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.