labeling images and media with alt text you are giving the search engines a description of media that they could not otherwise relate to your media. Surely by now you know that Google or any other search engine for that matter cannot see or comprehend what your image is without some kind of description from you the webmaster. So, they (the search engines) actually need you to tell them what an image represents. This is an awesome opportunity for you to influence the position in the search engines.

In the case of a project that we managed for a pet related business, we took the opportunity to label all pictures of the dogs with the name and breed of the dog. We resubmitted the sitemap to all the major search engines as well as created links to the pages as usual. Over the next several weeks we started to see a huge increase in the amount of traffic that we were obtaining for this account. The images were actually bringing in traffic themselves as they had been indexed and those searchers that were looking for images of the dogs that we had described were visiting our customer’s site after they had located the images!

Over the next several weeks, we noticed yet another increase in traffic as other sites were linking to our images and the pages containing the images from their sites. This brought in another wave of traffic. This project realized over 100% increase in organic traffic by simply utilizing alt text and title tags throughout the pages of our customer’s website.

I am not suggesting that alt text on all of the images of your site will increase traffic by 100%. At the end of the day, most of us are not in the pet industry or any industry for that matter where customers are looking for pictures of our product or services regularly. For example, if I labeled everyone of the images on our site with the keywords “Denver SEO“, it is very unlikely that I will obtain that many visitors from the images of my site; however, if I could get one of my images to show up in the organic rankings then perhaps my listing would stick out among all of my competitors as I would be one of the only results that had an image next to my title.

In conclusion, there is absolutely no way that completing alt text could hurt your campaign. Sure it is an additional step while completing your onsite optimization, but the time invested seems like it would be worthwhile considering that it is a small investment. I do want to emphasize that I do not believe that alt text will make or break your search engine optimization campaign, but I do believe it is worthwhile to add this element to your site. Making your site more useful to your users is what we all want to accomplish, so make certain that you are not keyword stuffing the tags and using legitimate short descriptions as this could definitely help your rankings for long tail keywords as well. At the end of the day, if nothing else, alt text will at least make your site more accessible to the search engines and those that access your site with screen readers, etc. If you are working with a seo company you would definitely want to check your images and make sure that they have been optimized with alt text or title tags.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) entails a maelstrom of techniques and tactics with the end goal being to improve the ranking of a particular website in the search results of major search engines. Denver SEO can be broken down into two main categories, on site SEO and off site SEO.

On site SEO relies upon excellent content first and foremost. Content must be on topic, relevant, and contain a 5% – 8% keyword (words or phrases) density. This means that for every 100 words of content, five to eight keywords should be used. The keywords that will be used must be carefully researched using tools such as the free Google AdWords keyword tool. When choosing keywords, it is important to remember to think like the customer. What will they be searching for? These same keywords should also be embedded into the website source code via Meta, Title and Heading tags. This will help ensure a high page ranking for these search terms.

Also, the website should be organized with a clear hierarchical structure. Creating a site map will significantly enhance site structure and ability to be scanned by search engines. This will allow search engines to more efficiently scan the target website. The most important information on a given website should be placed at or near the top of the page. This will make it easier for search engines to find the content that you want them to find. Use text instead of images; search engines can only scan text, so all important information must be included in text. This should be done even if the message(s) being conveyed are duplicated in images, banners, etc.

Of even greater importance is off site SEO. This includes back linking to highly ranked sites. For example, you can submit articles to free online repositories with links to your target website embedded in the text. The Google search engine will interpret a page with many back links to highly ranked pages as being of greater importance, and will therefore increase its page ranking. Another tactic is to submit entries to a highly ranked online blog, with excellent content, important keywords and back links where possible. Furthermore, you can join appropriate, and highly ranked, online forums and post useful content with a signature containing a back link to the target website. You should submit your website to the major search engines’ web indices. This will speed up and enhance the optimization process greatly.

SEO is a multifaceted endeavor, and requires ongoing maintenance and tuning. There are many competent companies that are dedicated to carrying out SEO campaigns. If page ranking is extremely important to you, consider outsourcing the project to a professional Denver SEO company.

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Keyword research often relies heavily upon online tools such as Google Analytics.  In doing so, you enter a word or phrase that describes what your site has to offer, and the research tool returns a list of words or phrases related to that description, in descending order of search popularity.

This research will let you know exactly what keywords you should be using in your meta tags, titles, headers, footers, etc.  Don’t entirely ignore search terms that do not rank at the top of your research findings.  Since Google will scan up to 500 characters in keyword tags, you should plan on using all 500 characters for best results.  If the top terms only require 350 characters, for example, you should work your way down the list and fit as many terms into your tags as possible. 

