SEO Checklist: 60 essential checks before launching a website

Launching a brand new website or publishing a new site version is typically a straight forward process given that it is well planned and well organized. Failing to take into account all the known ranking factors or failing to build an SEO-friendly website can lead to low rankings in Search Results. As a result before publishing a website, the Webmasters and the SEO professionals should validate that they are aligned with the best current practices and that they have not made important mistakes in their SEO campaigns. In this article we provide a detailed SEO checklist in which we have the most essential checks that one should make before publishing a website online.

Keyword Optimization

Having well written/optimized texts and using the right keywords right is extremely important in SEO. Make sure that before launching your website, you can give a positive answer to all the questions below:

1. Did I conductive an extensive keyword research? Did I find all the popular terms that are relevant to my industry/niche/website? 2. Did I choose the targeted keywords wisely? Have I made sure that I can compete for the selected terms?
3. Did I write unique, high quality texts that will be considered useful both by the Users and by the Search Engines? Have I performed a spelling check to all of my texts?
4. Do I have unique titles and descriptions in all the pages of the website?
5. Did I add all the important keywords in the page Titles, the Meta-Descriptions and the HTML Headings (H1-H6)? Have I optimized my texts for those keywords?
6. Are the Titles and Meta-Descriptions compelling for the users? Will they click on my page if it appears on Search Engine Results?
7. Did I use keyword combinations that are likely to be searched by users? Have I optimized my pages for those keyword combinations? Did I incorporate in the text synonyms that are likely to be used in the queries?
8. Do I have a descriptive alt text in all the images of my website?
9. Have I ensured that the content is not over-optimized, that there is no hidden text in the pages and that no Keyword Stuffing techniques are used?
10. Did I keep my pages targeted by focusing on a small number of keywords per page?
11. Have I kept the content of my pages relevant to my website’s theme? Am I sure that I have not optimized my pages for irrelevant terms?
12. Are the most important keywords of my page in the beginning of the document?
13. Did I make sure that my pages will not compete each other on SERPs and that I do not have lots of different pages optimized for exactly the same keywords?

Note that by using SEO Tools you can speed up your checks. Analyze your pages by using the Keyword Analyzer in order to ensure that your pages are targeted and optimized for your selected keywords. Additionally the SERP Analysis tool can help you analyze and evaluate the competition and see if it is possible to compete for the selected terms.

Website Development

The techniques that are used in order to develop a website are extremely important and they affect the SEO. So ask yourself the following questions and make sure you have done everything properly.

14. Is my website well coded? Is it cross-browser? Have I made sure that my pages contain no broken HTML that is likely to affect the analysis of the site? 15. Have I developed my website by using Search Engine friendly technologies? Is someone able to access my website without requiring him to use Flash, Silverlight, JavaScript/AJAX, Java applets, frames etc?
16. Is my menu visible from all the pages and is it developed in HTML so that the search engines can find the rest of the pages?
17. Is my site easy to be crawled? Do I provide text links for all the pages of my website?
18. Do I use properly the meta-robots tags?
19. Did I take steps to eliminate duplicate content by focusing on the Link Architecture, by doing 301 redirects when required and by using proper canonical tags?
20. Did I make sure that I don’t use unnecessary or incorrect HTTP redirections?
21. Do I redirect the non-www version of my website to the www version or vise versa?
22. What is the loading time of my website? Have I done everything I can to reduce it?
23. Am I certain that I do not do Cloaking and that I have no Doorway pages?

Note that you can check several of the above (HTML Validation, Meta-Robots usage, Spider View, Page Analysis etc) by using the Web SEO Analysis tool. Additionally you can check the similarity percentage between two pages by using the Duplicate Content Tool.

Link Structure, URLs and Links

In several articles in the past we have discussed how important it is to develop a solid link structure. Below we list the most essential checks that are related to the link structure, the URLs and the links:

24. Did I incorporate the important keywords in my URLs? 25. Have I ensured that my URLs are not too lengthy or too spammy?
26. Am I sure that no Session IDs (or other unnecessary variables) appear in my URLs?
27. Are my URLs static and SEO friendly (they do not include the “?” char)?
28. Do I use dashes instead of underscores in my URLs?
29. Have I ensured that I do not have too many outgoing links per page?
30. Do the anchor texts of my internal links contain important keywords? Are their text short but descriptive? Are these keywords the same with the ones that I selected during keyword optimization?
31. Do I have an optimized Link Structure? Do I use a tree-like architecture where the top level pages are the most important pages of my website?
32. Have I linked the most important pages directly from homepage or from the top categories?
33. Have I ensured that most of my PageRank/Link Juice passes to my internal pages and that there are not too many links pointing to external sites or dangling pages?
34. Have I eliminated all the links that point to different versions of the same page, causing duplicate content problems?
35. Have I eliminated all the broken links?
36. Do I use meaningful internal anchors when necessary?
37. Am I 100% sure that I do not have any hidden, spammy or paid links in my site?
38. Do I usually use text links instead of image links, when I point to an internal page?
39. Have I nofollowed the links that I do not trust? Have I decided on whether I will do PageRank sculpting?

In order get a detailed view of how the PageRank flows within your site and what is the link structure of your webpages, make sure you use the Link Structure Tool. It will provide you with detailed statistics and graphs along with all the data you require to evaluate your current link architecture.

Domains & Hosting

Both domain names and hosting can heavily affect the performance of your website and your SEO campaign, so make sure you check the followings:

40. Have I checked that my domain has no previous bans from search engines? 41. Does the domain name contain any useful/relevant keywords?
42. Have I selected the TLD of the domain wisely? Am I certain of why I want to use a generic or a country specific TLD?
43. Do I understand what are the benefits and the tradeoffs of using subdomains?
44. Do I know in which country my website is hosted? Am I certain that the website should be hosted in that country? (Given that the server location is a signal)
45. Is my hosting company reliable? Do they update/patch their servers regularly? Do they offer the necessary modules that will help me build an SEO Friendly Website? What is the uptime percentage? What are the loading times? How many sites are hosted under the same IP?

