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.
Nov
16
Selecting Your Keywords
November 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment
It probably should not be … but sometimes you just can’t second guess what people are going to be looking for.
This is just a quick tip, or mention. When you are going through your logs, and stats, keep an eye on what people are seaching for, and what they find you buy. In particular, if your stats show it, look at keywords and phrases that you rank beyond page one for. Are these important keywords? If so, you need to optimize some page of your site for them.
It’s a very interesting thing to see what people are searching for when they find you. I love to go over the stats and see the keywords and phrases that a site is found for.
Pay attention to this and gain some traffic from terms people are actively searching on.
Nov
14
One in a Million Links
November 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment
This tip is taken directly from my SEO Tips Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
The links pointing in to your site, for the most part, are all very important.
One link pointing to your site from a very well established, important, authority site … is worth 100 other basic links.
When you are looking for links try hard to find sites that are super super relevant to you, and are important authority type of sites. These sites are also sometimes referred to as trusted sites. They are not easy to find, and even harder to get in touch with to get a link, and they won’t link out if it has no purpose for them.
But … here is where you could get lucky … if the relevance is there, they may see where their users could benefit from reading something on your site.
Try adding some content that goes hand in hand with some of their content. Get in touch and say … “hey, you mention this on your site … I go into more detail here …” and maybe you’ll get lucky and have them link back to you to provide a more thorough explanation to their users!
Nov
13
Use Variety in Your Anchor Text
November 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Over the years linking has undergone a gazillion changes. I can hardly recognize it anymore, from what it was.
One thing holding true is the anchor text used in the links pointing to your site … as well as those throughout your site. You want to utilize your most important key phrase, or keyword, as anchor text.
But don’t jump out the window with this information! Over the years the algorithm has been fine tuned, and believe me, it will continue to be fine tuned. Today, repeating the same anchor text over and over is not going to help you out. Having every inbound link to your site have the same anchor text isn’t going to help you out as you think either. You need variety.
Use variations, similar keywords, completely different keywords. Link to more than just your main home page so that you utilize many different keywords for these inbound links.
Nothing is cut and dry any more in SEO … everything is forever changing and you need to be part of the flow. Just keep in mind that you can’t appear as SPAM, or some sort of commercial exploitation … and you will probably keep yourself OK.
Nov
12
SEO Tips Newsletter – Cut Bait or Fish? … or Self SEO or Run Your Business?
November 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment
It is a relatively mute subject. You either have the time to SEO your own site, or you don’t. Most business people I have had the opportunity to work with over the years all have the same mindset which is to let a professional do the work to their website. They will run their business. Not everyone has the time to take on extra tasks to market, or create and maintain, they websites. They are busy running their businesses.
But this doesn’t pertain to everyone. There are a lot of smaller companies out there, that not only create their own websites, they optimize them as well. Many sites are even created because the owner needs the site to market their product … whatever it may be.
I have brought up this subject because, well, for two reasons. One is there is an SEO Course offered right here, and also I have a very useful SEO Tips Newsletter. The Newsletter will provide you with one good tip every day via your email. This is a good way for those of you who utilize self SEO for your sites … learn how to SEO your own website.
You can subscribe via the link at your right, or … right here at SEO Tips Newsletter.
Nov
10
Blogging for Success
November 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Blogging has come a long way over the past few years. We have seen it rise from nothing (or more appropriately, pieces of many different online communication methods) to arguably the most used facet of online communications.
How does a blog help your site? Google loves blogs and this is something that every successful blogger knows. I can’t explain why, other than the algorithm lends importance to blogs, a blog listing often makes it to the SERPs quicker than a similar web page will. Web pages may last longer in the SERPs, in the overall picture, but not enough so that they have a greater importance in any given SEO campaign. I say all this with a grain of salt … we have no facts about how long a blog posting will last in comparison to a typical web page … there just hasn’t been enough time.
Blogs entice people too. The two way communication, the ability to comment, the timeliness or newsiness of blog postings that bring people back to a blog … and make them read it in the first place. Blogs are … NOW … they are hip and cool and people want to partake.
Should you blog? Absolutely! Should you have a blog on your site? Absolutely!
Nov
4
Social Media Marketing
November 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Social Networking, Social Media Marketing, by any other name … it is all the same.
Today, as with any other day on the internet … things have changed. Today we are finding that social networking is one of the more important parts of SEO and for a very basic reason … it works.
Well, actually, probably, a few reasons … but two stand out.
One, Google likes social media sites as much as they like blogs. This is important. Second, postings add inbound links to your site.
The bottom line remains inbound links. When will the morning come that we wake up and find that inbounds don’t count anymore? Probably never, but never is one of those words we don’t like to use.
Bookmarking on social media sites like Delicious, Digg etc., is good business. It’s not huge in SEO but it is good business. What I like about this is not only the convenience of having my own bookmarks wherever I travel, but I’m also providing this information for anyone else as well … who happens to type keywords relevant to my sites into the bookmarking sites.
I wonder when we’ll wake up and find that Googlin’ has been replaced by simple searches on bookmarking sites. I see today that review sites are getting a huge increase in traffic. This is good qualified traffic. You may find yourself going to a movie review site to get other people’s opinion before heading out to the local one-too-many cine. Why are you doing this? Probably, as myself, because I get other people’s opinion of the movie. This is real … this isn’t a site meeting Google’s algorithm so they get listed well, this is live human beings providing their opinions. How do you get better information than that?
Well, the future is laid out … we only need to live it.