4 Quick Ways To Build Quality One-Way Links

Obtaining one-way quality links is often cited as the “Holy Grail” of online success. Especially if you take the SEO route for getting high rankings for all your profitable keywords in the search engines. It’s no wonder then, achieving top spots for valuable and popular keywords should be the ultimate goal of any webmaster or online marketer.

How well you do in this “link quest” will largely determine the success or failure of your site or online business. Assuming of course, you’re going after free organic traffic from the search engines and not using Pay Per Click or other means of succeeding online.

Link building and achieving top placements in the search engines (especially Google) has been my main objective for over ten years of online marketing. Over the years, I have tried hundreds, if not thousands of link building methods in order to get those links. I would like to discuss briefly some of those methods and then explain in full detail my four favorite and most effective proven ways to get quality one-way links.

First, some general tips on how you should approach your link building from the get-go. You must realize the web is based on content; web surfers/users are looking for quality content. If you can supply valuable content that the surfers want, you will build your links naturally. People will see your content and want to link to it. This process is often referred to as link baiting – you make your content/offer so irresistible, they will not only want it but they will go out of their way to tell others about your fantastic content.

Be careful not to link to “spammy” link farms and it’s probably a good idea to always check the Gooogle PageRank PR of any site or page you link to on the web. Many cautious webmasters/marketers won’t link to anything less than a PR3 page but use your own judgment here.

There are numerous ways of getting quality links:

. place your links in directories – free and paid

. join online forums and place your links

. do recommendations and testimonials

. viral videos with your embedded links

. join social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, etc.

. use hub traffic sites like Squidoo and Hubpages

. use Google sites like Google News, Google Docs, Google Knol

. use Wikipedia to build links

. use Yahoo Answers and those types of sites

. use eBay and sites like Craigslist

. use viral ebooks and software programs

Now, I have used all of the above link building methods and many more over the years but I would like to explain to you my most effective link building techniques – these are the proven methods that have worked for me. No doubt you may have heard of many of these link building methods before… but here goes:

Article Marketing

This is still one of the most effective ways to build good one-way links to your site. I know this is “old school” but it still works. At least for now, there are rumors Google is cracking down on article links but for now links in your article resource boxes are still very effective.

From my own experience, article marketing is my most effective technique at building links. My sites and my online marketing were going nowhere until I started writing articles. Now I do aggressive article marketing using all the major online article directories…

The Top 5 I Use Are: Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Isnare, Ideamarketers, and Buzzle.

Now just look at my stats from ezinearticles alone and you will know why I use them.

Account Statistics

Articles Views: 421,327

Profile Views: 2,573

Articles Published: 4,787

URL Clicks: 49,480

Emailed: 115

Live Articles: 203

I have roughly 200 articles which have been viewed over 400,000 times which has sent around 50,000 visitors to my sites. Plus, I have around 5,000 places where my articles are published. And this is only for one online article directory – I have my articles in hundreds of them.

Whether you’re just a webmaster or into online marketing you must realize all this stuff is a “numbers” game. The more content you have out there, the more links you have on the web – the more traffic and visitors you get coming to your site. It’s not rocket science, it’s simple math. The more links you have, the higher probability someone will click them and come to your site.

The same goes for high rankings in the search engines, the more good quality links you have, the higher your rankings. Article marketing will give you highly targeted keyword links to your web pages. I also use SubmitYourArticle which will automatically submit my articles for me to many different article directories. I use this service to save time but you can hand-submit your own articles.

One last point about article marketing – you’re not just using articles to build links, you’re also using articles to “pre-sell” yourself, your site and/or your product. It’s a very effective way of funneling interested visitors/buyers to your site. Many of my sales are already made before visitors reach my site.

AddThis Bookmark

Now I am not really into the “social media” sites but that has not stopped me from using them to my advantage. And it would be a BIG mistake not to use these social media sites for your own link building.

Sites like MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Linkedin… and thousands of others are very important for link building. They are becoming even more important as Google moves away from articles and focuses on the “real interactions” taking place on these sites.

Couple of years ago, I added the free AddThis Bookmark to all my sites. This is a simple code which lets your visitors bookmark your site or content in any or all of the major social media sites.

What’s actually happens is that your visitors are building your links for you. I have gotten hundreds of links from these sites just by placing this simple bookmark on my sites. Truth be told, I nearly laughed at this idea at first – sure visitors to my sites would automatically bookmark and build links for me? No way that would happen?

Wrong again!

This really works, so if you want this simple way of building links just use the Addthis.com bookmark to your site or pages.

Google Alerts Link Building

This method of building good quality one-way links does take a little more work but it is extremely effective, especially for getting high rankings in Google.

Here’s how it works:

You sign-up for Google Alerts for your major keywords that you’re promoting. Google will send you email alerts whenever a new page/site/link is created containing your keywords. You then go to those newly created pages to make a comment and add your link.

