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SEO Coach

Archive for January, 2008

The Top 10 of Search Engine Optimization That Really Works

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

My top 10 ways to improve search engine rankings are based on 7 years of banging my head against the world wide web’s search engines and reading numerous books on top 10 SEO tactics.

Let me say first of all that there are a lot of books, sources and tutorials that make promises of getting your website into the top 10 spots on the major search engines. Most of these are self promoting and the end result is that you have to hire these people to accomplish the things they say you can do on your own.

So I want to preface this by saying that this article on how to improve search engine rankings is not necessarily a do-it-your-self guide. In fact, the art of SEO can be time consuming and irritating to say the least. Some methods require the help of companies like mine so I write this in hopes that you will understand what it really takes to gain exposure, realize what you can do on your own and determine when you need assistance.

One final point I want to make is “Don’t use any SEO Company that can’t explain what it is doing and that makes claims of using secret software that you can never see or use”. Yes, SEO can be complex but not to the point that you can’t understand what is being done. A good SEO company is able to educate you on what is being done and explain that it is best to leave some techniques to the experts.

My 10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking

1. If you are using a shared host, ask your host for a dedicated IP address for your site. This means that no one on the net shares this IP with your site. It is yours and yours alone. Many shared servers have tons of related sites on them. Having your own IP separates you from those sites.

2. Make sure your site validates as a search engine friendly site. The best site to use for this purpose is The World Wide Web Consortium. Their markup validation service will tell you if your site conforms to W3C standards and whether or not the search engines can read your site. If your site has errors, these may stop the bots from properly indexing your site.

3. Make sure you have a contact page with an address and telephone number and a form of some sort so people can contact you. Don’t list your email on the site unless you want spammers to send you tons of junk mail. Make sure the form you use on the site uses captcha (challenge-response system). Have a Privacy Policy Page and Terms of Services page and ensure that they have at least 300 words of text each. Most sites have these pages, but I strongly recommend you not copy. Find examples, but use your own words and include keywords related to your site. Make the pages personal to the reader.

4. Every page on your site should have at least 300 words or more. Don’t write a 2 paragraph page that has little to no real information. Provide details and give examples.

5. Create a FAQ or Tutorial page on your site. Make each subject link to its own page and focus each page on 1 or 2 keywords. As a start, try to add 10 of these types of pages to your site. You can come up with ideas for FAQ’s or Tutorials by reviewing your industry and trying to determine what people might not understand about it and the kinds of questions they might ask. Then post the questions and the answers. This is an easy way to add great content to your site and to help potential clients feel secure about your service.

6. Add a blog to your site. Have your blog designed to match your site so that as it draws traffic your readers know this is your main site of business. This will add value to your site, plus improve your search engine rankings. Create categories and write frequently about your industry to keep your readers interested and your content fresh.

7. Create Link Bait using your blog. There are very few services that offer this on a professional level and it can be very complex. I suggest leaving this service to the professionals because it requires time and knowledge and can be difficult and frustrating to do. The idea is to add unique and detailed content about your industry which creates enough buzz through various channels to motivate others to refer and link back to your blog. This can be a huge asset to your business because many writers love to provide plugs to quality content.

8. Post to Directory sites that have good inner page rank, especially on the page where your site will be listed. Use unique anchor text for each posting. Again, this may be one of those tasks best left to professionals because, if done correctly, your site’s search engine ranking can be dramatically improved and, if done incorrectly, can be a waste of time, effort and money.

9. Text Link Brokering is another creative and effective way to build more anchor text back links. Find related and quality ranked sites that will list your site in text format. Generally, this requires a one time, monthly or yearly fee.

10. If you have a product or service to sell, offer affiliate incentives. Post these incentives on affiliate forums and elsewhere to generate interest in getting others to promote your service for you. Be sure you have a solid affiliate back end in place to provide your affiliates with dependable stats and access. Then, have people write reviews on your program’s tracking and payout reliability to generate additional buzz.

The 10 points noted above are by no means a complete list of what you could do to improve your site’s search engine ranking, but if you focus your efforts on these 10 areas, rest assured you will see both an increase in traffic and higher rankings.

A Secret Guide to Blog Techniques For Better SEO Traffic

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Many online business owners that I talk to have tried many SEO tactics and no matter what they do, they can’t make their way into the top of Googles search engine. What they all have in common is what I consider to be “old school seo”. Yes, old school seo, because they are using techniques that worked several years ago. At the rate of speed the search engines change, what worked 1 year ago doesn’t necessarily apply today.

