Mar
12
More Article Marketing – Duplicate Content
March 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I touched on article marketing in an earlier post. I was asked about it as a good tool for increasing traffic, as it was seen as duplicate content, and the duplicate content issue scares everyone.
Well, duplicate content is not a good thing, but we need to really define duplicate content as in the eyes of the search engines.
Article are seen much like news where many sites may publish the same story. This is very important to understand. There is a distinct difference between content that is the same on every page of your site, and content that is the same on your site as it is on other sites. Go one step further and determine what kind of content it is. If it’s newsy, or an article, then it is probably seen by the engines as OK.
To keep it short, any content that is considered to be news, or timely information, is more than likely published elsewhere on the web as well as on whatever site you are on. This is a given, as no one site can be entitled to have all the news, or information.
Keep writing articles and keep them informative.
Mar
8
How Much SEO is Too Much SEO?
March 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I was stumbling around on the web reading about SEO, and other marketing things, when I passed by Jill Whelen’s site and found a posting about SEO, and how you can be over optimized. Jill was saying that being perfectly optimized may lead you to being dropped from the listings. Her explanation goes to Google and how they really don’t like SEO people, because, afterall, we are indeed trying to get a site listed in the top of the results, when in reality, Google wants to make that decision. She talks about it here: http://www.highrankings.com/art-of-seo.
I believe Jill is right on the money. See, Google wants sites with merit to be high in their listings. When we, as optimizers, improve a site so that it more closely meets the requirements of their algorithm, we are actually pushing a site into the top listings that Google would not normally put there.
So, and I have mentioned this before (Jill I’m thinking all the time too!) too much of a good thing can turn bad. Things like alt= tags don’t necessarily always need to have your keywords in them. It can become overkill. All of your anchor text doesn’t have to be your most important keywords and phrases. Think about this … how many times have you seen a link where the anchor text says … “Click Here”. Quite a number, I’m sure. So, in the natural order of things, within the Google database, there should be a significant number of links pointing at your site that say “Click Here”. My point is, you don’t want to have every single one of them, and this is important if the majority of the links pointing at your site are generated by you, be your most important keywords. Mix it up … and yes, use some that are not keywords and don’t … from an SEO point of view … help you out.
I may be out on a limb here, but I even like the reciprocal link for this reason … but not when it is on a page called links.html, or resources.html, but when it is from within the actual content of the site … and vice versa. Long gone are the days of reciprocal linking, and in particular, the links page. I believe links like this are natural and should exist.
The bottom line for optimization, and Ma Google won’t fight you on this one, provide valuable content that can’t be found anywhere else and that which makes your reader happy to have found your site. You’ll always win if you can do this!
Mar
4
SEO Training / Cost of SEO (continued)
March 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment
To continue along with the “Price of SEO” posting I want to be sure you understand that you can do the SEO for your site yourself. It’s not beyond a moderately savvy website owner to optimize their own website, or have someone on your staff do it.
I’m referring to training yourself to do this work. It’s not all that difficult, if you know what to do, and you can discover all the secrets of SEO in my SEO Training Course. Of course you can also discover lots of secrets if you subscribe to the Daily SEO Tips Newsletter which is delivered to your inbox every day … of course that will take a little longer to get all the information.
I mentioned in the other posting that, at this point in time, most of my clients are working on my $500 a month plan and sign on for an initial six month campaign. Many stay on with me for the long term and I have clients that have been with me for years … four or more years. When you consider that my course sells for $250, which is only half of a typical month’s campaign price, you can clearly see the benefit to yourself from purchasing access to this course. This is lifetime access as well, to all future updates, tools, etc., etc. Everything that I include as time moves forward. I say access which means you get a username and password to enter a protected area of my site where the course is. I changed over to this method from an eBook because it is so much easier to update and keep the most recent information in front of you.
Right at this point in time I am updating this course. I’m taking it all the way from the Version 1, which I created several years ago and have been updating regularly, to a Version 2 which includes Social Networking and a lot more about inbound link acquisition … the most important advances in SEO over the past years.
While it’s being updated I am selling access for a reduced rate. Today that reduced rate is $50, but sometime over this weekend (before March 8, 2010) I will be increasing this to $75. Soon, and although I expected to complete this update by mid March, it looks like it will be April before I’m done … it’s a lot of updating, I will be increasing this price to the actual purchase price of $250. There is a definite benefit to getting on-board now while I am updating … or wait and pay full price later. I don’t care!
So there you have the latest about the cost of optimization. It can be had for a very inexpensive price if you are willing to learn about it, and do it yourself, or do your SEO in-house. Otherwise the monthly figure is not all that outrageous, and I do work with people on a smaller scale, with less time involvement, to meet smaller budget needs. Contact me to talk about it.
Feb
28
What Does SEO Cost?
February 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It might be a better question to ask … what will it cost if I don’t optimize my site?
You can pay very little in this day and age to get your site “optimized”, but to what degree will it be done?
I see a lot of people from Asia advertising their SEO skills and trying to make a living at SEO. For one thing, SEO is not easy. It’s not difficult work that you will break out in a sweat over, no, nor should it give you a headache from straining your brain power. However, SEO isn’t something that you just lean right off, nor is it something that you can learn, completely, in even a year or two of working at it.
I have been at SEO since 1997. I found that back then if I got my affiliate sites up in the ranks, I could earn commissions and bring money home to put food on my table. It was really easy back then, simply put one more keyword that the person in the #1 position and you would then be in the number one position.
The engines quickly caught on to this though, and it became more difficult all the time. The engines caught onto all of the simple tricks quickly and over the course of the past decade, they have become very, very smart. They don’t fall for these tricks any more and you need to really do the right things to get yourself listed. This is all actually for the overall good of every website out there. And in reality, it has made the job of optimizing easier … that is easier if you are doing it for yourself.