Off Page and other Checks

After checking your webpages you need to ensure that all the necessary files have been built, that all of the necessary accounts are created and that you are ready to go live. Check out the followings and make sure you have not forgotten any of the basics:

46. Did I create XML and/or HTML sitemaps? Have I submitted them to the search engines? 47. Have I created a robots.txt file? Do I know exactly which pages I have to block? Am I certain that I want to block those pages?
48. Have I created an account on Google, Bing and Yahoo Webmaster Tools? (Yes you should still use Yahoo tools until they are fully integrated with Bing).
49. Have I created a Google Analytics account (or use a similar Web Analytics service)? Have I added the tracking code in all the pages of my website? Am I sure? Am I 100% sure?
50. Have I set up an RSS feed (mainly for blogs and news websites)? Do I use the RSS autodiscovery technique? Have I added the RSS URL on the HTML Header of my pages?
51. Do I understand what are the benefits and the tradeoffs of using Geo location? Have I decided on whether I should use it on my website?
52. Have I evaluated the design on my website? Have I set up the call to actions?
53. Have I setup the scripts to monitor user’s activity?
54. Have I decided on whether I will do A/B testing?
55. Have I developed a solid Link Building strategy? Have I gathered all the relevant high traffic directories of my industry and the search engine’s local listings where I can submit my business? Do I know which websites link to my competitors? Do I have a plan on how to acquire high quality links?
56. Have I decided on whether I should use Social Media to promote my brand? Have I developed a solid Social Media strategy? Did I add the social media buttons in my website? Have I created the profiles?
57. Have I tested my website by using the Web SEO Analytics Toolbox? How can I improve the site based on the SEO reports?
58. Am I positive that I use no blackhat techniques and that I do not violate Google ‘s Guidelines?
59. Have I created the Email accounts, the FTP accounts etc? Have I set up everything?
60. Have I tested thoroughly my website? Am I ready to go live?

I strongly believe that if you complete all of the checks that are described above and if you use this SEO checklist you will be able to detect most of the flaws that can damage your SEO campaign. I wish you the best of luck and I am looking forward to your suggestions and comments.

What other SEO checks do you perform before launching a website?

The Top 10 Things to Consider When Searching for a Professional SEO Company

Nowadays, it seems that everyone does search engine optimization, or at least make the claim. But it’s more than just developing good content and slapping on a few meta tags. True SEO takes a lot of research, implementation, monitoring, and time. It truly is its own service. I suggest seeking out a company that specializes in SEO for the best results possible.

When it comes to shopping around for a quality SEO company, many are not sure where to begin. There are multitudes of SEO companies out there offering different services at different rates. That being said, I have put together a list of what I believe to be the “top 10 things to consider” when looking for the right Search Marketing agency – A guide to finding your diamond in the rough.

1. Guarantees specific rankings

No reputable SEO company will ever make such a claim! It states within the Google Webmaster Guidelines,”No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” And no companies run Google or have any “insider secrets” to their complex ranking algorithm. Google does not just hand out #1 rankings. If they did, I would be out of a job.

 

2. Offers instant results

Rankings take time. It can take weeks to months for a page to increase in Google search results. Plus, your site will be competing against other sites for relevancy and popularity.

 

3. Guarantees an amount of Inbound links

The important thing to focus on is your content – keep it fresh and relevant. It can take time, but you want your links to be valuable. Quality inbound links are created by humans and can be born and die at any time, so they cannot be guaranteed – be sure the company does NOT buy the links.

 

4. Does not offer understandable reports

You want to know where all your money is going, right? And wouldn’t it be great to be informed on what keywords have risen and dropped in rankings? If they cannot offer concrete results, there is something wrong.

 

5. How does their site look

“If you can talk the talk, then you can walk the walk”: clean and simple – does their site look good and is it optimized? If they cannot even promote themselves, how are they going to help you?

 

6. Unsolicited offers

If you open a generic looking email template offering you their services, then you probably have received a spam email. Do not get me wrong, there is a difference between a company reaching out to you, and a company reaching out to thousands with the same email. Most reputable companies will not reach out to you unless there is a reason for it.

 

7. Does not offer insights

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t it the job of the agency to lend a hand in your search efforts? After all, you did hire them. Not only should they be offering assistance on ways for your site to rank higher, but also show you where these insights are coming from (this is where reporting comes in).

 

8. How much do they cost

Good quality SEO is not cheap. When it comes to cost, SEO services prices varies greatly. On one end of the spectrum, you will have a company offering you the world for practically nothing, and on the other hand, there are companies who charge in the thousands for their services. It is best to keep in mind, you pay for what you get.

 

9. Does not do in-depth keyword research

Understanding how people perform searches related to your brand is the foundation of SEO. Slacking off here can mean the difference between having a successful campaign or not. If you do not know how your customer is searching for your brand or products, then how are you going to reach them?

 

10. Does not Perform black-hat SEO practices

This is very important, and may be hard to spot by the untrained SEO eye. What is important here is making sure the company practices good ole’ SEO practices – make sure they follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Black-hat SEO is not only unethical (buying links, stuffing a site with keywords, etc), but it also can get you banned from Google. If it appears that the company is trying to be sly and pull a fast one on Google, then step away. We all saw how JC Penney got ratted out and Google-slapped.
Once you weed out the competition and narrow it down to some worthy prospects, here are some questions you might want to ask about their agency (just to make sure they are up to snuff):

1. Can you show me some recent case studies?
2. Does your company abide by the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
3. How long have you been in business?
4. How familiar are you with my industry?
5. How do you measure success?
6. Will you supply me with reports?
7. How often will we be in contact?