Many of these new pages will be on blogs so you can easily add your comment and link. The trick is to add valuable comments/content which the site moderator will approve because it adds to his/her site’s value. Many will also approve your link because your link is related to their site and this is just good SEO practice.

The key here is to put yourself and your site in the whole discussion of related blogs, sites and forums relevant to your content. You want your site in the whole mix of things so that relevant links will flow naturally from the discussion. Now all your links won’t be accepted but you can easily add 2 or 3 links each day with very little time spent on this. Great way to build links, hope you can give it a try.

Press Releases

I am just starting this method of link building, but what I have seen so far tells me this is a very effective way to build links. It’s not cheap, I use PRWeb and I believe it’s $200 for a release. You can get a cheaper price at around $80 but you don’t get the full benefits at this lower price.

Press releases are very effective because you can embed your links with your “anchor text” into the body of your press release. Other sites pick up your release and place it on their site with your keywords/links embedded. This seems more like natural link-building which the search engines loves, especially Google.

Again, depending on your own marketing budget, press releases can be a very effective way of building links. I have noticed sites going from a PR0 to PR4 in less than 6 months using this method and also getting top 5 rankings in Google in the process. Keep in mind, sites displaying press releases are usually already highly ranked in Google so some of their PR juice is passed on to your site.

www.seo-mama.com

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Local Search Engine Optimization: Proven steps to reaching a larger market

In today’s economy, local search optimization is more important than ever for businesses that serve specific communities. Many still think of it as only a way to connect with customers in their community and that print advertising or even billboards is more effective. The reality is that for a florist, a realtor, a hotel, the visitors to their site are as likely to be someone not even in their state. In fact it’s hard to imagine any business that wouldn’t benefit from having a site that is optimized for local search given the increase in online activity.

Here are some steps you can take to reach customers not just in your area, but those outside it who are also likely prospects.

Put Your Contact Information On Your Site

One would think that this would be a cliché by now, but for whatever reason, many business owners only put their contact information on a single page. Instead, it should be on every page as you never know which page a visitor might discover first or which the search engines will rank for your services. 

If you serve multiple communities then develop a tag line at the bottom of each page that says “we sell widgets in Chicago, Aurora, and Wheaton.” If you’re a hotel by a historic landmark or popular attraction then add this as part of that description. Better yet, do a page about that landmark. Many tourists search for lodging close to the sites they want to visit.

Testimonials are an excellent way to instill confidence in potential customers. It’s also a great way to incorporate other locations into your site. Instead of just listing the name of the person giving a testimonial include their location. Also it goes without saying that your meta tags and descriptions should also incorporate your location. 

Submit to Directories

This is different than developing links to your site, although that is also important. Granted there are hundreds of directories out there that very few people other than those in SEO visit. When it comes to local search, however, there are a number of directories and specialized search engines that it’s crucial you’re listed in. Sites that receive a significant amount of traffic.

The biggest of these are directories such as http://www.superpages.com and http://www.local.com, http://www.yellowpages.com, and http://www.truelocal.com . These engines have millions of pages views a month, which means companies, definitely benefit from appearing in these search engines. They allow for free listings, although they will attempt to get you to upgrade to a paid listing.

Business directories often appear when you search for a business on the search engines, including http://www.merchantcircle.com and http://www.hotfrog.com . Again these have free listings. 

Another valuable resource is your local Chamber of Commerce. Many people moving to a community look at a chamber site to research businesses. 

Reflecting the importance of local search, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com all have their own local listing services. One way to see if your business is listed on some of these sites is to go to http://getlisted.org . You simply type in your business name and your zip code and it shows if you are listed on Google Local, MSN Live, Yahoo Local, and Best of the Web’s new local service. If you’re not they have a link to these sites where you can submit your information.

Take control of your listings.

Just because your business information is listed on a local directory doesn’t mean it’s complete. It’s crucial that you take ownership of your listings. Google Local is the easiest and the most beneficial to review and revise. If you haven’t taken ownership of your listing, it might be little more than your business name, address, and telephone number. But their Local Business Center allows you to add a wealth of information, including your web site, photo, your categories, even a video. Yahoo and MSN also allow more information, although not to this extent. 

Another reason to review your information is to make sure your listing hasn’t been hijacked. Google claims it has corrected the problem that resulted in local listings being manipulated by others, but it also suggests owners continuously review their data. Both Google and MSN require verification of your relationship to the business either through a phone call, a postcard, or a letter. Only after you’ve verified your ownership, you’re listings will soon be updated. 