I say that because, no one knows your business like you do. If you are writing all of your content, and you know some SEO regarding content and keywords, all you really need to do is right quality content, and make the keyword density right, and include the right keywords. Not all the difficult of a task.
It becomes more difficult for me to optimize a site that is out of my realm of knowledge. I’m not much of a “car dude” so if I have to write about automobiles, I’m going to have a hard time of it. I have worked with clients in many fields where I was not really up on the subject. It was difficult for me to write copy for them. I have farmed it out to those more adept at, and also have had the client himself write the copy. Either method can work.
So, what does all this have to do with what optimization costs? It takes time. Writing content doesn’t just happen, and taking that content and analyzing it for keyword density, and to ensure it includes the most important keywords, it a time consuming practice. So is the on site code and updating. Time, is money. Time spent well, by someone educated in SEO is invaluable. Time spent optimizing by someone who does not know what to do, or how to really get close to the engines’s algorithm … is a waste of time and money.
I’ll say right out, today I charge most of my clients a $500 monthly fee with a campaign minimum of six months. This is basics and gets the job done on nearly all sites. But it is a time frame too … I won’t be spending 60 hours a month of your site, but I’ll be working smart and getting the job done. Compare this with the Asian, who perhaps, would not care if he had to work 160 hours for a $500 USD fee. But what would you get? Well, I’ll leave that to you to figure out. I’m not trying to put down the Asians, who have flooded into the market, not at all, and I would imagine some of them know SEO well, or at least I hope so.
As mentioned a bit above, the engines have really honed in on the algorithm. This translates to on-site work that needs to get a certain number of things done, and done in a certain way. This can really be learned by anyone, and then analyzed and worked on more. That’s what SEO is all about. You can learn how to do this yourself. Why not spend a smaller sum of money, learn how to optimize your site yourself, or have your staff learn it, and save a bundle of money over time. Check out my SEO Training Course to see how you can do it.
Feb
25
Ya Gotta Know Your Best Keywords
February 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It’s happened again … a site that is targeting keywords that just aren’t the best ones for them.
Isn’t the whole idea to drive traffic to your site?
Well then, you need to know what people are searching for, with regularity, and what the competition is for those keywords, before you decide on which one will be best.
I advise you to think long tail, at least when you start, because they will provide a jump start of traffic because they are more easy to get listed for. Later you can concentrate on your favorite keyword that has 60,000 monthly searches and 999,000,000,000 competing sites.
Really, you need to sift through all the keywords and select the best. You need to use some software to tell you which keywords are getting searches. You probably know your market pretty well, but I’ll bet people are searching for you with keywords you have never thought about.
Do the research.
Feb
23
Article Marketing
February 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Here is a good idea for linking, and getting traffic.
Write an article and get it published on Ezine Articles and have it link to your site, blog or both.
Write another and have it published somewhere else. Have this article link back to the Ezine Articles site.
While doing this you are building importance to you Ezine Article posting, which makes it more important, and makes its links to your site more important.
Ever use a paid posting site? They are generally fairly inexpensive and will put your article onto hundreds of other sites, depending on how many of those other sites approve your article … good reason to make it a good one! Try fastsubmitarticles.com … it seems good.
Jan
27
Testimonials
January 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It’s always good business to include customer testimonials on your site. It lends credibility to your business. People see this and it really helps you.
Ever consider submitting a testimonial to another site? This could work well for you if you have the right complementary market. For instance, if you can include a link back to your site within the testimonial, or signature included within it, you have a nice backlink. But you need to have a complimentary market to do this. You don’t want irrelevant links, but very relevant links.
Perhaps a good example would be a restaurant site who sends in a testimonial about a brand of frying pans.
Get the idea.
Good, now make use of it.
Jan
24
Is SEO an Art or a Science
January 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I recently saw this topic come up, and it is one that I have spoke of many a time.
There is indeed a lot of (what I would call art) when it comes to SEO. Perhaps the word creativity more closely describes what I’m calling art. As a for instance, when coming up with the idea of finding a site online that you’d like a link from, then writing a webpage, or blog entry, targeted at that page and linking to it, in the hopes of getting a link back in the end, I find to be a creative action.
Sure there is science actions as well. Layout out your site navigation, title tags, H tags … this is all business as usual.
So, with these thoughts, I tend to lean towards SEO being an art form in many instances. It’s thinking out of the box, it’s coding your way down unknown territory, it’s testing ideas and working with competitive sites and all that they have going for them. In this respect I just can’t consider it a science!
Jan
23
Advanced Ethical SEO Training Course
January 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I have been busy updating my original SEO Training Course. I am bringing this course up from Version 1 to a Version 2. It’s a bit of work, but this is what I have been spending my time on lately, aside from optimizing for my clients, this has been the task at hand for quite a while now.
I expect to complete this major update in mid March or so. I have decided on a promotion that should be of interest to anyone who wants to learn SEO.
From now until I finish this update I am going to sell this $250 product and the low, low, low price of $50.
That’s right … $50. I’ll include the usual lifetime updates as well. So what you are getting here is the complete Ethical SEO Training Course valued at, and which will be priced at, $250 for a mere $50.
You’ll probably spend more than that next time you go out to dinner, or even lunch!
I created one of those crazy sales pages for this promotion. You can see that page and purchase the course here:
Advanced Ethical SEO Training Course
Jan
2
Post Regularly
January 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Well, it is important to post frequently.
I guess I haven’t been heeding my own instructions!
I have been a bit busy updating a SEO training course.