These questions should help you get even closer to finding what you are looking for. Also, do not be afraid to ask questions. You want an agency that wants to hear everything you have to say. This only gives them more information on creating a winning game plan for your site.
When in doubt, keep this in mind: “You pay for what you get.” And not to be cynical, but if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

Remember, the goal of SEO is to ensure that the content of your site is matched and displayed on search engines results from relevant search queries – It is all about the end user and what they are searching for. This type of process is not over night and takes a lot of time and care to implement. Even though companies offer it as an add-on package, it truly is its own niche. A truly dedicated search company, who primarily focuses on quality SEO services, will often provide the best results.
Do not become a victim of bad SEO. Use this guide and find the right internet marketing company and speak with a search engine optimization consultant who can aid you in devising a strategic plan that works best for you and your company.

SEO new technic Link Trundle

Establishing link wheels to one’s money site with various high performance web 2.0 property sites like Squidoo Lens, HubPages, Blogger or WordPress has become the order of the day because these sites have gained the stature of authority sites that are easily picked up by the major search engines. There are lots of advancements taking place in the way links are established between the money site and the authority sites. Where a few opt for a traditional closed link wheel, it is slowly giving place to clients asking for not closing the link wheel at all.

We at Blurbpoint perfectly understand the way in which Link Wheels affect your business and hence are in an extremely comfortable position to execute whatever you have in mind. At the same time, our SEO consultants can also advice on which method would be ideal for your kind of business as they are constantly updated with the emerging techniques in establishing link wheels.

At Blurbpoint, we offer Link Wheel services in five different packages so that you could choose the one that fits right for your kind of business. If you are unsure about how the entire thing would work positively for your business, U may try our Starter package and witness the positive results for yourself. You will get a detailed submission report of what all has been done and a Unique C class IP, user name and password are provided.

Link Trundle Key Features :

We leverage the power of high performance based web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Blogger, and WordPress so as to build backlinks directed to your money site. Search Engines values these sites very high and when content related to your website is posted on the web 2.0 sites it can rank high in the search results. Through link wheel, you could get links from powerful sites to your money site which is the major crux of the entire link wheel strategy.

 

In any link wheel scenario, each and every web 2.0 property site is linked to the money site (your website) and also to one another so as to form a closed loop. By doing so, the link juice passes to your site as well as each and every web 2.0 property sites that are linked thereby enhancing the power of both the sides. We also take advantage of social bookmarking in order to bookmark the authority sites so that the chances of getting good page ranks are strengthened further.

 

We further focus on creating link wheels with the authority sites and link them to your main money site so that your website is present all over the web in the relevant niche and ranks high in the search. At Blurbpoint, we perfectly understand that creating good link wheels is indeed a powerful technique that would boost your website ranking and helps you reach your target audience.

 

We provide only unique content for each and every submission that is made on the web 2.0 property sites and not any kind of spun articles.

Anchor Text Can Improve Your SEO

Anchor text is the words you use to link to another web page. It's normally indicated with a different color and underlining, like this:

Anchor text is put to its best use when you choose relevant keywords to link to your destination.

In the example above, the anchor text - "relevant keywords" - is indicated with both an underline and blue text. If you click on the link, you'll be taken to an article that explains how keyword research helps you find the best relevant keywords for your business purpose. The anchor text gives you a good idea of what you can expect to find when you click the link.

What Anchor Text Tells Search Engines

Anchor text is even more important to search engines than it is to people. Search engines use links from one web page to another to discover new pages, and they pay attention to the anchor text associated with a link. That anchor text can tell the engines what the page is about....if it's been thoughtfully chosen.

For example, which sentence below do you think will tell search engines what the linked page is about?

Using Anchor Text for SEO Within Your Site

Thoughtfully linking between pages on your site is an important way to boost your site's search engine optimization (SEO). When you link from many different pages to one specific page on your site, you're telling search engines that page is important.

You may have a particular page you'd like to see ranking well in search results for a specific keyword or keyword phrase. You can help this happen by linking to that important page from a number of pages on your site, using the keyword phrase as anchor text.

For example, a site selling cosmetics might want to boost its sales of acne care products. If the site has a blog offering helpful hints on skin care and makeup techniques, the people writing the blog posts can occasionally address the issue of acne, using the keywords "acne care" or "acne treatment" to link to the page where acne care products are displayed and sold.

You should not indiscriminately link between all pages on your site, nor use keywords in places where they don't really fit. Common sense should tell you that if everything is important, nothing is important, and search engine algorithms are built to mimic common sense.

Make sure you tell search engines - and the people visiting your site - which pages really do matter by linking to them where it makes sense, using the anchor text that's most appropriate for the linked page and the context.

Beware: Too Much Anchor Text Can Backfire on You

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Overdoing the anchor text is just as ineffective as keyword stuffing. In both cases, someone is trying to get a web page to rank well for a specific keyword or keyword phrase by using the words way too much - so much that the text reads unnaturally, or completely lacks coherent meaning.

Search engines can tell when a keyword is repeated too often, whether it's used as anchor text or not. Bottom line: Link where it's natural to do so, and use relevant words for your anchor text.

What Should I Do About Anchor Text in External Links?

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Inbound links from high-authority websites are one of the best indicators that a web page is valuable. And the anchor text those links are built on tell search engines what a web page is about.

That's why people are often tempted to buy links to their site, and why there are so many people selling links. However, Google and sophisticated SEO professionals caution webmasters against buying links. Google and other search engines want all linking to be natural - that is, for every link to reflect someone's judgement that a web page is valuable.

The anchor text should flow naturally from that judgement, too. For example, an owner of a dog care blog would naturally link to a superior flea-control product on text like "flea control," "flea soap," "flea comb" or simply, "kills fleas."

That's in a perfect world. The fact is, many people find it easier and more natural to write "click here" or "read this," and then link on that text, rather than on keywords that are relevant for the page they're linking to.

You can't control who links to you or how they link to you. But you can keep track of inbound links to your site, and communicate with the people who have created those links.

It's a friendly gesture to email the webmaster or owner of a site that has linked to you to say "thank you." At the same time, you can politely ask them to change the anchor text they're using, and to include the keywords that matter most to you.

If a site that links to you is relevant to your site - and it probably is - it's an even nicer gesture to write something about that site, and link to it with relevant anchor text. Bonus points for asking in advance which keywords matter most to them.

