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These are the latest guest posts I’ve written for StartUpNation, BizNik, Blogtrepreneur and PartnerUp:
Enjoy!
SEO isn’t rocket science but you do need to have an arsenal of tools if you want to outrank your competition.
You want to focus on these key areas when it comes to SEO. If you can beat out competitors in the following areas, you have a 90% chance of outranking them in the search engines.
• Indexed pages
• Incoming links
• Incoming links -with anchor text matching keywords you want to rank
• Site age
• Domain PageRank
• Page optimization
However, there are some forces that may be against you and could negatively affect your ranking. Avoid the following:
• Duplicate content – this is a big No-No in SEO
• Website structure - poorly built/coded
• Internal linking - structure is bad
• Incoming links - generated from link farms and/or poor quality sites
• Incoming links – not relevant to the topic associated with your site
• Lack of content/keyword issues - not enough content around keyword you want to rank
• Page optimization - don’t have at least ONE page optimized for that particular keyword
Indexed Pages
It’s easy to find out how many pages search engines have indexed by running searches through Google, Yahoo and Bing. The syntax for each search engine is different – use the following:
• Google – site:thecoolblog.com
• Yahoo – linkdomain:www.thecoolblog.com
• Bing – site:www.thecoolblog.com
Incoming Links
The best tool to use to find incoming links is Yahoo Site Explorer. This tool allows you to find what websites link back to your sites.
Get MORE incoming links than your competitor and make sure they are BETTER links:
• Higher-authority sites
• Similar sites/topics related to your site
• Links with right anchor texts
Incoming Links with Anchor Text Matching the Keyword You Want to Rank
Anchor text is clickable text in a hyperlink.
You can utilize tools to check how many links point back to your site with the right anchor text. It’s important to get as many links as you can with the right anchor text. It’s better to have 100 links if 75% of them have the anchor text: “search engine marketing (SEM)” compared to 1,000 links with only 5% having that anchor text.
• SEOmoz Backlink Analysis (paid membership)
• Backlink Analyzer (free software)
Site Age and Domain PageRank
Another great tool to use is SEO for Firefox. This addon allows you to find the site age/date. This is important when you are trying to find a keyword to rank.
You can also find the PageRank (PR) using the same tool above. It allows you to see where that particular page is ranked in Google (which is helpful when you are figuring out your competition’s rankings).
Page Optimization
It’s difficult to rank for a keyword you don’t have any optimized content for. If you don’t optimize pages for your keywords, it’s going to make it harder for you in the future when it comes to your rankings.
Create a chart for EACH keyword you want to rank. This allows you to analyze your metrics and figure out what you need to do better to outrank your competition: Do you need more links? Is your site younger than your competitor’s? Is your PR lower or higher than your competition?
The chart needs to include the following:
• Incoming links
• Indexed pages
• # of Matching Anchor Texts
• Site Age
• PageRank
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Google Analytics allows webmasters/developers to easily track actions visitors take on websites. It’s easy to customize Google Analytics to track a wide variety of events for your site. You just need to modify your code to match your website’s specific needs/functions. Google Analytics event tracking guide will walk you step-by-step through the process.
However, before you can track these events you need to have goals in mind and ask yourself some basic questions. If you have an e-commerce site you might want to ask the following questions: How many sales did I generate last month/last week? How many people are clicking on Product A on the products page?
The Benefits of Event Tracking
Event tracking will help improve your overall online sales and marketing goals. You will have a better understanding of your visitors’ actions. If you’re an e-commerce site, it allows you to figure out why a certain product isn’t selling (what’s popular, etc).
Maybe you are trying to boost membership on your site, and people aren’t opting-in to your site. You can basically track everything your visitors are doing and improve upon your site as a result.
Getting Started with Event Tracking
It’s easy to get started on Google Analytics. The following steps walk you through the basics of getting started with event tracking:
• Log into Google Analytics (if you don’t have an account, you’ll need to set one up before you proceed).
• You’ll need to create a new profile for your site. Go to “Analytics Setting” and choose “Create New Website Profile.”
• Choose a “Website Profile Type” – click either “Add a Profile for a New Domain” or “Add a Profile for an Existing Domain.”
