Thank you to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Contractors Association and the Luna Awards committee for having our CEO, Jennifer Bagley as a Judge for the 2009 Luna Awards. This was a wonderful experience and extremely rewarding.
GRETCHEN M. BATAILLE
On August 14, 2006, Gretchen M. Bataille made history when she became the University of North Texas’ first female president. She continues to make history as its 14th president. Prior to her UNT presidency, Dr. Bataille served for six years as Senior Vice President for the University of North Carolina system and also served as Interim Chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts in her final year.
Dr. Bataille also is a noted scholar in the field of Native American literature and Indians in film and is the author or editor of more than a dozen books.
Dr. Bataille has served as a trustee of The College Board and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Council on Education and on the Board of Directors of SAGE, one of the leading international academic presses. She also serves on the City of Denton Economic Development Partnership Board and the DATCU Credit Union Board. Dr. Bataille earned her D.A. in English from Drake University and holds an M.A. in Education and a B.S. in English, both from California Polytechnic State University.
Thank you to the University of North Texas and our sponsor MicroSoft…for having Compliments International provide a 5 hour training on building effective websites, practical search engine optimization and power-packed social media marketing!
We appreciate all of the businesses who attended and look forward to helping each of you improve your bottom line results!
Microsoft has reached collaboration agreements with Twitter and Facebook to get their members’ public status updates and messages indexed and presented in useful ways on the Bing search engine.
Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Audience Business, made the announcement on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
The partnership with Twitter has it working with Microsoft to optimize how Bing crawls and indexes “tweets.” Microsoft in turn will apply search algorithms to the Twitter messages, so that Bing users will not only be able to see a real-time feed of “tweets” but also rank them by how relevant they are to their query, Mehdi said.
“This is a big deal we’ve been working on for a long time,” Mehdi said.
Related story: Six Tweet tips to get the most from your Twitter search
To rank “tweets” by relevance, a feature Microsoft calls “Best Match,” Bing will take into consideration a number of factors, such as who are the authors of the messages based on a “social relevance” score Bing will assign to them, Mehdi said.
Bing will also evaluate the message’s quality, noticing, for example, if it contains a link to an online article or Web page. It will also take into consideration how popular the message is by calculating how many times it has been “re-tweeted” by others.
In addition to providing links to Twitter messages, Bing will extract the URLs of the pages that the messages are making reference to, so that users can go directly to that source of the information.
When providing links to “tweets” that contain a shortened URL, Bing will put in parenthesis the main Web domain of the link, so that users know, before clicking, whether it’s a reputable site and thus avoid landing in a malicious phishing or malware-laden site.
Bing will also display a tag cloud of the most popular Twitter topics, so that users can click on and dive deeper into them.
Until now, every story praising Google’s Google Voice phone service has had to explain one significant catch: All of its useful features required you to train your friends, relatives, and acquaintances to forget whatever phone number you’d given them and to start using a new one assigned to you by Google.
(See Related: Google Labs Introduces Social Search: See How It Works)
Now there’s a workaround: Google has announced a new version of Google Voice that doesn’t require you to change your phone number. Once you’ve configured your phone number to use Google Voice, you pretty much get one specific part of of the service: its excellent voicemail service. You can check your voicemail online (with speech-to-text transcriptions) and play different voicemail greetings for different callers. You can also make cheap international calls. But you don’t get a bunch of the other features that make Google Voice Google Voice, including the ability to have incoming calls ring all your phone and to record calls.
Google is working on another option that may beat either of the two existing ones: the ability to port your existing number from a traditional carrier to Google Voice, turning any phone number into a full-blown Google Voice number. In the meantime, this new option is a good way to dabble with Google Voice without committing yourself to it or putting much effort into the process-although you’ll s
Some poorly developed content management systems return 200 status codes even when a file does not exist. The proper response for file not found is a 404.
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This is the preferred method of redirecting for most pages or websites. If you are going to move an entire site to a new location you may want to test moving a file or folder first, and then if that ranks well you may want to proceed with moving the entire site. Depending on your site authority and crawl frequency it may take anywhere from a few days to a month or so for the 301 redirect to be picked up.
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Generally, as it relates to SEO, it is typically best to avoid using 302 redirects. Some search engines struggle with redirect handling. Due to poor processing of 302 redirects some search engines have allowed competing businesses to hijack the listings of competitors.
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Some content management systems send 404 status codes when documents do exist. Ensure files that exist do give a 200 status code and requests for files that do not exist give a 404 status code. You may also want to check with your host to see if you can set up a custom 404 error page which makes it easy for site visitors to
Search engines request a robots.txt file to see what portions of your site they are allowed to crawl. Many browsers request a favicon.ico file when loading your site. While neither of these files are necessary, creating them will help keep your log files clean so you can focus on whatever other errors your site might have.
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Example absolute link
<a href=”http://seobook.com/folder/filename.html“>Cool Stuff</a>
Example relative link
<a href=”../folder/filename.html“>Cool Stuff</a>
While it has a few cool features (including dayparting and demographic based bidding) it is still quite nascent in nature compared to Google AdWords. Due to Microsoft’s limited marketshare and program newness many terms are vastly underpriced and present a great arbitrage opportunity.
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AdSense offers a highly scalable automated ad revenue stream which will help some publishers establish a baseline for the value of their ad inventory. In many cases AdSense will be underpriced, but that is the trade off for automating ad sales.
AdSense ad auction formats include
AdSense ad formats include
In some cases I have seen ads which got a 2 or 3% click through rate (CTR), while sites that are optimized for maximum CTR (through aggressive ad integration) can obtain as high as a 50 or 60% CTR depending on
It is also worth pointing out that if you are too aggressive in monetizing your site before it has built up adequate authority your site may never gain enough authority to become highly profitable.
Depending on your vertical your most efficient monetization model may be any of the following
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AdWords is an increasingly complex marketplace. One could write a 300 page book just covering AdWords. Rather than doing that here I thought it would be useful to link to many relevant resources.