Don't Buy Inbound Links!

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It can't be said too many times: Buying inbound links is a no-no. So is meaningless link exchanging, and other schemes for amassing lots of inbound links very quickly.

Link buying and link exchange schemes undermine the entire premise of the Web: that linking between web pages is a reliable indicator of what pages are about, and which pages are the most valuable.

Google has sophisticated ways of detecting paid links and links resulting from exchange schemes. At best, the links you buy or barter won't help your site's pages rank well in search results. At worst, your pages will be deemed worthless, and banished to the furthest reaches of search results.

Need more convincing? Link buying and link exchanges are explicitly called out as a bad practice in Google's own guidelines:

From Google Webmaster Central

Bottom line: The best way to get inbound links is by creating great content that people will want to share. You can make sure more people see your great content by promoting it on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Keyword Research Lifeblood Of Any Online Business

The lifeblood of any online business is traffic and the subject is one that interests Internet Marketers all over the world. It’s a fairly simple process but one that people generally find difficult, so here we present a simple guide to the subject – no bull or frills, just simple, straightforward advice on how to make sure you get tons of traffic and therefore tons of sales!
The first step is to pick the right url. Google has suggested that keyword rich url’s will be downgraded in importance but there is no sign of this happening anytime soon.
Let’s take an example. Suppose you have a plan for a new site which is all about making pasta. What domain name should you choose? This depends on the number of searches which people make for specific search terms. So lets take a look at some typical search terms around the subject and see if we can choose a good one. You can use a number of paid tools to look at typical search terms – such as Market Samurai – but Google has a free tool which is very good. You can use it by going to: Google AdWords: Keyword Tool So let’s add the keywords “making pasta” and see

You can see from this list that “making pasta” has 18100 searches a month, however “how to make pasta” has 74000 searches a month. Even “how to make pasta sauce” has 27100 searches a month. The next question is to see if any of these are available as a domain name. There are a number of sites which provide the ability to check availability. We use namecheap.com – and a quick check reveals that both howtomakepastasauce.net and howtomakepastasauce.org are both currently available!

Once you have a suitable url it’s time to find some suitable keywords and use them to name pages and categories on your website. This is done in exactly the same way and you are obviously not restricted in the phrases that you choose. Simply pick the phrases that have good search numbers and not too much competition.

The simple aim here is get the site ranked in the search engine rankings for your chosen term…..and a future article will show you how. It’s important to ensure that the major search engines have indexed your site….meaning that they know it exists and can judge a suitable ranking for it. You can inform the search engines each time you update your site or add new content. This is called “pinging”. Basically this is telling the search engines that new content exists and they come and crawl it and rank the site again. Many sites exist to automatically ping the search engines and one of the best is Pingler.com

SEO for WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular website platforms around and it’s naturally suited to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Here we will take a look at the subject of SEO in more detail and provide some guidelines based on our experience in building websites over many years. Search Engine Optimization is basically divided into on page and off page optimization.

On Page Optimization

On page describes those essential modifications you need to make to your site to make it easy to crawl by the search engines. WordPress has a number of settings which need to be changed in order to better optimize the site.

The first setting to change is Permalinks. This can be found in the admin panel under “Settings” and then “Permalinks”. The default setting uses web URL’s which include numbers and question marks but a custom structure can be constructed for the permalinks. To change the settings, click the radio button marked “Custom structure” and then in the available space enter “/%postname%/” without the quotes. Then click on “Save Changes”. Posts and pages will now be named correctly with the titles showing as part of the URL.

It is also necessary to optimize your posts for SEO. Think carefully when naming posts and make good use of your chosen keywords. The keywords should appear regularly on post and page titles without looking too obvious. Don’t forget to also include alt tags for all images. Search Engines expect this and if a reader is browsing the site using a web browser that does not readily support images then they will still see a description of the image. This is another opportunity to use keywords and all images should contain a description as an Alt tag. If you don’t know how to do this then there are a number of plugins which can do it for you.

Post titles should use the H1 tag in html and nothing else. The site’s name should also be a H1 on the front page and nothing more than a H3 on posts and category pages. WordPress does a pretty good job of getting these right but its worth checking them. They can be seen in the post.php and page.php templates which can easily be edited.

One other area which is often overlooked is to make sure that your site loads quickly. Sites that load slowly are penalized by the search engines. The easiest way to speed up the load time for your site is to install a caching plugin. These work by saving a local copy of certain pages and posts and then check to see if anything has changed since the copy was saved. If not then the page or post is loaded from the cache which is quicker than making more calls to the database for the information.

Off Page Optimization

As the name suggests, this means optimization by making sure that the website can be seen by search engines to an extent that it moves up the Search Engine Ranking Pages. One of the most important aspects of off page optimization is to maximize the number of back links. These are links from other websites to yours. The more back links you have the more your site will rise in the rankings. It can be thought of as a type of popularity voting system – back links from sites which Google ranks highly are worth more than back links from sites which it ranks less highly. The best way of obtaining back links is to ensure your site has relevant and quality content. This will increase the likelihood of other sites linking to you. It is possible to look at the back links of competing sites by using a variety of software tools such as Market Samurai or SEO Spyglass.

The other very important aspect of SEO is to make sure that Google indexes your site content – which it does by crawling the site using an automated bot – Google’s crawler is affectionately known as “Googlebot”. Once the site has been crawled the search engine knows that new content has been added and the site can be re-ranked – hopefully higher – as a result.

These site crawlers can take some time to find new content and it’s possible to let the search engines and other sites know you have new content by “pinging” them. This means that you are telling the search engine and other sites that you have changed or added to your site and they should come back and crawl the content or provide a back link to the site. There are a number of tools to automatically “Ping” search engines and other sites and one of the best is Pingler.com. They offer a basic premium account in which 25 links or websites can be stored and pinged regularly automatically. Try it and see just what a difference it makes to your search engine visibility and traffic!