This delves into what some call “long-tail” keywords.  The name is derived from how and where the terms would fall if plotted on a normal curve.  The lower-ranked terms would form a “long-tail” along the descending curve.  Typically, terms that fall beyond the second standard deviation will not be used, simply because the aforementioned 500 characters will be exhausted first.

As important as tags, alt-text, etc. are, diligent keyword research is at least as important.  There is no useful purpose in adding random keywords to your website.  You might get lucky once in a while and choose a popular one, but you will obtain results that are orders of magnitude more effective if you perform keyword research as described herein.

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Most of the sites we have worked on that have been built by “website designers” are not effectively producing leads for that business. We have seen some of the most beautiful websites but without traffic and without new customers what good are they? Your online business should be another source of income and customers. If you trust the right people to work with your website designer than you might have a shot of obtaining both.

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here. Website designers are very useful if their services are used in the correct capacity. Most web designers do not have a clue how to build a website that is developed to convert traffic or drive floods of traffic to the site; most developers that I have talked with would agree. Usually web designers are focused on aesthetics, navigation, look and feel and not placement in the search engines.

So why do you have a website?

Most business owners that I speak with have a website so that they can develop more online business. When I say this, what I mean is they are looking for more prospects or customers online. They definitely want to see some type of return from their website as most of them have spent a small fortune on developing the site to begin with. So if that is the case for you, it is probably best to make certain that the web designer you are working with owns a successful online business and knows also how to run it. They should be able to show you some successful online campaigns that they have led and give you references for their work. Simply showing you websites that they have built is not enough. I know that you want a “pretty” site
but I am certain it is more important that you are able to develop new customers from your site, right? It only stands to reason that your website designer should have the same experience that would deliver the results you are looking to achieve yourself!

Your website is your business online!

Sure it is nice to have a charming storefront, one that customers constantly compliment. Does it bring in cash flow? Is your office, store, garage or retail space built for sales?

These are the same types of questions that you should be asking yourself about your website. Your website is not there to win awards or compliments, you are building this website to make money and build customer relationships. Even if you have the lowest prices online and are providing more services than your nearest competitor, it is the website that attracts more traffic that wins more prospects and customers. Being the best at marketing your product and services is really all that matters at the end of the day. Stop reading this right now, hop on Google and check it out. Use a search term that a customer would use to find your business. If you don’t know what they would type in, go to Google’s free adwords keyword tool and locate a search term related to your business or service. (To locate Google’s free keyword tool simply search for “adwords keyword tool” in Google)

Now, after you have located a popular search term for your business, search it! Open the first “organic” result that you see (by organic, I do not mean any of the “sponsored links” or local listings next to the map), what do you think of your competition’s website? Is it the prettiest site you have seen? Is it the “coolest” site you have ever been too? If I was to place a wager on it, my guess is that it is none of the above. Probably a very average looking site at best, yet all of your prospective customers are coming here first.

Marketing online is not like you’re off-line marketing

On every website project I have ever been a part of it seems that somebody always has a problem with a font that we have chosen or an image that we had used. While branding is extremely important and the look and feel of your website is important as well, it is important to remember that all of the communication tools and techniques that you use in the real world are very different than what works online. Whatever type of marketing you are doing in the real world may be a complete and utter failure online. This is why it is so critical to work with an online marketing agency or consultant who has experience with successful websites. When I state successful, I mean websites that have a proven track record of traffic and generating leads. Usually these types of individuals know what works best for traffic conversion and online marketing. For example, online marketing absolutely requires you to know how to get your site ranked extremely high in search engines like Google and Yahoo so that you organically show up on the first page for customers that are searching for your product or services.

Most website designers and businesses do not know SEO or search engine optimization. If a business owner does know and understand how to optimize their own website; they usually do not have the time to implement all of the tactics and techniques used by a search engine optimization professional to make the campaign successful. It is imperative for any online business to have both an optimized presence as well as a strong marketing campaign online! This means that not only should the site be optimized for search engine optimization but there must be a campaign put in place for search engine marketing.

If you are looking to market online, only work with Internet marketing firms that know website and online marketing

I know it’s a simple statement but probably 97% of web design companies do not know how to create websites that actually market your products and services. Often times when we are talking with prospective customers about search engine optimization they refer to their experience with the larger corporations that have handled their pay per click campaigns and even their “search engine optimization campaigns”. You absolutely must work with people that know how to create “high traffic” websites that can “convert”. A sales representative from one of the larger advertising directories doesn’t usually have knowledge of SEO. Usually he/she can regurgitate whatever pitch their sales manager gave them that morning and sure it sounds good, but will the team behind him/her be able to deliver the product that you were promised? Usually they cannot deliver the results that were originally promised or they are able to show minimal results compared to a firm or company that is dedicated to internet marketing. Internet marketing takes a great deal of time and cannot happen overnight. You’ll need to work with a team that can make it possible for you to have an online revenue stream. These people must have real world experience as well as online experience that can combine your website into a practical functioning marketing machine for your business! The best combination would be a search engine optimization professional that has sales and marketing experience or a marketing company that has proven search engine optimization experience.