Many websites who have been online for several years and not seeing what they want in traffic results or even new sites trying to figure out where to start, this article will give you very detailed information that if you follow it, will see results in less then 3 weeks. Just so we are clear on this subject we are talking about online marketing by blogging. Notice I said “blogs” meaning more then 1. Do you want to climb your way to the top?, it revolves around blogs.

If you are not sure what a blog is, check out the archive section of our site (click here), you will find many articles talking on the blog basics.

Pimp Your Blog

Your site more then likely needs a “blog makeover” and it is time to do things the right way. I will always recommend using WordPress as it is free and open source software. Open source basically means that if you are a programmer you can modify how the script looks and works on your site and modify it for your own purposes.

Using wordpress and having knowledge of html and php you can modify your blog to match your website. This is called “branding your blog”. This is very important because if your blog yields placement in the search engines you want people to know they made it to the right place.

If you are not familiar with modifying code then you will need to outsource someone or a team that can. This can range in price from $400.00 to $1000.00 depending on what is involved in your blog makeover. Make sure that you choose someone who knows what they are doing, that your blog will still validate as an XHTML site and that your rss feeds still validate as well. Changing the codes of the default blog can cause issues that will make your blog null and void so be careful!

Once you have your blog designed it is time for the real pimping! You will want to add some plugins to your blog and add a larger ping list to your “Update Services” Section. You will find this in your “Options” >> “Writing”, scroll down and find “Update Services” and add to your list ping servers to notify. Here is a short list to help you get started:

Some useful Plugins:

All 3 of those include instructions and examples to help you get started. These will officially “Pimp Your Blog” and will put you well on your way to SEO success.

Start Posting Content To Your Blog Daily

Well, give your self a couple of days off on the weekends, but blog daily! Your blog content will consist of approximately 200 + words per post and will contain your keyword or phrase that you are looking to position approximately 2 times.

You don’t want to post more then 5 blogs per day, otherwise it will appears a spam and count against you. Focus on about 5 keywords or phrases at any given time. If you try to get all the keywords you want all at the same time you will never see the success you want. Stay focused til you get the results from the first 5 keyords that you are going after.

If writing is not your thing, then outsource again and hire ghost writers. Writers that have a clue and will accomplish what you need will truly help you increase your traffic. The content does not need to be compelling or so content rich that it causes your sales to sky rocket, the purpose is to gain traffic. If your blog is branded correctly with your sites design then most users will click around to get to the part of your site that they were looking for.

An important tip here is to make sure that you link keywords or phrases to your home page or service page as that will redirect the search engines to index the page you are linking to so when people do find you, they end up on your main site rather then your blog. If you don’t do this, then your blog will gain higher results then your main site.

Start Posting Daily to Other Peoples Blogs

This concept is a bit different then posting comments to blogs just to get a basic link. This is creative blogging at its best. There are several blog sites that are starting to appear on the net that run like article directories and they allow you to register so you can login and post to categories of your choice. An example of one of these can be found here: http://www.seositemanager.com/blog/ which is also by the way an article directory.

What is happening now, is you are posting seo content on your own branded blog and posting on other blogs and linking back to your site from these blogs. Again, here you don’t want to do more then 5 of these per day and you want to distribute this around on several different blogs to spread the link wealth.

Finding these can be a bit of a challenge as there is not much information out there. If this becomes a challenge for you there is a service that gives you access to private and public blogs that will allow you to create accounts and start blogging. Go to Article Underground and read up on their services and see if this is of use to you.

Which ever way you choose to go, submitting blogs on a regular basis and linking your keywords back to your, plus branding your own blog will make your site traffic increase plus you will have a higher rate of success in gaining new clients.

Using Google Reader for SEO Strategy

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Blogs have become the wave of the future. People used to get newspapers and magazines daily in order to get their information. Now they just click the mouse a few times and are instantly given all of the information they search for. Unfortunately, it started becoming a really long process. One person might have thirty blogs that they enjoyed reading, or found informational, and they could easily spend an hour looking at all of those blogs. Even worse is when you read a good article and then spend hours searching for it weeks later.

