17 Steps That Will Maximize Your Organic SEO Goal: To have multiple listings on Google page one for each keyword/keyword phrase (one out of 10/25, (10 or 25 keywords/keyword phrases))
1. Site Analytics, how can you know what time it is if you never look at a clock? Install Google Analytics, minimally. Consider Hitslink.com or Visistat.com for more comprehensive analytics and lead generation from your traffic.
2. Keywords, analysis, identification of your top 10/25. Use free Google Adwords keyword tool, Wordtracker if you want to go deeper. Keep in mind searcher intent when choosing keywords.
3. On-page optimization of website, spider friendly (see ‘b’ below), alt tags, search function on all pages, keyword optimized page titles, meta description on main pages, keyword optimized/organized, H1, H2 tags, bold text blocks, internal linkage, multiple forms, best practices; fast load time, sufficient content (quality AND quantity (75 ppgs., & keyword optimized navigation)
9. Podcasts, content development, creation, distribution
10. Directories, manual, automated, submission, confirmation. Google competitors, see what directories they are listed in and submit your site. Be careful with directory submission services, automated directory submission is not recommended.
11. Forum/Blog Participation. Registration/regular participation in major industry relevant blogs/forums; avoid ‘nofollow’ links. (get SEO Moz toolbar to highlight nofollows)
12. Dominate Local Search (unless you need traffic nationally or globally), list site on Yahoo! Directory ($300.00 yr.) local.com, ibegin.com, ultimatebusinesslisting.org, merchantcircle, localeze.com. Google maps, Bing and Yahoo! (Site Explorer). Dominate Local Search.
13. Social media/Viral, AddThis button (http://www.addthis.com/) to all articles/blog posts/pages on website.
14. Blog w/RSS feed, submit to Yahoo blogs, technorati, stumbleupon, etc. Content cross-posting: press release goes to blog on site, on MerchantCircle.com on Facebook page,etc.
15. Client Reviews and/or testimonials in multiple locations, duplication ok, feature clients on website. Cross-post reviews, redundancy ok. Client writes once, you repost.
16. “Projects”, “Featured Clients”, “Testimonials” or “Case Studies” pages on website, updated regularly. This technique can be applied to almost any business. Designed to showcase whatever product you sell
17. Emulate written releases with video releases when possible, distribute via tubemogul.com
Last Tips:
Remember to update site map regularly.
MAKE SURE THE TITLES OF THE ARTICLES AND VIDEOS MATCH KEYWORDS AND ARE KEYWORD OPTIMIZED IN TAGS AND DESCRIPTIONS.
Facebook doesn’t really have a way to post a real blog or forum, especially for things like press releases. The maximum status length when posting items on the wall is 420 characters, which doesn’t really give enough room for something like an article or press release.
If you already have a blog there are ways to integrate it into your Facebook page via RSS feeds and other third party apps, but the status app on Facebook is a little short at its character limitation for being an original blog.
This article is for any business or organization who is using Facebook as a primary tool to communicate with its market. This technique may not be necessary if you have a website, as you are able to easily create a blog on blogger.com or on your website and allow visitors to subscribe via rss feed.
If you don’t have a blog, don’t want to create a separate blog, and just want to use Facebook, then this is for you. In one of my applications I am actually duplicating content by adding press releases to my clients Facebook page in addition to their website, this is also a sound strategy.
Use the Discussions tab to post Press Releases. Use the headline of the press release as the title of the discussion and then post the content of the release in the body. This will allow more characters, higher word count, enough for a good press release and it also allows comments, which is kind of cool.
Although this tool was not designed for this, it is a nice fix if you want to post either articles or press releases. It also stimulates participation and conversation about that content as well.
In regard to duplicate content, I have found that things have changed. Google doesn’t seem to be as picky when it comes to rankings relative to duplicate content. We are all discovering that people find information in different ways, and have different levels of comfort and preferences when it comes to accessing information. It is for this reason that I post the same information in many places. Some visitors just follow my clients on Twitter, other exclusively on Facebook.
So even if you have sent out press releases via prweb.com, prlog.com, marketwire.com or from a host of any other press release distribution services, you may want to post your releases on your Facebook page as well.
This article explains how to create a custom username or “vanity URL” for a Facebook.com page for a band, product, service or company.
How a Facebook Profile is different from a Facebook Page, how to create a custom username or “vanity URL” for a Facebook page for a band, product, service or company.
First of all, it is important to note the difference between a “Profile” and a “Page” in Facebook. The Profile is for an individual and a Page is for a band, product or brand, or company. They both work differently.