Finding the words prospects are using

The problem with many local search campaigns is the lack of data. Services such as Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery are great if you serve a large market. But for most communities, the data will be so low it might not even turn up in their results. After all there may only be a hundred searches all total in a month for a florist in a town of 50,000. Divide this over all the search engines and the data seems particularly minuscule. Yet, for a florist in that community those 100 searches could be 100 missed opportunities to sell flowers. 

One solution is to run a Google Adwords campaign. Why Google? Obviously because its reach is so strong. Put in any phrase you think prospects might be using – florist, florist delivery, flowers for sale, etc. Then add your community to these phrases. Chances are you can put a bid of five cents for each phrase. Make sure, however, you only run the ad on the Search campaign and not the Content. After a few days you’ll begin to see how many impressions your ad is receiving. Run it at least a month and you’ll see how much interest there is in a specific phrase. 

In the end you may decide to continue with your AdWords campaign. And supplement it with Yahoo, MSN, or one of the previously mentioned local search directories. 

Another way to determine how visitors can find you on the web is through analytics. Google Analytics is one of the easiest to set up and more importantly, it’s free. Once set up properly you can begin to see how prospects are finding your site. A chiropractor may discover that people in their community are typing in their community’s name and specific symptoms, such as Springfield back pain or Springfield migraine treatment. See where you rank for these phrases on all the search engines and optimize your site if necessary. 

Use Pay Per Click Effectively

Running a pay per click is among the simplest things to do. You put in your information, including a credit card, pick out some keywords, write a small ad and start your campaign. Your ad begins almost immediately so you can see within a day how much interest there is in your keywords. Unfortunately in a few days you’ll find either your ads aren’t being clicked on. Or worse that they are being clicked on too much.

One third of all total online ad spending is for local ads. That being said, most local businesses set up their campaigns in manner that costs them money. For example, a realtor may think the keyword California real estate may be beneficial. It will certainly get them a lot of clicks. But if their market is Fresno, most of these clicks will be of little value. Instead establish a specific market when you set up your ad, say Fresno and all visitors within a hundred miles. 

With money so scarce today no business can afford to miss out on any opportunities for a sale. Local search engine optimization can be time consuming, particularly if you serve a large community. The dividends, however, could mean the difference from surviving this economic crisis or becoming another statistic.

www.seo-mama.com

How To Write For Search Engines

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) writing, as a distinct style, was born in the Internet era and has matured before our very eyes in a relatively short span of time. Although it is evolving and maturing still, and will continuously do so, we can define some of the tried and tested steps of content optimization to help unique pages place at or near the top of search engine rankings.

Some experts go on to say that the goal of SEO is two-fold, with the first objective to put out the appropriate “bait” for search engine spiders and the second to serve up useful information to people who want and need it. Debates about priorities continue among SEO professionals, but it is never a good idea to devalue the human factors in any success formula. The singular goal, then, would be to develop, position and refine content in such a way as to satisfy all visitors to the page and/or site, both human and bot alike.

Rethinking search engine content terms

“Content is king,” goes the old saying – and not only is good content king, it is becoming more important with every passing day. But the term content is best taken in its broadest sense. Content is not simply the written copy placed in a document, assembled on a page, or aggregated at a site. It includes all this, of course, but content actually comprises titles, headings, tags, intra-site links and external links, as well.

All of these components need to work together and form an interconnected whole so that both search engines and humans find the right things, come to the right conclusions and, most importantly, make the right decisions. Good writing is always targeted to the audience, and you are writing for an audience of two readers, human and software. Remember these two components of the audience and find creative ways to reach both of them at the same time.

First things first

Titles are critically important – they are usually the first thing read by both real and virtual visitors. A title is the “primary topical identifier” and, as such, has an invaluable function – again, a dual-purpose one. It must contain keyword targets at the individual word level while stoking interest in potential readers at the phrase level. 

When a person performs a search, the title is both their first indication of your relevance to their needs and your first opportunity to compel them to click through. Search engines, more clinical and objective, give the title importance because they see it as an indicator of the page’s main idea.

Yet many pages on the Internet have no title at all, or share “Home” and “Untitled” with several million others. There is no excuse for this oversight. The ignorant cousin of these mistakes, making the company name by itself the title of every page, is just as bad. Keywords relevant to the page should be part of every page’s title.

Heading tags carry some importance too. Simply put, heading tags define the headings and subheadings of your article to both readers and spiders. By default they appear larger than normal text and are bolded. While not a magic ranking bullet, they are looked at with more importance than average text and are an opportunity to show spiders the themes of your content and what keywords you wish to rank for.

The H1 tag is the main heading of your article and carries the most importance, like a headline in a newspaper article. It should clearly convey the article’s topic to the reader and main keywords to the search engines. H2 tags are one level down in importance and structure. Use them to define subtopics under your main topic, and again use keywords where descriptive and useful. If you needed to break down your article to sub-sub-headings, you would use the H3 tags, and so forth. 