If you are attempting to perform search engine optimization or search engine marketing without a professional, that would be very similar to representing yourself in court if you are not a lawyer or building your own house if you are not a general contractor. Granted, I’m certain that you could learn any one of these trades but it is probably best if you focused on the strengths you have in your business rather than trying to focus all of your time and energy on staying up to date with Internet marketing. The most successful businesses and business leaders have developed a team of experts and surrounded themselves with experience.

Lastly, MEASURE THE RESULTS!

It doesn’t matter whether or not you are advertising in the Yellow Pages, newspapers, local trade magazines, or a bulletin board near your office! You will always, always want to measure the success of any marketing campaign to validate its effect on business. It is never a surprise for us to see a prospective client that has absolutely no idea about the amount of traffic they get on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis. Usually they do not know where they get the traffic from, how long visitors are on their website, or what keywords brought them to their site to begin with. You should always pay attention to your key performance indicators for your online strategy and if your web developer has not shown you how to monitor the results of your website, you might want to consider working with a different developer.

At the end of the day, a website developer is absolutely needed to help you with your website; however, they are usually best at working with code, graphics and overall look and feel. An internet marketing professional is what will help you take your online business to the next level. Either a professional search engine marketing firm or agency will help you establish a marketing plan for your site so that you can start to see results from your presence online.

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If you’re reading this article, you obviously understand there is quite a buzz around SEO and internet marketing.  Not only is it becoming a must to be on the first page of Google, you also need to have a presence on all major social networking sites, article and video repositories and directories listings.  Here are some helpful tips on how to avoid getting delisted by search engines so all of your hard work doesn’t go to waste!

Watch your Keyword Density

Your keywords on your web page are very important.  It lets the search engine know what your content is about and what you are trying to target with each page.  Each search engine has keyword density in their algorithm for ranking sites, however, their equation for density differs from one to another meaning their lenience of density allowed before a penalty varies.

If you know anything about SEO, you understand that at least 75% of searchers are using Google – I would think this is a pretty good place to start.  I have heard many SEO’s give the 3-5% rule for keyword density.  In my personal experience, I’ve gotten away with 7% and had great results.  The idea here is to watch you keyword density throughout your web page and never exceed 9%!  If you go over this mark, you are risking a negative reaction from the search engines.  I would say stick between 3-6% here and you should be fine.

Keep your Content Original

If you are running your own SEO campaign, you have and will be investing a ton of time.  Do not take the short cut and use someone else’s content on your web pages – it doesn’t make sense!  Search Engines love original content and in the SEO world, content is king!  It is what separates your page from the next before you even begin to create backlinks.  That being said, why would you want to be on a level playing field from the start with the same content?  Make sure you let the search engines know what separates your page from the competition.  Follow the keyword density rule above and write as much as possible!

Do not allow a search engine to disregard your content because it is a duplicate of someone else’s page. 

Don’t Hide your Content

As much as we don’t want to say it, the search engines (google bots) are actually pretty smart.  They know the difference between visible and invisible content.  Search engines will discredit a web page if they feel you are trying to trick them with text that cannot be read.  Make sure the text on your page is a completely different font and do not hide it behind images.  Make sure you tag your images with keywords but do not make the text invisible.  If you are smart you will have content on your Home page that leads to more content in the site.  

Tip: Publish articles to your home page with “Read More” buttons and your home page will get credit for all of the content on your home page including important keywords and links.

Be Cautious of Your Affiliate Links… too many = negative ranking

Be cautious of adding hundreds of affiliate links along with product descriptions.  If you have too many affiliate links on your website, Google will drop you down the listings.”

I hope this article has helped you understand exactly not what to do to a web page.  An SEO Campaign involves blood, sweat and tears which we don’t want to go to waste by getting delisted.  Search Engines do not like keyword stuffing, duplicate or invisible content and too many outside links.

Nick Hantge is a SEO Professional with Iniquitous, a Denver SEO Firm. Nick Specializes in organic search engine optimization, traffic analysis and conversion as well as SEO coaching in Denver (303) 999-7963.

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A search engine is basically an information finding system in a computer that helps one find out information they are trying to find. They dramatically cut down the time needed to find the information one is looking for.

The concept of optimizing a website for the search engines began in the mid 1990s when webmasters saw the benefit on high ranking of their sites.

In earlier years webmasters were able to manipulate their websites with the result of them being able to get high ranking in the search engines regardless of whether the content of their web page was actually relevant to the targeted keyword or not.