• Enter the URL of your website that you want to be tracked. In the drop-down menu, choose either http:// or https:// format (choose your country, time zone, etc.)
• Click “Finish” and the tracking page will open and your tracking code will appear.
• Cut/paste your tracking code, and then insert tracking code before body tags of code for all the web pages you want to track.
• Read this guide from Google that explains how to track events on Google Analytics and either implement it yourself or have your developer take care of this for you.
Most Common Event Tracking
You can also customize your tracking in order to generate specific data/reports. However, modifications to the tracking code will need to happen before your visitor’s actions can be accurately reported. Event tracking really depends on the specific goals and needs of your site, and what you want to track.
Here are some common events that are tracked:
• Ecommerce activity/shopping cart purchases
• When visitors download PDFs/files or click a certain button on a page
• Member functions such as tracking new member sign-ups, log-ins, etc.
• Banner Ad exits - tracks which banner ads visitors click on to leave your site and which advertisers they visit
• Outbound links - how many times visitors click on links leading away from your site
• Actions that don’t take users to new pages - if a visitor clicks the play button to watch/listen to audio or video on your site
• Tracks Flash, Ajax and Javascript content
• Page widgets
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You’re stumped! You just created the BEST content to add to your blog but you are now stuck. What are the MOST effective SEO keywords to use on your site? Where do you start? What tools do you use?
Keyword research is THE most important part of effective SEO. If you pick the wrong keywords, you will waste both a lot of time and money. You also won’t get the search engine rankings you want.
There are some basic criteria you need to keep in mind when searching for keywords:
• Relevancy – What keywords are relevant to your market/niche?
• Search volume – There are many users searching for that keyword/term
• Current ranking – What is the keyword ranking? If it’s a high volume keyword such as “marketing” (ranked #10) compared to “retail marketing” (ranked #600)– go with the former because you’ll get better results faster (more qualified traffic)
How to Avoid Bad Keywords
• Keywords should be relevant with a high traffic volume
• People aren’t always going to search for difficult terms. Don’t use complicated terms such as “freestyle snowboarding champion in Lake Tahoe, California” It’s very unlikely that a person is going to search for that specific term – keep it simple!
• Sometimes keywords with high search volumes may be more difficult – you may have to work a little harder! Check out the following tools to analyze keyword difficulty: SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool and SEOlogs Keyword Difficulty Check Tool.
How to Choose Effective Keywords
The first step in choosing keywords is brainstorming. You also need powerful tracking tools that will lead you in the right direction. Learn about the buying process and how consumers research and buy online.
• First, ask yourself this question: “How would my customers/clients search for my products and services online?”
• Brainstorm a seed list (it helps to brainstorm with other colleagues) – choose a list of terms that would answer the above question.
• Use the following keyword tools to expand your list: Google Keyword Tool, WordTracker and WebCEO. This is how you optimize keywords/terms that people search for the most.
• Place keywords you find underneath your seed list. The goal is to grow your list with well-optimized keywords/phrases. You need to figure out which keywords have the most relevancy, search volume and current tracking.
• You could spend up to hours looking for optimized keywords – that may sound long and boring but you could end up with the wrong keywords and mess up your SEO. It’s better to take the time to research keywords NOW then to regret it later!
• Pay attention to keyword discovery – broad keywords (broad terms with a high search volume) versus long-tail keywords (less searches but more specific/relevant terms related to your products and services)
• Figure out the search volume for each keyword. You need a relevancy value for each keyword and then calculate the score of each keyword.
• Choose 5-10 primary keywords (keywords that have high relevancy and search volumes), 20-60 secondary words (lower search volume but very relevant) and keyword modifiers (words that go before, after or in the middle of primary or secondary words – i.e. “free”)
When choosing keywords keep the following criteria in mind:
• Brand names (i.e. Target)
• Generic product names (i.e. laptops)
• Product attributes (i.e. affordable laptops)
• Brands (i.e. Dell laptops)
• Models (i.e. Dell Inspiron E1705 laptops)
• Action keywords (i.e. buy laptops)
• Problem-related keywords (i.e. how to fix laptops)
• Specials (i.e. laptops free shipping)
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Link building is an effective online marketing strategy and the key to your company’s success. If you strategically place your links, you’ll be surprised with the qualified traffic you get and how those links build and grow over time. More links equals more sales and customers!