For both human and robotic readers, it is vital to keep page content focused. The “one topic per page” rule is an unwritten one, certainly, and it’s followed by most professional content developers. This has less to do with the intelligence of the readers (either kind) than it does with several other considerations. For one thing, search engine “crawlers” have algorithms that tend to work best on one concept at a time, and most humans work best this way, too. 

In addition, limiting the focus eases the task of placing keywords in the meta descriptions, page title, body copy, tags and links. Finally, dealing with more than one topic necessarily means using more verbiage, which dilutes the potency of a site-wide SEO program and may negatively impact ranking. Better to give these other topics their own content, strengthening your site’s overall informational authority.

SEO copywriting balance

Much ink has been spilled and many pixels propagated in discussing SEO techniques, analyzing strategies, teaching “web content” writing, and chasing changing algorithms. Mentioned less but encompassing everything is that SEO copywriting, like all SEO, is about balance. 

While articles such as this one can be helpful, it is important to understand that SEO will always evolve, change, adapt and improve. Study and implement tested techniques, but remain flexible and nimble. Writing for search engines and people at the same time is tricky and challenging at best, and can be frustrating and time-consuming, too. Approach the challenges in a businesslike fashion.

SEO content writing at its best balances art with science, blending the craft of engaging the reader with the dispassionate analysis of keywords on a page. Follow best practices, but fill each article to the brim with information useful to your demographic.

In simultaneously targeting a subject, an audience, and an algorithm, a great deal of creativity must take place to get effective SEO results. And, of course, it all has to happen in an environment that encourages short attention spans and constantly tries to lure people elsewhere. It is a major challenge to craft article titles and copy so compelling as to make people stop and read – or, better yet, stop and then click where you want them to.

Basics, opportunities, and consistency

The basic approach to writing for such a dynamic, ever-changing environment is to get to the point quickly. The “USA Today” news style – which relies on short headlines, descriptive sub-headlines and a few concise paragraphs – is perhaps the best analogy for good SEO writing. The important points (keywords) should appear early and often, and within a short period of time the human readers should know what they are supposed to do, while the search engines should be able to tell what the page is about from a consistency between your page structure and your body copy.

In the eyes of the search engines, everything that it can possibly see counts. That is, using image alt-text not only helps blind readers and people using phone- or text-based browsers, it also gives you another opportunity to add more descriptive strength to the overall page for the search engines. Do not miss any opportunity to further empower and refine your content. 

And always remember when writing for search engines – keep writing. Write write write. Search engine bots gorge on new information, and if you consistently update your site with fresh content they will come around more often. While this gives you more opportunities to display your value, more importantly it builds the foundation of information that obviates it.

There’s a lot to do, and it all needs to be done well. Use your numbers, metrics and analytics to point you in the right direction for creating more content. That’s some science. Your creativity and amount of useful information, on the other hand, will point site visitors and search engines in the right direction. That’s a touch of art. When both aspects of your SEO program are firing on all cylinders, you should soon be marching up the search engine rankings.

www.seo-mama.com

How do you market your product online with Social Media

Marketing is all about making people like you. The best marketer is the guy who sells a refrigerator to an Eskimo. We all have been in either situations, of that of the Eskimo and the marketer, right ?

And Social Media is a much twisted, mis-interpreted and wrongly defined term these days. In fact, I don’t even want to try defining social media, because I realize its a different thing for each person. Like Guy Kawasaki once said, its like how the telephone was, once upon a time. Though it was made initially for personal communication, some people use it for sales calls while some use it for personal communication.

So its all about creating a comfortable zone that delivers your requirements. And any social media tool, be it Twitter, or Facebook, if they gets you closer to completion of this demand bridge (requirement – demand), then that’s the best tool that works for you. However, the same tool may not work for another person with the same success rate.

So my question is – How to make a company “likeable” through the social media. Is it really possible ?

Take for example all the so called “spam” on Twitter. “Success mentors” , “Dating help” , heck.. “Social Media Experts” even. Why do we call them spam ?

Personally, I think anything that I can’t relate to or identify with is spam. I think success mentors (mostly) are fake, so they’re spam. I don’t think I’d require any “Dating help”, so they’re spam too. I could be wrong, but I guess this is the case with the most of us. We consider anything that we don’t require and being “pushed” to us as spam. Fair enough.

So let’s say you have a company that sells mobile phone calling cards. (Like wqn – They are my clients, clever huh ? ) So how does your company use the social media to boost its business ?

Of course the first thoughts would be to set up a Twitter account and may be to even set up a facebook account, isn’t it ?

Sounds silly ? Well in fact, that’s what many of the “social media experts” do. They set up all the social media channels and manage them. Alright, so you set up a Twitter account and start tweeting. Most probably your first tweet would be something like –

“The cheapest calling cards to India – Check out our Asia section.”