The Perfect Solution

Once again, Google has come to the rescue. Everyone knows that Google is the number one search engine, and has become the best place to get free e-mail access and storage. We should have figured out that they would out-do the rss / blog marketing arena. They have done this in a huge way. The Google Reader uses RSS feeds to give users access to only the information that they want to have access to. Think of it as a personal, constantly updating newspaper!

How To Use Google Reader

Like most things Google, Google Reader is exceedingly easy to use. Some RSS readers require being downloaded and installed, which can be a daunting notion for anyone. Instead, Google Reader, like most things Google, keeps things all online, at http://reader.google.com/. You can use it in three simple steps:

  1. Visit the Google Reader site.
  2. Use the search box or enter your favorite blogs rss address.
  3. Click “Subscribe”.

Three very simple steps and you have access to all of your favorite news and information sites. Trust Google to make things easy. One of the nicer functions of the Google Reader is that you don’t need to know the address of a specific site. You can type something in the search box, such as the word “news” and get a list of hits of sites that Google deems appropriate. Then just click on them, and click “Subscribe” and you’re all set up!

Once you’ve subscribed to a few feeds, look to the left of the screen. This space will show you all of the feeds that you have subscribed too. This means that, instead of spending hours looking at the sites, you can spend minutes searching for new content! Add this site to your favorites menu and it will be the only site you need to have access to.

Google Reader and SEO

If you are focusing on optimizing your site to increase your rank with Google, than the Google Reader should make you smile. The fact that this reader is both free and very easy to use means that millions of people will be searching for and adding their favorite blogs to the Google Reader. This means that blogs and RSS feeds will become even more important on the internet than they are now, which is an excellent sign for any internet marketer. Even better is the fact that the gurus at Google have added a search box to the Google Reader. This means that a user can type in a word or phrase, possibly to search for a blog post they read weeks before, and all of the top matches will come up. There is nothing an internet marketer likes better than to have their site be pushed to the top by Google.

So how does this help in SEO, well the ease of use means that by adding your own feeds and feeds that are from your favorite location then Google is now recognizing these feeds as well. The more popular your feeds are and the more they are used by others then the higher up your results will be when others are looking for relevant content to add to their reader and the more importance Google places on your content.

The face of the internet is changing so much and unless you are keeping up you are going to loose out. The value of internet users is now being taken more seriously then ever before and the more valuable your content is the more popular you become in the ranks.

Where to Start

The first thing to do is to set up your own Google Reader. It’s quick and painless and will give you an idea of exactly how the program works. In order to do that, just head to http://reader.google.com/ to begin setting up your account. Then just figure out what you’d like to do with your account. You can sit back and enjoy being able to read all of your favorite blogs in one area, or you can take it a bit further by using Google Reader to optimize the potential of your website. One thing is for sure, Google Reader has amazing potentials, no matter how you want to use it.

Sites Benefiting Already

Here are sites running blogs in various industries that are making full use of the Google Reader and already saying they have seen the traffic results for it.

  1. http://www.freeonline-slots.net/online-slots/
  2. http://www.nodeposit-casinos.com/news.php
  3. http://www.mycustomwater.com/news
  4. http://www.pirate-theme-party.com
  5. http://blog.autowarranties.com

Content Writing: How to Hire Ghost Writers and Succeed in Keyword Ranking

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Recently there has been a major change taking place not only in Google but in all the search engines. The search engines have 2 goals for their users. To filter out junk web sites from natural search results, and to make money on paid advertisements which are also know as sponsored links. This competition gives the search engines the power to choose how they accept sites and which they want to exclude. Though this process is not bullet proof, you will see more sites disappearing from the top 10 of the major search engines and more relevant sites appear relating to your keyword search.

Is your site appearing in these results naturally? Are you finding that no matter what you do, there is no progress for your site, though you spend hours daily trying to make this happen?

Many websites could easily climb the keyword ranks if they just apply some standard content writing to their site. After much effort and time, many site owners realize they need help in this area. These site owners have hired Ghost Writers to accomplish these tasks with some to no real success.

The frustration levels now are growing all around as people realize their need for help and yet still can’t find Ghost Writers who know any better then they do. The problem is too many people are not understanding of what the real needs are, and are hiring people without this knowledge and are once again wasting time.

Service companies offering Ghost Writers know your desires to move up in keyword ranks, but this doesn’t mean they are experts in SEO. The real needs here are some simple guidelines to follow when hiring a Ghost Writers.