The first step is to either create a Profile page for yourself or use someone else’s profile. It may be a good idea to use a profile that has a lot of friends already, here’s why…
A few months ago, Facebook required you to have over 1000 “fans” of a Page before you could create a custom username. The purpose of this was to try to manage all of the custom usernames, so the guy down the street living in his trailer couldn’t create a username like: facebook.com/coke. It was an attempt to control the legitimacy of the usernames.
Upon receiving numerous complaints from the small business community, this number of 1000 required fans was reduced down to 25. So, you need to have at least 25 fans before you can request a username, check it’s availability.
This brings us back to choosing a profile that has a lot of friends, the friends are kind of a captive market, insomuch as after you have created your page, if you have a lot of friends, it is easy to go in and invite all of your friends to become a fan of your new page. Using this technique, you will get to your minimum of 25 very quickly, which is important considering you may have a high-demand username and you want to snatch it up asap.
Create or use a profile, create the page, invite friends, get 25, then go here: www.facebook.com/username/ to request your custom username, and see if it is available.
Please note that after your custom username has been created for your page, the profile from which it was created is the default Admin. You can add other administrators to your page as you see fit. They need to have a Facebook profile in order to be added.
Many times, with large companies, there is an employee with a Facebook profile with a lot of friends, this is a good person to use, and add or change administrators later.
After the page and custom username have been created, make sure to get your “badge” from the Facebook page and add a nice graphic icon to your website, email blasts and other marketing material to continue to build up your fan base. In Facebook, the “fans” are pretty much just like an in-house mailing list, so the more the better, there is money in your list.
Make sure to review the settings for your new page. You may not want all fans to be able to post their own comments, videos and pictures, etc. You will definitely want to manage this.
Lastly, remember to update the Facebook page often, give people a reason to become a fan, update with pics, videos and blogs every week.
One of the most common issues I run into with new clients is a lack of content. After we get past how much the website is going to cost and start planning it, I ask about content. I usually get a blank stare, or they offer me a token 3 pages of information. Then I have to go into my long, boring, “all about content” speech...which you are getting right now.
If this is your first website, you are probably not thinking in terms of performance or the website making you money, you are thinking about how it looks. Focusing on looks primarily can lead you into a ditch. At the end of the day, after your website is built and you are used to it and have had it for a year or so, the newness wears off and you start to focus on the real elements of the website: functionality and traffic.
Without going into great detail about SEO, it is fair to say that if there was one singular item that will enable the success of your website it is content. New, fresh, original content, and you probably don’t have much of it.
You are better off if you start to develop your content before you start building your website. If you have your content ready to go, that means you are ready to start building your site, you are ready to move. It makes it much easier on the person or company building the website also. Developing your content and building a website are two different things and it is easier to do one at a time.
At the core of good content is keywords. When I say successful, I mean you get as much free traffic as you can, from the people who have a good chance of buying from you or using your services, not lookie loos or tire kickers, real prospective customers.
One of the easiest ways to get an idea of good keywords is to use the free Google keyword tool. Type in just one of your main words and see what pops up, make a list, remove ones that are not relevant or you don’t think will bring the right traffic and you should have a good list to work from.
The main words should be the main navigation items of your new site. The main nav items should have pages that have the main keyword in the file name, page title and at least one H1 tag. Use the other related words on that main page. You can find related words when you type in the main word. If you can prepare at least 15 to 25 pages of content, organized by keyword, then you are ready to build your new website.
Bear in mind that the more original, relevant copy you have on your site, the greater chance you have of people linking to it. It must be updated and added to often, but that is a subject for another article.
An easy way to develop good content is to make a list of the top ten questions your customers ask you, the most common. Write them down and then answer them, in detail. Then think of all the questions your customers should be asking you but are not. Write those down, with detailed answers. If this technique doesn’t give you a good amount of content, pretend you are at a mixer or social gathering and people are asking you about your business, what would they ask? How would you answer? This can be another good technique for coming up with good copy.
For most of us, writing is difficult. If you are blessed with the ability to write, know that you are a special person in terms of the Internet. One of the most valuable things on the Web is original content. Original content is like honey to the bee in terms of traffic, so if you can write you have one up on everyone else.
If writing is hard work, like it is for me, you may want to hire a copywriter. Copywriters are not as expensive as you think, most are easy to work with and many are SEO and Web savvy. Many of my clients will have a brief phone conversation with a copywriter and we will receive well written, SEO’d content within a day or so...ready to go on the website, it is well worth the money.
After you have your content, then it is time to look at layout. Look at your competitors and compare your website to theirs. Make sure to position yourself against your competitors. Make sure you site can be navigated easily and people can find what they are looking for quickly.