Oh dear, how better can spam get ?

And as a second step, you go follow anyone you find, in the vague hope that they would follow you, and in the end you end up with a profile that looks something like –

Following 643, Followers – 6 (Your staff), Updates – 167

So how do you crack it ?

The idea is to re-package yourself / your product / your company.

While it is true that social media is an excellent way to reach out to more customers (possibly), it isn’t equally true that you can just barge in and grab everyone’s attention. If that was the case, every company would have a twitter account and a facebook page and they could smile/laugh their way to the bank.

The reality is that “Social Media” is nothing but a bunch of genuine people.

Call them whatever you want but they are intelligent people who’ve learned what’s spam and what’s not. You can’t take them for granted. So unless you give them something to enjoy, they’re not going to even bother you.

“So you’re saying that setting up a Twitter / Facebook account is not about Social Media Marketing ?”

Of course not. I highly recommend channels like Twitter, but it should be a well studied and well planned approach. Not just a “Set up – tweet – and wait for them” kind of thing.

If you have a product, see if its got elements that people will like on the Social Media. They are not dumb people out there, they probably are the most intelligent ones, as they’ve seen the best stuff out there. So you have to be clever enough to give them something extra ordinary. Something that will make them say – “Hey this guy’s cool. haven’t seen that before !” That’s when you become “friends” with them – the social media.

So essentially, Social Media Marketing is not an utopian concept. Its about making your company / product likeable on the Social Media.

And please…when you say “Social Media”, it isn’t any random set of people out there just trying out Twitter or Facebook for the first time. They are a bunch of genuine, intelligent and much clever people than you. They may be impatient, but that is no excuse to push in with your sales pitch and get away with their money. They’re ruthless, they’d kick out spam with no mercy. But befriend them, give them value and help them out  – they’ll love you for what you are, what ever that you are.

www.seo-mama.com

 

Multiple Domains for SEO?

Online businesses and websites that cover a broad range of topics or one large topic are sometimes broken down into multiple domains and, in content terms, it can make a lot of sense to do so. Certainly where no logical link between the topics exists it is almost essential to use more than one domain name and more than one online identity otherwise it can confuse visitors and provide no clear line. In Search Engine Optimisation terms, though, using a single domain for related topics and pages can help all of your pages to enjoy the benefits of a single Search Engine Optimisation campaign.

Optimising Individual Pages

Search Engine Optimisation typically requires the optimisation of individual pages. However,Authority Sites that have been established for some time and have developed a large number of links enjoy a special relationship with the search engines. Engines like Google will seemingly rank new pages on these sites very highly for a number of reasons; not least because of the Age Of The Domain and the existence of many links pointing to that domain.

Keeping Readers Happy

It isn’t just the search engines that enjoy a good relationship with authority sites either. The readers of those websites will become more and more entrenched in the character of the site. They will visit more often and will return in the hope of their being new content to read. If you offer Bookmark And RSS features then your regular visitors can be instantly notified as soon as a new page is added virtually guaranteeing that they will visit in order to read it.

Adding A Blog To Your Domain

A lot of business websites have benefited from the addition of a number of online elements. Web applications, blogs, forums, newsletters, and other forms of online media can certainly prove popular with readers and they also present certain Search Engine Optimisation opportunities. There is some debate over whether websites benefit more from separating, for instance, their blog and their main site but the general consensus is that a blog can be used to drive traffic to your website and build links; adding that blog to your existing domain or at least adding a redirect in your navigation menu will help your Search Engine Optimisation gains.

Don’t Compromise Your Business For SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is something of a balancing act but it never need compromise your online business activities. If you have multiple domains because you offer multiple, distinct, and different services, then there is certainly no reason to jam them together. Search Engine Optimisation is all about relevance and this includes site relevance as well as link relevance and keyword relevance. Keep the sites separate if they demand it.

Search Engine Optimisation Campaigns

Search Engine Optimisation is broken down into the on page and off page optimisation of your website’s pages. This means conducting separate keyword research, content writing, and link building for each page. Adding blogs and other forms of online media can be used to target more keywords and if you create a blog that is based on or around the same topic as your main website then add it to that domain for the best results.

SearchURL4Me (Web Directory)
SearchLink4Me (Web Directory)

5 Reasons Why Article Submission Is A Poor SEO Tactic

 I get the feeling that Aaron is not a big fan of using article submission for SEO and neither am I, here are 5 good reasons why article submission is a poor link building tactic and why you should publish your articles on your own site as apposed to article sites:

1/ If you submit the article to an article site and market the article on social media sites, the links will be going to the article site and not your own.

2/ If you submit the article to an article site and it attracts links from other websites, blogs etc. they will be going to the article site and not your own.