Keep the following “link building formula” in mind when building your campaign:
• Links from related sites are worth more than unrelated sites – This is basic common sense. If you have an e-commerce site that sells running apparel, you don’t links from sites that sell cars. Choose links related to running apparel/running-related products.
• You want high authority websites linking back to you – A link from a reputable news source such as CNN is worth more than a link from your friend’s parenting blog. It’s also advised to check the authority of the URL linking to you (and the page where the link to your site is located). Sometimes if a site is new they don’t have a PageRank yet. You can easily tell the reason behind why or why not a site has a PR.
• Quality and Quantity of Links – You need to be aware of the quality of your links, where they originate, the quantity (are you getting a lot of links?) and your anchor text. Are you getting links with keywords you want to rank for in your anchor texts?
Remember that NOT all link building strategies are appropriate for EVERY business/company. You need to figure out what works best for your industry/niche and create your campaign accordingly.
Add Value to Your Content
The KEY to effective link building is to always, always add VALUE to the content you create. If you create bad, irrelevant content, no one will link to your site and you will have stopped your campaign in its track.
You also have to look like an authority in your field. You want to show visitors that you KNOW more than your competitors. Remember to always add value with your content – how will your content solve a problem or make a person’s life easier?
Links will come to you VERY easily if you stand out with your content and make a unique statement. Link building is contagious and if you become well-known as an industry expert, friends of friends will tell their colleagues and the links continue to BUILD!
Create Natural Looking Links
The worst thing you could do is to make your links LOOK unnatural. Make your links look natural – do NOT create links with the same anchor text because the search engines will throw up red flags. Mix up your anchor text with “click here” or “check it out.”
Common Link Building Tools
• Web Directories – Add URLs to web directories such as DMOZ
• Blog Directories – List in blog directories such as Blogarama
• Article Directories – Add articles/content to free article distribution sites i.e. EzineArticles
• Press Release Distribution Sites – Utilize free press release site such as PRWeb
• Video Marketing – Post videos (include links) on YouTube
• Social Media Sites – Don’t forget to post on all the social media sites such as Facebook, Digg, HugPages, etc.
• Online communities/forums – Interact with online communities and forums – answer questions and participate (another way to be seen as an expert in your field)
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These are the latest guest posts I’ve written for BizNik and StartUpNation. Enjoy!
When creating SEO content, stuffing your content with keywords won’t work (keyword stuffing is also an unethical SEO tactic). Not only does your content have to sound unique and exceptional, keywords need to be placed strategically within your content.
When you write articles, keep your keyword list handy and insert keywords as you write. Your goal is to create quality content that adds value to your readers. If your article sounds like nonsense with strings of keywords crammed into paragraphs, you’re not utilizing correct SEO practices. It’s fairly simple to add a few primary and secondary words within articles without jeopardizing your entire content quality.
How to Optimize Your Blog
There are three main reasons WHY you want to create QUALITY content on your blogs:
• MORE pages indexed – Search engine spiders crawl content (quality content equals more page indexing!)
• Provide visitors with GREAT information – When visitors find you on Google, the rapport with your readers begin right there! When you provide valuable, quality content you engage your readers. Great content gives you a competitive edge over every other business floating around on cyberspace.
• Links – When visitors read an informative, helpful article, they write about it on their blogs/sites and link to it. They also share with their friends and they tell their friends, etc.
Calls to Action
Visitors read your blog posts because they want to learn more information or are interested in what you have to say/share.
At the end of each blog post, you need to add a call to action. A call to action is a specific task that you ask your visitor to do. You can’t just “assume” that after reading your great post that your visitor will know what to do. You need to push them in the right direction.
• Subscribe - Visitors can subscribe to your blog by RSS feeds and email. WordPress provides a useful plug-in, Subscribe2
• Tell a Friend – You’ll receive a better response if you remind people to spread the word about your blog. Tell a Friend is an effective WordPress plugin that makes it easy to remind/email people about your blog post
• ShareThis – Allows visitors to share content with friends through social bookmarking platforms such as Facebook, Digg, Twitter, etc.
• TweetMeMe – Invites readers to “re-tweet” your posts (i.e. share your article on Twitter)
How to Write Great Content – Best Practices
• Brand your own writing style – Stand out amongst other bloggers by creating your own unique voice and style. Don’t try to copy other writer’s styles.