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Most affiliates make next to nothing because they are not aggressive marketers, have no real focus, fall for wasting money on instant wealth programs that lead them to buying a bunch of unneeded garbage via other’s affiliate links, and do not attempt to create any real value.
Some power affiliates make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year because they are heavily focused on automation and/or tap large traffic streams. Typically niche affiliate sites make more per unit effort than overtly broad ones because they are easier to focus (and thus have a higher conversion rate).
Selling a conversion is typically harder than selling a click (like AdSense does, for instance). Search engines are increasingly looking to remove the noise low quality thin affiliate sites ad to the search results through the use of
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Fresh content which is also cited on many other channels (like related blogs) will temporarily rank better than you might expect because many of the other channels which cite the content will cite it off their home page or a well trusted high PageRank page. After those sites publish more content and the reference page falls into their archives those links are typically from pages which do not have as much link authority as their home pages.
Some search engines may also try to classify sites to understand what type of sites they are, as in news sites or reference sites that do not need updated that often. They may also look at individual pages and try to classify them based on how frequently they change.
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Alexa is heavily biased toward sites that focus on marketing and webmaster communities. While not being highly accurate it is free.
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Example usage
<img src=”http://www.seobook.com/images/whammy.gif” height=”140″ width=”120″alt=”Press Your Luck Whammy.” />
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Ad networks are a game of margins. Marketers who track user action will have a distinct advantage over those who do not.
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Search engines assume that your page is authoritative for the words that people include in links pointing at your site. When links occur naturally they typically have a wide array of anchor text combinations. Too much similar anchor text may be a considered a sign of manipulation, and thus discounted or filtered. Make sure when you are building links that you control that you try to mix up your anchor text.
Example of anchor text:
<a href=”http://www.seobook.com/”>Search Engine Optimization Blog</a>
Outside of your core brand terms if you are targeting Google you probably do not want any more than 10% to 20% of your anchor text to be the same. You can use Backlink Analyzer to compare the anchor text profile of other top ranked competing sites.
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Search engines constantly tweak their algorithms to try to balance relevancy algorithms based on topical authority and overall authority across the entire web. Sites may be considered topical authorities or general authorities. For example, Wikipedia and DMOZ are considered broad general authority sites. This site is a topical authority on SEO, but not a broad general authority.
Example potential topical authorities:
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If you want to program internal bid management software you can get a developer token to use the Google AdWords API.
A few popular bid management tools are
Backlink (see Inbound Link)
It is generally easier to get links to informational websites than commercial sites. Some new sites might gain authority much quicker if they tried looking noncommercial and gaining influence before trying to monetize their market position.
In many ways text ads are successful because they are more relevant and look more like content, but with the recent surge in the popularity of text ads some have speculated that in time people may eventually become text ad blind as well.
Nick Denton stated:
Imagine a web in which Google and Overture text ads areeverywhere . Not only beside search results, but next to every article and weblog post. Ubiquity breeds contempt. Text ads, coupled with content targeting, are more effective than graphic ads for many advertisers; but they too, like banners, will suffer reader burnout.
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Any media channel, publishing format, organization, or person is biased by
Search engines aim to be relevant to users, but they also need to be profitable. Since search engines sell commercial ads some of the largest search engines may bias theirorganic search results toward informational (ie: non-commercial) websites. Some search engines are also biased toward information which has been published online for a great deal of time and is heavily cited.
Search personalization biases our search results based on our own media consumption and searching habits.
Large news organizations tend to aim for widely acceptable neutrality rather than objectivity. Some of the most popular individual web authors / publishers tend to be quite biased in nature. Rather than bias hurting one’s exposure
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Bid Management Software (see Automated Bid Management Software)
Search engines are not without flaws in their business models, but there is nothing immoral or illegal about testing search algorithms to understand how search engines work.
People who have extensively tested search algorithms are probably more competent and more knowledgeable search marketers than those who give themselves the arbitrary label of white hat SEOs while calling others black hat SEOs.
When making large investments in processes that are not entirely clear trust is important. Rather than looking for reasons to not work with an SEO it is best to look for signs of trust in a person you would like to work with.
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Block level link analysis can be used to help determine if content is page specific or part of a navigational system. It also can help determine if a link is a natural editorial link, what other links that link should be associated with, and/or if it is an advertisement. Search engines generally do not want to count advertisements as votes.
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Most blogs tend to be personal in nature. Blogs are generally quite authoritative with heavy link equity because they give people a reason to frequently come back to their site, read their content, and link to whatever they think is interesting.
The most popular blogging platforms are Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type, and Typepad.
Automated blog spam:
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by
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Manual blog spam:
I just wrote about this on my site. I don’t know you, but I thought I would add no value to your site other than linking through to mine. Check it out!!!!!
by
cluebag manual spammer (usually with keywords as my name)
As time passes both manual and automated blog comment spam systems are evolving to look more like legitimate comments. I have seen some automated blog comment spam systems that have multiple fake personas that converse with one another.
It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain off of Blogspot.com, or to FTP content to your own domain. If you are serious about building a brand or making money online you should publish your content to your own domain because it can be hard to reclaim a website’s link equity and age related trust if you have built years of link equity into a subdomain on someone else’s website.
Blogger is probably the easiest blogging software tool to use, but it lacks many some features present in other blog platforms.
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Example use:
Either would appear as words.
Social bookmarking sites are often called tagging sites. Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking site. Yahoo! MyWeb also allows you to tag results. Google allows you to share feeds and / or tag pages. They also have a program called Google Notebook which allows you to write mini guides of related links and information.
There are also a couple meta news sites that allow you to tag interesting pages. If enough people vote for your story then your story gets featured on the homepage. Slashdot is a tech news site primarily driven by central editors. Digg created a site covering the same type of news, but is a bottoms up news site which allows readers to vote for what they think is interesting. Netscape cloned the Digg business model and content model. Sites like Digg and Netscape are easy sources of links if you can create content that would appeal to those audiences.