Importance of Google Webmaster Tools

The whole idea of Google Webmaster Tools is to provide website owners with the means to improve their sites visibility on the web and also diagnose a number of different errors (if they exist). If you don’t have a Google account then you will have to create one before you can use Google Webmaster Tools. The first step when you log into your account is to actually verify that you own a site. Enter the URL of your site and you will be a choice of options to verify ownership. You can either paste a META tag on your home page or upload a html file. Once you have done this then Google checks that the change has been made and if it has then Google knows you have control of the site.

Once verified, you will now be able to manage your profile by clicking on the “Manage: yourwebsite.com” link on the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard. There are a number of different options and we will look at some of the more important here.

Diagnostics

This tool allows you to check if your site has any errors. These can be 404 errors, excluded pages or a multitude of other errors such as URL’s not followed, URL’s timed out or unreachable URL links. The Google website crawler will check all of your site and report on what it finds.

Top Search Queries

This is a great feature of Google Webmaster Tools and allows you to see where people are coming from when they enter a Google search. You will see a list of search queries and also the number of times each search query was clicked. One very interesting feature is that you can also see where in the Search Engine Rankings that your site was listed for a given search phrase.

Links

This feature examines all the links on your site and allows you to see and measure link popularity, either external or internal. You may, for example, be interested in seeing how a particular link on your site is used and how often. The Google Webmaster Tools: Links feature will tell you the answer.

Google Sitemaps

You can create and upload XML based sitemaps with this feature. This means that sitemaps catalogue your pages and links so that the Googlebot can crawl your site, see the content and index it in its rankings.

If you are interested in making sure that your site content is seen by Google and other websites then you should seriously consider pinging your site which means telling the search engines that you have added new content and that therefore they should visit your site again in the near future and re-rank the site. Take a look at our automatic pinging service here.

Becoming an SEO Expert

It’s been a while since I launched this website and I have been working my way through the huge maze of products and websites in the internet marketing world. Add to that Christmas, the ‘Big Freeze’ , and other commitments such as family and pets as well as the offline business, posting anything of merit on here would just have been impossible until recently.

I decided to take a short cut with my online business by paying for some coaching and this accelerated my knowledge immensely, and I now have a number of websites including a JV with my coach and my own product on Clickbank! In addition I now have two employees who are working away for me in the area of SEO and website design that will help me build my business faster than I could on my own. None of that would have happened without the advice I received from my coach, Ben Hulme.

One of the things Ben suggested was networking with other Internet marketers, especially successful ones. I discovered that one of Ben’s successful friends grew up in the same village as I did and so I checked out his product, registered for the free version, liked what I saw and paid to upgrade.

Now this is where things will become interesting! Based on advice from Ben (which I have also noticed a number of internet marketers commenting on recently, regarding the ethics of some of the so called gurus,) it seems that finding a more steady income stream that does not rely on IM is the way forward.

So, with my offline business and contacts, it would appear that there is a niche for me, in the North East of England as well as online, in developing the SEO tactics being taught to me at the moment.  So the plan for the next few weeks is to become an SEO expert, utilising the online and offline businesses that need more traffic and more business and also by utilising my two employees to generate traffic for my new clients.

For a free 16 part Social Media Course on how to use Social Media for Profit, please visit

http://www.fbtrafficsystems.com/

Link Building Tips and Tricks (Part-2)

Case Example 1: Suppose you are a software engineer developing an open source tool for testing printed circuit boards. Your software only runs in Ubuntu/Linux. This means your website is highly relevant to Ubuntu applications. You look for linking opportunities in Ubuntu.com and find this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuEngineering. You then contact the editor in charge of that documentation and request that your application be added. Of course, your site will be added right away, because you worked hard for your website content and explained your developed software that will run on Ubuntu in a detailed manner.
 
Case Example 2: Codex-m developed a useful piece of website traffic monitoring software in MS Excel that will help webmasters detect out-of-control situations in their website traffic using Google Analytics data. The application is released as open source, and everybody can use it. Codex-m decides to contact the official Google Analytics website and suggests adding the application and making it available to its users. The application is then added to its gallery, as shown here: http://www.google.com/analytics/apps/about?app_id=1080001
 
Case Example 3: You are an expert in Adobe Photoshop and you decide to write all your tips in a blog. You then decide to go to the Adobe Photoshop official website and examine it for linking opportunities. You land on their community page, http://www.adobe.com/community/publishing/download.html, where they allow users to submit tips. You decide to write a guest post and ad a link to your blog, like the one shown here: http://kb2.adobe.com/community/publishing/895/cpsid_89560.html You might notice that if your website has no value or less value to offer, you will find it hard to execute this tip to get some links. Ensure that your site has some value to offer before you ask reputable websites to link to you.

Clever Reciprocal Link Exchanges
This does not mean you will trick users or search engines. Reciprocal link exchange is not always bad at all; it is “excessive” reciprocal link exchanges which are not advisable. Here is a scenario where you can cleverly take advantage of reciprocal link exchange. In one of your quality posts, you have explained something in detail, but not as well as it is explained on site X, so you decide to just put a link to website X, as it is much better explained in detail. You then proceed to finish your content and publish it. Next, you contact the owner of website X and thank him/her for a much better explanation in one of the articles on that site, which you linked to. Both of you are experts in your niche, so invite him to check out your blog; maybe he can also link to you. Gratitude begets generosity, so it is highly possible that he/she will link to you also.
 
Link Building Tip #2: Get Attention from New Products or Services by Doing an Expert Review
One of the easiest ways to get links yourself is to simply search for new products or services released on the Internet and take the opportunity to write a detailed review of the services. Of course, you need to impress them, so make sure you only publish reviews of products that you find yourself happy using.  Here is how you do it. Say that your website is about mathematics, and you publish your own mathematical proofs of numerous theorems, which users look for as references in their academic studies. At first, you find it very difficult to write mathematical formulas, because they're not properly rendered on the web page. You search the Internet and you find a newly released product about writing mathematical formulas that is 100% compatible with HTML. You then decide to purchase it and use it for an entire week. You are happy with the product, because it helps make your job easier and very productive. You then write a review about the product in detail. You discuss the functionality offered and how the product helped you save a lot of time writing difficult formulas. You also mention the price (perhaps comparing it to other products in the niche and whether it is a good value). Of course  you talk about what "edge" the product has over other products  you have tested. When you publish it, leave it for a while. Ninety percent of the time the marketing departments of the company that manufactured the product are searching for happy users; with the use of Google, they might discover your review.