Know Your Site Needs More Then Ghost Writers

The most important thing you need to understand is what your site needs more then any Ghost Writer can. If you direct these writers with a well thought out plan you will see more success with your keyword ranking.

Know Your Word Count

Your first plan is to know how many words each page of your site needs. To get the Search Engines Attention you want to have at least 300 words and not more then 500 words per page. The only time you really can use more then 500 words on a single web page is if you are offering news or press.

Make Your Point Stand Out

Each page of content by the Ghost Writers should have specific points readers can focus on. There are a few ways to do this:

  1. Use a numbered point system. Have a section of your content break down 3 or 5 important things in the format of Numeric points
  2. Bullet point your 3 or 5 things that make that page of content clear for your readers
  3. Use Sub Headings to break down your thoughts as this helps people get to the most important parts to them.

Which ever way you choose, you are structuring your content in such a way that readers can skim through your information and find what they need.

Proper Keyword or Key Phrase Placement

You do not want your pages filled with keyword or phrases randomly just to get them in your site. This only delays your keyword rankings. Instruct the Ghost Writers to dedicate each page to a specific keyword.

Now, to make this point clear not confusing, what I am saying here is you will have your basic pages of content like your home page, contact page, about us page, service page, etc. Those pages you can put in different keyword phrases in the content itself and in the meta tag areas like Meta descriptions, keywords & title of page, but only put these in if they make sense to the reader as these pages are meant to drive sales and call people to action!

Create a section on your website either via an FAQ, Information page, Blog, News or something that will allow you to have titles and descriptions that link to their own independent pages where now you can have clear content focusing on 1 keyword or phrase that make sense to the readers and tells the search engines what keyword to place you for in their rankings.

Make sure that you link the keyword at least 1 time back to your main home page, as this really helps push the search results to get people to the starting page of your site.

Only focus on 10 keywords for natural results when you first start this process. If you try for too many keywords then again you will slow down this process.

A Bit More Details on Meta Data

Make sure that your Ghost Writer includes:

  1. Meta Title: This should be the primary keyword for that page along with 1 more keyword and then the name of your company. For example this article title tag could be “Ghost Writers, Keyword Ranking: The Content Writers”.
  2. Meta Description: Your description should be compelling and to the point about what the particular page is about. A good description for this article could be “Ghost Writers, everything you need to know before you hire one. Read our step by step guide and watch your keyword rankings improve in no time at all”
  3. Meta Keywords: Research your primary and secondary keywords first so that when you hand over the details to your Ghost Writer they will know already which ones you want. Though you already know yourself you want this included on the page of content written for easy copying and pasting. The keywords for this article could be “ghost writers, ghost writer, keyword ranking”

Final Preparation and Research To Find The Best Ghost Writers

Now that you have an idea on what you should plan for in advance this will make your Ghost Writers very happy as you are providing them with great details on what you want for main site content and for keyword site content. They know now what you are expecting in return and should speed up the process to return to you the content needed.

I want to note here that you are not presenting these writers with content for your site, only a specific outline of page names, keywords and expectation. You only need now to do a bit of research to find the best writer for your business.

When searching for a Ghost Writer you are now simplifying your search for someone who can follow your instructions rather then hope they know what they are doing for improving your keyword rankings. Here is a guide to help you find the best provider for you:

  1. 1. You want to find writers who are easily accessible via Phone or Email
  2. 2. Hire only a company that gives you a clear pricing plan so you know what to expect when all the content is complete. Typically you can have them break down a per word cost to make things really simple.
  3. 3. Have them write up 1 or 2 pages before you give the complete set of pages. This way you can see how quickly they return the content, if they followed your instructions and how well written the content is.
  4. 4. Leave a little room for content that is almost what you needed but not exactly on target. Remember, you are more of an expert then they are in your industry. This is very important because many times it is just a minor change in wording or adding a simple sentence to complete your page that you requested. If this is the case then make the fix and pay them for their work.
  5. 5. For terms of payment I suggest you work this out with them in advance but never pay 100% up front. A rule of thumb in business is let them collect 25% to 50% up front. This of course depends on your experience with them in regards to time and quality. If you see they are pretty close but need to send requests back to have fixes then try for the 25%, if they are pretty much right on target then pay the higher amount up front, and then pay them the full amount once the content is complete.

For your sites success and the success of the Ghost Writers you hire, I truly hope this information serves you well.