As of this writing domain names tied to geographic locations still seem to be available, for the most part. Many are “premium” domains, if purchased through GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest domain name registrar.
Getting a domain name that can help your local search results is dependent upon two things, 1. Your product or service and 2. Where you live
Every product and/or service is a different market, some are more saturated than others. If you were in the insurance business or an attorney, you would know that your industry is extremely competitive and may be at a high saturation level in your geographical area.
As a rule, the larger the city, the less chance you have at getting a domain name for local search.
Before we go any further, let’s talk about a local search domain. I am referring to a domain that is designed to exploit local search as much as possible. Let’s say you own a pizza place in Denver, Co., this is a highly competitive industry and market, and Denver is a very large city. The ideal domain name we would want to buy, and probably can’t get, is pizzadenver[dot]com or denverpizza[dot]com. A domain name for local search would include two items, 1. your product or service and 2. your location (or where you want to pull business from)
Smaller cities have not been gobbled up yet. I was able to buy redlandswebdesign.com about a month ago at the regular price, not premium price. Redlands is a small town east of Los Angeles. I was also able to buy socalwebsitedesigns.com a couple of years 11ago. With “socalwebsitedesigns.com” you can see another strategy, a nickname for the area you live in, this will work the same as the formal name of the city.
The first step to take is to check keyword popularity in either Google or Wordtracker free tool, and confirm that your product/service combined with the name of where you live are getting sufficient traffic. I wouldn’t consider buying any domain for traffic less than 1000 queries per month or so, it is up to you and your own discretion.
Check variations of your product name also in the keyword tools. “pizza place” may be useful in lieu of “pizza”. “auto repair” or “auto service” are two variations that can be attached to a city name.
If you find the domain you are looking for and it is a premium domain, in GoDaddy.com, the price can be negotiated. The harder you negotiate, the better price you will get the domain for. As a rule, they will reduce the asking price by about 30%, so don’t let the listed price throw you. It very well may be a good investment.
After you purchase the domain, to get full impact, your homepage must match the domain name. The closer it matches the better. If it is www.denverpizza.com, there must be references to “pizza” and “Denver” throughout the homepage, or landing page. Don’t put in an abnormal amount of references or keywords, keep it natural, doing otherwise is called keyword stuffing and it doesn’t work.
The main page the domain points to doesn’t have to be the homepage, it can be an interior page or landing page. This strategy is used for multiple domain names, names of a specific product tied to names of small areas, cities or towns. This is a viable strategy. These pages must match the domain name as well, to maximize effectiveness.
A major part of the Google algorithm is relevance. They measure it in many ways, one of the ways is via the relationship between keywords in the domain with the keywords in the landing page. Not only are the specific keywords checked, but also related keywords, as per their search data. Meaning, not necessarily keywords you think are related, they use their data. Without being privy to their actual data set, it would be reasonable to assume that their data would be very close to the data shown by their free keyword tool, so I use that to find related keywords. I adjust prominence in relationship to popularity.
There are many free things you can do to help with your local search results, which I will address in future articles.
In my previous article, I focused on historical data of domain name value, type-in traffic, behavioral and purchasing habits of domain name buyers. In this article we will examine the specific elements of a domain that contribute to it’s value.
There are many elements that have contributed to the value of a domain, and they are changing all the time. For the foreseeable future, it appears that domain names will continue to rise in value overall and could be a great investment. In the past 11 years, I have owned and/or managed over 500 domains. By comparison, I am not a big player in the domain name game, but in my expenditures of both time and money, I will share with you what I have learned in my experience.
This article does not address websites, only and exclusively domains. This is important to note as many domains for sale come with a website and it is important to differentiate between the two, they are two separate, independent things. It is also important to note that a domain names value can be strongly effected by it’s association with a website or not. Let’s say you see a domain name for sale, and it is only the domain name that is for sale, not the website, and a measurable amount of traffic is attributed to that domain. There may be a good number of incoming links to the domain as well, contributing positively to it’s value also. If you pull the site away you pull away the content, if you lose the content, you lose the links, you lose the traffic, you lose the value. Be very careful in purchasing a premium domain.
Some domain names may have had a website attached to it previously, but are independent now. You can see if a domain ever had a website by visiting www.archive.org “wayback machine”. If you purchase a domain that used to have a website you have to be careful of what kind of site it was. It may have been a complete disconnect from your business or vision of what the domain means. This disconnect could cost you thousands and take a lot of time to “undo”. Check the history of a domain name.
Here are some of the major contributing factors in domain name value. In informal order of importance and relevance to value.