What happens next? Most of the time, they will thank you for the review and decide to publish it on their company home page or other prominent pages of their website, linking back to your site. Or even better,  they may make you their expert user, which allows you to submit some guest posts containing tips on how to use their product. You can always put a link to your website whenever you need to substantiate that your website content has the answer. When it is edited by them, they always allow your links because it is useful in a relevant context; therefore, the link will be editorially given.

Link Building Tips and Tricks (Part-1)

In this search engine optimization tutorial, we will be looking at some tips and tricks for doing DIY link building in an effort to increase your standing in the major search engines.

The most common solution for website owners in regard to link building is to hire either an SEO company or a link builder to do the job. This approach might work, provided the techniques and methods implemented are in accordance with Google search quality guidelines. Those techniques will also work provided the links built count not only on the basis of quantity, but quality and relevance as well.

The down side is that hiring SEO companies and link builders can be a very expensive investment for a beginning webmaster who does not yet have a positive return on the online business. It can also be risky, because a lot of SEOs and link builders practice techniques which are in violation of Google quality guidelines. As a result, your site can be penalized if it gets involved in one of these link schemes (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356).

This article will list the best practices for “do-it-yourself” link building techniques, which can help your site rankings in the search engines (particularly in Google). This way, you will not only learn to build links yourself, but be actively involved in the online community/niche where your website belongs.
Remember that success using these techniques is highly dependent upon what you are doing on your website. You cannot expect a link from a reputable website with authority if all they find on your website is crappy content and cluttered ads. Remember: content is still king. Let’s get started.


Link Building Tip #1: Let Them Know That You Have Quality Content to Offer
If your site is extremely new and getting only a few visitors, it would not make sense to rely on link baiting techniques. This technique is only effective if your website already receives a lot of visitors coming from other sources.

What would make sense is to let your community know that you have quality content to offer. Why? Even sites with authority that are trusted by Google are not complete; they still need improvement, particularly when it comes to content. To do this, follow the steps below.

1. Wait until you have at least 30 or more pieces of content. Fifty high quality/originally written articles is a good start to exposing your site to your related niche. The content must meet the following specifications:

• Substantial and detailed. You need to impress upon them that you have the details, and not just content with one or two paragraphs.
• Useful tutorials and guides that are rare to find in authority websites. You can search websites that are related to your niche which have authority and high rankings in Google. Examine these website thoroughly for portions (i.e. topics) that are in need of content and details.

2. Show your background and history in your website's “about” page. It helps your visitors to get to know you better and begin to trust you sooner. Show your pictures and biography. If your website is about car repairs and you are a certified car technician by profession, you can say this in your bio and provide a link to the organizations that grant your certifications.

3. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and professional-looking. Avoid cluttering your website with too many ads; it is a big turn-off, and has an adverse impact on your professionalism. I recommend you hold off on ads until the later stages, when you are already earning a lot of links and receiving a lot of visitors. For now, I recommend you turn them off.

4. Avoid having a link page with links pointing to nonsense, spammy and unrelated websites. It is much better to have no link page at all. You need to convey a professional image to other website owners in your related niche, which you will invite to your website later.

5. Include your contact information. Some people might be willing to contact you in person. So a phone number, contact form or even an email address on your website will be useful. Avoid listing just the email address and no official business address. They need to know that you are for real.

6. Get a list of reputable, related and authoritative websites in your niche. You can use the following tools:

• Google search engine - Try searching for your targeted keyword, or even the most relevant keyword that describes your website content. Get the domain names and contact information for the top 20 websites.
• DMOZ – Try searching for your targeted keyword in the DMOZ search box. Select only those websites that are updated, and include both contact information and quality content. Sometimes DMOZ is not updated at all, and has a tendency to list dead sites.
• Technorati - If your site is a blog, you can use the Technorati blog directory (http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/)to look for relevant blogs with high authority.

7. Now that you have a list, it is time to do your homework. Go through each website and look for opportunities for them to link to you.

How To Increase Google Trust (Part-3 Complete)

Tip #4: Make yourself availably known: Trust Factor
How many times have you visited a website and could not even find the following information: name of the website owner, who is in-charge of the website, contact information, phone, etc. These are very important factors that can contribute to overall website quality. Remember the following equation about website quality:

High website quality = High content quality + High trust factor

It’s not enough to build a high quality website by just establishing content quality. You need to build trust with your readers/visitors. The following guidelines are helpful:

1.) Add some history or information about you. This is often found in the "About" page.

2.) Add a real picture of yourself.

3.) Add a picture of your office or establishments. Some websites even add a live video of their office where their clients can see them working, e.g. http://www.taxi.com/abouts/webcam.html

4.) Add your business address, official contact form and email address as well as an active phone number.

5.) Include some business certificates and accreditation (e.g. Better Business Bureau accreditation) you have earned or awards given to you from the industry you belong.

6.) Include your Official Facebook page widget where they can find user comments about your services.

7.) Always add some “real” testimonials and where your product/services have been successfully used/deployed.

8.) Protect your user privacy. Be careful when asking personal information such as name, phone number, etc. Some users are very sensitive to this. Include a link to your privacy policy that explains how information is handled. When your user submits highly sensitive information using your website, make sure you use SSL. This will encrypt the communication and protect your user privacy.

9.) Make sure you add a terms and conditions page about how you conduct your business. If you accept payments, ensure that they are protected in case of a mistake. Most consumers nowadays do not even trust websites that do not accept refunds. It is just too risky.

10.) Associate yourself with reputable companies you have worked with or do business with. Adding what professional organizations you belong is also very helpful. Add trust logos of these reputable companies and badges on your website. And make sure they are there because you are really affiliated with them.