3/ If you submit the article to an article site then the search engine traffic will go to the article site, the readers may or may not click the link to your own site.

4/ If your article is great surely you want the readers of your website to be able to read it, if you submit the article to an article site they won’t.

5/ Most article sites are not trusted by the search engines so the links back to your own site will hold little if any weight.

Publishing informative articles on your own website and marketing them on social media and press release sites etc. is a great SEO tactic and the rewards can be plentiful.

Publishing the article on your own site and article sites is a complete waste of time as article sites generally generate very little traffic and only one copy of the article will be counted by the search engines.

www.seo-mama.com

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WordPress SEO

Now, why is everyone turning to wordpress? You hear about WordPress every now and then. We don’t know what happened, but suddenly, everyone is turning to blogging and blog means wordpress to many. Corporates, Individuals, Medium companies, Services…everyone is turning to wordpress these days.

Why WordPress and SEO?

WordPress is a powerful blogging platform. And search engines like Google love wordpress. And if you have passed your fifth grade, then you probably are a wordpress guru.

Yes, ease of use and versatility is the main reason why everyone’s embracing WordPress. And surely, Google loves WordPress (blogs for that matter.)

So now you have a great product to market, a great service to offer, and you know that the world is your target, so where do you begin with?

Two things. WordPress and SEO. With a powerful blogging platform like WordPress, and an even more powerful factor called SEO, there’s no stopping you. You can start selling to anyone in the world and market you website to the right audience.

SEO for WordPress?

Search Engine Optimization, as you might already know, is the technique that will help you get more visibility and exposure online on the various channels through your website.

With SEO, your world is your audience.

Gone are the days when you created a webpage and waited for days to get it indexed on Google and the world to know you. With the power of SEO, you can pretty much let the world know your opinion in just a matter of hours or minutes.

If you have a wordpress website, how easy is it to get on Google?

Interesting question. Now, with all the power of WordPress, it’s very easy for you to assume that all you need to do is just go blogging, and take the world in your hands.

Not really.

If you have a wordpress blog set up, it may be easier for you to come up to the top results on Google, but if you don’t approach it scientifically, with the metrics in place, then don’t even think of ranking on the tenth page of Google.

So what does it take to rank high on Google?

WordPress + SEO + Brilliant Content added with some little hardwork can work wonders! And in fact, that’s all it takes to get high ranks on Google.

SEO for WordPress

SEO for wordpress isn’t rocket science. It is in fact different from other SEO strategies that it may seem confusing. But if you try and learn it, it’s easy.

Well, if you want to study a few things, check out some of the articles I’ve written.

– Latest SEO for WordPress guide
– SEO Tweaks for your WordPress blog
– SEO Plugins for WordPress to rank high

Also, check out this SEO category.

So, how can I use WordPress to SEO my way up to top ranks in Google?

Well, honestly, there are no formulas about it. It all depends on the nature of your website, your content, your strategy and your time frame.

WordPress has a set of features that will help you as SEO tools. Of course, WordPress is by default, SEO friendly, but there are a few things that you need to take care of.

Categories, Tags, Sitemaps, Page Titles, Meta Information, Duplicate content, Homepage stuffing, Pages, Site structure, Plugins, it all ends up in designing a well rounded strategy. And when you dive into details, WordPress gives you more options and configurations that you can get confused.

Of course, leaving things to an expert is the easiest way to go about. But also keep in mind that, there are a few things an SEO can’t do but is upto you. An SEO can give you the best WordPress platform with the best SEO friendly design and track your SEO metrics to design content that will help you reach top of Google. But again, it all depends on what you are about and what you want to rank for.

But comparing with other blogging platforms, WordPress is the best one available today, it is SEO friendly, is configurable to reach epitome of SEO success and can even be developed into a CMS. I don’t think there’s any other platform available today like WordPress that possess this potential.

www.seo-mama.com

WordPress SEO

Now, why is everyone turning to wordpress? You hear about WordPress every now and then. We don’t know what happened, but suddenly, everyone is turning to blogging and blog means wordpress to many. Corporates, Individuals, Medium companies, Services…everyone is turning to wordpress these days.

Why WordPress and SEO?

WordPress is a powerful blogging platform. And search engines like Google love wordpress. And if you have passed your fifth grade, then you probably are a wordpress guru.

Yes, ease of use and versatility is the main reason why everyone’s embracing WordPress. And surely, Google loves WordPress (blogs for that matter.)

So now you have a great product to market, a great service to offer, and you know that the world is your target, so where do you begin with?

Two things. WordPress and SEO. With a powerful blogging platform like WordPress, and an even more powerful factor called SEO, there’s no stopping you. You can start selling to anyone in the world and market you website to the right audience.

SEO for WordPress?

Search Engine Optimization, as you might already know, is the technique that will help you get more visibility and exposure online on the various channels through your website.