• Write in a conversational style – Keep language simple and easy to understand. You don’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist to create winning content.
• Write UNIQUE content – Do not copy content from other sites and create content that solves a person’s problem or makes life/business easier.
• Plan posts strategically and add “teasers” about upcoming posts/content – keep readers engaged so they’ll come back and read more!
• Always encourage comments from readers and answer comments quickly. Include related posts at the end of each post.
• Include guest bloggers on your site – You’ll add free content to your site and create new relationships within your industry/niche.
Content Examples
• “How To” articles – How To Lose Weight on The Flat Belly Diet
• Lists – Top Ten Family Vacation Spots
• Demonstrations – A video demonstrating yoga poses
• Case Studies – How I Built a Worm Farm from Scratch
• News – Write about late-breaking news that affects your business/industry
• Humor – Add a personal touch and humor to your content. People love it when you share practical advice.
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Wouldn’t it be nice to have a personal assistant JUST to send updates to your social networking sites? Don’t you wish you had ONE easy tool that would automatically update your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts ALL at once?
You don’t have to look any further because you can find all that and MORE with this free and user-friendly service. Ping.fm is your virtual personal assistant when it comes to social networks.
How Ping.fm Benefits Your Business
• Allows you to easily and quickly market your company, products and services – makes a big impact on your branding!
• Saves you time and money – your own social networking “virtual assistant” at your fingertips!
• A great way to interact with thousands of new people (potential customers and clients) easily– allows you to stay on top of your networking/status updates!
The Basics Behind Ping.fm
Ping.fm allows you to update your social networks simultaneously. What’s the catch? Just sign up for a free account and you’re ready to get started!
Ping.fm incorporates all facets of the latest and greatest technology. If you’re waiting to catch a flight to France, you can update your status via text message on your cell phone. It applies to iPhone, iPod, WAP and SMS text messaging in the US, Canada and Europe (text message rates apply).
Ping.fm even allows you to post messages on your instant messenger programs such as Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, AIM and Windows Live Messenger. Basically, ping.fm posts messages WHEREVER you WANT it to post!
It is really is the perfect “virtual assistant” when it comes to social networking. Ping.fm supports over 40 social networking sites including the big players such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.
• Sign up for a free account and fill out your profile information
• Add your desired social networking sites accounts you want to update to your Dashboard
• Your Dashboard is your main hub – it allows you to add social networking sites, Instant messaging programs, cell phone information, etc. so you can send out one update simultaneously to all your sites
• You need to have accounts set up for each social networking site before you can add sites to your Dashboard (you probably already have accounts set up with these sites already so it will be easy to add to your Dashboard)
• There are over 100 3rd party web/desktop applications available to make it easier to update/send messages. Some of the featured applications include: HootSuite, Tweetie, Ping Fire, Pingle, Notify.me and Blip.fm
User-Friendly Services - Update Anywhere, Anytime
• Email – You receive a private email via your account that allows you to post updates from this email address. Just send a standard email from your computer or mobile phone to update your status!
• iGoogle Gadget – Allows you to post ping.fm to your personalized Google page – allows you to update easily from your iGoogle dashboard
• Conduit Toolbar – The browser toolbar makes it very easy to send updates directly from your browser. You don’t have to log into your account every time you want to send messages/updates
• Seesmic Video – Allows you to record videos straight from your webcam and post to your social networking sites (via your ping.fm account)
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Who has the time during their busy week to run down the LONG list of bookmarking sites? Are you tired of spending hours submitting your content to social bookmarking sites? There’s one quick, easy answer to your social networking dilemma and it’s called OnlyWire.
OnlyWire is a one-stop shopping auto-bookmarking tool. It makes it easy for companies to automatically send web content to major social bookmarking sites at once. This stable, secure platform is reliable and works FAST! OnlyWire is being used by all the online players – webmasters, bloggers, content developers, online marketers, etc.