Many forms of vertical search, like Google Video or YouTube, allow you to tag content.
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Examples:
Some search engines also allow you to search for other unique patterns or filtering ideas. Examples:
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A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher margin value based pricing.
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Some affiliate marketing programs prevent affiliates from bidding on the core brand related keywords, while others actively encourage it. Either way can work depending on your business model and marketing savvy, but it is important to ensure there is synergy between internal marketing and affiliate marketing programs.
Example breadcrumb navigation:
Home > SEO Tools > SEO for Firefox
Whatever page the user is on is unlinked, but the pages above it within the site structure are linked to, and organized starting with the home page, right on down through the site structure.
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Links may broken for a number of reason, but four of the most common reasons are
Most large websites have some broken links, but if too many of a site’s links are broken it may be an indication of outdated content, and it may provide website users with a poor user experience. Both of which may cause search engines to rank a page as being less relevant.
Xenu Link Sleuth is a free software program which crawls websites to find broken links.
The most popular browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Safari, andOpera.
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The buying cycle may consist of the following stages
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Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? – book by Brian & Jeffrey Eisenberg about the buying cycle andPersuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing.
Some search engines provide links to cached versions of pages in their search results, and allow you to strip some of the formatting from cached copies of pages.
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Webmasters should use consistent linking structures throughout their sites to ensure that they funnel the maximum amount of PageRank at the URLs they want indexed. When linking to the root level of a site or a folder index it is best to end the link location at a / instead of placing the index.html or default.asp filename in the URL.
Examples of URLs which may contain the same information in spite of being at different web addresses:
Catalog (see Index)
Cloaking has many legitimate uses which are within search guidelines. For example, changing user experience based on location is common on many popular websites.
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Blog software programs are some of the most popular content management systems currently used on the web. Many content management systems have errors associated with them which make it hard for search engines to index content due to issues such asduplicate content.
Leaving enlightening and thoughtful comments on someone else’s related website is one way to help get them to notice you.
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HTML comments in the source code of a document appear as <!– your comment here –>. They can be viewed if someone types views the source code of a document, but do not appear in the regular formatted HTML rendered version of a document.
In the past some SEOs would stuff keywords in comment tags to help increase the pagekeyword density, but search has evolved beyond that stage, and at this point using comments to stuff keywords into a page adds to your risk profile and presents little ranking upside potential.
As the number of product databases online increases and duplicate content filters are forced to get more aggressive the keys to getting your information indexed are to have a site with enough authority to be considered the most important document on that topic, or to have enough non compacted information (for example, user reviews) on your product level pages to make them be seen as unique documents.
For example, if a search engine understands a phrase to be related to another word or phrase it may return results relevant to that other word or phrase even if the words you searched for are not directly associated with a result. In addition, some search engines will place various types of vertical search results at the top of the search results based on implied query related intent or prior search patterns by you or other searchers.
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Most offline ads have generally been much harder to track than online ads. Some marketers use custom phone numbers or coupon codes to tie offline activity to online marketing.
Here are a few common example desired goals
Bid management, affiliate tracking, and analytics programs make it easy to track conversion sources.
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Many people use CPM as a measure of how profitable a website is or has the potential of becoming.
Since searches which are longer in nature tend to be more targeted in nature it is important to try to get most or all of a site indexed such that the deeper pages have the ability to rank for relevant long tail keywords. A large site needs adequate link equity to get deeply indexed. Another thing which may prevent a site from being fully indexed isduplicate content issues.
Sites which are well trusted or frequently updated may be crawled more frequently than sites with low trust scores and limited link authority. Sites with highly artificial link authority scores (ie: mostly low quality spammy links) or sites which are heavy in duplicate content or near duplicate content (such as affiliate feed sites) may be crawled less frequently than sites with unique content which are well integrated into the web.
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Note: Using external CSS files makes it easy to change the design of many pages by editing a single file. You can link to an external CSS file using code similar to the following in the head of your HTML documents
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://www.seobook.com/style.css” type=”text/css” />
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Most large high quality websites have at least a few dead links in them, but the ratio of good links to dead links can be seen as a sign of information quality.
When links grow naturally typically most high quality websites have many links pointing at interior pages. When you request links from other websites it makes sense to request a link from their most targeted relevant page to your most targeted relevant page. Some webmasters even create content based on easy linking opportunities they think up.
Dedicated servers tend to be more reliable than shared (or virtual) servers. Dedicated servers usually run from $100 to $500 a month. Virtual servers typically run from $5 to $50 per month.
A high deep link ratio is typically a sign of a legitimate natural link profile.
De-indexing may be due to any of the following:
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Some internet marketing platforms, such as AdCenter and AdWords, allow you to target ads at websites or searchers who fit amongst a specific demographic. Some common demographic data points are gender, age, income, education, location, etc.
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High quality directories typically prefer the description describes what the site is about rather than something that is overtly promotional in nature. Search engines typically
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Some directories cater to specific niche topics, while others are more comprehensive in nature. Major search engines likely place significant weight on links from DMOZ and theYahoo! Directory. Smaller and less established general directories likely pull less weight. If a directory does not exercise editorial control over listings search engines will not be likely to trust their links at all.
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Some webmasters cloak thousands of doorway pages on trusted domains, and rake in a boatload of cash until they are caught and de-listed. If the page would have a unique purpose outside of search then search engines are generally fine with it, but if the page only exists because search engines exist then search engines are more likely to frown on the behavior.
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Search engines do not want to index multiple versions of similar content. For example, printer friendly pages may be search engine unfriendly duplicates. Also, many automated content generation techniques rely on recycling content, so some search engines are somewhat strict in filtering out content they deem to be similar or nearly duplicate in nature.
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In the past search engines were less aggressive at indexing dynamic content than they currently are. While they have greatly improved their ability to index dynamic content it is still preferable to use URL rewriting to help make dynamic content look static in nature.