Over time the search engine computations of the relevance of a particular web page to a particular keyword or set of keywords became more sophisticated so that the search engine could tell what web pages were relevant to a keyword being searched for and what web pages had just been manipulated just to gain traffic. This was done by those computing by being able to determine the quality and strength of incoming or inbound links to a web page. This system however was still not foolproof as webmasters were still able to manipulate by exchanging, buying or selling for the higher quality links to their sites. From that point on other factors were entered in to the computations the search engines use in ranking pages. This information is not available to webmasters and the public at large.

There are companies that are search engine optimization companies. The service they sell to the public is to optimize their website to give it the best possibility of higher ranking with the search engines. If their techniques are too aggressive the effect may be detrimental to their clients to a point where their websites could be banned from search results. Not something you would want to pay someone for.

Some of the search engines have made efforts to communicate with the search engine optimization companies to get their efforts aligned for everyones benefit. There are those who use search engine optimization (SEO) to conform with the desires and wishes of the search engines and there are those who seek to get around the search engine rules and guidelines to get what traffic they can until they are caught.

It is a good practice to mix a campaign using search engine optimization with one of a good paying campaign. The reason for this is that the computations that the search engines use do change and one may see a drop in unpaid traffic due to this factor. It is also a good practice to avoid search engine optimization companies that make false promises they can not deliver, that guarantee a top rank with Google, that are secretive, that are nondescript about where your money goes, etc.

(Source: www.denverseoinfo.wordpress.com)

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SEO Tips For You

These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily

Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins

No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms… SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche – you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time. I make this clarification because you must understand search

engines, especially Google, are constantly redefining how they rank pages. Here are my favorite SEO tips, tactics and strategies:

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches.

Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don’t forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting “long-tail” keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it – keeping

a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords… are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be

keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site – make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name

also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don’t ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google’s influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my

niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords but don’t ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don’t forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant

sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 – 700 word informative and helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters… plus other major online sites. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you’re also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don’t forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages… to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts – a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts.  Works similar as a sub-domain

but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you’re creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress Blog Software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter… media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati… you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It’s time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a

WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on

all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don’t want SEO – you want effective SEO. In order

to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you’re pursuing – your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That’s why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what’s been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived

authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site – tops in your niche – the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you’re into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you’re seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.

…

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools If you liked the SEO tips above, why not try the Free 7 Day Traffic course here: Internet Marketing Course Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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Eric Giguere’s unofficial and long-running blog about Google’s AdSense program. He also covers contextual advertising and related topics.

From: The Unofficial AdSense Blog

By: Eric Giguere

As I’ve argued before (see It’s All About The Traffic, Stupid!), you need traffic to make money with a website. It doesn’t matter if you’re monetizing with AdSense, affiliate offers, CPA offers, or some other advertising system — no traffic, no conversions; no conversions, no money.

One way to get traffic is to show up in the top 10 results for a well-searched keyword phrase on Google. This is the Holy Grail of Free Traffic. But it can be very hard to hit that top 10, or even the top 20.

There is a way to do it on a temporary basis, though, with some effort. I call it the “Google ranking bounce”.

Here’s how it works: Google currently gives a “freshness boost” to newly-published content. If the site that hosts the content is authoritative enough, this freshness boost can be enough to temporarily catapult the new content into the top 30 results for the content’s main keyword. (We’re assuming good on-page SEO here, of course, with the main keyword in the title of the page and ideally also in the URL itself, plus sprinkled appropriately throughout the content.) The boost lasts for 2 or 3 days, after which the page will “slide down” to its natural rank, there to stay until it gets pushed up through “natural” means (i.e. link acquisition). The page may in fact disappear for a few days from the index before reappearing.

I’ve seen this boost happen on my own sites (I have a few old domains) and on sites like EzineArticles. You can get a real, but unfortunately temporary, traffic boost from this rankings boost.

So what do you do? Write several articles/posts of content targeted at the main keyword and then publish them several days apart. If you’ve done it right, the freshness boost will ensure that one of your articles is continually in the top 10/20/30 until your supply of content is exhausted.

This is not easy to do, and it takes real effort to write all that content. The best place to start is with EzineArticles, I think. Find a high-volume search term that displays two articles from EzineArticles in the top 10. You won’t be able to displace the first article, but you can probably temporarily push out the second article. You’ll be surprised at how many times your article will be viewed. It’s temporary, of course, and only some of the traffic will make it to your own site, but it’s a cheap way to get some good, targeted traffic.

If you try this technique, let me know how it goes for you. It definitely takes work, though. The good thing is that over time all the content you write will itself reach critical mass and help you rank higher in the future.

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