Length. This is an old one and has not changed. The shorter a domain the better, generally speaking. Keywords in domain. This is a plus but not a requirement. I have seen it be particularly effective for a very narrow channel or a singular brand, but it is not a requirement. .com still rules. When you can’t find the domain you are looking for with a .com ending you may be tempted to go to a .net or .org, or God forbid a .biz, .us or worse. It’s not fair to say that you can’t have a great website with an extension other than .com, but I recommend going with a .com as SEO best practices. Sometimes you can buy your .com version as a premium domain, and it may be worth the extra money. Existing traffic. This is a sticky one. This is what I addressed above. A domain name will only have traffic under 4 conditions: Existing or previous content that attracted traffic Incoming links that drive traffic and ranking due to “a.” Fake or PPC traffic. Details of this is for another article. Type-in traffic. Very hard to measure.
Brand-Match. This is one of the smartest ways to establish a good domain at a cheap price. You are able to choose any brand name you want for your product and many times able to find the .com version of it for less than $10.00 per yr. It is important to mention that when using this strategy you should support the domain with very a strong multi-media marketing campaign, the two work well together and increases your chances for success with both the brand and the domain.
Existing traffic to a domain is probably the biggest element of value. It can also be the most complex. Buying a domain that someone else owns is like buying a used car, but worse. There is no singular source for finding out the history of a domain like there is on a car, a VIN number. The only historical data you can find on a domain is very limited. There is no way to know what the previous owner did to drive traffic to that domain. It could all be legitimate but there are unlimited ways to drive fake traffic to a website. Fake traffic is invisible to a domain buyer and can also inflate the value.
Buying and transferring ownership of a domain is another thing and best fit for another article. This can be tricky and you can get ripped off easily if you are not careful.
Be very careful when spending money on a premium domain, I recommend using a professional domain name broker and dig up as much info as you can on the domain yourself.
If you have a new website, less than a week or so old, or are planning a new website, you should know that it will take a little time before Google "finds" it. Until then, you can't really expect to see any traffic.
When you perform a search in Google, the results do not show a "live" listing of websites. The Search Engine Results Page (SERP) displays sites that have been crawled and indexed by Google. The SERP is actually displaying what is in Google's index. One of the easiest ways to see if your website has been crawled (found) and indexed by Google is to check www.indexedbygoogle.com, it will display a simple "YES" or "NO". Really cool tool.
There are other reasons your website is not being indexed by Google. If it is a Flash site it cannot be seen by Google, there are other criteria such as the way the site is built, PHP, etc. that may deter Google from spidering the site, or portions of your site may be "visible" to Google and other areas not.
Use the "Search Engine Spider Simulator" tool on this page to see how a search engine spider "sees" your website. This will help you get an idea of what your website looks like to a search engine spider, AKA Googlebot, the Google search engine spider/robot.
If your site has not been indexed by Google, you need to submit the site to Google Local, which we will cover in the next post.
If you run a Facebook Page, you may be very interested in some new features that are rolling out for admins. Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook has discovered that some admins are starting to see impression counts for each post, as well as the number of likes and comments for each impression.
Eldon spoke with BrandGlue.com's Jeff Widman , who is one of the admins that has so far been able to access this information (doing work for a site called Mint.com), and he says he is able to check things like how much the news feed algorithm weights individual items versus the fan page itself. He also says Pages are seeing "many more" impressions than fans. Eldon writes (and shows screenshots):
With Mint's Page, for example, it has around 45,000 fans but a single post has more than 53,000 impressions. The 8,000 difference could be fans coming from the Page wall instead of their news feeds. But “it’s also a little uncertain where those 8,000 extra visits are coming from," Widman adds, "as the Insights package shows less than half the 8K page visits since that post appeared. Perhaps it’s counting each time someone sees the News Feed? So multiple Facebook visits in a single day appear as multiple impressions?"
Facebook Pages have become an increasingly great way for businesses and web sites to generate traffic as well as customer engagement. Facebook also recently launched it's answer to Twitter's retweet, which means that content pushed through pages have a much better shot at being shared more frequently throughout the social network (which is much larger than Twitter I might add).
In other Facebook news, the company is getting into customized data centers and is now letting application users get notifications through email. This means developers can seek out your email address on an opt-in basis (not much differently than a web site would do).