Many paid links, such as those from quality directories, still count as signs of votes as long as they are also associated with editorial quality standards. If they are from sites without editorial control, like link farms, they are not likely to help you rank well. Using an algorithm similar to TrustRank, some search engines may place more trust on well known sites with strong editorial guidelines.
Please note that it is more important that copy reads well to humans than any boost you may think you will get by tweaking it for bots. If every occurrence of a keyword on a page is in emphasis that will make the page hard to read, convert poorly, and may look weird to search engines and users alike.
<em>emphasis</em> would appear as emphasis
If you are buying pay per click ads it is important to send visitors to the most appropriate and targeted page associated with the keyword they searched for. If you are doing link building it is important to point links at your most appropriate page when possible such that
Some search marketers lacking in creativity tend to describe services sold by others as being unethical while their own services are ethical. Any particular technique is generally not typically associated with ethics, but is either effective or ineffective.
The only ethics issues associated with SEO are generally business ethics related issues. Two of the bigger frauds are
As long as the client is aware of potential risks there is nothing unethical about being aggressive.
In the past Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted to a constantly updating index Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance.
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Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents
Some people believe in link hoarding, but linking out to other related resources is a good way to help search engines understand what your site is about. If you link out to lots of low quality sites or primarily rely on low quality reciprocal links some search engines may not rank your site very well. Search engines are more likely to trust high quality editorial links (both to and from your site).
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Upload an image named favicon.ico in the root of your site to have your site associated with a favicon.
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Favorites (see bookmarks)
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For example, if a site publishes significant duplicate content it may get a reduced crawl priority and get filtered out of the search results. Some search engines also have filters based on link quality, link growth rate, and anchor text. Some pages are also penalized forspamming.
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Search engines tend to struggle indexing and ranking flash websites because flash typically contains so little relevant content. If you use flash ensure:
Forward Links (see Outbound Links)
Given the popularity of server side includes, content management systems, and dynamic languages there really is no legitimate reason to use frames to build a content site today.
Many SEOs talk up fresh content, but fresh content does not generally mean re-editing old content. It more often refers to creating new content. The primary advantages to fresh content are:
Many content management systems (such as blogging platforms) include FTP capabilities. Web development software such as Dreamweaver also comes with FTP capabilities. There are also a number of free or cheap FTP programs such as Cute FTP, Core FTP, and Leech FTP.
Fuzzy search technology is similar to stemming technology, with the exception that fuzzy search corrects the misspellings at the users end and stemming searches for other versions of the same core word within the index.
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Google has a shared crawl cache between their various spiders, including vertical search spiders and spiders associated with ad targeting.
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Google AdSense (see AdSense)
Google AdWords (see AdWords)
Google Base may also help Google better understand what types of information are commercial in nature, and how they should structure different vertical search products.
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Typically it is easier to bowl new sites out of the results. Older established sites are much harder to knock out of the search results.
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Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh aseverflux.
The second meaning of Google Dance is a yearly party at Google’s corporate headquarters which Google holds for search engine marketers. This party coincides with the San Jose Search Engine Strategies conference.
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Keyword research tool provided by Google which estimates the competition for a keyword, recommends related keywords, and will tell you what keywords Google thinks are relevant to your site or a page on your site.
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Please note that the best way to submit your site to search engines and to keep it in their search indexes is to build high quality editorial links.
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If you do not submit a bid price the tool will return an estimated bid price necessary to rank #1 for 85% of Google’s queries for a particular keyword.
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Free multi variable testing platform used to help AdWords advertisers improve their conversion rates.
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Heading elements go from H1 to H6 with the lower numbered headings being most important. You should only use a single H1 element on each page, and may want to use multiple other heading elements to structure a document. An H1 element source would look like:
<h3>Your Topic</h3>
Heading elements may be styled using CSS. Many content management systems place the same content in the main page heading and the page title, although in many cases it may be preferential to mix them up if possible.
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The title of an article or story.
While some sites may get away with it for a while, generally the risk to reward ratio is inadequate for most legitimate sites to consider using hidden text.
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As far as SEO goes, a home page is typically going to be one of the easier pages to rank for some of your more competitive terms, largely because it is easy to build links at a home page. You should ensure your homepage stays focused and reinforces your brand though, and do not assume that most of your visitors will come to your site via the home page. If your site is well structured many pages on your site will likely be far more popular and rank better than your home page for relevant queries.
Host (see Server)
As a note of caution, make sure you copy your current .htaccess file before editing it, and do not edit it on a site that you can’t afford to have go down unless you know what you are doing.
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Some newer web pages are also formatted in XHTML.
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Topical hubs are sites which link to well trusted within their topical community. A topical authority is a page which is referenced from many topical hub sites. A topical hub is a page which references many authorities.
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IDF = log ( total documents in database / documents containing the term )
Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link: function. For example, using link:www.seobook.com would show pages linking to the homepage of this site (both internal links and inbound links). Due tocanonical URL issues www.site.com and site.com may show different linkage data. Google typically shows a much smaller sample of linkage data than competing engines do, but Google still knows of and counts many of the links that do not show up when you use their link: function.
When search engines search they search via reverse indexes by words and return results based on matching relevancy vectors. Stemming and semantic analysis allow search engines to return near matches. Index may also refer to the root of a folder on a web server.
It is preferential to use descriptive internal linking to make it easy for search engines to understand what your website is about. Use consistent navigational anchor text for each section of your site, emphasizing other pages within that section. Place links to relevant related pages within the content area of your site to help further show the relationship between pages and improve the usability of your website.
Good information architecture considers both how humans and search spiders access a website. Information architecture suggestions:
Internal Navigation (see Navigation)
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Inverted File (see Reverse Index)
Many SEOs refer to unique C class IP addresses. Every site is hosted on a numerical address like aa.bb.cc.dd. In some cases many sites are hosted on the same IP address. It is believed by many SEOs that if links come from different IP ranges with a different number somewhere in the aa.bb.cc part then the link may count more than links from the same local range and host.