How To Increase Google Trust (Part-2)

This is included in the Google quality guidelines already: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 . But some are not even aware or just take this for granted, so I'm adding it as a tip.
 

Beware: nowadays webmasters often receive emails from link building companies requesting you to add their client link to your website for an exchange of a monthly fee. This violates the Google quality guidelines and falls under the paid link scheme, because more often than not these websites are not  related to your website's content and you are giving a link to them without editorial merit. Even though they make sense, these companies are requesting you to place these links on your homepage, which is not advisable because it drains out a lot of link juice to your other website pages. Why does participating in these link schemes not help your overall website quality? 

1.) These companies force you to remove the rel=nofollow attribute, aside from the fact that the link is sponsored in nature and should be placed with rel=nofollow. 

2.) Even though they convince you to make the link look as natural as possible, it can still be classified as a “sponsored link” by analyzing the text that surrounds it - ditto with the targeted page.This is easy to detect, if your website homepage content is talking about “collecting antique widgets”, your reader is expecting the target page of the link to be exactly what your content is talking about. Most citations and links provided with editorial merits are pointed to inner pages of the domain. 

The primary reason is that the homepage is rarely used as a reference to details because it’s used in introducing visitors to what the website is all about.  But these link building companies are building links to their client's homepage, which of course is not editorial and does not look natural.
 

Tip #3: Limit Your Advertisements and Speed Up Your Website
It is understandable that every website owner needs to find some way to earn income from their website. But it does not mean that the user experience should be compromised. Some website owners are not aware of this and just decorate their website with a lot of annoying ads that scare users away.
A common measurable aspect is your bounce rate. If your website is ad-heavy and your bounce rate is very high, it indicates that your ads are affecting your user-experience. Some ads are also known to slow down the website and confuse your visitors from distinguishing content from advertisements.
Below are some recommended guidelines: 

1.) If you are using Google Ad Sense, place the ads in strategic locations so as not to confuse them with website content. 

2.) If you are using in-text advertising, consider limiting the number of links to a minimum (for example 3 links per page). Infolinks for example, recommends that you should maximize the number of links to 12 for maximum earnings. But in reality, your website content can look very spammy with a lot of in-text links. Try to wear the user-hat; try reading your website content with this in-text advertising on it. If it disturbs your reading experience - for example you accidentally click on it - maybe it is time to minimize or remove them, as it affects the reading experience. 

3.) Optimize your website loading time with ads. Make sure they are loading fast. Remove any pop up banners and welcome banner ads, as they can distract your readers from going directly to the content.  

Some useful resources: 

Average loading time study: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Google-Optimization-Help/Average-Page-Load-Time-of-Top-Ranking-Websites-in-Google/

Speed up your website using Page Speed: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Speed-up-Web-Page-Loading-Using-Google-Page-Speed/ 

3.) Remember that every ad added to your site cheapens your site content quality. Limit them.

How To Increase Google Trust (Part-1)

If you are a webmaster looking to increase rankings and organic traffic from Google, then this tutorial will definitely prove helpful. You may have heard of Google's Panda / Farmer update affecting low quality websites - this tutorial will answer the questions of what does Google view as low quality - and more importantly - how do I make my website a high quality site? 

Tip #1:  Add Original, Useful and Substantial Content on a Frequent Basis
In this page: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html , Google stresses the importance of having original content on your website. Below are some good content guidelines you can implement: 

a.) At least 500 words. Most readers need details - especially if your content is a tutorial or how-to guide. If your content does not explain the details, then your content is not good enough, which also reflects the overall quality of your website. Having a thin amount of content, your site can be labeled as a “content farm” by Google. Make a habit of writing content with details instead of generalizing everything in one or two paragraphs.

b.) Content should be original and not copied. As suggested by Google here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html , some great ideas about writing original content are based on research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis.

c.) Articles should be well written, clear, concise, and direct to the point. The readability of your content is also important.

d.) Content should contain images or videos. Content with images or videos reinforces learning and helps the reading process. Make sure you have rights to these images and videos. Make sure to ask permission first if you do not own them.

e.) If absolutely necessary, cites references to external sources as proof. Sometimes when you are writing something in your blog or website, you need evidence that can substantiate your point. In this case, you need to link to a quality external resource. This linking process should be given with editorial merit.

f.) Link to other content within your website. For example if your content is talking about “building widgets” then in some of your paragraphs you start talking about “configuring widgets”. If you already wrote a separate and detailed tutorial about “configuring widgets”, then have your “building widgets” page link to the “configuring widgets” content.  This method is really helpful for visitors who are in need of detailed resources about a certain topic (example “widgets”). You might notice that if you are reading a Wikipedia article, it links to a lot of related pages within Wikipedia, and of course helps improve the user experience and increases the retention time of your visitors.

g.) Allow user-generated comments. When you publish content make sure you allow comments to it. User comments are helpful to validate the accuracy and trust of the content. If certain content receives a lot of interaction and approval, then any future readers do not need to spend more time searching for quality content on the Internet because they already found one. They will stick to your website longer.

h.) Allow users to share your content on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites. One aspect of a quality website is that its content is highly shared, liked and added to a users list of favorite websites. You should take this opportunity, as search engines like Google are definitely using this data (source: http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389 ).

i.) Write as often as possible- this makes your website grow bigger with quality content. The end results are higher organic traffic due to long tail effect and higher link baiting opportunity because of your content. Google also loves to rank big websites (source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Choosing-Keywords-Help/Keyword-Difficulty-vs-Size-of-Domain/ ).

Keyword Research Gems From PubCon

I love keyword research and taking time to figure out which keywords will not only bring a large amount of traffic to a website, but, those keywords that will convert and bring additional revenue to a company. Because of this, I decided to attend a great session at PubCon this morning that was focused on keyword research. One of the speakers, Craig Paddock from Boost Research Marketing delivered an amazing presentation called “Organic Keyword Research & Selection”. I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you his keyword research wisdom that he imparted to a few hundred of us.