With SEO, your world is your audience.

Gone are the days when you created a webpage and waited for days to get it indexed on Google and the world to know you. With the power of SEO, you can pretty much let the world know your opinion in just a matter of hours or minutes.

If you have a wordpress website, how easy is it to get on Google?

Interesting question. Now, with all the power of WordPress, it’s very easy for you to assume that all you need to do is just go blogging, and take the world in your hands.

Not really.

If you have a wordpress blog set up, it may be easier for you to come up to the top results on Google, but if you don’t approach it scientifically, with the metrics in place, then don’t even think of ranking on the tenth page of Google.

So what does it take to rank high on Google?

WordPress + SEO + Brilliant Content added with some little hardwork can work wonders! And in fact, that’s all it takes to get high ranks on Google.

SEO for WordPress

SEO for wordpress isn’t rocket science. It is in fact different from other SEO strategies that it may seem confusing. But if you try and learn it, it’s easy.

Well, if you want to study a few things, check out some of the articles I’ve written.

– Latest SEO for WordPress guide
– SEO Tweaks for your WordPress blog
– SEO Plugins for WordPress to rank high

Also, check out this SEO category.

So, how can I use WordPress to SEO my way up to top ranks in Google?

Well, honestly, there are no formulas about it. It all depends on the nature of your website, your content, your strategy and your time frame.

WordPress has a set of features that will help you as SEO tools. Of course, WordPress is by default, SEO friendly, but there are a few things that you need to take care of.

Categories, Tags, Sitemaps, Page Titles, Meta Information, Duplicate content, Homepage stuffing, Pages, Site structure, Plugins, it all ends up in designing a well rounded strategy. And when you dive into details, WordPress gives you more options and configurations that you can get confused.

Of course, leaving things to an expert is the easiest way to go about. But also keep in mind that, there are a few things an SEO can’t do but is upto you. An SEO can give you the best WordPress platform with the best SEO friendly design and track your SEO metrics to design content that will help you reach top of Google. But again, it all depends on what you are about and what you want to rank for.

But comparing with other blogging platforms, WordPress is the best one available today, it is SEO friendly, is configurable to reach epitome of SEO success and can even be developed into a CMS. I don’t think there’s any other platform available today like WordPress that possess this potential.

www.seo-mama.com

Top 25 SEO Myths

1. Using Robots.txt is the safest way to keep a page/site from being crawled.

Actually not. Even if you blocked a page through the “disallow” tag on robots.txt, Google might still crawl it following an external incoming link. The safest way to block out a page from being crawled 100% is to add a password secure login to that page. Bots won’t get past it.

2. The meta description displayed on the SERPs is always the few lines of text you specify.

No. Google’s algorithm has updated lately which will pick up matching lines/phrases from the page content to the search query and display selective parts of the content on the SERPs snippets. Particularly relevant for longer search queries.

3. Changing the crawl rate settings in Webmasters tools console will change the Google crawl rate once and for all.

Apparently not. Google will also check your posting/publishing frequency and set an appropriate crawling frequency based on it, despite your manual setting.

4. Adding a plugin like the AllinOneSEO puts your blog into auto SEO mode.

I wish if it did. In fact, a plugin will take care of the most important parts, but sometimes they do harm more than good. Like the auto generate meta description feature of All in One SEO, can create more duplicate entries in certain themes, if you set it to auto generate. Its always best to do it all manually, while leaving certain parts for the plugins.

5. Following a 4% Keyword density will help in optimizing the content.

Search Engines are clever enough to detect any particular patterns in the site content. While its best not to follow any predictable pattern, using them cleverly can give you results. Keyword Density is no longer a metric SE’s count, so get over it. Rather focus o relevancy factor.

6. Linking to authority websites will help your reputation.

Well, if it did, then I guess everyone would start doing the same and it would not make any difference. While linking to authority websites is a healthy habit, they don’t give you any added advantage.

7. A higher Page Rank means better chances of ranking.

Repeated this several times already. Page Rank has no direct association with your SERPs ranks, however getting a higher Page Rank means a lot of quality work and authority.

8. Adding H1 tags to keywords directly help in SEO.

Header tags used in the content definitely supports SEO, but they are no stand alone factors that will directly give you any push.

9. Submitting to search engines is the only way to get indexed.

No. Getting a relevant link from other sites is the better way to get indexed.

10. A flash page means bad SEO.

Not at all. Using flash will definitely give you less options for SEO compared to a content rich page, but that doesn’t mean bad SEO. You can focus on other SEO factors and get equally good if not better results.

11. Adding a WordPress blog will automatically fix your site’s SEO.

WordPress is a great tool. But just adding one to your site/replacing with it will not give you any edge. You have to use it wisely to get the results.