IP delivery (see cloaking)
Italics (see emphasis)
Search engines do not index most content in JavaScript. In AJAX, JavaScript has been combined with other technologies to make web pages even more interactive.
Long tail and brand related keywords are typically worth more than shorter and vague keywords because they typically occur later in the buying cycle and are associated with a greater level of implied intent.
When people use keyword stuffed copy it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link worthy), plus some pages that are crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).
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Example keyword discovery methods:
Short list of the most popular keyword research tools:
Please note that most keyword research tools used alone are going to be highly inaccurate at giving exact quantitative search volumes. The tools are better for qualitative measurements. To test the exact volume for a keyword it may make sense to set up a test Google AdWords campaign.
When people use keyword stuffed copy it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link worthy), plus some pages that are crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).
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Keyword Suggestion Tools (see Keyword Research Tools)
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When Google AdWords launched affiliates and arbitrage players made up a large portion of their ad market, but as more mainstream companies have spent on search marketing, Google has done many measures to try to keep their ads relevant.
Most major search engines consider links as a vote of trust.
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A few general link building tips:
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When links occur naturally they generally develop over time. In some cases it may make sense that popular viral articles receive many links quickly, but in those cases there are typically other signs of quality as well, such as:
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Log files do not typically show as much data as analytics programs would, and if they do, it is generally not in a format that is as useful beyond seeing the top few stats.
Generally link hoarding is a bad idea for the following reasons:
“Of course, folks never know when we’re going to adjust our scoring. It’s pretty easy to spot domains that are hoarding PageRank; that can be just another factor in scoring. If you work really hard to boost your authority-like score while trying to minimize your hub-like score, that sets your site apart from most domains. Just something to bear in mind.” -Quote from Google’s Matt Cutts
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For competitive search queries link quality counts much more than link quantity. Google typically shows a smaller sample of known linkage data than the other engines do, even though Google still counts many of the links they do not show when you do a link: search.
Links may broken for a number of reason, but four of the most common reasons are:
Most large websites have some broken links, but if too many of a site’s links are broken it may be an indication of outdated content, and it may provide website users with a poor user experience. Both of which may cause search engines to rank a page as being less relevant.
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How does the long tail applies to keywords? Long Tail keywords are more precise and specific, thus have a higher value. As of writing this definition in the middle of October 2006 my leading keywords for this month are as follows:
| #reqs | search term |
|---|---|
| 1504 | seo book |
| 512 | seobook |
| 501 | seo |
| 214 | google auctions |
| 116 | link bait |
| 95 | aaron wall |
| 94 | gmail uk |
| 89 | search engine optimization |
| 86 | trustrank |
| 78 | adsense tracker |
| 73 | latent semantic indexing |
| 71 | seo books |
| 69 | john t reed |
| 67 | dear sir |
| 67 | book.com |
| 64 | link harvester |
| 64 | google adwords coupon |
| 58 | seobook.com |
| 55 | adwords coupon |
| 15056 | [not listed: 9,584 search terms] |
Notice how the nearly 10,000 unlisted terms account for roughly 10 times as much traffic as I got from my core brand related term (and this site only has a couple thousand pages and has a rather strong brand).
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A good meta description tag should:
Relevant meta description tags may appear in search results as part of the pagedescription below the page title.
The code for a meta description tag looks like this
<meta name=”Description” content=”Your meta description here. ” / >
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The code for a meta keyword tag looks like this
<meta name=”Keywords” content=”keyword phrase, another keyword, yep another, maybe one more “>
Many people spammed meta keyword tags and searchers typically never see the tag, so most search engines do not place much (if any) weight on it. Many SEO professionals no longer use meta keywords tags.
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A meta refresh looks like this
<meta http-equiv=“refresh” content=“10;url=http://www.site.com/folder/page.htm”>
Generally in most cases it is preferred to use a 301 or 302 redirect over a meta refresh.
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Sites with strong mindshare, top rankings, or a strong memorable brand are far more likely to be linked at than sites which are less memorable and have less search exposure. The link quality of mindshare related links most likely exceeds the quality of the average link on the web. If you sell non-commodities, personal recommendations also typically carry far greater weight than search rankings alone.
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Generally search engines prefer not to index duplicate content. The one exception to this is that if you are a hosting company it might make sense to offer free hosting or a free mirror site to a popular open source software site to build significant link equity.
Movable Type is typically much harder to install that Wordpress is.
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Natural Link (see Editorial Link)
Natrual Search (see Organic Search Results)
It is best to use regular HTML navigation rather than coding your navigation in JavaScript, Flash, or some other type of navigation which search engines may not be able to easily index.
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Search is a broad field, but as you drill down each niche consists of many smaller niches. An example of drilling down to a niche market
Generally it is easier to compete in small, new, or underdeveloped niches than trying to dominate large verticals. As your brand and authority grow you can go after bigger markets.
The code to use nofollow on a link appears like
<a href=”http://wwwseobook.com.com” rel=”nofollow”>anchor text </a>
Nofollow can also be used in a robots meta tag to prevent a search engine from counting any outbound links on a page. This code would look like this
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
Google’s Matt Cutts also pushes webmasters to use nofollow on any paid links, but since Google is the world’s largest link broker, their advice on how other people should buy or sell links should be taken with a grain of salt. Please note that it is generally not advised to practice link hoarding as that may look quite unnatural. Outbound links may also boost your relevancy scores in some search engines.
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Open Directory Project, The (see DMOZ)
On the web open source is a great strategy for quickly building immense exposure and mindshare.
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Most clicks on search results are on the organic search results. Some studies have shown that 60 to 80% + of clicks are on the organic search results.