If you need to blast out content to promote your site/company, OnlyWire will DRIVE quality web traffic to your site in no time! This tool allows you to spread the word quickly about your company, products and services without wasting a lot of time submitting content to INDIVIDUAL bookmarking sites
Add OnlyWire today and watch your traffic skyrocket! OnlyWire can really help out your site/company in the following ways:
• Automatically submits new posts to MANY bookmarking sites at the same time
• Increased traffic to sites quickly and easily
• Increased speed of search engine indexes
• Increased backlinks
OnlyWire knows what it’s doing and you don’t have to spend hours researching what bookmarking sites will increase your traffic. This tool is all about QUALITY social bookmarking.
OnlyWire submits to over 20 social bookmarking sites such as:
• Bebo
• MySpace
You have to sign up for each of these sites individually in order to use the tool. Bookmarking sites are free and easy to navigate.
Another great feature of OnlyWire is that it includes the Power of the Button – allows you manage submissions at the same time. Check out the following functions/addons:
• You have the option of adding bookmarklets with the “OnlyWire Browser Button.” This makes it really easy when you’re using your browser. Just submit once with the click of a button!
• Add “Bookmark and Share” button to your website or blog. This allows users to post your content to other websites simultaneously! There are addons for both Firefox and Internet Explorer – easy to download and use immediately!
• Developers can use the “OnlyWire API” feature – allows developers to add other bookmarking sites that aren’t currently used by OnlyWire. There’s an API limit of five submissions per day.
Paid Versus Promote Option
You are under no obligation to pay for OnlyWire. With the paid version, you receive the “ad free” version. Paid members are advised to embed their “Bookmark and Share” button on websites and blogs to increase traffic to their sites. Another great feature with the paid service is you have the capability to turn off OnlyWire ads (so you don’t have to view their ads).
The “promote” option is the free OnlyWire version. You still can download the tool and add it to your site to increase traffic; however, you don’t have the option to turn off ads. You promote the site via OnlyWire advertising – one of the catches to the “promote”/free version.
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Keyword cannibalization occurs when pages on your website compete against each other for certain keywords. Your pages are “cannibalizing” (eating) popularity from other pages to gain search engine ranking.
Webmasters are sometimes unaware of keyword cannibalization, or just automatically optimize the same keyword on all pages thinking it strengthens their SEO. Actually, the OPPOSITE happens and it hurts your SEO.
Keyword cannibalization is detrimental to your site and can affect pages in the following ways:
• Causes bad indexing – Google crawls your pages and is forced to choose one of many page versions based on its “best” query (and may not even pick a relevant page).
• Website pages compete against each other for a position in search engines
• Reduces SEO effectiveness – Anchor text, keyword targeting and link power are spread across many pages
• Quality of your content suffers – When you write about the same topic on every page, your content sounds replicated and dull (which makes your site less attractive to links)
• Limits search engine traffic – Don’t put your keywords in one cyber basket. There are thousands of variations that would work just as well (if not better) in the rankings compared to that one phrase/keyword that’s repeated on every page.
How to Avoid Keyword Cannibalization Issues
The biggest problem with keyword cannibalization is duplicate content, especially when pages have identical titles and meta descriptions. Think carefully about your website structure including anchor text and keyword placement/prominence throughout pages.
In order to clean up your pages and make them SEO-friendly, the following tips will help you solve keyboard cannibalization problems.
• Create unique meta tag titles and descriptions for your home page and sub pages. Use words that specifically describe that page.
• For blogs, create unique headlines appropriate to the blog. Variations of keywords are acceptable as long as you don’t go overboard with them. If your blog is about California wine trips you could use “California wine vacations” or “California wine destinations.”
• Organize keyword lists. Use broader, competitive keyword phrases/terms on top level/shallow pages. Your home page and top level pages will have more potential for ranking when you use those broader terms. Add those specific “long tail” keywords when you create blog posts or write articles – these are known as your deep pages.
If you are a novice when it comes to SEO and can’t figure out which keywords to on your pages, don’t worry – there are great keyword search tools available! Begin your search with a broad term and use those results to find the most popular and relevant keywords to add to your pages.
You may be surprised to learn that the keyword you originally wanted to use didn’t get as many searches. For example, you wanted to use “California red wine” but it only has 6,000 searches. However, you changed the phrase to “California wine” and it generated over 200,000 searches. “California wine” would be a better keyword phrase to use.
The following keyword search tools will assist you with finding appropriate keywords for your content.
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