12. The more the internal links the better.

Technically true, but its not just about the numbers. You have to use the proper anchor texts and use relevant link placement to get the maximum benefits.

13. Dynamic URLs are bad for the site.

Not any more. Trimming them to a much understandable format is better and saves a lot of time, however the most commonly used and avoidable parameters are “known” to Google and there is no extra effort required to convert them to an SEO friendly format, especially when the content is optimized and SE friendly.

14. Sitelinks appear only for websites who have high PR.

Sitelinks are auto generated for websites with high traffic. There is nothing you can do control them except to block some of the links from appearing using WebMaster tools.

15. Adding keywords to meta tags gives you a direct push on the SERPs.

Meta Keywords help you in getting more clicks from the SERPs, by serving more like and ad copy. Stuffing them with keywords won’t help you at all. They have to be relevant, descriptive and attractive.

16. Using a meta nofollow header tag on the page will “block” the search engines from crawling the page.

No. The page could still be crawled if the bots follow an external link to that page. Nofollow meta tag is not the surest way of keeping the bots away.

17. Adding Canonical URL tag to a page will stop the bots from scanning that page.

Again, bots will scan the page first as they land on them. But they will ultimately “forward” all the queries to the original URL. There are chances of Google looking into the landed page however.

18. A deep directory structure is bad for SEO.

Not always. Deep directories are fine as long as they are well linked and connected. An endless loop of deep directory is not good however.

19. All external links should be nofollowed to protect your page rank.

Page Rank is determined based on who links to you and not always about whom you link to. There’s nothing to “preserve”.

20. Adding more keywords to the page title will always help you in seo.

It helps you make a spam of your site not SEO. In very less competitive spaces, it may give some immediate results, but you won’t see them sustain.

21. Bolding out keywords on the content helps.

Not always. Bolding out important phrases/words using strong tags are okay as long as they are done in a non-spammy way. It doesn’t mean that every time you add them, there is a chance of search engines picking them up.

22. SEO is a one month process. Do it and get it done !

SEO is not a quick fix. It requires regular check ups and updates. Nothing can be achieved in short term.

23. Nofollow incoming links from other sites are no good.

Technically, nofollow links are not followed. But Google has its own signals to find out whether a nofollow links from a high authority site is relevant or not. So nofollow from high authority sites are always good, at least they’ll fetch you some extra links from other sites. So I can’t say that they are useless.

24. Search Engine Positions are guaranteed.

As you might already know there is never a guarantee. But quality SEO can always assure you good results.

25. If you did all the ten things for SEO, there is no beating you and you’ll remain on the top forever.

Wish if it did. But if the nine others did extremely well as you, you’d again fall back. So its a continuous struggle and there is nothing permanent. So, what are the SEO myths that you think is popular among others. Would you like to add your own ?

www.seo-mama.com

Is SEO Expenditure an Expense or Asset? Or Does SEO Cost influence Profitability?

Your website is your intellectual real estate. Even though you bear annual variable cost of maintaining the site, the cost never can be labeled as expense. After finishing your site, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) to market your site, are they incurring expense or adding value to your website? Let’s start with some definition:

Expense in terms of asset: The portion of the asset or capital given away as variable cost for specific utility that has no reusability and to get the same utility, you have to pay again. e.g. advertising cost.

Asset in terms of expenditure: The expenditure invested as fixed cost for specific utility that has reusability. So with the investment, you get the same utility for a certain period of time. Please note that all assets are perishable, except for real estates. e.g. your computer is an asset not expense, but if you rent it, then it is an expense.

The accounting formula

Asset = Liability + Equity
i.e. Equity = Asset – Liability
in another analog, Profit = Capital – Expense

According to this formula, you can get more profit by decreasing expenditure or increasing capital. Remember that cost on capital is fixed in nature, but expense can be variable. Now, in terms of gaining profitability, how should the expenditure on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) be labeled? As “Capital” or “Expense”?

Investment in SEO an Expense or Asset?

PPC is somewhat a marketing expenditure. It is instantly perishable and each time you have to buy advertisement to get customers to your site. PPC is a variable cost. So, this affects the expense, not the asset.

But, SEO is not like that. Because, it is not intended for short term marketing. SEO has reusability and brings you customers even after the SEO is finished. SEO expenditure has no attribute to be labeled as variable cost.

So, SEO expense is a capital expenditure which increases your asset and should never be treated as expense, since it adds value (not cost) to your site.

Does SEO Cost Influence Profitability?

We have tried to convince some customers that SEO doesn’t affect your profitability. Because, it becomes your asset. And asset is not expenditure that would negatively influence your profitability. The perishable behavior of SEO, may make it seem like expense. But, all assets are perishable. And we own a lot of short timed assets. So, if SEO expenditure is an asset, then you are increasing investment, not giving away money.

www.seo-mama.com