Some webmasters believe in link hoarding, but linking out to useful relevant related documents is an easy way to help search engines understand what your website is about. If you reference other resources it also helps you build credibility and leverage the work of others without having to do everything yourself. Some webmasters track where their traffic comes from, so if you link to related websites they may be more likely to link back to your site.
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Co-founder of Google.
Since PageRank is widely bartered Google’s relevancy algorithms had to move away from relying on PageRank and place more emphasis on trusted links via algorithms such asTrustRank.
The PageRank formula is:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
PR= PageRank
d= dampening factor (~0.85)
c = number of links on the page
PR(T1)/C(T1) = PageRank of page 1 divided by the total number of links on page 1, (transferred PageRank)
In text: for any given page A the PageRank PR(A) is equal to the sum of the parsed partial PageRank given from each page pointing at it multiplied by the dampening factor plus one minus the dampening factor.
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Page Title (see Title)
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Paid Link (see Text Link Ads)
Publishers publishing contextual ads are typically paid per ad click. Affiliate marketing programs pay affiliates for conversions – leads, downloads, or sales.
If a site is penalized algorithmically the site may start ranking again after a certain period of time after the reason for being penalized is fixed. If a site is penalized manually the penalty may last an exceptionally long time or require contacting the search engine with areinclusion request to remedy.
Some sites are also filtered for various reasons.
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Search spam and the complexity of language challenge the precision of search engines.
A page which has words near one another may be deemed to be more likely to satisfy a search query containing both terms. If keyword phrases are repeated an excessive number of times, and the proximity is close on all the occurrences of both words it may also be a sign of unnatural (and thus potentially low quality) content.
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There are a variety of ways to define what a quality link is, but the following are characteristics of a high quality link:
While appropriate anchor text may also help you rank even better than a link which lacks appropriate anchor text, it is worth noting that for competitive queries Google is more likely to place weight on a high quality link where the anchor text does not match than trusting low quality links where the anchor text matches.
Query refinement is both a manual and an automated process. If searchers do not find their search results as being relevant they may search again. Search engines may also automatically refine queries using the following techniques:
Some search toolbars also aim to help searchers auto complete their search queries by offering a list of most popular queries which match the starting letters that a searcher enters into the search box.
When sites link naturally there is going to be some amount of cross linking within a community, but if most or all of your links are reciprocal in nature it may be a sign of ranking manipulation. Also sites that trade links off topic or on links pages that are stashed away deep within their sites probably do not pass much link authority, and may add more risk than reward.
Quality reciprocal link exchanges in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link offers are of low quality. If too many of your links are of low quality it may make it harder for your site to rank for relevant queries, and some search engines may look at inlink and outlink ratios as well as link quality when determining how natural a site’s link profile is.
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Example relative link
<a href=”../folder/filename.html“>Cool Stuff</a>
Example absolute link
<a href=”http://seobook.com/folder/filename.html“>Cool Stuff</a>
Many search engines may also bias organic search results to informational resources since commercial ads also show in the search results.
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Rewrite (see URL Rewrite)
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Do not put files on a public server if you do not want search engines to index them!
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While ROI is a somewhat sophisticated measurement, some search marketers prefer to account for their marketing using more sophisticate profit elasticity calculations.
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Search engines may also determine what a document is about and how much they trust a domain based on aggregate usage data. Many brand related search queries is a strong signal of quality.
Also known as:
SEO consists largely of keyword research, SEO copywriting, information architecture, link building, brand building, building mindshare, reputation management, and viral marketing.
There are two main ways to write titles and be SEO friendly
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Dedicated servers usually run from $100 to $500 a month. Virtual servers typically run from $5 to $50 per month.
Server logs typically do not show as much data and are not as user friendly as analyticssoftware. Not all hosts provide server logs.
Important steps:
Multi dimensional scaling is more efficient than singular value decomposition because it requires exceptionally less computation. When combined with other ranking factors only a rough approximation of relevance is necessary.
Tips:
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Snippit (see Description)
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Search engines also like to outsource their relevancy issues by calling low quality search results spam. They have vague ever changing guidelines which determine what marketing techniques are acceptable at any given time. Typically search engines try hard not to flag false positives as spam, so most algorithms are quite lenient, as long as you do not build lots of low quality links, host large quantities of duplicate content, or perform other actions that are considered widely outside of relevancy guidelines. If your site is banned from a search engine you may request reinclusion after fixing the problem.
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Many non-traditional search companies have different spiders which perform other applications. For example, TurnItInBot searches for plagiarism. Spiders should obey therobots.txt protocol.
Make sure your home page has relevant content on it if possible.
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To use a server side include you have to follow one of the conditions:
The code to create a server side include looks like this:
<!–#include virtual=”/includes/filename.html” –>
Many static sites do ok, but the reasons fresh content works great for SEO are:
It is both fine and natural to use stop words in your page content. The reason stop words are ignored when people search is that the words are so common that they offer little to no discrimination value.
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Some topical or vertical search systems will require submission, but you should not need to submit your site to large scale search engine.
Some search engines, such as Google, have multiple indicies. Documents which are not well trusted due to any of the following conditions:
Documents in the supplemental results are crawled less frequently than documents in the main index. Since documents in the supplemental results are typically considered to be trusted less than documents in the regular results, those pages probably carry less weight when they vote for other pages by linking at them.
You can find document’s on this site that are in Google’s supplemental results by searching for site:seobook.com *** -view:randomstring
Tagging, tags (see Bookmarks)
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Since the web was originally based on text and links people are typically more inclined to pay attention to text links than some other ad formats which are typically less relevant and more annoying. However, search engines primarily want to count editorial links as votes, so links that are grouped together with other paid links (especially if those links are to off topic commercial sites) may be less likely to carry weight in search engines.
Thesaurus tools can also be used as a keyword research tool to help search marketers find related keywords to target.
The title is one of the most important aspects to doing SEO on a web page. Each page title should be:
Page titles appear in search results as the links searchers click on. In addition many people link to documents using the official document title as the link anchor text. Thus, by using a descriptive page title you are likely to gain descriptive anchor text and are more likely to have your listing clicked on.