Great question. How does a domain name affect your Search Engine rankings? What actually contributes to the value of a domain name? Let's take a look. 1. Type-in Traffic Years ago, many people didn't understand the difference between the URL (Uniform Resource Locater) or address of the actual website and the search window in Google. One goes directly to a particular website, like the address of a house. The other is an actual search. So people would just type in what they were looking for in the *address* field...i.e. "new shoes". This is called type-in traffic. This meant that if you were lucky enough to buy a domain like "newshoes.com" for around $7.00 per year, you would automatically receive a respectable amount of traffic to that domain...type-in traffic. This would make the domain valuable, as it could be parked or used for an ecommerce shoe store...traffic equals money.
It is 2010 now, people are more savvy. More people use the search window and they know that it is a search window. So, type-in traffic has diminished, not to mention that everyone is hip to domain ownership, any ones with any value have been bought up. Goddaddy.com even buys domains they feel will have high traffic and resells them to you and me at a premium price, this is a premium domain. By the way, they will quickly settle for 70% of the asking price if asked. Type-in traffic isn't what it used to be and domains are more expensive.
Does it matter? The short answer is "not much". Content is still king. Google works very hard to return relevant, high-quality results for it visitors. Look at facebook.com, google.com, yahoo.com, the domain can be anything. Can it help? Absolutely. If your domain contains your keywords you will get a little more love from Google and the search engines, but will it make or break your website? No. Shorter is better, descriptive is better. I recommend considering buying a premium domain, it is a good start.
Domain name traffic Listen, I have owned a lot of domains, upwards of 450 at one point. I have purchased premium domains, acted as a domain broker for my clients, parked domains at different domain parking services like sedo.com, parked.com and many others. I have struggled to optimize over 150 landing pages in an effort to make a passive income...all with not much success, except learning a lot about how domains work. Look, there are many ways to measure traffic. All of my websites are built on a CMS and it has it's own traffic stats. Well, I also use Google Analytics on all my sites. When I compare the numbers from both, they are different. There is no way to tell who is linking to your site, conclusively. There is no way to be 100% accurate on where the traffic is coming from. I have been a victim of a scam where you "purchase traffic". The company explained that they had high-traffic websites...that were relevant...that you would get links from and traffic to your site. I found that that was not the case. Technically, I got traffic, but who knows where it came from. With all the traffic, I got not new customers and a very high bounce rate. The bottom line is: Don't believe traffic reports, unless you are using Google Analytics and have personal access to the live Google Analytics account.
Old domains One cool thing you can do is to check out archive.org. This site will let you see what a website looked like years ago. It will show you if there was a website associated with the domain you are looking at. If you want to see what your competitor's site looked like back in '08 you can check it out. With old domains, you want to be careful. You want to know what kind of site it was, you don't want to do a lot of back paddling in the first few months of your new domain/website ownership. Type in "link:www.yournewdomainname.com" in Google, and it will show you how many links point to that domain, same thing using Yahoo!, I use both.
Summary Who is the best company to buy a domain from? Godaddy.com. A short domain is better, easy to spell, easy to remember. Remember, you may be giving your domain name address over the phone. It is ok to spend money on a domain, but be careful, negotiate, grind the dude down. If you want to know how drop me a line.
The most valuable thing online is original content. How is original content created? It begins with either original thought or an original perspective on existing content.
The problem with original thought is, although it is probably very common, it must be expressed to be shared. It can only be expressed either verbally or in writing. Both are different skill sets. For the Web, writing is writing and verbal can be either audio or video w/audio. Writing is more work and all require a separate talent.
So it is easier to proceed in sections. ID the original thought, organize it and decide how it should be expressed. Work on the expression until it matches the thought as closely as possible.
That is how to get great content which will eventuate into great traffic for your Facebook page or anything online.
The overwhelming majority of people who provide content for the Web have the original thoughts, but they are never conveyed online. There seems to be an invisible border.
Out of everything I do to drive traffic to a website, how it is built, keyword research, site optimization, advertising...everything...it all can be replaced with consistent, regular original content.
So why is there so much mediocre content on the Web? Google referred to it as a "cesspool" a few months ago. It is because of two primary reasons. 1. People don't realize what they are sharing, there is a formality to it that people new to the Web bring; that is not necessary. We forget how far we have come and how quickly. Adding content to the Web is actually publishing something. Prior to the Web getting published was a big deal. The second thing is that providing quality content is actual work.
With Mint's Page, for example, it has around 45,000 fans but a single post has more than 53,000 impressions. The 8,000 difference could be fans coming from the Page wall instead of their news feeds. But “it’s also a little uncertain where those 8,000 extra visits are coming from," Widman adds, "as the Insights package shows less than half the 8K page visits since that post appeared. Perhaps it’s counting each time someone sees the News Feed? So multiple Facebook visits in a single day appear as multiple impressions?"