Keyword Research

When researching different kinds of keywords, you will want to take a look at a few different factors.

• Popularity of the particular keyword
• The click-thru rate of the keyword
• The quality of the keyword (conversion rate or engagement)
• The competitiveness of the keyword
• Your current ranking for that keyword

When analyzing each of these factors, you will be able to easily decide which keywords will be best for you to target to get the maximum return on your invested time or money.

Keyword Expanders / Variations

When doing keyword research, one of the best ways to drive organic search traffic to your website is by focusing on expanders and variations of keywords. These expanders or variations will help you take advantage of other, less obvious ways rank for particular keywords. You will want to focus on expanders such as best, online, buy, cheap, discount, wholesale, and accessories. Adding these to your keywords allows you to potentially rank for less competitive keywords and drive very targeted traffic to your site.

Another way to drive traffic to your website using expanders or variations is by adding reviews to your website. Allowing your customers or site visitors to comment and write reviews can help you easily and quickly add new content to your site that is very relevant. Not only that, but more people are starting to search for products services reviews. If your review pages or sections are highly optimized, you can easily show up in the search results when searchers are trying to find what you offer.

Keyword Selection

When doing keyword research, one really great way of finding keywords that will work for you and your business is by setting up and running a ppc campaign and collecting data solely for the purpose of selecting your keywords.

The first thing that you need to know about running a campaign for the purpose of collecting data is that you want to set your campaign up with no daily limit and make sure that it is on the 1st page of results. I know this might get expensive, but the data that you will glean is well worth it. You shouldn’t have to collect more than 72 hours of data to get a pretty good idea of what direction you need to go.

When setting up your campaign, you will want to make sure to set up two different campaigns, one that is targeting the exact [keyword] and another that is targeting the broad match.

Some metrics that you will want to analyze are the number of impressions or queries that keyword generates. This will provide an accurate number of how many people searched for your exact keyword and how many people searched for some variation of your keyword. You will also want to analyze the click-thru ratio, and the conversion data. Doing so will help you find the VERY best keywords for your business.

Another way to help you decide which keywords to select for your SEO campaign is by analyzing your analytics data, both ppc and organic traffic. You will want to analyze the conversion rate of your site visitors. You should see how much revenue each visitor is bringing to your business.

You should also look at how each visitor engages with your website. Take a look at how many pages per visit your visitors are looking at. Take a look at your bounce rate. Take a look at the pages they are visiting (terms of service and about us pages are engaging pages). Each of these things can help narrow your huge list of keywords related to your business.

Keyword Competitiveness

In terms of selecting keywords to target in your SEO campaign, you always want to look at the competition for each keyword you are considering. You definitely don’t want to go after keywords that will take you years to rank for (I know from personal experience). You want keywords that you will be able to rank well for in six to twelve months.

Some of the easy ways to determine the competitiveness of your keywords are by using certain tools like the SEO Quake plugin or the SEO for Firefox plugin. I think everyone here at the office uses the SEO for Firefox plugin for our competitive research for our clients. One of the most important things to look at with that plugin is the number of unique external links to your domain. This number will give you a good idea of how many unique domains linking to your competitors for any given keyword.

There were a few other things that he touched on, but I felt that these were some of the biggest takeaways and will change the way that I look at and perform keyword research in the future. In summary, you will always want to set up a ppc campaign for the purpose of collecting data to guide your organic search campaign. You should always remember that keyword research is more than just looking at the popularity of any given phrase.

There are many different factors to look at and study to ensure that you are targeting the right keywords now, not when you realize that you have been doing SEO on the wrong keywords six months down the road.

How to Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool for SEO

While the Adwords tool is meant for PPC, it’s also a vital tool when performing keyword research for SEO. Google Adwords identifies the number of searches for specific words or key phrases. However, many people leave with false information because there are several different filters with different numbers.

If you go to the keyword tool and search for “online schools,” “online degrees” and “online education,” you’ll get information about those keywords as well as many other related terms.

Underneath the search field is a checkbox as shown below:

Make sure this is checked; otherwise you will get a huge list of keywords that may not actually apply to your business.

Google automatically presets your location and language to serve you the most relevant results. It sets my location as “United States” and my language as “English.”

You can change this if it doesn’t happen to apply to you by expanding the Advances Search section.

The next step is to simply click search. This is where the tool can get confusing.

If you’re like many, it would appear as though there are 246,000 searches for “online schools” all over the globe. Likewise, somebody would think that there are 201,000 searches for the same keyword in your local area.

This is not true and I’ve had many people regret their decision to pursue these keywords because they just didn’t understand the data.

Over on the left there is a column with “Match Types.” Check the box associated with [Exact]. This will change the keyword numbers to reflect more realistic search volume. “Why wouldn’t the keyword tool show me exact search volume from the beginning?” The default match type of “Broad” is referring to the number of searches that involve the phrase. For example, it’s giving you search volume numbers for the keyword “online schools” as well as search volume for all the other keywords that mention that phrase such as “best online schools,” “online schools degrees,” “online high schools” and others.

The other match type, “Phrase,” shows you keywords where the exact phrase of your keyword is used. This includes keywords where the term is used with other words within the phrase. For example, using the Phrase match type while searching “online schools” would give you search volume for other keywords like “best online schools” or “online schools degrees” but not “online high schools” or “online accredited schools” because the original phrase is being broken up.

If you’re looking for how many people search a specific keyword, stay with [Exact].

Now that the data has been changed to realistic numbers, you’ll notice the number of searchers go down drastically.

Because there are some terms that are searched worldwide, Google differentiates the two searches columns to Global and Local. The numbers underneath Global are the amount of searches all around the globe averaged out over 12 months. Searches in the Local column are referring to the location that you specified in the beginning. In our case, they’re showing the number of searches in the Unites States averaged out over 12 months.

That’s basically the gist of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. There are some other things you can do with this tool to improve your keyword research and discover additional relevant keywords. This is by no means advanced or the end to your keyword research, you still need to analyze your online competition, research the searcher’s intent and decide what’s worth going after given your time and budget.