On some occasions it also makes sense to use a title which is not literally descriptive, but is easily associated with human emotions or a controversy such that your idea will spread further and many more people will point quality editorial links at your document.
There are two main ways to write titles and be SEO friendly
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Due to the automated nature of trackbacks they are typically quite easy to spam. Many publishers turn trackbacks off due to a low signal to noise ratio.
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It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain off of Typepad.com, or to publish content which appears as though it is on its own domain. If you are serious about building a brand or making money online you should publish your content to your own domainbecause it can be hard to reclaim a website’s link equity and age related trust if you have built years of link equity into a subdomain on someone else’s website.
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Unethical SEO
SEO is an inherently risky business, but any quality SEO service provider should make clients aware of potential risks and rewards of different recommended techniques.
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The structure and formatting of text and hyperlink based calls to action can drastically increase your website usability, and thus conversion rates.
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Vector Space Model (see Term Vector Database)
For example, Business.com would be a B2B vertical search engine, and YouTube would be a video based vertical search engine.
Many social news sites and social bookmarking sites also lead to secondary citations.
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Using a virtual server can save money for smaller applications, but dedicated hosting should be used for large commercial platforms.Most domains are hosted on virtual servers, but using a dedicated server on your most important domains should add server reliability, and could be seen as a sign of quality. Dedicated servers usually run from $100 to $500 a month. Virtual servers typically run from $5 to $50 per month.
Weblog (see Blog)
Some domain registrars also allow you to hide the ownership data of your sites. Many large scale spammers use fake Whois data.
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Search engines are not without flaws in their business models, but there is nothing immoral or illegal about testing search algorithms to understand how search engines work.
People who have extensively tested search algorithms are probably more competent and more knowledgeable search marketers than those who give themselves the arbitrary label of white hat SEOs while calling others black hat SEOs.
When making large investments in processes that are not entirely clear trust is important. Rather than looking for reasons to not work with an SEO it is best to look for signs of trust in a person you would like to work with.
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If you are serious about building a brand or making money online you should publish your content to your own domain because it can be hard to reclaim a website’s link equityand age related trust if you have built years of link equity into a subdomain on someone else’s website.
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Due to Wordtracker’s small sample size their data may be easy to game.
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The Yahoo! Directory is one of a few places where most any legitimate site can pick up a trusted link. While the cost of $299 per year may seem expensive to some small businesses, a Yahoo! Directory link will likely help boost your rankings in major search engines.
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Have you ever wondered why Google is worth over a hundred billions of dollars? Or why a single click from Google can go for as high as $50? The reason is the precise targeting offered by search engine marketing.
Most ads try to club you over the head and beat you into submission. Search engine marketing is a completely different form of advertising because rather than trying to tell you what to do, the searcher requests to see the ads and views them as relevant to their wants, needs, and goals.
Ads on websites with no targeting can have little to no value. Search traffic, which is laser targeted, is worth over 30x as much. [1]
For display advertising, Credit Suisse estimated that in 2009 the average CPM will be $2.39, down from $2.46 in 2008.
…
As for paid search, JPMorgan projected that for every 1,000 searches, $75.33 would be generated from ads in 2009.
Would you rather hunt for customers, or make yourself available to customers hunting for you? SEO allows you to tap the value of search, with your customers finding your business when they need your products & services!
The cool thing about search engine marketing is not only is it so targeted, but it benefits search engines to share valuable keywords with prospective advertisers. This means you get to spy on the relative search volumes of different keywords, and how much your competitors are willing to pay for keywords.
Using the Google Traffic Estimator Sandbox you can view how much Google’s estimate the of keyword value at
For example, here is the estimated value for credit card and credit cards
Notice how there are 3 different listings for each keyword. They are based on Google’s AdWords ad match types, and can be used to help you know the relative search volumes between different types of searches.
Enter some of your keywords here and see what Google thinks they are worth.
https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
The above tool estimates the value of traffic to a single paid Google AdWords ad, but most searchers click on the free search results, so the keyword value to your business may even be higher than estimated by the above tool.
Search engines take advantage of reverse broadcast networks to help save time and money. They are instant answer systems that provide ultra-targeted advertising.
While normal advertising interrupts people, search allows you to sell what your customers want, when they want it. Search is not intrusive, and does not look or feel like any other form of advertising.
The biggest mistake that newbie internet marketers make is thinking simply building a great website, having the best search engine optimization, that creating great content on their blog and signing up for a few social media networks will be all it takes to be successful internet marketers. My biggest frustration is when newbie online marketers and bloggers pack up shop after just a few months of writing because their website or blog doesn’t have an immediate impact on their search traffic and lead volume.
It takes time, continued building, persistence, a perfectly coded website (viewable by major search engines), a team of highly skilled online surgeon’s.
If you don’t know weather or not you have a good web foundation or don’t know your current performance level, CHECK YOUR VITALS HERE!!! If you come back graded less than 50, you need to start over, under 80, you need a lot of help, over 80… you are ready to start your online marketing campaign.
Here is your team checklist: (Check references and make sure you don’t skimp on the talent… each team member will play a critical part of your success!)
At the end of the day, if you publish great content on the web AND connect, relate and build relationships with other humans, really good links will come naturally. Until then, put in some homework and earn your way through link building high school.
There is NO magic pill that will make you loose weight fast. There is also NO magic product that will get you results on line fast. Make sure you have the best platform and team supporting your marketing efforts and know that you are looking at a 4 – 6 year plan, no different than your plan to build and create a successful business.
Contact us today for a COMPLEMENTARY 1 HOUR CONSULTATION – Only 15 Spots available in September!
In that article, I said I’d be writing a follow up article about “how” to build links to your site.
Link building is not easy. And it’s not that intuitive until you do it. There are also many different techniques and methods that will have varied results. Below is how I recommend clients start and master link building.
I tell people that there are 4 Levels of Link Building Excellence. And it usually takes 4 years to master it – just like high school:
9th Grade: Links You Can Build Yourself That Require Little Time Investment
Before I get into this, I’d like to stress that you should have a really good keyword strategy (based on solid research – hiring an expert will insure you don’t waist the next 4 years) and make sure you’ve optimized each page on your site around a different keyword phrase. Any link you’re building should be designed to help a specific page rank high in the search engines for a specific keyword.
That said, the first set of links that every business should get are the ones that don’t require anyone else’s help. There are lots of business directories out there where you can just submit your URL, company name and a description of your business. Some of them require approval. Some of them require a fee. Yahoo’s directory, Joe Ant, Aboutus.org are some of the ones you should do right away. This is one of the services we recommend our clients subscribe to within our managed social media marketing plans.
In this class of Level I links, there are also many social media sites where you can simply build links to your site. Most of these no longer pass SEO credit, but they’re still good links to get, assuming your target audience visits the site or these sites rank high for your keywords already.
It’s arguable that you should hire someone to do (or start) this stuff for you. It’s low level work that generates low level returns. Just make sure that you don’t hire a firm that will get you 1,000 links for < $1,000 dollars or build 1000 links in a month. If it’s too good to be true, trust me it is!
10th Grade: Links You Build Yourself that Require Effort
Before I get into this level, I’d like to stress that launching a properly designed and search engine optimized business website and blog should be done before doing this. Without having a blog on your site with lots of good well optimized content, you don’t really have anything to link to.
That said, there are two very common link building techniques that work well that don’t require you to be a “thought leader”. Yet. These activities require a bit more time investment and a small financial investment. They are article marketing and press release optimization. With both of these methods, you have to create relevant content that will appeal to your market. So, it requires more time than Level I. Also, the process of getting your articles syndicated and your press releases submitted and picked up – takes effort. You might consider hiring a wired pr firm or a strong seo firm to do some of this stuff for you.
If done correctly, both of these methods can significantly increase the links to your site. Also, if you write your articles and press releases with a keyword strategy in mind, and with links that support your keyword strategy, it can significantly raise your rankings for specific keyword terms. Run your press releases and your articles through press release grader to determine whether they’re going to help.
11th Grade: Links You Network For that Require a Significant Time Investment
This part of link building is kind of like sales. Cold calling can be done effectively with persistence. But, networking, getting referrals, giving first, the law of attraction, etc is a better way of getting new clients.
Link building is the same way. If you’re more of a cold caller type, and there are lots of potential places you can get a link, you might consider just creating a list of webmasters and asking them for a link.
If you’re a natural networker and you’re in this for the long haul, I’d recommend being a bit more patient. Apply your persistence and spend your time building relationships.
No matter what route you take, the goal of this level is to make yourself visible among people interested in the same topics as you. This process is a bit self promotional. But, you must promote yourself in a way that you’re adding value. You master this level by acting like a resource for people in your industry. How do you do this? It’s all about networking and building meaningful relationships.
The first step is reading other people’s blogs. Then, commenting on them – Feel free to leave comments on ours. Then, eventually starting a relationship where you’re communicating 1 on 1 with them. I recommend you take the leap from reader to 1:1 with a blogger, by pointing them in the direction of other people’s content that might be interesting to them. In the non marketing world, this usually happens through email. In the marketing world, this usually happens through Twitter. If you’re techy, this might happen through Delicious. If you use StumbleUpon or Digg, those are great platforms to share things with peers. Even google reader lets you do this kind of networking. But, it can certainly happen through any social networking platform or system that enables 1:1 communication.
From a link building perspective, the ultimate goal of this level is to get invited to write a guest article for other people’s blogs or website. For example, I wrote an article about inbound lead generation for not too long ago. In the article, I linked to relevant resources on my blog and the Compliments International blog and site. These are great links from an authoritative source. Aaron reaches our target market sending relevant traffic. These links also help us rank for our target keywords.
During this process, you’re also building up a group of people that will most likely begin following you…
Seniors Rule! (12th Grade): Links Other People Give You Because You Create Remarkable Content.
This level is like the last month or two in high school when you’ve already passed mid terms and you’ve been accepted to the college of your choice. You’ve done the hard work already…4+ years of hard work with an expert team behind you. Now, it’s time to go to parties and enjoy being the care free big man on campus.
You don’t necessarily halt the activities above. But, you spend more of your time just creating remarkable content and having your marketing team push it out to hundreds of networks for you. (And some link bait.)
At Compliments International, we do some guest articles once in a while and we optimize our press releases. But, mostly we just put time into churning out content on our blog and producing other online marketing resources like webinars, weekly training, client portfolio promoting and white papers. Some of you seem to think this stuff is pretty remarkable. As a result, it generally creates great conversations in our comments, strong attendance at our webinars and lots of attendees at our trainings and seminars. And regularly, people link to our webinar announcements and blog articles of their own accord.
This doesn’t start happening overnight, unless you’re already famous. We have a lot of advantages at Compliments internationals. Our Clients success, our company continues to grow and increase our profitability, smart and experienced founders who have been coding and on the internet since it started and before they had a company… a team of great employees , a strong social media following, etc.
But, we did it in < 2 years. If you’re a small business and you follow the path above, there’s no reason why you can’t stake your claim on the web. Link building is an important part of that. Hopefully, this post demystifies the process a bit and gives you a roadmap to get started.
The biggest mistake that newbie internet marketers make is thinking simply building a great website, having the best search engine optimization, that creating great content on their blog and signing up for a few social media networks will be all it takes to be successful internet marketers. My biggest frustration is when newbie bloggers pack up shop after just a month of writing because the blog doesn’t have an immediate impact on their search traffic and lead volume.
It takes time, continued building, persistence, a perfectly coded website (viewable by major search engines), a team of highly skilled online surgeon’s.
